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+Project Gutenberg's Morals and the Evolution of Man, by Max Simon Nordau
+
+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
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+
+Title: Morals and the Evolution of Man
+
+Author: Max Simon Nordau
+
+Translator: Marie A. Lewenz
+
+Release Date: November 12, 2011 [EBook #37998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORALS AND THE EVOLUTION OF MAN ***
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+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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+
+  MORALS AND THE EVOLUTION
+  OF MAN
+
+
+
+  MORALS AND THE
+  EVOLUTION OF MAN
+
+  BY
+  MAX NORDAU
+
+  A Translation of
+  "BIOLOGIE DER ETHIK"
+
+  By
+  MARIE A. LEWENZ, M.A.
+  Fellow of University College, London
+
+  CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
+  London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
+  1922
+
+
+
+  TO MY DEAR WIFE ANNA (née DONS),
+
+  the sunshine of my life in happy days, my brave
+  comrade in the storms of the world-catastrophe, with
+  love and gratitude I dedicate this book which helped
+  both her and me to endure the dark years when we
+  were homeless wanderers.
+
+  MADRID, _September 26th, 1916_
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER                                               PAGE
+  1. THE PHENOMENON OF MORALITY                            1
+  2. THE IMMANENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF MORALITY             46
+  3. THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORALITY                    84
+  4. MORALITY AND LAW                                    115
+  5. INDIVIDUAL MORALITY AND COLLECTIVE IMMORALITY       144
+  6. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY                          185
+  7. MORALITY AND PROGRESS                               215
+  8. THE SANCTIONS OF MORALITY                           247
+
+
+
+
+MORALS AND THE
+
+EVOLUTION OF MAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE PHENOMENON OF MORALITY
+
+
+A very well-known experiment in animal psychology was once made by
+Möbius. An aquarium was divided into two compartments by means of a pane
+of glass; in one of these a pike was put and in the other a tench.
+Hardly had the former caught sight of his prey, when he rushed to the
+attack without noticing the transparent partition. He crashed with
+extreme violence again the obstacle and was hurled back stunned, with a
+badly battered nose. No sooner had he recovered from the blow than he
+again made an onslaught upon his neighbour--with the same result. He
+repeated his efforts a few times more, but succeeded only in badly
+hurting his head and mouth. At last a dim idea dawned upon his dull mind
+that some unknown and invisible power was protecting the tench, and that
+any attempt to devour it would be in vain; consequently from that moment
+he ceased from all further endeavours to molest his prey. Thereupon the
+pane of glass was removed from the tank, and pike and tench swam around
+together; the former took no notice whatever of his defenceless
+neighbour, who had become sacred to him. In the first instance the pike
+had not perceived the glass partition against which he had dashed his
+head; now he did not see that it had been taken away. All he knew was
+this: he must not attack this tench, otherwise he would fare badly. The
+pane of glass, though no longer actually there, surrounded the tench as
+with a coat of mail which effectually warded off the murderous attacks
+of the pike.
+
+The fact so often observed, that man in many cases does that which he
+passionately desires to leave undone, and refrains from doing that which
+all his instincts urge him to do--this phenomenon of Morality is a
+generalization upon a huge scale of the above experiment on animals with
+the pane of glass in a tank.
+
+Jean Jacques Rousseau thought out a theoretical human being who was by
+nature good. Such a human being does not exist and has never existed.
+From sheer annoyance at the provoking obliquity of vision which led the
+enthusiast of Geneva to develop such a theory, one is sorely tempted to
+go to the opposite extreme and declare that man is by nature
+fundamentally bad; but such an assertion is just as naïve as Rousseau's
+contention. Good and bad are values which we can only learn to
+appreciate when we have felt the effect of the phenomenon of Morality.
+The concepts of good and evil are of much later origin than mankind, and
+can therefore no more constitute a fundamental characteristic of man's
+original nature than, for instance, the cut and colour of his clothes;
+though it is open to wiseacres to maintain that man's nature to some
+extent actually finds expression in the cut and colour of his
+clothes--that is, in his choice of them. Anyone contemplating primitive
+man, man as he emerges from the hands of Nature, stripped of all the
+additions which he has acquired in the course of his historical
+development, is bound to admit that man is neither good nor bad; he is a
+living being acting according to the instincts implanted in his nature;
+just like the pike. But in most contingencies he does not obey these
+instincts, and if he reflects upon himself and his actions, he is
+astounded at realizing this, and asks: "Why do I refrain from revelling
+in the gratification of my desires?"
+
+Innumerable times every day of his life he would like to break many or
+all of the Ten Commandments; but he abstains from so doing, and, what is
+more, mostly without effort, without having painfully to suppress his
+desire. What prevents him from yielding to his impulses? An invisible
+power which lays its commands upon him: "Thou shalt not!" "Thou shalt!"
+Often his aims and inclinations come into violent collision with this
+order, or this prohibition, and are hurled back by the painful impact.
+Man hears the threatening, imperious voice, but cannot see whence it
+comes. Accustomed to reason by analogy, he concludes that it is, like
+thunder, a voice of Nature. When the pike has sufficiently injured his
+nose against the pane of glass, he assumes as an actual fact that an
+insuperable barrier separates him from the tench, and, moreover, that it
+is both useless and painful to come into contact with this. He does not
+try to discover the nature of the obstacle, and gives up any further
+attempt upon his mysteriously protected prey. Man, with a more highly
+developed intelligence than the pike, does not accept the phenomenon of
+Morality with dull resignation. Since he has become conscious of a
+mysterious barrier erected between his volitions and his actions, he has
+not ceased to reflect upon this barrier, to investigate it with a timid
+yet irresistible desire for knowledge, and to try and discover its
+nature.
+
+It redounds to man's credit that he has devoted so much time and energy
+to investigating the character and essence of Morality. But the result
+of these investigations does not redound to his credit. With the
+exception of theology, there is no subject upon which so much has been
+written as upon ethics. Yet whosoever plunges into this boundless sea of
+literature will emerge with feelings bordering upon horror and despair.
+Here a free rein is given to all man's errors, to his habit of drawing
+false conclusions, to his faulty modes of thought. Incapacity to
+interpret facts, association of ideas, elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp and
+uncurbed by any criticism, intemperate mysticism, arrogant dogmatism,
+shallow self-sufficiency--all these vie with one another in the
+presentment of theories which either are patently foolish, arbitrary or
+ill-founded, or else prove to be so when impartially examined.
+
+It is hard for the few reasonable thinkers who have taken part in this
+great investigation to make their voices heard amid the uproar raised by
+the solemn, unctuous, dictatorial or pedantic tomfools. And even the
+former are not entirely satisfactory, because they do not distinguish
+clearly enough between the form and the substance, the externals and the
+essence of Morality, and because they do not discriminate with
+sufficient care between questions as to its nature, origin and aim, and
+its powers or sanctions--questions which must on no account be
+confounded.
+
+What is Morality? Obviously it is necessary to attempt a clear answer to
+this question before any useful purpose can be served by inquiring into
+the group of problems to which it gives rise: its aim, its laws, its
+origin, its method, its assumptions. The Stoics answer this question as
+follows: "Morality is living according to Nature." Furthermore, it is
+quite in accordance with the doctrine of the Stoics that Cicero says:
+"Virtue, however, is nothing but Nature developed to the highest
+possible degree of perfection" ("_ad summum perducta_"). Moral therefore
+means natural; Morality and Nature are equivalent; they are one. Really
+a simpler or more childlike explanation is hardly possible. The most
+superficial glance at human life and at our own soul teaches us that
+Morality is contrary to Nature, that it must struggle against Nature to
+assert itself, that it means a victory over Nature, in so far as we
+understand by Nature in this special sense the most primitive reaction
+of man to simple and more complicated stimuli, the first tendency of
+impulse, the immediate, instinctive urge to act. Further, the definition
+of the Stoics ignores the aggregation of concepts which the synthetic
+conception, Morality, involves; as if this were self-evident and
+required no definition. The Stoics tacitly assume that Morality and
+Good are synonymous. Cicero makes this assumption clearer by using the
+word Virtue (_virtus_) instead of Morality. But in all languages this
+word implies approbation and praise. It is an appreciation of worth
+(_Werturteil_), to use the expression so appropriately coined by Lotze.
+
+But the very fact that we recognize Morality as being valuable is by no
+means a matter of course and it demands an explanation.
+
+Certain actions could only be judged to be good if they were
+distinguished from others which did not suggest the same judgment, which
+were felt to be not good, to be bad or indifferent. We come to the
+question, What is Good, what is Bad? The Stoics reply, "That which is
+good is natural." It is easy to call facts which please us natural, and
+such as displease us unnatural. In reality both series of facts are
+equally natural; because everything that happens is natural; because by
+definition Nature is the synthesis of all phenomena; because nothing
+exists outside of Nature, and within Nature everything is a part of her
+and therefore is natural and can be nothing but natural. If we
+nevertheless wish to distinguish between natural and unnatural
+phenomena, if we call Good, Morality, and Virtue natural, and compare
+them favourably with the unnatural, this only proves that we use the
+words natural and unnatural as synonyms for good and bad, and that we
+have a ready-made standard by which we measure the naturalness or
+unnaturalness (that is, the goodness or badness) of actions, and that
+there exists within ourselves the law by which we judge them to be good
+or bad. But how do we come by this law? How, of what material, and why
+do we fashion this standard? Why do we approve of one thing as good and
+condemn another as bad? What qualities do the former and the latter
+possess, or what qualities do we ascribe to them? That is what we want
+to know when we inquire as to the significance of Morality, and the
+definition of the Stoics throws no light whatever upon the matter.
+
+According to Aristotle Morality is "the activity of Practical Reason,
+which is accompanied by pleasurable emotion." It is not worth while to
+dwell upon this definition. It is absolutely valueless. Practical Reason
+is not a definite concept; Aristotle does not say anywhere what he
+understands by "practical" when he applies this attribute to Reason; and
+to call every activity of Practical Reason accompanied by pleasurable
+emotion Morality is mere eccentricity.
+
+To take only one example: if I have a house built, and accept the
+architect's plans because they please me greatly, my practical reason is
+most certainly active; the gratification induced by my reasonable choice
+of the plans is doubtless a pleasurable emotion; but assuredly no one
+will characterize as moral this activity of my practical reason which is
+accompanied by pleasurable emotion. It may be that Aristotle was
+contemplating not a single action, but conduct in life as a whole. In
+that case he has expressed in an unfortunate, and much too loose a
+manner the thought that Morality is Reason plus pleasurable emotion. We
+shall frequently meet with and have to examine this idea, which omits to
+explain why pleasurable emotions attend certain activities of
+"Practical Reason," whatever that may be, and fail to be aroused by
+others.
+
+Judaism, as embodied in its law-givers and prophets, teaches that
+Morality consists in living and acting in accordance with the divine
+Will. Maimonides, who, however, was regarded by many of his
+contemporaries as a heretic, does not consider Judaism a creed at all,
+but a code of Morality. He maintains that anyone who repudiates the
+tenets of the Jewish faith, even the most essential one, namely, the
+belief in a single god, must not be excluded from the Jewish community
+as long as he conforms to its moral laws. This thinker, usually so
+accurate and nice in his reasoning, overlooks the fact that in this case
+he is contradicting himself in a manner wellnigh comic. According to
+him, too, Morality consists in the endeavour to live and act in
+accordance with the divine Will. How is such an endeavour possible for a
+man who does not believe in God and for whom consequently no divine Will
+exists? Therefore either Morality must be something different from an
+approximation to the standard set up by the divine Will, or else he who
+denies God cannot be moral. But I will leave the author of the "Guide of
+those who have gone astray" to his self-contradiction, and only retain
+the Jewish definition of Morality as based upon the Will of God.
+
+Without any restriction Christianity has taken over this definition from
+the mother-religion. In his zeal to claim that God alone is the source
+of all Morality, St. Augustine allows himself to be carried away to such
+an extent that he libels mankind most hatefully. Just as for Rousseau
+man is by nature good, for the Bishop of Hippo he is by nature
+fundamentally bad. Left to his own devices he would always wallow in the
+mire of sin and vice, and would never even feel the wish to abandon his
+wickedness. It is God's mercy alone which rescues him from his depravity
+and sets his feet upon the path of righteousness, leading him to virtue,
+salvation and eternal bliss. Thomas Aquinas is no less definite on this
+point. The scriptures of Judaism and Christianity contain the eternal
+law which God has ordained for mankind. He points out the paths that man
+should follow. All Morality springs from Him alone.
+
+To this very day true believers adhere to this doctrine. Morality did
+not originate on earth; the knowledge of it is a gift of grace from
+heaven to mankind. It is derived from God; it is that which God has
+willed; or else it does not need any special act of volition on the part
+of God, but is the essence of God himself. That is the teaching of
+Paley, the classical moral philosopher. Virtue consists in doing good to
+mankind in obedience to the Will of God, and in order to attain eternal
+salvation. Here stress is laid upon the fact that Morality is active
+love for one's neighbour, and this is a concession on the part of the
+conciliatory Englishman to the utilitarian ethics of his countrymen; but
+for him the necessary and sufficient reason for this love of one's
+neighbour is the Will of God and the desire for eternal salvation. The
+German devotee, Baader, blustering like a capuchin, preaches this
+twaddle: "Any Morality which is not rooted in divine law is the
+intellectual impiety of our time raised to its highest power; it is the
+perfection of atheism; for the idea of the absolute autonomy of man
+atheistically denies the Father as law-giver; the theistic denial of the
+necessity for divine aid in fulfilling the law does away with the Son or
+Mediator, and finally the materialistic-pantheistic apotheosis of Matter
+does away with the Holy Ghost with its sanctifying power." The Frenchman
+Jouffroy, though more careful and reticent in his manner, unmistakably
+expresses his conviction that "ethics, as well as the philosophy of law,
+inevitably and necessarily lead to theology."
+
+But this necessity only exists for minds whose desire for knowledge and
+truth is easily satisfied by words without a meaning that can be
+visualized, by fabulous statements accepted without proof, by fictions
+of the imagination, and by shallow juggling with the association of
+ideas. Even those who do not approve all Auguste Comte's arguments will
+agree with him when he classifies the successive steps in the mental
+development of mankind as the theological, transcendental, and
+scientific modes of thought. When man's understanding is in its infancy
+he is content with a supernatural explanation of all phenomena which
+strike him as mysterious, disquiet him or rouse his curiosity. Only I
+have never been able to understand why Comte discriminates between the
+theological and the transcendental modes of thought, and assigns to the
+latter a higher place than the former. Both are on a footing of absolute
+equality; both raise arbitrary fictions of the imagination to the
+position of sources of knowledge; both substitute anthropomorphic
+trivialities for the observation of phenomena and research into the
+conditions under which they occur and their relationship to one another.
+The only difference between them lies in the fact that transcendentalism
+expresses itself in choicer language than does theology, that it
+presents formulæ that are more complicated and pretentious, less
+transparent and honest--formulæ which the unpractised mind does not
+immediately recognize as mythological dogmas in a pseudo-scientific
+disguise.
+
+The relationship of theological to transcendental thought is much the
+same as that of superstition to religion. Both of them are one and the
+same. Religion is shamefaced superstition, whereas superstition has not
+yet learned to feel shame. Religion is superstition in a dress-coat, and
+therefore fit for polite circles; superstition is religion in a cotton
+smock and therefore cannot be admitted to society. Superstition is the
+religion of the poor and unassuming, religion is the superstition of
+fine folk who plume themselves on their formal and verbal scholarship.
+
+Ever since man has risen above the level of the beasts, ever since the
+first faint glimmerings of thought began in the thick-walled, narrow and
+dark skull of a hunter of the Neanderthal or Cro Magnon, he has ascribed
+everything unintelligible in life and in the world around him to divine
+actions and divine sources. How did the world come into existence? A god
+or gods created it. How does Nature work? In accordance with the will of
+a god or gods, in obedience to divine commands, as a result of divine
+activities. What is life? A divine gift of grace. What is
+consciousness? An irradiation of the divinity. What is infinity, what
+eternity? Attributes of the god. God is the name that from the beginning
+of time to the present day men have given to their ignorance. They find
+it easier to bear disguised by this pseudonym; they are even proud of
+it. With cunning self-deception they have endowed the word with the
+dignity pertaining to a title of the most awe-inspiring majesty, and
+they no longer feel ashamed of a poverty of mind which can boast of such
+a magnificent name. Morality also is one of those phenomena which are
+not intelligible as a matter of course. The questions how, whence, why,
+and to what end Morality exists, and what it is, cannot be solved at a
+glance; its life-history is not apparent to every observer, as is that
+of the domestic cat. But why cudgel one's brains? Cheap explanations are
+ready to hand. This way mythology, you maid-of-all-work! Morality has
+been ordained by God. A moral life is one in accordance with God's
+commandments. He who will not content himself with this answer is an
+infidel and does not deserve to have any notice taken of him.
+
+Let us leave the paltry statements of theologians and note how men who
+investigate questions more thoroughly have dealt with Morality.
+Descartes defines Morality as the sustained endeavour to do that which
+one has recognized to be right. It is difficult to discern in this
+definition the father of scientific scepticism. What are the
+distinguishing marks of Right? Is the decision as to what is right and
+what is wrong to be left to the subjective judgment of the individual?
+In that case Descartes must concede that the action of a burglar is
+moral, if he has recognized that it is right for him to perpetrate his
+crime between two and three o'clock in the morning, that being the most
+favourable time for it, and then strives to the best of his ability to
+effect an entrance into the building he has selected, at the moment
+which he has recognized as the right one. Or shall all mankind, or at
+least the majority, and not the individual, decide what is right? In
+that case the definition would certainly approximate to the one which I
+hold to be true; but for one thing it would suffer from vagueness; and,
+moreover, its originator would lay himself open to the reproach of not
+having shown why the individual is worthy of praise when he acts in
+accordance with the convictions of the majority, though these be opposed
+to his own, and in so doing allows his action to be determined by a
+judgment due to a psychic mechanism other than his.
+
+Spinoza's "Ethics" leaves the reader in great discomfort, the result of
+vacillating and contradictory explanations. Obviously Descartes' great
+disciple had no clear conception of the essence of Morality and held
+either consecutively, or may be even simultaneously, divers views on the
+subject, amongst which those of all schools of thought are either quite
+clearly expressed or at least implied. "By Good," he says, "I mean that
+which we know for certain to be useful to us."[1]
+
+  [1] I quote the wording of Berthold Auerbach's translation:
+      "B. de Spinoza's collected works. Translated from the Latin
+      by Berthold Auerbach." Stuttgart, J. G. Cotta, 1871. Second
+      edition, Vol. II.
+
+And again: "To act absolutely virtuously is merely to act, live,
+preserve one's being (these three mean the same thing) in accordance
+with the dictates of Reason, because one seeks one's own interest."
+
+According to that Morality is synonymous with egoism, and its aim is
+man's individual profit or interest. Even the most pronounced
+Utilitarians among ethical theorists have not ventured to go to such
+lengths. True, they have contended that the aim of moral action is
+happiness, but at least they define it as the happiness of the whole
+community and not that of the individual, except in so far as he is a
+member of the community and has his fair share of its well-being.
+Spinoza foresees the objection that the pursuit of one's own happiness
+cannot possibly deserve the universal esteem in which virtue is held,
+and he tries to adduce reasons whereby the egoism which he characterizes
+as moral may be justified and palliated:
+
+"Everyone exists according to the supreme law of Nature, and
+consequently everyone does, according to the supreme law of Nature, that
+which results from the necessities of his own nature; and therefore
+every man forms his judgment as to what is good and bad according to the
+supreme law of Nature, pursues his own interest according to his lights,
+seeks revenge, strives to preserve what he loves and to destroy what he
+hates." That is possibly the most audacious and at the same time the
+most ill-founded statement that has ever been written on the subject of
+Morality. Morality means behaviour calculated to further one's own
+interest. Morality is therefore utility. But man cannot act otherwise
+than morally, since he always acts as he is compelled to do by his own
+nature. There is no sense in discriminating between good and bad, moral
+and immoral, since one always acts in accordance with the behests of
+Nature. Man automatically executes the dictates of Nature which is alone
+responsible for his deeds.
+
+For the Stoics, too, Morality is action in accordance with the law of
+Nature, but Spinoza goes further than the Stoics, in that he does away
+with any universally applicable standard of moral conduct, and sets up
+instead of Nature pure and simple, which is the same for all, each man's
+individual nature as the authority which shall lay down rules of
+behaviour for him. So Morality is something individual and subjective.
+Man acts according to the requirements of his interest; his own nature
+shows him what his interest requires; no other person has any right or
+any qualification to form a judgment upon the worth of his conduct, to
+call it good or bad, for he cannot know what course of action the man's
+personal nature, peculiar to himself and to no other, may prescribe to
+him. This is the doctrine of anarchy and amorality put in a nutshell, a
+more wordy paraphrase of the _Fais ce que vouldras_ (please yourself),
+the terse inscription that Rabelais put over the entrance to his Abbey
+of Thélème, as the only law governing that abode of alluring wantonness.
+Spinoza certainly does half-heartedly concede to Reason the rôle which
+Aristotle positively assigns to it ("To act in an absolutely virtuous
+manner is merely to act according to the guidance of Reason," etc.), but
+it is impossible to see how Reason can exercise guidance and control if
+"everyone does according to the supreme law of Nature that which
+results from the necessities of his nature." This can surely only mean
+that everyone may yield to the unbridled desires of his natural
+instincts, which is the very reverse of self-control by Reason. If
+Nature is to rule despotically, there is obviously no place for a
+constitutional limitation of her sole power by the effective counsel and
+protests of Reason.
+
+But Spinoza renounces in a much more definite way his views recognizing
+the right of every individual "to form his judgment as to what is good
+and bad according to the supreme law of Nature," for he calmly adds:
+"Society can be founded, if it reserves to itself the right possessed by
+the individual to take revenge, and to pronounce a verdict on what is
+good and what is bad; thereby it acquires the power to prescribe rules
+of conduct for the community, to make laws, and to enforce them, not by
+means of Reason, which cannot restrict passions, but by threats....
+Hence in a state of Nature, sin cannot even be imagined."
+
+This concession to Society most emphatically contradicts his first
+definition of Morality. It does away with the right claimed for the
+individual "to do according to the supreme law of Nature that which
+results from the necessities of his own nature," and by the same
+"supreme law of Nature" to "judge what is good and what is bad." It
+subjects conduct to the restraint, not of Nature, but of Society. It
+bears witness to the admission that "Reason cannot restrict passions,"
+although Spinoza has just required the virtuous man to "act according to
+the guidance of Reason." Spinoza admits that Morality is not the
+consequence of a law inherent in the individual, but of an extraneous
+law forced upon him by society; that it is not an individual but a
+social phenomenon. In this he agrees with the conclusions of modern
+sociological thought, but his merit is much diminished by the fact that
+he skims lightly over the one great difficulty which sociological ethics
+is struggling to overcome. He says, society "reserves to itself the
+right ... to pronounce a verdict on what is good and what is bad, and
+thereby acquires the power to prescribe rules of conduct to the
+community," etc.
+
+It has the power right enough; police, judge, prison and gallows bear
+witness to that; but has it the right? That is not clear without further
+investigation. It requires to be proved. The amoralist can emphatically
+deny this, basing his conclusion on Spinoza's own definition. He can
+legitimately declare that he need submit to no dictates of society, that
+he owes obedience only to his own nature and his own inner needs, and
+the moral philosopher can only prove to him that he is wrong by
+scornfully indicating the penal code and its stalwart minions.
+
+Spinoza, we see, has already given a whole series of mutually
+destructive and contradictory definitions of Morality: it is the law of
+life and conduct which society lays down for the individual, though we
+do not learn from him on what principles it is based; it is the pursuit
+of one's own interest as indicated by Reason; it is obedience to
+necessity--that is to say, to the demands of one's own nature. All this
+does not suffice him. He discovers a new aspect of Morality.
+"Recognition of Good and Evil is nothing but a pleasurable or a
+disagreeable emotion in so far as we are conscious of it." And again,
+"Pleasure is not actually bad (as the ascetics probably contend), but
+good; pain, on the contrary, is actually bad."
+
+In this case the ideas pleasure and pain are treated as equivalents of
+good and bad, as were useful and harmful in the former case. According
+to the axiom that things that are equal to the same thing must be equal
+to one another, pleasurable is synonymous not only with good, but also
+with beneficial, and in like manner painful with bad and harmful. Brandy
+undoubtedly produces a sensation of pleasure in the drinker; is brandy,
+then, good in a moral sense? Above all, is it beneficial? Many such
+questions could be put to Spinoza, but this one is enough.
+
+Thus we discover Spinoza to be at one and the same time a Utilitarian
+and a Hedonist, the champion of Impulse and again of Reason, an
+anarchistic individualist and a herald of the right of society to rule
+the individual. Angry and disappointed, we turn from him, for instead of
+finding in him the definite standard we sought we have met with the
+shifting hues of the chameleon and the uncanny changes of form of
+Proteus.
+
+The views of the English thinkers are clearer and more convincing
+although they, too, do not carry their investigations far enough. Hobbes
+uses Justice and Injustice as synonyms for Morality and Immorality, and
+he definitely recognizes what Spinoza only dimly guessed, namely, that
+these ideas could only arise in man when living as a member of society
+and not in a being dwelling alone. According to him, therefore, Morality
+is a social and not an individual phenomenon; just as the moral
+philosophers of the theological school look upon it as the Will of God,
+so he considers it to be the Will of Society. But he was under the
+obligation (non-existent for the theologian) to trace to its source this
+social Will, to show how it is manifested, to explain why the individual
+not only submits to it, but values this submission far more highly than
+mere utility. Man learns the Will of God by revelation, and it is
+forbidden to inquire into its basis. To the Will of Society Hobbes
+cannot possibly ascribe the same incontestable sanctity. It should not
+have escaped his notice that this Will is neither uniform nor of assured
+stability, and that it often wavers and is sometimes self-contradictory.
+Therefore, if he wants to call the Will of Society Justice, as the
+theologians call the Will of God Morality, and if he wants to look upon
+Justice and Morality as equivalents, then it is his duty to explain how
+Society can make claims which conflict with the principles on which the
+universal rules it has drawn up are based, and which, consequently, not
+being just or moral, are unjust and immoral, but which, nevertheless,
+must be acknowledged by the individual as being both just and moral,
+simply because they are social claims.
+
+In Kant's moral philosophy we find the extremest form of mystic
+dogmatism; its success would be inexplicable did one not know how prone
+mankind is to be intimidated by brusque statements. Kant's dictatorial
+pronouncements have become common-places. "Act only on that maxim
+whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a
+universal law." That is very impressive. But what is "the maxim" on
+which you act? This maxim is the moral law. Now we yearn to know what
+this moral law is, whence it comes, and on what it is based.
+
+But our yearnings remains unsatisfied. The moral law is a secret. It is
+an incomprehensible power which rules our consciousness. Ask no
+questions. Be silent, submit and obey. Even the theologian discussing
+moral philosophy will listen to reason. He gives us the information,
+sibylline though it be, that the moral law emanates from the Will of
+God, and is shown to us in the revelations of religion. Kant does not
+even give such meagre information. The moral law exists. That must
+suffice. "The starry heavens above thee, the moral law within thee." You
+retort that that is a metaphor which you may call poetical, if you like,
+but it is no explanation. You will get the following reply: this
+metaphor, rightly understood, indicates that the moral law is eternal,
+that it is part and parcel of uncreated Nature like the stars, that it
+is a phenomenon of the same order as all the elements that go to make up
+the universe. "The moral law does not flow from antecedent ideas of Good
+and Evil; on the contrary, the moral law decides what is good and what
+is evil." It is not derived from human experience. The less so since
+"it cannot be proved by experience that it has at any place or any time
+become real." In other words, no one can testify that the "Categorical
+Imperative" has ever been realized, that the moral law has "at any place
+or any time" ceased to be a Kantian theory productive of sacred thrills,
+that it has ever emerged from the unapproachable cell wherein it dwells
+in the temple of human consciousness, to take a place and play an active
+part among mortals.
+
+The lessee of all Kant's wisdom, Hermann Cohen, with the clumsiness of
+an over-zealous assistant, has expressed his master's thought in a
+perfectly ludicrous form: "The moral law is to be conceived as a reality
+of such kind that it must exist, that its being must be" (note the
+elegance and euphony of the phrase "being must be"!) "even if no
+creature existed for whom it would be valid." True, the moral law is a
+maxim on which you should "act," a standard of human conduct, but it
+would still exist if there were no human beings and no action. It would
+come to exactly the same thing if Hermann Cohen said: the railway is to
+be conceived as a reality of such kind that it must exist if there were
+no human beings and consequently no travellers; even if there were no
+earth on the surface of which rails and sleepers could be laid. This is
+such palpable nonsense that it would be a work of supererogation to
+prove its absurdity. By this grotesque exaggeration Hermann Cohen has
+clearly brought to light the hollowness and weakness of Kant's Moral
+philosophy which culminates in the "Categorical Imperative." In spite
+of its arbitrary dogmatism, the formula of the "Categorical Imperative"
+has taken a hold on the imagination of the superficially educated, and
+has never ceased to be repeated with the fervour evinced by a devout man
+at prayer, by several generations of those who have made it their
+business to cultivate mental and moral science.
+
+In one of his early novels, "The Island of Dr. Moreau," H. G. Wells has
+described how an audacious scientist, by performing an operation on the
+brains of the most savage beasts of prey, such as panthers, wolves,
+etc., transformed them into creatures with the powers of thought and
+speech. He succeeds in suppressing, or at least in lulling for the time
+being, their bloodthirsty instincts, but he is always afraid that these
+may be roused again, and forbids the animals on which he experiments to
+touch blood or fresh meat. He takes good care to give no reason for this
+prohibition. He merely issues it sternly and threateningly. It is "the
+Law," an unknown, inexplicable, but terrible power to which one must
+submit, because opposition would expose one to unimaginable, but
+terrible evils. If temptation assails the beasts they flee it,
+whispering fearfully and warningly to one another: "The Law! the Law!"
+Wells is a trained philosopher, and often has his tongue in his cheek. I
+shrewdly suspect that when he writes of the mysterious "Law" which fills
+Dr. Moreau's semi-humanized beasts of prey with superstitious terror, he
+is poking fun at Kant's "Categorical Imperative."
+
+The great logical mistake in Kant's moral philosophy is that he
+conceives Morality as a social or collective phenomenon, and yet
+defines it as an individual one. According to Kant, the Categorical
+Imperative exists within us. It is as immutable as the starry heavens
+above us. It gives us the criterion by which to discriminate between
+good and evil. Its realm is our consciousness wherein it lives and
+rules; it is not introduced from outside, it springs from no power or
+conditions outside our person. All the same, the only law which this
+ultra subjective Categorical Imperative imposes on us is the most
+centrifugal that can possibly be imagined: "Act only on that maxim
+whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a
+universal law." Hence our action is designed to produce an effect on the
+world around us. It is "to become a universal law" can, of course, only
+mean, it is to become a universal law of human society, for Kant cannot
+possibly have aspired to make the Categorical Imperative impose laws
+upon the stars in their courses. Our moral law, in so far as it applies
+to our actions, deals with society. When we formulate it in our minds,
+we associate it from its first inception with the notion of the society
+to which it is to be applied. It would have been logical to say: "Your
+standard of conduct is to be what society recognizes as its universal
+law." But Kant puts the cart before the horse and says on the contrary:
+"The maxims on which thy action is based are by thy will to become the
+universal law of society."
+
+Other philosophers have avoided this mistake. Hegel declares: "It is not
+until man becomes a member of a moral community that the ideas of Duty
+and Virtue attain a definite meaning and become direct representatives
+of a universal spirit in subjectivity, which knows that it is actuated
+in its aim by the universal and realizes that its dignity and its
+particular aims are founded upon it." If we translate this horribly hazy
+language of Hegel's into plain speech we find it means: "The ideas of
+Duty and Virtue only acquire a meaning when they are applied to the acts
+of commission and omission of the individual member of a community."
+(When Hegel speaks of "moral community" his use of the word "moral" is
+inadmissible, for he takes it for granted that the meaning of the word
+"moral" has been determined and is clearly understood, whereas he ought
+first to have defined its meaning.) The concepts of Duty and Virtue
+denote that the individual in taking action thinks of the community,
+that regard for its interests determines him, that his actions do not
+attain dignity and worth until his aim becomes the interests of the
+community, that these interests must coincide with those of the
+individual if his actions in his own interests are to merit the
+appellations of dutiful and virtuous. In short: to act morally is to act
+so as to ensure the well-being of the community. The real Categorical
+Imperative is a social conscience.
+
+Feuerbach expresses this thought clearly and distinctly when he says:
+"There can be no question of Morality in the strict sense of the word
+except where the subject of discussion is the relationship of man to
+man, of one person to another, of me to thee."
+
+Recent contemporary French writers are in no way doubtful of the
+meaning implied by the concept of Morality. "Morality," says Littré,
+"is the whole collection of rules which determine our conduct towards
+others. Moral Good is the ideal, which at any period of a civilization
+forms opinions and customs with respect to this conduct; moral evil is
+that which offends this ideal." This definition is very incomplete and
+weak, as will be seen in the course of our remarks, but on one point it
+is quite clear: it treats Morality as a social phenomenon, it
+paraphrases it as the adjustment of individual action to the standard
+set up by the community. The question of the origin and the aim of this
+standard is left open.
+
+L. Lévy-Brühl formulates Littré's idea more clearly. "We call by the
+name of Morality the collection of such conceptions, opinions, feelings
+and customs respecting the mutual rights and duties of men in their life
+as members of a community, as are recognized and generally observed at a
+given time in a given civilization."
+
+Thus, according to some, Morality is subjection to an absolute law of
+divine, or at any rate of unexplained and inexplicable origin, which
+religion or a mysterious inner voice reveals to man; according to
+others, it is the recognition that the claims of the community, or at
+any rate of the majority of one's fellow men, are of binding force upon
+the actions of the individual. These different answers to an inquiry as
+to the origin of Morality both contain the tacit admission that it is a
+law which peremptorily dictates to man what he shall do and what he
+shall not do. But by means of what psychic mechanism does this law
+enforce obedience in the consciousness of man? It is remarkable that all
+moral philosophers, no matter to what age, nation or school they belong,
+dimly feel or clearly recognize that in civilized man at any rate,
+natural instincts and judgment are always at war; that the latter
+opposes the former; that in the victory of judgment over impulse lies
+the very essence of Morality; that consequently the essence of Morality
+implies the control and repression of instinct by Reason--in a word,
+that it is inhibition.
+
+We have seen that Aristotle, in definite though unconscious opposition
+to the Stoics, who consider Morality synonymous with Nature, defines it
+as the activity of Reason.
+
+Henry More was the first to express this quite clearly: "Virtue is an
+intellectual force of the soul which enables it to control ... animal
+instincts and sensual passions."
+
+And Dr. Jodl sums up the character of Christian morality in the
+statement: "Moral philosophy under the influence of Christian ideas
+makes Morality always appear in the guise of a prohibition; at any rate
+it is apt to conceive Morality as acting in an essentially restrictive
+and prohibitive manner upon the natural impulses and instincts of man."
+
+This is not quite correct. This Christian code of morals does not always
+manifest itself as a prohibition. Its main precept is: "Love thy
+neighbour as thyself." That is not a prohibition but a positive command.
+Nevertheless, the point of departure of this command is an inhibition.
+For the first instinctive movement of man is selfishness and, as its
+consequence, indifference to one's neighbour; the first imperious
+impulse is to sacrifice the latter's interests to one's own. But if
+regard for one's neighbour, nay, love for him permeates our feelings,
+thoughts and actions, that denotes a victory of Christian ideas over the
+impulse of instinct, a suppression of that impulse--that is, an
+inhibition which, not content with mere prevention, prolongs its
+efficacy in the same direction until it changes the impulse of
+selfishness and inconsiderateness into its very antithesis, that of
+unselfishness and charity.
+
+It constitutes an important advance in knowledge to recognize that
+Morality, and not, as Jodl makes out, only Christian Morality, is
+manifested as an inhibition, as the victory achieved by Reason over
+Instinct which is contemptuously described as animal, simply because its
+worth is judged by a standard already supplied by current views on
+Morals. It is inadmissible to judge by this standard when one attempts
+an impartial investigation into the ultimate foundations and the essence
+of Morality. We have no plainly obvious right--no right which does not
+require a proof--simply to scorn instinct as animal; to run it down from
+the start and with a respectful bow to give Reason precedence over it;
+to applaud with satisfaction the suppression of rascally Instinct by
+highly respectable Reason. Instinct is no more animal than any other
+manifestation of life in man; and he indulges in pleasant self-deception
+if he imagines that he is other than an animal, that is, a living
+organism in which all processes take place according to the same laws as
+in all other living beings, from the simplest one-celled creature to
+the most highly developed and complicated.
+
+In itself Instinct has the same claim to dignity as Reason; according to
+some people an even greater one, because the former is more primitive,
+unpremeditated, self-assured and firmly established than the latter, and
+if Reason claims to be the superior, it must substantiate that claim.
+
+As a matter of fact, that claim has never been universally acknowledged.
+
+Periods during which Reason rules at least in name and is treated with
+the obsequious reverence which the model citizen has, or feigns to have,
+for his sovereign, are followed by others in which Instinct revolts;
+rebels dethrone Reason and set up Instinct in its place, or, as they
+call it, passion and nature. The parties which in turn wield power in
+these periodic revolutions may be briefly termed classical and romantic.
+The classicists are the legitimist supporters of Reason; the
+romanticists are revolutionaries, and their leaders are men like Cleon
+or Jack Cade, Cromwell, Washington or Robespierre; that is to say, rude
+demagogues or subtle dialecticians in favour of Instinct. Among the
+legitimists in Reason as in politics, are to be found those who maintain
+the divine right, who base the right of Reason to rule over Instinct
+upon the Will of God, and others again, the constitutionalists, who base
+their support on the Will of the people, on universal suffrage, who
+force upon Instinct the law promulgated by society. I need not carry the
+metaphor to extremes. Every reader can work it out in all its details.
+I only wanted to show quite clearly that almost all moral philosophers
+conceived Morality as a struggle between Reason and Instinct, as the
+defeat of lawlessness by law. But their views diverge widely when they
+try to explain the source of this law and its claim to obedience.
+
+The theologians find no difficulty in this explanation. Just as the
+essence of Morality according to their ideas is the nearest possible
+approximation to divine perfection, so the moral law is one enacted by
+God Himself, and it is a sin punishable with hell fire to fail to
+observe it or to rebel against it. Others look upon Man as his own
+law-giver, and trace his moral conduct, his willingness to combat his
+own instincts, to an inner voice which teaches him what is right. They
+call this inner voice by different names. They call it Nature, Reason or
+Conscience, and look upon it as something innate, as a normal
+constituent of man's psychic nature. That is the meaning of Fichte's
+apodictic statement: "That which does not meet with the approval of
+one's own conscience is necessarily sin. Therefore he who acts on anyone
+else's authority acts in a conscienceless manner."
+
+With this emphatic utterance Fichte dismisses both the devout believers,
+for whom Morality is the revealed Will of God, and the Rationalists who
+look upon it as the dictate of society. He considers that if man claims
+to act morally, he can do so only on his own authority, i.e. on that of
+his conscience. He is not aware that in so doing he frivolously abandons
+all rights to pronounce an objective moral judgment on any human action.
+He thereby relinquishes the power to ask any further question except:
+"Did he act in accordance with his own conscience? If so, then he has
+acted in a subjectively conscientious way, even if it appears to me to
+be immoral or even criminal and monstrous. If he has acted contrary to
+the promptings of his own conscience, then he is assuredly a sinner,
+even if his action be in my eyes splendid and exemplary." Thus Fichte,
+with his subjective basis of Morality, is led to a conclusion which is a
+ludicrous reversal of generally accepted ideas. According to him, a man
+would be acting conscientiously if, despising what all others hold good,
+right and sacred, he wallows in the satisfaction of his selfish
+instincts, as long as his conscience approves or even bids him do so; on
+the other hand, he is a sinner if, in opposition to his inner voice, but
+according to moral law, that is in obedience to extraneous authority, he
+practices all the virtues.
+
+All these subjective moral philosophers tacitly assume with Rousseau
+that man is by nature good. They take no account of the empirically
+established fact that there are men whose Fichtean conscience, or whose
+Kantian categorical imperative, urges them to a course of action which
+according to the general opinion is bad, wicked and revolting. This
+criticism applies to Beneke, according to whom Morality is "a
+development of human nature which exists as such within us, and which we
+need only continue or promote"; it applies equally to Reid and Dugald
+Stewart, who describe it as an inclination, which has become a habit or
+a principle, to act according to the dictates of conscience. But
+conscience must be explained. It is by no means self-evident that each
+individual conscience will have the same standard of good and evil. The
+moral philosopher must not shirk the duty of showing how the conscience
+acquires its concepts of moral values, with what weapons it provides
+Reason to combat Instinct, which demands satisfaction without paying any
+attention to the warnings of conscience.
+
+The great majority of moral philosophers do not endorse the view of Kant
+and Fichte, that conscience is a piece of human nature, a sense inborn
+in man, an inner voice that is independent of, and unmoved by, external
+influences; on the contrary, they are convinced that conscience
+originates outside the individual, that, in his consciousness, it is the
+advocate retained by society, commissioned to plead the cause of the
+community before the reason of the individual even, nay, especially,
+when the interests of the community run counter to those of the
+individual.
+
+Bacon calls the presence in our consciousness of a defender of the
+interests of society our innate social affection, and treats it
+unreservedly as the source of Morality. Long before his time the
+Stoics had noted the existence of this social affection and called it
+[Greek: oikeiôsis]; Hugo Grotius, with the intellectual perspicuity
+peculiar to himself, says that "Right and Morality flow from the same
+source, and this source is a strong social instinct natural to man, it
+is solicitude for the community, a solicitude guided by Reason." The
+English philosophers are practically unanimous in ascribing both
+conscience and Morality in general to a social source. The welfare of
+the community, says Richard Cumberland, is the highest moral law;
+Hutcheson remarks that, in the struggle between egoism and universal
+benevolence, the decisive factor in favour of the latter is the
+accompanying feeling, the reflective emotion of approval.
+
+In modern parlance we call "universal benevolence," altruism, and the
+"reflective emotion of approval" is a paraphrase of conscience which
+contains an indication of its mode of action. For the idea that our
+action will meet with the approval of the community and the pleasurable
+emotion of satisfaction are in fact the reasons why we mostly submit to
+the dictates of conscience voicing the commands of the community. Only
+Hutcheson is too venturesome and goes too far, when he maintains
+unreservedly that the reflective emotion of approval in the struggle
+between egoism and universal benevolence is the decisive factor which
+turns the scales in favour of the latter. This is by no means always the
+case. When it does occur we call the action moral, but we characterize
+it as immoral when, in spite of the "reflective emotion of approval"
+"universal benevolence" is worsted by egoism.
+
+It is unnecessary to quote the opinions of other moral philosophers.
+It is enough to observe that most of them describe the moral law as a
+social agreement and make conscience its accredited representative.
+L. Lévy-Brühl repeats a doctrine current since the days of Pythagoras
+when he says: "The sense of duty and that of responsibility, horror of
+crime, love of what is good and reverence for justice--all these, which
+a conscience sensitive to Morality thinks it derives from itself and
+from itself alone, have nevertheless a social origin"; and Feuerbach
+expresses the same view in an entertainingly melodramatic fashion when
+he calls the voice of conscience "An echo of the cry of revenge uttered
+by the injured party." This cry of revenge would never wake an echo in
+us if we did not possess a sounding board which cries of distress and
+lamentation cause to vibrate. Schopenhauer, digging deeper than his
+predecessor, clearly recognizes this sounding board, and describes its
+characteristics when he says that the foundation of ethics is pity,
+which in its passive form warns us: "_Neminem laede!_ Do harm to no
+one!" And in its active form gives the order: "_Imo omnes quantum potes
+juva!_ Assist everyone with all your might!"
+
+The assumption, that sympathy with his neighbour must be present in
+man's consciousness before he is capable of moral action, is one that
+need not be made by subjective moral philosophers, who hold with Kant
+and his school that the moral law is an inborn categorical imperative,
+which proclaims its commands without reference to any extraneous object,
+or to the world, or mankind.
+
+In the same way the theologians have no need of it, for they consider
+that what is morally good is the Will of God.
+
+But he who holds with the moral philosophers of sociological tendencies
+that Morality is regard for one's fellow men, and the recognition that
+the claims of the real or supposed interest of the community are
+superior to those of the comfort of the individual, must admit that
+sympathy is a necessary preliminary to moral action; i.e. that the
+individual must have the ability to picture the sufferings of others so
+vividly that he feels their sorrows as his own, and with all his might
+and all his will strives to prevent, alleviate and heal them. The lack
+of this ability, psychic anæsthesia, is a symptom of disease. It renders
+the person affected incapable of moral action. It is a characteristic of
+the born criminal, and is the essential symptom of that state of mind
+which alienists term moral insanity. Even in this condition, if reason
+and the power of judgment are not affected, great offences against
+current moral law can be avoided. But this results from the fear of the
+painful and ruinous results which a collision with public opinion
+entails, even if the offender is not actually haled into court. It is
+not due to any inner necessity, nor to the prompting of one's own
+feelings.
+
+Only the Rationalists have any cause or reason to inquire into the aims
+of Morality, whether they look upon the moral law as dictated by society
+or are of the opinion that it is the sum total of the rules by which
+Reason, of its own initiative, successfully combats the urging of
+Instinct. If the moral law is a creation of society, and is obeyed by
+the individual out of sympathy with his fellow-men or consideration for
+society, the logical conclusion is that society has set up the moral law
+to satisfy some real or imagined need. Its aim in this case can only be
+the real or supposed welfare of the community. This is the most widely
+accepted view.
+
+"Morality and universal welfare," says Macchiavelli, "are conceptions
+which coincide." In his calm assurance this apodictic writer, who
+doubtlessly slept well and had an excellent digestion, is never troubled
+by a doubt as to whether there is such a thing as an absolutely reliable
+measure of universal welfare, and therefore whether Morality, which is
+termed its equivalent, can provide us with a perfectly unimpeachable
+standard. He whose ethical conscience is more tender and timid will
+inevitably anxiously ask himself: Who decides what universal welfare
+demands and what is conducive to it? Is it to be the masses? Is the mob,
+incapable of thought, ignorant, swayed by momentary and shifting
+impulses, to make moral laws for the select few who are its natural
+guides? What tragedies would necessarily result from this definition!
+How often a strong personality, trained to come to independent
+conclusions, refuses to obey the voice of the mob! Is the sheep who
+trots bleating along with the herd to be taken as the type of a moral
+being? Must we necessarily condemn as immoral those who swim against the
+stream, enlightened tyrants who force upon their people hateful
+innovations calculated to ensure their welfare,--such men as Peter the
+Great, the Emperor Joseph II, the reformer who comes into violent
+conflict with the majority who are creatures of habit? "The aim of
+Morality is the welfare of society; this is indeed the essence of
+Morality." A sufficiently safe and most soothing formula this seems; but
+really the security it gives is most deceptive, and it leaves unsolved
+the most important problems relating to the phenomenon of Morality.
+
+A numerous group of moral philosophers seeks the aim of moral conduct
+in the individual himself, not outside him. In spite of Schopenhauer's
+sympathy, they doubt that consideration for the well-being of the
+community would act forcibly enough upon the individual to induce him to
+wage unceasing war on his impulses and struggle to overcome them. Rather
+they hold that the individual must find in his inner consciousness not
+only the spur to moral action, but also the reward for the same, and
+they characterize this driving force as pleasurable emotions in every
+sense of the words. According to them man acts morally because, and in
+so far as, he anticipates pleasurable results from so doing. Epicurus
+considers the aim of Morality always to be Pleasure. He makes only the
+one reservation, that a reasonable man will renounce an immediate
+pleasure for the sake of a greater one in the future, and that he may
+delight in the anticipation of pleasurable emotions which defeat and
+dull present pains. Thus the martyr may be a true Epicurean, even if by
+his actions he exposes himself to most cruel torture and the most
+painful death, for he is convinced that the everlasting joys of paradise
+will more than indemnify him for his temporary sufferings.
+
+I have already shown that Aristotle considers Morality the activity of
+practical Reason, which is accompanied by pleasurable emotions. He makes
+these pleasurable emotions an essential part of Morality, and Spinoza
+shares this view, for he says: "Knowledge of good and evil is nothing
+but a pleasurable or a disagreeable emotion in so far as we are
+conscious of it."
+
+No less roundly, one might almost say brutally, Leibnitz declares: "We
+term good that which gives us pleasure; evil that which gives us pain,"
+while Feuerbach expresses himself rather more carefully and indefinitely
+thus: "The instinct for happiness is the most potent of all instincts.
+Where existence always occurs together with volition, volition and the
+will to be happy are inseparable; they are, indeed, essentially one. 'I
+will,' means 'I have the will not to suffer, not to be hindered and
+destroyed, but, on the contrary, to be assisted and preserved; that is,
+I have the will to be happy.'" This is a wordy paraphrase of Spinoza's:
+"All existence is self-assertion, and Morality is only the highest and
+purest form of this fundamental instinct in a reasonable being."
+
+Among those moral philosophers who see in pleasurable emotions the aim
+of Morality, its reward and its incentive, we must distinguish two
+groups: those who understand by pleasurable emotions such as appeal to
+the senses--the Hedonists; and those who spiritualize the meaning of the
+word and expect of Morality not an immediate bodily gratification, a
+pleasure, or an insipid satisfaction of the sense, but lasting
+happiness--the Eudæmonists. At the first glance the Eudæmonists seem to
+have a higher and more worthy conception of the subjective reaction of
+moral conduct than have the Hedonists; for the satisfaction the former
+expect and promise does not apply to the lower spheres of our organic
+life, but to the loftiest functions of our mind, from which alone a
+feeling of happiness can emanate.
+
+But if we look into the matter more closely we find that to draw a sharp
+distinction between the Hedonists and Eudæmonists is more than a little
+arbitrary. For Pleasure and Happiness differ hardly at all in
+essentials, but chiefly in degree; and this would at once be obvious if
+one only took the trouble to define the two ideas, which, however, is
+mostly not done. And with good reason, for it is impossible to explain
+Pleasure. You can use synonyms for it; you can look wise and say:
+Pleasure is that which is agreeable, or that which one desires, that in
+which one delights, or a certain quality of feeling which accompanies
+such organic processes as strengthen or vitalize the system; but all
+that this amounts to is to say in a roundabout way, Pleasure is
+Pleasure. It is a fundamental fact of our inner consciousness, just as
+inexplicable as life, or as its antithesis, Pain. But if we assume that
+Pleasure is something given by subjective experience, then the idea of
+Happiness can be defined. Happiness is a flooding of the consciousness
+with sunshine; it is enjoyment of the moment, a sense of living in the
+present accentuated by pleasurable emotion. If this feeling is
+organically differentiated, that is, if it springs from a certain
+section of the mind or mechanism of the body and can be located there,
+it is ecstasy. It is only felt as Happiness when it is, so to speak,
+melted, dissolved, distributed throughout the organism,
+coenesthetically diffused.
+
+If we agree to this definition we can take Eudæmonism into consideration
+as an aim of moral action, but Hedonism we shall have to discard from
+the start. If Morality is to be inhibition, a victory of Reason over
+Instinct, then it cannot possibly arouse Pleasure, since the first and
+most immediate source of Pleasure is the surrender to instinct, the
+satisfaction of the organic appetites; but if one resists them,
+suppresses them, then one experiences a privation which at best
+occasions discomfort and may easily cause pain. By its very nature and
+the mechanism by which it works, Morality can therefore give rise to no
+pleasure, but only to discomfort. All the same, it can afford a feeling
+of happiness.
+
+It may be objected that I am guilty of a contradiction when I assume the
+possibility of Happiness without Pleasure, as I have just described
+Happiness as a particular kind of Pleasure; but in reality there is no
+contradiction. For Pleasure springs from a special organic apparatus,
+whereas Happiness is not a condition of any particular apparatus in our
+body, but a general feeling that cannot be located; if it is roused by
+moral actions it originates in the self-satisfaction of Reason, in its
+pride in the victory over Instinct, in the rapture occasioned by one's
+own strength of will; therefore, it can well exist without any
+differentiated pleasurable emotion located in any particular organic
+apparatus.
+
+Many moral philosophers have for various reasons rejected plausible
+Eudæmonism as well as Hedonism, and these reasons can all be traced back
+to the recognition, or at least an inkling, of the fact that moral
+action in the nature of things must exclude pleasurable emotions; at any
+rate immediate ones, and such as are perceived by the senses. Perhaps
+Fichte does this in the most naïve fashion, for he rejects every form of
+Eudæmonism as the aim of moral action, but admits as its purpose only
+bliss, that is to say, the self-satisfaction of Reason resulting from
+action in accordance with its own laws. However, he struggles in vain to
+deny that this "bliss" is of the nature of a pleasurable emotion, or to
+interpret it as differing from Eudæmonism. He is only giving the latter
+another name to make it conform in an orthodox manner with his doctrine
+of the Supreme Ego. "_Baptizo te carpam!_" I baptize thee, carp! In this
+way the pious man complies with the law enjoining abstinence from meat,
+and with an easy conscience smacks his lips over a roast pheasant which
+he has dubbed fish.
+
+Plato is among those who most emphatically deny that Pleasure is either
+the motive force, the accompaniment, the consequence, or the aim of
+Morality. But a reasonable thinker can derive no profit from his
+arguments in support of this point of view, for they are rambling,
+fantastic, mystical and visionary. Plato thinks it a necessary
+consequence of the very nature of Good that it should be absolutely
+self-sufficient. For Pleasure is a perpetual growth, a ceaseless longing
+for more; it can therefore not be self-sufficient, and on this account
+can not be the foundation of Morality.
+
+However, it is by no means obvious why Morality should not be in a
+perpetual state of growth (just as Pleasure is, according to Plato), or
+why it should not constantly desire an increase of its own activities.
+On the contrary, this craving is just what one would most wish Morality
+to have. True, it would not then attain self-satisfaction. But what is
+the good of this self-satisfaction? It is a pleasurable emotion, and
+according to Plato Morality is supposed to have nothing in common with
+Pleasure. It is not to be contentment and serene satisfaction, but
+rather tireless endeavour. However, Plato, of course, cannot admit this,
+because for him Good and the deity are identical, and being perfect can
+therefore advance no farther in perfection; and the striving after Good
+is merely an effort of memory on man's part to call to mind more clearly
+the deity whom he saw in his spiritual life before birth, and of whom he
+retains a dim and confused memory in his earthly life. It is plainly
+idle to waste reasonable criticism upon such visionary arguments.
+
+The Stoics, too, try to sever the connexion between moral conduct and
+Pleasure, and to conceive the former as a simple activity of human
+nature, one, moreover, from which they expect no particular
+satisfaction. They overlook the fact that every activity of the impulses
+and instincts of man's own nature affords him satisfaction, and that
+Pleasure is nothing but this very satisfaction of natural instincts. If,
+then, Morality were, as the Stoics contend, only "Life in harmony with
+Nature herself," then, like every other satisfaction of natural desires,
+it should be an ever-flowing source of pleasurable emotions, and this
+characteristic would be inseparable from it, though the Stoics may
+vainly try to deny it.
+
+Christianity has an easier job than Stoicism. With harsh severity,
+disregarding any plea for indulgence in view of the weakness of the
+flesh, it absolutely excludes the factor of pleasure from the fulfilment
+of moral duties. But this severity is only apparent. The good and just
+man can expect no reward for his moral conduct here on earth, but he
+will find a much more ample one in the life to come. To the devout
+believer who gives unlimited credit to it, the promise of the joys of
+paradise has the full value of a cash disbursement. It is somewhat
+childish juggling with words to deny pleasurable emotion to be the aim
+of moral conduct if at the same time a most vivid foretaste of the
+eternal bliss which awaits him after death be given to the virtuous man;
+as if the anticipation of heavenly bliss were not a pleasurable emotion
+of the highest degree!
+
+Kant finds it due to his point of view to spurn every weak inclination
+to Eudæmonism. A Categorical Imperative cannot issue commands with an
+eye to profit or comfort. That is as clear as daylight. "All Morality of
+action must be founded on the necessity which arises from duty and
+respect for the law, and not from love or inclination for the desired
+result of the action." Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and John Stuart Mill
+have recorded such irrefutable criticisms of the Kantian doctrine of the
+absolute disinterestedness of moral action, that it is unnecessary to
+add to their arguments.
+
+Only some moral philosophers, and particularly Mill, are guilty of
+logical inaccuracy when they reject Eudæmonism but retain Utility as the
+aim of morality. Why do the Utilitarians not realize that they are
+merely Eudæmonists under another name, and that he who disregards his
+own immediate interests in order to further the well-being of the
+community experiences a pleasurable emotion of high order in the
+satisfaction he derives from the sacrifices whereby he has contributed
+to the good of the community?
+
+The useless exertions of a section of moral philosophers to eliminate
+not only Hedonism but also Eudæmonism from moral action are a veritable
+labour of Sisyphus. Hardly have these two with difficulty been expelled
+by the door than they return by the window or the chimney. It is a mere
+conjuring trick to remove them from this world to the next, as do the
+theologians, or to substitute universal well-being for the feeling of
+happiness. All the same, the desire to purge moral action of the least
+admixture of hope of profit or pleasure is comprehensible. Common
+experience, which is equally forced upon the profound thinker and upon
+the plain man in the street least inclined to cudgel his brain, teaches
+us that Morality consists, with very few exceptions, in acting against
+our own immediate interest, in denying ourselves some coveted pleasure,
+in renouncing some attainable profit, in undertaking some disagreeable
+exertion because Reason bids us do so. From this practical experience
+the man in the street gets the impression that duty is a bitter
+necessity and that decency is attended by many and varied
+inconveniences. The theorist, the philosopher, derives a principle from
+his empirical facts; he observes that the moral man often acts against
+his own immediate interests, and expresses this in the pretentious
+axiom: "Morality from the very beginning excludes all thought of
+profit."
+
+And yet the philosophers are guilty of the same superficiality as the
+man in the street. They do not go far enough into the matter to perceive
+that the morality of pleasure, of interest, and of duty, Hedonism,
+Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative, all lead in very slightly
+different ways to the same goal--Eudæmonism. The fulfilment of duty
+affords spiritual satisfaction, a pre-eminently pleasurable emotion
+which increases in direct proportion to the effort which its fulfilment
+demands. Interest also implies pleasure, for every interest ultimately
+comes to this, that it is an attempt to secure a pleasure. This aim lies
+at the bottom of all interests; it is the fundamental interest from
+which all seemingly different interests are derived; it is the universal
+goal to which all human effort tends, whether it be a question of making
+money to satisfy ambition, of winning love and friendship, of material,
+spiritual, personal or social values. Interest is self-assertion and the
+intensifying of the zest for life. But these are always accompanied by
+pleasurable emotions; thus interest is forthwith identified with
+pleasurable emotion, even though one has to work hard, even though at
+the moment it entails drudgery and discomfort. Hedonism makes no secret
+of its nature and its tendency. It openly admits what the Categorical
+Imperative denies and what Utilitarianism veils with vague phrases: that
+the aim and object of moral action is Pleasure and nothing else.
+
+In our short survey of the immense field of literature dealing with
+moral philosophy we have learnt that, although the most various and
+divergent views are expressed as to the essence and source of Morality,
+nevertheless there is but one opinion, be it clearly or vaguely stated,
+be it the result of knowledge or surmise, as to the mechanism by means
+of which moral concepts determine action, and as to the conscious or
+unconscious aim of moral action: Moral concepts do their work by means
+of inhibition, and the aim of moral action is a feeling of happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE IMMANENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF MORALITY
+
+
+It is natural for man's thoughts to be concentrated on himself until he
+has learnt to rise from the deep and narrow well of his egoism to a
+higher and wider view of life and, free from the taint of self-love, to
+form an idea of his place in the world and his relationship to it. Not
+till the development of his intellect is far advanced does any doubt
+assail him as to the truth of his conviction that all his personal
+affairs, the least as well as the most weighty, are of the greatest
+importance to the universe, that every ache or pain he feels must wake
+an echo in the heavens, that the Earth shudders in anticipation when he
+is about to stumble and sprain his ankle, and that the stars in their
+courses mysteriously, though intelligibly to the discerning, foretell
+the hour of his birth and of his death. An Indian legend pours cruel
+scorn upon this childlike megalomania: A fox had fallen into a stream
+and was drowning. "The world is coming to an end!" gasped the animal in
+its agony. A peasant standing on the brink replied coldly, "Oh, no, I
+see only a little fox drowning."
+
+Many moral philosophers, those of the Kantian school without exception,
+labour under the delusion of this same, egocentric view. In their eyes
+the phenomenon of Morality is a cosmic one. Morality is the law of
+human conduct, therefore it is the law of world processes, of the
+universe. Indeed, it is the law of the universe before it becomes that
+of human conduct. It would exist even if there were no men, no humanity,
+no human conduct at all. The solemn innocents who weightily give
+utterance to this doctrine are unaware how ridiculous they are. They do
+not hesitate to subject Sirius to the yoke of the Ten Commandments. They
+are convinced that the Milky Way practises virtue and shuns, or ought to
+shun, vice, just as we inconsiderable human beings do. The precept,
+"Thou shalt not steal," applies with binding force to gravity, and the
+warning, "Thou shalt not kill," to electricity, though the latter
+ruthlessly disregards it, as the results of being struck by lightning
+and accidents with high voltage installations frequently prove. If they
+do not threaten Nature with police and prison it is only because in
+their eyes Morality is independent of all sanctions, is superior to
+rewards and punishments, depends upon itself alone, constitutes its own
+aim, is by its very nature a compelling force, and therefore has no need
+of adventitious compulsion.
+
+Such profound nonsense cannot lay claim to serious treatment. It is a
+counterpart to the belief that events in the history of mankind, like
+war and pestilence, are foretold by heavenly signs such as fiery comets.
+The stars revolve, the clockwork of the universe continues undisturbed,
+as though the earth were still uninhabited, as it was when it was a
+glowing fluid globe or, earlier still, a nebular mass; and this
+although man's self-esteem be hurt by such a lack of consideration. If
+we care to call the (so far as we know) unalterable laws, according to
+which the forces of Nature act and the mechanism of the world works, the
+Morality of the Universe, that may pass. Only we must in that case
+clearly realize that we are speaking metaphorically, that we are making
+use of a poetic simile, that we are anthropomorphically attributing
+human traits to the universe. Morality is a phenomenon restricted to
+mankind, or, to be strictly accurate, a phenomenon which occurs only
+among living beings; for the beginnings of Morality may be traced in
+creatures of a lower order than man, and it develops simultaneously with
+the consciousness and the mentality of living beings. Morality is a
+function of life, dependent upon it, begotten and developed by it, to
+meet life's needs and serve its interests. The existence of Morality
+apart from life is as unthinkable as that of hunger, ambition, or
+gratitude.
+
+Morality is a collection of laws and prohibitions which Reason opposes
+to organic instincts, by means of which the former forces the latter
+into actions from which they would like to refrain, or prevents them
+from carrying out that which they yearn to do. The existence of
+Morality, therefore, presupposes in the first place that of an
+intelligence sufficiently developed to form a clear idea of something
+that is still in the future, namely, an image of the consequences
+resulting from an action.
+
+Guided by this inner contemplation of the image of the consequences of
+an action, Reason decides to carry out or prevent the action. This
+gives us the lowest plane upon which Morality can occur as the cause of
+action and of abstention from action. It implies, above all things,
+foresight, and can therefore only exist in a consciousness which is
+sufficiently developed to grasp the idea of the future and form a
+picture of it. This consciousness must be capable of extracting the
+elements of a conception from memory according to the laws of the
+association of ideas, and be able to group them logically in a new
+order. In other words, as long as the mind cannot visualize the past and
+from it build up a picture of the future, Morality can find no place in
+it.
+
+This statement requires no limitation, but it demands a short
+explanation. It is quite true that Morality is foresight, but it is only
+among the elect that the latter is developed to such a pitch that it is
+possible to form images of the consequences of action and abstention
+sufficiently clear and definite to exercise a restraining or encouraging
+influence.
+
+The average man can act morally without first working out a clear
+picture of the future. It is enough that he has been trained to the
+habit of respecting current precepts, and of accepting the views
+obtaining in his circle as to what is good or bad, what is admissible or
+inadmissible. This morality, of course, is merely a matter of drill or
+training; it is unthinking automatism; it is inferior, and not to be
+compared with the living, creative morality of higher natures, which, as
+a sovereign law-giver, comes to an independent decision in every case
+and, like the guardian angel of childlike faith, guides man on his path
+through life, indicates the right course at the cross-roads, and warns
+him of pitfalls and stumbling-blocks. But for everyday use mechanical
+morality may suffice. In the uneventful existence of the average man,
+which passes in a stereotyped way, this mechanical morality is an
+acceptable guide and counsellor, but it remains an outside influence
+foreign to his inner consciousness; he is glad to deceive and outwit it,
+as a slave does his master's bailiff if he can do so without running the
+risk of a thrashing; but if his destiny unexpectedly rises above its
+accustomed dead level, then this dogmatic morality, which he has never
+really assimilated, leaves him in the lurch, and mournfully, in piteous
+tones, he utters the well-known cry, "It is easy to do one's duty; it is
+difficult to know where one's duty lies."
+
+Reason, then, which is capable of foreseeing the results of actions,
+teaches a man what he must do and from what he must abstain, where he
+may follow his instinct and where he must resist it, according as it
+considers the presumptive results of yielding to impulse good or bad.
+But whence does Reason obtain the standard it applies to the actions of
+men and their results? How does it acquire the fundamental concepts Good
+and Bad, and what is their significance? Generally speaking, the answer
+will be as follows: Moral values are appraised by a standard supplied by
+a general consensus of opinion; Reason acknowledges as good that which
+meets with the approval of the community, that which the latter desires
+and therefore praises; the community, for its part, echoes the
+pronouncements of influential personages, i.e. of the most respected,
+most powerful, and most aristocratic; Reason condemns as bad that which
+the community disapproves, and which it therefore censures and rejects.
+This definition does not solve the problem of good and bad, it only
+shifts it.
+
+Later we shall have to show upon what grounds the community
+discriminates between acceptable and reprehensible facts, calling the
+former good and the latter bad. For the present it is enough to observe
+that Reason derives the laws, which it constantly impresses on man, from
+the opinion of the community.
+
+It can happen that Reason rejects the opinion of the community and forms
+a conclusion opposed to it. This revolt of individual morality against
+conventional morality is the great tragedy of man. It can only occur in
+the soul of a hero, for mediocre and insipid people always bow to the
+opinion of the majority. There is clearly imminent danger of making a
+mistake. Not seldom, however, the individual is right in his opposition
+to the community, and then the latter is fired by his example to examine
+its traditional dogmas and to correct or reject them. This is not the
+only, but it is the most common means by which Morality is developed and
+changed. Its progress demands martyrs. Strong personalities must be
+sacrificed to force a revision of moral values. Socrates has to swallow
+the draft of hemlock so that unfettered thought may acquire the right to
+doubt the legend of the gods. Jesus has to incur the dangerous anger of
+the Pharisees so that the adulteress may be treated with indulgence and
+human sympathy instead of being punished according to rigorous law. But
+the opposition of a self-willed, subjective Morality to the accepted
+moral law is always exceptional; the general rule is submission to the
+moral law. This is indeed a necessary preliminary to revolt against the
+moral law of the community, for it is only by means of a vigorous social
+education that man develops such a nicely balanced and keen sense of
+Good and Bad, that he cannot prevail upon himself to carry out generally
+approved actions which his own intelligence does not recognize as moral.
+He whose moral sense has not been intensified by strict discipline will
+never be assailed by doubt, as long as he follows in the footsteps of
+the multitude.
+
+Hence, as a rule, Reason exercises its control of the actions of man in
+conformity with the laws prescribed by the community. Before Morality
+develops into the practice of Good and the rejection of Bad it takes the
+form of consideration for the world at large, since it is the latter
+which has created the concepts of Good and Bad as well as the standard
+by which they are judged, and in order to avoid conflict with the
+community, and to maintain uninterrupted agreement with it, the
+individual exerts himself to persist in doing good and to refrain from
+doing evil.
+
+The establishment of these facts gives deep offence to the mystics among
+moral philosophers. "What a debasement and belittling of Morality! What!
+It is supposed to be nothing more than a sort of obsequiousness towards
+the multitude? Its laws are observed for the sake of pleasing others? It
+is a comedy played to win applause and a call before the curtain? That
+is a libel and a calumny. The truly moral man looks neither to the right
+nor to the left. He does not condescend to ask, 'What will the world say
+to this?' There is but one judge in whose eyes he wishes to be
+justified: his conscience."
+
+Quite right. But what is conscience found to be if we penetrate the fog
+of mystic words with which it has come to be surrounded? Conscience is
+the permanent representative of the community in the consciousness of
+the individual, just as public opinion may be termed the conscience of
+every member of society made manifest. Metaphorically, it wields the
+powers pertaining to society; it praises and blames, it condemns and
+exalts, it punishes and rewards, as society could do; and it actually
+pronounces judgment in the name of society, even though it does not
+preface such judgment with this formula which is tacitly implied and
+must always be mentally added. Conscience is the invisible link which
+unites the individual with a social group, just as speech, custom,
+tradition, and political institutions are the visible links. But the
+social origin and representative nature of conscience set limits to its
+power. Conscience is a respected authority with wide powers only in the
+consciousness of those individuals who have a highly developed social
+sense. I purposely do not say those in whom the instinct to follow the
+crowd preponderates, because this mode of expression might imply blame
+and condemnation which I do not intend to convey.
+
+For social instinct comes natural to an individual born, educated and
+working in a community, who shares its feelings, views and interests,
+nay, even its prejudices and mistakes; and if he lacks it, it is a sign
+of a morbid deviation from the normal. Only the decadent man is
+uncannily lonely in spirit, alien, indifferent or definitely hostile to
+his human surroundings; he is, according to the violence and
+polarization of his instincts, the passionate anarchist or the born
+criminal; the public opinion of his circle is unintelligible to him and
+makes no impression on him; it has no significance for him; he attaches
+no importance to its approbation, and its anger leaves him cold; he
+would take no notice of it, were it not that he knows its power to
+destroy him, and fears its police, its prisons, and its scaffolds. Such
+a man, organically predisposed to crime, most urgently needs a
+conscience. It would arrest him on the downward path to which his evil
+instincts lead. It would warn him to resist the wicked impulses of his
+selfishness. But he, of all people, has no conscience. He can have none.
+He is anti-social, he is at war with society, diplomatic relations
+between him and it have been broken off, and it has no representative in
+his consciousness. A lively and active feeling of joint responsibility
+with the community is a necessary predisposition on the part of the
+individual before conscience can have any power. Where the former is
+lacking the latter is mute and paralysed.
+
+The essence of Morality, as we have found, is the subjection of
+instinct and direct organic impulses to the discipline of Reason. The
+latter exercises a censorship in pursuance of a law which it derives not
+from within, but from without, from the ordinances of the community
+which instructs Reason as to what it should permit, what it should
+forbid, and what it should demand. Conscience ensures respect for its
+commands, and may be called the executive power or police of Reason,
+acting as the authorized representative of Morality. It is the garrison
+which the community maintains in the individual's consciousness, which
+it arms and supplies with authority and instructions; the power of
+conscience lies in the strength of the community at its back, and is
+without influence only upon those who refuse admission to the troops of
+the community and yield to none but actual physical force. All this
+proves irrefutably that Morality is a phenomenon arising from the social
+life of man, and its power is a function of society.
+
+If under the conditions in which humanity lives nowadays one could
+imagine a man totally detached from his species, leading a solitary
+life, Morality would be absolutely meaningless to him. The idea is one
+he could never conceive. It would have no significance. Good and bad
+would always retain their original meaning as labels for sensual
+qualities, for pleasant or unpleasant sensations of taste, smell, etc.;
+they would never be spiritualized or apply to the quality of actions. He
+would be unable to attach any meaning to the words duty and right. The
+terms virtue, vice, conscience, repentance would convey nothing to him.
+Morality can only originate when the individual lives united with
+fellow beings in a social community. It is a consequence of this union.
+It is the one condition on which alone this union can be permanent.
+
+The solitary individual must, however, not be confused with the lonely
+one. Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on a desert island and forced to stay
+there without companionship, is not primitive man. He is a son of
+civilization who has fallen upon evil days. In his enforced solitariness
+he maintains the habits of thought of his original surroundings. He
+preserves the concepts of Morality even though he has no occasion to
+obey its dictates. He can, if not actually yet potentially, be a paragon
+of virtue or a sink of iniquity; he can have a very delicate or a very
+dull conscience. He continues to be a man of social instincts cut off
+from society, and goes on thinking and feeling in a social manner. By
+primitive man I mean man as he was before society originated. For,
+contrary to the sociological school which denies the individual and
+boldly refuses to allow him any existence, declaring society to be older
+and earlier than the individual, I think I have conclusively shown
+("_Der Sinn der Geschichte_" [The Meaning of History]) that man is not
+by nature a gregarious animal, that he lived alone, being self-sufficing
+as long as the climatic conditions, under which he first made his
+appearance on earth, enabled him to exist by his own unaided efforts and
+capabilities, and that he banded himself together with others in gangs,
+troops and hordes--the earliest forms of subsequent society--when, after
+the first ice age following his appearance, the struggle for existence
+grew ever harder, ever more laborious, transcending the powers of the
+individual so that he could only overcome Nature, now grown hostile to
+him, by uniting with others of his kind.
+
+This primitive man of the golden geological period before the Ice Age
+knew no Morality, and as far as human intelligence can tell he would
+never have known of it had there been a continuance of the paradisaic
+conditions obtaining at the time of his birth, and had the climate not
+deteriorated. The occurrence of murderous frosts, the necessity of
+seeking protection from them in natural caves or artificially
+constructed shelters, and of kindling and maintaining fires, the
+diminution or disappearance of vegetable food, and the need to replace
+it by the booty of the chase or fishing--all these forced him to unite
+his efforts with those of other men who shared his wretched lot on
+earth. But in order to maintain this community with others he had to
+learn a new science, one he had hitherto not known because he had had no
+need of it: consideration for his fellows. He might no longer think of
+himself alone, consider his own inclinations in all eventualities, give
+way to all his moods or yield to every whim; he had unceasingly to bear
+his neighbour in mind and take care not to annoy him, not to make an
+enemy of him, not to become hateful to him. Forbearance towards his
+neighbour was the necessary condition of their life in common, just as
+their life in common was the necessary condition of self-preservation.
+The penalty for selfish indulgence was stern persecution, punishment,
+perhaps death; in any case, expulsion from the community. Man,
+therefore, stood before the choice of self-control or destruction, and
+this dilemma taught him Morality.
+
+Such, we must imagine, were the beginnings of Morality. It was not
+prearranged or purposely sought; it grew naturally from the
+companionship of men and developed simultaneously with society. If the
+struggle for existence made life in communities a necessity, the first
+coercive law of the community was to enjoin upon its members a mode of
+conduct which alone rendered the existence of the community possible,
+and the fundamental rule of this conduct was mutual consideration.
+Without this two egoisms cannot exist side by side and develop. They
+either destroy or shun one another. This phenomenon may also be observed
+among the higher animals. Elephants, living in herds, expel quarrelsome
+individuals and force them to wander alone far from the rest. The
+natives of Ceylon and India fear these "bachelor elephants" as being
+specially savage and malicious. They think that they grow like this
+because of their loneliness. That is probably a false conclusion. It is
+much more likely that these animals have been driven from their herd
+because they were savage and malicious, because their characters were
+opposed to discipline. Here we come upon the first faint foreshadowing
+of the phenomenon of Morality in an animal community.
+
+Now that we have introduced the idea of the growth and development of
+Morality, it becomes obvious that it must have begun with mere
+indications, and that from rude, dim, undeveloped beginnings it
+gradually grows more perfect, more refined, more nicely differentiated.
+At first man avoids only the most brutal injuries to his neighbour, such
+as hurting him, doing him bodily harm, threatening to kill him, openly
+robbing him. In proportion as he becomes more spiritually sensitive, as
+he learns to feel the insult and humiliation of injuries other than
+those inflicted with a fist or club, he is led to refrain from giving
+his fellow-men similar offence, which though it deals no gaping wounds,
+yet hurts his spiritual sensibilities. A series of values is developed,
+growing ever longer, ever more complicated, with more and more
+gradations, until, going far beyond the simple, artless commandments,
+"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet thy
+neighbour's wife nor his goods," it reaches the pitch of agonized
+self-reproach, because of the slightest and most secret impulses to
+dislike, injustice, covetousness, dissimulation, etc.
+
+Morality must be regarded as a support and a weapon in the struggle for
+existence in so far as, given present climatic conditions on earth and
+the civilization arising therefrom, man can only exist in societies, and
+society cannot exist without Morality. The chain of thought runs as
+follows: without morality no society, without society no individual
+existence; consequently, Morality is the essential condition for the
+existence of the individual as well as for that of the community.
+However, we must always bear in mind the reservation, "given the
+present climatic conditions on earth." Had the earth continued to be the
+paradise it must have been at the birth of our species (since otherwise
+the latter could simply not have originated), the necessity would never
+have arisen for the individual to band himself together with others of
+his kind, no society would ever have developed, and there would have
+been no Morality. Serious as the subject is, one cannot but smile at the
+thought of the comic figure the learned, professorial Neo-Kantians would
+cut with their dogma of the absolute and cosmic nature of Morality, if
+they propounded it among men whose wants Nature's bounty was able to
+satisfy as easily as the frog is satisfied in his puddle or the crow on
+his tree top. They would find no trace of absolute Morality among
+mankind, and would be reduced to seeking it among the stars.
+
+The very nature of Morality, in that it is an aid to man in the struggle
+for existence, makes it easy to understand the origin and nature of the
+concepts Good and Bad. There are propensities and actions which
+facilitate life in a community which, indeed, alone make it possible:
+love of one's neighbour, helpfulness, liberality, consideration for the
+feelings of others, and amiability. There are others which make such a
+life difficult or absolutely impossible: uncompromising selfishness,
+violence, cruelty, rapacity, instinctive hostility to one's neighbour.
+Men recognized that the former were beneficial to them, the latter
+harmful. The former aroused their liking, the latter their disapproval,
+dislike and animosity. The quality of feeling which accompanied the
+perceptions of actions of the former kind was akin to that with which
+they responded to beneficial, profitable, useful and welcome sense
+impressions. The quality of feeling, which actions of the second
+category gave rise to, was akin to that due to harmful and repellent
+sense impressions. Following the law of analogy, they placed on an equal
+footing actions which were felt to be pleasing and pleasant sensations
+of taste and smell; similarly with disagreeable actions and unpleasant
+sense impressions; and finally they called the former good and the
+latter bad, using terms originally applicable only to the realm of the
+senses.
+
+Not everything that is pleasant to the senses is beneficial. There are
+poisons which are pleasing to taste, but none the less noxious for that,
+such as (to give only one example) alcoholic drinks and impressions of a
+certain order, like voluptuousness, which man greedily pursues, even
+though they ruin his health. But these are exceptions. As a rule, not
+only man, but all living creatures, derive pleasant sensations from
+beneficial things; and it is probable that that category of sensations,
+which we are conscious of as being pleasant, is nothing but the state of
+coenesthesis, when the organism functions particularly energetically
+under the influence of the absorption of food or of a special stimulus
+of the senses, when it feels its life processes carried on particularly
+vigorously, freely and harmoniously; just as we feel that state of
+coenesthesis to be unpleasant, which occurs when the organism
+functions badly, slackly, and in a manner calculated to endanger the
+continuance of life. With the reservation that has been indicated we
+can say in general that Good is equivalent to beneficial and pleasant,
+Bad to harmful and unpleasant. This is true of the transferred and
+spiritualized as well as of the immediate and material meaning of these
+expressions of value. The significance of the words Good and Bad, the
+point of departure, development and change of conception they indicate,
+suffice to justify the Utilitarians and the Hedonists or Eudæmonists
+among the moral philosophers, and to confute the contentions of their
+critics, who deny all connexion between Morality and a practical
+purpose, profit or pleasure, and declare these to be unworthy
+humiliations of its majesty.
+
+They wriggle, with the agility of a contortionist on the music-hall
+stage, to get over the obvious and palpable aim of moral conduct. They
+display all the cunning of dishonest sophistry in their arguments to
+prove that the element of subjective satisfaction which moral action
+yields is non-existent, and that, therefore, the Hedonists and
+Eudæmonists are wrong. They stir up an opaque cloud of words, phrases
+and formulæ to hide the fact, which nevertheless emerges clearly, that
+he who acts morally expects to derive pleasurable emotions from his
+action, or at least tries thereby to avoid probable painful emotions,
+and that moral conduct, just as it is designed to give the individual
+subjective satisfaction which is a kind of pleasure, is also meant to be
+a benefit, or at any rate a supposed benefit, to the community.
+
+Morality must never try for a reward and never expect one. It must be
+absolutely disinterested. It has no business to pursue any aim outside
+itself. Thus say the mystics of moral philosophy, juggling with words;
+and they think they are doing especial honour to Morality and raising it
+to a particularly proud eminence. But Morality has no need of this
+artificial and false grandeur to maintain its lofty place among the
+phenomena of life, and it is derogatory neither to its authority nor to
+its influence to be recognized as a beneficial force conducive to
+happiness.
+
+The opponents of Utilitarianism and Eudæmonism in Ethics, if they speak
+in good faith, may be excused on the grounds that their analysis of the
+phenomenon of Morality is shallow. For them Morality is something
+absolute, which exists by itself as an eternal and unalterable law of
+the Universe, but which is revealed in the individual and therefore must
+be conceived individually as a quality which has become human, as a
+human value. If anyone persists in looking upon Morality as an
+absolutely individual matter, without any connexion with anything
+outside the individual, if anyone obstinately shuts his eyes to the fact
+that Morality has not been developed by the individual out of his own
+immediate needs and in consideration of himself alone, but that it is,
+on the contrary, a creation of society and has no sense or significance
+except as a social phenomenon, then indeed he can with some show of
+justification deny Utilitarianism and Hedonism. For truly, looked at
+from the point of view of the individual, moral conduct appears neither
+pleasant nor immediately beneficial. On the contrary, it is, as a rule,
+directly opposed to his own apparent interest, and it is achieved with
+difficulty by sacrifice and renunciation, which are never pleasant and
+often very painful.
+
+Once in a drawing-room, during a game of definitions, I heard a
+light-hearted young lady define Duty in the following terms: "Duty is
+that which we do unwillingly." A stern professor contradicted her at
+once with the solemnity he thought due to his position, and assured her
+reprovingly: "It is my duty to give lectures, and I do this duty gladly.
+If you were right, madam, expressions such as 'zealous in one's duty'
+and 'willing performance of duty' would have no meaning and could never
+have been coined." That seems convincing, but yet it is wrong.
+Expressions such as "zealous in one's duty" and "willing performance of
+duty" were not coined until society had developed its system of Morality
+and had educated its members to strive for its approval by conducting
+themselves in accordance with this system, to look on its approval as a
+flattering distinction and to fear its disapproval as a disgrace. Such
+phrases are Pharisaical, calculated to exercise a suggestive influence
+profitable to society. They are the sugar to sweeten the pill; but the
+young lady was honest and the professor conventional; the pill is
+bitter. Thinkers recognized and admitted this thousands of years ago.
+Antiphon, the sophist, says: "The law, the outcome of an agreement,
+coerces nature, the result of growth, and goes against the interest of
+the individual." The same idea is expressed by the tragic poet in the
+lines: "The gods have placed sweat before virtue." This was said in the
+very same words by Lao Tse, the disciple of Meng Tse, the pupil of
+Confucius and the reformer of his doctrine.
+
+The law, not only the law of the state which Antiphon has principally in
+view, but also the moral law, "goes against the interest of the
+individual"; not in reality, but apparently, at the first superficial
+glance. Moral conduct is the reverse of natural conduct; it takes place
+in opposition to instinct by deflecting the original impulse; it is a
+subjugation of inclination, a victory over the real nature of the man.
+Virtue has to exert its utmost strength in bitter struggles, fought out
+within the individual, before it can reveal itself actively in deeds.
+That is a natural consequence of the manner in which Morality
+originated.
+
+The point is that it was not created directly for the individual, but
+for the community, and for the former only in so far as he is a part of
+the community, and from its stability and well-being derives a benefit
+which he may, or may not, be conscious of; which he may, or may not, be
+able to appreciate; which he accepts as something natural and
+self-understood without further thought; for which he does not consider
+any return service to be due; but which is nevertheless of real
+magnitude, profiting the individual, facilitating his existence, or even
+alone making it possible; and for which, as for every other gift, he
+must make sacrifices. For within society there can be no gifts. It
+possesses nothing but what it has acquired from its members, and the
+latter must pay full value for everything it provides, unasked or
+otherwise.
+
+As the Moral law originated to meet the needs of the community, and was
+gradually formulated in definite precepts, it is comprehensible that the
+community never paused to inquire what subjective effect its law would
+have on the feelings of the individual. If you impose a law upon someone
+you hardly ever consider how great will be the emotions of pleasure or
+displeasure which its enforcement will entail. The order is, "Obey,
+whether you like it or not; that which deeper insight and more
+far-seeing wisdom prescribe is for your good." Thus the individual is
+forced to work laboriously for his own good, which in his purblindness
+he does not even recognize. It would be comprehensible if the
+individual, who does not see farther than his own nose and does not look
+beyond the present moment, formed the opinion that Morality is not
+perceptibly beneficial to him and gives him no pleasure, and that,
+therefore, the Utilitarians and the Hedonists talk nonsense. But the
+moral philosopher, who observes the individual in relationship to the
+community and surveys human actions, the way they are connected, and the
+way they interact upon one another, has no right to pursue the same line
+of thought as the individual, and deny that Morality aims at utility and
+pleasure, even though the individual, when he acts morally, does not
+perceive any personal advantage, nor feel any pleasure except the
+self-satisfaction which he has been trained to feel, since in the eyes
+of others he is so good and honest. That Morality aims at utility, and
+is at the same time a source of pleasure and happiness, may seem dark
+and doubtful while we consider the individual, but it becomes clear as
+day and indisputable when we regard the community.
+
+Among creatures of a lower order than man, indeed among all animals that
+live together in flocks or herds, we find the first beginnings of that
+mode of conduct which in man we call moral, and which is not intended to
+be of direct benefit to the individual, or to add to his momentary
+pleasure, but which subordinates or sacrifices these personal
+satisfactions to the good of the community.
+
+Chamois, when they are grazing, set one of their number on guard upon a
+rocky eminence with a distant view, and this individual is responsible
+for the safety of the herd. While the others feed in peace and comfort,
+this guardian chamois forgoes the food which is doubtless just as
+attractive to it as to the others, and tirelessly keeps a sharp look out
+over its whole field of vision, warning its companions at the first
+approach of danger by uttering a shrill cry.
+
+When the great herds of buffaloes still inhabited the North American
+prairies, they had at the head and on the flanks of the herd the
+strongest bulls, while the centre was occupied by the cows with their
+calves and the young animals. Before civilization came to trouble them,
+the grizzly bear was the only enemy that threatened them, and with him
+they were able to deal; one of them would meet the attacking bear in
+single combat, but did not always emerge from it unhurt. Often enough at
+the end of the fight both the bull and the bear would be terribly
+injured or even dead; yet by sacrificing his life the bull saved the
+rest of the herd.
+
+The thrilling adventure of the Abyssinian baboon is well known; first
+told by Alfred Brehm in his "_Tierleben_" (animal life), it was
+afterwards quoted by Darwin and many other writers. On a hunting
+expedition Brehm surprised a party of monkeys in a clearing. They fled
+at once and had found shelter in the wood before the dogs could reach
+them. Only one young one had got separated from the rest and was left
+behind alone. It had scrambled up on to a solitary rock standing in the
+plain, round which the dogs were barking furiously, and in its terror
+the creature uttered piercing cries for help. A little male monkey,
+hearing it, detached himself from the group, turned back from the safety
+of the forest, made quietly for the rock and fetched away the trembling
+young baboon from among the pack, silent now and shrinking in amazement;
+and then stroking and caressing the little creature he carried it safely
+in his arms to its family in the wood, unmolested by the stupefied dogs
+and spared by the hunter, lost in admiration of this self-sacrificing
+courage.
+
+In these three instances we see how the joint responsibility among
+gregarious animals develops in them an ever increasing sense of duty,
+which teaches the chamois to forgo its food during the hours it is on
+guard, rouses in the buffalo a savage lust for battle, and makes the
+baboon perform a premeditated deed of epic heroism. When men act as
+these animals did, we ascribe this to Morality. This is nothing but
+joint responsibility in action, the joint responsibility which the
+species is forced by the conditions of life to adopt, if it is to
+survive.
+
+Among the moral philosophers the mystics are prevented, by the haze
+which obscures all their thought, from seeing that Morality originates
+from this joint responsibility. Or rather, if they do see it, they think
+this origin too low. They demand a more exalted genealogy for the
+phenomenon of Morality. According to them the Moral law comes straight
+from God. The concepts Good and Evil are revealed. Commands and
+prohibitions are imposed upon the soul by that omnipotence which
+spiritualizes the universe and of which the soul is an immortal part.
+
+If these phrases were anything but moonshine and tinkling cymbals they
+certainly would make any other explanation of this astonishing fact
+superfluous; the fact, namely, that man does what is repugnant to him,
+and refrains from doing what would give him pleasure, that he is content
+with himself when he has voluntarily curbed his impulses and made
+sacrifices, and that he feels the pricks of conscience if he chances to
+experience the pleasure of appeasement because he has satisfied his
+desires. "Man obeys divine commands." That suffices and obviates the
+necessity of seeking for explanations of this phenomenon, which shall
+satisfy Reason.
+
+It is a mere mirage, the reflection of an earthly state of affairs in
+the heavens, to assume that the universe is governed by an authority
+devoid of responsibility, which imposes on its subjects, that is to say
+men, laws and instructions, discipline and order.
+
+It is a form of anthropomorphism, the most widespread and stubborn of
+errors in thought among those men who try to understand the
+unintelligible, and are content with the most unfounded explanation
+which their naïve imagination freely invents for them. This same
+anthropomorphism, not even at a loss to solve the problem of the origin
+and essence of the universe, replies unhesitatingly that God by an act
+of volition created it out of nothing to prove to Himself His own
+omnipotence and omniscience; in like manner it has no scruple in
+ascribing the phenomenon of Morality to a creative act of God's, and
+makes Ethics, which properly speaking form the chief part of psychology,
+anthropology and sociology, a subdivision of theology, that is, of
+anthropomorphic mythology.
+
+Critical Reason, which realizes that deceptive fictions are not true
+thought, but dreams--not the result of ripe intellectual effort, but of
+the childish play of the imagination, seeks the roots of Morality not in
+the air or in the ether, but in the solid earth; not in some
+indemonstrable, transcendental sphere, but in an obvious need of human
+nature. The biological necessities of the species, which can only
+survive by dint of living in communities, sufficiently explain the
+origin of the feeling of joint responsibility, of consideration for
+one's neighbour, of the concepts Good and Evil and of conscience; and we
+have no use for the dogmas of revealed Morality derived from some
+fabulous, supernatural source, or for the Kantian categorical
+imperative.
+
+Morality, understood as a form of joint responsibility, determines the
+inner and outer relations of the individual to the community; that is to
+say, to as much of it as he comes in immediate contact with, to wit, his
+neighbour. Morality provides him with the notions of Duty and Right, of
+the consideration he owes his neighbour and of that which he may demand
+from his neighbour. It is customary to look upon Rights and Duties as
+opposites. This is mere indolence of thought. Right and Duty are
+supplementary, forming together one concept. They are in reality one and
+the same thing regarded from different points of view. My Duty is the
+subjective form of my neighbour's Right; my Right the subjective form of
+other people's Duty. That which is Duty, when I have to do it out of
+consideration for others, becomes my Right, when others have to do it
+out of consideration for me.
+
+Respect for the personality of others, which is the feeling from which
+the concept of Right and Duty emanates, seems to be a late and noble
+product of Morality and a particularly praiseworthy victory of prescient
+intelligence over selfishness. This factor of our consciousness which
+determines our will and which gradually becomes an instinct, is really
+only a special application of the law of least resistance which governs
+all organic life. We have no selfless, ideal respect for the personality
+of another; but, made wise by experience and observation, we assume that
+that other has the power to resist and to retaliate if a wrong is done
+to him or he is injured; hence we avoid, to the best of our ability,
+actions to which he is likely to object, so as not to come into conflict
+with him, because to overcome his opposition would require effort and
+expose us to danger. Respect for the personality of another and for his
+rights may be expressed by a mechanical formula which runs as follows:
+this respect varies directly as the real or supposed might of the other
+person, and inversely as our own real or supposed might.
+
+The society of which he is a member, and which makes his existence
+possible, prescribes to the individual the laws governing his moral
+conduct. That which a community at any given time approves and demands,
+rejects or forbids, constitutes the precept whereby its members regulate
+their conduct, and offers ample security for their conscience.
+
+The concepts Good and Bad originate simultaneously with society; they
+are the form in which its actual conditions of existence are conveyed to
+the consciousness of its members. The only immutable thing about them is
+the fact of their continued existence. Without the coercive discipline
+of a rule conducive to the common weal and governing the mutual
+relations between its members, no society could be imagined to exist,
+unless its members were all similar in nature, reacted in an identical
+fashion to all impressions and possessed the same feelings and
+sensations, the same inclinations and the same impulses of volition. In
+that case no difference could ever arise between one individual and
+another, or between an individual and the community, which would have to
+be smoothed over by the moral law emanating from the community and
+controlling the individual, or be suppressed by the community's order.
+Every individual could be left to the guidance of his own instincts, for
+he would know himself always to be in agreement with the community; no
+consideration for others need hamper or modify his actions; he could
+behave just as if he were alone in the world. But as individuals differ
+from one another, feel, think and want different things, collisions in
+which they hurt, cripple or even kill one another are the inevitable
+consequence of their opposing movements; and the interference of the
+moral law is absolutely necessary to polarize these movements and guide
+them into parallel courses, so that they do not run counter to one
+another.
+
+But Good and Bad derive not only their existence but their measure and
+their significance from the views of the community. They are therefore
+not absolute but variable; they are not an immutable standard amid the
+ever-changing conditions of humanity, a rule by which the value of the
+actions and aims of mortals are indisputably determined, but are subject
+to the laws of evolution in society and therefore in a constant state of
+flux. At different times and in different places they present the most
+varied aspects. What is virtue here and now may have been vice formerly
+and at another spot, and _vice versa_. In the royal family of ancient
+Egypt marriage between brothers and sisters was the prescribed custom.
+We call this incest and it fills us with horror. To the sons of Egypt it
+seemed meritorious and constituted a claim to special veneration. The
+Babylonians and Canaanites burnt their first-born in Moloch's fiery
+furnace, and this sacrifice was accounted a highly praiseworthy act of
+piety and of the fear of God. The Spartans taught their sons, their
+future warriors, the art of stealing without being caught; and he who
+did this most cleverly achieved the most flattering recognition. The
+Cherusci butchered the Roman prisoners taken from the legions of Varus
+as a sacrifice to their tribal gods, and a noble-minded and brave man
+like Arminius considered this absolutely honourable and knightly. The
+Aztecs, who had undeniably attained an advanced degree of civilization,
+at high festivals used with obsidian knives to cut open the breasts of
+human sacrifices on the altars of their gods, and tear the heart out of
+their living bodies. That was an action finding favour in the sight of
+the gods, and the people watched it with awe and those mystic emotions
+which religious rites are intended to arouse.
+
+Moral law in Europe, during the Middle Ages and almost up to modern
+times, permitted, and even ordained, the punishment by horrible torture
+and death of those whose religious convictions differed from the
+teaching of the established church; and with its consent supposed
+witches were sent to the stake. In feudal times the most terrible and
+revolting of crimes was felony--that is, a breach of faith on the part
+of the vassal against his overlord--and no torture was too cruel as a
+punishment. Nobles, who had so delicate a sense of honour that for a wry
+look or the accidental touch of an elbow they would draw their swords,
+enunciated the principle: "the king's blood does not defile," and vied
+with each other in forcing their daughters upon the king as concubines.
+Until Wilberforce roused the English conscience at the end of the
+eighteenth century, and Schölcher did the same in France in the middle
+of the nineteenth, slavery was considered a state of affairs which a
+moral community could tolerate. The North American descendants of those
+Puritans whom no persecution and no martyrdom could prevent from leading
+a life consonant with the dictates of their conscience, did not scruple
+to exercise proprietary rights over human beings who, in the case of
+octoroons and even of quadroons, did not even differ from them in
+colour, supposing that difference of colour could be considered an
+excuse. The code, which began with the "Declaration of Rights,"
+contained heavy penalties for those who helped a slave to escape. Men,
+whose uprightness no one could doubt, did not hesitate to set
+bloodhounds on the track of an escaped nigger, and four years of a
+bloody civil war were needed before refractory slave-owners were forced
+to acknowledge the immorality of forced labour.
+
+These examples have been taken from the customs of civilized nations.
+Amongst races that have not attained the high degree of development to
+which the white man has risen, we meet with much more revolting
+deviations from the moral law obtaining among white men. Tribes are
+known in which the commandment, "Honour thy father and thy mother," is
+interpreted so, that the children kill and eat their parents as soon as
+the latter have attained a considerable age. The North American Indians,
+who had a well developed sense of honour, were capable of chivalrous
+feelings and kept their word with absolute loyalty, used to torture
+helpless prisoners and scalp their defeated enemies, even the women.
+Among the Dyaks, who are under Dutch rule and are familiar with the laws
+and customs of Christian Europe, a marriageable youth must first cut off
+a human being's head before he is allowed to wed. He need not overcome
+his victim in honourable combat; he may creep upon him surreptitiously,
+and even fall upon him in his sleep and murder him in cowardly fashion
+without danger to himself.
+
+All these are instances which we unhesitatingly condemn. To our idea
+they are crimes and misdeeds which among us would make their
+perpetrators liable either to contempt and expulsion from decent society
+or to the extremest penalties of the law; yet at their time and in their
+place they were considered meritorious and virtuous, and were approved
+by public opinion and the conscience of their authors. But we can go
+farther and subject our own moral law to a similar independent
+consideration. We shall find that to us also deeds appear permissible,
+virtuous and even splendid, which do not differ essentially from the
+thefts of the Spartans or the head-hunting of the Dyaks. A company
+promoter who sells on the Stock Exchange shares that he must know to be
+worthless, can with Spartan cunning rob thousands of trustful victims of
+the fruits of their labour and economy, and reduce them to beggary; and
+not only does he go unpunished, but if by his knavery he becomes a
+millionaire and uses his wealth cleverly, he can attain the highest
+political and social honours and distinctions. We may admit that
+financial roguery of this sort can now no longer be classed among
+strictly moral actions, that public opinion is on the verge of placing
+it in the category of vice and crime, and that legislators are beginning
+to make attempts to inflict severe and humiliating penalties on its
+perpetrators.
+
+But another series of deeds is still generally considered so undoubtedly
+virtuous and laudable, that it evokes the highest homage from the best
+intellects of the age, poets, musicians, scientists, teachers, sculptors
+and painters, and the leaders of the people--the deeds of war. The most
+horrible butchery of men, the theft of property and liberty,
+ill-treatment, destruction are not only permissible but obligatory and
+laudable, if they occur in war, and if their authors can point to the
+fact that they are acting in the service of their country at the order
+of a legitimate authority. Neither the soldiers nor their leaders are
+bound to inquire whether the authority, whether their mother country is
+waging war for a purpose that moral law can approve. "Right or wrong, my
+country." In the eyes of her sons the country is always in the right,
+even if it be objectively in the wrong, and by its orders every soldier
+murders, robs, burns and ravages, plays the executioner to harmless,
+unarmed, innocent strangers, compels prisoners to forced labour, steals
+letters that fall into his hands and prevents families who are cruelly
+separated from communicating with one another; and his conscience does
+not reproach him in the least, nor is he conscious of being a criminal
+deserving of all the penalties of the law. Every single one of these
+actions, if perpetrated by an individual on his own account and for his
+own purposes, would result in the death penalty, and it would be richly
+deserved, too. But in war, carried out collectively at the bidding of a
+government, they become deeds of heroism, filling the doer with pride,
+moving the community to tears of enthusiasm, and they are held up to
+youth as shining examples to be imitated. It is more than likely that
+future times will judge the esteem in which these deeds are held not
+otherwise than we do the value placed by other forms of society on human
+sacrifices, the slaughter of parents and head-hunting.
+
+It is hard to determine the exact part which conscience plays in the
+changes undergone by the concepts Good and Evil. As conscience is the
+voice of the community in the consciousness of the individual, it
+approves on principle what seems right and praiseworthy to the
+community. Just as little as conscience prevented a Babylonian mother
+from sacrificing her child to Moloch, does it in these days stop the
+average citizen from doing a soldier's work of killing and destroying in
+time of war. If an individual knows himself to be in complete agreement
+with the general opinion, then he lives at peace with his conscience. No
+impulse to change the customs, to set up a new Morality, to condemn
+long-established usages, is to be expected from such an one.
+
+The mechanism whereby changes are wrought in views on Good and Evil is
+quite different. Everywhere and at all times there are exceptional
+persons whose abilities render them specially fit to feel and think
+independently. To their idea the community has no determining but only
+an advisory voice. They reserve to themselves the right of decision in
+every case. In their consciousness there persists a clear recognition of
+the fact that the essence of Morality lies in consideration for others,
+and when the current acceptation of the moral law among the majority
+allows them, nay, commands them to disregard this consideration, they
+experience a feeling of discomfort which dull, unthinking imitation of
+the general example does not soothe. They meditate upon the deviation
+from the fundamental rule of considering one's neighbour, they test its
+justification, and they condemn it, if its difference with the general
+moral law cannot be adjusted. If the essence of Morality is
+consideration for one's neighbour, its purpose is the well-being of the
+community; its essence must be adapted to this purpose, that is to say,
+consideration for one's neighbour must be subordinated to the general
+welfare. The thief, the robber and the murderer have no claim upon
+consideration, and even a man with the most delicate sense of Morality
+will agree that coercion of the criminal is desirable. Tolstoy's
+warning: "Do not oppose the evildoer," is not Morality, but an
+exaggerated parody of it, which renders it nugatory. Thus the most moral
+person will not raise any objection to a war waged in defence of hearth
+and home when their safety is threatened by a ruthless attack.
+
+But, if a mode of action which, though it be generally practised and
+approved, injures the individual and causes him to suffer, cannot be
+justified on the grounds of an obvious benefit to the community, then a
+small, sometimes an almost infinitesimal minority of independent
+thinkers will rise against the custom; they are not afraid of coming
+into violent conflict with generally accepted views; they defend the
+fundamental principle of Morality, namely, consideration for the
+individual, against the exception, namely, oppression of the individual
+for the ostensible good of the community; they brand as immoral what is
+generally accounted moral; they announce that the current acceptation of
+the goodness or badness of a certain order of actions must cease.
+
+The intervention of such reformers always gives offence, and arouses
+anger which at times rises to murderous fury. But this wrathful
+indignation is just what makes a break in the automatic fashion in which
+the majority of average men act according to traditional custom; the
+attention of more and more minds is arrested, critically they examine
+the accepted moral law, they are penetrated first by the suspicion and
+finally by the clear conviction that it is contrary to the essence of
+Morality, and they swell the ranks of the innovators who inveigh against
+the tradition. The struggle lasts long and is carried on pitilessly. The
+preachers of the new Morality seem corrupt and criminal to the
+supporters of the old. They are persecuted and slandered and not seldom
+have to suffer martyrdom, but they always emerge victorious if their
+doctrine is in agreement with the logic of the fundamental principles of
+Moral law. That is the history of the abolition of human sacrifices, of
+the vendetta, of slavery, of legal torture, of religious coercion.
+
+Whoever looks about him with open eyes will note that civilized men are
+at the moment adopting new ideas with regard to the operation of state
+omnipotence, to war, to the right of the economically strong to exploit
+others, to the rights of women, to sexual morality, to the penal system.
+The advocates of a new Morality must still put up with the most
+humiliating abuse. He who wishes to defend the individual from coercion
+by the state is an anarchist and deserves to be hanged or broken on the
+wheel. He who maintains that war is immoral belongs to the rabble of
+vagabonds who own no nationality, for whom no contempt is too deep and
+no punishment too severe. He who refuses a duel is a dishonoured coward,
+and thereby cuts himself off from decent society. He who recognizes
+woman's right to motherhood is a dastardly purveyor of opportunities for
+prostitution. He who attacks the present relation between Capital and
+Labour as a hypocritical continuation of slavery is an ignorant agitator
+or an enemy of society. He who would like to see the idea of punishment
+excluded from the law, as being retrograde and unscientific, and who
+wishes only the point of view of the defence of society to be recognized
+as valid, talks sentimental nonsense, disarms justice and places the
+community at large at the mercy of criminals.
+
+But the issue of the struggle is not in doubt. The present systems,
+which present exceptions to the moral law of consideration for one's
+neighbour, must go. Although they are considered moral to-day, are, in
+fact, Morality itself, to-morrow they will be felt to be immoral and be
+abhorred by all men of moral feelings. Thus the concepts Good and Bad
+gradually change their meaning; views on what is moral and what immoral
+are constantly in a state of flux; and the only permanent thing is
+recognition of the fact that man's actions must be withdrawn from the
+control of subjective choice and whim, and must be subject to a law set
+up by the community; the justification of this law lies in its being
+necessary to the existence of society. Every revision of Moral values
+originates in some vexation, and ends by refining and deepening moral
+sentiment. In this chapter only the scheme of development of moral views
+and of their changes has been indicated. The question of moral progress
+will be dealt with fully later on.
+
+To sum up the arguments of this section, Morality is not transcendental
+but immanent; it is a social phenomenon and restricted to the sphere of
+living beings. Its beginnings may be traced in animal societies, it is
+developed among mankind. The preliminary condition necessary for this
+development is the ability to visualize future happenings, since moral
+conduct is determined by estimating its effects and results, that is, by
+conceiving something in the future. Morality has a positive, concrete
+aim. It makes the existence of society possible, and this, given the
+circumstances obtaining on our planet, is the necessary condition for
+the preservation of each individual, and it originated from the instinct
+of self-preservation in the species. Its essence lies in consideration
+for one's neighbour, because without this the communal life of
+individuals, that is, a society, would be impossible.
+
+If individuals had been able to live alone, Morality could never have
+come into existence. The concepts Good and Bad characterize those
+actions which society feels to be beneficial or harmful to itself. As
+moral conduct implies consideration for one's neighbour, it is often, if
+not always, in conflict with selfishness, that is, with the immediate
+and instinctive impulses, and is, in the first place, accompanied by
+disagreeable sensations. The pleasurable emotion of satisfaction arises
+later through habit and reflection; it accompanies the thought of the
+merit and praiseworthiness of the victory over self. Conscience is the
+voice of the community in the individual's consciousness. The idea of
+Duty is the subjective conception of the Rights of our neighbour; the
+idea of Rights is the subjective conception of our neighbour's Duty to
+us. Morality is not absolute, but relative, and is subject to continual
+changes. To maintain that Morality is cosmic, eternal, immutable, that
+it aims neither at profit nor pleasure, but constitutes its own aim, is
+pure anthropomorphic superstition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORALITY
+
+
+Morality is a restraint which the community imposes on each of its
+members. It demands from the individual the sacrifice of his transitory
+and momentary comfort in favour of his general welfare which is
+dependent on that of the community. It prohibits the pleasure of
+gratifying his desires in order that by this unpleasant renunciation his
+lasting well-being may be ensured. Subjectively experienced and viewed,
+therefore, Morality always implies the limitation of free will, the
+curbing of desire, opposition to inclinations and appetites, and the
+diminution or suppression of free, or let us rather say of unbridled,
+action. Before Morality can profit the community, it disturbs and
+incommodes the individual, it rouses in him disagreeable sensations
+which may reach such a pitch as to be intense pain. It is only after
+deep reflection, of which not everyone is capable, that the individual
+realizes that Morality is an essential condition of the life of society,
+and that the preservation of society is an essential condition of his
+own life; before he investigates, before he even meditates on Morality,
+the individual feels it directly to be unpleasant, laborious,
+stern--nay, hostile.
+
+The control which Morality exercises over the actions, and indeed in
+many cases over the most secret thoughts of the individual, appears at
+the first glance to be somewhat paradoxical. It is by no means obvious
+why the individual should always take sides against himself and,
+adopting a defensive and disapproving attitude, hold his instinctive
+tendencies in check. Moral conduct would be intelligible if the
+community were always ready with means of coercion and could constrain
+the individual by brute force to place its interest before his own
+pleasure. But the individual does not wait for police intervention on
+the part of the community. He frowns upon himself with the awful
+severity of the law. He threatens himself with a cudgel. He divides
+himself into two beings, one of which wants to follow its instincts,
+while the other curbs them vigorously; one is a rearing, often a
+refractory, horse, the other a rider with bridle, whip and spur.
+
+This reduplication of the ego, one-half of which establishes control
+over the other, one-half of which tries to remain true to itself, while
+the other divests itself of its identity and denies itself--this is the
+inner process, the outward manifestation of which is moral conduct. This
+demands investigation and explanation. We must show how the organism
+could develop from within itself the power to paralyse, or completely
+repress, its own elemental activities, and how Morality was able to
+become an integral part in the general scheme of life processes.
+
+The mechanism whereby the mind, appraising, foreseeing and judging,
+checks the first movement of impulse, is inhibition or repression.
+Without inhibition moral conduct would not be possible. The mind would
+have no method of indicating the path and prescribing rules to the
+organism's instinct. It would have no means of making its insight
+prevail over the desires of the senses. It would have no weapon with
+which to force its being to actions opposed to its organic inclinations.
+Without inhibition the individual would never give precedence to the
+demands of the community and lay himself open to disagreeable emotions
+in order to please the community. Inhibition was the necessary organic
+preliminary to the phenomenon of Morality. It had to be pre-existent in
+the individual, so that Morality could make itself at home in his
+intellectual life, so that it could acquire creative, ruling and
+practical power among the elect, and become an unconscious and easy
+habit among the average. Morality took possession of a pre-existent
+organic aptitude and made it serve its own purposes. But organic
+aptitudes are not alike in all individuals. In some cases they are more
+or less perfect; in others they may be lacking altogether. Indeed only
+individuals with highly developed powers of inhibition are capable of
+that heroic Morality which liberates them from the weakness of the flesh
+and makes them independent of the demands of the body; those in whom
+this power of inhibition is scantily developed evade the influence of
+Morality entirely, and it has no authority over them.
+
+That which is called character is at bottom the name we give to the
+power of inhibition. Where it is weak we speak of lack of character,
+whereas by strength of character we mean that the power of inhibition is
+great. The will makes use of inhibition. With its help the will guides
+the living machine in a certain direction and urges it to perform given
+tasks. At the first glance it may not seem obvious that positive actions
+can come of repression, which is something negative. But if we analyse
+psychologically the actions demanded and promoted by the will, and trace
+them back to their organic origins, we shall find that, as a rule, the
+first elements consist in the prevention of impulsive movements, and
+that the impetus to positive effort is given by the will, which converts
+these movements into contrary ones. A few instances may make this
+psychic process clearer. Winkelried, at Sempach, cleaves a path through
+the cuirassiers while they bury their lances in his breast; he becomes
+capable of this great deed of self-sacrifice in that, by a mighty effort
+of will power, he suppresses the strongest of all instincts, that of
+self-preservation, and forces all his energies, which are naturally
+directed towards flight from danger, to challenge danger and yield
+completely to it. The lover who overcomes his passion and renounces its
+object, because his idol is the bride of his best friend, begins with
+the determined inhibition of the impulse which urges him towards the
+woman, and attains renunciation by the suppression of his desire; this
+renunciation finds expression in positive actions, in the rupture of
+relations which bring him happiness, the avoidance of meetings which
+would prevent the wound in his heart from healing, and so on. The brave
+rescuer who plunges into the waves to save a drowning man, or enters a
+burning house to save a fellow creature threatened by the flames, must
+first overcome his natural shrinking fear of the water and the fire; and
+not till after the suppression of strong impulses to avoid the uncanny
+adventure, does he succeed in making his muscles obey the impulse to
+save life.
+
+Inhibition, therefore, is the organic foundation on which Morality
+builds, not only that Morality which consists in abstention from certain
+actions, but that which is manifested in active virtue. But inhibition
+is a faculty which the organism has developed for its own ends, the
+better and more easily to preserve its own life, and to render its power
+of achievement greater. Morality makes use of this faculty, which it
+finds ready to hand, for the ends of the community, and very often
+against the immediate interests of the individual for whose advantage it
+is nevertheless intended. Now the individual would not put up with this
+inexpedient use, one is tempted to say this clever misuse, of one of its
+organic capacities, if this yielding up of the mechanism of inhibition
+to Morality were not beneficial to life and therefore came within the
+sphere of the biological purpose of inhibition. By being grafted on a
+pre-existent organic faculty Morality becomes such itself; it forms a
+link in the chain of biological processes within the individual
+organism; it ceases to be purely a product of society forced upon the
+individual to his molestation and in spite of his annoyance; it acquires
+the character of a differentiation of inhibition in order to help the
+individual, or even to make it at all possible for him to adapt himself
+to life in a society.
+
+That under the present conditions obtaining on our planet the human
+individual can only live in society demands no proof. And as he can only
+live in society if he submits to its rules of good and bad, Morality,
+which urges him to this submission, aids and even preserves his life. We
+shall now show that inhibition, of which Morality is a differentiation
+making it easier for the individual to adapt himself to the conditions
+of social life, is of the greatest value to the individual from the
+biological point of view.
+
+The lowest forms of life it is possible for us to observe show nothing
+which can be interpreted as inhibition. All external influences to which
+they are not indifferent invariably produce the same effects. They
+respond to every stimulus with a reflex action which reveals nothing
+that we should be justified in describing as an activity of the will.
+The reaction follows with strictly automatic regularity upon the
+stimulus, and nothing intervenes between the two which would permit the
+conclusion that in the simple organism there is any faculty that could
+delay, modify or change the reaction to the external stimulus.
+
+Just as iron filings always respond to the attraction of a magnet in the
+same way, just as certain combinations of mercury at the impact of a
+blow flare up with an explosion, just as ice when warmed melts and
+becomes water, and water when cooled to a definite point freezes into
+ice, so do the simplest living things seek out certain rays in the
+spectrum, certain temperatures, certain chemical conditions and avoid
+others. Not only unicellular organisms do this, but also comparatively
+highly developed animals, such as the daphniæ, for if light is sent
+through a prism into a vessel containing water, these little creatures
+collect at the violet end of the spectrum; such as the wood-lice, which
+hate the light and creep into dark crevices; such as gnats, which are
+attracted by the sun and dance in their hundreds in its rays. Moreover,
+we meet with a similar phenomenon in man. We, too, in winter and spring
+seek the sun and in summer the shade; in the cold season the warm stove
+attracts us; bad smells put us to flight, sweet scents of flowers allure
+us. The simplest automatic reflex actions are at the root of these
+attractions and repulsions, exactly the same as with the daphniæ,
+wood-lice and gnats. Only we are able to control and suppress these
+reflex actions which the lower animals apparently cannot.
+
+Anthropomorphic modes of thought easily mislead us into thinking that
+the processes we observe in lower animals are due to an exercise of will
+power. We draw near to the fire in winter because it is pleasant, but we
+can quit it if duty calls us into the cold streets. One is apt to
+imagine that the simple organisms also experience pleasant and
+unpleasant feelings, that they try and avoid the latter, that the
+daphnia seeks the violet rays because it likes them, that the wood-louse
+flees the light because it dislikes it; in fact, that these creatures
+possess a consciousness which becomes aware of and distinguishes between
+pleasing and displeasing impressions, and that they possess a will which
+responds to these impressions with suitable reactions. Very
+distinguished scientists have been unable to resist the temptation to
+assume in the lower animals, even in unicellular organisms, the
+existence of processes with which we are familiar in the human
+consciousness. William Roux introduces us to a "psychology of protista,"
+and W. Kleinsorge goes so far as to maintain the existence of "cellular
+ethics," and to devote himself to research into its laws. The work of
+both these biologists is as fascinating as the most beautiful
+fairy-tale, but it is probably the creation of a lively and fertile
+imagination, just as the fairy story is.
+
+More prosaic and less imaginative scientists do not see evidences of
+psychology in the signs of life in the protista, or ethics in the
+movements of a cell, but merely the effects of universal chemical and
+physical laws which also control lifeless inorganic matter. To these
+laws they trace the tropisms of simple organisms which tempt the
+imagination, prone as it is to anthropomorphism, into errors; such
+tropisms, that is to say, as their tendency to seek moderate warmth,
+certain rays of light and weak alkaline solutions, or to avoid acids,
+heat and ultra-violet rays. The little organisms probably do not obey
+these impulses for reasons of pleasure or pain any more than the iron
+filings obey the attraction of a magnet for such reasons. They do not
+fly to it because it gives them pleasure; the little metal leaves of an
+electroscope do not move apart because contact with each other
+displeases them. All forms of tropism, chemicotropic, thermotropic,
+phototropic manifestations, active and passive tropisms clearly show
+that minute organisms involuntarily and unresistingly respond to the
+influence of natural forces, just as if they were inanimate particles.
+
+Microscopic investigations reveal many phenomena which one is tempted to
+consider signs of life, but which cannot be such, as they occur in
+connexion with inanimate matter. The Brownian movements are rhythmical
+molecular changes of position, not due to any mechanical impulse
+emanating from the surroundings, nor to a current in the fluid in which
+the object of investigation is immersed, but arising from the object
+itself, mostly very finely divided, tiny balls of mercury. A very small
+drop of chloroform introduced into a fluid of different density behaves
+exactly like a unicellular organism. It sends out pseudopods, wriggles
+and draws them in again. The pseudopods seem to feel and examine
+particles of matter with which they come in contact, and then either to
+withdraw quickly from them or to surround and incorporate them in the
+drop. This is deceptively similar to the behaviour of a living cell
+absorbing food, though there can be no question of this in the case of
+the drop of chloroform. In the latter it is merely a question of the
+effects of surface tension, that is, of the normal behaviour of matter
+in accordance with the laws governing the forces of nature, the
+investigation of which lies in the domain of chemistry and physics.
+
+Impartial thought comes to a conclusion about these phenomena different
+from that derived from anthropomorphic delusions. It does not try to
+smuggle dim, dark life into the collections of mercury molecules
+apparently obeying some inner impulse, or into the seeking or feeling
+about of a pseudopod of chloroform. On the contrary, it understands life
+as the play of natural forces under the conditions supplied by a living
+organism, as the automatic working of a machine-like apparatus to which
+natural forces supply the motive power. Similar manifestations in
+inanimate matter and in elementary organisms seem to justify the
+conclusion that the distinction between living and non-living matter is
+arbitrary, that there are only forces, or perhaps one single force, that
+is to say, one movement, in the universe, whose activity is manifested
+in the most manifold forms, of which life is one. Modern Monism has come
+to this conclusion, but it is not alone in so doing. Long before Monism
+there was a philosophy which conceived all cosmic energies to form a
+unity; and really it is only an obstinate quarrel about words, for the
+Hylozoists regard the universe as something living and ascribe life to
+all matter and all atoms of which matter is made up, while the
+Materialists regard life as a play of forces in matter. Fundamentally
+the Hylozoists and Materialists hold the same views, only that the
+former call force life and the latter call life force; just as the only
+point of difference between them and the Pantheists is that these have
+given the majestic title of God to the universal life they assume--as
+Spinoza has it, "_Omnia quamvis diversis gradibus animata sunt_."
+
+The question, what is life? is the greatest that the human understanding
+can ask of itself. For thousands of years man has cudgelled his brain
+over this, and is as far from finding an answer to-day as he was on the
+first day. The definition most often repeated runs thus: Life is the
+ability possessed by certain bodies to react to stimuli, to absorb
+nourishment and to reproduce themselves. That is a statement of observed
+facts, but it is no explanation. It informs us that we are familiar with
+bodies which behave in a way distinguishing them from other bodies; but
+why they conduct themselves differently from others, what the particular
+thing is which is present in certain combinations of matter and absent
+in others--that is an impenetrable secret.
+
+Science has tried by the most varied methods to solve the problem. It
+seemed a triumph of research that Woehler produced urea, that chemists
+later on manufactured carbohydrates, that Fischer is on the high road to
+the production of synthetic albumen. What is gained by these
+discoveries? We bring about the same combinations as the living cell
+does. That is, no doubt, an interesting achievement, but its value as an
+addition to our knowledge on this point is infinitesimal. For we
+accomplish the production of sugar, urea and amine in a manner very
+different to that of the living cell, and he who copies the things
+turned out in a workshop has contributed nothing to our knowledge of the
+workman who plies his trade in the workshop. The dividing line between
+life and lifelessness was supposed to have been obliterated when
+elementary manifestations of life were proved to exist in inanimate
+matter; the Brownian movements in the smallest particles; the growth of
+crystals immersed in a solution of the same chemical composition as
+themselves; crystallization itself which represents a kind of very
+simple organization of matter, and at any rate proves the sway of a
+regulating and directive force; the tendency of certain elements to
+combine, which has been called their affinity. But this name is only a
+poetical metaphor which no one will take literally. The growth of
+crystals in their mother liquor is merely mechanical precipitation on
+their surface, an external addition of layers of the same material; but
+not growth by the incorporation of such matter, that is, through the
+absorption of nourishment.
+
+These and similar results of observation do not suffice absolutely to
+justify the assumption, seductive though it be, that life is a
+fundamental attribute of matter, that it is present everywhere though
+graduated in intensity, that therefore apparently inanimate matter
+differs not qualitatively, but only quantitatively from living beings,
+that life stretches in an unbroken line from the block of metal or rock,
+in which it is completely obscured, to man, the most highly developed
+organism we know of; and that at a certain point in its range it reveals
+itself in a form which permits no distinction between organic and
+inorganic matter.
+
+The origin of life is as completely unknown to us as its essence. For
+thousands of years the assumption was lightheartedly made that under
+certain, somewhat vague circumstances, life originated of its own
+accord. Pasteur showed that a _generatio spontanea_ cannot be proved to
+exist, that every living thing comes from another living thing, a parent
+organism, and that the old philosophers were right in propounding
+"_omne vivum ex ovo_" as a law, although they only guessed it and had
+not proved it experimentally. A very few critics, who are hard to
+convince, still dare to assert in a small voice that Pasteur's work and
+all the facts established by microbiology do not prove conclusively that
+life does not nevertheless originate from inorganic matter under
+conditions which we cannot nowadays reproduce in our laboratories. No
+answer can be made to this objection. An experiment is only conclusive
+for the conditions in which it is made, and not for others. All that we
+can positively assert is that on earth the genesis of life without a
+demonstrable parent organism has never been observed. To go farther, and
+to assert that a _generatio spontanea_ is absolutely impossible under
+any conditions, on earth or elsewhere, is arbitrary, just as it is to
+assert the contrary.
+
+Those who are supporters of the theory that life can be developed from
+non-living matter for a long time thought they had conclusively proved
+their case; they argued as follows: At the present time life exists on
+our planet; according to the Kant-Laplace hypothesis our planet was
+formed from a cosmic nebula and passed through a state of fluid
+incandescence; in this state life is impossible; therefore life must
+have originated spontaneously one day after the Earth had cooled down;
+consequently either the Kant-Laplace hypothesis is wrong or the
+assertion that life can only be generated by life is erroneous; the two
+assumptions are incompatible. This conclusion no longer presents any
+insuperable difficulties. It has been observed that spores which have
+been kept for months at the temperature of frozen hydrogen, that is,
+very nearly at absolute zero, have retained their germinative power and
+have developed when they were brought back to a favourable temperature.
+Therefore they would not be killed by the cold of interstellar space on
+their way from one heavenly body to another, and could become the seeds
+of life on another hitherto inanimate star. That large numbers of tiny
+particles of matter exist in interstellar space and are precipitated on
+the heavenly bodies is proved by the cosmic dust that arctic explorers
+have collected from the surface of snow and ice. Therefore the Earth may
+well have been in an incandescent state, and may yet have received from
+interstellar space the germs of life which developed and multiplied when
+the Earth's crust had cooled sufficiently to provide the conditions
+favourable to their existence; and these germs may have been the
+ancestors of all the life that exists on earth to-day after a period of
+evolution lasting hundreds of millions of years.
+
+This would account for the origin of life upon the Earth, but not of
+life in general. The germs, which travel as carriers of life from an
+older heavenly body to a younger one, must have sprung from parents, and
+however far back we trace their genealogical tree we are always finally
+faced by this dilemma: either life did, after all, originate at one time
+from something lifeless, and what has happened once must be able to
+happen again, now and always; or life never originated at all, but has
+always existed; it is eternal like matter, in forms whose variety we
+cannot even dimly grasp, its threads, having neither beginning nor end,
+wind through eternity. Of these two assumptions the latter is
+incomparably more in harmony with our present-day views on the universe.
+We believe the matter of which the universe is built up to be
+everlasting. It costs no great effort to believe life to be eternal too.
+True, the idea of eternity is inconceivable to us; it is a dim
+conception which has given rise to a word, a tone picture which portrays
+something indefinite, but within the bounds of the inconceivable there
+is room for both semi-obscurities, the everlastingness of matter and the
+everlastingness of life.
+
+But the most enigmatical point in the riddle of life is not life itself,
+which is a form of being, and is neither more nor less comprehensible
+than the existence of an inanimate object, of a stone, of water, of the
+air; it is consciousness. Descartes proves his own existence to himself
+by the fact that he thinks. Life must be accompanied by consciousness in
+order to convince the living being that it exists. The formula: "_cogito
+ergo sum_" has been admired for hundreds of years. It certainly is
+specious. But how many questions it leaves unanswered! Has it the right
+to deny life to an entity that does not conceive itself? Must it not be
+completed by the proof that life without thought, that is, without
+consciousness, does not exist, that consciousness is the necessary
+complement of life? And, above all, ought not Descartes to have given us
+an explanation of what thought and consciousness are?
+
+I will attempt to answer the questions left unanswered by Descartes. But
+I must premise one thing. Every definition of consciousness implies a
+postulate: life. Though at a pinch we can picture life without
+consciousness, consciousness without life is absolutely inconceivable. I
+do not undertake to explain what life is, any more than I attempted it
+above. We must take it as something given. Consciousness, then, is the
+subjective realization of something objective, the inward realization of
+something outside. If in a living being a picture of its surroundings is
+developed, then it absorbs something which is not a necessary part of
+itself. Of course, this inner image must not be understood to imply an
+absorption of matter. It is a process in the matter of which the living
+being is built up. But, all the same, the image of the outer world in
+the inner being does signify a penetration of the latter by the former.
+This image, which follows the changes of the outer world and repeats
+them in the inner being, is consciousness. It may be shadowy and
+blurred, or clear and distinct; it may in rapid succession be formed and
+pass away, and it can be preserved as a memory; it may reflect a greater
+or a lesser portion of the outer world; consciousness is accordingly
+duller or sharper; its contents are scant or plentiful, it retains the
+images of a shorter or longer series of conditions in the surrounding
+world. Between nutrition, which is recognized as an essential phenomenon
+of life, and consciousness a surprising parallelism subsists. Both
+consist in an absorption of the outer world by the organism; nutrition
+is the assimilation of matter, consciousness that of stimuli. In the
+process of nutrition the organism digests small quantities of the
+outside world; in consciousness it digests the world as a whole.
+
+This parallelism is no mere play of the intellect. If it is followed out
+it leads to significant ideas if not to actual knowledge. What
+penetrates from the outer world into the inner being of the organism is
+vibration, movement, force. Is the matter which is absorbed as
+nourishment ultimately anything different? Here we come up against the
+ultimate problems of physics, the various hypotheses regarding the
+nature of force and matter, the theories that in addition to matter
+there is an ether, or that the ether is a different, more subtle, form
+of matter, or that neither matter nor ether exist, but atoms out of
+which everything is built up, which themselves consist of electrons
+which are centres of force, motions without material consistency. All
+these theories, of which the last cannot be grasped by the human
+understanding, we can leave severely alone. This is not the place to
+investigate them. But the attitude of the living organism towards the
+outer world from which it absorbs nourishment and impressions,
+converting them into power to drive the life machine and transmuting
+them into consciousness, lends peculiar support to the supposition that
+force and matter are not only inseparable but identical, that in them we
+must seek a principle, or perhaps regard them themselves as a principle,
+which must be of the same nature as consciousness, for otherwise it
+could not be transmuted into the latter.
+
+The senses are the means by which the outer world penetrates as an image
+into the inner being. Before the senses are differentiated the living
+organism possesses a general sensitiveness; that is to say, that under
+the influence of the outer world its cell protoplasm undergoes a process
+of regrouping, resulting in chemical and dynamic changes. The chemical
+results of stimulus are anabolism and katabolism, a building up and
+breaking down of the cell content; the dynamic results are movements
+which in the lowest forms of life are purely mechanical, but in the
+higher forms adapt the organism to the external influence in so far as
+they place it either so as to be affected by the latter as long and as
+powerfully as possible, or else so as to evade it. The living organism
+can experience no stimulus and respond to it without absorbing and
+transmuting it, converting it into a chemical process or a movement.
+This inner process is a subjective realization of something objective, a
+penetration by the outer world, therefore an elementary consciousness.
+In proportion as the general sensitiveness becomes differentiated into
+specific ones, as the image of the outer world filters through the
+different coloured glass panes of the various senses into the inner
+being of the organism, this image becomes multicoloured and varied.
+
+It lies in the nature of this mechanism that the subjective image is not
+identical with the objective original, but is modified and even
+distorted by the panes through which it penetrates to the inner being of
+the organism. What the subject perceives is never anything but a symbol
+of the object, never the object itself; but this symbol suffices to
+enable the consciousness to form an idea of the object, just as letters
+enable the reader to take in words and thoughts. We must conceive the
+development of consciousness to go hand in hand with that of the senses.
+The more windows the organism can open to the outer world the more
+easily and the more clearly does its image penetrate. The number of
+objects which the subject can take in is the measure of the perfection
+of its consciousness. The protista, lacking specific sense organs and
+possessing only the general sensitiveness of protoplasm, can form only
+to a very limited extent and with very little variety an inner
+realization of the stimuli of the outer world. Its consciousness is
+necessarily very restricted and exceedingly dim. Consciousness is
+enlarged and grows clearer as the organism develops and its general
+sensitiveness is differentiated into specific senses, until we reach the
+level of man whose consciousness embraces far more of the outer world
+than does that of any other living creature; because, lacking new
+senses, he has succeeded in amplifying and enlarging those he possesses,
+and has by artificial means made himself capable of perceiving stimuli
+to which he is not directly susceptible and which therefore would have
+remained unknown to him; to a certain extent he has translated them into
+a form which his senses can perceive.
+
+I do not overlook any of the difficulties which my attempt to explain
+consciousness leaves untouched. On all sides the most urgent and
+disquieting questions arise. Above all, the fundamental question, the
+most enigmatic of all: how is an external stimulus, that is a movement,
+a vibration, converted into a sensation, a perception? Further: must we
+in the consciousness distinguish between the frame and its contents,
+the conceptual mechanism and the concept? Or do the two coincide? Is
+there no consciousness without a conceptual content? And is it the
+movement entering into the organism, the inner realization of the outer
+world which, transmuting itself in an incomprehensible manner into a
+concept, creates consciousness, becomes consciousness? Is the
+consciousness of the man standing upon the highest plane of
+intellectuality the greatest consciousness possible? Does there exist
+anywhere in the universe a more abundant, perhaps an infinitely more
+abundant consciousness than that of human beings on the Earth, and will
+the latter ever rise to this height? It is obvious that a development is
+in progress. There was a time when the most comprehensive, the clearest
+consciousness on earth was that of the trilobite or the cephalopod.
+Evolution has gone as far as man. Does it stop at that or will it
+continue?
+
+According to Herbert Spencer evolution is progress from the simple to
+the complicated. Let us accept this definition. Have we the right to set
+up a scale of values and place the complicated above the simple? Is the
+latter not the more perfect because it has more power of resistance,
+greater durability, and can hold its own triumphantly against all
+destructive influences? Is not evolution, then, a retrogression from the
+perfect, because simple, to the more complicated, and therefore more
+fragile, more easily upset and less capable of resistance to harm? Is it
+not sheer egocentrism if we appraise the value of living beings
+according to their greater or less resemblance to ourselves, and judge
+them to be less or more worthy in proportion to their disparity with us?
+Are the fish which, living in the sea wherein we cannot exist, can
+inhabit the greater part of the globe, are wild duck which fly, swim and
+walk, not more perfect than we, who have had to conquer the air and the
+water by artificial means? Is not the mouse's hearing sharper than ours?
+The eagle's sight keener? The dog's scent incomparably more delicate?
+Has not the carrier pigeon an infinitely better sense of locality than
+we have? Are not many beasts physically stronger, more nimble and agile
+than man? His only claim to superiority rests on the greater perfection
+of his consciousness. Why do not all living creatures participate
+equally in the evolution to which this superiority is due? Why does it
+not take place in every organism and lead the unicellular living being
+in an unbroken ascent to the level of Goethe or Napoleon, or to a still
+more lofty one, if such an one exist anywhere in the universe?
+
+If one could believe in a Ruling Power and the plan of the universe as
+its work, would it not be terribly cruel and revoltingly unjust that
+this power, instead of treating all living beings alike, should make a
+kind of selection of grace and lead some up to a higher level while it
+condemned others to lasting lowliness, and that it should ordain that on
+the road from the unicellular organism to man, countless connecting
+links should be left hopelessly behind and not be permitted to continue
+their ascent? Or must we admit the humiliating conclusion that a greater
+amount of consciousness does not necessarily imply higher rank and
+greater dignity, and that a protista, with its almost unimaginably pale
+and narrow consciousness, can have just as great a feeling of well-being
+as man with his immeasurably superior intellectual life; that therefore
+the protista suffers no wrong if it never gets beyond its present stage
+of evolution; and finally that the amount of the outer world which man
+can absorb in his consciousness is as far removed from the entirety of
+the universe as the contents of the protista's consciousness are from
+that of the human mind? No answer can be found to these questions.
+Whatever purports to be an answer, be it introduced as theology or as
+philosophy, is visionary or nonsensical. We must resign ourselves to
+moving in a very small circle moderately illuminated by Reason, while
+all around, if we seek to penetrate beyond it, we perceive gruesome
+darkness.
+
+Evolution, that is a progress from the comparatively simple to the more
+complicated, is a striking fact--I say comparatively simple advisedly,
+for even in the unicellular organism the processes are far removed from
+the absolutely simple. We do not know from what part of the organism the
+impulse to evolution comes. Here we meet with the same mystery which
+shrouds growth, its duration, its measure and its bounds. As the
+conception is lacking, a word has been found, viz., entelechy, which
+Driesch introduced into biology, the co-operation of all parts of the
+organism for the purpose not only of preserving it but also of making it
+more efficient in the matter of self-preservation and more perfect. A
+critical investigation of entelechy would involve the broaching of the
+whole question of life. It does not come within the scope of this work.
+I shall therefore content myself with a very few remarks. Entelechy
+works as if it were reasonable and acted with a set purpose. If you
+think it out exhaustively it forces you to the assumption that life is
+an intellectual principle, even in the protoplasm of the cell, long
+before there is any perceptible trace of consciousness; that this
+intellectual principle makes use of matter, builds it up, organizes it,
+moulds it into material and tools for construction, and sets up a
+mechanism in which and by which it develops itself. As far as we can see
+the purpose of life is life itself. Entelechy directs all the work of
+the organism in such a way that it becomes more and more capable of
+self-preservation, that its efficiency becomes greater, that it can
+absorb more of the outer world and can react more vigorously upon the
+outer world. In other words, life strives continuously to make its
+embodiments more permanent, securer, richer and more manifold.
+
+However, if we do not know how the impulse to evolution originates, we
+can at least form an idea of the mechanism of evolution. Fundamentally
+life consists in the absorption of cosmic movements or vibrations, and
+their transformation into another form of movement. The living cell is a
+machine which makes use of cosmic energy for physio-chemical work.
+Metabolism, warmth, electric manifestations, movement, and as their
+concomitant a graduated consciousness, are the result of this work which
+is carried out by cosmic energy in the cell power machine.
+
+To start with, this machine works in the very simplest fashion. It uses
+up its motive power as fast as it acquires it. Energy flows in and
+immediately flows out again in another form. The organism is like a pipe
+or a vessel without a bottom, so that its contents cannot be stored. The
+lower organisms which obey tropisms are such bottomless vessels. They
+are continually and inevitably subjected to the same attractions and
+repulsions and have no means to withstand them. But at a certain stage
+of evolution--how? why? Driesch replies: Entelechy!--a new part is
+developed in the machine, something like the cam on a cogwheel which
+forces it to come to rest. Or, to keep to the earlier simile, the
+bottomless vessel acquires a bottom with a tap that can be opened and
+closed. With this arrangement the organism is able to store the energy
+it has received and then to make use of it according to its needs, to do
+much more or much less work with it, to achieve much greater or much
+smaller effects, than it would be capable of doing with the amount of
+energy it receives from outside in a given unit of time. It is obvious
+how much more efficient the organism becomes if it can store up energy
+and can adapt to its needs the amount used up. This new part of the
+machine is Inhibition.
+
+It appears early, and takes part in the general development of the
+organism; it is indeed the strongest factor in this development. Before
+Inhibition intervenes the organism has only one response to stimulus:
+reflex action. This is of the character of an electric discharge. It may
+be stronger or weaker, but is uniform in kind. It varies quantitatively
+but not qualitatively. In the lower organisms it is a contraction of the
+cell protoplasm, a movement. In the higher organisms, in which the life
+processes are carried out on the principle of the division of labour and
+which have developed various organs for this purpose, each organ
+performs the action of its specific function; the muscle contracts, the
+nerve sends out a nervous impulse, the gland forms a secretion, and so
+on. All reflex actions have this in common, that they serve no other
+purpose than that of relaxing tension in the organism. They do not imply
+any co-ordinated effort to promote the comfort and the welfare of the
+living being. They cannot fulfil any complicated task. They exhaust the
+organism which, after a series of reflex actions, becomes insensitive to
+stimuli and must rest for a time before it can react again.
+
+Beginning from that stage of evolution where inhibition intervenes,
+reflex action loses the character of an automatic response to impulse
+and becomes disciplined. Inhibition tries to suppress reflex action. Its
+success is more or less complete according to the sensitiveness and life
+energy of the tissue receiving the stimulus and the degree to which the
+mechanism of inhibition is developed. The organism retains its tension,
+remains charged with energy, and is able to carry out work for definite
+purposes. In place of anarchistic reflex action which occurs regardless
+of the needs of the organism, we find economy of energy, co-ordination
+of effort, movement directed to a profitable end. It is only inhibition
+which can raise the organism from its state of passivity, its helpless
+dependence upon tropism, to a being in which a will is beginning to
+dawn and which by its will becomes self-determinative. Inhibition is a
+function of the will; it is the will's tool. Even Plato dimly perceived
+this, and he expresses it in the metaphorical language peculiar to
+himself, when, in the "Republic," he compares a human being to a
+creature made up of three animals: a hundred-headed sea-serpent which
+must at one and the same time be fed and tamed, a blind lion, and a man
+who tames the serpent by means of the lion. These three animals are
+desire ([Greek: epithumia]), courage ([Greek: thumos]), and mind
+([Greek: nous]). We say in biological language, reflex action,
+inhibition, and will or volitional reason.
+
+All the concepts that are referred to here: purpose, co-ordination,
+inhibition and will, are every one of them dependent upon one
+fundamental concept, consciousness. Without it they are unthinkable.
+Schopenhauer's unconscious will is a word without meaning. I have
+postulated consciousness as the inseparable concomitant of life. It is
+probably the essence of life. In its lowest stage it is too dim, its
+contents too meagre and blurred, properly to distinguish the organism in
+which it dwells from the world around. In a higher state of development,
+when it gradually grows clearer and begins to be filled with more
+sharply defined ideas, it learns to keep its organism and the
+surrounding world apart, and tries to make the attitude of the former to
+the latter one of self-defence, self-preservation and self-development.
+From this stage of development onward, concepts begin to connect and
+group themselves in such a way that consciousness contains not only an
+image of the immediate present, but also memories of the past and a
+forecast of the future. The ability to prolong the present into the
+future, to understand the actual as a cause of the effects that follow
+and to foresee these effects, that is the starting point of logic and
+reason. It is the necessary antecedent of the will, which would have no
+meaning if it were not the effort to realize a conception of actions and
+their consequences, previously worked out by consciousness. Will is a
+function of consciousness which, in pursuance of the well-known
+biological law, creates an instrument for its purposes, and this
+instrument is inhibition. The higher an organism stands on the ladder of
+evolution the more energetically and surely does inhibition work, the
+nicer and the more masterly does its intervention in the original reflex
+actions grow.
+
+Thanks to the piling up of reserves of energy, which is a result of
+inhibition, the organism can carry out its work of differentiation, can
+develop organs and organic systems, and obtain the power to perform more
+complicated functions; these render it ever more independent of the
+outer world and enable it to affect the outer world to an increasing
+extent. Inhibition plays an important part in differentiation. Its
+apparatus becomes organized. The nerve centres from which the inhibition
+proceeds form a ladder of which each rung is subordinate to the next.
+The peripheral nerves are controlled by the nerve centres in the spinal
+cord, these again by the centres in the medulla oblongata, and then in
+succession by the cerebellum and the cerebrum, and finally by the
+corticle. On the principle of least resistance, on which all life is
+based, the highest centres of inhibition unburden themselves by granting
+the lower ones a certain measure of independence. The reaction to the
+most ordinary and frequent stimuli is controlled and organized in its
+character and strength by the apparatus of inhibition, so that it ensues
+automatically, and no active inhibition, that is, no conscious effort of
+the will, is required. The simplest of these automatic reflex movements
+take place below the level of consciousness.
+
+Those organized complexes of movement, however, which we call instincts,
+are carefully watched by the consciousness and subjected to severe check
+if they appear to run counter to the supposed interest of the organism.
+The hereditary complexes of movement constituting instinct are highly
+organized and oppose inhibition, only yielding to it when it is stronger
+than they are. This can be observed in animals which are capable of
+taming and training. All the artificial actions and omissions that man
+teaches them are triumphs of inhibition over automatism. Among human
+beings it is only the elect who can vigorously suppress their instincts
+by inhibition directed by Reason. The being that has attained the summit
+of organic evolution on earth is man, in whom only the lower, vegetative
+life processes are liable to the influence of tropism and primary reflex
+actions, while all the higher and highest functions are the work of
+Reason, which arms the will with inhibition and suppresses all impulses
+and actions that hinder its purposes. It is characteristic of these
+functions that they are first worked out as concepts by the
+consciousness before they are realized as movements.
+
+It was essential for Morality to find this whole organic structure ready
+to its hand before it could become a factor in human life. This
+structure had been developed and perfected by the organism for its own
+purposes, for the defence and enrichment of its life, to ward off
+painful and obtain pleasurable feelings. Morality took possession of it
+and used it for its own ends, which do not at the first glance coincide
+with the aims which the individual immediately perceives and imagines,
+and may indeed be diametrically opposed to these, preventing pleasurable
+emotions, causing him pain and even endangering his life.
+
+But Morality, which is a creation of society, was only able to dominate
+the individual and gain control of the organic apparatus of his vital
+economy, because its purpose is directed towards the same goal as the
+tendencies of the individual organism, prolonging them beyond the
+individual's scope, aiming at his preservation, and thus coinciding with
+his instinct for self-preservation.
+
+Morality limits the individual's vainglory and subordinates him to the
+community; it is the condition on which the community allows the
+individual to participate in the mightier and more varied means of
+protection and the enrichment of existence which it has to offer. But
+apart from this somewhat remote advantage of Morality, there is another
+immediate one for the individual: it consists in the continual exercise
+and consequent strengthening of inhibition; therefore, as we have learnt
+to see in inhibition the main factor in the development and
+differentiation of all living creatures, it offers a means of raising
+the individual to biological perfection. The faculty of inhibition,
+being in a continual state of strong tension, makes automatic reflexes
+subject to the will, makes blind impulses obedient to the somewhat less
+blind reason, and helps man along the path of evolution from the status
+of a creature of instinct to that of a thinking personality of strong
+character, capable of judgment and foresight, a personality which does
+not seek to attain the pleasurable emotions necessary to every living
+creature by pandering to his senses and satisfying the appetites of the
+flesh, but achieves them by gratification of a higher order, by the
+triumph of the intellect over vegetative life, by strengthening the will
+in relation to the stimuli of the outer world and the organs, by taking
+pleasure in the fact that the will is content with its sway. These are
+harsh but subtle pleasures which, when they continue to preponderate in
+the consciousness, bring about that state of subjective happiness which
+is in the highest degree beneficial to life.
+
+Morality is an arrangement which has arisen from the needs of society;
+that is to say, it is not innate, but is an artificial institution of
+the race. However, it grafts itself upon the natural organs and
+attributes of man, and thus, from being a sociological phenomenon, it
+becomes a biological one. The idea that Morality is something absolute,
+a cosmic force, and that it would still exist and be valid if there were
+no human beings, and even if the earth had no existence, I have refuted
+with scorn. We must hold fast to the fact that Morality is a law of
+human conduct, that it is in force only among mankind, and that apart
+from mankind it is unthinkable. As, however, it becomes a differentiated
+function of the apparatus of inhibition, it participates in the general
+processes of life and leads us to that point where, indeed, we face the
+unnerving outlook upon the absolute and the question of eternity.
+
+My arguments have led me to many phenomena that can be established and
+interpreted as facts of experience, but the explanation of which lies
+beyond the power of the human mind. We have examined the riddle of life,
+and we have distinguished therein a number of inexplicable things: the
+lack of a beginning, sensitiveness to stimuli, consciousness, the
+transformation of vibrations into sensations and concepts, the will, and
+inhibition. We are forced to the conclusion that the only discernible
+aim of life's activities is the preservation of life, or, more shortly,
+that life is its own aim and object. Morality, too, either openly or by
+implication, sets itself the one clearly demonstrable task of ensuring
+to the individual the preservation and security of his existence in a
+higher sphere than that of individual vegetative life processes. Thereby
+it fits into the scheme of existence, its mysteries and aims, and
+becomes an integral part of the cycle of life which emerges from
+eternity and returns to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MORALITY AND LAW
+
+
+The coercion which the community exercises upon its members, by means of
+which it forces them to adapt their actions and abstention from action
+to the standard it has set up, has two forms: Custom and Law. Are the
+two really different? What is their relation, one to the other? These
+are questions worth investigating.
+
+Ever since the earliest times, grave men have meditated on the relation
+between Custom and Law. They were forced by evidence and practical
+experience to note a difference between the two institutions, but at the
+same time they had the definite impression that they trace their origin
+to the same source. Socrates distinguishes between the written laws of
+his country and the unwritten ones which express the will of the gods.
+The former constitute positive Law which the citizen must observe and to
+which he must submit; the latter, however, are higher, for they emanate
+from the gods themselves. The immutability of the unwritten laws is a
+proof that they are superior to the written ones. Written laws vary from
+state to state. They are the work of individual law-givers who were
+sometimes wise men and sometimes unreasonable tyrants. But all contain
+certain precepts which are everywhere alike, which everywhere impose
+the same rules upon man. It is almost as if one and the same law-giver
+had co-operated in the making of all the laws that obtain in the
+different towns and countries, and are so unlike one another in many
+points. This common law-giver, whose will is manifest in all laws,
+however far removed they be from one another, is the Deity. That is
+essentially Socrates' train of thought as given by Xenophon in his
+_Memorabilia_. The Attic sage speaks the language of his time, which, by
+the way, is still that of many present-day people. The Deity, whose will
+permeates all written laws and to whom they may be traced, is the
+principle of Morality. Hugo Grotius, in a manner more appropriate to
+modern thought, expresses it thus: "Law and Morality spring from the
+same source, namely, the strong social instinct natural to man. They
+bear witness to reasonable solicitude for the welfare of the community."
+This placing on an equality of Law and Custom, of _jus_ and _mos_, is
+very remarkable in such a strictly professional thinker, such a positive
+jurist as Grotius. Kant discriminates between the doctrine of Virtue and
+the doctrine of Law; he keeps them apart, but he emphasizes their
+connexion, and the two together make up his doctrine of Ethics.
+
+As a matter of fact, no fundamental difference between Law and Custom
+exists; only Law is enforced differently to Custom. It would be going
+too far to say: Law has sanctions and Custom has none. The latter has
+sanctions too, but they are of a different kind to those of the Law. He
+who transgresses Custom will suffer the contempt of his fellow men, and
+this may become so penetratingly severe that the most hardened and
+shameless rascal must feel it. In an old, loose form of society where
+individualism is highly developed, and each one goes his own way, paying
+little regard to the others, there an unscrupulous, conscienceless rogue
+may sin against Socrates' unwritten law without being penalized. In a
+young, closely-knit community, however, in which the feeling of intimate
+connexion between the members is lively and vivid, he would be
+proscribed, as soon as he was found out, and it would be impossible for
+him to remain, say, for example, in a small town of the United States.
+Public opinion would make it so hot for him that he would be glad to
+escape with a whole skin. But this punishment is exceptional for
+transgressions of Custom, whereas it is the rule for those of the Law.
+
+The sanction of the Law is stricter than that of Custom, just as the Law
+itself is stricter than is Custom. The Law concerns itself with concrete
+cases in which consideration for one's fellow men must be practised,
+duties to him fulfilled, and his claims respected. These cases are
+defined by Law as clearly as possible, whereas Custom confines itself to
+generalities and determines the whole attitude of the individual to his
+neighbour. Custom embraces the outer and inner life of man and
+supervises his opinions, which are the parents of his deeds, and also
+his deeds themselves; Law is only concerned with actions, and refrains
+from penetrating to the intimacy of thoughts, unless the latter alter
+the essential character of the action, as premeditation in an act of
+revenge and temporary or permanent irresponsibility alter the judgment
+of offences and crimes. Law is a miserly extract of custom, a meagre
+selection from its variety, a concentration and embodiment of its
+surging vagueness. It may be compared with crystals, which in their
+geometrically accurate forms are crystallized clearly and definitely out
+of a liquid, the mother liquor; or with the heavenly bodies which
+agglomerate out of surging primal nebulæ. Custom is the primitive thing,
+Law is derived from it. It appeals to its descent from Custom, and
+founds, at any rate tacitly, its claim to respect on these grounds. A
+law which ran counter to Custom, which was confessedly in opposition to
+Custom, could never be maintained or prevail, though it bristled with
+the menace of the most dreadful punishments.
+
+The relationship of mother to child between Custom and Law may be
+obscure to the majority; it is clear to the analytical mind. Recognition
+of the essential unity of both phenomena explains an assumption which
+was widespread among the best intellects from the Middle Ages until well
+into the eighteenth century, but which has now been abandoned as
+erroneous by more positive, though indeed narrower, legal minds. This
+assumption is that there is a natural Law antecedent to historical Law,
+which exists and acts beside and above the latter, and which forms the
+basis and the measure of every positive law, of every concrete legal
+judgment. It is comprehensible that the nineteenth century swept away
+the idea of natural Law and freely made fun of it. To a sternly
+disciplined legal mind it must indeed seem grotesque if a judge, in
+order to arrive at a verdict in some concrete dispute, cites the rights
+to which man is born instead of a certain text of the law, or even,
+following Schiller's advice, reaches up to the stars and brings down
+thence the eternal Law. Even this procedure is not so farcical as it
+seems to stupid article-mongers and hair-splitting paragraphists, for
+the procedure of equity of the English judges, who are not prone to
+clowning, is at bottom nothing but this reaching up to the stars and
+this judging by the rights to which man is born. The feud between
+natural Law and historical Law was really a quarrel about a word. Jean
+Jacques Rousseau, his contemporaries and disciples, simply made a
+mistake in their choice of an expression. They were guilty of an
+inaccuracy when they spoke of natural Law. They should have said: "the
+innate claim of man that his person should be respected," or, "natural
+consideration for one's fellow man," or, most shortly and simply,
+"Morality." To the latter legal lights would have raised none of the
+objections with which they victoriously opposed natural Law.
+
+The beginnings of Morality coincide with the beginnings of society, as
+the latter could not have existed for a single day without the former.
+Since men, forced by the struggle for existence, emerged from their
+original, natural solitude and united in a community, they have had to
+watch over their impulses, suppress their desires, do things they
+disliked, and in all their actions and abstentions from action consider
+their neighbours' feelings, as they demanded that their feelings, too,
+should be considered. That was Morality which limited the vainglory and
+arbitrary conduct of unfettered man. It included all rules that
+determine the attitude of man to man. There was no distinction between
+Custom and Law. Men were ruled by custom which was traditional in their
+community and observed by all; and their Custom had the force of Law.
+
+Formulated laws, and more especially written laws, appear comparatively
+late. True, Asia has old examples of such; the Manava Dharma Shastra,
+the book of laws of the Indian Manu, the Chinese Chings, the law of
+Hammu Rabi, and that other law, akin to this, though not derived from
+it, but probably drawn from a similar older source, the law of the
+Pentateuch. The laws of Draco, Solon and Lycurgus and the Roman Twelve
+table law are appreciably younger; much later still the _leges
+barbarorum_ were written down, some of them, like the prescriptive Law
+of the Germans set down in the "_Sachsenspiegel_," not till the end of
+the Middle Ages. It is peculiar to most of the old Asiatic laws that
+they contain both rules of conduct and legal regulations, and that they
+do not differentiate between these two kinds of precepts.
+
+Let us take one example: the Ten Commandments. Beside such positive
+orders as "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt not kill"; "Honour thy
+father and thy mother"; we find such as give rules for the character and
+course of spiritual happenings, regarding which others cannot observe
+whether they are obeyed or not, like the commandments respecting man's
+relationship to God, or admonishing man not to covet his neighbour's
+wife or goods. Those are subjective impulses, spiritual moods which are
+revealed only to the eye of conscience as long as they do not betray
+themselves in action, and which by their very nature cannot be the
+subject of Law which deals only with outward manifestations of thought
+and will, and is concerned only with things done.
+
+In constitutional Law, too, no less than in criminal and civil Law, the
+eighteenth century tends to preface certain laws with universal moral
+principles, and to establish by formal law that the former are derived
+from the latter. The Declaration of Independence of the United States in
+July, 1774, says: We consider the following truths self-evident: that
+all men are born equal; that the Creator has bestowed upon them
+inalienable rights, amongst which are the right to life, to freedom, to
+the pursuit of happiness, etc. So before these rights are guaranteed by
+the Law, they are announced to belong by birth and nature to man, to be
+independent of any particular and express bestowal by the law-giver, and
+beyond all dispute or even argument. Of the thirteen States which formed
+the original Union, ten accompanied their constitution by a Bill of
+Rights which repeated the essential contents of the Declaration of
+Independence of July, 1774; seven of them placed them as an introduction
+before their fundamental law, and three of them incorporated them in the
+latter. Two others, New York and Georgia, distributed them among various
+articles of their constitution. Rhode Island alone refrained from a
+general declaration. The States which joined the Union later, with few
+exceptions followed the example of their predecessors and built up their
+constitution on the foundation of an explicit statement of the natural
+rights of man. The French Revolution followed the course which the
+United States had indicated, and began its constitution of 1791 with the
+"Declaration of the rights of men and citizens," which is not a law in
+the technical sense of the word, but is superior to all positive Law,
+constitutes the latter's standard and touchstone, and straightway makes
+all laws invalid which are not animated by its spirit or which
+contradict it.
+
+In the beginning, therefore, there was Morality, and the first laws,
+which formulated its precepts either in oral tradition or in writing,
+recommended without distinction what was good and desirable, and what
+was necessary and expedient. The differentiation of the Morality, which
+the commonwealth felt to be its code of right and wrong, into Custom and
+Law took place in late times. It was most definite in Rome, where for
+the first time a clear distinction was made between men's relation to
+their gods and their relation to one another; the former was left to the
+individual's conscience, the latter subjected to the power of the State;
+the elements of feeling and of dim perception were banished from the Law
+which confined its attention to deeds which it regulated in a
+high-handed manner. Law chose from out the all-embracing sphere of
+Morality one narrow area, that of mankind's immediate, material
+interests, and took this as its sole theme. The object of all Morality
+is to enable men to live together in a community peacefully and
+prosperously; within the bounds of this more general purpose, the task
+of the Law is to suppress by force the grosser hindrances to this
+harmony among individuals, and by material means of coercion
+emphatically oblige everyone to respect the interests of his neighbour.
+What every responsible man of sound mind demands first and foremost is a
+proper respect for the possessions that are his by birth and
+acquisition, that is for his life, for his bodily welfare, for all the
+goods he owns that minister to his needs, his comfort and his pleasure.
+He who lays violent hands on these possessions, or threatens to endanger
+them, is recognized to be an enemy; man arms himself against such an
+one, fights against him, tries, if he have a strong character, to
+destroy him, or flees from him if he is too weak to triumph over him;
+man only yields to such an one if he simply cannot help himself, but he
+does so with hatred and revenge in his heart, and in a state of mind
+which, if it becomes fairly widespread, sets every man's hand against
+his fellow-men and leads to the ruin and even to the dissolution of the
+community. Hence the task of Law is effectively to protect the
+individual from the infringement of his rights by others. It places the
+organized forces of the community at the service of the individual whose
+interests are threatened, for the criminal law penalizes more or less
+severely attempts against life and health, unlawful seizure of property
+whether by force or cunning, malicious molestation and offence; the laws
+of commerce keep watch over the faithful fulfilment of contracts dealing
+with the fair exchange of goods or the execution of work, and in case of
+need enforce it.
+
+A select few, everywhere only a small minority, has a different scale of
+values to that of the masses. For them "life is not the supreme thing."
+There are things they value more highly. The masses have no
+understanding for these people's needs and fine feelings. Their
+self-respect and their dignity are dear to them as wealth, their honour
+more sacred than life itself. Unhesitatingly they sacrifice their
+property to freedom, and more unbearable than anxiety for their material
+interests is life in surroundings in which brutality, vulgar sentiments,
+harsh egotism, malice, hypocrisy and treachery preponderate. The Law
+does not consider this minority. It is the creation and the servant of
+the great majority. It clings to earth and is incapable of lofty
+flights. It is of no service to the elect in the preservation of their
+noblest spiritual possessions or the defence of their ideals against
+clumsy maltreatment. It declares itself to be incompetent to deal with
+any but material affairs.
+
+Therein lies at one and the same time the strength and the weakness of
+the Law. Its strength lies in the fact that it definitely limits its
+sphere of action and strives to achieve positive results by positive
+means, results intelligible even to a mean understanding. Its weakness
+lies in the fact that it ignores man's highest and noblest interests.
+And these interests are there, they too deserve consideration and
+protection, they have a right to demand that the guarantee of the
+community should embrace them as well. The well-being of the community,
+which is the object of Morality and of Law too, demands that such
+conditions should be created and maintained, as should enable the elect
+also to enjoy life or at least find existence bearable. But Law does
+not suffice for that. No law enjoins upon the careless throng of
+pachyderms to spare the tenderest and noblest sensibilities of lofty
+natures; no judge punishes thoughtless or purposely malicious injury to
+them. To remedy this evil we must rise from the lowly plain of Law, the
+natural dwelling-place of the masses, to the heights of Morality, the
+habitual abode of superior minds. At the theological stage of
+civilization refuge is sought with the gods in whose hands the
+protection of essential, spiritual possessions is placed. They are
+expected to punish the wicked whose evil deeds are beyond the reach of
+any penal code, they are expected to soothe and comfort when life is
+hard or even unendurable. That is the compromise that the elect made
+with life in the hard times of European barbarism. They escaped from the
+world and thus avoided contact with the repugnant masses. They shut
+themselves up in cloistered cells away from mankind and held mystic
+intercourse with God. Among the people, cruel authorities with
+difficulty maintained discipline and scanty law and order by means of
+flogging and the pillory, torture, the gallows and the wheel. The
+minority of the elect disciplined themselves, suppressed their lower
+impulses by self-imposed mortification, and with the help of prayer and
+belief in God's promised millennium managed to keep their heads above
+water despite the crushing spectacle of the life of those times.
+
+Long before the Christian era, the Greeks of noble disposition felt the
+need of living in an atmosphere of higher intellectuality and morality
+than that of the market-place, and they hid themselves behind the
+cloud-curtain of the Eleusinian Mysteries, where they kept to
+themselves, escaped the rule of the rude Law, and followed the nobler
+precepts of Morality. Whenever the measure of Morality contained in
+positive law did not suffice for the minority with higher aspirations,
+this minority adopted the same expedient, a form of esotericism; small
+circles were formed outside the community in which there was added to
+the current legal code a superstructure of stricter rules, more finely
+shaded duties, more courteous consideration. Present-day life also
+offers examples of this tendency which is met with in all ages. There
+are select circles and professions in which the standard of
+irreproachableness is far higher than among the mass of the people.
+There a man is not held blameless, simply because he has never
+transgressed a positive law, never come into conflict with the powers of
+justice. He must be as unspotted in the eye of moral justice as he is in
+that of the Law. A club or association that is self-respecting will not
+admit to membership a candidate reputed to lie, to have an evil tongue,
+to break his word, to be a toady and a snob, though none of these
+offences are punishable by law. It has happened that a corps of German
+officers has forced one of their number to send in his papers because he
+has seduced and deserted a respectable girl, an adventure flattering to
+the vanity of puppies who, as like as not, boast of it, and with which a
+judge can only deal if the injured girl appeals to him--and even then he
+cannot punish the offender, but merely sentence him to pay damages.
+
+Almost the whole world is agreed on the point that the Law does not
+sufficiently protect honour. Positive Law evidently does not consider it
+of such value as material possessions, for the defence of which it knows
+itself to be qualified. But there are numbers of people whose honour is
+dearer to them than their fortune, even than their life, and trembling
+with indignation they see that a thief who steals their purse with a few
+shillings is haled off to prison, while a slanderer who sullies their
+honour either goes unpunished, or at most gets off with a fine, which
+merely adds official insult to the injury. In this case the Law has
+lagged so far behind Morality that individuals try of their own accord
+to bridge the gulf without counting on the intervention of the
+community. For aspersions of their honour the masses take revenge with
+fists and cudgels, often with bloody results; and among the elect they
+resort to duels with lethal weapons, a preposterous proceeding due to
+desperation, and a bitter indictment of the prevailing laws. It is a
+deed of self-help, like the formation of a vigilance committee among the
+anarchical throng of a lawless rabble. Hardly to be justified on
+reasonable grounds, it is intelligible from the point of view of
+historical tradition, and as a survival of dim and primitive ideas. In
+early days a properly regulated duel was an ordeal showing the judgment
+of heaven. It was the general conviction that God would give victory to
+the right and crush the wrong. When human Law failed, the injured party
+appealed to the source of all Law and placed his cause in the hands of
+the Almighty. From this point of view the duel is no unsuitable means
+of preventing plots to evade the law. Even if the injured party is
+inexperienced in the use of the weapon, even if his opponent is skilled
+and vastly his superior, he need not worry, for God fights on his side.
+Therefore he is more sure of success than if he entrusted his cause to
+fallible human judges. But from the moment that the duel ceases to be
+regarded as a means of arriving at the verdict of God, nothing can be
+urged in its defence, and that it nevertheless persists is a fact that
+can only be accounted for by the inadequacy of the current laws.
+
+It really is astonishing that the Law does not yet appraise honour at
+its true value. Educated people almost unanimously regret and condemn
+the backwardness of the Law in this respect, all the more so because the
+tremendous development of the respectable, as well as of the
+disreputable, Press facilitates and aggravates libel to a hitherto
+undreamed-of extent, and no defence can overtake the slander which is
+quickly spread broadcast. Doubtless public opinion will urge that
+measures be taken to bring the Law into line with the views now held on
+all sides on the significance of honour, its defencelessness and its
+need for protection. That this has not yet been done is due to the
+slowness with which the Law adapts itself to the demands of a Morality
+which grows ever more profound and more refined. Law, which originally
+devoted itself only to the crudest material interests, very slowly
+extends the range of its protection, but it does so continually, with an
+ever-widening embrace, including more and more delicate, more and more
+noble, possessions, taking into consideration ever higher and ever finer
+needs. What early legislator would have thought of man's needing
+protection not only against murder, grievous bodily harm and
+maltreatment, but also against the dangers due to ignorance and
+carelessness in light-heartedly spreading infectious diseases, and
+contaminating water and the air? Who would have dreamed in former times
+that positive Law would consider the sensitiveness of nerves, desire for
+beauty, dislike of ugliness and forbid disturbing street noises, protect
+the countryside from wicked disfigurement, and prevent the construction
+of buildings which would spoil the artistic architectural plan of a
+city?
+
+These little traits, these concessions to personal demands, which to a
+coarse mind do not seem obviously justified, go to prove that positive
+Law continues to grow beyond the bounds of its unavoidably crude
+materialism, and strives to rise into the regions of the unwritten law
+of the Peripatetics, where ideal possessions are of more importance than
+those which have traditionally come within the scope of criminal and
+civil Law. Law and Custom have a natural tendency to approach more and
+more nearly to one another, to become merged in one another where the
+line that divides them is but faintly indicated. The closer the union
+between them, the more perfect is the Morality of a society. Absolute
+perfection would be reached if Law, which has been derived by
+differentiation from Morality, should, after a protracted period of
+development, return to its source and be completely merged again in
+Morality. But that is a dream which can never be realized as long as
+man is constituted as he is at the present time. Enthusiasts have
+dreamed of it, and in their imagination have seen an anarchical and
+lawless society in which no positive Law, no sanctions of force were
+needed, and in which the understanding and conscience of individuals
+would suffice to ensure the rule of good faith and goodness, and the
+curbing of selfishness. As far as man can tell we shall never attain
+this Utopia. We shall never be able to do without positive Law, not only
+on account of undeveloped and perverse natures, in which animalism has
+the upper hand of humanity, and which must be kept under strict
+discipline, but because a sure guide is needed in cases of doubt and
+irresolution which confuse even the good, nay, the best, men when
+passion and violent desire, with their heavy thunderclouds, darken the
+outlook of Reason, and judgment wavers amid the hurly-burly of a
+spiritual tempest. All that we may hope for and should desire is that
+Law should be filled with the spirit of Morality and embrace as many
+moral ideas as possible.
+
+It lies in the nature of the thing that Morality was never clearly and
+definitely formulated, for as soon as this was done it assumed the
+character of Law. It remained general and slightly vague, it spoke to
+men in such indefinite terms as "good," "virtue," "duty," "love of one's
+neighbour," "unselfishness," "patience"--terms into which everyone can
+read the meaning which suits his thoughts and feelings. Mankind has
+never lacked moral teachers. The Indian Shastras and the Chings,
+Confucius and Meng Tse, the prophets of Israel and Ben Sirach, Plato
+and the wise men of the Stoics, the Zend Avesta, Jesus and Paul, the
+platonic ethics of Nicomachus, those of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius,
+thousands of years ago preached the principles which exhaust the whole
+field of Morality, and beyond the essentials of which none of the later
+moralists have gone; neither the "Imitation of Christ" nor Ibn Bachia,
+Spinoza, the Scotch school and Kant, up to Wundt and Guyau.
+
+But what about the effect of the doctrines which they advocated gently
+or passionately, adducing proofs or uttering threats? To lend weight to
+them they either appealed to God, threatening mankind with His wrath and
+vengeance, or to Reason, which, according to them, could advise man only
+for his good. Perhaps they could intimidate those who had blind faith
+and convince the reasonable. But there are many of little faith, and
+more still who are unreasonable, and on these the persuasion, warnings
+and conclusions of the Moralists had no effect. For these it was
+imperative to clothe the minimum of Morality, the minimum without which
+no society can exist, in the definite form of laws, and so create the
+Law to which the weapons of the community lend compelling force. Thus
+the whole material of Ethics is divided into Morality and Law. The
+Theologians and Scholiasts who trace all binding rules of human conduct
+back to revelations of the Divine Will recognized on principle only one
+single law: but the aspect of practical life made even them distinguish
+between the "_lex indicativa_" and the "_lex præceptiva_," between an
+indication or counsel and precept or command. The "_lex indicativa_" is
+Morality, the "_lex præceptiva_" is the Law.
+
+Codes are the normal expression of the Law. Not all Law is formulated in
+this way, for there is a recognized Law of custom, but all laws,
+codified or not, become a part of the prevailing Law. Naturally, and as
+is only reasonable, all Law is pre-existent in the consciousness of the
+majority, and the law-giver's rôle is limited to setting down in
+paragraphs universally acknowledged principles dictated by public
+opinion. However, there are an appreciable number of historical
+instances in which this procedure is reversed; the law-giver, without
+inquiring whether his ideas were in accord with the general conscience,
+arbitrarily clothed his dictates to the community in paragraphs which it
+had to accept as Law. It is clear that this procedure is extremely
+risky. Even if the law-giver possesses superior wisdom, even if he is
+far in advance of his people and his age, even if his intentions are of
+the best, there is grave danger that the moral feeling of the people
+will revolt against the laws thus forced on them. Outwardly they yield
+to the pressure of public authority, but they obey the Law with a keen
+inner sense of opposition; a chasm yawns between conscience and the
+practice of the Law, ideas of Morality and Law become confused, the
+moral foundation of all laws totters, and the public gets into the habit
+of regarding the Law as something alien and hostile, which cannot be
+disregarded with impunity, but which it is not only not culpable, but
+even meritorious to evade.
+
+An enormous amount has been written on the subject of what a law is, and
+all this literature expresses in endless words very few and, almost
+without exception, very mediocre thoughts. I should consider it an
+unpardonable waste of time to devote any considerable space to this
+rubbish, either in order merely to quote opinions or to investigate and
+confute them. Perhaps the best thing said of the laws is Hobbes's
+description: Civil Law (the law of the country) is nothing but a
+guarantee of natural Law. It is true that this definition implies a
+supposition: the existence of natural Law which, however, is not binding
+in itself but requires the sanctions of the law of the country.
+Moreover, it is only correct if we add the limitation that it does not
+guarantee all natural Law, but only a part of it. Hobbes is also forced
+by his definition of the law of a country to explain what he means by
+natural Law, and he does not evade this duty. "Natural Law," he says,
+"is the decree of true Reason (_ratiocinatio recta_) with regard to what
+we must do and what avoid for our self-preservation.... Transgression of
+natural Laws is due to false Reason (_ratiocinatio falsa_)."
+
+In spite of its vagueness this explanation of Hobbes's shows that what
+he really means by natural Law is Morality, and in this respect his
+views on the relation of natural Law to civil Law, that is, of Morality
+to Law, practically coincide with mine. Nevertheless, he ignobly denies
+the moral decency of his doctrine of Law when later on he coldly and
+dryly remarks: All that the state commands is just, all that it forbids
+is unjust. Saying this he stupidly and obsequiously makes the civil
+code the source of Law, whereas by his own definition Law (he says
+"Natural Law") is the source of the civil code. It is more pardonable
+for Pusendorf, a formal jurist, to say: "Law is the decree (_decretum_)
+with which a superior binds his subject (_sibi subjectum_)." That
+interpretation of Law is possible if it is considered from outside; it
+is a means of coercion in the hands of the mighty to subjugate the
+dependant; this point of view ignores the essential; but Pusendorf has
+no concern with this, for he makes no claim to be a philosopher, he
+keeps within the bounds of juridical practice.
+
+The Bishop of Seville, Saint Isidor, the most respected theologian of
+the time between the last patristic writers and St. Thomas Aquinas,
+gives the following definition of Law: "Law is an institution
+(_constitutio_) made by the people, by which the nobles (_majores
+natu_), together with the common folk, have given a sanction to some
+ordinance." This says little about the essence of Law, but it leads to
+the question of the origin of laws. On this subject, too, whole
+libraries full of books have been written since the time of Plato and
+Aristotle; luckily, for the most part, they now only serve as food for
+moths and worms.
+
+From this tangle of hair-splitting and sophistry, from this muddle of
+syllogisms, dogmatism and deep-sounding phrases which mean nothing at
+all, one thought emerges pretty clearly, to wit, that only the highest
+authority in the State has the right to make laws. On this point there
+is perfect unanimity; and that is natural, for it is so obvious that it
+has no need to be circumstantially investigated and proved in the fifty
+thousand books that have been written on the subject. It is perfectly
+clear that one cannot possibly force all the members of a state to obey
+certain commands and prohibitions which the Law contains, unless one is
+stronger than each one of them, and therefore the Law must necessarily
+emanate from the highest power in the state. It is beside the point to
+obscure this simplest and most transparent fact by questions as to the
+right of the law-giver. He needs no theoretical right since he has the
+might. To use Kant's expression, positive Law is not a creation of the
+mind ([Greek: noumenon]), it is a phenomenon; its existence is a matter
+of empiricism, not of reason; it is a matter of fact and is under no
+obligation to justify itself intellectually to the intellect. No
+law-giver has ever troubled to tack on a preamble or an addition to the
+law he promulgates proving that he has the right to enact it.
+
+But in the literature dealing with this matter opinions differ widely as
+to who embodies or possesses the highest power in the state. According
+to some it is the king, because he wields the sword and therefore can
+enforce unconditional obedience; according to others it is the Church,
+because the Law, to be binding, must be moral, and Morality is
+established by God since the Church is the representative of God on
+earth. Others again regard the people as a whole as the highest power,
+because without their assent no law can prevail, and because even the
+king only has the power of which the people divests itself to transfer
+it to him. History has advanced beyond this quarrel.
+
+To-day no one dares to dispute the fact that the nation alone is
+qualified to enact laws for itself through the agency of its chosen
+representatives, and that no law can be binding for the people without
+their explicit or tacit consent. In Switzerland, where they have
+instituted the referendum, the people by their vote can repudiate a law,
+made by their representatives in their name, before it comes into force;
+and in the other constitutional states they have recourse to the
+following expedient: whenever a law is promulgated which seems
+inacceptable to them, at the next Parliamentary election they vote for
+men who are pledged to do away with it. The people have the power to
+make laws, therefore they also have the right to do so, and they do not
+hesitate to revolt if this right is tampered with. In recent times no
+nation outside Russia has submitted to having laws forced on it, in
+framing which it has not co-operated, and which it has not expressly
+accepted. The United States tore themselves away from the Mother Country
+with the cry: "No taxation without representation!" and more than a
+hundred years before that the English people had irrefutably proved to
+the Stuart king, Charles I, that he had no right to make and unmake
+laws, by condemning him in a court of law with legal formalities and
+then having his head cut off by a masked executioner.
+
+The legal code is the concrete form of the Law, and the Law is the
+crystallization of the most material part of Morality. And as Morality
+binds every member of the community, as man is only tolerated in the
+community on condition that he respects Morality, it is a matter of
+logic that he should also respect the Law; that is to say, that he must
+not only submit to it because he fears punishment if he fails to do so,
+but that he must feel obedience to the Law to be part of his Morality,
+that he must act lawfully at the dictate of his own conscience, and not
+because of the threat of the power of the state. This might be
+enunciated as a principle without reservation and without limitation, if
+in practice the laws always were, as in theory they should be, moral.
+But this is not necessarily the case. The law is a form, and every form
+can be abused by filling it with unlawful contents. If an unscrupulous
+adulterator of wine fills a champagne bottle of the usual shape,
+complete with metalled and wired cork and a label recommending it, with
+some disgusting mixture and puts it on the market, he is severely
+punished for adulteration of food and infringement of the law protecting
+trade marks. But if the government publish in the _Gazette_ foolish,
+risky, and perhaps absolutely immoral orders in the form of a law, duly
+arranged in chapters, articles and paragraphs, as the people are
+accustomed to seeing their moral laws expressed, who impugns them for
+it?
+
+The examples of this in history are only too numerous. To this category
+belong all laws seeking to maintain the validity of state authority at
+the expense of the natural rights of thinking and feeling men, e.g. all
+religious persecutions, the maltreatment of socialists, excise laws and
+duties which hamper freedom of work and movement, or are tantamount to
+robbing a particular man or all citizens. As a rule, laws of this kind
+can be imposed upon the people only in a despotically ruled state, since
+the people in this case has no share in legislation; but constitutional
+government is no guarantee against it, for parliamentary majorities can
+be forced to enact tyrannical laws, by fanning the flame of national or
+party fanaticism, by encouraging prejudices, or by intimidation; this is
+proved by Bismarck's May laws and Socialist laws, and also by the laws
+passed by the National Assembly at Versailles against the rebels of the
+Commune and against Paris. Obedience to such laws cannot reasonably be
+demanded. Only a Hobbes will dispute this, for whom "everything that the
+state commands is just, everything that it prohibits is unjust," or the
+Digest according to which "_quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem_"
+(what pleases the ruler has the force of law). Legal enactments, though
+they be immoral, are yet formal Law; as a matter of fact, however, they
+are wrong, and even if their originator has the power by brute force to
+secure obedience to them, no man who tries to evade them and to get them
+abolished will be accused of immorality.
+
+A trivial objection strikes one at once. Only a despotic megalomaniac
+will forbid his subjects to make representations in the proper quarters,
+and in the proper way, for the purpose of getting a bad law abrogated;
+but as long as it is in force it must be obeyed. For if every citizen
+were allowed to make a selection of the laws according to his choice,
+acquiescing in some and rejecting others, this would lead straight to
+anarchy. The reply to this is that anarchy, although a terrible evil, is
+notwithstanding a lesser one than an immoral law, that is, a law which
+sins against Morality. For the maintenance of law and order which the
+State guarantees is only preferable to anarchy because it enables
+individuals to live together in peace, and guarantees liberty of
+movement and respect for persons, life and property. But if the State
+acts wrongly, and interferes in the feelings and convictions of
+individuals, if it uses brute force to compel them to actions and
+abstentions against which all the good in them rebels, then its law and
+order is law and disorder, and it is the State itself which brings about
+a condition of anarchy by making force the ruling factor in the life of
+the individual. For the latter it is all one whether he has to yield to
+the force of the State or that of his neighbour. Nay, more, his position
+is worse in a condition of anarchy caused by the State, than in that
+which existed before the State was formed, because it is easier to meet
+force with force, when this emanates from an individual who is one's
+equal, than when it is exercised by the superior organization of the
+State. The State which enacts immoral laws denies its own principle and
+causes its own dissolution.
+
+The intellectual constructions of the eighteenth century, of which the
+most famous is J. J. Rousseau's "Social Contract," are not taken
+literally by anyone nowadays. Nobody seriously believes that one day
+individuals living in a state of nature banded themselves together and
+made a contract, by virtue of which they renounced certain liberties
+and rights and transferred them to a superior authority which was to
+rule them so as to promote the general welfare, peace and happiness. But
+if the procedure was not quite so simple as this, at least it is certain
+that the State undertakes the task which Rousseau expressly prescribes
+as its aim. If, however, through its fault, the fault of its
+legislation, the welfare of the community suffers, and peace and
+happiness are not promoted but hindered, disturbed and destroyed, then
+every citizen has the moral right to revolt against the State and
+paralyse its pernicious might; not because it has broken a formal
+contract with its citizens, but because it has become inimical to the
+peaceful life of mankind, the purpose of every social community. If
+anyone is troubled at the thought that there is no reliable standard
+whereby to test the morality of a law and no place indicated where such
+a measure can be applied, he may take comfort by remembering that all
+Morality is surrendered to the feelings and judgment of the majority and
+has no other sanction than this. History teaches us that the majority
+does not acquit itself too badly of its duty. Public opinion suffices to
+maintain Morality at a certain level in a community. And if public
+opinion is capable of ensuring respect for the unwritten law of Morality
+without the sanctions of State Law, it may surely be recognized as a fit
+judge of the morality of a law. That is the theory of the right of
+citizens to defend themselves by all means, even by force, against
+immoral laws. Practically, it is of no importance, because nowadays, at
+least in all progressive and liberally governed States, the people have
+constitutional means at their disposal to prevent or quickly to rid
+themselves of laws that are obnoxious.
+
+Morality includes the Law, whereas Law is only a part of Morality. Owing
+to its coercive nature, the Law is obliged to be concrete and material
+and to ignore all the imponderable, barely perceptible, spiritual and
+dream-like things which hover round Morality, surround it with an
+atmosphere and transport it beyond definite boundaries into the realm of
+the unconscious and visionary. The total exclusion of the element of
+feeling which Morality includes, constitutes the most profound
+difference between it and the Law. Law protects order but knows no love.
+The separation of Law from Morality is due to the pressure of
+selfishness which thinks it has made the greatest possible concession
+when it rises to the height of saying with Ulpian: "_Neminem laedere.
+Suum cuique reddere. Honeste vivere._" Injure no one; that is, refrain
+from the ruthless use of force; render to each his own; that is, do not
+retain in rascally fashion what belongs to another; live honourably;
+that is, give no offence to your neighbour by disorderly conduct and
+depravity.
+
+Well and good. At a pinch one can live like that. But the words pity,
+kindness, love of one's neighbour do not occur in Ulpian's pithy
+statements, and the Law knows nothing of them.
+
+The Law guards each man's well-earned possessions, but it bids no one
+make sacrifices. Morality can demand these. It can insist that the
+individual should freely, and urged by his own inner impulse, impose
+sacrifices upon himself, reduce his possessions in favour of another,
+disturb his personal comfort at any moment, perhaps even risk his life;
+that is to say, that of his own free will he should do just those things
+from which the Law carefully shields him. Where the Law says: injure no
+one! Morality says often enough: injure yourself to do good to your
+neighbour. Where the Law says: to each man his own! Morality not seldom
+says: to each man your own if he needs it more than you do. Morality
+counts on the existence of a quality of which the Law has no need:
+Sympathy. To be moral we must feel in our own being at the time, or
+retrospectively, the subjective experiences of our neighbour, with the
+same quality of emotion that he feels; his pain must be our pain, as his
+pleasure must be our pleasure. For the man who cannot do this--who
+realizes in his mind the circumstances of his neighbour only as an
+image, and without the concomitant note of feeling--it is impossible to
+rise to the height of Morality. It is not his fault, for the gift of
+sympathy is an organic disposition, which you either do or do not
+possess, which you can develop or suppress, but which you cannot create
+if it is lacking. Nevertheless, the lack of sympathy is a pitiable
+infirmity, for it prevents a man from scaling the heights of Morality.
+
+To respect the Law is to practise a wise selfishness. To act morally is
+to divest oneself of selfishness and attain the privilege of
+unselfishness. To behave in strict accordance with the Law earns the
+merited praise of civic blamelessness. But to act morally is a virtue
+which is of incomparably higher quality than that of mere
+blamelessness. The law-abiding man, the honest man, is praised as having
+been "_Integer vitae sceleris purus_." That is an acceptable epitaph.
+But the man of active Morality, willingly suffering for others, provides
+an example which reconciles millions to the hardships of life. The
+former is a worthy man, but the latter is a saint.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+INDIVIDUAL MORALITY AND COLLECTIVE IMMORALITY
+
+
+Men, who would be deeply offended if their Morality were called into
+question, quite coolly investigate the problem as to whether the State
+in its actions and omissions is bound by the same moral laws as the
+individual, and the majority of them come to the conclusion that in its
+relation to other States, the State must not be guided, that is to say,
+hampered, by moral considerations. They go further than this and not
+only liberate the State in its dealings with other countries from the
+trammels of Morality, but claim for the government the privilege of
+standing beyond and above the moral law in the conduct of public
+affairs, because to their mind both foreign and home politics move on a
+different plane to that of ethics. If anyone objects to this shameless
+contention, its advocates contemptuously dismiss him with the disdainful
+remark: "That is the drivel of a layman, and no man of science would
+waste his time on it." And if you were to reply: "Your views are those
+of gaolbirds who try after the event to hatch a theory justifying their
+misdeeds," they would probably shrug their shoulders and murmur
+scornfully: "The man is obviously mad."
+
+Professorial wisdom has formulated pedantically what practical
+politicians, the heads of states and leading ministers have thought,
+said and done. Napoleon remarked at St. Helena to Count de Las Cases,
+who respectfully notes the fact in his "_Mémorial de Sainte Hélène_":
+"The actions of a ruler who labours for the community, must be
+distinguished from those of a private individual who is free to indulge
+his feelings; policy permits, nay, commands, the one to do what in the
+case of the other would often be inexcusable." Perhaps it was under the
+influence of this remark, with which he, no doubt, was familiar, that
+Professor Nisard one day in a lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris
+propounded the theory that there was a dual Morality, one public or
+political, the other private, and that these two did not follow the same
+rules. That was shortly after the Coup d'Etat of Napoleon III, and it
+was easy to descry, in the words of the celebrated professor of literary
+history, obsequiousness towards the new Emperor and the effort of a
+courtier to excuse the violence which the Emperor had just done to the
+constitution he had sworn to uphold. Nisard was one of the ornaments of
+the university, a teacher of youth, who was as popular as he was
+respected. But the sound ethical feeling of his hearers revolted against
+the depravity of the principles he had just enunciated, and the violent
+expression of their indignation drove him in shame and disgrace from his
+chair and out of the lecture hall.
+
+Macchiavelli is the most famous advocate of the Immorality of the State
+and the right of politics to be unethical, and his name is identified
+with this infamous theory. An enormous amount has been written about
+the Florentine statesman, his book of the "Prince" and the doctrines he
+advances in it; among these works those in which his theories are
+endorsed preponderate to a horrifying extent over those which oppose and
+refute them. Mohl and Paul Janet have furnished us with the best
+abstracts of these very numerous writings, and I refer the reader to
+them. Here I can only dwell on the main points of the investigation.
+
+Macchiavelli writes: "A man who wishes to be perfectly good is without
+doubt in danger among those who are not good. It is therefore advisable
+that a prince should learn not always to be good, so as to be able to
+put these rules of life into practice, or not, as circumstances may
+demand." "A prince cannot maintain loyalty to a treaty if it become
+dangerous to his interests." In short, the prince not only may, but
+must, do what is in his own interests. He need not stop to think whether
+his actions are honest. The only measure of their worth and
+appropriateness is the profit they promise. Their success always
+justifies them, only their failure proves them to be bad.
+
+The most revolting thing in the arguments of the "Prince" is the
+equanimity with which the author adduces them. Never does he let slip a
+word of excitement, never does an indication of feeling appear. He
+treats his subject not as an investigation of principles to which one
+adopts a mental attitude and which one should approve or disapprove, but
+as a description of existing facts which arouse one's emotions as little
+as, for instance, the enumeration of the qualities and characteristics
+of a mineral. It has been said in his defence that his book is a
+concrete study, the presentation of the character of Cæsar Borgia, of
+his psychology and of his principles of government; and that
+Macchiavelli wished to give an objective account of the philosophy of
+the events he had observed, but did not wish to judge them subjectively;
+and this, if for no other reason, because an expression of his own
+opinion would have been too dangerous for him. It is further urged that
+his personal views are revealed in the treatise on Livy.
+
+This defence, however, is far from convincing. In the "Prince"
+Macchiavelli maintains the same unconcerned and cool note that prevails
+in his account of the treacherous assassinations perpetrated in
+Senigaglia by his hero Cæsar Borgia. The only personal feeling, which
+peeps out occasionally in both works, is a certain perverse, æsthetic
+satisfaction, experienced by the artist with the eye of a connoisseur
+who lingers over a work of nature, perfect in its way, and delights in
+the harmony of actions which, with absolute logic, almost with
+mathematical precision, result from the definite premise supplied by a
+certain character. Des Esseintes, the ideal æsthete invented by Joris
+Karl Huysmans, may appraise the worth of a monster solely by its beauty,
+without a thought for its morality. But by such appraisement he cuts
+himself off from the community of men, though he, in his arrogance,
+being morally insane, may abuse them as philistines.
+
+Since it first appeared, Macchiavellism has found disciples and admirers
+in every age; and these, in liberating politics from all fetters of
+Morality, go further than its originator. The German jurist of the
+century of the Reformation, Schoppe (1576-1649), declares sententiously
+that politics differ from Morality and have their own principles, just
+as Morality has: he considers that the chief difference between them is
+that the latter takes as its subject of study that which should be; the
+former, that which is. For this one phrase this pedant, who has
+otherwise rightly deserved oblivion, has some claim to be remembered.
+For here he consigns Morality to the realm of pure thought, of
+theoretical and meditative idealism, while for politics he claims the
+sphere of practical reality and shows the first dim dawning of that
+practical policy (_Realpolitik_) which, two hundred and fifty years
+later, was to be as the light of the sun to statesmen.
+
+The Frenchman, Gabriel Naudé, almost a contemporary of Schoppe's,
+constituted himself the champion of Coups d'Etat, if they promised
+political advantages; further, he justifies and praises the Night of
+Saint Bartholomew, a very energetic measure taken in his lifetime to put
+an end to the religious strife which was weakening France and causing
+the government much embarrassment; his only regret is that the happy
+idea of slaughtering all the Huguenots was not carried out more
+completely; in other words, that the massacre of the obnoxious
+Protestants was not continued until they had been completely wiped out.
+
+Even in Descartes, who confessed to a somewhat shady opportunism in
+questions of state and, for instance, concedes reasonable and moral
+justification to Absolutism, we find the depressing statement: "Against
+the enemy one is, so to speak ('_quasi_'), permitted to do anything," a
+conscious and determined denial of the Christian commandment "Love thine
+enemies," which perhaps demands too much of the average man and can only
+be expected from saints, but which, anyway, contains an exhortation for
+all the world at least to be just to one's enemies and act according to
+the dictates of Morality.
+
+D'Holbach does not beat about the bush, but declares roundly: "In
+politics the only crime is not to succeed." Even Macchiavelli did not
+express it as baldly as that. To quote the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, he
+at least pays virtue the compliment of hypocrisy, for he gives this
+advice: "Do (the evil which is profitable) and excuse it afterwards."
+This is a paraphrase of the old advice given by a pettifogging lawyer
+for the benefit of the criminal: "If you have done it, deny it," and of
+the well-known phrase of Frederick the Great which runs something like
+this: "If I have a desire for a foreign country, I begin by seizing it,
+then I send for lawyers who prove that I had a right to it." This, then,
+was the opinion of that king who wrote an "Anti-Macchiavelli," of whom,
+however, Paul Janet neatly remarks: "Nothing is more typical of
+Macchiavellism than as heir presumptive to the throne to refute
+Macchiavelli's principles, and then as ruling monarch to apply them with
+the more determination."
+
+For the sake of the incorruptible Morality which Kant defends in his
+little work "_Vom ewigen Frieden_" ("Of Eternal Peace"), he may be
+forgiven for his weakly worldly wisdom in following up the "Critique of
+Pure Reason" with the "Critique of Practical Reason." In "_Vom ewigen
+Frieden_" he bravely demands harmony between Politics and Morality. More
+sweepingly than the English proverb, "Honesty is the best policy," he
+demonstrates that honesty is better than policy. It is an old tradition
+of all governments, and especially of diplomacy, to affect secrecy,
+since their inavowable intrigues shun the light of day and the eye of
+outsiders. To-day the democracy in all constitutional states demands
+that foreign policy should be given full publicity. Kant expressed his
+opinion shortly and sharply a hundred and fifty years ago: "All
+political actions which cannot be made public are unjust." In the
+eighteenth century, in which he lived and which began with the war of
+the Spanish Succession, went on to the wars of Frederick the Great, and
+ended with the war of the Coalition against the French Revolution, he
+does not dare to make a definite claim that force should be expelled
+from inter-state relations and Law put in its place, but he does say, if
+somewhat timidly, that one may "dream of" an ideal in which the quarrels
+of nations are adjusted, like those of private persons, by laws which
+have been framed and approved by all. Kant is a comforting exception
+amid the many teachers of constitutional law who are almost unanimously
+Macchiavellian in their attitude, and who regard his point of view with
+contemptuous and condescending leniency because he was an unworldly
+philosopher, a theorist in politics.
+
+The English and Scottish moral philosophers, from Locke to J. S. Mill
+and Herbert Spencer, are all untainted by Macchiavellism and recognize
+only one Morality for the state as for the individual, for political as
+for private action. But it must be admitted that their doctrines have
+not yet been generally assimilated by the consciousness of their own
+people. Now, as ever, it is a fundamental principle of English law that
+"the king can do no wrong." That means that the king, the embodiment and
+epitome of the state, as the source of Law is Law itself, and is
+superior to all the laws of the country, which is a still more drastic
+paraphrase of the doctrine of the Digest: "_quod principi placuit legis
+habet vigorem_"; every whim of the potentate has the force of law, and
+the English have coined the horrible phrase, "My country, right or
+wrong," a dictum which allows ruthless deceivers of the people and
+destroyers of their country to hide their most appalling misdeeds
+beneath the mask of patriotism and to disguise deeds worthy of a
+criminal in the habiliments of virtue.
+
+Real patriotism demands that a true citizen and an honourable man should
+with might and main, even at the price of his life, oppose any injustice
+about to be committed by his government and his misguided compatriots;
+and, further, that he should strive to maintain his country in the path
+of Right and Morality even if, as sometimes happens, in a dispute
+between his nation and a foreign one the latter has Right and Morality
+on its side. On the plea of inevitable partiality a judge may refuse to
+try a case in which a near relative of his is involved. That is a
+permissible concession to that human imperfection which causes reason
+to fall silent when feeling raises its voice; and justice does not
+suffer, for there are other judges who can take the seat that has been
+voluntarily vacated. No citizen has the right to evade the duty of
+judging his country, because, if he fails, there is no other judge who
+can be put in his place and fulfil his duty. Every citizen is personally
+responsible for the just and moral behaviour of his community,
+responsible to his own conscience, to his nation, to the world, to the
+present and to the future; and if he is powerless to prevent depravity
+and misdeeds, he must at least solemnly and loudly condemn them, as this
+is his only means of avoiding joint responsibility for the infamy. If he
+fails to do this, the public crime becomes his personal crime as well.
+The elder Brutus, so much and so justly admired by the Romans, is an
+example to all, for without mercy he handed his own flesh and blood over
+to the executioner, when according to the law his life was forfeit. The
+state has no greater claim to indulgence and mercy than had Brutus's
+son, if knowingly and intentionally it indulges in vice. For if you
+allow the dictum, "Right or wrong, my country," to be valid, then you
+must also apply it to the state of filibusterers that once existed in
+the Antilles, and must demand of its citizens that their patriotism
+should approve and defend theft, piracy, rape and assassination, for the
+systematic perpetration of which their state was founded.
+
+In contrast with this wretched "My country, right or wrong," the
+inflexible dictum of the ancients stands out: "_Fiat justitia, pereat
+mundus!_" (Let justice be done though the world perish!). And what does
+most honour to the French Revolution is the phrase so often mocked by
+political profiteers: "Sooner shall the colonies perish than a
+principle!" That was the standpoint of the prophets of Israel, who truly
+did not love their people less than do the wretched scoundrels who shout
+"hurray!" and yell songs, when their country deals Morality and Right a
+brutal blow, because the leaders think that this will profit the
+country, or themselves.
+
+Frederick the Great and Napoleon, as heads of the state, acted in
+accordance with Macchiavelli's views. At their time this was expressed
+by saying that they were guided by the necessities of the state. In the
+second half of the nineteenth century Macchiavellism received the name
+of practical policy (_Realpolitik_). The despisers of Morality, who call
+the misdeeds of the state _Realpolitik_, apparently do not know that
+this one word implies a very comprehensive admission. To their idea
+_Realpolitik_ is a policy which reckons only with realities, not with
+desires, yearnings or hope, or as Schoppe brutally expresses it: with
+that which is, not with that which ought to be. It is active in the
+domain of facts, not in that of principles.
+
+But, according to the advocates of _Realpolitik_, facts and realities
+mean nothing but the sole rule of interest, selfishness, ruthlessness,
+force, cunning and contempt for all foreign rights; whereas fairness,
+justice, the curbing and suppression of one's own desires, consideration
+for one's neighbour, love of mankind--all these are phrases, or let us
+rather say ideals, which are to be found, not in the world, but in the
+brains of a small minority of enthusiasts without influence. He who
+confesses to such views, to whom the worst impulses alone are real,
+while he relegates Morality to the sphere of the unreal, of visions far
+from reality, is a pessimist as long as his convictions remain theory;
+but if he puts them into practice, or urges the leaders of the state to
+do so, then he is an evildoer who breaks the moral law as soon as it
+appears unaccompanied by the police, the prison and the gallows. In
+private life a man with such views is a criminal who obeys his evil
+instincts whenever he may hope to evade the law of the state. The
+bandit, who is clever enough to manage so that police and court of
+justice cannot touch him, is a practical politician, for the riches he
+acquires by theft, robbery and murder are realities; the criminal code
+is but a scrap of paper, something visionary, as long as its minions do
+not seize him by the collar.
+
+The immorality of politics, the way in which the foundations of Morality
+are ignored by the state, is the natural consequence of the power of
+rulers; for in them all the original instincts of the human beast still
+untamed by moral law are exaggerated by the intense realization of their
+loftiness, the glory and the illustriousness of their position, and they
+are not forced by wholesome fear of the means of coercion wielded by the
+moral administration to control themselves, to exercise and develop
+their organic powers of inhibition. The elevation of this fact of the
+Immorality of the state to a theory that the state is not bound by moral
+law, is derived from the conception which philosophers of all ages,
+from ancient times to the present day, have formed of the character and
+the purpose of the state. Plato, in the Republic, maintains the
+omnipotence of the state, which nothing and no one can limit; and
+Aristotle, not rising to such heights of error as his master, says more
+soberly: "It is a grave mistake to believe that every citizen is his own
+master." The Italian philosopher Filangieri considers the guiding
+principle and motive power of the state to be "love of power," which a
+fool three centuries later called the "will to power," whereupon other
+fools declared this to be a brand-new discovery.
+
+Hegel goes farthest of all in his idolatry of the state; according to
+him the state is not alone moral, but Morality itself, just as God is
+according to the theologians. As it would be arrogant blasphemy to
+characterize anything that God ordains as immoral, as it would be
+nonsensical to wish to impose upon God a moral law from outside, not
+emanating from Him, to which He would have to submit even against His
+will, so it is reprehensible to judge the actions of the state by the
+standard of individual Morality; and it is equally absurd to admit any
+moral coercion imposed on the state from outside, any guiding principle
+other than the law of its necessities and the logic which indicates the
+means needed to attain the necessary end.
+
+According to Treitschke the state is the highest form of human
+existence; nothing higher than the state exists. He has never asked
+himself the question whether, after all, humanity itself is not superior
+to the state which is the form, a form, of its existence and therefore
+not its essence.
+
+From his conviction that the state is the highest thing existing,
+Treitschke concludes that certain moral duties, e.g. that of
+self-sacrifice, cannot possibly exist for the state. "The individual is
+to sacrifice himself for the sake of a higher community of which he is a
+member; but the state is itself the highest thing in the outer community
+of mankind, therefore it can never be confronted with the duty of
+self-destruction."
+
+How obvious that seems! How grossly mistaken it is all the same! First
+of all the state is not the highest thing; there is something higher,
+and that is humanity; if then we recognize a moral duty of
+self-sacrifice for humanity, theoretically this duty may arise just as
+much for the state as for the individual.
+
+Secondly, the idea that owing to Morality the state might one day
+actually be in such a position as to be forced to sacrifice itself is
+the most shocking nonsense. How could that possibly be? If the state
+always acts with strict Morality towards its citizens and foreign
+states, it is simply impossible that it should have to sacrifice its
+existence in the fulfilment of some task; for tasks only arise when, and
+as long as, the state exists. Once it is disintegrated there can be no
+task, either theoretically or practically, for it to accomplish,
+therefore it cannot have to sacrifice itself for such a task. But if the
+Immorality of another state, or of a minority of its citizens, should
+endanger it, threaten it with an unjust attack from within or without,
+then there is no rule of Morality that can forbid it to defend itself
+to the last, and its self-sacrifice could then only be a result of its
+complete annihilation in a justifiable war of necessity. On the other
+hand, even the most unscrupulous practical politicians do not possess
+any absolute guarantee against defeat, though they declare a war of
+aggression to be permissible, whether waged on account of an itching for
+power, for purposes of conquest, for the winning of prestige,
+predominance or economic advantages.
+
+Thirdly and lastly, the duty of self-sacrifice for the state can only be
+envisaged and seriously discussed, if the state be conceived as a person
+to whom the duty of Morality applies in every way; but this conception
+is mystic anthropomorphism, not sober, sensible recognition of realities
+such as the practical politicians love to boast of.
+
+For, as a matter of fact, the state is not a person but a concept, an
+institution created by man in the interests of one individual, of a few,
+of many or of all; an organization of habits and interests, a relation
+in which individuals live together. The mysticism of the weak-minded has
+transformed it into a person with human features, with the qualities,
+desires, duties, and aims of an individual; these men are intellectually
+incapable of penetrating to the fundamental facts underlying the
+concept, and cling entirely to word-pictures which are mere verbalism.
+Scholasticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was chiefly occupied
+in a quarrel about Nominalism and Realism. It was allowed to drop and
+was not fought out to a decision. Perhaps because it is impossible to
+convince these superficial babblers who take a name or a word for an
+object actually existent in time and space, that they are in error. The
+fight between Abelard and Roscelet and that between the two of them and
+Duns Scotus ought to be taken up again. Above all, one ought to knock it
+into the heads of those who make a fetish of the state that it is a mere
+word, the famous "_flatus vocis_" of the Nominalists, which they
+worship, to which they build altars and make human sacrifices.
+
+This humiliating form of idolatry is practised by the school of
+sociologists known as organicistic, as well as by the practical
+politicians. This school maintains that the individual has no
+independent existence at all, that he continues to exist only in the
+community, by the community, as a totally subordinate, dependent and
+incomplete fraction of the community; that the only real thing in the
+species is society, the state; that this must be regarded as a living
+organism, in which the individual human being is merely a cell which in
+solitude, outside the community and detached from it, is as little
+capable of life and has as little significance as a cell separated from
+a highly differentiated creature, such as a man or some other mammal. In
+my book "_Der Sinn der Geschichte_" (The Meaning of History), I threw as
+much light as I possibly could on this superstition, and I pointed out
+in detail its lack of sense as well as its dangers. I can, therefore,
+content myself here with a résumé and a few indications.
+
+There is nothing mysterious or supernatural about the historic or even
+the prehistoric origin of the state; part we can learn from reliable
+documentary evidence, part we can gather with certainty from obvious
+facts. From the primitive human family, which more probably consisted of
+a pair than of a man and several women, there arose the formless horde,
+a crowd of individuals of all ages, connected by blood; this developed
+into a tribe in which age, strength, courage and intelligence were
+appreciated in a certain order, and thereby were produced the beginnings
+of discipline, co-operation and regularized mutual relations; that is to
+say, of organization. This embryo of later formations, this sketchy
+beginning of an economic and political community, evolved more definite
+and differentiated forms when the wandering huntsmen and shepherds,
+seeking prolific hunting grounds and pasture lands, and later on arable
+land too, came upon other groups of men and fought with them for the
+possession of the desired domain. In the conflict strong and brave men
+came to the front, and the victor became the natural, and for the most
+part willingly recognized, leader and master of his companions, while
+any who opposed him were reduced by force to submit to his authority.
+The state crystallized around this war-hero, and by all its members its
+aim was clearly and obviously recognized to be defence and the increase
+of property outside the state; that is, the warding off of attacks by
+foreign robbers and acquisitive invasions of neighbouring domains--wars
+of defence and conquest, but always war; and within the state the
+maintenance of a certain measure of safety for individuals. This safety,
+however, had to be purchased dearly by the limitation, often enough the
+complete surrender, of the right of self-determination, of independence
+of will and freedom; so dearly, in fact, that the price was far higher
+than the value of the advantages acquired.
+
+The leader in warfare became the ruler and bequeathed his privileges to
+his descendants. The state was he himself, the land his property, the
+people his family in the old sense of the word--that is, his kindred,
+his servants, his slaves. His comrades in arms who had most
+distinguished themselves became an aristocracy of the sword, the
+supporters and tools of his power, though often enough they became his
+rebellious rivals and overthrew him. Defeated enemies were robbed of all
+their possessions and slaughtered; later on they were degraded to serfs,
+a position little better than that of beasts of burden. A regular
+parasitism developed, by means of which the ruler and his companions in
+arms exploited the subjugated and productive masses for their own
+profit.
+
+The acute form of this parasitism was warfare in its chronic form, its
+prolongation in times of peace, the extortion of contributions and
+duties, the imposition of taxes and forced labour from the people. The
+ruler was clever enough to provide himself with a moral right to his
+exercise of brute force, by inventing a divine origin for his person and
+power, and making worship of his person an essential tenet of the
+national religion. The systematic suppression of the masses without
+rights became the universal practice of the ruler and of the instruments
+of his power, and this gradually spread to the higher classes who could
+still play the master to the lower strata, but were of no more account
+than the vulgar herd in the eyes of the ruler, having to bow their
+proud heads beneath the same yoke. A very few races followed a different
+course of development from the primitive horde to an organized state.
+They remained free members of the community with equal rights, they
+allowed no hereditary ruler from among themselves to become their
+superior, and governed themselves as republicans, who nevertheless also
+waged war without exception, either forced thereto by the attacks of
+greedy neighbours or lured into doing so by the example of the
+monarchies within their purview or by lust for booty. In warfare they
+won slaves and subjects, and changed into oligarchies, most often into
+despotic states, and before they ultimately declined to the parasitism
+of a single man and his aids fell victims to a collective parasitism
+which gave the conquered and subjugated population up to the spoliation
+of the victors.
+
+Up till modern times the state preserved the character of a private
+domain belonging to the ruler and his house. Wars were waged in the
+interests of dynasties, and as late as the eighteenth century the
+succession in Spain and in certain provinces of Austria was the origin
+and purpose of various campaigns. The French Revolution first wrought a
+change in this. Since this great event it has been impossible to plunge
+any European state into war in order to support the claims to property,
+more or less legally justified, made by its ruling house. The people
+have taken the place of princes, and now the principle of nationalities
+furnishes the reason or excuse for bloody conflicts between states; and
+this has become a factor in modern politics and history merely because
+dynasties had built up their realms regardless of the origin and
+language of the inhabitants of the districts which they had conquered,
+stolen, bought, or acquired by exchange, by marriage or by inheritance,
+and were indifferent to the national unity of their subjects as long as
+they could gain possession of the country and the people.
+
+From the time of its first vague beginnings up till the rise of modern
+democracy, the state has been nothing but a means of parasitism in the
+hands of the ruling person or group, and an instrument for the
+preparation for, and the waging of, war. All the state's tasks, which
+apparently lie outside the sphere of war, if they are carefully
+examined, will be found, after all, to aim at efficiency in war, and it
+has gradually selected these tasks from the simple consideration that
+their execution increases the guarantees of success in warfare and in
+government.
+
+The deification of the ruler in Asiatic and Egyptian lands, the
+unconditional identification of the realm with his person, the uniform
+enslavement of the whole people, its naïve exploitation for the sole
+benefit of the sovereign and his assistants are no longer possible in
+Europe at the present day. The development of the nations to a higher
+plane of civilization and a clearer consciousness of their own worth
+forced the state to alter its constitution to a certain extent and to
+devote itself, at least theoretically, more to the interests of its
+citizens than the service of its prince. The intellectual constructions
+of the eighteenth century correspond to no historical reality. The
+Social Contract, the inception of which J. J. Rousseau described so
+graphically, was never made. Hutcheson, who had expressed the idea long
+before the enthusiast of Geneva, conceived it only as the epitome of the
+principles which the state should embody; according to Hume, the
+relations of the citizens to each other and to the state are a tacit
+contract which need not be explicitly formulated, because it originates
+in human nature; and Fichte even assures us that Rousseau himself did
+not mean his Social Contract to be taken literally. According to him it
+was only an idea. But societies must act in pursuance of this idea, and
+they were founded, if not actually, yet legally upon an unwritten
+contract. Anyway, the ideas of Hutcheson, Hume and Rousseau have
+nowadays been assimilated by the general consciousness. The masses
+believe in the natural, inborn rights of man, some of which he certainly
+has surrendered in favour of the community; they demand and expect of
+the state that it should serve their just interests, and they are no
+longer ready to be made use of by the ruler and a powerful, often very
+small, minority, for purposes which are foreign to them, which they do
+not know, and for which they do not care.
+
+Those who juggle with words, who talk dark and mysterious nonsense about
+the concept of the state, or dogmatize fanatically on the subject,
+contemptuously call this conception of the nature of the state and the
+relation of its citizens to it shallow rationalism, and from the heights
+of their supposed knowledge they look down disdainfully upon arguments
+which they libellously call the laymen's babble. They are only in part
+bumptious fools who pretend that uncritical, parrotlike repetition of
+traditional formulæ is erudition and confused thought is profundity, and
+who declare the clear-headed men who mock their silly mysticism, their
+superstitious dread of word phantoms, to be simply incapable of
+understanding their depth. Partly they are very sly toadies, very
+cunning sycophants of power, or ruthless egoists, unscrupulous
+freebooters, who pretend to be enthusiastic and devout apostles of the
+divinity of the state and demand the most humble submission, adoration
+and unconditional devotion in order that, as priests in its temple, they
+may grind their own axes at its altars.
+
+Such are those folk who maintain the double thesis that the state is
+everything, the individual nothing, the former the sole reality, the
+latter without any separate existence, and that the state, as mankind's
+highest form of existence, need recognize nothing as superior to itself,
+neither right nor law, and may therefore take as sole guide for its
+actions its own interests and not Morality.
+
+You cannot maintain a single one of these contentions unless you and all
+men are deprived of reasoning power; they crumble away instantly in the
+light of Reason. It is not true that the state alone is real and that it
+is superior to the individual, not only because of the forces at its
+disposal, the complex of which it represents, but also as an entity, as
+a thought, a principle. The individual alone in the species, that is,
+living, feeling, thinking and acting man, is real. The individual
+created the state out of himself. He can also destroy it. The practical
+politicians above all people should be of this opinion; as he can do
+it, he may do it; as he has the power to do it, he has the right to do
+it. The individualist will not make this a question of law, but will
+simply assert that, though the individual is the father of the state,
+yet he has no reasonable grounds for destroying it, so long as it makes
+no murderous attacks on its creator. The individual did not create the
+state consciously, intentionally and formally by means of a social
+contract, but naturally and organically, under pressure of
+circumstances. It is clearly to his interests to maintain it, to furnish
+the necessary means for its existence and efficiency, but always on the
+one condition that the state should really protect and promote the
+interests of the individual, lighten his burdens in the struggle for
+existence, and make that prosperity, comfort and happiness possible
+which he cannot secure unaided in his struggle with the hostile forces
+of Nature and with rival fellow-men.
+
+But if the state oppresses the individual with burdens and duties which
+he feels no inner necessity to fulfil, if it confiscates him, body and
+soul, instead of respecting his freedom and his right to
+self-determination, then the assumption falls to the ground; the state
+is no longer an institution which benefits the individual; it is
+inimical to the individual, hinders him in his struggle for existence,
+destroys his happiness; and he obeys his primitive instinct for
+self-preservation if he turns against it, masters it as he would a
+monster, draws its teeth and claws, and forces it back to the place it
+was meant to occupy, that of a docile and industrious servant of the
+individual, not of one individual who aspires to rule the others, but of
+all individuals who are of the people that make up the state.
+
+I consider it unnecessary and a little ridiculous to quote authorities
+in support of the statement that twice two are four; what is reasonable
+and clear is convincing without further recommendation; nevertheless, it
+is a fact that may be worthy of mention that some of the best intellects
+of all nations have sided with the individual against the state. On the
+one side we have Plato, whose ideal is Sparta and who would like to see
+the despotism of this model state and its communal meals completed by
+the addition of community of property, of wives, and of children; we
+have Hegel, who has gone farther than any one in his idolatry of the
+state; we have Auguste Comte, who, in his zeal for his newly founded
+science of Sociology, conceives society as an organism biologically
+superior to the individual, and thereby has become the father of the
+Organicists. But against these we can put the Englishman, Jeremy
+Bentham, the embodiment of sound common sense, whom the muddle-headed
+fools that pose as deep thinkers have good reason to hate and fear, and
+whom they try to depreciate as vulgar and shallow; further, his
+compatriot, Herbert Spencer, who is his kindred spirit; the Frenchman,
+Frédéric Bastiat, whose writings sparkle with flashes of wit; the
+German, Wilhelm Humboldt, who bravely and successfully combated the
+state tyranny defended by Fichte. All these are convinced individualists
+who adduce irrefutable reasons for their views. We may also include
+Kant among them, as he gave utterance to this decisive sentence: "Man is
+his own aim and end, and must never be a mere means"; consequently it is
+never permissible to sacrifice the sovereignty of one's own person to
+that of the state, or make use of it for the realization of political
+aims by disregarding, and doing violence to, one's right of
+self-determination. Harald Höfding contends that progress should be
+measured by the extent to which, in Kant's sense of the words, man is
+recognized to be his own aim and end; but that is not only a measure of
+progress, it is the measure of all civilization.
+
+For civilization, to my idea, means a state worthy of man, implying his
+mental, moral and material independence of all motive forces other than
+those of his own nature; its aim is the most complete attainment
+possible of this independence; its measure the extent to which the
+individual determines his own fate and is able to ward off from it
+undesired outside influences. At the first awakening of his
+consciousness primitive man was aware of being exposed to unknown forces
+which controlled him at will and against which his will was powerless.
+From the very beginning, at first dimly and then more and more clearly,
+man has felt this to be unworthy and intolerable. The best of the
+species have always laboured with all their strength to liberate
+themselves, and the great ambition of man throughout his development has
+always been not submissively to accept whatever fate was accorded him,
+but to work out his destiny according to his needs and his own ideas.
+
+The anguish caused by wretched dependence upon external forces is the
+origin of religion as of superstition, which both spring from the same
+root. With the anthropomorphism peculiar to the earliest stages of
+thought, man personified the mysterious powers which ruled his fate. He
+created gods for himself, and then, as far as his knowledge permitted,
+he sought some relation between himself and them, and tried to get at
+them by every means available. He imagined them like unto himself, that
+is, vain, capricious, greedy, easily frightened by dark threats, and
+then, very reasonably on this hypothesis, he importuned them with
+prayers, sacrifices, hymns of praise and vows, as well as magic formulæ
+and incantations, always with the inflexible intention of making them
+serve his purposes, not of serving theirs. The contrite Jewish prayer:
+"Thy will be done, Lord, Thy will, not mine," is a new trait in the
+religious thought of man. The heathen always strives to have his will
+done in opposition to that of the gods, and to divert them from their
+decisions if he dislikes them.
+
+In a state of advanced development theological thought gave way before
+the scientific. Man learnt to conceive Nature's rule, not
+transcendentally, but intrinsically. He recognized that the forces
+around him, which so often crossed his purpose, are not to be influenced
+by prayer and sacrifice, but that it is expedient and possible to
+discover their character and the conditions of their activity. By dint
+of long-sustained efforts he has succeeded in effectively standing up to
+hostile Nature and in warding off her undesired interference in his
+destiny. If the tribulations, which formerly suddenly brought his
+schemes to nought and often destroyed him, are not entirely overcome, it
+is merely because his practice does not conform closely enough to the
+directions evolved by his theoretical knowledge, because he is too
+careless or too clumsy to make proper use of the weapons against the
+elements with which science has armed him.
+
+But this same man, who has learnt to be a match for Nature, his creator,
+is powerless against his creature, the state. He can neither evade it
+nor escape from it. The state disposes of him without his consent,
+against his most obvious interests, in spite of his powerless
+opposition; it hurls him hither and thither, annihilates him, crushes
+him by its will and is unmoved by the will of the individual.
+
+True, man has sought to maintain his right of self-determination against
+the forces of politics, as against all others that broke his will and
+intervened in his life without his consent. For thousands of years all
+state development has tried to protect the modest individual, lost in
+the crowd and featureless, but nevertheless a person, that is, a world
+to himself, against the arbitrariness of rulers or leading statesmen.
+That is the one unchanging tendency which leads from Harmodius and
+Aristogeiton, the slayers of a tyrant, the rebellion of the elder
+Brutus, the murder of Cæsar, by way of the Revolt of the Netherlands and
+the execution of Charles I of England, to the great Revolution, the
+risings of 1848 and the struggle for constitutional government in all
+states of the Old World and the New. The formula has long been
+discovered whereby the individual can maintain the dignity of his
+sovereign personality and his own responsibility for the shaping of his
+destiny. It is civil freedom, constitutionalism, sovereignty of the
+people. There are arrangements, carefully thought out, nicely weighed,
+cleverly worked out to the smallest detail, by which the individual is
+fitted into his place in the community without being deprived of the
+management of his own affairs, by which the sacrifices needful for the
+fulfilment of collective tasks are exacted without his being reduced to
+a condition of slavery, by which the independence of the individual is
+safeguarded and yet a state of chaos and anarchy is avoided.
+
+But this formula fares as do the doctrines of science: hitherto it has
+remained a theory everywhere. The franchise, representation of the
+people, responsibility of ministers, constitutional limitation of the
+ruler's power, are infallibly effective weapons or instruments, but no
+people has yet learnt how to handle them rightly. That is why pessimists
+speak of the bankruptcy of civilization, that is why the aim of
+civilization, the liberation of the person and the enforcement of its
+sovereignty, has nowhere been attained, that is why, to quote Napoleon I
+in his interview with Goethe at Erfurt, "In our times the power of fate
+is politics." And yet all these institutions of a modern constitutional
+state, from the ballot-paper and the voting of taxes in Parliament to
+the enforced resignation of the ministry on a vote of censure and the
+oath of the ruler to observe the constitution, recognize the rights of
+the individual as opposed to the state, and at least theoretically give
+the lie to the bold declaration that the state is everything and the
+individual nothing.
+
+It is no less untrue to say that the state is superior to Morality and
+is not bound by it. In order to prove this we need only be brave enough
+not to be intimidated by the mysterious mien and gestures and the dark,
+pompous phrases of the mystics who worship the state, and to penetrate
+to the real, conceptual idea of the word.
+
+The hocus pocus that the worshippers of the state perform around their
+idol puts one in mind of Kempelen, who created a sensation with his
+automaton in the beginning of the nineteenth century. This figure, got
+up as a Turkish woman, gave rise to astonishment and, among not a few,
+to superstitious fear. It played chess, and so well, too, that it almost
+always succeeded in winning, even against its most skilled opponents.
+People cudgelled their brains to solve the riddle, all sorts of
+explanations were suggested, one more impossible than the other, but
+still the mystery remained dark, until the owner, having made enough
+money and sick of the part of an itinerant swindler, revealed the trick.
+In the hollow figure there sat a clever chess player who worked its
+hands and with them carried out the moves on the board.
+
+This anecdote can be applied literally to the state. Simpletons, drunk
+with phrases, and cunning cheats contend that the state is a
+supernatural creation in which the "spirit of the universe," the "spirit
+of history" takes shape, and through which it realizes its aims; these
+aims, utterly transcending the understanding of the individual, are
+unintelligible to man. Such overwhelming phrases strike the simple,
+credulous hearer dumb and send cold shudders of awe up his spine. But
+let us look at the inside of this magic machine whose works are driven
+by the "spirit of the world" and with whose help this spirit fulfils its
+impenetrable designs. What do we find? Men, quite ordinary mortals, who
+sit in the machine and work its levers; men whose intellectual powers
+are only in rare cases superior to those of their enslaved subjects
+bereft of will; men who are, as a rule, of average intelligence and not
+seldom even below the average.
+
+These men are the rulers, ministers who cling to office, high officials,
+party leaders and professional politicians who would like to become
+ministers, generals who seek to make themselves conspicuous, publicists
+who hope to derive personal profit by dint of bowing and scraping before
+the men in power, by flattering the stupidest and most despicable
+prejudices of the masses, or even by implanting such prejudices with
+persuasive talk and purposely leading them astray. These men are formed
+on the same model as all individuals of the species and are therefore
+full of human weaknesses, a prey to all human desires, moved by all
+human impulses. They are selfish, vain, the sport of likes and dislikes,
+of self-deception as to the value of their ideas, opinions and
+judgments, disputatious, arrogant, greedy of possessions, power and
+pleasure, spurred by the instinct to magnify and swell their personality
+and impose it upon others. And these men are to be liberated from the
+discipline of the moral law? They are to be superior to the moral law?
+
+For whom, then, was the moral law created and developed if not for these
+men--whose actions, although they spring from the same motives and
+aspire to the same satisfaction of self as those of all other men, can
+be fraught with consequences incomparably more evil, because they make
+use of the state machine for their purposes. Through the force and
+momentum given by the machinery of the state these actions are
+boundlessly augmented, their range being indefinitely increased and
+their results multiplied a thousandfold. The simplest logic shows that
+these men within the state machine, rendered so specially dangerous by
+their terrible armament and weapons, far from being liberated from the
+coercion of moral law, ought to be subjected to it with extraordinary
+severity, a severity which should be greater than that which suffices
+for the average man, in proportion as their power to do harm is greater
+than that of the man in the street.
+
+Now all this time, rather carelessly, or at any rate weakly, I am making
+a concession to the pious devotees of the religion of the state, by
+speaking of the state machine,--a dubious expression, coined to deceive
+by rousing superstitious ideas. The phrase is a picture, a rhetorical
+figure that one must be careful not to take literally. There is no state
+machine. There is only a relation of men to one another and to
+traditional habits, organized rules of command, obedience and equable
+conduct--habits into which the community of men has fallen in accordance
+with the law of least resistance, in order to promote their own
+interests, at least theoretically, without being forced to exert
+themselves continually to form new judgments, decisions and
+arrangements which the ever-shifting, ever-changing conditions of life
+render necessary.
+
+Here again, behind the word, we find men, always only men. Just as those
+who command, from whose will all state action emanates, are men, so also
+the instruments by which they carry out their decisions are only
+metaphorically speaking, levers and wheels, parts of a machine of steel
+and iron; in reality they are officials, soldiers and policemen, they
+are judges and bailiffs; in short, they are men. And these men, who in
+all private relations with their fellow men are sternly required to
+submit to the dictates of Morality and the demands of the Law, are the
+same on whom other men, the leaders of the state, impose the duty of
+breaking all these precepts and laws; as ambassadors they must deny and
+dishonour the signatures to treaties; as leaders or paid servants of the
+press bureau they must systematically spread lies; as attorneys of the
+state they must persecute and maltreat those who tell the truth; as
+policemen they must tear the fathers of families from wife and children
+and hunt them into the barracks; as soldiers they must invade a foreign
+land, murder unknown and innocent men, rob them of their property, burn
+down their houses, lay waste their lands, in a word, do everything that
+is punishable with prison and gallows; they must perpetrate all crimes
+which the aim and end of Morality and Law are to prevent and condemn. If
+one defends such action, where can one find the courage and the
+justification to require these men at one time to honour the Ten
+Commandments and at another to disregard them, to be criminals in the
+name of the state in the morning and to be moral private persons and
+law-abiding citizens in the afternoon? After all, they only have one
+nature, one mind, one character and one set of perceptive faculties.
+
+To realize the monstrosity of this doctrine of twofold Morality, public
+and private, and of the non-compulsoriness of moral law for the state,
+it suffices to refer again to the fundamental concepts of Morality.
+Individuals have banded themselves together in a community in order to
+be able to live more easily, or to live at all, under the present
+conditions obtaining on our planet. Lest society should be disintegrated
+by the quarrels of its members, and the latter should find themselves
+exposed single-handed to a hopeless struggle for existence, a limitation
+of their unfettered whims and desires, the curbing of their selfishness,
+control of their impulses and the exercise of consideration for their
+neighbours have been imposed upon them.
+
+This coercion is Morality, and society can enforce it by vigorous
+measures; but for the most part this is unnecessary, for society has
+inculcated in its members the faculty of urging upon themselves in every
+situation the dictates of the community and of insisting on obedience to
+them. This faculty is conscience. The means by which conscience,
+inspired and assisted by reason, determines the will to keep in check or
+to suppress organic impulses and inclinations, desires and appetites, is
+inhibition; moreover, the development and strengthening of inhibition
+does not alone promote the aims of the community, but is of the highest
+biological importance to the individual himself, apart from his
+relations to society, as it renders him stronger and more efficient,
+differentiates him more subtly, and raises him to a higher level of
+development.
+
+Now the state is a special development of society; it owes its existence
+to the same necessities as the latter, its task is to minimize the
+struggle for existence for the individual, to protect him from avoidable
+dangers and to ensure the safety of his life, the fruits of his labour
+and that measure of freedom which is compatible with life in a
+community. But if the state puts an end to the coercion instituted by
+the community and therefore by the state itself; if it does away with
+Morality for itself, that is, for a number of individuals, be they few
+or many, that act in its name; if it allows selfishness, appetites and
+ruthlessness to have the same free play as with creatures of a lower
+order than man, or as with men before they formed themselves into
+communities; if in the pursuit of its plans beyond the bounds of
+Morality it intensifies the struggle for existence in a tragic manner,
+exposes men to the most terrible dangers, brutally destroys their
+liberty, gravely threatens their life and property or even devotes them
+to ruin--why, then it destroys the assumptions on which the state itself
+is based, denies its own aim, deprives itself of any right to existence,
+and the individuals have thenceforward but one interest, namely, to
+drive away this bogey of the state and with all possible means to force
+the men, who make use of it and the superstitions clinging to it, to
+respect the moral law which the community has created to overwhelm
+anti-social, immoral individuals, to render them harmless and if
+necessary to destroy them.
+
+One point there is on which the Machiavellian or practical politicians
+are particularly fond of talking nonsense, and that is the state's
+loyalty to treaties. Is the state bound by a treaty? Must it honour its
+signature? Must it perform what it has undertaken to do? The detestable,
+unanimous answer is "No. A treaty cannot hinder the state from doing
+what its interest demands." Prince Bismarck is often cited on this
+point, as he once said: "The only sound foundation for the state is
+state egoism." And another time: "A treaty is only valid _rebus sic
+stantibus_, if the situation is the same as when it was concluded; if
+the circumstances change, it becomes invalid by the very fact." Such
+views are revolting, however great a name be appended to them. Contract,
+or treaty, is the basis of the law. Whoever breaks it is dishonoured,
+and doubly dishonoured is he who from the beginning enters upon it with
+the idea at the back of his mind of deriving every possible advantage
+from it and of breaking it when the time comes to fulfil obligations.
+
+The phrase, "sound egoism," whether it refer to a private person or to
+the state, must make every decent man blush for shame. Egoism may be
+sound, but it is always the contrary of moral. It is just as convenient
+for the individual as for the state to think only of his own advantage
+and unhesitatingly to sacrifice his neighbour's rights to it; but
+Morality arose and was constituted a rule of human relations in order
+to break the back of this selfishness and to teach man consideration for
+his neighbour. It is no valid excuse to say that state egoism is no sin,
+but a virtue and a merit, that it is different in character from the
+egoism of the individual. That is not true. It is not different in
+character. It is of exactly the same character as in private life. The
+responsible leader of the state who is guilty of a breach of treaty
+makes believe to himself and others that he does not do it for his own
+sake, but in the interests of the state. But who is the state? I have
+already given the answer to this. The state consists of men, the
+interests served by a breach of treaty are those of men, not, as a rule,
+of all, not even of many members of the state, but of a few, of a class,
+a group, perhaps of only one family whose power, wealth and reputation
+it is intended to increase. So-called state egoism is in actual fact the
+private egoism of many individuals, who break the law, or tolerate and
+condone a breach of the law, for the sake of pocketing ill-gotten gains;
+and no one is so stupid as to let himself be bamboozled into believing
+that the shameful crime of breaking a treaty for the purpose of "sound"
+egoistic grabbing becomes moral when it is perpetrated not by one
+individual but by thousands or millions of individuals.
+
+The _reservatio mentalis_, too, of "_rebus sic stantibus_" is an
+unwarrantable and wicked reservation. Nothing prevents a decent man when
+making a contract from adding a clause reserving the right to terminate
+it if the essential conditions should change. If the other party to the
+contract does not agree to this, well, then the contract cannot be
+concluded. But to sign it with the mental reservation that one will
+disavow one's signature if the obligations undertaken become irksome,
+that is swindling. There is one consideration so simple that it is
+inconceivable that those who break contracts do not realize it. In some
+concrete case the leader of the state judges it to be profitable to the
+state to disregard good faith. What guarantee has he that his judgment
+is right? He is a man, and no man is infallible. But all mankind have
+made good faith the foundation of their life in communities, and if a
+single man has the temerity to draw a conclusion violating the immutable
+convictions and doctrines of all mankind, he must be mad not to see that
+most probably he is wrong and that all mankind in every age and every
+clime is right. I have left out of consideration the fact that any
+possible advantage arising from the breach of faith would not excuse him
+morally, and setting aside the ethical aspect of the case, I dwell only
+on the logical argument.
+
+There is one case and one only in which a contract is not binding,
+either on the state or on the private individual, and that is when the
+signatory was forced to enter upon it with a knife at his throat.
+Obligations which a victor imposes on his defeated and disarmed opponent
+are by their very nature invalid. The old cry of Brennus: "_Vae
+victis!_" is might and cannot constitute a right. Civil law calls this
+kind of thing compulsion and decrees that it invalidates any contract.
+Only a pedantic mind, stupid and depraved, immersed in hair-splitting
+trickery and incapable of a straight thought, could complacently
+maintain in the face of all common sense that might and compulsion, far
+from doing away with right, are the source of all right. The silly
+formula coined for this is: "Might is right." Might may be a fact, but
+it is not right. The source of right is not might but Morality, which
+might disavows and destroys. The necessary condition of any obligation
+which is to be valid is freedom. Kant proved this, but his proof was
+unnecessary, for it is self-evident. A forced treaty is no treaty, for
+it is the victor's fist which has guided the hand of the vanquished, and
+it is he who wrote the latter's signature under the document. The will,
+the consciousness of the seeming signatory were absent at the time.
+
+But the worst and most immoral action of the state, beside which a
+breach of treaty for selfish reasons pales to insignificance, is the war
+of aggression for purposes of profit, that is, for the conquest of
+territory, extortion of money, increase of power, or fame. War is the
+quintessence of all crimes against life and property, against the body
+and mind of a person, the prevention of which is the aim and object of
+all Morality and all laws derived from it. Any means are permissible
+whereby this wickedness may be prevented; the war of defence, waged by
+the party attacked, is not only justified but sacred, as are the
+functions of the institutions that society has developed to hunt down
+and punish those who do not respect Morality and Law. And just as it is
+the duty of every society to maintain courts of justice, police and
+prisons, so it is the duty of every state to be well armed, well versed
+in the use of weapons and strong, so long as it must count on the fact
+that there are practical politicians who do not recognize Morality as
+binding the state, and nations that are ready on the first hint of their
+leaders to perpetrate every crime that conscience, the Ten Commandments
+and penal law forbid.
+
+It is idle, in my opinion, to discuss the question whether war will ever
+disappear from the world. It serves no purpose to contradict those who
+declare it to be eternal. It is possible that it will continue to exist
+as long as there is vice, sin and crime; and I do not believe that these
+will ever be completely exterminated. Among mankind there will probably
+never be a lack of sick and depraved people whose selfishness is
+monstrously exaggerated, whose instincts urge them with stormy violence,
+whose powers of inhibition are scantily developed or altogether wanting,
+who suffer from anæsthesia of the feelings and are therefore incapable
+of any sympathy with their fellow men and who are mentally too weak to
+foresee the results of their actions. Individuals of this kind are born
+criminals whose existence society will probably never be able to prevent
+and against whom it is obliged to protect itself. Now war arises from
+the same psychic conditions as the antisocial actions of these born
+criminals, and therefore the pessimists may be right in maintaining that
+it can never be abolished. But it is one thing to assert the existence
+of a deplorable fact and quite another to glorify it. To say that war is
+a part of the universe constituted by God is blasphemy, even though the
+saying emanates from Moltke. To extol war ecstatically and to sing hymns
+of praise to it, to declare that it evokes the highest virtues of man is
+a panegyric of crime, a thing anticipated and punishable in the penal
+code.
+
+I am not here attempting to solve the problem of what practical measures
+can be taken whereby right may be set in the place of might in
+inter-state relations, and instead of ruthless selfishness, Morality,
+that is, self-control, consideration and respect for the just claims of
+one's fellow men and love of one's neighbour. That is as far beyond the
+scope of this work as is the investigation of the methods of education,
+criminal justice, police organization or prison conditions intended to
+deal with the tide of crime and to stem it as far as possible. I am
+concerned with moral philosophy, and from that point of view I show that
+all Morality is rooted in the desire of men to live together peaceably
+in a society, to have greater security of life and property, greater
+possibilities of happiness, and that the same needs must impose the
+rules of Morality upon states in their relations to one another.
+According to Hobbes the primitive condition of mankind is that of a war
+of every man against all other men, and only the creation of society
+makes an end of it. But if the state unleashes the dogs of aggressive
+warfare it hurls mankind back into its primitive condition and destroys
+the work it was created to do. The Stoic Seneca says: "_Homo sacra res
+homini_," "Man is sacred to man." The practical politicians who praise
+war repeat with Hobbes: "_Homo homini lupus_," "Man is a wolf to man."
+The moral man demands a return from Hobbes to Seneca. If it has been
+possible in the state to tame the wolfish instincts of the individual
+and to make him bow down before Custom and Law, it must be equally
+possible to do so in the relations of states to one another. He who
+denies this in principle disavows Morality altogether, not only for the
+state but also for the individual; he who admits it in principle but in
+practice scornfully disregards it is a bandit, and it is desirable to
+treat him like any other robber and murderer who, to satisfy his wolfish
+appetites, tramples on Morality and Right and acts like a wild beast.
+
+To this, however, the Moralist will object sadly, and the practical
+politician with scornful superiority, that the state has created
+institutions for suppressing the bandit, but that there are none such to
+control bandit states, and that self-defence alone, the only means of
+self-protection for man in Hobbes's primitive condition, can gain a
+footing between them. Clearly only the party attacked is in a state of
+self-defence, but the bandit who has a sufficient sense of humour to
+play the pettifogging lawyer can always maintain that attack is also
+self-defence, the preventive form of self-defence. The answer to this
+is: if society has managed to provide judges and police in order to
+secure peace, then mankind will for the same purpose learn how to
+provide courts of justice and a police force to deal with the bandits of
+practical politics who endanger peace among nations. But that is a
+practical question, not a theoretical one, not a principle of moral
+philosophy. The latter shows irrefutably that there is only one
+Morality, not a private one and a public one which is its negation, not
+one kind for the individual and another for politics, for the state.
+
+He who defends the thesis of a twofold Morality merely shows that he
+does not possess simple Morality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
+
+
+Theological thought is faced with a problem in ethics which presents the
+greatest difficulties. It is the problem of Free Will.
+
+Is man who perceives, judges, has volition and acts, a free being
+inwardly? Can he, guided only by his own reasonable thoughts and
+conclusions, determined entirely by his own inner impulses and
+uninfluenced by outer circumstances, choose one or the other of two
+conflicting possibilities? When he has to make a decision, is he always
+like Hercules at the cross-roads who has to make up his mind alone as to
+which path he shall take, whether he is to follow quiet, modest virtue,
+or alluring, voluptuous vice? Does he do evil because he willed to do so
+and not otherwise, although it was in his power to avoid it? Does he
+decide for the good, because after due investigation and consideration
+he recognized it as preferable, though he might have rejected it? Or is
+man always subject to coercion from which at no time and no place he can
+escape? Are all his actions determined by the law of Nature which
+regulates every one of his movements just as mechanically as the course
+of the stars or the fall of a body to our earth when its support is
+removed? Is he an automaton, set going by cosmic forces, who possesses
+the doubtful privilege consciously to be able to follow the turning of
+his wheels, the action of his levers, rods and indicators and to listen
+to their humming and knocking without being allowed to interfere in
+their movements or to change the least thing in their functions or work?
+Is he fettered by the chain of causes which have existed eternally and
+continue to act immutably to all eternity?
+
+Theological thought is condemned to find an answer to the question of
+freedom or determinism, as it is the necessary condition for the
+essential concepts of the theological doctrine of Morality, that is, the
+concept of responsibility and those consequent upon this, namely, sin,
+reward and punishment. For the true believer God is the source of
+Morality. He Himself is Morality. What He ordains is good in itself and
+cannot be otherwise, for there is no room for evil in His nature, since
+if He could be conceived to do evil, it would by the very fact of His
+doing it become good. A man, to be moral, must approximate to the nature
+of God as nearly as it is granted to mortals to do. The moral law is
+revealed by God's mercy to give man a light which shows him the right
+path and lights him on his way. Thanks to Him the poor mortal is
+relieved of the incertitude due to his limited mental powers and is
+endowed with the priceless possession of a certain precept which he need
+only obey in order to be sure of salvation.
+
+However, granted the correctness of this assumption, it is not
+comprehensible how evil came into the world. It contradicts all
+attributes with which faith has endowed the deity. It cannot appear
+without God's knowledge, for He is omniscient and nothing is hidden
+from Him. It cannot occur against His will, for He is omnipotent and
+nothing resists His bidding. But least of all can it rage with His
+knowledge and consent, for He is infinitely good and therefore does not
+permit his creatures to fall victims to evil. But experience teaches us
+that evil has a permanent place in human life, and this forces one to
+the conclusion that either God is hard and cruel, and therefore not
+infinitely good and not Morality itself, or that He has no knowledge of
+evil and therefore is not omniscient, but, on the contrary, blind as
+well as stupid, or that He sees the evil but cannot prevent it, and
+therefore is not omnipotent and must recognize the existence of higher
+powers than Himself against whom He is impotent.
+
+These terrifying conclusions have not escaped the notice of the devout,
+and they have always made the most desperate efforts to evade them. Some
+have chosen the easiest way out of the difficulty; they close their eyes
+before the yawning abyss, fold their hands devoutly and invent pious
+phrases about the inscrutable ways of Providence and its infinite
+wisdom, which the weak intelligence of mortals cannot grasp. Others take
+infinite pains; in the sweat of their brow they with difficulty evolve
+tortuous and hypocritical explanations, which in reality explain
+nothing, but in a mind which lends itself willingly to them give rise to
+the illusion that the contradiction has been solved. Perhaps the most
+astounding piece of work accomplished by this miserable juggling, or
+this delusion of self by means of an exuberant flow of words, is
+presented in the four volumes of the "Théodicée," by which Leibnitz
+made himself a laughing-stock. Mazdeism has invented an alluring but at
+the same time risky expedient. It lightly assumes that two principles
+obtain in the universe, a good one and a bad one, the creator and the
+destroyer, the merciful God and the cruel demon, Ormuzd and Ahriman. In
+this way everything is easy to understand. Good is the work of radiant
+Ormuzd, evil the deed of dark Ahriman. The two fight together with very
+nearly equal forces, but this doctrine reveals the comforting prospect
+of a distant future in which Ormuzd shall finally triumph over Ahriman,
+and fills the trembling believer with elation at the thought that after
+æons of the tragic struggle between good and evil, at the end of the
+world the curtain will fall on the victory of good. By this victory
+Mazdeism, which claims to be monotheistic, rescues its single god,
+although the introduction of a second principle of very nearly equal
+power, which holds the one god in check for an immeasurable period of
+time, brings this system perilously close to polytheism.
+
+To the purer monotheism of Christianity there is indeed something
+repugnant in the assumption of a second, opposite principle of almost
+equal power, but yet it has admitted the existence of the devil, who is
+undoubtedly reminiscent of Ahriman. Only he lacks the independence of
+the Mazdean demon. He is not on a footing of equality with God, but is
+subject to Him as is every creature. He is not strong enough to oppose
+God and can only do evil because God allows it. But why does He allow
+it? Why does He tolerate the devil? Why can the latter proceed with his
+evil work with God's consent? To this theology gives a crafty answer
+which Goethe has clothed in the glorious beauty of inimitable poetry.
+God has assigned to the devil the task of tempting man with all the arts
+of seduction in order to give him the opportunity of testing and
+developing his moral strength in resistance, of purging himself, of
+attaining purity and salvation by his own efforts. In short, he exists
+in order to give man a sort of Swedish gymnastics in virtue. The
+struggle is not quite fair, for the devil is held by a halter and is
+pulled up if he gets too big an advantage, and man is always assisted by
+redeeming mercy, a hand being stretched out to him from the clouds which
+sets him on his feet as often as he stumbles. But theology is not bound
+by rules of sport. That is how the picture of the universe is presented
+in "_Faust_." But he who painted it is the same Goethe who on another
+occasion angrily complains: "You allow man to become guilty--and then
+leave him to his suffering." Does the divinity allow man to fall a
+victim to evil without turning it aside from him? Does he only try him
+in order mercifully to rescue him at the moment when he is about to
+succumb? Goethe does not answer this question without ambiguity. That is
+not his business either. He may contradict himself. He is a poet who is
+allowed to express contradictory views. He is not a theologian whose
+duty it is, by means of a definite dogma, to support those who totter in
+doubt.
+
+All these attempts to reconcile the attributes of the deity with the
+fact that there is evil in the world which continually leads man into
+danger, emanate from the explicit or tacit assumption that man possesses
+Free Will. For if his will is not free and he does evil, then he does it
+because he must and because he cannot do otherwise. But this must can
+only come from the deity who is almighty; it is the deity who condemns
+man, who forces him to do evil. Man therefore does evil as God's tool
+without volition; therefore, as a matter of fact, it is God Himself who
+does evil. But if God is capable of doing evil He is not Morality
+itself, or every distinction between good and evil is destroyed, and we
+must recognize what seems evil to us to be just as moral as what seems
+good, because the one is as much the work of God as the other. But if
+this is admitted, and it is logically impossible not to admit it, then
+the whole foundation of transcendental, that is, of theological, ethics
+breaks down. The latter is therefore forced, on pain of suicide, to
+maintain that man has Free Will.
+
+But with this assertion theological ethics by no means disarms all the
+objections which threaten its life. Renouvier's book on Free Will is
+probably the most thorough and exhaustive work on this subject which has
+been treated by thousands of thinkers and not a few babblers since the
+time of the ancient Greeks, and he describes it as follows: "Will is
+free and spontaneous if Reason cannot foretell its untrammelled action
+at any time other than that at which it actually takes place." Renouvier
+makes no limitation and no reservation. He does not say, "if human
+reason cannot foretell its action," and this omission of the
+particularizing adjective is not carelessness or a mistake on his part,
+it is duly considered; for the prudent dialectician knows very well that
+he would ruin his theory of Free Will if he only maintained that human
+reason alone should be able to foretell its action. There are many
+happenings which human reason cannot foretell, and which nevertheless
+obey immutable laws and take place according to absolutely fixed rules
+without the exercise of any inner freedom or authority on the part of
+the individual. If human reason cannot foretell these happenings, it is
+not because no external force of the universe determines them and they
+are entirely spontaneous, but simply because the laws controlling them
+are unknown. Therefore the impossibility of foretelling them is no proof
+of their freedom, it is only a proof of the ignorance of the human mind.
+There was a time when no human intellect could foretell the occurrence
+of a solar or lunar eclipse. Was that because the heavenly bodies act
+freely and are eclipsed only at their own spontaneous desire, when and
+how they please? No, because man had not discovered and comprehended
+their movements. To this very day we are unable to foretell the weather
+on a particular day next year, or the result of the next harvest, or an
+earthquake. Does this prove the freedom, the absolute independence of
+these occurrences? No; it only proves the inadequacy of our knowledge.
+Renouvier therefore would achieve nothing for his theory of Free Will,
+if only human understanding were to be unable to foretell the actions of
+the Will. That is why he does not say "human reason," but simply
+"Reason." The essence of Free Will is that its actions altogether shall
+be incapable of being foreseen; it is not in its nature to act in
+accordance with some predetermination which must necessarily reckon with
+outer circumstances and given forces; and the impossibility of
+foretelling its actions exists not only for human Reason but for every
+Reason--for Reason in general.
+
+For every Reason and therefore for the divine Reason as well. And now
+theological ethics must find a way out of this dilemma: either God does
+not foresee the decisions of free human Will, then this is a denial of
+his omniscience, that is, of one of His essential attributes; or God
+foresees the decisions of free human Will, then this is a denial of the
+Freedom of the Will, the essence of which, according to Renouvier, lies
+in the fact that it cannot be foreseen. For this impossibility of being
+foreseen is indeed the quality by which Free Will stands or falls. Let
+us realize the significance of this concept. Nothing can be foreseen
+which will not with certainty occur. But whatever at some future time
+will become a reality, must even now be virtually a reality for an
+omniscient Reason not bound by the human categories of time and space,
+since for this Reason neither proximity nor distance exists, but
+everything is on one plane, and there is no future or past, but
+everything is present. So if the divine Reason foresees now how the free
+Will of man will act in the future, that is equivalent to saying that
+this free Will is forced to act in the particular way which God foresees
+and not otherwise. Therefore the Will is not free but, on the contrary,
+strictly bound. It is obliged to make the event foreseen by God a fact,
+as God can only foresee what must certainly come to pass, and a foreseen
+event that does not happen would mean a mistake, a false assumption, of
+which one cannot believe God capable without denying Him. This apparent
+free Will is coercion at sight. As its action is foreseen by God, the
+Will is subject to the law of fate, but a period of delay is granted.
+Every movement of the supposedly free Will becomes a part of the order
+of the universe which has been unalterably laid down from eternity, and
+which the human Will cannot upset without burying God in the ruins. Man
+may imagine that his Will is free. But that is self-deception, and he
+can only indulge in it because what God sees clearly is hidden from him,
+namely, the goal towards which, though he does not realize it, he is
+inevitably led along strictly defined paths by the iron hand of fate.
+
+It would be unjust towards theology to say that it has never seen the
+incompatibility of Free Will with divine omniscience. This has not
+escaped its notice, but it has attempted by the use of familiar formulæ
+to get out of the difficulty. In his book _De libero Arbitrio_ Saint
+Augustine stoutly maintains that the human Will is free, but he tries to
+rescue the attributes of the deity by reserving to it the right or the
+power to intervene by its mercy in the actions of the Will, if in its
+freedom it comes to a decision which endangers the salvation of the
+soul. Saint Thomas Aquinas takes good care not to differ in opinion from
+the Bishop of Hippo. The reformers, Calvin, Luther and Bishop Jansen,
+too, were better logicians than the patristic writers, and
+unhesitatingly denied the freedom of the Will, but they did not notice
+that they made God responsible for all the misdeeds of man, lacking
+freedom and acting with God's foreknowledge and at His behest. The
+Council of Trent scorned all these contradictions and unintelligible
+points, and declared with infallible authority that man's Will is free
+and that at the same time God is omniscient. The Catholic Church at the
+time was in some countries still in a position to meet Reason, if it
+raised objections, with an unanswerable argument: the stake.
+
+That is the peculiarity of theological as distinguished from scientific
+thought, the purest form of which is mathematics. The former never
+follows a train of thought to its strictly logical conclusion, but only
+follows a certain distance, to a point where it loses itself in an
+impenetrable black fog, or in a cloud of glory which dazzles the
+beholder. Mathematical thought, on the contrary, develops the train of
+thought to the bitter end, to its ultimate conclusions. These are
+necessarily absurd if the premises are erroneous, and their absurdity is
+so clear that it convincingly proves the mistake in the point of
+departure. Such a scrupulous confutation of self is to be expected as
+little from mystic visions as from arrogant dogmatism. The former obey
+the laws of dreams, in which the association of ideas, unfettered by
+logic, holds sway and strings together the most incompatible ideas to
+form an apparently connected series; the latter demands the privilege of
+being independent of the judgment of Reason, and of being tried by
+Faith, a judge who always decides in its favour.
+
+Those who believe in Free Will adduce a proof of it which they derive by
+the method of introspection. Man, they say, will never be convinced that
+he is not free, that his actions are not determined by his own will
+alone, for he has the incontrovertible consciousness of the contrary. He
+is quite clear on the point that he does a thing because it is his will
+to do so, that he had the choice of doing it or not, that he does what
+he wants, that he comes to his decision owing to considerations,
+inclinations, moods or intentions which are perfectly known to him, if
+to him only. At the Sorbonne in Paris they still remember the
+professor--when the anecdote was told me Victor Cousin was named as the
+hero, but I cannot guarantee that it was he and no other--who used to
+say in his lecture on Free Will: "Man's will is free. There is no need
+to prove this by giving reasons. We feel it immediately as a truth. I
+will show you. I will raise my right arm. I raise it"--here he raised
+his right arm with a commanding gesture, kept it for a short time in
+this position, and added triumphantly: "You see that my will is free."
+His hearers broke into enthusiastic applause at this triumphant
+demonstration. To-day they would receive it with loud laughter.
+
+We have learnt to seek the roots of most, perhaps of all, human actions
+in the subconsciousness. There they are worked out under influences
+which cannot be perceived by introspection and in which inborn and
+acquired inclinations, experiences, organic conditions at the time,
+instincts, attractions and repulsions play a decisive part. They rise
+ready made into consciousness, and the latter, not having seen them
+being formed, persuades itself that it has produced them spontaneously,
+and imagines reasons why it willed to do actions that were determined
+outside its sphere. The professor who authoritatively states, "I wish to
+raise my right arm and therefore I do it," certainly says this in all
+good faith, but equally certainly he is ignorant. He is not aware of the
+play of forces which end in his gesture. He raises his right arm, which
+he believes he chooses with complete freedom, because he is in the habit
+of using his right arm by preference; if he had been left-handed he
+would have announced his wish to raise his left arm, and would have been
+equally convinced that he had decided, with complete freedom, for his
+left arm. If he suffered from chronic muscular rheumatism in one of his
+arms, so that it would trouble him or hurt him to move it, he would
+unconsciously choose the other, sound arm, and maintain just as
+positively that he had done so with complete freedom. I have mentioned
+as instances two particularly crude and therefore very obvious reasons
+which may determine the action of this simple-minded professor without
+his being aware of it. But each one of our more complicated, and even of
+our simplest, movements is the outcome of numberless subtle causes which
+are partly due to the organized experiences and habits of our individual
+life, partly a necessary consequence of our inherited qualities, our
+bodily and intellectual constitution, and their origin goes back to the
+far distant past of our species, to the beginnings of life, we may even
+say to eternity. Our consciousness can tell nothing of these causes.
+They elude our observation and investigation and remain ever unknown to
+us. Renouvier is quite right when he says no understanding--and I say
+without his ambiguity no human understanding of the present time--can
+foretell the actions of another, nor indeed his own, but not because
+they come to pass independently of inevitable causes, but simply because
+these causes cannot be descried by our ignorance.
+
+It is vain labour to try and derive the solution of the question of
+Free Will, or even a contribution towards it, from introspection.
+It is a method unsuitable for this purpose. The Greek sage well knew
+what a great and difficult task he set man when he admonished him:
+"[Greek: gnôthi seauton]." That is easy to say but difficult if not
+impossible to do. Spinoza very happily characterized the self-deception
+in which the individual is plunged with regard to the part played in
+determining his actions by his conscious Will aided by Reason; he says
+that if a stone, flung by some hand, had consciousness, it would imagine
+it was flying of its own free will; and in another place he points out
+without any illustrative metaphor, that a drunk man and a child, who
+certainly do not act on their own initiative, also believe in the
+freedom of their will. It has been possible to prove experimentally how
+ignorant of the real motives of his actions the individual may be. It is
+suggested to a person who has been hypnotized that on awakening he is to
+carry out a certain action, something particularly absurd, unjustified
+and aimless being intentionally chosen. The subject of the experiment
+on awaking faithfully carries out the suggestion, and as he has no
+memory of what happened while he was in the hypnotic state, he is
+convinced that he is yielding to a sudden idea, a whim, but that in any
+case his action is determined by his own will. But since he must realize
+the absurdity of what he is doing, he seeks for some sufficient motive
+to explain it, and always finds one to his own satisfaction.
+
+All the efforts of anguished sophists to prove their thesis of the
+Freedom of the Will from data supplied by introspection have failed
+miserably. But they were forced to undertake them, for theology cannot
+give up the contention that man acts with free Will. It is an important
+part of the religious conception of the universe and of the relation in
+which, according to this, man stands to God.
+
+To put it shortly, religion sees in man's life on earth a preparation
+for eternity. It gives him the opportunity of coming nearer to God by
+his own efforts and thus making himself worthy of the salvation which
+secures him a place in the sight of God to the end of time. Thus the
+life of the flesh is made a method of selection by which the sheep are
+sundered from the goats. God provides man with free Will for this
+special purpose, so that he may make use of it to choose good of his own
+accord and to avoid evil. This undoubtedly wearisome task is made much
+easier for him, because God in His goodness has given him laws,
+doctrines of Morality and examples which point out the way of salvation.
+If man makes proper use of his gifts, if in pursuance of divine
+admonition, he treads of his own free will the path of virtue, he
+acquires merit which gives him a legitimate claim to the reward of
+finding favour in God's eyes and to be admitted to the company of the
+just and pure. But if man purposely turns to evil, of which he is warned
+by revelation and which he has been given the power to avoid, then he is
+a sinner and deserves the punishment of damnation, which, however, he
+may yet escape if God in His mercy forgives him his sin. Therefore man
+holds in his hand the fate of his immortal soul. It depends on him
+whether this fate be salvation or damnation. He is responsible for
+directing it to the former or the latter. Of course, God has the power
+to force him to virtue and to stop him from vice. But it is not His plan
+to condemn man to be the slave of virtue. He wants man to choose virtue
+of his own accord, He wants noble souls about Him who by freedom have
+attained Morality.
+
+This religious view of the universe, which deals in assertions and
+disdains on principle to prove even one of them to Reason by facts that
+can be tested, contrasts with the scientific view of the universe which
+asserts nothing but what can be objectively ascertained to be true,
+which distinguishes sharply between the account of what has been
+observed and can be tested by everyone and hypotheses for which it
+demands no belief, but only the recognition of their possibility or
+probability, and which it discards as soon as an ascertained fact
+definitely disproves them. No compromise is possible between these two
+views of the universe. Nothing can bridge the chasm between them. It
+would be superficial to say that the theme of the scientific view is
+realities and that of the religious one imagination. Imagination is also
+a reality, only of a different order to that which is called so in
+common parlance. It is a subjective reality; it exists only in the mind
+that conceives it. Reality itself is for the thinking mind only a state
+of consciousness, but it is an image of conditions which have an
+objective existence, though in another form, outside the consciousness.
+The supporters of religion maintain that there is an objective reality
+corresponding to their concepts, but this cannot be ascertained by any
+of the senses which the living organism has developed in order to
+establish a relation between the world, of which it is a part, and
+itself. It is perfectly useless for supporters of the one view of the
+universe to try and convince those of the other. Each of them moves on a
+different plane and is unapproachable to the other. All that can be done
+is to define both the one and the other as clearly as possible and prove
+their incompatibility.
+
+For the scientific view of the Universe the problem of Free Will does
+not exist and cannot exist. All facts that science has observed force it
+to the assumption of causation, which does not only mean that every
+phenomenon is produced by a cause, is the effect of a cause and could
+never have occurred but for this cause, but also means that the effect
+represents the exact equivalent of the energy which was its cause. Thus
+the hypothesis of the indestructibility of the total energy in the
+universe is an essential part of the concept of causation, the
+fundamental hypothesis without which the phenomenon of the universe and
+the things which occur in it are simply unintelligible to Reason; and
+everything in and outside ourselves, everything that we perceive,
+becomes chaos, chance, lawless whim or miracle in the theological sense
+of the word.
+
+It is inconceivable that an effect should be anything other than the
+reappearance in a different form of the exact quantity of energy that
+caused it; for if the energy of the effect exceeded that of its cause,
+then part of the effect would have been produced without cause; and if
+the energy of the effect fell short of that of the cause, then part of
+the energy of the cause would have been expended without producing an
+effect. That, however, would be the negation of causation, it would be
+an admission that part of the effect (i.e. an effect) could be produced
+without sufficient cause, i.e. out of nothing, and that a part of the
+cause (i.e. energy) could disappear (into nothing) without producing an
+equivalent effect, which is obviously absurd.
+
+The human Will manifests itself by an action or the prevention of an
+action according to the impulse felt by our organism. Both these are an
+exercise of force, the amount of which can be measured. Indeed,
+inhibition, too, is a dynamical effort which represents the exact
+equivalent of the force with which the impulse which it has checked
+acted on the motory centres. The Will, therefore, expends energy which
+does work that can be measured. But the Will must derive this energy
+from some source. It therefore also only converts energy derived from
+the energy of the universe, the total amount of which can neither be
+augmented nor diminished; the Will consequently is a part of the dynamic
+energy of the universe, and must necessarily be subject to its
+mechanical law; that is, to the law of causation. It is therefore not
+free, but dependent, as is every phenomenon in the universe. Whoever
+maintains its freedom maintains that it is independent, that it is not
+subject to the law of causation, that it has no cause of which the
+elements, if they could be fully known to us, would be measurable, that
+it expends energy which it derives from nowhere, that it produces energy
+out of nothing. Whoever maintains this contradicts all experience from
+which the knowledge of Nature and her laws has been built up; it is
+obviously hopeless to expect a reasonable discussion with such a person.
+
+Now the supporters of free Will may reply that they do not deny that the
+Will derives its energy from the organism and therefore from the
+universal source of cosmic energy, and that it makes use of it according
+to the laws of mechanics; but they assert that the direction in which
+energy is expended by the Will is freely determined by it; further, that
+the direction does not affect the amount of energy used, and
+consequently the Will can act absolutely in accordance with the
+mechanical laws of the universe and yet can, independently of outside
+causes, determine the manner in which the energy shall be expended; that
+is to say, the Will can be free. But this objection is pure sophistry,
+for the determination of the direction, in so far as it is not mere
+imagination and therefore ineffective and sterile, but really controls
+the action, is an expenditure of energy. The controlling power uses up
+energy and obeys a cause, so we have arrived at the same dilemma
+again--either the controlling Will is subject to the law of causation,
+then it is not free; or it is free and is determined by no outside
+cause, then we must ascribe to it motion without driving power and
+energy derived from nothing--which is absurd.
+
+No. There is no such thing as Free Will. The concept of freedom itself
+is an illusion of thought which cannot survey sufficiently extensive
+connexions. Nothing in the universe is free; all things mutually
+determine each other. All are cause and effect, and they fit into one
+another like cog wheels. Everything is linked up and dovetailed. The
+philosopher's phrase, "Everything is in flux," is the description of the
+outward appearance of things. Against it we must set the reality which
+is: "Everything is eternally at rest." For a circumscribed system of
+motion without beginning or end may mean motion for every individual
+point which describes the course, but is, as a whole, virtually at rest.
+Everything that exists, or ever will exist, has its necessary and
+sufficient cause in that which has always been; the sequence of
+phenomena has been unalterably determined since all eternity for all
+eternity; what we call chance is an occurrence for which our ignorance
+cannot perceive the necessary causes and conditions; past and future
+would be in the same plane, therefore would be present for an
+omniscience, which knew and understood the machine of the universe down
+to its smallest wheel and pin.
+
+One of the logical consequences of this is that, without any miracle or
+the assumption of any supernatural influences, it would be possible to
+foretell the most distant events in all their smallest details. An
+intelligence sufficiently wide and penetrating would, following the
+strict law of causation, be able to produce all lines of the present
+with absolute certainty immeasurably far into the future. As everything
+that ever will be necessarily must be, it virtually exists at present
+and has always existed; therefore it is only a question of clarity of
+vision, which however, is denied to man, to see it at any time and to
+any extent.
+
+The illusion of flux is explicable. Life, which like all world processes
+is a cyclical motion, is passed in an endless alternation between the
+shining forth and extinction of consciousness, the bearers of which are
+an everlasting series of organisms following one another. Every organism
+lasts a limited time, during which it is carried along an inconceivably
+small fraction of the tremendous cycle. It sees all the points of this
+short stretch but once, and does not learn that they are eternally the
+same. It gathers the false impression that they fly past it, whereas
+they are at rest and it passes them, until it ceases to be a suitable
+bearer of consciousness and disappears, making room for a successor.
+This rigid immutability of the whole Universe is certainly intolerably
+gruesome to the imagination, but then, every time we look beyond the
+narrow confines of life and human circumstances, to peep into the
+infinity and eternity which surrounds us, do not terrifying vistas open
+up before us?
+
+Not only the religious minded, but many free thinkers, too, have Free
+Will at heart, though the latter are otherwise guiltless of any
+mysticism. They claim it in the name of man's dignity, which would be
+deeply humiliated if we had to confess ourselves the slaves of outside
+influences, automata moved by universal causation without our having any
+say in the matter. We are not entitled to such trumpery pride. Let us
+seek our dignity in our striving for knowledge, in the subjection of our
+own instincts to the control of our Reason, but not in an imaginary
+independence of the laws of Nature, whose commands we should oppose in
+vain.
+
+With Free Will responsibility also disappears. That is obvious. But that
+means a collapse only for theological Morality. Scientific ethics can
+manage very well without responsibility. Nay, more; there is no room in
+it for this concept. In the system of theological Morality
+responsibility has a transcendental significance. To sum up once more
+shortly what has been dealt with in detail above: according to this
+system Morality is a divine command, obedience to, or disregard of which
+results in salvation or damnation; in order that reward and punishment
+may be just, one as well as the other must be merited; that implies the
+assumption that virtue is practised or vice chosen intentionally and
+with forethought; but this mode of action must be freely willed if man
+is to be responsible for it before his divine Judge.
+
+Scientific ethics knows nothing of this supernatural dream. In its view
+Morality is an immanent phenomenon which occurs only within humanity--or
+to define it more accurately, within humanity organized as a society.
+It arose from a definite necessity; from the undeniable need of men to
+unite, so as to be able, in company with one another, shoulder to
+shoulder, to succeed more easily, or indeed to succeed at all, in the
+struggle for existence which is too hard for the solitary individual. It
+has a clearly recognizable aim: to teach man to curb his selfish
+instincts and to practise consideration for his neighbour, by which
+means alone peaceable life in common and productive co-operation are
+possible. The instinct of self-preservation supplies society with the
+laws of Morality which it imperiously imposes on all its members, and
+unconditional obedience to which it demands. Society does not dream of
+saying to the individual: "You are free; you must yourself decide
+whether you will follow the path of virtue or that of vice." On the
+contrary, it says to him: "Whether you wish it or not, you must do that
+which my doctrine of Morality indicates as good and eschew that which it
+declares to be evil. You have no choice. I tolerate you in my midst only
+if you submit to the laws of Morality. If you transgress them I shall
+draw your teeth and claws or destroy you altogether." By discipline
+lasting many thousands of years society has developed in the individual,
+though not in all, an organ that watches that his conduct is moral, and
+this is the conscience. But this is only supplementary to, and
+representative of, society, which in the main exercises police
+supervision itself, and sees that in general the moral law is obeyed. It
+judges all the actions of the individual that come to its knowledge.
+Conscience only is the competent authority where occurrences are
+concerned which take place simply in the consciousness of the
+individual, and which he alone is aware of. Conscience is only too often
+a lenient judge who acquits the individual too easily and nearly always
+admits extenuating circumstances. Society does not let him off so
+lightly; his punishment is certain if he cannot prevent his sin from
+becoming known.
+
+Responsibility therefore also exists in Morality as understood by
+sociologists. As far as his intentions are concerned the individual must
+come to terms with his conscience, which, as a rule, he does not find
+difficult. For his deeds he must account to society, and it does not ask
+what took place in his consciousness, but only how his spiritual
+impulses were manifested. For his deeds, then, he is summoned before
+society's court of justice and must answer for them without having
+recourse to the excuse that he acted as he was forced to do by his
+disposition and the pressure of circumstances, and that he had no choice
+and could not act otherwise. Though Morality has always been necessary
+for the life of the community, and though the latter has, under the
+pressure of the law of self-preservation, always had to make its members
+strictly subservient to Morality, it has ever had a dim idea that the
+responsibility of the individual for his actions is only of practical,
+not of fundamental or ideal significance. It has never pushed
+investigation as to how far the individual acted freely or not to any
+great lengths, never attempted to trace it to the foundations of his
+consciousness, to the inception of the impulses of his Will. Where the
+lack of freedom was obvious, for instance, where every layman could see
+there was insanity, the Moral law has been disregarded ever since
+ancient times, and society has contented itself with protecting itself
+from the intolerable actions of the lunatic by rendering him harmless.
+Since positive Law, made concrete in the laws with penal sanctions, was
+evolved from the universal Moral law, it has admitted the plea of
+irresponsibility and refrained from exercising its coercive powers where
+such irresponsibility has been established. In addition to madness,
+demonstrable coercion and self-defence relieve the individual from
+responsibility for the crime and render him immune from punishment.
+
+In the course of evolution society has conceded still further
+limitations of individual responsibility. It willingly admits new
+knowledge gained by scientific psychology and concedes limited
+responsibility, not only in case of madness, but in such cases, too,
+where experts can convincingly prove to the judges, the guardians of its
+Law, that the individual was in an abnormal condition and affected by
+morbid influences at the time of the crime. Farther society cannot go,
+if it does not want to put an end to Moral law and do away altogether
+with positive law. Concern for its continued existence forbids this. It
+must leave it to the philosophers to continue the investigation. They
+must show that the Will is never free, always fettered, not only in the
+extreme cases of madness or when under the influence of suggestion. They
+must make it clear that there is only a difference of degree and not of
+kind between the determining influences under which the individual is
+constrained to act, and that the causation which binds him proceeds by
+imperceptible degrees from the delirium of the maniac and the obsession
+of the abnormal man to the passion, lust and desire of the man with
+strongly developed instincts, and to the slight stimulus of habits, the
+colourless judgment and shallow considerations of the ordinary man with
+a deformed character and no definite features. Society can draw no
+practical conclusion from the theoretical recognition of the lasting
+limitation and lack of freedom of the Will, because moral law by its
+very nature implies coercion, and therefore excludes freedom. Whether
+the individual submits to the Moral law of his own accord, or because he
+is forced thereto by the community's powers of coercion, is of no
+account to society. It deals only with the visible results.
+
+But it is not merely a matter of flat utilitarianism, it is not even
+unjust, if society, without inquiring whether the Will is free or not,
+makes the individual responsible for his actions and only makes an
+exception from this universal rule in extreme cases. Even though his
+will is subject to the law of causation, and the individual always acts
+as he must, he nevertheless has a means of keeping within the moral law
+despite inner impulses and outer pressure, and that is by his judgment
+and its instrument, inhibition. Like every organic function which is not
+purely vegetative and therefore beyond the influence of the Will,
+judgment and inhibition can be strengthened and perfected by methodical
+exercise, while total neglect of them will weaken and finally atrophy
+them. The community may demand that each of its members shall devote
+attention to the development of the natural functions which permit him
+to discriminate and to suppress any inclination to evil which may
+appear. It facilitates this duty towards itself and himself for the
+individual--for it is a question of the increase of his organic
+efficiency and of his personal worth--by the institutions it founds for
+the education of youth, by schools which not only impart knowledge, but
+also form the character, by instruction after the school age, by the
+honours with which it distinguishes especially excellent persons,
+thereby holding them up to example. The community prescribes that
+everyone should acquire a certain minimum of knowledge, and for this
+purpose forces each individual by law to go to school for a certain
+number of years. It may and ought to force him also to render himself
+more capable of obeying the moral law by methodical exercise of his
+will. Every citizen is responsible to the state for being able to read
+and write. In this sense the individual is also responsible for
+sufficiently strengthening his faculty of inhibition to be able to
+control his selfish, anti-social and immoral desires.
+
+The particular purpose for which he is to employ his faculty of
+inhibition depends on the current moral law of the age, which is
+determined not by the individual, but by the community. The individual
+does quite enough and is free of blame if he strives with all his might
+to approximate his actions to the ideal which the community demands at a
+given time for the life of its members in common and for their mutual
+relations. To alter and perfect this ideal is the business of a few
+select men with wider judgment, stronger will and warmer sympathies than
+the average. In these exceptional cases it is not the community which
+imposes its ideal on the individual, but, on the contrary, the
+individual who works out a new ideal for the community, and, so to
+speak, thanks to his personal qualities, establishes a new record in the
+gymnastic of the Will which beats all earlier ones.
+
+Finally, it is true, the individual is dependent on his natural
+disposition. To say that he can be, and is to be, raised above himself
+is a very impressive, but really nonsensical, phrase. He can get out of
+himself only what is in him by nature, and however hard he may try to
+reach out beyond the boundaries drawn by his organic disposition, he
+finds it impossible to overstep them. But, as a rule, they are far wider
+than the individual has any idea of until he attempts to reach them, and
+he will find many surprises if he labours untiringly to develop to their
+fullest extent all the possibilities latent in him. Even a born weakling
+can, by dint of methodical practice, harden his flaccid muscles
+sufficiently to become a gymnast of average skill, though he is hardly
+likely to become a first-class athlete.
+
+In just the same way a weak-willed or simple person can by earnest
+endeavours rise to a consistent morality; if, nevertheless, there appear
+in him, continually or occasionally, organic impulses which carry him
+away, it is not his fault but his misfortune. In that case he is
+subjectively not responsible for his immorality. But the community can,
+all the same, not liberate him from responsibility, because the law of
+self-preservation forces it to insist on observance of the moral law,
+and it has no means of accurately measuring how strong the pressure of
+instincts and the power of inhibition is in any individual, and to what
+extent he has fulfilled the duty of exercising and strengthening the
+latter. The phrase "To understand everything is to forgive everything"
+shows insight, but is only true in the sense that one must not blame an
+individual for his natural imperfection. It comprehends recognition of
+the Will's lack of freedom, and the inadmissibility, from the
+philosophical point of view, of the concept of responsibility, but it
+does not affect the right and the duty of the community to demand moral
+conduct regardless of this lack of freedom. It is not permitted to
+forgive because it understands. Moreover, there would be no sense in
+forgiveness by the community, for the concept of forgiveness implies
+feeling and kindly forgetfulness of an injury inflicted of malice
+prepense; but insult and offence play no part in the punishment by
+society of transgressions of the moral law, and indulgence due to
+sensibility would endanger its existence.
+
+The certainty possessed by the individual that his evil deeds, if they
+become known, will have evil consequences for him is one of the
+determining factors which is indispensable in helping him to make a
+decision. It is an inadmissible affectation to condemn the fear of
+punishment as a motive for moral action, because it ought to be the
+result of the conviction that it is absolutely right. It is a powerful
+aid to self-discipline, as also are the thought and the foretaste of
+the satisfaction upon which self-respect may count if general respect
+and praise are to be the reward of exemplary conduct.
+
+The great weakness of the Kantian doctrine of Morality lies in the fact
+that it retains Free Will, even though it gives it another name. It is
+called autonomy of Will and is contrasted with heteronomy. This doctrine
+demands, and considers it possible, that the Will should be its own
+lawgiver and should not allow others to lay down laws for it; but it
+fails to examine how the Will comes to make laws for itself, of what
+hypothesis these laws are the necessary conclusions, by what means the
+Will secures respect for its law, and whether this seemingly
+self-imposed law is not really the inner realization of a ready-made law
+of extraneous origin. The dogma of the autonomy of the Will is a
+consequence of the preliminary error of excluding utility from Morality
+and of declaring its imperative to be categorical, that is, not
+dependent on the aim, but independent and regardless of any aim. The
+whole tomfoolery of the categorical imperative and of the autonomy of
+the Will is transcendental mysticism, and is all the more surprising as
+it is the result of an investigation which claims to be the work of pure
+Reason. It is the shadow of the ghostly bogies of religious conceptions
+in the daylight of "pure Reason."
+
+From the point of view of the community we may speak of merit and sin,
+but not from the subjective point of view. For the community the moral
+conduct of the individual is useful, immoral conduct is disadvantageous,
+therefore it praises the one and condemns and punishes the other. That
+is opportunism, but not moral philosophy. Considered subjectively, moral
+conduct is just as little meritorious as beauty, great stature, muscular
+strength, keen intelligence, health, a good memory, prompt reactions of
+consciousness and all other advantages that the individual has received
+without his personal intervention as a gift of nature. And immoral
+conduct is just as little blameworthy as ugliness, stupidity, sickness
+and other misfortunes which the individual is burdened with by heredity
+or which a hard fate has imposed on him. Happy is the favoured man!
+Pitiable the unfortunate one! Both are the work of forces which are
+absolutely beyond the control of their wills. In the same way the good
+man acts morally because he possesses insight and restraining
+will-power, and the bad man acts immorally because these perfections
+have been denied him, and neither the one nor the other can do anything
+in the matter.
+
+That does not relieve man of the duty of labouring assiduously at his
+moral development, but it does relieve him of responsibility for the
+result of his efforts. On one point the sociological, the biological and
+the theological moralists agree: they all bow down humbly before Grace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MORALITY AND PROGRESS
+
+
+I have fully investigated in another book ("_Der Sinn der Geschichte_")
+the problem of progress in all its details. I therefore refer the reader
+to that for all particulars, and will here give only a summary of the
+main points.
+
+Progress implies motion from one point to another. This simple concept
+is supplemented by others, some clear and some dim, which group
+themselves round it: the conception that the point towards which motion
+is directed signifies something better and more desirable than the one
+from which the motion takes place, and the assumption that the motion is
+due to an impulse, either inherent in the moving object or complex of
+objects and an essential part of it, or else impressed upon it by
+outside forces; further, that the impulse connotes a conscious image of
+the goal arrived at, recognition of its higher worth and the desire for
+greater perfection.
+
+All these ideas, which are concomitants of the concept of progress, are
+childish anthropomorphism when applied to the universe. To define
+progress as motion from a worse point to a better one implies the
+existence of a scale whereby value may be measured. Now values are
+clearly determined and graded as far as human beings or any similar
+creatures are concerned. Worse or better means to man less or more
+pleasant, useful, pleasing; progress, therefore, is a development to a
+condition which man considers more suitable and useful for him and feels
+to be more harmonious and pleasanter. The universe, from this
+standpoint, would make progress to prepare itself for the appearance of
+man, to become more intelligible, habitable and comfortable for man, to
+please and delight him. Whether it obeys its own natural disposition or
+a higher intelligence, a god, in carrying out this work, in either case
+it would realize progress to serve mankind. But if this ceases to exist,
+there is no point in characterizing a development as progress in the
+sense of amelioration, beautification and perfection. One would then
+have no right to describe, for instance, the solar system with its
+planets as indicating progress from the original condition of nebula,
+because the latter in itself, apart from man and the conditions of his
+existence, is not better or worse, not more beautiful or uglier, not
+more perfect or more defective than the former; the original nebula and
+the solar system are equally the result of the play of the same cosmic
+forces, and the dynamic formula of the one is the same as that of the
+other. But Reason rejects as nonsensical any view which declares man to
+be the aim of the universe, which puts all the work of the universe at
+his service, and conceives it as a huge machine functioning for his
+advantage.
+
+For reasons of formal logic, too, the idea of progress in the universe
+is unthinkable. The understanding cannot conceive of the universe as
+other than eternal. Now in eternity all progress, that is, all motion
+from a point of departure, must have reached its goal eternities ago,
+however slow the motion, however distant the goal. Eternity and progress
+are two concepts which logically exclude one another.
+
+In the universe there can be no progress in the sense of ascent, of
+motion from a worse to a better thing; the only thing in the universe,
+in Nature, which is comprehensible to the understanding and which
+experience, derived from sense perceptions, can establish, is evolution,
+an eternal, equable motion always on the same level; and human standards
+of value are not applicable to its regular, successive stages. One state
+is merged without a break in another, the simple becomes more manifold
+until a maximum of complexity is reached; thereupon what is intricate
+gradually falls to pieces, and the complicated is dissolved and returns
+to the simple; then, when this point is attained, the same course begins
+again, and so on for all eternity. Thus evolution in the universe is an
+endless succession of cyclic movements from the simple to the intricate
+and back to the simple; with a constant alternation from one point of
+each single circle to the other; with the most extreme, crushing
+uniformity in the totality of all cycles; with absolutely equal dignity
+of all the phases of the endless course as they develop one from the
+other; with a synchronism, inconceivable to man, of all forms of
+evolution in numberless circles revolving side by side within the
+infinite whole of the universe.
+
+But the concept of progress, which cannot be derived from the processes
+in the universe and has no sense when applied to them, becomes a
+reasonable one as soon as its validity is limited to the evolution of
+humanity. Here we no longer deal with conceptions of eternity and
+infinity. It is a question of temporal and spacial phenomena. The
+existence of man had a beginning. No doubt it will have an end. It
+appeared on earth latest at the commencement of the Quaternary
+geological period, but more probably towards the end of the Tertiary
+period. It must necessarily disappear when the earth, owing to cold and
+evaporation, becomes incapable of supporting life, a state of affairs
+which, according to our present knowledge of natural laws, must
+inevitably come to pass. A few million years are allotted to it in which
+to fulfil its destiny, certainly a short span of time compared with the
+eternity of the universe, but compared with the duration of individual
+and national life, with personal destinies and historical occurrences,
+an immeasurably vast prospect. Within the limits of its genesis, its
+being and its disappearance, it is in a constant state of evolution. It
+is impossible to deny this. Comparisons between the skulls found among
+remains of the paleolithic age and those of our times, between the state
+of the undeveloped tribes of central Africa and Australia and that of
+the peoples of Europe and America, between the beginnings of human
+speech and the present-day languages, between the thought, knowledge and
+abilities of former generations and ours--all these prove this
+incontrovertibly.
+
+The purpose of this evolution is unmistakable. It is directed towards an
+ever closer, ever subtler adaptation to the unalterable conditions
+which are imposed on men by Nature, and which they must make the best of
+if they are not to perish. And it is synonymous with progress; that is
+to say, not only with change, simple motion from one point to another,
+but with amelioration and improvement.
+
+Here we may apply standards of value. The aim and object of evolution,
+which we know and desire, supply us with them. Here we may judge and
+appraise anthropomorphically. Not only may we do so, but we must, for it
+is a question of matters which concern mankind alone. All evolution of
+mankind, corporal and intellectual, the enlargement of the brain case so
+as to accommodate a larger brain; the development of the muscles of the
+larynx, palate and hand, and the accurate co-ordination of their
+movements, which things make clearer and more emphatic speech possible
+and render the hands defter; the acquisition, interpretation and storing
+up of experiences leading to discoveries and inventions, all are
+directed to the same end: to provide men with more reliable weapons in
+the struggle for existence; to defend them from the dangers surrounding
+them, the destructive forces of Nature; to render their life more
+secure, longer and richer; to save them from fatigue and suffering; to
+give them pleasurable emotions and possibilities of happiness. And as we
+have a clear idea of the object of our evolution, as we desire this
+object and continually seek to find new means whereby to reach it, we
+are absolutely justified in calling every movement that brings us nearer
+to the aim we have in view, and aspire to reach, a progressive step,
+and in calling every stage of evolution which realizes a biggish part of
+the object desired an amelioration, an improvement, an ascent.
+
+The total amount of progress which has secured to mankind its
+development we sum up in the concept of civilization. The latter,
+however, is still far removed from ideal perfection. What we know is
+infinitesimally small compared with the tremendous bulk of the unknown,
+perhaps the unknowable, which greets our view on all sides. Our
+technical achievements often leave us in the lurch and indicate no way
+out of many difficulties. In the human being who knows and can do
+something, too much still remains of the stupid, helpless, untamed,
+primitive beast.
+
+Nevertheless, what has been achieved is of value, and it is childish to
+depreciate it. Paradoxical minds, like J. J. Rousseau and his
+parrot-like imitators, may deny the use of all civilization and declare
+that the so-called state of nature, the ignorance and helplessness of
+undeveloped man amid all too mighty Nature, is preferable. That is an
+intellectual joke which is not very amusing. We have not vanquished
+death, but we have prolonged life, as the mortality statistics prove. We
+cannot cure all diseases; crowded dwellings in great cities, the nature
+and intensity of our occupations--civilization, in short--bring diseases
+from which we should probably not suffer if we were savages; but the
+cave-dwellers, too, were subject to illnesses, and our antisepsis and
+hygiene effectually prevent many and grave bodily ills. Division of
+labour makes the individual dependent on the whole economic organism;
+it makes it easier for the favoured few to exploit the many and to be
+parasites at their expense, but nevertheless the individual can more
+easily satisfy his needs than if, being completely free and independent,
+he alone had to provide all the objects he requires. The speed and
+facility with which the exchange of goods is effected, thanks to ever
+new and ever more excellent means of communication, often give rise to
+artificial wants; cheap travel occasions useless restlessness, but the
+emancipation of the individual from the place of his birth, the
+conversion of the whole globe into one single economic domain, of which
+every part with its own particular superabundance of men and products
+supplies the lack of the same in other parts, has at least this
+invaluable advantage, that it makes man more independent of local
+hazards and makes the earth more habitable for him. Many things provided
+by civilization are obtainable only by the rich, and the spectacle of
+the luxury of these favoured mortals makes the lot of the poor harder to
+bear, but the possibility of working one's way up into the ranks of the
+fortunate is a mighty spur to strong characters, and gives rise to
+efforts which are profitable to many. All the great technical
+achievements of civilization can certainly not bring happiness either to
+the individual or to the community, because happiness is a spiritual
+state which does not depend on bodily satisfactions and, though it may
+be troubled by material conditions, can never be created by them; but
+the moments of happiness which the individual experiences derive an
+extraordinary intensity from the instruments of civilization which
+surround and serve us.
+
+Certainly civilization has its bad points, and it requires no great
+cleverness to discover them, to point them out and to exaggerate them.
+Certainly many of its most boasted, supposed benefits are not really a
+blessing, but either merely imaginary or else unimportant--little,
+superfluous things which may be pleasant, but lacking which we can live
+without great deprivation, and for which we undoubtedly pay far too
+dearly. But, on the whole, it is a mighty achievement of man's
+struggling intellect, an invaluable improvement of the lot of man, and
+if anyone denies this he forfeits any claim to serious refutation.
+Rousseau's state of nature may be a very pleasant change for a summer
+holiday, but every man of sound common sense would decline it as a
+permanent abode.
+
+We may therefore freely concede the fact of progress in civilization in
+so far as the latter implies greater safety, facility, order and
+equability of life, deeper and more widely diffused knowledge and more
+perfect adaptation of man to the natural conditions in which he finds
+himself. For it is no reservation to note in the course of evolution
+both individual deviations from the path which leads to the goal of
+civilization, the amelioration of the constitution of mankind, and
+occasional relapses into bygone barbarisms. To make use of Gumplowicz's
+expression, it is not an acrochronic and acrotopic illusion (that is, a
+form of self-deception which consists in thinking the time when one
+lives and the place where one lives the best of all times and the most
+wonderful of all places) if we place the present far above all past
+ages and declare our civilization to be incomparably richer and more
+perfect than anything that has preceded it. The _laudator acti_, the
+cross-grained Nestor who praises the past at the expense of the present,
+the enthusiast for "the good old times," is a figure that has always
+been familiar. But it proves nothing. This tender love of the past is
+not the outcome of objective comparison and consideration, but an
+impulse of subjective psychology. It is simply the emotion and longing
+which fill an old man's heart when he looks back on his youth. He
+remembers the pleasurable emotions which once accompanied all his
+impressions and which are now unknown to his worn-out organism, and he
+thinks the world was better because he found more joy in it. The aged
+man is convinced that in his youth the sky was bluer, the rose more
+odorous, the women more beautiful than now, but an impartial observer
+would pityingly shake his head at this.
+
+But can the progress, which cannot reasonably be denied in civilization,
+also be traced in Morality? Philosophers who are by no means negligible
+have roundly replied in the negative. Buckle declares uncompromisingly
+that the only progress possible to man is intellectual, and by this he
+means that mankind grows in knowledge, foresight and clarity of thought,
+but not at the same time in Morality, which, according to him, differs
+from the intellect and understanding and is not included in them.
+Buckle's unfavourable judgment has been turned into a formula which has
+often been repeated. Scientifically, technically, we progress; morally
+we stand still or slip back; the two orders of development move neither
+in the same direction nor with the same speed. That is a view that is
+widely held. Fr. Bouillier comes to the same conclusion as Buckle,
+though from different considerations. He asserts that "a savage who
+obeys his conscience, however ignorant this may be, can be as virtuous
+as a Socrates or an Aristides; one can even go so far as to defend the
+view that social progress instead of strengthening individual morality
+weakens it, for society, in proportion as it is better ordered, saves
+the individual the trouble of a great many virtuous actions."
+
+However, there are other moralists who take the opposite view.
+Shaftesbury cannot imagine a moral system in which there is no place for
+the idea of constant progress, of continuous improvement. The great
+Frenchmen of the eighteenth century are convinced of the moral rise of
+humanity. "The mass of mankind," says Turgot, "advances constantly
+towards an ever-growing perfection," and elsewhere: "Men taught by
+experience grow in ever greater measure and in a better sense humane."
+Condorcet defends no less emphatically the view that the faculty of
+growing more perfect is inherent in man. This is a case of pessimism and
+optimism which have their roots less in reasonable thought than in
+temperament. A worn-out, weary individual, or generation, looks back and
+spends the time in futile yearning and melancholy visions of the past;
+but a sturdy generation, full of life, and conscious of it, looks
+forward, and planning, inventing, and determined to realize its creative
+ideas, it conjures up the image of the future. Pessimism regrets and
+groans; optimism hopes and promises. The former, like Ovid, thinks the
+Golden Age is in the past, the latter, like the fathers of the great
+Revolution, looks for it in the future. In neither case do they reach
+conclusions as a result of observation and logical thought, rather they
+invent reasons afterwards for their conclusions, as they do
+interpretations of their observations. But he who regards life neither
+with bitterness nor with pride, and tries to understand it objectively,
+will come to the opinion that Morality too has its fair share in the
+progress of civilization.
+
+Theological thought interprets moral perfection differently from
+scientific thought. According to the former it is independent of
+intellectual development and purely a matter of faith. God is the ideal
+of Morality, belief in Him the necessary condition for a moral life.
+Through its fall mankind withdrew from God and was left a prey to
+Immorality; original sin perpetually burdened it; by redemption and
+grace it has been purified from this inborn stain, led back to God and
+once more rendered capable of Morality. For mankind only one kind of
+progress in Morality was possible, and this took place, not gradually
+and step by step, but with one sudden swift advance, by which it
+immediately attained the highest degree of moral perfection possible,
+and that was when the true faith was revealed to it. Before the
+revelation mankind did not know real Morality, only its dim shadow, only
+a vague yearning for it; by the revelation at one blow it was in full
+possession of Morality, and now it is the business of every individual,
+whether he will draw near to the divine example by pious efforts or
+ruthlessly withdraw from it. Since the glad tidings of faith were
+announced to humanity there can be no question of moral progress for
+mankind as a whole; it has become a personal matter which everyone has
+to deal with himself. Criticism of this dogmatism is superfluous. It is
+quite enough to place it before the reader.
+
+It is quite comprehensible, too, that those whose views permit them to
+talk with Bouillier of a savage who obeys his conscience should deny
+moral progress. They assume that a savage has a conscience, that
+conscience is an element of human nature, that it is a quality or a
+capacity like sensation or memory, that it is born with man like his
+limbs and organs. In that case it might well be asserted that subjective
+Morality has made no progress in historic and perhaps even in
+prehistoric times, and that actually a "savage who obeys his conscience
+can be just as virtuous as a Socrates or an Aristides."
+
+It would hardly be possible to give a concrete proof of the contrary; if
+for no other reason because for a long time there have been no savages
+in the strict sense of the word anywhere on earth. By savages we mean
+human beings in their primitive, zoological condition who have developed
+solely according to the biological forms of the species and under the
+influence of surrounding Nature and have taken over nothing of an
+intellectual character from the group to which they belong. All savages
+of whom we know form societies which for the most part are not even
+loosely, but firmly, knit together, with laws that may seem nonsensical
+and barbaric to us, but are none the less binding with clearly defined
+duties which they impose on every member, with sanctions whose cruelty
+supersedes that of any punishment permitted by civilization. A man who
+is a member of a society, no matter how primitive it may be, may
+certainly have a conscience, but the point is that he is not a savage,
+but the contrary of a savage, namely: a social being who has received an
+education from his society, who is bound to conform to its habits,
+customs and views, and who in all his actions must consider its opinion.
+But these conditions, as I have shown, produce a conscience, the
+representative of society in the consciousness of the individual.
+Conscience is no innate feature of man uninfluenced by society, it is
+not a product of Nature, it is the result of education; he who possesses
+a conscience is no savage, but a person formed by discipline and
+subservient to it; conscience is the fruit of civilization, of a certain
+civilization; in itself it represents progress compared with the
+primitive state of man. Consequently it is an objectionable
+contradiction to talk of conscience and at the same time deny moral
+progress.
+
+It is peculiarly arbitrary, too, to think that a savage, if he had a
+conscience, could obey it to the same extent, that is, be just as
+virtuous, as a Socrates or an Aristides. This would contradict all the
+observations and experience from which I have derived the doctrine that
+conscience works by means of inhibition, and that Morality and Virtue
+from the biological point of view are inhibition. For inhibition is
+developed by practice and use. Except in cases of morbid disturbance it
+develops simultaneously with the understanding which manipulates it and
+demands efficiency from it. There can be no two opinions about the fact
+that the understanding and the faculty of inhibition in living beings
+have developed progressively. There is no need to adduce any proof that
+the frog is intellectually superior to the zoospore, and man to the
+frog, and that as we ascend the scale of organisms we find their
+reactions to stimuli are increasingly subject to individual
+modification, and that there is a gradual transition from the original,
+purely mechanical tropism to differentiated reflex action, which,
+however, is still beyond the control of the will, and finally to
+resistances which suppress every externally visible reply on the part of
+the organism to the impression it has received.
+
+In the course of this development the faculty of inhibition grows
+stronger and more efficient and obeys the behests of the understanding
+more and more swiftly, surely and reliably; it can reach a pitch of
+invincibility against which all the revolts of instinct, all the storms
+of passion, are powerless.
+
+In the savage, or rather in man at a low stage of civilization, the
+power of inhibition is far from having reached such perfect development.
+It is not very robust, works defectively and often fails. Little
+civilized man, if he has a conscience, cannot even with the best
+intentions always obey it punctually. His instinct is stronger than his
+insight. He is not master of his impulses; rather it is they that master
+him. All who have described tribes of low civilization have observed
+that their reactions resemble reflex movements and that they lack
+self-control. Moral conduct, that is, control of their selfishness and
+consideration for their fellow men, is difficult for them if it demands
+effort, sacrifice and painful renunciation. However, we need not trouble
+to go to the negroes of the Congo or the inhabitants of the Solomon
+Islands to observe the inefficiency of the power of inhibition. We need
+only look around us. We shall find enough instances among ourselves. The
+uneducated, the badly educated and abnormal people on whom teaching and
+example make no impression cannot follow the precepts of Morality,
+although they know them. To express it as the Roman poet does, they know
+the better and approve it, but they have a longing for the worse. So it
+is wrong to say that a savage can be just as virtuous as a Socrates or
+an Aristides. He could not, even if he would. He would lack the organic
+means: a sufficiently trained intelligence to point out his moral duty,
+a sufficiently developed faculty of inhibition to follow the admonition
+of his intelligence. Bouillier's objection to moral progress will not
+hold water. The Romantics who have invented the fairy tale of the noble
+savage and who declare in Seume's words: "See, we savages are better men
+after all," are out of touch with reality. Like civilization, and
+simultaneously with civilization, Morality progresses towards
+improvement, towards perfection.
+
+The Kantian moralist, like the theologian, is forbidden by the logic of
+his system to admit the possibility of moral progress. If the moral law
+is categorical, that is, unlimited by any special purpose, if it exists
+within us, eternal and immutable as the stars above us, we should be
+hard put to it to say how this unalterable block, placed in our souls we
+know not how or by whom, could receive an impetus to progressive
+development, or in what way this development could be carried out. That
+which is categorical is absolute, and the concept of progress in the
+absolute, as in the infinite and the eternal, has no sense. But whoever
+regards Morality from the biological and sociological point of view is
+forced to assert its progress, just as the dogmatic mystic, who believes
+in the categorical imperative, is forced to deny it.
+
+Let us recapitulate the fundamental concepts. Regarded biologically
+Morality is Inhibition, the development of which is of the greatest
+importance to the individual, as it enables him not to waste the living
+force of his cell plasm and of his organs in sterile reflex movements,
+but to store it up and hold it ready for useful purposes. The stronger
+his power of inhibition the better he is armed for the struggle for
+existence, and the better he is armed the more efficient he is. Denial
+of the progressive development of Inhibition implies a denial that
+modern man can maintain himself with more ease and security against
+Nature and hostile or injurious natural phenomena, and that he is more
+successful in competition with other men than his predecessors on earth.
+But this latter denial is obviously nonsense. The only individuals who
+do not take part in progressive development are the degenerates. They
+are organically inferior, their faculty of inhibition is defective or
+altogether lacking, they are slaves of impulses which their will and
+intelligence have no means of controlling, they are the outcome of
+morbidly arrested or retrograde development, they are the victims and
+refuse of a civilization too intensive, too exhausting and wearing for
+some men, and they are destined to fall out of the ranks of a race
+moving majestically forward and to lie helplessly by the roadside.
+
+From the sociological point of view Morality is the bond which unites
+the individuals in a community, the foundation upon which alone society
+can be built up and maintained. For it implies a victory over self,
+consideration for one's neighbour, recognition of his rights, concession
+of his claims, even when valued possessions must unwillingly be given up
+and painful renunciation of attainable satisfaction is required. This is
+neighbourly kindness and the charity of the Bible, Hutcheson's and
+Hume's benevolence, Adam Smith's sympathy and Herbert Spencer's
+altruism; it is the necessary condition on which alone individuals can
+live peaceably together and helpfully assist each other to make life
+easier. If most or all individuals lack it, we have Hobbes's war of all
+against all; then man is as a wolf to other men, and each one is
+condemned to the state of a beast roaming in loneliness. If a few, a
+minority, lack it, then the majority will not tolerate them in its
+midst, but will expel them from the community as a dangerous nuisance
+and deprive them of the privilege of mutual aid and of the advantage of
+joint responsibility.
+
+The species of man, like every other species of organism and like every
+individual, wants to live. It can only achieve this by adapting itself
+to existing natural conditions. The more suitable and perfect the
+adaptation the more easily and securely it lives. Under the present
+conditions of the universe and the earth a solitary human individual
+could not manage to exist, let alone develop into an intelligent being.
+The form his adaptation to circumstances has taken is that of union in
+an organized community. For the existence of society and the adjustment
+of the individual in it is the indispensable condition for the life of
+the species as well as of the individual. Society can only continue to
+exist if individuals learn to consider one another and practise
+benevolence towards each other. Society therefore created Morality and
+inculcated it in all its members, because it was its first need, the
+essential condition which rendered its existence possible, just as the
+species created society, because it could only continue to live as an
+organized society.
+
+Thus Morality with the strictest logical necessity has its place in the
+totality of efforts which human beings had to make, and still have to
+make, in order to preserve life, to make it sufficiently profound and to
+enrich it with satisfactions, that is, with pleasurable emotions of
+every kind, so that they may continue to have the will and the eager
+desire to maintain their existence by effort and struggle; in short, in
+order to make life seem worth living, even at the cost of constant toil
+and moil. Without society it is impossible for the individual to exist;
+without Morality it is impossible for society to exist; the instinct of
+self-preservation furnishes society with habits and rules governing the
+mutual relations of its members and with institutions for economizing
+force; all these together we call civilization. The development and
+improvement of civilization is obvious; it is proved by the fact that it
+draws nearer and nearer to its goal, namely, the establishment of
+satisfactory relations between individuals and groups, and the
+attainment of a maximum of satisfaction with a minimum of individual
+effort. But it would be incomprehensible if Morality, the essential
+condition for the existence of society which creates civilization,
+should have no part in the indisputable, because easily demonstrable,
+progress of the latter.
+
+Morality occupies such a large place in civilization that the mistaken
+view has arisen among many moral philosophers that it is the aim of
+civilization and has no aim other than itself. Closer investigation
+shows this to be an error, a reversal of the true relation. Morality is
+no aim, certainly no aim to itself, it is a means to an end, the most
+important, most indispensable means to the one end, to bring about
+civilization, to maintain and refine it, and adapt it more and more to
+its task. But the task of civilization, as I have shown, is to preserve,
+facilitate and enrich the life of the individual and the species.
+Morality therefore is the most important form in which the instinct of
+self-preservation in the species is manifested, and to deny progress to
+it implies the assumption that the species does not possess the impulse
+to preserve and beautify its existence, that its instinct of
+self-preservation flags, that it does not recognize its aim and is
+ignorant of the path leading to its goal. This assumption, however, is
+contradicted by all, and supported by none, of the phenomena observable
+in the life of the species--the absolute increase of the population of
+the earth, the prolongation of individual life and of the age of
+efficiency, the combating of every kind of harmful thing.
+
+The steadfast self-control of civilized man compared with the
+unreliability of the savage, who appears capricious and unaccountable
+because he freely obeys every impulse, proves the progressive
+development of the faculty of inhibition in the individual organism. The
+order and definite organization of modern society, the rule of law,
+men's equality before the law, the guarantee of freedom and respect for
+the person, all these compared with the state of nations in earlier
+times (actually anarchy under a mantle of tyranny and the unlimited
+power of a few mighty ones over the helpless masses) prove the
+progressive development of civilization in the social organism. But
+logically the progressive development of Morality itself must correspond
+to the progressive development of its instrument, inhibition, and of its
+product, civilization.
+
+The conclusion to which we are forced by theoretical considerations is
+fully endorsed by observation of actual life. It is sufficient to
+indicate broad facts to one who denies moral progress. Slavery, which
+Aristotle thought a law of Nature, which Christianity tolerated, which
+modern states, such as England, France, the United States and Brazil,
+defended and protected by law, was everywhere abolished some years ago.
+The objection is raised that modern hired labour is merely slavery of
+the proletariat under another name, that the exploitation of workmen by
+employers is a hypocritical continuation of serfdom. But that is
+sophistry. The hired labourer is not bound to his contract. He can break
+it. "Yes, at the price of starvation." That used to be the case, but
+nowadays organized working men are no longer at the mercy of powerful
+capital, and therein lies progress. They are in a position to make
+conditions and not seldom to force their acceptance. They have the right
+to strike, to move from place to place, to form unions. The community
+has recognized the duty of mitigating, at least to some extent, the
+evils to which faulty economic organization exposes the workman. It has
+instituted accident and health insurance, old age pensions, and, in some
+places, assistance for those who are out of work through no fault of
+their own. All this is still very defective, but these are hopeful
+beginnings, all the same, and, above all, it shows the awakening of a
+social conscience that earlier ages did not know.
+
+Justice is administered more and more humanely, that is, morally. It is
+a century since legal torture was abolished. Society is ashamed to get
+at the truth easily by torturing a suspect who after all may be
+innocent. The condemned man is no longer branded or mutilated; he
+suffers no corporal ill-treatment of which the results can never be
+obliterated. Capital punishment is still a blot on the honour of
+civilization. But for more than a century now, since the time of
+Beccaria, it has been violently opposed and has already been abolished
+in some states; the others will no doubt have to follow suit within a
+short time. Consider that in England at the beginning of the nineteenth
+century a thief was hanged if he had stolen a thing of no more value
+than the rope that was to hang him, and even children of fourteen years
+were condemned to this fate. To-day the judge pronounces sentence of
+death, even where it is still legal, with grave misgivings and
+searchings of conscience, and the execution, formerly a public
+spectacle, is carried out more or less secretly, because the conviction
+is gradually ripening in society that by the cold-blooded killing of a
+man it is perpetrating a crime which it must keep as secret as possible.
+The sentence is now almost everywhere deferred, and thus the conviction
+becomes a very emphatic warning which points out the path of repentance,
+of conversion and improvement to the guilty man, and leaves him the
+possibility of becoming a decent human being again. Special courts for
+children mitigate the stern penal code and modify it according to the
+needs of unripe, youthful characters. Imprisonment for debt is a
+half-forgotten thing of the past and regarded more or less as a joke.
+What these changes have in common is that they one and all indicate a
+deepening of the community's feeling of duty and responsibility towards
+the individual, greater respect for persons on the part of the law, an
+increase of the will to resist the first impulse of anger, revenge and
+mercilessness. These tendencies, however, are the very essence of
+Morality.
+
+I forbear to adduce as a proof of progress that the Inquisition no
+longer rules and nowhere burns its victims. For actually there is no
+greater toleration of those who hold other opinions than there was
+formerly. Religious toleration is explained by the fact that the
+people's consciousness no longer attaches such enormous importance to
+religion as in past centuries. But political, æsthetic and philosophical
+antagonisms arouse as much bloodthirsty rage to-day as did formerly
+heresy in religion, and opponents would unhesitatingly apply torture and
+the stake to one another if the great mass of the people would develop
+sufficiently enthusiastic zeal for their views to allow their raging
+fanaticism to have recourse to violence, as it once permitted
+domineering religious orthodoxy to do.
+
+Other aspects of civilization, not so essential, are hardly less
+encouraging than the developments on which I have hitherto dwelt.
+Drunkenness, formerly an almost universal vice, is on the decrease.
+Among the educated classes it is only met with exceptionally, and is
+recognized as a morbid aberration; among the lower classes it
+continually grows less. The statistics of the savings banks show an
+ever-growing determination to save. The masses who used to rejoice in
+dirt now manifest an increasingly vigorous desire for a cleanliness that
+demands soap and baths. This indicates control of impulse, of the
+inclination for alcoholic drinks and the tendency to squander, and an
+increase of self-respect which recognizes dirt to be humiliating. These
+are activities of the moral feelings, their material activities.
+
+If, in spite of these material proofs of the progress of Morality in all
+social functions and in many individual habits, serious-minded men still
+maintain that it stands still or even that it shows retrogression
+compared with former times, this view, which is undoubtedly a mistaken
+one, is due to wrong interpretation of facts.
+
+Bouillier's remark that "social progress instead of increasing
+individual Morality weakens it, because society, in proportion as it is
+better organized, saves the individual the trouble of a number of
+virtuous actions" has a perfectly correct point of departure. Many tasks
+of neighbourly kindness and humane joint responsibility which used to be
+left to the inclination, the free choice and the noble zeal of
+individuals, and could be carried out or neglected by them, are now
+methodically fulfilled by the community. Saint Martin no longer needs to
+divide his cloak to give half to a poor shivering man. The public
+charity commission gives him winter clothes if he cannot afford to buy
+any. No knights are needed to protect innocence, weakness and humility
+from oppressors. The oppressed appeal successfully to the police, the
+court of justice, or, by writing to the papers, to public opinion. There
+is no need for Knights Templar or Knights of St. John to care for
+strangers and tend the sick. Inns and public hospitals are at their
+disposal. To-day there would be neither occasion nor reason for the
+miracle of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who against the orders of her hard
+husband took to the starving bread which was turned into roses. The poor
+are regularly fed in municipal and communal kitchens. Individual deeds
+of mercy are less necessary now than formerly, when, if they occurred,
+they were the outcome of exceptionally noble and devout sympathy and
+heroic self-sacrifice.
+
+One is therefore inclined to believe that men are less capable of such
+deeds than they were in the past. But that is doing them a grave
+injustice. Dr. Barnardo, who opened a home for the little waifs and
+strays of the East End of London, is not inferior to St. Vincent de Paul
+who adopted and brought up forsaken children. John Brown who suffered a
+martyr's death by hanging because he attempted with arms to liberate the
+negro slaves of the Southern States, Henry Dumont who devoted the
+efforts of a lifetime to founding the Red Cross to help those wounded in
+war, Emile Zola who sacrificed his fortune, his reputation as an author,
+his personal safety, and suffered persecution, calumny, exile, a
+shameful condemnation in court, and violent threats to his life in order
+to get justice for Captain Dreyfus who had been wrongfully accused--all
+these can well compare with the saints in the Golden Legend. Virtue
+exists potentially in as many cases as formerly, probably in more; and
+it is actively practised whenever and wherever it is appealed to.
+
+Another result of the long evolution of civilization and Morality is the
+development of an ethical instinct in all except abnormal, degenerate
+individuals, which causes men to act morally in nearly all situations
+without conscious reflection, choice or effort. The individual who is
+ethically well grounded, in whom moral conduct has become an organized
+reflex action, does what is right without any conscious effort, and
+therefore does not in so doing evoke any idea of merit either in
+himself or in witnesses. But to do right habitually, carelessly and
+almost without thought, as one breathes and eats, easily makes one
+unjust in one's judgments. The battle between Reason and blind instinct,
+between the Will and refractory Impulse, the victory of the lofty
+principle, of spirituality over what is irrational and materialistic,
+which give us the illusion that free humanity is superior to the
+fatality of cosmic forces, have something so elevated and beautiful
+about them that we are disappointed if they are absent, and practical
+Morality without this dramatic setting does not appear to be real
+Morality.
+
+Nevertheless we must not give way to this æsthetic point of view. We
+must always remember that Morality has a biological and sociological aim
+and must soberly admit that it is all the better if this aim is realized
+without in every single case depending on uncertain individual
+decisions. It would be an ideal state of affairs if in a society there
+were such clear knowledge of all its vital necessities, and this had
+been so inculcated in all its members, that their harmonious life
+together and their co-operation for the common weal would never more be
+troubled by the revolt of ruthless individual selfishness against the
+love of one's neighbour and willingness to sacrifice oneself for the
+community. The ideal of Morality would be attained, but the concept of
+Merit would be transferred from the individual to the community.
+Superficial observation might object to finding in individuals no
+victorious struggle against resistance, hence no virtue, and might
+bemoan the stagnation, nay, the retrogression, of Morality. But whoever
+views matters as a whole would have to admit that it would imply the
+greatest progress in virtue if the latter from being an individual merit
+had become an attribute of the community. I am far from maintaining that
+we have reached this ideal state; but evolution tends unmistakably in
+this direction; and this is one of the reasons why Morality may appear
+to make no progress.
+
+The very rise of the community to a higher stage of Morality may be a
+fresh cause of error concerning the progress of Morality. The work of
+the strongest and most clear-headed thinkers for many thousand years,
+who have bequeathed as a legacy to the community their lifelong labours
+for the amelioration of the lot of mankind, has developed in us an ideal
+of active and passive Morality which is always present, even to the mind
+of the weak or bad man who cannot or will not live up to it. By this
+ideal, which is that of the community and which we bear within us, we
+involuntarily judge real life as we observe it, without applying the
+necessary corrections. We necessarily note a discrepancy between theory
+and practice, which appears to us to be not mere inadequacy but a
+contradiction of principles, not a quantitative, but a qualitative
+difference, and thus he who is not forewarned easily becomes doubtful,
+pessimistic, and bitterly contemptuous of mankind.
+
+This is the theme with which light literature unweariedly deals. Novels
+and the drama constantly show us types: "Pillars of society" and other
+worthy men, who pretend to be honourable, who are full of good
+principles, preach unctuously and condemn others with pious indignation,
+but who themselves in all situations behave with the most horrible
+selfishness and are sinks of iniquity. The creators of these rogues
+professing virtue, of these secret sinners, think they are mightily
+superior; they think they know mankind, that they are deceived by no one
+and can see deep down into men's souls; they call their method realism,
+and they look down with the greatest contempt upon poets who depict
+good, unselfish, noble, in short, moral characters, and call them
+optimists, flirts, distillers of rosewater, who are either too silly or
+too dishonest to see the truth or to confess it. If realism happens to
+be the fashion, the public believes these men who depict what is ugly
+and disgusting, admires them, is impressed by them, and scorns the
+idealists who have a better opinion of mankind.
+
+However, realism is onesided and exaggerated, and therefore just as far
+from the truth as enthusiastic idealism. It picks out certain
+characteristics of human nature, generalizes from them and neglects the
+others, thereby libelling mankind. The same people who in their flat,
+insipid daily life unhesitatingly indulge their poor little vanities,
+their naïve selfishness, their childish jealousy, their secret
+sensuality and their moral cowardice because it is of no consequence,
+because it alters nothing in the general constitution of society,
+because the community takes good care that moral principles shall be
+maintained, these same people can, on great occasions, which, however,
+seldom occur, reveal virtues which they themselves never suspected and
+which we gaze at in blank astonishment with reverent awe. The
+hypocritical Philistines of realistic literature, rotten at the core,
+when the _Titanic_ sank, during the plague in Manchuria, at the
+earthquake of Messina, in the mine disaster at Courrières, and on Arctic
+and Antarctic expeditions, proved to be heroes who came very near to the
+theatrical ideal of Morality, if they did not quite reach it. If one
+takes the valet's point of view and observes man in his dressing-gown
+and slippers when he does not feel called upon to pull himself together,
+one may very well form a poor opinion of him. But if one considers the
+actions of the community and dwells on the loftiest deeds of
+individuals, one will no longer believe that the Morality of the present
+time is inferior to that of any other age.
+
+There is one phenomenon, though, which seems to prove that those who
+deny moral progress are in the right, and that is war. This is indeed
+the triumph of the beast in mankind, a bestial trampling under foot of
+civilization, its principles, methods and aims, and it might be adduced
+as a crushing proof of the stagnation or retrogression of Morality that
+to this very day its horrors can devastate the earth, as they did
+hundreds and thousands of years ago, only to an incomparably greater
+extent, more cruelly and more thoroughly. But this, too, would be a
+false conclusion. It is certain that the men who take it upon themselves
+freely, purposely and intentionally to make war are monsters; their
+action is a crime that cannot be expiated. Unhesitatingly they have
+recourse to massacre, robbery, fire and all other horrors in order to
+satisfy their devilish self-seeking which desires the fulfilment of
+their ambition, that is, of their self-love and vanity, which covets
+riches, increase of power, a ruling position and its privileges. These
+they pursue either for themselves or for a family or caste, and they
+pretend that they wish to defend their country from its enemies, to
+acquire new boundaries for it affording better protection than the old,
+to promote the development of the nation by getting fresh territory, to
+spread its civilization and secure a glorious future for it.
+
+Nations, however, which allow their rulers to plunge them into a war of
+aggression may be foolish and clumsy, but they need not be immoral. They
+are made drunk with phrases which appeal to their noblest feelings,
+which their government and its intellectual bailiffs pour out to them in
+overflowing measure; they believe the shameless lies which are told them
+boastfully; and this is undoubtedly a lamentable, mental weakness which
+drew from Dante the bitter cry: "Often one hears the people in their
+intoxication cry: 'Long live our death! Down with our life!'" But having
+simply accepted these preliminary ideas the people act with such
+Morality as one cannot forbear to admire. In a grand flight they rise
+superior to all thought of self, raise their feeling of joint
+responsibility to the pitch of heroism and martyrdom, and gladly
+sacrifice to their duty to their neighbour and to the community their
+possessions, their comfort, their health and their lives. That is very
+great virtue whose subjective merit is no whit diminished by the fact
+that it is manifested in a cause that is objectively unjust. And this
+virtue on the part of nations which have been misled was never so
+widespread or so real as now. The attitude of mercenaries who served the
+highest bidder, the lack of ideals among the soldiers who followed
+foreign conquerors at whose command they tyrannized over nations who did
+not concern them at all, the cynicism of the leaders who unhesitatingly
+went over to the enemy and fought against their own country and people,
+these are things that are not to be found nowadays and are almost
+unthinkable. No Napoleon of to-day could lead the men of Würtemberg and
+Bavaria to Spain and Russia, nor could an Elector of Hesse sell recruits
+to England for the conquest of North America; no Louis XIV could induce
+a Bernard of Saxe-Weimar to fight his battles against German
+adversaries, no Constable of Bourbon ally himself with Spain against his
+native France. Leonidas, once admired and praised as an exception, is
+to-day the rule. "The guards who die but do not yield" are to be found
+on every battlefield nowadays.
+
+In modern warfare a higher, more perfect Morality of the masses obtains
+than was the case in the past. That war itself is the most immoral thing
+does not detract from the moral worth of those who are led and misled.
+The masses lack insight and judgment, their understanding is not
+sufficiently developed to realize the bestiality of the rulers who put
+them to such evil use; but the way they suppress their own feelings, the
+way their will controls their impulses, their social discipline, in
+short, their Morality, is admirable. Moreover, the conscience of mankind
+revolts more and more against the wickedness of war, and the best men of
+the time are striving to bring the mutual relations of nations, like
+those of individuals, within the jurisdiction of Law and Morality.
+Morality will doubtless at no distant date do away with war, as it has
+abolished human sacrifice, slavery, blood feuds, head hunting and
+cannibalism.
+
+No phenomenon of individual worthlessness observed within a narrow
+sphere can detract from the fact that the community constantly improves.
+A pessimistic view of the development of Morality has no justification.
+Progress of civilization implies progress of Morality, its most
+important instrument in the work of adapting the race to the immutable
+conditions of its existence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SANCTIONS OF MORALITY
+
+
+The concept of Morality includes an idea of compulsion, of coercion. A
+voice says to man: "You must!" or "You may not!" It commands him to do,
+or to refrain from doing, something. If he obeys, all is well; but if he
+takes no notice of it, pays no heed to it, the question arises: "What
+now? Will the voice rest content with crying in the wilderness? Will it
+not mind speaking to deaf ears? Will the refractory individual not
+suffer for disregarding it, or has it means to enforce obedience, and
+what are these means?"
+
+The answer to this question depends on what view one holds as to the
+nature of this monitory, warning, commanding voice. Whoever believes in
+Kant's categorical imperative must admit that this word of command is
+denuded of all power of coercion and must absolutely rely on the good
+will of the individual in whose soul it makes itself heard. According to
+Kant the moral law aims at no extraneous result, no utility. It is its
+own aim and object. But its own aim is fulfilled as soon as the
+categorical imperative has spoken, whether the individual acts in
+accordance with it or not. It has therefore in principle no sanction.
+
+True, Kant contradicts himself, for after having sternly excluded from
+his doctrine all utility as the end of Morality, all trace of feeling
+from moral action, he smuggles blissful happiness in by a back door; the
+result of submission to the moral law and its dutiful fulfilment, he
+declares, will be bliss. Bliss, however you interpret it, is a
+pleasurable emotion. Whether you act morally with the declared intention
+of attaining the pleasurable emotion of bliss, or whether this
+pleasurable emotion comes of its own accord as an undesired reward when
+you have acted morally merely from a feeling of duty, without a thought
+for such a result, without a wish to attain it, it makes no difference
+to the fact that moral action actually meets with a reward. Kant does
+not openly promise this, but with a wink he whispers in your ear that
+there is a prospect of it.
+
+Nor does it alter the further fact that Kant, having contemptuously
+expelled Eudæmonism from his system, reinstates it with full honours.
+Once it has been conceded that moral conduct makes man blissful, in
+other words gives him a reward, the categorical imperative also has a
+sanction, albeit a very insufficient one. He who fulfils the moral law
+attains bliss; that is a spur whether you admit it or not. But he who
+does not fulfil it loses this advantage, otherwise, however, nothing
+happens to him. The sanction, therefore, is onesided. A reward is
+offered for the fulfilment of the moral law, but there is no punishment
+for its non-fulfilment. For it is no penalty if bliss is withheld from
+him who has no conception of it and no desire for it. No matter, then,
+if the moral law be eternal and immutable as the stars above us, if it
+be categorical, if it be fulfilled, not owing to a conception of its
+effect, not from liking for this effect, but from an inner necessity, it
+ceases to be a living force for mankind or to have any practical
+significance; for the single thread which unites it with human
+feelings--the whispered, vague promise of bliss--is too thin. Feeling
+which has no knowledge of this misty bliss, and therefore no yearning
+for it, is uninfluenced by the categorical moral law. Reason is not
+necessarily convinced that it is right and valid. The moral law abides
+like the stars with which it is arbitrarily compared, itself a star in
+airless space, pursuing its course regardless of humanity, having no
+relation to it or connexion with it; regard for or disregard of the
+moral law makes no perceptible difference, and it ceases to have any but
+a kind of astronomical interest for mankind, a purely theoretical
+interest for purposes of scientific observation and calculation, and is
+in no way applicable to the feelings, thoughts and actions of men.
+
+Theological Morality adopts a widely different point of view. Its logic
+compels it to provide the most effective sanctions. God is the lawgiver
+of Morality. He prescribes with dictatorial omniscience what is good,
+what is bad, what should be practised and what avoided. Obedience earns
+a glorious reward, revolt entails the most terrible punishment. Reward
+and punishment are eternal, or may in certain circumstances be so, and
+this, by the way, is cruelty which ill accords with the universal
+goodness ascribed to God. For human understanding will never be
+persuaded, will never be able to grasp, that a sinner, however grave
+and numerous his sins committed during the brief period of the fleeting
+life of man, can ever deserve an eternity of the most fearful
+punishment. The lack of proportion between the deed and the penalty is
+so monstrous that it is felt to be the gravest injustice, against which
+both Reason and feeling revolt. Imagination can conceive hell fire that
+lasts a certain time and has an aim, like life with its praiseworthy and
+wicked deeds, but it boggles at the idea of a hell from which there is
+no escape and the agonies of which are endless.
+
+The Old Testament conceives the sanctions of the moral law enunciated by
+God in a thoroughly realistic manner. Fulfil the commandment "that thy
+days may be long in the land." If you disobey, the curse of the Lord
+will be on you and you will be pursued by His anger unto the fourth
+generation. Christianity considered it dubious to make this life the
+scene of reward and punishment. It is imprudent to let divine justice
+rule here below, so to say, in public, before an audience and
+representatives of the Press who attentively follow the proceedings,
+watch all its details, and can judge whether the verdict is put into
+execution. Prudence demands that the trial should take place in the next
+world, where it is protected from annoying curiosity. Mocking onlookers
+cannot then observe that it is only in the dramas of noble-minded poets
+that in the last act vice is inevitably punished and virtue rewarded,
+while in real life only too often merit starves, suffers humiliation and
+poverty and altogether leads a miserable existence, while sin flourishes
+in an objectionable manner and to the very end revels in all the good
+things of this earth. However, the religious moralists painted such a
+vivid and arresting picture of what awaits the sinners in the next
+world, that if men had not been obdurate in their disbelief they must
+have shudderingly realized it, as if it actually happened in this world.
+Words from the pulpit admonishing men to obey God's law under penalty of
+most terrible punishment were greatly emphasized by the paintings and
+sculpture over the altars and the church doors, where all the tortures
+of hell were depicted by great artists who put all their imagination and
+all their genius into the work.
+
+As innumerable people have testified, these representations were taken
+so literally, not only by the simple-minded masses but also by the more
+highly educated, that they were haunted by them, waking and sleeping,
+and imagined that in their own flesh they felt the torture of flames, of
+boiling pitch, of the prick of the pitchfork as the devil turned them on
+the grid, of the teeth with which the spirits of hell tore their flesh
+from their bones. The fear of hell poisoned many a life up till quite
+recently, especially in Scotland, and kept people in a constant state of
+agitation and anguish which occasionally rose to mad despair. It is
+remarkable that only punishment was so impressively held up to man's
+view, but not reward. Pictures of paradise are much less rich and varied
+than those of hell, and its joys are peculiarly modest. The inventive
+powers of painters, sculptors, and poets did not rise above a
+beautifully illuminated hall where the blessed are ranged around God's
+throne and with folded hands sing hymns of praise to Him, while angels
+play an accompaniment on trumpets and fiddles. A prayer meeting, a choir
+and a concert of music, that is all that Christian eschatology holds out
+as an eternal reward to virtue. It redounds to its credit that it
+assumes a sufficiently modest taste among the good to make them long for
+these joys and find infinite happiness in them.
+
+Islam does not count on such moderation. The joys of paradise that it
+promises are so crudely sensual that they may well arouse lust in coarse
+natures, and can counterbalance the fear of hell fire. The ideas of the
+reward of merit in the hereafter held by the northern nations, Germans
+and Scandinavians, are just as low and coarse. For the Mohamedans
+paradise is a harem; for the worshippers of Odin it is a pot-house where
+there are free drinks and a jolly brawl to end up with. Heroes who fall
+in battle--they knew no virtues but a warlike spirit and contempt of
+death--enter Valhalla, where they partake of the everlasting orgies of
+the gods, drink unlimited quantities of mead and beer, and fight for
+them to their heart's content without taking any harm. The North
+American Indians hope, after leading a model life, to be gathered to the
+Great Spirit, and in the happy hunting grounds of heaven evermore to
+kill abundant game. Only Buddhism comforts the virtuous man with finer
+and more spiritual hopes. From out his world of weariness and pessimism
+it opens up the prospect of Nirvana to him, that is, of the end of all
+feeling, which after all can only be painful, and of all thought, which
+after all is only melancholy and despair, and of the volatilization of
+the personality, the only real release; while it condemns the sinner to
+the worst punishment, continued existence in ever new incarnations.
+
+These are indeed extraordinarily vigorous sanctions, which, though they
+fail to have any effect on the unbeliever, make a very deep impression
+on the believer, and are well fitted to determine his actions. But they
+imply a debasement of the motives for leading a moral life, which are no
+longer the outcome of insight and a convinced desire for good, but the
+result of fear and avidity, a speculation for profit, a prudent flight
+from danger. The practice of morality becomes a safe investment for the
+father of a family who hopes to find his savings augmented by interest
+in the hereafter, and the avoidance of vice becomes a schoolboy's fear
+of punishment. Nevertheless, the view is widely held by superficial,
+practical men that these imaginary and deceptive sanctions of Morality
+cannot be dispensed with, that only the fear of hell can keep the masses
+from giving themselves up to every form of vice and crime, that only the
+promise of paradise is capable of inducing them to act unselfishly and
+make sacrifices, and that all bonds of discipline would be loosened if
+they ceased to believe in a last judgment and an hereafter with its
+rewards and punishments.
+
+This whole system of sanctions in a future life is a transcendental
+projection (according with primitive, childlike thought) of immanent
+practices and forms in the positive administration of justice which are
+transferred to a class of actions that successfully evade it.
+Traditional and customary Law, as well as written Law, puts its whole
+emphasis on sanctions; it partakes itself of the nature of a sanction.
+Without sanctions it has no meaning. It is not kindly counsel, nor
+fatherly admonition, nor wise advice, it is a stern command, it is
+coercion, and this arouses only scorn if it is not armed with the means
+to make itself a reality to which the unwilling must also submit,
+because they cannot help themselves. There is no law, there can be no
+law, which is not supplemented by arrangements that make it binding for
+everyone.
+
+In the British House of Commons it has been customary for many hundred
+years to designate members as the representatives of their particular
+constituency. Only if a member commits a grave offence against the rules
+of the House does he run the risk of the Speaker's calling him by name,
+but this case has not arisen within the memory of man. A disrespectful
+Irish member of Parliament, urged by perverse curiosity, asked the
+Speaker one day: "What would happen if you called me by my name?" The
+Speaker thought for a short time and then answered with impressive
+gravity: "I have no idea, but it must be something terrible." Such a
+mysterious threat of an unknown catastrophe may suffice for a picked
+assembly whose members would no doubt maintain order and observe all the
+rules of parliamentary decency, even if they were not held in check by
+the fear of some dark danger. It would not be sufficient by a long way
+to guarantee the rule of Law in a society which includes individuals of
+the most varied disposition, mind development, education and strength of
+impulse.
+
+Positive Law, as I have shown, presents a very simplified excerpt of
+Morality for the use of coarser natures. It is a summary of the minimum
+of self-denial, consideration for one's fellow men, and the feeling of
+joint responsibility, the observance of which the community must
+pitilessly demand from all its members if it is to continue to exist and
+not fall back within a very short time into the state of Hobbes's war of
+all against all. The necessity of self-preservation makes it a duty for
+the community to provide for the case that one of its members refuses to
+accept the minimum of discipline and to recognize the claims of another
+personality. The community prevents this revolt, which would frustrate
+its aim and endanger its existence, by employing physical force to break
+all resistance to the Law which it must, for the common weal, impose on
+all its members. That is an extraneous compulsion that certainly has
+something brutal and unworthy of man about it and may well arouse
+discomfort in more highly developed minds. It would undoubtedly be more
+dignified and better if there were no need for the handcuffs of the
+police, for prison cells and executioners, if man's own insight and the
+admonition of his conscience were enough to constrain everyone to
+respect the Law, that is, to practise a minimum of Morality.
+
+But the community cannot wait until this stage of moral development has
+been generally attained. It refuses to entrust its existence to the
+spiritual purity of all its members. On principle it disregards
+processes in the consciousness of the individual--I have cited in an
+earlier chapter the few exceptions to this rule: investigation as to
+premeditation, accountability, freedom from undue influence--and keeps
+to actions which alone it judges. It declares itself incompetent to
+pronounce sentence upon a "storm inside a skull," to quote Victor Hugo.
+Its sphere is that of obvious facts. Not until subjective impulses and
+decisions are manifested in outward form does it intervene with methods
+of the same order, with outward coercion. The sanctions of its law are
+material, are punishments and fines. It hits the wrongdoer over the head
+and on his hands and forcibly empties his pockets. To look into his soul
+and set matters to rights there is a task undertaken much later by
+law-givers. It was only after they had remembered that the source of law
+is Morality and that its ultimate aim is not the bare attainment of a
+state of mutual respect for one another's rights, but the education of
+the community to a universal condition of self-discipline, consideration
+and neighbourly love, that the law-givers made a point not only of
+requiting the bad man's misdeeds, but also of trying to elevate him
+morally.
+
+At different times, at different stages of civilization, and according
+to the current views of the universe, society has interpreted in
+different ways the punishment it inflicts and which it carries out by
+forcible means, so as to ensure respect for its laws. Its original
+character is that of revenge for an offence. The wrongdoer has offended
+the community, it attacks him furiously and breaks every bone in his
+body just as an angry individual would do in his first access of
+indignation. That is Draco's penal code. That is the law of literal
+requital. The special characteristic of this sanction is its violence
+and lack of moderation. It does not trouble to find the right proportion
+between punishment and crime. It does not carefully and fairly weigh the
+force of its blows. The club falls with a frightful crash, but its
+dynamical effect is not calculated beforehand in kilogrammetres. "The
+stab of a knife is not measured," as an Italian proverb says. Thus
+conceived, punishment has something primitive about it, something
+intolerably barbarous. The community does the very things it was
+created, by Morality and Law, to prevent; it exercises the right of the
+stronger against the challenger; it promotes war, not that of all
+against all, but of all against one, and its punishment is an act of
+war.
+
+In a strongly religious society which lives in the idea of immediate
+community with the deity, every transgression of the law is felt to be a
+sin against the gods, and the punishment becomes an expiation offered to
+them so as to avert their dangerous anger from the commonwealth. In the
+administration of justice dim religious ideas are mingled, punishment is
+tinged with a veneer of civilization, the culprit is, so to speak,
+offered as a sacrifice to the gods. This supernatural view was prolonged
+by the Inquisition, at least for a certain class of offences, until
+almost modern times.
+
+When society awakens to the consciousness that its bond of union is
+Morality, and that its most important task is to educate its members in
+Morality, it introduces the concept of betterment into its penal system.
+It wants not only to punish the wrongdoer sharply but also to transform
+him inwardly and purify him. He is to feel that the punishment is not
+only a requital but a mental benefit. In the Austrian army, until
+corporal punishment was abolished, it was a rule that the soldier, after
+being flogged, should approach the officer on duty and say, as he
+saluted, "I thank you for the kind punishment." That is the attitude
+that society, when it gives a moralizing tendency to its penal laws,
+wishes the person who has been punished to attain. In this there is much
+pleasing self-deception not unmixed with a good deal of hypocrisy. Penal
+law offers the wrongdoer but little scope for improvement.
+
+All misdemeanours and crimes flow from three sources: ignorance, passion
+and innate, anti-social self-seeking. Ignorance is the main, almost the
+exclusive cause of wrongdoing among young criminals who have been badly
+brought up or neglected, who have never had anything but bad examples
+before them, and who cannot distinguish between good and evil. Society
+may hope to improve these by right treatment; it must not punish, it
+must educate them. Men who commit crimes from passion are those who
+possess a consciousness of Morality and a conscience, who know quite
+well what is right and what wrong, but have not sufficient strength of
+character, that is, not an adequately developed power of inhibition, to
+resist an opportunity, a temptation, a turmoil of their instincts. To
+want to improve them is senseless, for they are not bad; they are weak,
+or at any rate not strong enough. What they need is a strengthening of
+their character, of their faculty of inhibition, and to achieve this is
+beyond the power of society. All it can do is to humiliate the guilty
+party by publicly exposing his lapse and by condemning him, and then
+grant a delay of the execution of the sentence. In so doing it says to
+him: "You have acted basely and ought to be ashamed of yourself, now go
+and do not do it again." If the warning is unavailing and he relapses,
+then the earlier sentence, as well as the new one, is executed. Fear of
+this is added to his motives for acting honestly, and may possibly
+strengthen his resistance to the onslaught of his evil instincts. But
+his good conduct will always be at stake in the struggle between his
+power of inhibition and his instincts, and the stronger of the two will
+always carry the day. And finally, upon the man whose organic
+disposition makes him anti-social, upon Lombroso's born criminal,
+society can have no educative effect whatever. It is a hopeless case.
+Society can render him harmless, it cannot alter him. Consideration for
+his neighbour will never find a place in his consciousness. He will
+never learn to resist his impulses and desires. His spiritual
+insensibility makes him indifferent to the sufferings of others.
+Incapable of continuous and equable effort, he will always want to prey
+on society by begging, deceiving, stealing and robbing. He has no
+conscience and does not hear the voice of society in his mind. He knows
+nothing of good and evil, which are both empty phrases for him, words
+without any meaning, and he is convinced that he acts rightly every time
+he seeks to satisfy his appetites. In his case it is love's labour lost
+to try and give a moral meaning to the sanctions of the law. Punishment
+is not directed against the soul of the born criminal, only against his
+body. It overwhelms him, fetters him and makes him either for the time
+being, or permanently, harmless; but his organic tendency continues to
+sway him, and whenever he recovers his liberty he is the same as before
+he was punished.
+
+The Mystics give to punishment the character of fatherly and chastening
+discipline by which the sinner expiates his crime and is purged of the
+sin; thus it purifies him and leads him back to the state of innocence;
+a kind of anticipatory hell fire which enables him to enter paradise. In
+"Gorgias" Plato says explicitly: "He who is punished is liberated from
+the evil of his soul." And the Apostle Paul teaches us: "Punishment is
+ordained for the betterment of man." Criminal anthropology recognizes
+that it is useless to expect this moralizing and redeeming effect from
+punishment. Lombroso altogether rejects punishment as a means of
+discipline and expiation, and before him Bentham and J. S. Mill, and
+simultaneously with him and after him Fouillée, Guyau and Maudsley
+adopted the same view. According to them the sanction of criminal law,
+which extends and completes it and ensures its efficacy, can have no
+other aim than the law itself, and this aim is to defend society against
+its active enemies, if possible by converting them, if necessary by
+forcible subjugation.
+
+In a book which is full of interest, but whose value is considerably
+diminished by a strong admixture of mysticism, "Esquisse d'une morale
+sans obligation ni sanction," M. Guyau goes much farther than the
+criminal anthropologists and sociological opponents of punishment, and
+expresses the somewhat paradoxical view that "the real sanction seems to
+imply complete freedom from punishment for the crime committed, as
+punishment for any action that has been accomplished is useless." It is
+quite correct that no punishment under the sun can undo what has been
+done. But it is not feasible for that reason to dispense with all
+punishment for misdeeds and to call this systematic freedom from
+punishment a sanction. Guyau overlooks the fact that the punishment is
+directed not to the crime but the perpetrator. It certainly alters
+nothing in a past transgression of the law, and that is not its object,
+but it may possibly have the effect of preventing fresh misdeeds on the
+part of the same wrongdoer or of others, and that would justify it.
+
+If society must renounce the idea of improving the misdemeanant,
+especially the man whose organic tendencies make him a criminal and who
+is the most dangerous and commits the most numerous and worst crimes, it
+nevertheless assumes that it makes an impression on morally doubtful
+characters by punishing misdemeanours and crimes, that it warns them and
+prevents them from erring. That is the theory of intimidation, which
+also has many opponents. It will hardly be denied that psychologically
+it is well founded. The conception of the evil consequences for himself
+that his action may entail strengthens the impulsive man's power of
+inhibition when he is about to do wrong, and perhaps enables him to
+overcome his immoral instinct. Only it is difficult to measure the force
+which the thought of punishment adds to the effort of inhibition. This
+force does not come into question at all with the man who sins
+occasionally from passion. The flood of his impulses sweeps away all
+barriers which reason may oppose, and their power of resistance is not
+materially increased by the fear of consequences, because the mental
+horizon is completely darkened at the time of the storm and no prevision
+is possible. The criminal from organic causes exercises no inhibition.
+He knows that society condemns his actions, but he is convinced of his
+personal right to carry them out, and fears no punishment, because he
+hopes to escape it, and tries his utmost by means of planning, prudence
+and self-control to outwit society. The theory of intimidation is not
+applicable to these two classes of criminals, and they constitute a
+large proportion of the army of wrongdoers against which society has to
+defend itself by force.
+
+But there remains the great number of mediocre natures whose sympathy
+with their fellow men, the emotional foundation of the subjective
+impulse to Morality, is only slightly developed, who have a superficial
+veneer of Morality, who act honourably out of prudence, but who would
+feel no repugnance towards perpetrating profitable misdeeds, if they
+were certain that they would incur no risk. These insipid characters
+whose emotional temperature oscillates round about freezing point and
+who are incapable of great excitement, of passion, would see no reason
+to resist any temptation, to disregard any favourable opportunity, if
+the penal code, the judge and the policeman did not warn them to be
+careful. For this kind of man the penal sanction is really a useful and
+perhaps an indispensable means of prevention, and it has been thought
+out and developed by the community with a view to such people.
+
+Not content with theoretical considerations, people have also appealed
+to practical experience to test the theory of intimidation. In some
+countries capital punishment was either legally abolished or tacitly
+suppressed, the judges either refraining from pronouncing the sentence
+on the prisoner or the head of the state, when appealed to, commuting it
+by an act of pardon to loss of liberty. Statistics seemed to show that
+serious crimes meriting the death penalty increased, and capital
+punishment was reintroduced or the practice of systematic pardons was
+abandoned, with the alleged result that the worst crimes grew less
+numerous. I express myself doubtfully, because I do not think that the
+statistics were sufficiently conclusive. They embraced too small a
+number of cases and too short a period of time. It cannot be
+conclusively proved that the abolition of the death penalty resulted in
+an increase of capital crimes; but it is certain that crimes were never
+more frequent or more horrible than in the times when criminal justice
+was most cruel and made use of the most terrible sanctions. Up to the
+dawn of modern times legal torture was administered, at every street
+corner there were gallows, the poor wretch under sentence of death was
+pinched with red-hot pincers, the executioner tore the flesh from his
+bones, poured boiling pitch over him, cut out his tongue, hacked off his
+hands, broke him on the wheel or burnt him alive; executions were a sort
+of public entertainment or popular holiday, and efforts were made to
+attract as many spectators as possible; every inhabitant of one of the
+larger towns was familiar from childhood with the horrid spectacle of
+mutilated human bodies writhing in torture, and there rang in his ears
+the echo of the screams of pain and of the shrill death rattle of the
+victims. But these impressions were so far from intimidating the gaping
+crowd that many hurried from the place of execution to commit the most
+execrable crimes, the punishment of which they had just witnessed;
+consequently punishments have gradually been made less cruel, and the
+public is excluded from executions, which clearly indicates a decisive
+rejection of the theory of intimidation.
+
+The truth is that the severity of the punishment has no effect upon the
+frequency or the savagery of crimes. The criminality of a community
+depends on the value and emphasis of the moral education which it
+bestows upon the rising generation. It can prevent its members, at any
+rate the average, normal type, from developing into criminals. But the
+fear of punishment has no deterrent effect upon those whose criminal
+impulses have not been subjugated by social discipline. The severity of
+the punishment does not contribute anything to the defence of society.
+It only proves that the lawgiver and the criminal judges are on the
+lowest level of civilization which corresponds to a widespread and
+barbarous criminality, and that their modes of thought and feeling are
+horribly like those of the criminals whom they sentence to torture, the
+gallows, and the wheel.
+
+Positive law aims at defending society, and tries to attain its end by
+punishing transgressions. It provides no reward for conscientious
+obedience. The law has no honours to bestow on blamelessness and virtue.
+Society felt the want of this and made attempts to encourage honourable
+conduct by conferring distinctions, just as it tries to intimidate vice
+by punishing crime. These attempts were not particularly happy. The
+bestowal of titles and orders is no recognition of virtue, but a means
+adopted by governments to ensure devotion to power. An arrangement was
+made in some places to honour model citizens in public and crown them
+with laurels, but it soon came to grief owing to indifference and
+mockery. A private individual wanted to fill this gap in social
+institutions. The Count of Montyon, a son of the eighteenth century,
+whose philosophy he had imbibed, instituted the prizes for virtue which
+are distributed annually by the French Academy. They are bestowed on
+modest integrity in humble circumstances which has manifested a sense of
+duty, neighbourly love and self-sacrifice. This friend of man has had
+few imitators, and that is understandable. Sound common sense realizes
+that rewards like the Montyon prizes for virtue do not with the
+infallibility of a natural law fall to the lot of merit, but are nearly
+always adjudicated to the prizewinner by chance, by recommendation, and
+by all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with virtue; and it
+seems unjust that among equal claims some should be satisfied while
+others, the great majority, are not. It would be vain to contend that
+one virtue which goes empty-handed is not unfairly treated when another
+gets a benefit on which it has not counted, and that in a moral
+character, such as alone would be eligible for a prize for virtue, there
+is no room for envy. That would be the moral of the Gospel concerning
+the labourers who came at the eleventh hour, which has met with
+opposition from others besides the contemporaries of Jesus.
+
+On the whole, the community has never felt called upon to solve the
+moral problem of the reward of virtue. It has always contented itself
+with the punishment of vice and has given its law threatening, but not
+encouraging, sanctions. This attitude shows that it has always had a
+clear conception of its moral task. In its positive law it never
+included anything but that minimum of Morality that was absolutely
+necessary to its existence, and without which it would dissolve into its
+original elements, its order would be replaced by chaos, by the war of
+all against all. It must insist on the observance of this minimum; it
+must use forcible means to achieve this. But it does not feel justified
+in demanding more than this minimum, because more is not claimed by its
+instinct of self-preservation. A surplus of virtue over and above the
+amount necessary for the life of society is desirable; but it does not
+lie within the scope of the natural functions of the community,
+determined by its organic necessities, to achieve this by compulsion
+and the provision of legal rewards as an encouragement. It is the
+business of the individual to work at his own moral improvement, and the
+community cannot interfere directly in the matter. It is enough that it
+encourage this work indirectly by bestowing care on the culture and
+education of the individual, by making it the duty of its public schools
+to inculcate good principles, and by creating a public opinion which
+surrounds all the activities of higher morality with admiration, respect
+and gratitude. The moral education of the individual is not an object
+with which laws are concerned; it is the result of the constant, vital
+influence of the community, and can have no sanction other than the
+increase of well-being of every single person within the social union,
+which is a natural consequence of raising the moral level of the
+community.
+
+The penal sanctions of positive law have a gross materialism about them
+corresponding to the definite concreteness of the actions with which
+positive law deals. The broad field of Morality, however, which is
+outside the narrow sphere of the laws, has no room for sanctions of a
+material nature. The penalties prescribed by law are directed to actions
+which, if they became general, would in a very short space of time
+result in the dissolution of society. The community essays by forcible
+measures to prevent this kind of action, and these measures more or less
+fulfil their aim, whether you interpret their use on the theory of
+discipline, of expiation and purification by repentance, of improvement
+and moral re-birth, or of intimidation. All these theories were invented
+later on, after the community had been convinced by experience that
+punishment, if it does not entirely prevent crime, at least limits it
+sufficiently to make the continued existence of society possible, and
+more or less to guarantee to its members the safety of their life, their
+property and their personal dignity.
+
+Against transgressions of the moral law, the results of which are not
+immediately obvious, such as ruthless selfishness, blunted sympathy and
+lack of active neighbourly kindness, the community does not proceed with
+forcible measures; firstly, because it cannot establish their existence
+convincingly and hence cannot try them in a court of justice, and
+secondly, because it does not recognize them as constituting an
+immediate danger to its existence. Now, as the sanctions set up by
+society are not applicable to these transgressions, an individual whose
+mind does not penetrate very far into matters is disquieted, for
+accustomed as he is to the spectacle of the steady justice of the state,
+he seeks the counterpart in the forms of this justice in the world of
+Morality, and does not discover it at the first glance. He asks
+anxiously where are the police, the public prosecutor, the examining
+magistrate, the criminal court, the prison for sins against Morality,
+and invents them, since he cannot find them. He transfers to the
+hereafter the sanctions of Morality, which are not visible on earth. He
+cannot make up his mind to renounce them, because the fact that sins
+against the moral law go unpunished would seem to him to indicate
+intolerable anarchy, comparable with the state of a community where
+everyone could murder, rob and mutilate to his heart's content without
+incurring the risk of the least personal unpleasantness.
+
+In the sphere of the moral law punishment certainly does not follow hot
+foot upon crime, but it nevertheless does not fail to appear, and
+becomes visible when the eye is capable of embracing long periods of
+time and of tracing intricate connexions. The sanctions of the moral law
+differ from those of criminal law, but they are not wanting. They are of
+a subjective and of an objective character. The subjective punishment
+for a sin against the laws of Morality is remorse. It is inflicted by
+the inner judge who rules in the consciousness of the individual, by
+conscience, and penetrates to the very deepest depths of a person's mind
+which no outward punishment imposed by the community ever reaches. It is
+not only religious and political martyrs who endure torture and death
+with proud serenity, conscious that they are morally immeasurably
+superior to their executioners; even common criminals remain perfectly
+unmoved by their punishment and regret only that they are weaker than
+their captors. Prisons are full of convicts who look upon their
+condition as that of prisoners of war. They have been worsted in their
+battle with law. That seems to them a misfortune but not a disgrace.
+They are neither humble nor contrite, but revengeful. They are
+determined and ready to take up the duel with society as soon as an
+opportunity offers and they may hope to do so with some prospect of
+success.
+
+But remorse is an unresisting submission to the verdict of conscience
+and the consciousness of one's own unworthiness. It is the recognition
+of the justice of the sentence which brands one, and the constant,
+anguished realization that one's personality has been deservedly
+humiliated, dishonoured and deprived of its rights. As a spiritual
+process, remorse causes the sinner continually to relive the misdeed he
+committed, while at the same time he is fully conscious of its atrocity.
+The ego becomes dual, one part active, the other watching and judging.
+The one again and again perpetrates its misdeed, the other looks on
+horrified and suffers agonies. It is one long torture and disgrace of
+self. Remorse condemns the sinner perpetually to repeat in his mind the
+deed which fills him with horror of himself. This state of mind is the
+nearest approach to eternal damnation in hell. There is only one means
+of temporary escape: to extinguish memory by narcotics. That is why
+remorse not seldom leads to drunkenness. Shakespeare, with a poet's
+infallible insight into the soul, has grasped and depicted the nature of
+remorse, the uninterrupted, torturing presence of the misdeed in man's
+consciousness. Lady Macbeth sees her hands ever stained with the blood
+of the innocent royal victim whom she herself did not even murder, and
+she complains that "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this
+little hand." Leontes, in the "Winter's Tale," on hearing of Hermione's
+alleged death, of which he believes himself guilty, mourns:
+
+                            "Once a day I'll visit
+  The chapel where they lie; and tears shed there
+  Shall be my recreation: so long as nature
+  Will bear up with this exercise, so long
+  I daily vow to use it."
+
+Remorse is the most effective of the subjective sanctions of Morality;
+it is almost too effective, for owing to its duration and severity the
+punishment easily grows disproportionate to the crime. But it has one
+great disadvantage, it affects only better natures who have an active
+conscience and spiritual delicacy, while it spares the wicked who have
+no conscience, who perpetrate their misdeeds contentedly, without a
+qualm, and regret them only when they are discovered and lead to
+unpleasantness.
+
+Nevertheless, the actions of these hardened sinners do not go quite
+unpunished. Moral law always takes vengeance for transgressions, but not
+directly on the evildoer. In addition to the subjective, it also has an
+objective sanction; when it is violated retribution falls on the
+community. The masses have a dim idea that every evil deed meets with
+requital and express it in the proverb that "Though the mills of God
+grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." They have noticed that
+the curse of an evil deed never fails to come, and is consummated with
+crushing force, only that it does not happen at once. It seems
+objectionably unjust that the culprit should not feel the effect of his
+crime, whilst others do who were not born when it was perpetrated. But
+the concept of retributory justice is as little applicable to the
+far-reaching relations in the life of humanity as to the actions of the
+laws of Nature, for instance gravity or electricity. Morality is, as I
+have shown, an adaptation of the species to the natural conditions in
+which it is forced to live. Morality, therefore, has an aim, which is to
+make social life in common possible for the individual, this life alone
+enabling him to maintain his existence amid the conditions obtaining on
+this earth. The discipline which Morality imposes on the individual
+leaves him a certain amount of free play. If he escapes from this
+discipline to a certain small extent which does not threaten the
+existence of society, this revolt has no ill effect upon the life of the
+species, the latter has no grounds for punishing him, and the only, yet
+sufficient, sanction of the loose Morality of an undisciplined
+individual lies in the fact that he is more or less inferior to the most
+perfect type of the species, and visibly bears the stamp of his
+worthlessness in his character, his bearing and his mode of thought. But
+if in his disregard of Morality the individual goes so far as to
+frustrate its aim and endanger the existence of society, then the latter
+must either find ways and means of rendering the culprit harmless or
+else it overlooks his misdeed and thereby becomes an accessory and
+justly suffers the evils consequent upon a deterioration of Morals which
+is universally tolerated.
+
+The means by which a society must defend the Morality necessary to its
+existence can only be spiritual, for it is not a question of breaches of
+the positive law which result in the intervention of justice and of
+material penalties, but of a disregard of the commands of Morality,
+which are not drawn up in paragraphs. Public opinion suffices to rouse
+the individual who despises the Moral law to an uncomfortable sense of
+his unworthiness; if he finds himself treated with contempt and sees
+disapproval and dislike in everyone's face, either he will be spurred
+to an effort to overcome his immoral instincts or his self-respect will
+suffer from the universal contempt with which he meets; and this
+suffering is his punishment, therefore it is the sanction of a breach of
+the Moral law.
+
+If public opinion does not keep careful and severe watch, such as may be
+termed the function of a higher moral police, then inevitably the moral
+tone of the whole society will sink to a lower level, and this will
+result in making life harder and more difficult, and in certain
+circumstances may lead to dissolution. This is not a theoretical
+assumption, but an observed fact, a lesson taught by history. It tells
+us of epochs in which the licentiousness of individuals, favoured by a
+society too dull, weak and indifferent to stand up against bad examples,
+succeeded in corrupting all classes. Such a period is exemplified by the
+fall of Rome. Common natures indulged and wallowed in every vice, the
+better ones felt such disgust for a life without nobility and virtue
+that they discarded it, and the community lost all excuse of joint
+responsibility and became so loosely knit together that it was incapable
+of common effort or sacrifice, and collapsed miserably at the first
+onslaught of a foreign aggressor tempted by its depravity.
+
+The disintegration of a society, the sanction of its sins against
+Morality, is a slow process. It does not often take place
+catastrophically, with theatrical effect, so that even a dull observer
+can grasp the connexion between cause and effect. But whoever
+investigates closely will realize that all evils from which society
+suffers, which make life more bitter and harder for its members, are
+ultimately due to defective Morality. What are class struggles with
+their consequent hostilities between groups of the same nation, their
+coercion and damage, but manifestations of self-seeking, lack of
+consideration and injustice, that is, of Immorality? Would they be
+possible if members of all classes, capitalists and workers,
+agriculturists and townsmen, rulers and subjects were inspired by
+neighbourly kindness, understanding and appreciation of the needs,
+pretensions and feelings of their opponents, and by a spirit of
+self-sacrifice? Would the decay of character, the arbitrariness and
+arrogance of the mighty, the cowardly slavishness of the masses, with
+the resultant rottenness of public affairs, be conceivable if
+individuals were conscious of their dignity and their duty to themselves
+and the community, and if they had the strength and the determination to
+overcome their fear of men? Could wars of aggression bring ruin upon
+mankind if leading personalities did not give way to the desire for
+outward honours, to the hunger for power, to avarice, to the itch of
+vanity, that is to the lowest forms of selfishness, and if the masses
+out of stupidity or fear of a mental effort, and out of dread for their
+personal responsibility did not allow themselves to be misused for base
+purposes?
+
+Thus we find insufficient Morality in individuals, or the complete lack
+of it, to be at the root of all evils with which the community is
+afflicted, and we are justified in conceiving war, party quarrels,
+collisions between groups representing different interests, revolutions,
+in fact, all tragedies of life in societies with the suffering and
+destruction they entail, as the penal sanction of sins against Morality.
+Morality, which was created to facilitate life for the individual or to
+make it at all possible for him, is no longer able to fulfil its aim,
+and the society finds itself by its own fault back in the condition of
+misery and fear, owing to which its instinct of self-preservation
+originally forced it to make the effort of setting up the Moral law.
+Even the most merciless zealot cannot wish for a more efficacious and
+painful punishment of Immorality.
+
+But Morality does not possess the sanction of punishment alone, it has
+also the more amiable one of reward. We have seen that by strengthening
+the faculty of inhibition it raises the individual to a higher level of
+organic development, that by the inculcation of consideration and
+neighbourly kindness it affords the community the possibility of working
+together peacefully and profitably. But it does more than that. It gives
+life an incomparably higher value than when it is dull and uniform, by
+enriching and beautifying it with heroism and with ideals.
+
+Ideals and heroism are direct creations of Morality and inconceivable
+without it. The ideal is a conception of perfection; the thought of
+attaining it is accompanied by the most pleasurable emotions, and the
+individual regards it as his life's task to strive for it. The struggle
+for the ideal implies effort at all times, renunciation of the ease of a
+thoughtless and care-free existence, an endless series of difficult
+victories over appetites clamouring for immediate satisfaction, that is,
+constant work in the service of Morality. He who has an ideal is never
+troubled by the problem of the meaning of life. His life has an aim and
+significance. He knows whither he goes, why he lives, for what he works.
+He knows nothing of the doubts of the aimless wanderer, of the
+discouraging consciousness of one's own uselessness, and his assurance,
+his conviction that his efforts are useful and worthy come very near to
+happiness. Heroism is the noblest victory of a thinking and volitional
+personality over selfishness; it is altruism which rises to
+self-sacrifice, the proud subjugation by Reason of the most primitive
+and powerful of all instincts, that of self-preservation. It is the
+highest achievement of which Morality is capable. It is never developed
+for the profit of an individual, but always for that of a community, for
+a thought, for an ideal. His heroic conduct raises the hero out of the
+rut of his existence, liberates him from the trammels of his
+individuality and enlarges this to represent a community, its longings,
+its resolutions, its determination. At the moment of his heroic action
+the hero lives innumerable lives, the lives of all for whom he risks his
+own, and if death reaches him, it can destroy only his single person,
+but cannot put an end to the dynamic activity of the community which is
+included in the hero, while he is magnificently elevated far above
+himself. The faculty of forming an ideal of existence and activity, and
+of rising to the heights of heroism, is the royal reward of Morality
+which the perfect subjection of animal instincts to the rule of human
+Reason has achieved. Its punishment for those retrograde individuals who
+never learn to control their instinctive reflex actions is that they are
+denied the sight of the glory of the ideal, that heroism is unknown and
+incomprehensible to them, that they lead their lives fettered and
+imprisoned, unconscious of any task, without prospect or exaltation, as
+if they dwelt in a cellar or in a dark dungeon. These are the sanctions
+of Morality. It has no others, nor does it need them.
+
+In one passage of the book cited above Guyau makes the doubting remark:
+"Who can tell us whether Morality is not ... at one and the same time a
+beautiful and useful art? Perhaps it bewitches us and deceives us." Let
+us assume that it is an illusion. That would not detract from its value
+for mankind. Is not all our knowledge of the world, is not our whole
+view of Nature an illusion? We are made conscious of the universe by its
+qualities, and these qualities are conferred on it by our senses. But
+all knowledge that we derive from our senses is an illusion. For the
+senses do not convey reality to us, but the modifications which the
+influence of reality produces in our sense organs. The universe has
+neither sound nor colour nor scent. But we perceive it as sounding,
+coloured and scented. These qualities we attribute to reality are
+illusions of our senses, but these illusions make up all the beauty of
+the world which without them would be dumb, blind and without charm for
+us.
+
+Life for us is an unspeakably oppressive riddle. Has it an aim, and, if
+so, what? We do not know. All thought only leads to the conclusion: life
+is its own aim and end, we live for life's sake. And this conclusion is
+no solution of the problem. Then Morality appears, and not only makes
+life easier and possible, but even shows us an aim, if not for
+universal, at least for individual life. That aim is the humanization of
+the animal, the spiritualization of man, the exaltation and enrichment
+of the individual by means of sympathy, neighbourly kindness, a sense of
+joint responsibility, and the subjection of Instinct to Reason which, as
+far as we know, is the noblest product of Nature. It is possible that
+Morality, which hides the eerie unintelligibility of life from us, is an
+illusion. Blessed be the illusion which makes life worth living.
+
+
+  Printed in England by Cassell & Company, Limited, London, E.C.4.
+  F17.122
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Morals and the Evolution of Man, by
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