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THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM.
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THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
THE
NATURE OF GOODNESS
BY
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
ALFORD PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Rtoerjrtbe prcaj* Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BT GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November, 1903
A. F. P.
BONITATE SINGULARI MULTI8 DILECTAE
VENUSTATE LITTERIS CON81LIIS PRAESTANTI
NUPER E DOMO ET GAUDIO MEO EREPTAE
PREFACE
THE substance of these chapters was de-
livered as a course of lectures at Harvard
University, Dartmouth and Wellesley Col-
leges, Western Reserve University, the Uni-
versity of California, and the Twentieth Cen-
tury Club of Boston. A part of the sixth
chapter was used as an address before the
Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and an-
other part before the Philosophical Union of
Berkeley, California. Several of these audi-
ences have materially aided my work by their
searching criticisms, and all have helped to
clear my thought and simplify its expression.
Since discussions necessarily so severe have
been felt as vital by companies so diverse, I
venture to offer them here to a wider audi-
ence.
Previously, in "The Field of Ethics," I
marked out the place which ethics occupies
viii PREFACE
among the sciences. In this book the first
problem of ethics is examined. The two vol-
umes will form, I hope, an easy yet serious in-
troduction to this gravest and most perpetual
of studies.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS
I. Difficulties of the investigation 3
II. Gains to be expected 8
III. Extrinsic goodness 10
IV. Imperfections of extrinsic goodness 15
V. Intrinsic goodness 16
VI. Relations of the two kinds 19
VII. Diagram 22
CHAPTER II
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
I. Enlargement of the diagram 31
II. Greater and lesser good 36
III. Higher and lower good 37
IV. Order and wealth 40
V. Satisfaction of desire 44
VI. Adaptation to environment 46
VII. Definitions 61
CHAPTER III
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
I. The four factors of personal goodness .... 67
II. Unconsciousness 60
III. Reflex action . 65
x CONTENTS
IV. Conscious experience 68
V. Self-consciousness 69
VI. Its degrees 75
VII. Its acquisition 77
VIII. Its instability 80
CHAPTER IV
SELF-DIRECTION
I. Consciousness a factor 89
II. (A) The intention 92
III. (1) The end, aim, or ideal 93
IV. (2) Desire 96
V. (3) Decision 101
VI. (B) The volition 102
VII. (1) Deliberation 104
VIII. (2) Effort 106
IX. (3) Satisfaction 113
CHAPTER V
SELF-DEVELOPMENT
1. Reflex influence of self-direction 119
II. Varieties of change 120
III. Accidental change 122
IV. Destructive change 122
V. Transforming change 125
VI. Development 126
VII. Self-development 130
VIII. Method of self-development 133
IX. Test of self-development 137
X. Actual extent of personality 139
XI. Possible extent of personality 144
XII. Practical consequences 146
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER VI
SELF-SACRIFICE
I. Difficulties of the conception 151
II. It is impossible 154
III. It is a sign of degradation 155
IV. It is needless 156
V. It is irrational 158
VI. Its frequency 159
VII. Definition 164
VIII. Its rationality 166
IX. Distinguished from culture 173
X. Its self-assertion 175
XI. Its incalculability 179
XII. Its positive character 183
XIII. Conclusion 185
CHAPTER VII
NATURE AND SPIRIT
I. Summary of the preceding argument .... 191
II. Spirit superior to nature 193
III. Naturalistic tendency of the fine arts .... 195
IV. Naturalistic tendency of science and philosophy 200
V. Naturalism in social estimates 202
VI. Self-consciousness burdensome 204
VII. Impossibility of full conscious guidance . . . 207
VIII. Advantages of unconscious action 210
\
CHAPTER VIII
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS
I. Advantage of conscious guidance 219
II. Example of piano-playing 224
xii CONTENTS
III. The mechanization of conduct 226
IV. Contrast of the first and third stages .... 233
V. The cure for self-consciousness 238
VI. The revision of habits 239
VII. The doctrine of praise 240
VIII. The propriety of praise . 246
THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS
IN undertaking the following discussion I
foresee two grave difficulties. My reader may
well feel that goodness is already the most
familiar of all the thoughts we employ, and
yet he may at the same time suspect that there
is something about it perplexingly abstruse
and remote. Familiar it certainly is. It at-
tends all our wishes, acts, and projects as
nothing else does, so that no estimate of its
influence can be excessive. When we take a
walk, read a book, make a dress, hire a ser-
vant, visit a friend, attend a concert, choose a
wife, cast a vote, enter into business, we al-
ways do it in the hope of attaining something
good. The clue of goodness is accordingly a
veritable guide of life. On it depend actions
4 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
far more minute than those just mentioned.
"We never raise a hand, for example, unless
with a view to improve in some respect our
condition. Motionless we should remain fo'
ever, did we not believe that by placing the
hand elsewhere we might obtain something
which we do not now possess. Consequently
we employ the word or some synonym of it
during pretty much every waking hour of our
lives. Wishing some test of this frequency
I turned to Shakespere, and found that he
uses the word "good" fifteen hundred times,
and its derivatives "goodness," "better," and
" best," about as many more. He could not
make men and women talk right without in-
cessant reference to this directive conception.
But while thus familiar and influential when
mixed with action, and just because of that
very fact, the notion of goodness is bewilder-
ingly abstruse and remote. People in general
do not observe this curious circumstance.
Since they are so frequently encountering
goodness, both laymen and scholars are apt
to assume that it is altogether clear and re-
quires no explanation. But the very reverse
is the truth. Familiarity obscures. It breeds]
instincts and not understanding. So inwoven
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 5
has goodness become with the very web of
life that it is hard to disentangle. We cannot
easily detach it from encompassing circum-
stance, look at it nakedly, and say what in
itself it really is. Never appearing in practi-
cal affairs except as an element, and always
intimately associated with something else, we
are puzzled how to break up that intimacy and
give to goodness independent meaning. It is
as if oxygen were never found alone, but only
in connection with hydrogen, carbon, or some
other of the eighty elements which compose
our globe. We might feel its wide influence,
but we should have difficulty in describing
what the thing itself was. Just so if any
chance dozen persons should be caUed on to
say what they mean by goodness, probably
not one could offer a definition which he would
be willing to hold to for fifteen minutes.
It is true, this strange state of things is not
peculiar to goodness. Other familiar concep-
tions show a similar tendency, and just about
in proportion, too, to their importance. Those
which count for most in our lives are least!
easy to understand. What, for example, do
we mean by love? Everybody has experi-
enced it since the world began. For a cen-
6 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
tury or more, novelists have been fixing our
attention on it as our chief concern. Yet no-
body has yet succeeded in making the matter
quite plain. What is the state? Socialists
are trying to tell us, and we are trying to tell
them ; but each, it must be owned, has about
as much difficulty in understanding himself
as in understanding his opponent, though the
two sets of vague ideas still contain reality
enough for vigorous strife. Or take the very
simplest of conceptions, the conception of
force that which is presupposed in every
species of physical science ; ages are likely to
pass before it is satisfactorily defined. Now
the conception of goodness is something of
this sort, something so wrought into the total
framework of existence that it is hidden
from view and not separately observable. We
know so much about it that we do not under-
stand it.
For ordinary purposes probably it is well not
to seek to understand it. Acquaintance with
the structure of the eye does not help seeing.
To determine beforehand just how polite we
should be would not facilitate human inter-
course. And possibly a completed scheme of
goodness would rather confuse than ease our
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 1
daily actions. Science does not readily con-
nect with life. For most of us all the time,
and for all of us most of the time, instinct is
the better prompter. But if we mean to be
ethical students and to examine conduct sci-
entifically, we must evidently at the outset
come face to face with the meaning of good-
ness. I am consequently often surprised on
looking into a treatise on ethics to find no
definition of goodness proposed. The author
assumes that everybody knows what goodness
is, and that his own business is merely to
point out under what conditions it may be
had. But few readers do know what good-
ness is. One suspects that frequently the
authors of these treatises themselves do not,
and that a hazy condition of mind on this
central subject is the cause of much loose talk
afterwards. At any rate, I feel sure that no-
thing can more justly be demanded of a writer
on ethics at the beginning of his undertaking
than that he should attempt to unravel the
subtleties of this all-important conception.
Having already in a previous volume marked
out the Field of Ethics, I believe I cannot
wisely go on discussing the science that I love,
until I have made clear what meaning I every-
8 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
where attach to the obscure and familiar word
good. This word being the ethical writer's
chief tool, both he and his readers must learn
its construction before they proceed to use it.
To the study of that curious nature I dedicate
this volume.
II
To those who join in the investigation I
cannot promise hours of ease. The task is an
arduous one, calling for critical discernment
and a kind of disinterested delight in study-
ing the high intricacies of our personal struc-
ture. My readers must follow me with care,
and indeed do much of the work themselves,
I being but a guide. For my purpose is not\
so much to impart as to reveal. Wishing
merely to make people aware of what has
always been in their minds, I think at the
end of my book I shall be able to say, " These
readers of mine know now no more than they
did at the beginning." Yet if I say that, I
hope to be able to add, " but they see vastly
more significance in it than they once did,
and henceforth will find the world interesting
in a degree they never knew before." In
attaining this new interest they will have ex-
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 9
perienced too that highest of human pleasures,!
the joy of clear, continuous, and energetic)
thinking. Few human beings are so inert
that they are not ready to look into the dark
places of their minds if, by doing so, they
can throw light on obscurities there.
I ought, however, to say that I cannot
promise one gain which some of my readers
may be seeking. In no large degree can I
induce in them that goodness of which we
talk. Some may come to me in conscious
weakness, desiring to be made better. But
this I do not undertake. My aim is a scien-
tific one. I am an ethical teacher. I want
to lead men to understand what goodness is,
and I must leave the more important work of
attracting them to pursue it to preacher and
moralist. Still, indirectly there is moral gain
to be had here. One cannot contemplate long
such exalted themes without receiving an im-
pulse, and being lifted into a region where
doing wrong becomes a little strange. When,
too, we reflect how many human ills spring
from misunderstanding and intellectual ob-
scurity, we see that whatever tends to illu-
minate mental problems is of large conse-
quence in the practical issues of life.
10 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
In considering what we mean by goodness,
we are apt to imagine that the term applies
especially, possibly entirely, to persons. It
seems as if persons alone are entitled to be
called good. But a little reflection shows
that this is by no means the case. There are
about as many good things in the world as
good persons, and we are obliged to speak of
them about as often. The goodness which
we see in things is, however, far simpler and
more easily analyzed than that which appears
in persons. It may accordingly be well in
these first two chapters to say nothing what-
ever about such goodness as is peculiar to
persons, but to confine our attention to those
phases of it which are shared alike by persons
and things.
Ill
How then do we employ the word "good "?
I do not ask how we ought to employ it, but
how we do. For the present we shall be
engaged in a psychological inquiry, not an
ethical one. We need to get at the plain
facts of usage. I will therefore ask each
reader to look into his own mind, see on what
occasions he uses the word, and decide what
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 11
meaning he attaches to it. Taking up a few
of the simplest possible examples, we will
through them inquire when and why we call
things good.
Here is a knife. When is it a good knife ?
Why, a knife is made for something, for
cutting. Whenever the knife slides evenlyN
through a piece of wood, unimpeded by any-
thing in its own structure, and with a minimum
of effort on the part of him who steers it, when \
there is no disposition of its edge to bend or
break, but only to do its appointed work effec-
tively, then we know that a good knife is a,t^\
work. Or, looking at the matter from anotherX
point of view, whenever the handle of the
knife neatly fits the hand, following its lines
and presenting no obstruction, so that it is a
pleasure to use it, we may say that in these ^\
respects also the knife is a good knife. That
is, the knife becomes good through adaptation
to its work, an adaptation realized in its cleav-
age of the wood and in its conformity to
hand. Its goodness always has reference to\
something outside itself, and is measured by I "
its performance of an external task. A sim-
ilar goodness is also found in persons. When
we call the President of the United States
12 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
good, we mean that he adapts himself easily
and efficiently to the needs of his people.
He detects those needs before others fully
feel them, is sagacious in devices for meeting
them, and powerful in carrying out his patri-
otic purposes through whatever selfish oppo-
sition. The President's goodness, like the
knife's, refers to qualities within him only so
far as these are adjusted to that which lies
beyond.
Or take something not so palpable. What
glorious weather ! When we woke this morn-
ing, drew aside our curtains and looked
out, we said " It is a good day ! " And of
what qualities of the day were we thinking?
We meant, I suppose, that the day was well
fitted to its various purposes. Intending to
go to our office, we saw there was nothing to
hinder our doing so. We knew that the
streets would be clear, people in amiable mood,
business and social duties would move forward
easily. Health itself is promoted by such sun-
shine. In fact, whatever our plans, in calling
the day a good day we meant to speak of it
as excellently adapted to something outside
itself.
This signification of goodness is lucidly
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 13
put in the remark of Shakespere's Portia,
" Nothing I see is good without respect."
We must have some respect or end in mind
in reference to which the goodness is reck-
oned. Good always means good for. That
little preposition cannot be absent from our
minds, though it need not audibly be uttered.
The knife is good for cutting, the day for
business, the President for the blind needs
of his country. Omit the for, and goodness
ceases. To be bad or good implies external
reference. To be good means to further
something, to be an efficient means; and the
end to be furthered must be already in mind
before the word good is spoken.
The respects or ends in reference to which
goodness is calculated are often, it is true, ob-
scure and difficult to seize if one is unfamiliar
with the currents of men's thoughts. I some-
times hear the question asked about a mer-
chant, "Is he good?" a question natural
enough in churches and Sunday-schools, but
one which sounds rather queer on " 'change."
But those who ask it have a special respect in
mind. I believe they mean, " Will the man
meet his notes ? " In their mode of thinking
a merchant is of consequence only in financial
14 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
life. When they have learned whether he is
capable of performing his functions there,
they go no farther. He may be the most
vicious of men or a veritable saint. It will
make no difference in inducing commercial
associates to call him good. For them the
word indicates solely responsibility for busi-
ness paper.
A usage more curious still occurs in the
nursery. There when the question is asked,
" Has the baby been good ? " one discovers
by degrees that the anxious mother wishes to
know if it has been crying or quiet. This
elementary life has as yet not acquired posi-
tive standards of measurement. It must be
reckoned in negative terms, failure to dis-
turb. Heaven knows it does not always at-
tain to this. But it is its utmost virtue,
quietude.
In short, wherever we inspect the usage of
the word good, we always find behind it an
implication of some end to be reached. Good
is a relative term, signifying promotive of,
conducive to. The good is the useful, and
it must be useful for something. Silent or
spoken, it is the mental reference to something
else which puts all meaning into it. So Ham-
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 15
let says, " There 's nothing either good orj
bad, but thinking makes it so." If I have in
mind A as an end sought, then X is good.
But if B is the end, X is bad. X has no
goodness or badness of its own. No new
quality is added to an object or act when it
becomes good.
IV
But this result is disappointing, not to say
paradoxical. To call a thing good only with
reference to what lies outside itself would be
almost equivalent to saying that nothing is
good. For if the moment anything becomes
good it refers all its goodness to something
beyond its own walls, should we ever be able
to discover an object endowed with goodness
at all ? The knife is good in reference to
the stick of wood ; the wood, in reference to
the table ; the table, in reference to the writ-
ing; the writing, in reference to a reader's
eyes ; his eyes, in reference to supporting his
family where shall we ever stop ? We can
never catch up with goodness. It is always
promising to disclose itself a little way be-
yond, and then evading us, slipping from
under our fingers just when we are about to
16 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
touch it. This meaning of goodness is self-
contradictory.
And it is also too large. It includes more
in goodness than properly belongs there. If
we call everything good which is good for,
everything which shows adaptation to an end,
then we shall be obliged to count a multitude
of matters good which we are accustomed to
think of as evil. Filth will be good, for it pro-
motes fevers as nothing else does. Earth-
quakes are good, for shaking down houses.
It is inapposite to urge that we do not want
fevers or shaken houses. Wishes are provided
no place in our meaning of good. Goodness
merely assists, promotes, is conducive to any
result whatever. It marks the functional char-
acter, without regard to the desirability of
that which the function effects. But this is
unsatisfactory and may well set us on a search
for supplementary meanings.
V
When we ask if the Venus of Milo is a
good statue, we have to confess that it is good
beyond almost any object on which our eyes
have ever rested. And yet it is not good for
anything ; it is no means for an outside end.
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 17
Rather, it is good in itself. This possibility
that things may be good in themselves was
once brought forcibly to my attention by a
trivial incident. Wandering over my fields
with my farmer in autumn, we were surveying
the wrecks of summer. There on the ploughed
ground lay a great golden object. He pointed
to it, saying, " That is a good big pumpkin."
I said, " Yes, but I don't care about pump-
kins." "No," he said, "nor do I." I said,
" You care for them, though, as they grow
large. You called this a good big one."
" No ! On the contrary, a pumpkin that is
large is worth less. Growing makes it coarser.
But that is a good big pumpkin." I saw there
was some meaning in his mind, but I could
not make out what it was. Soon after I heard
a schoolboy telling about having had a " good
big thrashing." I knew that he did not like
such things. His phrase could not indicate
approval, and what did it signify ? He coupled
the two words good and big ; and I asked my-
self if there was between them any natural con-
nection? On reflection I thought there was. If
you wish to find the full pumpkin nature, here
you have it. All that a pumpkin can be is set
forth here as nowhere else. And for that mat-
18 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
ter, anybody who might foolishly wish to ex
plore a thrashing would find all he sought in
this one. In short, what seemed to he intended
was that all the functions constituting the
things talked about were present in these in-
stances and hard at work, mutually assisting
one another, and joining to make up such
a rounded whole that from it nothing was
omitted which possibly might render its or-
ganic wholeness complete.
Here then is a notion of goodness widely un-
like the one previously developed. Goodness
now appears shut up within verifiable bounds
where it is not continuaUy referred to some-
thing which lies beyond. An object is here
reckoned not as good for, but as good in it-
self. The Venus of Milo is a good statue not
through what it does, but through what it
is. And perhaps it may conduce to clearness
if we now give technical names to our two
contrasted conceptions and call the former
extrinsic goodness and the latter intrinsic.
Extrinsic goodness will then signify the ad-\
justment of an object to something which lies
outside itself ; intrinsic will say that the many
powers of an object are so adjusted to one
another that they cooperate to render the ob-
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 19
ject a firm totality. Both will indicate rela-
tionship; but in the one case the relations
considered are extra se, in the other inter se.
Goodness, however, will everywhere point to
organic adjustment.
If this double aspect of goodness is as clear
and important as I believe it to be, it must
have left its record in language. And in fact
we find that popular speech distinguishes
worth and value in much the same way as
I have distinguished intrinsic and extrinsic
goodness. To say that an object hasy#alu is
to declare it of consequence in **pfpirftnp,p tn
something other than itself. To speak of its
wjjrjth is to call attention to what its own
nature involves. In a somewhat similar fash-
ion Mr. Bradley distinguishes the extension
and harmony of goodness, and Mr. Alexander
the right and the perfect.
VI
When, however, we have got the two sorts
of goodness distinctly parted, our next busi-
ness is to get them together again. Are they
in fact altogether separate ? Is the extrinsic
goodness of an object entirely detachable from
its intrinsic ? I think not. They are invari-
20 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
ably found together. Indeed, extrinsic good-
ness would be impossible in an object which
did not possess a fair degree of intrinsic.
How could a table, for example, be useful for
holding a glass of water if the table were not
well made, if powers appropriate to tables
were not present and mutually cooperating ?
Unless equipped with intrinsic goodness, the
table can exhibit no extrinsic goodness what-
ever. And, on the other hand, intrinsic good-
ness, coherence of inner constitution, is always
found attended by some degree of extrin-
sic goodness, or influence over other things.
Nothing exists entirely by itself. Each ob-
ject has its relationships, and through these
is knitted into the frame of the universe.
Still, though the two forms of goodness are
thus regularly united, we may fix our atten-
tion on the one or the other. According as
we do so, we speak of an object as intrinsi-
cally or extrinsically good. For that matter,
one of the two may sometimes seem to be
present in a preponderating degree, and to
determine by its presence the character of the
object. In judging ordinary physical things,
I believe we usually test them by their ser-
viceability to us by their extrinsic goodness,
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 21
that is rather than bother our heads with
asking what is their inner structure, and how
full of organization they may be. Whereas,
when we come to estimate human beings, we
ordinarily regard it as a kind of indignity to
assess primarily their extrinsic goodness, i. e.,
to ask chiefly how serviceable they may be
and to ignore their inner worth. To sum up
a man in terms of his labor value is the moral
error of the slaveholder.
If, however, we seek the highest point to
which either kind of excellence may be car-
ried, it will be found where each most fully
assists the other. But this is not easy to im-
agine. When I set a glass of water on the table,
the table is undoubtedly slightly shaken by
the strain. If I put a large book upon it, the
strain of the table becomes apparent. Putting
a hundred pound weight upon it is an experi-
ment that is perilous. For the extrinsic good-
ness of the table is at war with the intrinsic ;
that is, the employment of the table wears it
out. In doing its work and fitting into the
large relationships for which tables exist, its
inner organization becomes disjointed. In
time it will go to pieces. We can, however,
imagine a magic table, which might be con-
22 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
solidated by all it does. At first it was a little
weak, but by upholding the glass of water
it grew stronger. As I laid the book on
it, its joints acquired a tenacity which they
lacked before ; and only after receiving the
hundred pound weight did it acquire the full
strength of which it was capable. That would
indeed be a marvelous table, where use and in-
ner construction continually helped each other.
Something like it we may hereafter find pos-
sible in certain regions of personal goodness,
but no such perpetual motion is possible to
things. For them employment is costly.
VII
I have already strained my readers' atten-
tion sufficiently by these abstract statements
of matters technical and minute. Let us
stop thinking for a while and observe. I will
draw a picture of goodness and teach the eye
what sort of thing it is. We have only to fol-
low in our drawing the conditions already laid
down. We agreed that when an object was
good it was good for something ; so that if
A is good, it must be good for B. This in-
strumental relation, of means to end, may well
be indicated by an arrow pointing out the direc-
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS 23
tion in which the influence moves. But if B
is also to be good, it too must be connected
by an arrow with another object, C, and this
in the same way with D. The process might
evidently be continued forever, but will be
sufficiently shown in the A a
three stages of Figure 1.
Here the arrow always ex-
presses the extrinsic good-
ness of the letter which lies
behind it, in reference to
the letter which lies before.
Fig- *
But drawing our diagram
in this fashion and finding a little gap be-
tween D and A, the completing mind of man
longs to fill up that gap. We have no war-
rant for doing anything of the sort ; but let
us try the experiment and see what effect will
follow. Under the new ar- A
rangement we find that not
only is D good for A, but
that A, being good for B
and for C, is also good for
D. To express these facts
in full it would be neces- ^ " w
rig. 2.
sary to put a point on
each end of the arrow connecting A and D.
24 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
But the same would be true of the relation
between A and B ; that is, B, being good for
C and for D, is also good for A. Or, as
similar reasoning would hold throughout the
figure, all the arrows appearing there should
be supplied with heads at both ends. And
there is one further correction. A is good
for B and for C ; that is, A is good for C.
The same relation should also be indicated be-
tween B and D. So that to render our diagram
complete it would be necessary to supply it with
two diagonal arrows having double heads. It
would then assume the following form.
Here is a picture of in-
trinsic goodness. In this
figure we have a whole re-
presented in which every
part is good for every other
part. But this is merely
. 3 a pictorial statement of
the definition which Kant
once gave of an organism. By an organism,
he says, we mean that assemblage of active
and differing parts in which each part is both
means and end. Extrinsic goodness, the re-
lation of means to end, we have expressed in
our diagram by the pointed arrow. But as
25
soon as we filled in the gap between D and
A each arrow was obliged to point in two
directions. We had an organic whole instead
of 'a lot of external adjustments. In such a
whole each part has its own function to per-
form, is active ; and all must differ from one
another, or there would be mere repetition
and aggregation instead of organic supple-
mentation of end by means. An organism
has been more briefly defined, and the curious
mutuality of its support expressed, by saying
that it is a unit made up of cooperant parts.
And each of these definitions expresses the
notion of intrinsic goodness which we have
already reached. Intrinsic goodness is the
expression of the fullness of function in the
construction of an organism.
I have elsewhere (The Field of Ethics, p.
122) explained the epoch-making character in
any life of this conception of an organism.
Until one has come in sight of it, he is a child.
When once he begins to view things organic .*
cally, he is at least in outline a scientific! v
an artistic, a moral man. Experience there
becomes coherent and rational, and the dis-
jointed modes of immaturity, ugliness, and
sin no longer attract. At no period of the
26 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
world's history has this truly formative con-
ception exercised a wider influence than to-
day. It is accordingly worth while to depict
it with distinctness, and to show how fully it
is wrought into the very nature of goodness.
REFERENCES ON THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF
GOODNESS
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. ii. ch. ii.
Bradley's Appearance and Reality, ch. xxv.
Sidgwick's Methods, bk. i. ch. ix.
Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. iii.
Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iv. ch. ii.
Ladd's Philosophy of Conduct, ch. iii.
Kant's Practical Reason, bk. i. ch. ii.
The Meaning of Good, by G. L. Dickinson.
n
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
n
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
OUR diagram of goodness, as drawn in the
last chapter, has its special imperfections, and
through these cannot fail to suggest certain
erroneous notions of goodness. To these I
now turn. The first of them is connected
with its own mode of construction. It will
he rememhered that we arbitrarily threw a*,
arrow from D to A, thus making what was,
hitherto an end become a means to its own
means. Was this legitimate ? Does any such
closed circle exist ?
It certainly does not. Our universe con-
tains nothing that can be represented by that
figure. Indeed if anywhere such a self-suffi-
cing organism did exist, we could never know
it. For, by the hypothesis, it would be alto-
gether adequate to itself and without rela-
tions beyond its own bounds. And if it were
32 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
thus cut off from connection with everything
except itself, it could not even affect our
knowledge. It would he a closed universe
within our universe, and be for us as good as
zero. We must own, then, that we have no
acquaintance with any such perfect organism,
while the facts of life reveal conditions widely
unlike those here represented.
What these conditions are becomes appa-
rent when we put significance into the letters
hitherto employed. Let our diagram become
a picture of the organic life of John. Then
A might represent his physical life, B his
business life, C his civil, D his domestic ; and
we should have asserted that each of these
several functions in the life of John assists
all the rest. His physical health favors his
commercial and political success, while at the
same time making him more valuable in the
domestic circle. But home life, civic eminence,
and business prosperity also tend to confirm
'his health. In short, every one of these fac-
tors in the life of John mutually affects and
is affected by all the others.
But when thus supplied with meaning, Fig-
ure 3 evidently fails to express all it should
say. B is intended to exhibit the business
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
33
life of John. But this is surely not lived
alone. Though called a function of John, it
is rather a function of the community, and he
merely shares it. I had no right to confine
to John himself that which plainly stretches
beyond him. Let us correct the figure, then,
by laying off another beside it to repre-
sent Peter, one of those who shares in the
business experience of John. This common
business life
of theirs, B, A *
we may say,
enables Pe-
ter to grat-
ify his own
adventurous
disposition,
E; and this
tastes, F. But
Fig. 4.
again stimulates his scientific
Peter's eminence in science
commends him so to his townsmen that he
comes to share again C, the civic life of John.
Yet as before in the case of John, each of
Peter's powers works forward, backward, and
across, constructing in Peter an organic
whole which still is interlocked with the life
of John. Each, while having functions of
his own, has also functions which are shared
with his neighbor.
34
THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
Nor would this involvement of functions
pause with Peter. To make our diagram
really representative, each of the two individ-
uals thus far drawn would need to be sur-
rounded by a multitude of others, all sharing in
some degree the functions of their neighbors.
Or rather each individual, once connected
with his neighbors, would find all his functions
affected by all those possessed by his entire
group. For
fear of mak-
ing my figure
unintelligible
through its
fullness of re-
lations, I have
sent out arrows in all direc-
tions from the letter A only;
but in reality they would
run from all to all. And I
have also thought that we
persons affect one another
quite as decidedly through the wholeness of
our characters as we do through any interlock-
ing of single traits. Such totality of relation-
ship I have tried to suggest by connecting the
centres of each little square with the centres
H
Fig. 5.
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 35
of adjacent ones. John as a whole is thus
shown to be good for Peter as a whole.
We have successively found ourselves obliged
to broaden our conception until the goodness
of a single object has come to imply that of a
group. The two phases of goodness are thus
seen to be mutually dependent. Extrinsic
goodness or serviceability, that where an ob-
ject employs an already constituted wholeness
to further the wholeness of another, cannot
proceed except through intrinsic goodness, or
that where fullness and adjustment of func-
tions are expressed in the construction of an
organism. Nor can intrinsic goodness be
supposed to exist shut up to itself and parted
from extrinsic influence. The two are merely
different modes or points of view for assessing
goodness everywhere. Goodness in its mosti
elementary form appears where one object is]
connected with another as means to end. But,
the more elaborately complicated the relation 1
becomes, and the richer the entanglement of
means and ends internal and external in
the adjustment of object or person, so much
ampler is the goodness. Each object, in order
to possess any good, must share in that of the
universe.
36 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
II
But the diagram suggests a second ques-
tion. Are all the functions here represented
equally influential in forming the organism ?
Our figure implies that they are, and I see
no way of drawing it so as to avoid the im-
plication. But it is an error. In nature our
powers have different degrees of influence.
We cannot suppose that John's physical, com-
mercial, domestic, and political life will have
precisely equal weight in the formation of his
being. One or the other of them will play
a larger part. Accordingly we very properly
speak of greater goods and lesser goods,
meaning by the former those which are more
largely contributory to the organism. In our
physical being, for example, we may inquire
whether sight or digestion is the greater good ;
and our only means of arriving at an answer
would be to stop each function and then note
the comparative consequence to the organism.
Without digestion, life ceases ; without sight,
it is rendered uncomfortable. If we are con-
sidering merely the relative amounts of bod-
ily gain from the two functions, we must call
digestion the greater good. In a table, excel-
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 37
lence of make is apt to be a greater good than
excellence of material, the character of the
carpentry having more effect on its durability
than does the special kind of wood employed.
The very doubts about such results which
arise in certain cases confirm the truth of the
definition here proposed ; for when we hesi-
tate, it is on account of the difficulty we find
in determining how far maintenance of the
organism depends on the one or the other of
the qualities compared. The meaning of the
terms greater and lesser is clearer than their
application. A function or quality is counted
a greater good in proportion as it is believed
to be more completely of the nature of a
means.
Ill
Another question unsettled by the diagram
is so closely connected with the one just ex-
amined as often to be confused with it. It
is this : yft fl-
rank, or grade? TMj arfi nflt ? and this
qualitative difference is indicated by the terms
higher and lower, as the quantitative differ-
ence was by greater and less. But differ-
ences of rank are more slippery matters than
38 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
difference of amount, and easily lend them-
selves to arbitrary and capricious treatment.
Tn ordinary speech we are apt to employ the
words high and low as mere signs of approval
or disapproval. We talk of one occupation,
enjoyment, work of art, as superior to another,
and mean hardly more than that we like it
better. Probably there is not another pair of
terms current in ethics where the laudatory
usage is so liable to slip into the place of the
descriptive. Our opponent's ethics alwaysi
seem to embody low ideals, our own to bej
of a higher type. Accordingly the terms
should not be used in controversy unless we
have in mind for them a precise meaning
other than eulogy or disparagement.
And such a meaning they certainly may pos-
sess. As the terjfr greater good is employed to
indicate the degree in which a Quality .ser vfis
I ' ' <l I _ __ V
as_a means, so may the higher good nhow
the degree in which it is &U- end. Digestion,
which was just now counted a greater good
than sight, might still be rightly reckoned
a lower ; for while it contributes more largely
to the constitution of the human organism, it
on that very account expresses less the pur-
poses to which that organism will be put. It
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 39
is true we have seen how in any organism
every power is both means and end. It would
be impossible, then, to part out its powers,
and call some altogether great and others
altogether high. But though there is pur-
pose in all, and construction in all, certain are
more markedly the one than the other. Some
express the superintending functions ; others,
the subservient. Some condition, others are
conditioned by. In man, for example, the
intellectual powers certainly serve our bodily
needs. But that is not their principal office ;
rather, in them the aims of the entire human
being receive expression. To abolish the dis-
tinction of high and low would be to try to
obliterate from our understanding of the world
all estimates of the comparative worth of its
parts ; and with these estimates its rational
order would also disappear. Such attempts
have often been made. In extreme polytheism
there are no superiors among the gods and no
inferiors, and chaos consequently reigns. A
similar chaos is projected into life when, as in
the poetry of Walt Whitman, all grades of
importance are stripped from the powers of
man and each is ranked as of equal dignity
with every other.
40 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
That there is difficulty in applying the dis-
tinction, and determining which function is
high and which low, is evident. To fix the
purposes of an object would often be presump-
tuous. With such perplexities I am not con-
cerned. I merely wish to point out a perfectly
legitimate and even important signification of
the__tgnna_Jbigh and k>w, quite apart from
their popular employment as laudatory or de-
preciative epithets. It surely is not amiss to
call the legibility of a book a higher good
than its shape, size, or weight, though in each
of these some quality of the book is expressed.
IV
A further point of possible misconception
in our diagram is the number of factors re-
presented. As here shown, these are but four.
They might better be forty. The more richly
functional a thing or person is, the greater
its goodness. Poverty of powers is every-
where a form of evil. For how can there be
largeness of organization where there is little to
organize ? Or what is the use of organization
except as a mode of furnishing the smoothest
and most compact expression to powers?
Wealth and order are accordingly everywhere
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 41
the double traits of goodness, and a chief
test of the worth of any organism will be the
diversity of the powers it includes. Through-
out my discussion I have tried to help the
reader to keep this twofold goodness in
mind by the use of such phrases as " fullness
of organization."
Yet it must be confessed that between the
two elements of goodness there is a kind of
opposition, needful though both are for each
other. Order has in it much that is repressive ;
and wealth in the sense of fecundity of
powers is, especially at its beginning, apt to
be disorderly. When a new power springs*
into being, it is usually chaotic or rebellious J
It has something else to attend to besides bring-
ing itself into accord with what already exists.
There is violence in it, a lack of sobriety, and
only by degrees does it find its place in the
scheme of things. This is most observable in
living beings, because it is chiefly they who
acquire new powers. But there are traces of
it even among things. A chemical acid and
base meeting, are pretty careless of everything
except the attainment of their own action.
Human beings are born, and for some time
remain, clamorous, obliging the world around
42 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
to attend more to them than they to it. There
is ever a confusion in exuberant life which
bewilders the onlooker, even while he admits
that life had better be.
The deep opposition between these con
trasted sides of goodness is mirrored in the
conflicting moral ideals of conservatism and
radicalism, of socialism and individualism,
whicn have never been absent from the soci-
eties of men, nor even, I believe, from those of
animals. Conservatism insists on unity and
order; radicalism on wealthy life, diversified
powers, particular independence. Either, left
to itself, would crush society, one by empty-
ing it of initiative, the other by splitting it
into a company of warring atoms. Ordinarily
each is dimly aware of its need of an oppo-
nent, yet does not on that account denounce
him the less, or less eagerly struggle to expel
him from provinces asserted to be its own.
By temperament certain classes of the com-
munity are naturally disposed to become cham-
pions of the one or the other of these sup-
plemental ideals. Artists, for the most part,
incline to the ideal of abounding life, exult in
each novel manifestation which it can be made
to assume, and scoff at order as Philistinism.
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 43
Moralists, on the other hand, lay grievous
stress on order, as if it had any value apart
from its promotion of life. Assuming that
sufficient exuberance will come, unfosteredby
morality, they shut it out from their charge,
make duty to consist in checking instinct, and
devote themselves to pruning the sprouting
man. But this is absurdly to narrow ethics,
whose true aim is to trace the laws involved
in the construction of a good person. In such
construction the supply of moral material, and
the fostering of a wide diversity of vigorous
powers, is as necessary as bringing these powers
into proper working form. Richness of char*
acter is as important as correctness. The
world's benefactors have often been one-side^
and faulty men. None of us can be complete j
and we had better not be much disturbed ovei
the fact, but rather set ourselves to gro^w
strong enough to carry off our defects.
Because ethics has not always kept its eyes
open to this obvious duality of goodness it ha?
often incurred the contempt of practical men.
The ethical writers of our time have done bet-
ter. They have come to see that the goodness
of a person or thing consists in its being ai
richly diversified as is possible up to the limit
ucu\J7cu>
WVY\ ^M. vft, v
44 5THB NATURE OF GOODNESS
of harmonious working, and also in being or-
derly up to the Limit of repression of powers.
Beyond either of these limits evil begins.
What I have expressed in my diagram as the
fullest organization is intended to lie within
them.
V
It remains to compare the view of good-
ness here presented with two others which have
met with wide approval. The competence of
my own will be tested by seeing whether it
can explain these, or they it. Goodness is
sometimes defined as that which satisfies de-
sire. Things are not good in themselves, but
only as they respond to human wishes. A
certain combination of colors or sounds is good,
because I like it. A republic we Americans
consider the best form of government because
we believe that this more completely than any
other meets the legitimate desires of its peo-
ple. I know a little boy who after tasting
with gusto his morning's oatmeal would turn
for sympathy to each other person at table
with the assertive inquiry, " Good ? Good ?
Good ? " He knew no good but enjoyment,
and this was so keen that he expected to find it
repeated in each of his friends. It is true we
CuWLc&u) UHA&, ^^r* ?fe-
$o/uu a- cAn<u<yy v\ft*S i
^
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 45
often call actions good which are not immedi-
ately pleasing ; for example, the cutting off
of a leg which is crushed past the possibility
of cure. But the leg, if left, will cause still
more distress or even death. In the last an-| V
I ' ' .r o n
alysis the word good will be found everywhere!
to refer to some satisfaction of human desire.''
If we count afflictions good, it is because we
believe that through them permanent peace
may best be reached. And rightly do those
name the Bible the Good Book who think that
it more than any other has helped to alleviate
the woes of man.
With this definition I shall not quarrel.
So far as it goes, it seems to me not incorrect.
In all good I too find satisfaction of desire.
Only, though true, the definition is in my
judgment vague and inadequate. For we shall
still need some standard to test the goodness of
desires. They themselves may be good, and
some of them are better than others. It is
good to eat candy, to love a friend, to hate a
foe, to hear the sound of running water, to
practice medicine, to gather wealth, learning,
or postage stamps. But though each of these
represents a natural desire, they cannot all be
counted equally good. They must be tried by
46 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
some standard other than themselves. For de-
sires are not detachable facts. Each is signifi-
cant only as a piece of a life. In connection
with that life it must be judged. And when
we ask if any desire is good or bad, we really
inquire how far it may play a part in company
with other desires in making up a harmonious
existence. By its organic quality, accordingly,
we must ultimately determine the goodness of
whatever we desire. If it is organic, it cer-
tainly will satisfy desire. But we cannot re-
verse this statement and assert that whatever
satisfies desire will be organically good. My
own mode of statement is, therefore, clearer
and more adequate than the one here exam-
ined, because it brings out fully important
considerations which in this are only implied.
//Whatever contributes to the solidity and wealth
of an organism is, from the point of view of
\that organism, good.
VI
A second inadequate definition of goodnessi
is that it is adaptation to environment. This I 1 -
is a far more important conception than the
preceding ; but again, while not untrue, is
still, in my judgment, partial and ambiguous.
When its meaning is made clear and exact, it
seems to coincide with my own ; for it points
out that nothing can be separately good, but
becomes so through fulfillment of relations.
Each thing or person is surrounded by man
others. To them it must fit itself. Bern
but a part, its goodness is found in servin
that whole with which it is connected. Tha
is a good oar which suits well the hands of
the rower, the row-lock of the boat, and the
resisting water. The white fur of the polar
bear, the tawny hide of the lion, the camel's
hump, giraffe's neck, and the light feet of the
antelope, are all alike good because they adapt
these creatures to their special conditions of
existence and thus favor their survival. Nor
is there a different standard for moral man.
His actions which are accounted good arc
called so because they are those through
which he is adapted to his surroundings, fitted
for the society of his fellows, and adjusted
with the best chance of survival to his encom-
passing physical world.
While I have warm approval for much that
appears in such a doctrine, I think those
who accept it may easily overlook certain im-
portant elements of goodness. At best it is
48 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
a description of extrinsic goodness, for it sep-
arates the object from its environment and
makes the response of the former to an exter-
nal call the measure of its worth. Of that
inner worth, or intrinsic goodness, where full-
ness and adjustment of relations go on within
and not without, it says nothing. Yet I have
shown how impossible it is to conceive one of
these kinds of goodness without the other.
But a graver objection still or rather the
same objection pressed more closely is this.
The present definition naturally brings up the
picture of certain constant and stable sur-
roundings enclosing an environed object which
is to be changed at their demand. No such
state of things exists. There is no fixed en-
vironment. It is always fixable. Every envfc
ronment is plastic and derives its character!,
at least partially, from the environed objecti
Each stone sends out its little gravitative and
chemical influence upon surrounding stones,
and they are different through being in its
neighborhood. The two become mutually af-
fected, and it is no more suitable to say that
the object must adapt itself to its environment
than that the environment must be adapted to
its object.
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
Indeed, in persons this second form of state-
ment is the more important ; for the forcing
of circumstances into accordance with humai
needs may be said to be the chief business oi
human life. The man who adapts himself to"
his ignorant, licentious, or malarial surround-
ings, is not a type of the good man. Of
course disregard of environment is not good
either. Circumstances have their honorable
powers, and these require to be studied, re-
spected, and employed. Sometimes they are
so strong as to leave a person no other course
than to adapt himself to them. He cannot
adapt them to himself. Plato has a good story
of how a native of the little village of Seri-
phus tried to explain Themistocles by means
of environment. " You would not," he said
to the great man, " have been eminent if you
had been born in Seriphus." " Probably not,"
answered Themistocles, " nor you, if you had
been born in Athens."
The definition we are discussing, then, is
not true indeed it is hardly intelligible
if we take it in the one-sided way in which it
is usually announced. The demand for adap-
tation does not proceed exclusively from en-
vironment, surroundings, circumstance. The
50 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
stone, the tree, the man, conforms these to it-
self as truly as it is conformed to them. There
is mutual adaptation. Undoubtedly this is im-
plied in the definition, and the petty employ-
ment of it which I have been attacking would
be rejected also by its wiser defenders. But
when its meaning is thus filled out, its vague-
ness rendered clear, and the mutual influence
which is implied becomes clearly announced,
the definition turns into the one which I have
offered. Goodness is the expression of the
largest organization. Its aim is everywhere
to bring object and environment into fullest
cooperation. We have seen how in any organic
relationship every part is both means and end.
Goodness tends toward organism ; and so far
as it obtains, each member of the universe re-
ceives its own appropriate expansion and dig-
nity. The present definition merely states the
great truth of organization with too objective
an emphasis ; as that which found the satis-
faction of desire to be the ground of good-
ness over-emphasized the subjective side. The
one is too legal, the other too aesthetic. Yet
each calls attention to an important and sup-
plementary factor in the formation of good-
ness.
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS 51
VII
In closing these dull defining chapters, in
which I have tried to sum up the notion of
goodness in general a conception so thin
and empty that it is equally applicable to
things and persons it may be well to gather
together in a single group the several defini-
tions we have reached.
Intrinsic goodness expresses the fulfillment
of function in the construction of an organ-
ism.
By an organism is meant such an assem-
blage of active and differing parts that in it
each part both aids and is aided by all the
others.
Extrinsic goodness is found when an object
employs an already constituted wholeness to
further the wholeness of others.
A part is good when it furnishes that and
that only which may add value to other parts.
A greater good is one more largely con-
tributory to the organism as its end.
A higher good is one more fully expressive
of that end.
Probably, too, it will be found convenient
to set down here a couple of other definitions
52 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
which will hereafter be explained and em-
ployed. A good act is the expression of self-
hoojiassfiEKice. By an ideal we mean a mental
picture of a better state of existence than we
feel has actually been reached.
REFERENCES ON MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOOD-
NESS
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. iii. ch. i. 10.
Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. bk. i. ch. i. 2.
Mackenzie's Manual of Ethics, ch. v. 13 & ch. vii. 2.
Janet's Theory of Morals, ch. iii.
Dewey's Outlines of Ethics, Ixvii.
Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. 3-
m
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
ra
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
IN the preceding chapters I have examined
only those features of goodness -which are
common alike to persons and to things.
Goodness was there seen to be the expres-
sion of function in the construction of an
organism. That is, when we ask if any be-
ing, object, or quality is good, we are really
inquiring how organic it is, how much it con-
tributes of riches or solidity to some whole
or other. There must, then, be as many
varieties of goodness as there are modes of
constructing organisms. A special set of
functions will produce one kind of organism,
a different set another ; and each of these will
express a peculiar variety of goodness. If,
then, into the construction of a person condi-
tions enter which are not found in the making
of things, these conditions will render personal
58 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
goodness to some extent unlike the goodness
of everything else.
Now I suppose that in the contacts of life
we all feel a marked difference between per-
sons and things. We know a person when
we see him, and are quite sure he is not a
thing. Yet if we were called on to say pre-
cisely what it is we know, and how we know
it, we should find ourselves in some difficulty.
No doubt we usually recognize a human being
by his form and motions, but we assume that
certain inner traits regularly attend these out-
ward matters, and that in these traits the real
ground of difference between person and thing
is to be found. How many such distinguish-
ing differences exist ? Obviously a multitude ;
but these are, I believe, merely various mani-
festations of a few fundamental character-
istics. Probably all can be reduced to four,
they are sfjf -consciousness, sj3ldm^tiQn,l
self-development, and self-sacrifice. Wherever *
these four traits are found, we feel at once
that the being who has them is a person.
Whatever creature lacks them is but a thing,
and requires no personal attention. I might
say more. These four are so likely to go
together that the appearance of one gives
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 59
confidence of the rest. If, for example, we
discover a being sacrificing itself for another,
even though we have not previously thought
of it as a person, it will so stir sympathy that
we shall see in it a likeness to our own kind.
Or, finding a creature capable of steering itself,
of deciding what its ends shall be, and adjust-
ing its many powers to reach them, we can-
not help feeling that there is much in such a
being like ourselves, and we are consequently
indisposed to refer its movements to mechanic
adjustment.
If, then, these are the four conditions of
personality, the distinctive functions by which
it becomes organically good, they will evidently
need to be examined somewhat minutely be-
fore we can rightly comprehend the nature
of personal goodness, and detect its separation
from goodness in general. Such an exami-
nation will occupy this and the three succeed-
ing chapters. But I shall devote myself exclu-
sively to such features of the four functions
as connect them with ethics. Many interest-
ing metaphysical and psychological questions
connected with them I pass by.
60 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
II
There is no need of elaborating the asser-
tion that a person is a conscious being. To
this all will at once agree. More important
is it to inspect the stages through which we
rise to consciousness, for these are often over-
looked. People imagine that they are self-
conscious through and through, and that they
always have been. They assume that the en-
tire life of a person is the expression of con-
sciousness alone. But this is erroneous. To
a large degree we are allied with things.
While self-consciousness is our distinctive
prerogative, it is far from being our only
possession. Rather we might say that all
which belongs to the under world is ours too,
while self-consciousness appears in us as a
kind of surplusage. No doubt it is by the
distinctive traits, those which are not shared
with other creatures, that we define our
special character ; but these are not our sole
endowment. Our life is grounded in uncon-j
sciousness, and with this, as students of)
personal goodness, we must first make ac-J
quaintance.
Yet how can we become acquainted with
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 61
it ? How grow conscious of the unconscious ?
o
We can but mark it in a negative way and
call it the absence of consciousness. That is
all. We cannot be directly aware of ourselves
as unconscious. Indeed, we cannot be quite
sure that the physical things about us, even or-
ganic objects, are unconscious. If somebody
should declare that the covers of this book are
conscious, and respond to everything wise or
f oolish which the writer puts between them,
there would be no way of confuting him. All
I could say would be, " I see no signs of it."
My readers occasionally give a response and
show that they do or do not agree with what
I say. But the volume itself lies in stolid pas-
sivity, offering no resistance to whatever I
record in it. Since, then, there is no evidence
in behalf of consciousness, I do not unwar-
rantably assume its presence. I save my belief
for objects where it is indicated, and indicate
its absence elsewhere by calling such objects
unconscious.
But if in human beings consciousness ap-
pears, what are its marks, and how is it known?
Ought we not to define it at starting? I be-
lieve it cannot be defined. Definition is taking
an idea to pieces. But there are no pieces in
62 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
the idea of consciousness. It is elementary,
something in which all other pieces begin.
That is, in attempting to define consciousness,
I must in every definition employed really
assume that my hearer is acquainted with it
already. I cannot then define it without cov-
ert reference to experience. I might vary the
term and call it awaredness, internal observa-
tion, psychic response. I might say it is that
which accompanies all experience and makes
it to be experience. But these are not defi-
nitions. A simple way to fix attention on iti
is to say that it is what we feel less and less!
as we sink into a swoon. What this is, I can-*
not more precisely state. But in swoon or
sleep we are all familiar with its diminution or
increase, and we recognize in it the very color
of our being. After my friend's remark I am
in a different state from that in which I was
before. Something has affected me which
may abide. This is not the case with a stone
post, or at least there are no signs of it there.
The post, then, is unconscious. We call our-
selves conscious.
In unconsciousness our lives began, and
from it they have not altogether emerged. Yet
unconsciousness is a matter of degree. We
'SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 63
may be very much aware, aware but slightly,
vanishingly, not at all. Even though we
never existed unconsciously, we may fairly
assume such a blank terminus in order the
better to figure the present condition of our
minds. They show sinking degrees moving
off in that direction ; when we think out the
series, we come logically to a point where
there is no consciousness at all.
Such a point analogy also inclines us to
concede. In our body we come upon uncon-
scious sections. This body seems to have
some connection with myself ; yet of its large
results only, and not of its minuter opera-
tions, can I be distinctly aware. In like
manner it is held that within the mind pro-
cesses cumulate and rise to a certain height
before they cross the threshold of conscious-
ness. Below that threshold, though actual
processes, they are unknown to us. The teach
ing of modern psychology is that all menta
action is at the start unconscious, requiring
a certain bulk of stimulus in order to emerge
into conditions where we become aware of it.
The cumulated result we know; the minute
factors which must be gathered together to
form that result, we do not know. I do not
64 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
pronounce judgment on this psychological
question. I state the belief merely in order
to show how probable it is that our conscious
life is superposed upon unconscious condi-
tions.
In conduct itself I believe every one will
acknowledge that his moments of conscious-
ness are like vivid peaks, while the great mass
of his acts even those with which he is
most familiar occur unconsciously. When
we read a word on the printed page, how
much of it do we consciously observe ? Mod-
ern teachers of reading often declare that
detailed consciousness is here unnecessary or
even injurious. Better, they say, take the
word, not the letter, as the unit of conscious-
ness. But taking merely the letter, how
minutely are we conscious of its curvatures ?
Somewhere consciousness must stop, resting
on the support of unconscious experiences.
Matthew Arnold has declared conduct to be
three fourths of life. If we mean by conduct
consciously directed action, it is not one fourth.
\Yet however fragmentary, it is that which
tenders all the rest significant.
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 65
in
Just above our unconscious mental modifi-
cations appear the reflex actions, or instincts.
Here experience is translated into action be-
fore it reaches consciousness ; that is, though
the actions accomplish intelligent ends, there
is no previous knowledge of the ends to be
accomplished. A flash of light falls on my eye,
and the lid closes. It seems a wise act.
The brilliant light is too fierce. It might
damage the delicate organ. Prudently, there-
fore, I draw the small curtain until the light
has gone, then raise it and resume communi-
cation with the outer world. My action seems
planned for protection. In reality there was
no plan. Probably enough I did not perceive
the flash ; the lid, at any rate, would close
equally well if I did not. In falling from
a height I do not decide to sacrifice my arms
rather than my body, and accordingly stretch
them out. They stretch themselves, without
intention on my part. How anything so blind
yet so sagacious can occur will become clearer
if we take an illustration from a widely differ-
ent field.
To-day we are all a good deal dependent
66 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
on the telephone ; though, not being a patient
man, I can seldom bring myself to use it.
It has one irritating feature, the central office,
or perhaps I might more accurately say, the
central office girl. Whenever I try to com-
municate with my friend, I must first call up
the central office, as it is briefly called and
longly executed. Not until attention there
has been with difficulty obtained can I come
into connection with my friend ; for through
a human consciousness at that mediating point
every message must pass. In that central of-
fice are accordingly three necessary things ;
viz., an incoming wire, a consciousness, and an
outgoing wire ; and I am helpless till all these
three have been brought into cooperation.
Really I have often thought life too short
for the performance of such tasks. And ap-
parently our Creator thought so at the begin-
ning, when in contriving machinery for us he
dispensed with the hindering factor of a cen-
tral office operator. For applied to our previ-
ous example of a flash of light, the incoming
message corresponds to the sensuous report of
the flash, the outgoing message to the closure
of the eye, and the unfortunate central office
girl has disappeared. The afferent nerve
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 67
reports directly to the efferent, without pass-
ing the message through consciousness. A
fortune awaits him who will contrive a similar
improvement for the telephone. A special
sound sent into the switch-box must automat-
ically, and without human intervention, oblige
an indicated wire to take up the uttered
words. The continuous arc thus established,
without employment of the at present neces-
sary girl, will exactly represent the exquisite
machinery of reflex action which each of us
bears about in his own brain. Here, as in
our improved telephone, the announcement
itself establishes the connections needful for
farther transmission, without employing the
judgment of any operating official.
By such means power is economized and
action becomes extremely swift and sure.
Promptness, too, being of the utmost impor-
tance for protective purposes, creatures which
are rich in such instincts have a large practi-
cal advantage over those who lack them. It
is often assumed that brutes alone are instinc-
tive, and that man must deliberate over each
occasion. But this is far from the fact. Prob-
ably at birth man has as many instincts as
any other animal. And though as conscious-
68 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
ness awakes and takes control, some of these
become unnecessary and fall away, new ones
as will hereafter be shown are continually
established, and by them the heavy work of
life is for the most part performed. Personal
goodness cannot be rightly understood till
we perceive how it is superposed on a broad
reflex mechanism.
IV
But higher in the personal life than un-
consciousness, higher than the reflex instincts,
are the conscious experiences. By these, we
for the first time became aware of what is
going on within us and without. Messages
sent from the outer world are stopped at a
central office established in consciousness,
looked over, and deciphered. We judge
whether they require to be sent in one direc-
tion or another, or whether we may not rest
in their simple cognizance. Every moment
we receive a multitude of such messages.
They are not always called for, but they come
of themselves. My hand carelessly falling on
the table reports in terms of touch. A per-
son near me laughs, and I must hear. I see
the flowers on the table ; smell reports them
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 69
too; while taste declares their leaves to be
bitter and pungent. All this time the inner
organs, with the processes of breathing, blood
circulation, and nervous action, are announc-
ing their acute or massive experiences. Con-
tinually, and not by our own choice, our minds
are affected by the transactions around. Sen-
sations occur
" The eye, it cannot choose but see ;
We cannot bid the ear be still ;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will."
These itemized experiences thus pouring in
upon our passive selves are found to vary end-
lessly also in degree, time, and locality. Through
such variations indeed they become itemized.
" Therefore is space and therefore time," says \
Emerson, " that men may know that things \
are not huddled and lumped, but sundered \
and divisible."
V
Have we not, then, here reached the highest
point of personal life, self -consciousness ? No,
that is a peak higher still, for this is but con-
sciousness. Undoubtedly from consciousness
self-consciousness grows, often appearing by
70 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
degrees and being extremely difficult to dis-
criminate. Yet the two are not the same.
Possibly in marking the contrast between them
I may be able to gain the collateral advantage
of ridding myself of those disturbers of ethi-
cal discussion, the brutes. Whenever I am
nearing an explanation of some moral intricacy
one of my students is sure to come forward
with a dog and to ask whether what I have
said shows that dog to be a moral and respon-
sible being. So I like to watch afar and ban-
ish the brutes betimes. Perhaps if I bestow
a little attention on them at present, I may
keep the creatures out of my pages for the
future.
Many writers maintain that brutes differ
from us precisely in this particular, that whil
they possess consciousness they have not self
consciousness. A brute, they say, has just
such experiences as I have been describing : he
tastes, smells, hears, sees, touches. All this
he may do with greater intensity and precision
than we. But he is entirely wrapped up in these
separate sensations. The single experience
holds his attention. He knows no other self
than that ; or, strictly speaking, he knows no
self at all. It is the experience he knows, and
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 71
not himself the experiencer. We say, " The
cat feels herself warm ; " but is it quite so ?
Does she feel herself, or does she feel warm ?
Which ? If we may trust the writers to whom
I have referred, we ought rather to say, " The
cat feels warm " than that " she feels herself
warm ; " for this latter statement implies a
distinction of which she is in no way aware.
She does not set off her passing moods in con-
trast to a self who might be warm or cold,
active or idle, hungry or satiated. The expe-
rience of the instant occupies her so entirely
that in reality the cat ceases to be a cat and
becomes for the moment just warm. So it is
in all her seeming activities. When she chases
a mouse we rightly say, " She is chasing a
mouse," for then she is nothing else. Such
a state of things is at least conceivable. We
can imagine momentary experiences to be so
engrossing that the animal is exclusively occu-
pied with them, unable to note connections
with past and future, or even with herself,
their perceiver. Through very fullness of
consciousness brutes may be lacking in self
consciousness.
Whether this is the case with the brutes or
not, something quite different occurs in us.
1
72 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
No particular experience can satisfy us; we
accordingly say, not " I am an experience/'
but " I have an experience." To be able to
throw off the bondage of the moment is the
distinctive characteristic of a person. When
Shelley watches the skylark, he envies him
his power of whole-heartedly seizing a momen-
tary joy. Then turning to himself, and feel-
ing that his own condition, if broader, is on
that very account more liable to sorrow, he
cries,
" We look before and after,
And pine for what is not."
That is the mark of man. He looks before
and after. The outlook of the brute, if the
questionable account which I have given of
hun is correct, is different. He looks to the
present exclusively. The momentary experi-
ence takes all his attention. If it does not,
he too in his little degree is a person. Could
we determine this simple point in the brute's
psychology, he would at once become avail-
able for ethical material. At present we can-
not use him for such purposes, nor say whether
he is selfish or self-sacrificing, possessed of
moral standards and accountable, or driven by
subtle yet automatic reflexes. The obvious
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 73
facts of him may be interpreted plausibly in
either way, and he cannot speak. Till he
can give us a clearer account of this central
fact of his being, we shall not know whether
he is a poor relation of ours or is rather akin
to rocks, and clouds, and trees. I incline to the
former guess, and am ready to believe that
between him and us there is only a difference
of degree. But since in any case he stands
at an extreme distance from ourselves, we
may for purposes of explanation assume that
distance to be absolute, and talk of him as
having no share in the prerogative announced
by Shelley. So regarded, we shall say of him
that he does not compare or adjust. He does
not organize experiences and know a single
self running through them all. Whenever
an experience takes him, it swallows his self
a self, it is true, which he never had.
It is sometimes assumed that Shelley was
the first to announce this weighty distinction.
Philosophers of course were familiar with it
long ago, but the poets too had noticed it
before the skylark told Shelley. Burns says
to the mouse :
" Still thou art blest, compared wi' me !
The present only toucheth thee :
74 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
But, och ! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear !
An' forward tho' 1 caiina see,
I guess an' fear."
This looking backward and forward which
is the ground of man's grandeur, is also,
Burns thinks, the ground of his misery ; for
in it is rooted his self -consciousness, something
widely unlike the itemized consciousness of
the brute. Shakespere, too, found in us the
same distinctive trait. Hamlet reflects how
God has made us "with such discourse,
looking before and after." We possess dis-
course, can move about intellectually, and are
not shut up to the moment. But ages be-
fore Shakespere the fact had been observed.
Homer knew all about it, and in the last
book of the Odyssey extols Halitherses, the
son of Master, as one " able to look before and
after." MacrroptS^? 6 yap oto? opa Trpocro-a)
/cat 67rurcrft>. This is the mark of the wise
man, not merely marking off person from
brute, but person from person according to
the degree of personality attained. It is char-
acteristic of the child to show little foresight,
little hindsight. He takes the present as it
comes, and lives in it. We who are more
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 75
mature and rational contemplate him with
the same envy we feel for the skylark and
the mouse, and often say, " Would I too could
so suck the joys of the present, without re-
flecting that something else is coming and
something else is gone."
VI
Yet after becoming possessed of self-con-
sciousness, we do not steadily retain it. States
of mind occur where the self slips out, though
vivid consciousness remains. As I sit in my
chair and fix my eye on the distance, a day-*
dream or reverie comes over me. I see a pic-
ture, another, another. Somebody speaks and
I am recalled. " Why, here I am ! This is
I." I find myself once more. I had lost
myself paradoxical yet accurate expression.
We have many such to indicate the disappear-
ance of self-consciousness at moments of ela-
tion. " I was absorbed in thought," we say ;
the I was sucked out by strenuous attention
elsewhere. " I was swept away with grief,"
i. e. y I vanished, while grief held sway. " I
was transported with delight," " I was over-
whelmed with shame," and perhaps most
beautiful of all these fragments of poetic
76 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
psychology, " I was beside myself with
terror," I felt myself to be near, but was
still parted ; through the fear I could merely
catch glimpses of the one who was terri-
fied.
These and similar phrases suggest the ^in-
stability of self-consciousness. It is not fixedj
once and forever, but varies continually and!
within a wide range of degree. We like td
think that man possesses full self-conscious-
ness, while other creatures have none. Our
minds are disposed to part off things with
sharpness, but nature cares less about sharp
divisions and seems on the whole to prefer
subtle gradations and unstable varieties. So
the self has all degrees of vividness. Of it
we never have an experience barely. It is
always in some condition, colored by what it
is mixed with. I know myself speaking or
angry or hearing ; I know myself, that is, in
some special mood. But never am I able to
sunder this self from the special mass of con-
sciousness in which it is immersed and to
gaze upon it pure and simple. At times that
mass of consciousness is so engrossing that
hardly a trace of the self remains. At times
the sense of being shut up to one's self is pos-
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 77
itively oppressive. Between the two extremes
there is endless variation. When we call self-
consciousness the prerogative of man we do
not mean that he fully possesses it, but only
that he may possess it, may possess it more
and more ; and that in it, rather than in the
merely conscious life, the significance of his
being is found.
VII
Probably we are born without it. We
know how gradually the infant acquires a
mastery of its sensuous experience ; and it is
likely that for a long time after it has ob-
tained command of its single experiences it
remains unaware of its selfhood. In a classic
passage of " In Memoriam " Tennyson has
stated the case with that blending of witchery^
and scientific precision of which he alone]
among the poets seems capable :
" The baby, new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ' this is I.'
u But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me,'
And finds ' I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.'
78 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
" So rounds be to a separate mind,
From whence clear memory may begin,
As tbro' the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined."
Until he has separated his mind from the ob-
jects around, and even from his own conscious
states, he cannot perceive himself and obtain
clear memory. No child recalls his first year,
for the simple reason that during that year he
was not there. Of course there was experi-
ence during that year, there was conscious-
ness; but the child could not discriminate
himself from the crowding experiences and so
reach self -consciousness. At what precise
time this momentous possibility occurs can-
not be told. Probably the time varies widely
in different children. In any single child it
announces itself by degrees, and usually so
subtly that its early manifestations are hardly
perceptible. Occasionally, especially when
long deferred, it breaks with the suddenness
of an epoch, and the child is aware of a new
existence. A little girl of my acquaintance
turned from play to her mother with the cry,
" Why, mamma, little girls don't know that
they are." She had just discovered it. In
a famous passage of his autobiography, Jean
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 79
Paul Richter has recorded the great change in
himself : " Never shall I forget the inward
experience of the birth of self-consciousness.
I well remember the time and place. I stood
one afternoon, a very young child, at the
house-door, and looked at the logs of wood
piled on the left. Suddenly an inward con-
sciousness, *I am a Me,' came like a flash
of lightning from heaven, and has remained
ever since. At that moment my existence
became conscious of itself, and forever."
The knowledge that I am an I cannot be
conveyed to me by another human being,
nor can I perceive anything similar in him.
Each must ascertain it for himself. Accord-
ingly there is only one word in every language
which is absolutely unique, bearing a different
meaning for every one who employs it. That
is the word I. For me to use it in the sense
that you do would prove that I had lost my
wits. Whatever enters into my usage is out
of it in yours. Obviously, then, the meaning
of this word cannot be taught. Everything
else may be. What the table is, what is a
triangle, what virtue, heaven, or a spherodac-
tyl, you can teach me. What I am, you can-
not; for no one has ever had an experience
80 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
corresponding to this except myself. People
in speaking to me call me John, Baby, or Ned,
an externally descriptive name which has sub-
stantially a common meaning for all who see
me. When I begin to talk I repeat this
name imitatively, and thinking of myself as
others do. I speak of myself in the third per-
son. Yet how early that reference to a third
person begins to be saturated with self-con-
sciousness, who can say? Before the word
" I " is employed, " Johnny " or " Baby " may
have been diverted into an egoistic signifi-
cance. All we can say is that " I " cannot be
rightly employed until consciousness has risen
to self-consciousness.
VIII
And when it has so risen, its unity and
coherence are by no means secure. I have
already pointed out how often it is lost in
moments when the conscious element becomes
particularly intense. But in morbid condi-
tions too it sometimes undergoes a disruption
still more peculiar. Just as disintegration
may attack any other organic unit, so may it
appear in the personal life. The records of
hypnotism and other related phenomena show
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 81
cases where self-consciousness appears to be
distributed among several selves. These curi-
ous experiences have received more attention
in recent years than ever before. They do
not, however, belong to my field, and to con-
sider them at any length would only divert
attention from my proper topic. But they
deserve mention in passing in order to make
plain how wayward is self -consciousness,
how far from an assured possession of its
unity.
This unity seems temporarily suspended on
occasion of swoon or nervous shock. An in-
teresting case of its loss occurred in my own
experience. Many years ago I was fond of
horseback riding ; and having a horse that was
unusually easy in the saddle, I persisted in
riding him long after my groom had warned
me of danger. He had grown weak in the
knees and was inclined to stumble. Riding!
one evening, I came to a little bridge. I re-,
member watching the rays of the sunset as I
approached it. Something too of my college
work was in my mind, associated with the
evening colors. And then well, there was
no " then." The next I knew a voice was
calling, " Is that you ? " And I was surprised
82 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
to find that it was. I was entering my own
gateway, leading my horse. I answered
blindly, " Something has happened. I must
have been riding. Perhaps I have fallen."
I put my hand to my face and found it
bloody. I led my horse to his post, entered
the house, and relapsed again into uncon-
sciousness. When I came to myself, and was
questioned about my last remembrance, I re-
called the little bridge. We went to it the
next day. There lay my riding whip. There in
the sand were the marks of a body which had
been dragged. Plainly it was there that the
accident had occurred, yet it was three quar-
ters of a mile from my house. When thrown,
I had struck on my forehead, making an ugly
hole in it. Two or three gashes were on
other parts of the head. But I had appar-
ently still held the rein, had risen with the
horse, had walked by his side till I came to
four corners in the road, had there taken the
proper turn, passed three houses, and entep
ing my own gate then for the first time be-
came aware of what was happening.
What had been happening ? About twenty
minutes would be required to perform this
elaborate series of actions, and they had been
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 83
performed exactly as if I had been guiding
them, while in reality I knew nothing about
them. Shall we call my conduct unconscious
cerebration? Yes, if we like large words
which cover ignorance. I do not see how we
can certainly say what was going on. Per-
haps during all this time I had neither con-
sciousness nor self-consciousness. I may have
been a mere automaton, under the control of
a series of reflex actions. The feeling of the
reins in my hands may have set me erect.
The feeling of the ground beneath my feet
may have projected these along their way ;
and all this with no more consciousness than
the falling man has in stretching out his hands.
Or, on the contrary, I may have been sepa-
rately conscious in each little instant; but in
the shaken condition of the brain may not
have had power to spare for gluing together
these instants and knitting them into a whole.
It may be it was only memory which failed.
I cite the case to show the precarious character
of self-consciousness. It appears and disap-
pears. Our life is glorified by its presence,
and from it obtains its whole significance.
Whatever we are convinced possesses it we
certainly declare to be a person. Yet it is a
84 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
gradual acquisition, and must be counted ra-
ther a goal than a possession. Under it, as
the height of our being, are ranged the three
other stages, consciousness, reflex action,
and unconsciousness.
REFERENCES ON SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
James's Psychology, ch. x.
Royce's Studies of Good and Evil, ch. vi.-ix.
Terrier's Philosophy of Consciousness, in his Philosophical
Remains.
Calkins's Introduction to Psychology, bk. ii.
Wundt's Human and Animal Psychology, lect. xxvii.
r\r
SELF-DIRECTION
IV
SELF-DIRECTION
*
I
IN the last chapter I began to discuss the
nature of goodness distinctively personal.
This has its origin in the differing constitu-
tions of persons and things. Into the making
of a person four characteristics enter which
are not needed in the formation of a thing.
The most fundamental of these I examined.
Persons and things are unlike in this, that
each force which stirs within a self-conscious
person is correlated with all his other forces.
So great and central is this correlation that a
EggggiLJflin aft j } " T hayp a oxpomaaa^" not
as, possibly, the brutes " I am an expe-
rience." Yet although a person tends thus
to be a'n organic whole, he did not begin his
existence in conscious unity. Probably the
early stages of our life are to be sought rather
in the regions of unconsciousness. Rising out
90 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
of unconscious conditions into
those ingenious provisions for our security
at times when we have no directing powers
of our own we gradually pass into condi-*
tions of consciousness, where we are able to
seize the single experience and to be absorbed
in it. Out of this emerges by degrees an ap-
prehension of ourselves contrasted with our
experiences. Even, however, when this self-
consciousness is once established, it may on
vivacious or morbid occasions be overthrown.
It by no means attends all the events of our
lives. Yet it marks all conduct that can be
called good. Goodness which is distinctively
personal must in some way express the forma4
tion and maintenance of a self-conscious lif e. j
But more is needed. A person fashioned
in the way described would be aware of him-
self, aware of his mental changes, perhaps
aware of an objective order of things produ-
cing these changes, and still might have no real
share himself in what was going on. We can
at least imagine a being merely contempla-
tive. He sits as a spectator at his own drama.
Trains of associated ideas pass before his in-
terested gaze ; a multitude of transactions oc-
cur in his contemplated surroundings ; but he
SELF-DIRECTION 91
is powerless to intervene. He passively be-
holds, and does nothing. If such a state of
things can be imagined, and if something like
it occasionally occurs in our experience, it does
not represent our normal condition. Our life
is no mere affair of vision. Self-consciousness
counts as a factor. Through it changes arise
both without and within. I accordingly en-
title this fourth chapter Self -direction. In it
I propose to consider how our life goes forth
in action ; for in fact wherever self-consciousH
ness appears, there is developed also a centre]
of activity, and an activity of an altogether
peculiar kind.
It is well known that in interpreting these
facts of action the judgment of ethical writers
is divided. Libertarians and defrgrminista are
here at issue. Into their controversy I do not
desire to enter. I mean to attempt a brief
summary of those facts relating to human ac-
tion which are tolerably weh 1 agreed upon by
writers of both schools. In these there are
intricacies enough. To raise the hand, to
wave it in the air, to lay it on the table again,
would ordinarily be reckoned simple matters.
Yet operations so simple as these I shall show
pass through half a dozen steps, though they
92 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
are ordinarily performed so swiftly that we
do not notice their several parts. In life
much is knitted together which cannot be un-
derstood without dissection. In such dissec-
tion I must now engage. As a good peda-
gogue I must discuss operations separately
which in reality get all their meaning through
being found together. Against the necessary
distortions of such a method the reader must
be on his guard.
II
In the total process of self-direction there
are evidently two main divisions, a mental
purpose must be formed, and then this purpose
must be sent forth into the outer world. It
is there accepted by those agencies of a physi-
cal sort which wait to do our bidding. The
formation of the mental purpose I will, for
the sake of brevity, call the infonti op ; and
to the sending of it forth I will give the
name volition. That these terms are not
always confined within these limits is plain.
But I shall not force their meaning unduly by
employing them so, and I need a pair of
terms to mark the great contrasted sides of
self-direction. The intention (A) shall desig-
SELF-DIEECTION 93
nate the subjective side. But those objective
adjustments which fit it to emerge and seek
in an outer world its full expression I shall
call the volition (B).
For the present, then, regarding entirely the
former, let us see how an intention arises,
how self-consciousness sets to work in stirring
up activity. To gain clearness I shall distin-
guish three subordinate stages, designating
them by special names and numerals.
Ill
At the start we are guided by an end or
ideal of what we would bring about. To a
being destitute of self -consciousness only a
single sort of action is at any moment possi-
ble. When a certain force falls upon it, it
meets with a fixed response. Or, if the caus-
ative forces are many, what happens is but
the well-established resultant of these forces
operating upon a being as definite in nature
as they. Such a being contemplates no future
to be reached through motions set up within
it. Its motions do not occur for the sake of
realizing in coming time powers as yet but
half -existent. It is not guided by ideals.
Its actions set forth merely what it steadily is,
94 THE NATURE OF GOODNZSS
not what it might be. Something like the
opposite of all this shapes personal acts. A
person has imagination. He contemplates
future events as possible before they occur,
and this contemplation is one of the very
factors which bring them about. For exam-
ple : while writing here, I can emancipate my
thought from this present act and set myself
to imagining my situation an hour hence. At
that time I perceive I may be still at my
writing-desk, I may be walking the streets, I
may be at the theatre, or calling on my friend.
A dozen, a hundred, future possibilities are
depicted as open to me. On one or another of
these I fix my attention, thereby giving it a
causal force over other present ideas, and ren
dering its future realization likely.
So enormously important is imagination!
By it we effect our emancipation from the!
present. Without this p^w * to summon pic4
tures of situations which at present are
not, w^usfajuTfT ng freairtly lilrfi thn thin^n nr
brjites-alfeady-dcscribcd . For in the thing a
determined sequence follows every impulse.
There is no ambiguous future disclosed, no
variety of possibilities, no alternatives. Pre-
sent things under definite causes have but a
SELF-DIRECTION 95
single issue; and if the account given of the
brute is correct, his condition is unlike that
of things only in this respect, that in him
curious automatic springs are provided which
set him in appropriate motion whenever he is
exposed to harm, so enabling him suitably to
face a future of which, however, he forms no
image. In both brutes and things there is
entire limitation to the present. This is not
the case with a person. He takes the future
into his reckoning, and over him it is at least
as influential as the past. A person, through
imagination laying hold of future possibilities,
has innumerable auxiliary forces at his com-
mand. Choice appears. A depicted future
thus held by attention for causal purposes
is no longer a mere idea ; it becomes an ideal.
But in order to transform the depicted fu-
ture from an idea to an ideal, I must conceive
it as rooted in my nature, and in some degree
dependent on my power. Attracted by the
brilliancy of the crescent moon, I think what
sport it would be to hang on one of its horns
and kick my heels in the air. But no, that
remains a mere picture. It will not become
an ideal, for it has no relation to my structure
and powers. But there are other imaginable
96 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
futures, going to Europe, becoming a physi-
cian, writing a book, buying a house, which,
though not fully compatible with one another,
still represent, each one of them, some capac-
ity of mine. Attention to one or the other of
these will make it a reality in my life. They
are competing ideals, and because of such
competition my future is uncertain. The am-
biguous future is accordingly a central char-
acteristic of a person. He can imagine all
sorts of states of himself which as yet have
no existence, and one of these selected as an
ideal may become efficient. This first stagey
then, in the formation of the purpose, where
various depicted future possibilities are sum-
moned for assessment, may be called our
fashioning of an ideal.
IV
But a second stage succeeds, the stage of
desire. Indeed, though I call it a second, it
is really but a special aspect of the first ; for
the ideal which I form always represents some
improvement in myself. An ideal which did
not promise to better me in some way would
be no ideal at all. It would be quite inoper-
ative. I never rise from my chair except with
I
SELF-DIRECTION 97
the hope of being better off. Without this,
I should sit forever. But I feel uneasiness in
my present position, and conceive the pos-
sibility of not being constrained ; or I think
of some needful work which remains unex-
ecuted as long as I sit here, and that work
undone I perceive will leave my life less satis-
factory than it might be. And this imagined
betterment must always be in some sense my
own. If it is a picture of the gains of some
one else quite unconnected with myself, it will
not start my action.
But it will be objected that we do often
act unselfishly and in behalf of other persons.
Indeed we do. Perhaps our impulses are
more largely derived from others than from
ourselves, yet from desire our own share is
never quite eliminated. I give to the poor,
But it is because I hate poverty ; or because
I am attracted by the face, the story, or the
supposed character of him who receives ; or
because I am unable to separate my interests
from those of humanity everywhere. Jn^somei
subtle form the I-element enters. Leave it
out, and the action would lose its value and
become mechanical. What I did would be no
expression of self-conscious me. And such
98 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
undoubtedly is the case with much of our
conduct. The reflex actions, described hi the
last chapter, and many of our habits too, con-
tain no precise reference to our self. Intelli-
gent, purposeful, moral conduct, however, is
everywhere shaped by the hope of improving
the condition of him who acts. We do not
act till we find something within or about us
unsatisfactory. If contemplating myself in
my actual conditions I could pronounce them
all good, creation would for me be at an end.
To start it, some sense of need is required.
Accordingly I have named desire as the sec-
ond stage in the formation of a purpose, for
desire is precisely this sense of disparity be-
tween our actual self and that possible bet-
tered self depicted in the ideal.
Popular speech, however, does not here state
the matter quite fully. We often talk as if our
desires were for other things than ourselves.
We say, for example, " I want a glass of
water." In reality it is not the water I want.
That is but a fragment of my desire. It is
water plus self. Only so is the desire fully
uttered. Beholding my present self, my
thirsty and defective self, I perceive a side
of myself requiring to be bettered. Accord-
SELF-DIRECTION 99
ingly, among imagined pictures of possible
futures I identify myself with that one which
represents me supplied with water. But it isi
not water that is the object of my desire, it ia
myself as bettered by water. Since, however,
this betterment of self is a constant factor of
all desire, we do not ordinarily name it. We
say, " I desire wealth, I desire the success of
my friend, or the freedom of my country,"
omitting the important and never absent por-
tion of the desire, the betterment of self.
Of course a stage in the formation of the
purpose so important as desire receives a
multitude of names. Perhaps the simplest is
appetite. In appetite I do not know what I
want. I am blindly impelled in a certain
direction. I do not perceive that I have a
suffering self, nor know that this particular
suffering would be bettered by that particular
supply. Appetite is a mere instinct. In the
mechanic structure of my being it is planned
that without comprehension of the want I
shall be impelled to the source of supply. But
when appetite is permeated with a conscious-
ness of what is lacking, I apprehend it as a
need. Through needs we become persons.
The capacity for dissatisfaction is the sublime
100 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
thing in man. We can know our poor estate.
We can say, That which I am I would not be.
Passing the blind point of appetite, we come
into the region of want or need ; if we then
can discern what is requisite to supply this
need, we may be said to have a desire. That
desire, if specific and urgent, we call a wish.
All these varieties of desire include the
same two factors : on the one hand a recog-
nition of present defect in ourselves, on the
other imagination of possible bettered condi-
tions. Diminish either, and personal power
is narrowed. The richer a man's imagination,
and the more abundant his pictures of possi-
ble futures, the more resourceful he becomes.
Pondering on desire as rooted in the sense
of defect, we may feel less regret that our
age is one not easily satisfied. Never were
there so many discontents, because there were
never so many aspirations. It is true therd
may be a devilish discontent or a divine one.)
There is a discontent without definite aims,
one which merely rejects what is now pos-
sessed; and there is one which seeks what is
wisely attainable. Yet after ah 1 , it is a small
price to pay for aspiration that it is often at-
tended by vagueness and unwisdom.
SELF-DIRECTION 101
But before the formation of the purpose is
complete it must pass through a third stage,
the stage of decision. Ideals and desires are
not enough, or rather they are too many ; for
there may be a multitude of them. Certain
ideals are desired for supplying certain of my
wants, others for supplying others. But on
examination these many desirable ideals will
often prove conflicting; all cannot be attained,
or at least not all at once. Among them I
must pick and choose, reducing and ordering
their number. This process is decision. Start-
ing with my ambiguous future, imagination
brings multifold possibilities of good before
me. But before these can be allowed to issue
miscellaneously into action, comparison and
selection reduce them to a single best. I ac-
cordingly assess the many desirable but com-
peting ideals and see which of them will on
the whole most harmoniously supplement my
imperfections. On that I fasten, and the in-
tention is complete.
All this is obvious. But one part of the
process, and perhaps the most important part,
is apt to receive less attention than it deserves.
102 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
In decision we easily become engrossed with
the single selected ideal, and do not so fully
perceive that our choice implies a rejection
of all else. Yet this it is this cutting off
which rightly gives a name to the whole
operation. The best is arrived at only by a
process of exclusion in which we successively
cut off such ideals as do not tend to the
largest supply of our contemplated defects.
Walking by the candy-shop, and seeing the
tempting chocolates, I feel a strong desire for
them. My mouth waters. I hurry into the
shop and deposit my five-cent piece. In the
evening I find that by spending five cents for
the chocolates I am cut off from obtaining
my newspaper, a loss unconsidered at the
time. But to decide for anything is to decide
against a multitude of other things. Taking
is still more largely leaving. The full exteni
of this negative decision often escapes oui
notice, and through the very fact of choosing
a good we blindly neglect a best.
VI
Here, then, are the three steps in the forma-
tion of the purpose, the ideal, thajiejsire,
and the jdecision, each earlier one preparing
SELF-DIRECTION 103
the way for that which is to follow. But an
intention is altogether useless if it pauses here.
It was formed to be sent forth, to be entrusted
to forces stretching beyond the intending
mind. The laws of nature are to take it in
charge. The Germans have a good proverb :
" A stone once thrown belongs to the devil."
When once it parts from our hands, it is no
longer ours. It is taken up, for evil or for
good, by agencies other than our own. If we
mistake the agency to which we intrust it,
enormous mischief may ensue, and we shall be
helpless. These agencies, accordingly, need
careful scrutiny before being called on to work
their will. The business of scrutinizing them
and of turning over the purpose to their keep-
ing, forms the second half (B) of self-direc-
tion. In contrast with (A), the formation of
the purpose or the intention, this may be
called the realization of the purpose, or voli-
tion. Volition, it is true, is often employed
more comprehensively, but we shall do the
term no violence if we confine its meaning to
the discharge of our subjective purpose into
the objective world. Volition then will also,
under our scheme, have three subordinate
stages.
104 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
VII
The first of them I will call delibg^ation, in
order to approximate it as closely as possible
to the preceding decision. Having now my
purpose decisively formed, I have to ask my-
self what physical means will best carry it out.
I summon before my mind as complete a list
as possible of nature's conveyances, and judge
which of them will with the greatest efficiency
and economy execute my intention. Here I
am at a friend's house, but I have decided to
go to my own. I must compare, then, the
different modes of getting there, so as to pick
out just that one which involves the least ex-
penditure and the most certain result. One
way occurs to me which I have never tried
before, a swift and interesting way. I might
go by balloon. In that balloon I could sail at
my ease over the tops of the houses and across
the beautiful river. When the tower of Me-
morial Hall comes in sight, I could pull a cord
and drop gently down at my own door, hav-
ing meanwhile had the seclusion and exalta-
tion of an unusual ride. What a delightful
experience ! But there is one disadvantage.
Balloons are not always at hand. I might be
SELF-DIRECTION 105
obliged to wait here for hours, for days, before
getting one. I dismiss the thought of a bal-
loon. It does not altogether suit my purpose.
Or, I might call a carriage. So I should
secure solitude and a certain speed, but should
pay for these with noise, jolting, and more
money than I can well spare. There would
be waiting, too, before the carriage comes.
Perhaps I had better ask my friend to lend
me his arm and to escort me home. In this
there would be dignity and a saving of my
strength. We could talk by the way, and I
always find him interesting. But should I be
willing to be so much beholden to him, and
would not the wind to-day make our walk and
talk difficult? Better postpone till summer
weather. And after all there is Boston's most
common mode of locomotion right at hand,
the electric car. Strange it was not thought
of before ! The five-cent piece saved from
the chocolates will carry me, swiftly, safely,
and with independence.
It is in this way that we go through the
process of deliberation. All the possible
means of effecting our purpose are summoned
for judgment. The feasibility of each is ex-
amined, and the cost involved in its employ-
106 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
merit. Comparison is made between the ad-
vantages offered by different agencies; and
oftentimes at the close we are in a sad puzzle,
finding these advantages and disadvantages
so nearly balanced. One, however, is finally
judged superior in fitness. To this we tie our-
selves, making it the channel for our out-go.
The whole process, then, in its detailed com-
parison and final fixation, is identical with that
to which I have given the name of decision,
except that the comparisons of decision refer
to inner facts, those of deliberation to outer.
VIII
We now reach the climax of the whole pro-
cess, efforj;, the actual sending forth through
the deliberately chosen channel of the ideal
desired and decided on. To it all the rest
is merely preliminary, and in it the final move
is made which commits us to the deed. About
it, therefore, we may well desire the completest
information. To tell the truth, I have none
to give, and nobody else has. The nature of the
operation is substantially unknown. Though
something which we have been performing all
day long, we and all our ancestors, no one
of us has succeeded in getting a good sight
SELF-DIRECTION 107
of what actually takes place. Our purposes
are prepared as I have described, and then
those purposes something altogether mental
change on a sudden to material motions.
How is the transmutation accomplished? How
do we pass from a mental picture to a set of
motions in the physical world ? What is the
bridge connecting the two? The bridge is
always down when we direct our gaze upon
it, though firm when any act would cross.
Nor can we trace our passage any more
easily in the opposite direction. When my
eyes are turned on my watch, for example,
the vibrations of light striking its face are re-
flected on the pupil of my eye. There the little
motions, previously existing only in the sur-
rounding ether, are communicated to my optic
nerve. This vibrates too, and by its motion
excites the matter of my brain, and then
well, I have a sensation of the white face of
my watch. But what was contained in that
then is precisely what we do not understand.
Incoming motions may be transmuted into
thought; or, as in effort, outgoing thought
may be transmuted into motion. But alike in
both cases, on the nature of that transmuta-
tion, the very thing we most desire to know,
108 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
we get no light. In regard to this crucial
point no one, materialist or idealist, can offer
a suggestion. We may of course, in fault of
explanation, restate the facts in clumsy circum-
locution. Calling thought a kind of motion,
we may say that in action it propagates itself
from the mind through the brain into the
outer world ; while in the apprehension of an
idea motions of the outer world pass into the
brain, and there set up those motions which
we know as thought. But after such explana-
tions the mystery remains exactly where it
was before. How does a " mental motion "
come out of a bodily motion, or a bodily from
a mental ? It is wiser to acknowledge a mys-
tery and to mark the spot where it occurs.
This marking of the spot may, however,
illuminate the surrounding territory. If we
cannot explain the nature of the crucial act,
it may still be well to study its range. How
widely is effort exercised ? We should natu-
rally answer, as widely as the habitable globe.
I can sit in my office in Boston and carry
on business in China. When I touch a but-
ton, great ships are loaded on the opposite
side of the earth and cross the intervening
oceans to work the bidding of a person they
SELF-DIRECTION 109
have never seen. Perhaps some day we may
send our volition beyond the globe and enter
into communication with the inhabitants of
Mars. It would seem idle, then, to talk about
the limitations of volition and a restricted
range of will. But in fact that will is re-
stricted, and its range is much narrower than
the globe. For when we consider the matter
with precision, it is not exactly I who have
operated in China. I operate only where I am.
In touching the button my direct agency
ceases. It is true that connected with that but-
ton are wires conducting to a wide variety of
consequences. But about the details of that
conduction I need know nothing. The wire
will work equally well whether I understand
or do not understand electricity. Its working
is not mine, but its own. The pressure of my
finger ends my act, which is then taken up
and carried forward by automatic and mechan-
ical adjustments requiring neither supervision
nor consciousness on my part. We might
then more accurately say that my direct voli-
tion is circumscribed by my own body. My
finger tips, my lips, my nodding head are the
points where I part with full control, though
indefinitely beyond these I can forecast changes
110 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
which the automatic agencies, once set astir,
will induce.
Am I niggardly in thus confining the action
of each of us within his own body? Is the
range of volition thus marked out too narrow ?
On the contrary, it is probably still too wide.
We are as powerless to direct our bodies as
we are to manage affairs in China. This, at
least, is the modern psychological doctrine of
effort. It is now believed that volition is en-
tirely a mental affair, and is confined to the
single act of attention. It is alleged that when
I attend to an ideal, fixing my mind fully upon
it, the results are altogether similar to what
occurred on my touching the button. Every
idea tends to pass automatically into action
through agencies about which I know as little
as I do about ocean telegraphs. This physical
frame of mine is a curious organic mechanism,
in which reflex actions and instincts do their
blind work at a hint from me. I am said to
raise my arm. But never having been a stu-
dent of anatomy and physiology, I have not
the least idea how the rise was effected ; and
if I am told that nerves excite muscles, and
these in turn contract like cords and pull
the arm this way or that, the rise will not be
SELF-DIRECTION 111
accomplished a bit better for the information.
For, as in electric transmission, it is not I who
do the work. My part is attention. The rest
is adapted automatism. When I have driven
everything else out of my mind except the
picture of the rising arm, it rises of itself,
the after-effects on nerves and muscles being
apprehended by me as the sense of effort.
We cannot, then, exercise our will with a
wandering mind. So long as several ideas
are conflictingly attended to, they hinder
each other. This we verify in regrettable ex-
periences every day. On waking this morn-
ing, for example, I saw it was time to get up.
But the bed was comfortable, and there were
interesting matters to think of. I meant to
get up, for breakfast was waiting, and there
was that new book to be examined, and that
letter to be written. How long would this
require, and how should the letter be planned ?
But I must get up. Possibly those callers
may come. And shall I want to see them ?
It is really time to get up. What a curi-
ous figure the pattern of the paper makes,
viewed in this light ! The breakfast bell !
Out of my head go all vagrant reflections, and
suddenly, before I can notice the process, I
112 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
find myself in the middle of the floor. That
is the way. From wavering thoughts nothing
comes. But suddenly some sound, some sight,
some significant interest, raises the depicted
act into exclusive vividness of attention, and
our part is done. The spring has been touched,
and the physical machinery, of which we
may know little or nothing, does its work.
There it stands ready, the automatic machin-
ery of this exquisite frame of ours, waiting for
the unconf used signal, our only part in the
performance, then automatically it springs
to action and pushes our purpose into the
outer world. Such at least is the fashion-
able teaching of psychologists to-day. Voli-
tion is full attention. It has no wider scope.
With bodily adjustments it does not meddle.
These move by their own mechanic law. Of
real connection between body and mind we
know nothing. We can only say that such
parallelism exists that physical action occurs on
occasion of complete mental vision.
No doubt this theory leaves much to be
desired in the way of clearness. What is
meant by fixing the attention exclusively ?
Is unrelated singleness possible among our
mental pictures ? Or how narrowly must the
SELF-DIEECTION 113
field of attention be occupied before these
strange springs are set in motion? At the
end of the explanation do not most of the
puzzling problems of scope, freedom, and se-
lection remain, existing now as problems about
the nature and working of attention instead
of, as formerly, problems about the emergence
of the intention into outward nature? No
doubt these classical problems puzzle us still.
But a genuine advance toward clarity is made
when we confine them within a small area by
identifying volition with mental attention.
Nor will it be anything to the point to say,
" But I know myself as a physical creature
to be involved in effort. The strain of voli-
tion is felt in my head, in my arm, through-
out my entire body." Nobody denies it.
After we have attended, and the machinery is
set in motion, we feel its results. The physi-
cal changes involved in action are as appre-
hensible in our experience as are any other
natural facts, and are remembered and antici-
pated in each new act.
IX
Only one stage more remains, and that is
an invariable one, the stage of satisfaction.
114 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
It is fortunately provided that pleasure shall
attend every act. Pleasure probably is no-
thing else but the sense that some one of our
functions has been appropriately exercised,
Every time, then, that an intention has been
taken up in the way just described, carried
forth into the complex world, and there con-
ducted to its mark, a gratified feeling arises.
" Yes, I have accomplished it. That is good.
I felt a defect, I desired to remove it, and
betterment is here." We cannot speak a
word, or raise a hand, perhaps even draw a
breath, without something of this glad sense
of life. It may be intense, it may be slight
or middling ; but in some degree it is always
there. For through action we realize ou?
powers. This seemingly fixed world is found
to be plastic in our hands. We modify it.
We direct something, mean something. No
longer idle drifters on the tide, through our
desires we bring that tide our way. And in
the sense of self-directed power we find a
satisfaction, great or small according to the
magnitude of our undertaking.
In such a catalogue of the elements of ac-
tion as has just been given there is something
uncanny. Can we not pick up a pin without
SELF-DIRECTION 115
going through all six stages ? Should we ever
do anything, if to do even the simplest we
were obliged to do six things ? Have I not
made matters needlessly elaborate? No, I
have not unduly elaborated. We are made
just so complex. Yet as a good teacher I
have falsified. For the sake of clearness I
have been treating separately matters which
go together. There are not six operations,
there is but one. In this one there are six
stages ; that is, there are six points of view
from which the single operation may advanta-
geously be surveyed. But these do not exist
apart. They are all intimately blended, each
affecting all the rest. Because of our dull
faculties we cannot understand, though we
can work, them en bloc. He who would
render them comprehensible must commit the
violence of plucking them asunder, holding
them up detachedly, and saying, " Of such
diverse stuff is our active life composed."
But in reality each gets its meaning through
connection with all the others. Life need not
terrify because for purposes of verification it
must be represented as so intricate an affair.
It is I who have broken up its simplicity, and
it belongs to my reader to put it together
again.
REFERENCES ON SELF-DIRECTION
James's Psychology, ch. xxvi.
Sigwart's Der Begriffi des Wollen's, iu his Kleine Schriften.
A. Alexander's Theories of the Will.
Miinsterberg's Die Willenshandlung.
Holding's Psychology, ch. vii.
V
SELF-DEVELOPMENT
H
.
SELF-DEVELOPMENT
X
CONCEIVABLY a being such as has been
described might advance no farther. Con-
scious he might be, observant of everything
going on within him and without ; occupied
too with inducing the very changes he ob-
serves, and yet with no aim to enlarge him-
self or improve the world through any of the
changes so induced. Complete within himself
at the beginning, he might be equally so at
the close, his activity being undertaken for
the mere sake of action, and not for any bene-
ficial results following in its train. Still, even
such a being would be better off while acting
than if quiet, and by his readiness to act
would show that he felt the need of at least
temporary betterment. In actual cases the
need goes deeper.
A being capable of self-direction ordinarily
120 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
has capacities imperfectly realized. Changing
other things, he also changes himself ; and it
becomes a part of his aim in action to make
these changes advantageous, and each act
helpfully reactive. Accordingly the aim at
self -development regularly attends self -direc-
tion. I could not, therefore, properly discuss
my last topic without in some measure an-
ticipating this. Every ideal of action, I was
obliged to say, includes within it an aim at
some sort of betterment of the actor. Our
business, then, in the present chapter is not
to announce a new theme, but simply to ren-
der explicit what before was implied. Wei
must detach from action the influence which
it throws back upon us, the actors. We must I
make this influence plain, exhibit its method,
and show wherein it differs from other pro-
cesses in some respects similar.
n
The most obvious fact about self-develop-
ment is that it is a species of change, and that
change is associated with sadness. Heraclitus,
the weeping philosopher of the Greeks, dis-
covered this fact five hundred years before
Christ. "Nothing abides," he said, "all is
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 121
fleeting." We stand in a moving tide, unable
to bathe twice in the same stream ; before we
can stoop a second time the flood is gone.
In every age this is the common theme of
lamentation for poet, moralist, common man
and woman. All other causes of sadness are
secondary to it. As soon as we have compre-
hended anything, have fitted it to our lives
and learned to love it, it is gone.
Such is the aspect which gVia.pgft ordinarily
presents. |t is tied up with grief . We regard
what is precious as stable ; and yet we are
obliged to confess that nothing on earth is
stable nothing among physical things, and
just as little among mental and spiritual things.
But there are many kinds of change. We are
apt to confuse them with one another, and in so
doing to carry over to the nobler sorts thoughts
applicable only to the lower. In beginning,
then, the discussion of self-development, I
think it will conduce to clearness if I offer a
conspectus of all imaginable changes. I will
set them in groups and show their different
kinds, exhibiting first those which are most
elementary, then those more complex, and
finally those so dark and important that they
pass over into a region of mystery and para-
dox.
Ill
Probably all will agree that the simplest
possible change is the accidental sort, that
where only relations of space are altered. My
watch, now lying in the middle of the desk,
is shifted to the right side, is laid in its case,
or is lost in the street. I call these changes
accidental, because they in no way affect the
nature of the watch. They are not really
changes in it, but in its surroundings. The
watch still remains what it was before. To
the same group we might refer a large number
of other changes where no inner alteration is
wrought. The watch is now in a brilliant
light ; I lay my hand on it, and it is in dark-
ness. Its place has not been changed, but
that of the light has been. Many of the com-
monest changes in life are of this sort. Uhej
are accidental AY^nftnnn ghangftg- In I *
them, through all its change, the thing abides.
There is no necessary alteration of its nature.
IV
But unhappily this is not the only species
of change. It is not that which has brought
a wail from the ages, when men have seen
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 123
what they prize slip away. The commoni _
root of sorrow has been destructive change.] ^
Holding the watch in my hand, I may drop it
on the floor; and at once the crystal, which
has been so transparently protective, is gone.
If the floor is of stone, the back of the watch
may be wrenched away, the wheels of its deli-
cate machinery jarred asunder. Destruction
has come upon it, and not merely an extra-
neous accident. In consequence of altered
surroundings, dissolution is wrought within.
Change of a lamentable sort has come. What
before was a beautiful whole, organically con-
stituted in the way described in my first two
chapters, has been torn asunder. What we
formerly beheld with delight has disappeared.
And let us not accept false comfort. We
often hear it said that, after all, destruction is
an illusion. There is no such thing. What
is once in the world is here forever. No par-
ticle of the watch can by any possibility be
lost. And what is true of the watch is true
of things far higher, of persons even. When
persons decay and die, may not their destruc-
tion be only in outward seeming ? We cannot
imagine absolute cessation. As well imagine an
absolute beginning. There is no loss. Every-
124 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
thing abides. Only to our apprehension do de-
structive changes occur. We are all familiar
with consolation of this sort, and how in-
wardly unsatisfactory it is ! For while it is
true that no particle of the watch is destroyed,
it is precisely those particles which were in our
minds of little consequence. Almost equally
well they might have been of gold, silver, or
steel. The precious part of the watch was the
organization of its particles, and that is gone.
The face and form of my friend can indeed
be blotted out in no single item. But I care
nothing for its material items. The totality
may be wrecked, and it is that totality to which
my affections cling. And so it is in the world
around maj;erial.remains, organic wholeness
^ ^^""^^^^^. ^B^3i ""
goes. It is almost a sarcasm of nature that
she counts our precious things so cheap, while
the bricks and mortar of which these are
made matters on which no human affection
can fasten she holds for everlasting. The
lamentations of the ages, then, have not erred.
Something tragic is involved in the framework
of the universe. In order to abide, divulsion
must occur. Destruction of organism is going
on all around us, and ever will go on. Things
must unceasingly be torn apart. One ..mjght
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 125
tcall this destructive and lamentable change
\;he only steadfast feature of the world.
Yet after all, and often in this very process
of divulsion, we catch glimpses of a nobler
sort of change. For there is a third species
to which I might perhaps give the name of
transforming change. When, for example, a
certain portion of oxygen and a certain portion
of hydrogen, each having its own distinctive
qualities, are brought into contact with one
another, they utterly change. The qualities
of both disappear, and a new set of qualities
takes their place. The old ones are gone,
gone, but not lost ; for they have been trans-
formed into new ones of a predetermined and
constant kind. Only a single sort of change
is open to these elements when in each other's
presence, and in precisely that way they will
always change. In so changing they do not,
it is true, fully keep their past ; but a fixed
relation to it they do keep, and under certain
conditions may return to it again. The trans-
forming changes of chemistry, then, are of a
different nature from those of the mechanic
destruction just described. In those the
126 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
ruined organism leaves not a wrack behind.
In chemic change something definite is held,
something that originally was planned and
can be prophesied. An end is attained : the
fixed combination of just so much oxygen with
just so much hydrogen for the making of the
new substance, water. Here change is pro-
ductive, and is not mere waste, as in organic
destruction. Something, however, is lost
the old qualities ; for these cannot be restored
except through the disruption of the new sub-
stance, the water in which they are combined.
VI
But there is a more peculiar change of a
higher order still, that which we speak of as
development, evolution, growth. This sort
of change might be described as movement
toward a mark. When the seed begins to be
transformed in the earth, it is adapted not
merely to the next stage ; but that stage has
reference to one farther on, and that to still
others. It would hardly be a metaphor to
declare that the whole elm is already prophe-
sied when its seed is laid in the earth. For
though the entire tree is not there, though in
order that the seed may become an elm it
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 127
must have a helpful environment, still a cer-
tain plan of movement elmwards is, we may
say, already schemed in the seed. Here ac-
cordingly, change far from being a loss
is a continual increment and revelation. And
since the later stages successively disclose the
meaning of those which went before, these
later stages might with accuracy be styled the
truth of their predecessors, and those be ac-
counted in comparison trivial and meaningless
until thus changed. This sort of change car-
ries its past along with it. In the destructive
changes which we were lamenting a moment
ago, the past was lost and the new began as an
independent affair. Even in chemic change
this was true to a certain extent. Yet there,
though the past was lost, a future was prophe-
sied. In the case of development the future,
so far from annihilating the past, is its exhibi-
tion on a larger scale. The full significance
of any single stage is not manifest until the
final one is reached.
I suppose when we arrive at this thought
of change as expressing development, our lam-
entation may well turn to rejoicing. Possibly
this may be the reason why the gloom which
is a noticeable feature of the thought of many
128 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
preceding centuries has in our time somewhat
disappeared. While our ambitions are gener-
ally wider, and we might seem, therefore, more
exposed to disappointment, I think the last
half of the century which has closed has been
a time of large hopefulness. Perhaps it has
not yet gone so far as rejoicing, for failure
and sorrow are still by no means extirpated.
But at least the thoughts of our day have
become turned rather to the future than the
past, a result which has attended the wider
comprehension of development. To call de-
velopment the discovery of our century would,
however, be absurd. Aristotle bases his whole
philosophy upon it, and it was already vener-
able in his time. Yet the many writers who
have expounded the doctrine during the last
fifty years have brought the thought of it
home to the common man. It has entered
into daily life as never before, and has done
much to protect us against the sadness of
destructive change. Perceiving that changes,
apparently destructive, repeatedly bring to
light meaning previously undisclosed, we
more willingly than our ancestors part with
the imperfect that a path to the perfect may
be opened.
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 129
Is not this, then, the great conception of
change which we now need to study as self-
development ? I believe not. One essential
feature is omitted. In the typical example
which I have just reviewed, the growth of an
elm from its seed, we cannot say that the seed
expands itself with a view to becoming a tree.
That would be to carry over into the tree's
existence notions borrowed from an alien
sphere. Indeed, to assert that there has been
any genuine development from the seed up to
the finished tree is to use terms in an accom-
modated, metaphoric, and hypothetical way.
Development there certainly has been as esti-
mated by an outsider, an onlooker, but not as
perceived by the tree itself. It has not known
where it was going. Out of the unknown
earth the seed pushes its way into the still less
known air. But in doing so it is devoid of
purpose. Nor, if we endow it with conscious-
ness, can we suppose it would behold its end
and seek it. The forces driving it toward
that end are not conscious forces; they are
mechanic forces. Through every stage it is
pushed from behind, not drawn from before.
There is no causative goal set up, alluring the
seed onward. In speaking as if there were,
130 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
we employ language which can have signifi-
cance only for rational beings. We may hold
that there is a rational plan of the universe
which that seed is fulfilling. But if so, the
plan does not belong to the seed. It is im-
posed from without, and the seed does its
bidding unawares.
VII
But we may imagine a different state of
affairs. Let us assume that when the seed
sprouted it foreknew the elm that was to be.
Every time it sucked in its slight moisture it
was gently adapting this nourishment to the
fulfillment of its ultimate end, asking itself
whether the small material had better be be-
stowed on the left bough or the right, whether
certain leaves should curve more obliquely
toward the sun, and whether it had better
wave its branches and catch the passing breeze
or leave them quiet. If we could rightly ima-
gine such a state of things, our tree would be
much unlike its brothers of the forest; for,
superintending its own development, it would
be not a thing at all but a person. We persons
are in this very way entrusted with our growth.
A plan there is, a normal mode of growth, a
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 131
significance to which we may attain. But
that significance is not imposed on us from
without, as an inevitable event, already settled
through our past. On the contrary, we detect
it afar as a possibility, are thus put in charge
of it, and so become in large degree our own
upbuilders. Development is movement toward
a mark. In self -development the mark to be
reached is in the conscious keeping of him
who is to reach it. Toward it he may more
or less fully direct his course.
And what an astonishing state of things
then appears ! Self-development involves a
kind of contradiction in terms. How can I
build if at present there is no I ? Why should
I build if at present there is an I ? Which-
ever alternative we take, we fall into what
looks like absurdity. Yet on that absurdity
personal life is based. There is no avoiding
it. Wordsworth has daringly stated the par-
adox: "So build we up the being that we
are." On coming into the world we are onlyj
sketched out. Of each of us there is a ground!
plan of which we progressively become aware.
Hidden from us in our early years, it resides
in the minds of our parents, just as the plan
of the tree's structure is in the keeping of na-
132 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
ture. Gradually through our advancing years
and the care of those around us we catch sight
of what we might be. Detecting in ourselves
possibilities, we make out their relation to a
plan not yet realized. We accordingly take
ourselves in hand and say, " If any personal
good is to come to me, it must be of my mak-
ing. I cannot own myself till I am largely
the author of myself. From day to day I
must construct, and whenever I act study
bow the action will affect my betterment,
whether by performing it I am likely to de-
grade or to consolidate myself." And to this
process there must be no end.
Obviously, nothing like this could occur if
our actual condition were our ideal condition.
Self-development is open only to a being in
whom there are possibilities as yet unfulfilled.
The things around us have their definite con-
stitution. They can do exactly thus and no
more. What shall be the effect of any im-
pulse falling on them is already assured. If
the condition of the brutes is anything like
that which we disrespectfuUy attributed to
them, then they are in the same case ; they
too are shut up to fixed responses, and have
in them no unfulfilled capacities. It is the
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 133
possession of such empty capacities which
makes us personal. Well has it been said
that he who can declare, " I am that I am,"
is either God or a brute. No human being
can say it. To describe myself as if I were
settled fact is to make myself a thing. My
life is in that which may be. The ideals of
existence are my realities, and " ought " is
my peculiar verb. "Is" has no other appli-
cation to a person than to mark how far he
has advanced along his ideal line. Were he
to pause at any point as if complete, he would j
cease to be a person.
VIII
But it is necessary to trace somewhat care-
fully the method of such self-development.
How do we proceed? Before the architect
built the State House, he drew up a plan
of the finished building, and there was no
moving of stone, mortar, or tool, till every-
thing was complete on paper. Each work-
man who did anything subsequently did it
in deference to that perfected design. Each
stone brought for the great structure was
numbered for its place and had its jointing cut
in adaptation to the remaining stones. If,
134 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
then, each one of us is to become an architect
of himself, it might seem necessary to lay out
a plan of our complete existence before setting
out in life, or at whatever moment we become
aware that henceforth our construction is to
be in our own charge. Only with such a,
plan in hand would orderly building seem
possible. This is a common belief, but in
my judgment an erroneous one. Indeed the
whole analogy of the architect and his me-
chanisms is misleading. We rarely have in
mind the total plan of our unrealized being,
and rarely ought we to have. Our work be-
gins at a different point. We do not, like
the architect, usually begin with a thought of
completion. Rather we are first stirred by a
sense of weakness.
In my own education I find this to be
true. After some years as a boy in a Boston
public school, I went to Phillips Academy in
Andover, then to Harvard College, and sub-
sequently to a German university, and why
did I do all this ? Did I have in mind the
picture of myself as a learned man? I will
not deny that such a fancy drifted through
my brain. But it was indistinct and occa-
sional. I did not even know what it was to
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 135
be a learned man. I do not know now. The
driving force that was on me was something
quite different. I found myself disagreeably
ignorant. Reading books and newspapers,
I continually found matters referred to of
which I knew nothing. Looking out on the
universe, I did not understand it; and look-
ing into the yet more marvelous universe
within, I was still more grievously perplexed.
I thought life not worth living on such terms.
I determined to get rid of my ignorance and
to endure such limitations of knowledge no
longer. Is there, I asked, any place where at
least a portion of my stupidity may be set
aside? I removed a little fraction at school, but
revealed also enormous expanses which I had
not suspected before. I therefore pressed on
farther, and to-day am still engaged in the
almost hopeless attempt to extirpate my ig-
norance. What incites me continually is the
sense of how small I am, not that which a
few moments ago seemed my best incentive
the picture of myself as large. That on the
whole has had comparatively little influence.
Of course I do not assert that we are altogether
without visions of a larger life. That is far
from being the case. Were it so, desire
136 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
would cease. We must contrast the poverty
of the present with the fullness of a possible
future, or we should not incline to turn from
that present. Yet our grand driving force
is that sense of limitation, of want or need,
which was discussed in the last chapter. And
our aim is rather at a better than at a best,
at the removal of some small distinct hin-
drance than at arrival at a completed goal.
We come upon excellence piecemeal, and do
not, like the architect, look upon it in its
entirety at the outset.
Yet in the pursuit of this "better," the
more vividly we can figure the coming stages,
the more easily will they be attained. For
this purpose the careers of those who have
gone before us are helpful, reports about
the great ones of the past, and the revelations
of themselves which they have left us in litera-
ture and institutions. Example is a powerful
agent in making our footsteps quick and true.
But it has its dangers, and may be a means of
terrifying unless we feel that even in our low
estate there are capacities allying us with our
exemplar. The first vision of excellence is
overwhelming. We draw back, knowing that
we do not look like that, and we cannot bear
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 137
to behold what is so superior. But by degrees,
feeling our kinship with excellence, we are
befriended.
I would not, then, make rigid statements
in regard to this point of method. Grateful
as I believe we should be for every sense of
need, this is obviously not enough. To some
extent we must have in mind the betterment
which we may obtain through supplying that
need. Yet I do not think a full plan of our
ultimate goal is usually desirable. In small
matters it is often possible and convenient.
I plan my stay in Europe before going there.
I figure my business prospects before form-
ing a partnership. But in prof ounder affairs,
I more wisely set out from the thought of the
present, and the patent need of improving it,
than from the future with its ideal perfection.
Goethe's rule is a good one :
" Willst du ins Unendliche sclireiten ?
So such das Endliche, naoh alien Seiten."
Would you reach the infinite? Then enter
into finite things, working out all that they
contain.
IX
If in working them out a test is wanted to
enable us to decide whether we are working
138 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
wisely or to our harm, I believe such a test
may be found in the congruity of the new
with the old. Shall I by adding a fresh
power to myself strengthen those I already
possess ? By taking this path, rich in a cer-
tain sort of good as it undoubtedly is, shall
I be diverted from paths where my special
goods lie? Here I am, a student of ethics.
A friend calls and tells me of the charms
of astronomy, a study undoubtedly majestic
and delightful. Since I desire to take all
knowledge for my province, why not hurry
off at once to study astronomy ? No indeed.
No astronomy for me. I draw a ring about
that subject and say, " Precious subject, fun-
damentally valuable for all men. But I will
remain ignorant of it, because it is not quite
congruous with the studies I already have on
hand." That must be my test : not how im-
portant is the study itself, but how importanl
is it for me ? How far will it help me to
accept and develop those limitations to which
I am now pledged ?
lit: this acceptance of limitation, therefore,
which seems at first so humiliating, I believe
we have the starting point of all self-develop-
ment. Our very imperfections, once accepted,
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 139
prove our best means of discerning more.
That is a profound remark of Hegel's that
knowledge of a KflHt Iff ft Jpnwlftdge beyond
that lilpitr Let us consider for a moment
what it means. Suppose I should come upon
Kaspar Hauser, shut in his little room.
" And how long have you been here," I ask.
" Ever since I was born," he answers. " In-
deed ! How much, then, do you know ? "
" Nothing beyond the walls of this room."
Might I not fairly reply, " You contradict
yourself. How can you know anything about
walls of a room unless you also know of much
beyond them ? " We cannot conceive a limit
except as a limit from something. Accord-
ingly when we detect our ignorance we be-
come by that very fact not ignorant. We
have gone beyond ourselves and have seen
that we are not what we should be. And
this is the way of self-development. Becom-
ing aware of our imperfections, we by that
very fact continually lay hold on whatever
perfect is within our reach.
X
When then we ask whether at any moment
we are fully persons, we must answer, No.
140 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
The actual extent of personality is at any
time small. It is rather a goal than some-
thing ever attained. We have seen that it is
not to be described in terms of the verb " to
be." We cannot say " I am a person," but
only " I ought to be a person. I am seeking
to be." The great body of our life is, we
know, a purely natural affair. Our instincts,
our wayward impulses, our unconnected dis-
orderly purposes these, which fill the larger
portion of our existence, do not express our
personal nature. Each of them goes on its
own way, neglectful of the whole. There-
fore we must confess that at no time can we
account ourselves completed persons. Justly
we use such strange expressions as "He is
much of a person," " He is very little of a
person." Personality is an affair of degree.
We are moving toward it, but have not yet
arrived. " Man partly is and wholly hopes
to be." And can we ever arrive ? I do not
see how. We are chasing a flying goal.
The nearer we approach, the farther it re-
moves. Shall we call this fact discouraging,
then, or even say that self-development is a
useless process, since it never can be fulfilled ?
I think not. I should rather specify this fea-
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 141
ture of it as our chief source of encourage-
ment ; for I hold that only those aims which
do thus contain an infinite element and are,
strictly speaking, unattainable, move mankind
to passionate pursuit. Probably all will agree
that riches, fame, and wisdom are ideals which
predominantly move us, and they are all un-
attainable. Suppose, some morning, when I
see a merchant setting off for his office quite
too early, I ask him why he is hastening so.
He answers, " Why, there is money to be
made. And as I intend to be a rich man
some day, I must leave home comforts and be
prompt at my desk." But I persist, " You
have forgotten something. It occurs to me
that you never can be rich. No rich man
was ever seen. Whoever has obtained a mil-
lion dollars can get a million more, and the
man of two millions can become one of three.
Obviously, then, neither you nor any one can
become a completely rich man." Should I stay
that merchant from his exit by remarks of this
kind? If he answered at all, he would
merely say, " Don't read too much. You had U I
better mix more with men."
And I should get no better treatment from
the scholar, the man who is seeking wisdom.
142 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
It is true no really wise man ever was on
earth, or ever will be. But that is the very
reason why we are all so impassioned for wis-
dom, because every bit we seize only opens the
door to more. If we could get it in full, if
some time or other, knowing that we are now
wise, we could sit down in our armchairs with
nothing further to do, it would be a death
blow to our colleges. Nobody would attend
them or care for wisdom longer. An aim
which one can reach, and discover to be
finally ended, moves only children. They
will make collections of birds' eggs, though
conceivably they might obtain every species
in the neighborhood. But these are not the
things which excite earnest men. They run
after fame, because they can never be quite
famous. They may become known to every
person on their street, but there is the street
beyond. Or to every one in their town, but
there are other towns. Or if to every person
on earth, there are still the after ages. En-
tire fame cannot be had ; and exactly on that
account it stirs every impulse of our nature
in pursuit.
Now the aim at personal perfection is pre-
cisely of this sort. As servants of righteous-
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 143
ness we cannot accept any other precept than
" Be ye perfect as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect." But we know such per-
fection to be unattainable. Yet I sometimes
doubt whether we state the matter truly so.
Would it not be juster to say that perfection
can always be attained, and that it is about
the only thing which can be ? We might well
say of all the infinite ideals that they differ
from the finite ones simply in this, that the
finite can be attained but once, and then are
ended, while the infinite are continually at-
tained. At no moment of his life shall the 1 ;
merchant be cut off from becoming richer, or
the scholar from growing wiser, or the pub-
lic benefactor from acquiring further fame.
These aims, then, are always attainable; for
in them what we think of as the goal is not,
as in other cases, a single point which, once
reached, renders the rest of life useless and
listless. The goal here is the line of increase.
To be moving along that line should be our
daily endeavor. Our proper utterance should
be, "I was never so good as to-day, and I
hope never to be so bad again."
144 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
XI
But when we have seen how slender is our
actual perfection, how slight must be reck-
oned the attainment of personality at any
moment, we are brought face to face with
the profound problem of its possible extent.
How far can the self be developed? Infi-
nitely ? Is each one of us an infinite being ?
I will not say so. I do not like to make a
statement which runs beyond my own experi-
ence. But confining myself to this, let us see
what it will show.
When at any time I seek to perfect my-
self, does my attainment of any grade of im-
provement prevent or further another step ?
All will agree that it simply opens a new
door. Perhaps I am seeking to withdraw
from habits of mendacity, and beginning to
tell the truth. Then every time I tell the
truth I shall discover more truth to tell. And
will this process ever come to an end? I have
nothing to do with " evers." I can only say
that each time I try it, advance is more pos-
sible, not less possible. In the personal life
there is, if I may say so, no provision for
checkage. As I understand it, in the animal
SELF-DEVELOPMENT 145
life there is such provision. In my first chap-
ter I was pointing out the difference between
extrinsic and intrinsic goodness; and I said
that the table's entering into use and hold-
ing objects on its top tended to destroy it,
though we might imagine a magic table in
which every exercise of function would be
preservative. Now in the personal nature we
find just such a magical provision. Each time! '
a person normally exerts himself he
further exertion in those normal ways
possible.
And if this is true of all personal action
within our experience, what right have we to
set a limit to it anywhere ? It may not be
suitable to say that I know myself infinite,
but it is certainly true that I cannot conceive
myself as finite. I can readily see that this
body of mine has in it what I have called a
provision for checkage. Every time the blood
moves in my veins it leaves its little deposit.
Further motion of that blood is slightly im-
peded. But every time a moral purpose'/
moves my lif e, it makes the next move surer.
It is impossible to draw lines of limitation in
moral development.
146 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
XII
Such, then, is the vast conception with
which we have been dealing. Goodness, to
be personal, must express perpetual self -devel-
opment. All the moral aims of life may be
summed up in the single word, " self-realiza-
tion." Could I fully realize myself, I should
have fulfilled all righteousness, and this view
is sanctioned by the Great Teacher when he
asks, " What shah* a man give in exchange
for his life ? " his life, his soul, his self
If any one fully believed this, and lived as i
all his desires were fulfilled so long as he had
opportunities of self-development, he might
be said to have insured himself against every
catastrophe. Little could harm him. What-
ever occurred, instead of exclaiming, "How
calamitous ! " he would simply ask, " What
fresh opportunities do these strange circum-
stances present for enlarged living ? Let me
add this new discipline to what I had before.
Seeking as I am to become expanded into the
infinite, this experience discloses a new avenue
thither. All things work together for good
to them that love the Lord."
REFERENCES ON SELF-DEVELOPMENT
Bradley's Ethical Studies, essay vi.
Green's Prolegomena of Ethics, bk. iii. cb. ii.
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. iii. ch. iv.
Muirhead's Elements of Ethics, bk. iii. ch. iii.
Mackenzie's Manual of Ethics, pt. i. ch. vii.
Dewey in Philos. Journal, Dec., 1893.
VI
SELF-SACRIFICE
VI
SELF-SACKIFICE
I
THE view of human goodness presented in
the preceding chapter is one which is at present
finding remarkably wide acceptance. Philoso-
phers are often reproached with an indisposi-
tion to agree, and naturally where inquiry is
active diversity will obtain. But to-day there
appears a strange unanimity as regards the
ultimate formula of ethics. The empirical
schools state this as the highest form of the
struggle for existence ; the idealistic, as self-
realization. . The two are the same so far
as they both regard morality as having to
do with the development of life in persons.
These curious beings, both also acknowledge,
can never rest till they attain a completeness
now incalculable.
Of course there is abundant diversity in the
application of such formulae. In interpreting
152 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
them we come upon problems no less urgent
and tangled than those which vexed our
fathers. Who and what is a person ? How
far is he detachable from nature ? How far
from his fellow men ? Is his individuality an
illusion, and each of us only an imperfect phase
of a single universal being, so that in strict-
ness we must own that there is none good but
one, that is God ? These and kindred ques-
tions naturally oppress the thought of our
time. Yet all are but so many attempts to
push the formula of self-realization into entire
clearness. The considerable agreement in
ethical formulae everywhere noticeable shows
that at least so much advance has been made :
morality has ceased to be primarily repres-
sive, and is now regarded as the amplest exhibit
of human nature, free from every external
precept, however sacred. Man is the measure
of the moral universe, and the development of
himself his single duty.
But when we thus accept self-realization as
our supreme aim, we bring ourselves into seem-
ing conflict with one of our prof oundest moral
instincts. It is Fdf-gaflrifi^ *haf. fl*n^fgrtli I
from all mankind, as nothing else does, the!
distinctively moral response of reverence. In-/
SELF-SACRIFICE 153
telligence, skill, beauty, learning we admire
them all ; but when we see an act of self-
sacrifice, however small, an awe falls on us ;
we bow our heads, fearful that we might not
have been capable of anything so glorious.
We^thm acknowledge self-sacrifice to be the
very culmination of the moral life. He who
understands it has comprehended all righteous-
ness, human and divine. But how does self-
sacrifice accord with self-development ? Will
he who is busy cultivating himself sacrifice
himself ? Is there not a kind of conflict be-
tween the two ? Yet can we abandon either ?
And if not, must not the formula of self-
realization accept modification ?
This, then, is the problem to which I must'
now turn : the possible adjustment of these
two imperative claims, the claim to realize
one's self and the claim to
And I shall most easily set my theme before
my readers if I state at once the four historic
objections to the reality of self-sacrifice. I
call them historic, for they have appeared
and reappeared in the history of ethics, and
have been worked out there on a great scale.
While not altogether consistent with one an-
O
other, no one of them is unimportant. To-
154 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
gether they compactly present those conflict-
ing considerations which must be borne in
mind when we attempt to comprehend the
subtleties of self-sacrifice. I will endeavor to
state them briefly and sympathetically.
II
First, self-sacrifice is psychologically impos-
sible. No man ever performs a strictly disin-
terested act, as has been shown in my chap-
ter on self -direction. Before desire will start,
his own interest must be engaged. In action
we seek to accomplish something, and be-
tween that something and ourselves some sort
of valued connection must be felt. Every
wish indicates that the wisher experiences a
need which he thinks might be supplied by
the object wished for. It is true that wishes
and wills are often directed upon external ob-
jects, but only because we believe that our
own well-being is involved in their union
with us. I devote myself to my friend as
my friend, counting his happiness and my
own inseparable. Were he so entirely a for-
eigner that I had no interest in him, my sac-
rifices for him even if conceivable would
be meaningless. They acquire meaning only
SELF-SACEIFICE 155
through. mj_.sense. of _.a tie-betwpipn him and
me. My service of him may be regarded as
my escape from petty selfishness into broad
selfishness, from immediate gain to remote
gain. But the prospect of gain in some form,
proximate or ultimate, gain often of an impal-
pable and spiritual sort, always attends my
wish and will. The__aini_at_ seltteslizatiQii,
however hidden, is everywhere the root of
_action. No belittlement of ourselves can ap-
pear desirable except as a step toward ultimate
enlargement. Self-sacrifice in any true and it
thorough-going sense never occurs.
So cogent is this objection, and so fre-
quently does it appear, not only in ethical
discussion but in the minds of the struggling
multitude, that he who has not faced it, and
taken its truth well to heart, can have little
comprehension of self-sacrifice. But it is a
blessed fact that thousands who comprehend
self-sacrifice little practise it largely.
Ill
A second objection strips off the glory of
self-sacrifice and regards it as a sad necessity.
While there is nothing in it to attract or be
approved, the lamentable fact is that we are
156 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
so crowded together and disposed to trample
on one another that, partially to escape, we
must each agree to abate something of our
own in behalf of a neighbor's gain. We can-
not each be all we would. It is a sign of our
mean estate that again and again we need to
cut off sections of what we count valuable
in order to save any portion. Only by such
compromises are we able to get along with
one another. He who refuses them finds
himself exposed to still greater loss. The
hard conditions under which we live appear
in the fact that such restraint is inevitable. It
call self-sacrifice, therefore, a sad necessity. \
This theory of sacrifice is urged by Hobbes
and by the many later moralists who follow
his daring lead. It should be counted among
the objections because, while it admits the fact
of self-sacrifice, it denies its dignity.
IV
A third objection declares sacrifice to be
- needless. Its very appearance rests on a mis-
conception. We mistakenly suppose that in
abating our own for the sake of our neigh-
bor's good, we lose. In reality this is our
true mode of enlargement. The interests of
SELF-SACRIFICE 157
I the individual and society are not hostile or
| alien, but supplemental. Society is nothing
but the larger individual ; so that he alone
realizes himself who enters most fully into
social relations, making the well-being of so-
ciety his own. This is plain enough when
we study the working of a small and compre-
hensible portion of society. The child does
not lose through identification with family
life. That is his great means of realizing
himself. To assume contrast and antagonism
between family interest and the interest of
the child is palpably unwarranted and untrue.
Equally unwarranted is a similar assumption
in the broader ranges of society. When we
talk of sacrifice, we refer merely to the first
stage and outer aspect of the act. Under-
neath, self-interest is guarded, the individual
giving up his individuality only through ob-
taining a larger individuality still.
Such identity of interest between society
and the individual the moralists of the eigh-
teenth century are never tired of pointing out.
If they are right, and the identity is complete,
then sacrifice is abolished or is only a gener-
ous illusion. But these men never quite suc-
ceeded in persuading the English people of
158 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
their doctrine, at least they never carried their
thought fully over into the common mind.
That common mind has always thought of
sacrifice in a widely different way, but in
one which renders it still more incomprehen-
sible. Self -sacrifice it regards as a glorious
madness. Though the only act which ever
forces us to bow in reverent awe, it is insolu-
bly mysterious, irrational, crazy perhaps, but
superb. For in it we do not deliberate. We
hear a call, we shut our ears to prudence, and
with courageous blindness as regards damage
of our own, we hasten headlong to meet the
needs of others. To reckon heroism, to count
up opposing gains and losses, balancing them
one against another in order clear-sightedly
to act, is to render heroism impossible. Into
it there enters an element of insanity. The
sacrificer must feel that he cares nothing for
what is rational, but only for what is holy,
for his duty. The rational and the hplv^
in the mind of him who has not been dis-
turbed by theoretic controversy these two
stand in harsh antithesis, and the antithesis
has been approved by important ethical writers
SELF-SACRIFICE 159
of our time. The rational man is, of course,
needed in the humdrum work of life. His
assertive and sagacious spirit clears many a
tangled pathway. But he gets no reverence,
the characteristic response of self-sacrifice.
This is reserved for him who says, " No pru-
dence for me ! I will be admirably crazy.
Let me fling myself away, so only there come
salvation to others."
Such, then, are the four massive objections :
self-sacrifice is unreal psychologically, aesthet-
ically, morally, or rationally. But negative
considerations are not enough. No amount
of demonstration of what a thing is not will
ever reveal what it is. Objections are merely
of value for clearing a field and marking the
spots on which a structure cannot be reared.
The serious task of erecting that structure
somewhere still remains. To it I now address
myself.
VI
What we need to consider first is the reality
and wide range of self-sacrifice. The moment
the term is mentioned there spring up before
our minds certain typical examples of it. We
see the soldier advancing toward the battle-
160 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
field, to stake his life for a country in Avhose
prosperity he may never share. We see the
infant falling into the water, and the full-
grown man flinging in after it his own assured
and valued life in hopes of rescuing that incip-
ient and uncertain thing, a little child. Yes,
I myself came on a case of heroism hardly less
striking. I was riding my bicycle along the
public street when there dashed past me a
runaway horse with a carriage at his heels,
both moving so madly that I thought all
the city was in danger. I pursued as rap-
idly as I could, and as I neared my home, saw
horse and carriage standing by the sidewalk.
By the horse's head stood a negro. I went
up to him and said, " Did you catch that
horse?" "Yes, sir," he answered. "But,"
I said, " he was going at a furious pace."
" Yes, sir." " And he might have run you
down." " Yes, sir, but I know horses, and I
was afraid he would hurt some of these chil-
dren." There he stood, the big brown hero,
unexalted, soothing the still restive horse and
unaware of having done anything out of the
ordinary. I entered my house ashamed. Had
I possessed such skill, would I have ventured
my life in such a fashion ?
SELF-SACRIFICE 161
Such are some of the shining examples of
self-sacrifice which occur to us at the first
mention of the word. But we shall mislead
ourselves if we confine our thoughts to cases
so climactic, triumphant, and spectacular.
Deeds like these dazzle and do not invite to
full analysis of their nature. Let us turn to
affairs more usual.
I have happened to know intimately mem-
hers of three professions ministers, nurses,
teachers and I find self-sacrifice a matter of
daily practice with them all. To it the min-
istsr is dedicated. He must not look for gain.
He has a salary, of course ; but it is much in
the nature of a fee, a means of insuring him
a certain kind of living. And while it is com-
mon enough to find a minister studying how
he may make money in his parish, it is com-
moner far to find one bent on seeing 1 how he
o
can make righteousness prevail there, though
it overwhelm him. The other professions do
not so manifestly aim at self-sacrifice. They
are distinctly money-making. They exact a
given sum for a given service. Still, in them
too how constantly do we see that that which
is given far outruns that which is paid for.
I have watched pretty closely the work of a
162 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
dozen or more trained nurses, and I believe it
would be hard to find any class in the com-
munity showing a higher average of estimable
character. How quiet they are under the
most irritating circumstances ! How fully
they pour themselves into the lives of their
patients ! How prompt is the deft hand !
How considerate the swift intelligence ! Their
hearts are aglow over what can be given, not
over what can be got. A similar temper is
widely observable among teachers, especially
among those of the lower grades. Paid
though they are for a certain task, how indis-
posed they are to limit themselves to that task
or to confine their care of their children to
the schoolroom ! The hard-worked creatures
acquire an intimate interest in the little lives
and, heedless of themselves, are continually
ready to spend and be spent for those who
cannot know what they receive. Among such
teachers I find self-sacrifice as broad, as deep,
as genuine, if not so striking, as that of the
soldier in the field.
Evidently, then, self-sacrifice may be wide-
spread and may permeate the institutions of
ordinary life ; being found even in occupa-
tions primarily ordered by principles of give
SSLF-SACEIFICE 163
and take, where it expresses itself in a kind
of surplusage of giving above what is pre-
scribed in the contract. In this form it enters
into trade. The high-minded merchant is not
concerned merely with getting his money
back from an article sold. He interests him-
self in the thoroughly excellent quality of
that article, in the accommodation of his cus-
tomers, the soundness of his business methods,
and the honorable standing of his firm. And
when we turn to our public officials, how fre-
quent it is how frequent in spite of what
the newspapers say to find men eager for
the public good, men ready to take labor on
themselves if only the state may be saved from
cost and damage !
But I still underestimate the prevalence of
the principle. Our instances must be homelier
yet. Each day come petty citations to self-
sacrifice which are accepted as a matter of
course. As I walk to my lecture-room some-
body stops me and says, " What is the way
to Berkeley Street?" Do I reprovingly
answer, " You must have made a mistake. I
have no interest in Berkeley Street. I think
it is you who are going there, and why are
you putting me to inconvenience merely that
164 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
you may the more easily find your way?"
Should I answer so, he would think and pos-
sibly say, " There are strange people in Cam-
bridge, remoter from human kind than any
known elsewhere." Every one would feel as-
tonishment at the man who declined to bear
his little portion of a neighbor's burden. Our
commonest acceptance of society involves
self-sacrifice, and in all our trivial intercourse
we expect to put ourselves to unrewarded in-
convenience for the sake of others.
VII
What I have set myself to make plain in
this series of graded examples is simply this :
self-sacrifice is not something exceptional,
something occurring at crises of our lives,
something for which we need perpetually to
be preparing ourselves, so that when the great
occasion comes we may be ready to lay our-
selves upon its altar. Such romanticism dis-
torts and obscures. Self-sacrifice is an every-
day affair. By it we live. It is the very air
of our moral lungs. Without it society could
not go on for an hour. And that is precisely
why we reverence it so not for its rarity,
but for its importance. Nothing else, I sup-
SELF-SACRIFICE 165
pose, so instantly calls on the beholder for a
bowing of the head. Even a slight exhibit
of it sends through the sensitive observer a
thrill of reverent abasement. Other acts we
may admire ; others we may envy ; this we
adore.
Perhaps we are now prepared to sum up
our descriptive account and throw what we
have observed into a sort of definition. I
mean by self-sacrifice any diminution of my
own possessions, pleasures, or powers, in order
to increase those of others. Naturally what
we first think of is the parting with posses-
sions. That is what the word charity most
readily suggests, the giving up of some physi-
cal object owned by us which, even at the
moment of giving, we ourselves desire. But
the gift may be other than a physical object.
When I would gladly sit, I may stand in the
car for the sake of giving another ease. But
the greatest conceivable self-sacrifice is when
I give myself : when, that is, I in some way
allow my own powers to be narrowed in order
that those of some one else may be enlarged.
Parents are familiar with such exquisite char-
ity, parents who put themselves to daily hard-
ship because they want education for their
166 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
boys. But they have no monopoly in this
kind. I who stand in the guardianship of
youth have frequent occasion to miss a favor-
ite pupil, boy or girl, who throws up a college
training and goes home often, in my judg-
ment, mistakenly to support, or merely to
cheer, the family there. Of course such gifts
are incomparable. No parting with one's
goods, no abandonment of one's pleasures,
can be measured against them. Yet this is
what is going on all over the country where
devoted mother, gallant son, loyal husband,
are limiting their own range of existence for
the sake of broadening that of certain whom
they hold dear.
VIII
But when we have thus assembled our om-
nipresent facts and set them in order for cool
assessment, the enigma of self-sacrifice only
appears the more clearly. Why should a man
sacrifice himself ? Why voluntarily accept
loss ? Each of us has but a single lif e. Each
feels the pressure of his own needs and desires.
These point the way to enlargement. How,
then, can I disinterestedly prefer another's
gain ? Each of us is penned within the range
SELF-SACRIFICE 167
of his solitary consciousness, which may be
broadened or narrowed but cannot be passed.
It is incumbent on us, therefore, to study
our own enrichment. Anticipating whatever
might confirm or crumble our being, we
should strenuously seize the one and reject the
other. Deliberately to turn toward loss would
seem to be crazy. What shouldarinan accept
in exchange for his life? S\
Here is the difficulty, a difficulty of the pro-
foundest and most instructive sort. If we
could see our way clearly through it, little in
ethics would remain obscure. The common
mode of meeting it is to leave it thus para-
doxical. Self-sacrifice banishes rationality
and is a glorious madness. But such a con-
clusion is a repellent one. How can it be?
Reason is man's distinctive characteristic.
While brutes act blindly, while the punctual
physical universe minutely obeys laws of which
it knows nothing, usually it is open to man
to judge the path he will pursue. - Shall we
then say that, though reason is a convenience
in all the lower stretches of life, when we
reach self-sacrifice, our single awesome height,
it ceases ? I cannot think so. On the con-
trary, I hold that in self-sacrifice we have a
168 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
case not of glorious madness, but of somewhat
extreme rationality. How, then, is rational
contrasted with irrational guidance ? As we
here approach the central and most difficult
part of our discussion, clearness will oblige me
to enter into some detail.
When a child looks at a watch, he sees a
single object. It is something there, a some-
thing altogether detached from his conscious-
ness, from the table, from other objects around.
It is a brute fact, one single thing, complete
in itself. Such is the child's perception.
But a man of understanding looks at it differ-
ently. Its detached singleness is not to him
the most important truth in regard to it. Its
meaning must rather be found in the relations
in which it stands, relations which, seeming
at first to lie outside it, really enter into it and
make it what it is. The rational man would
accordingly see it all alive with the qualities
of gold, brass, steel, the metals of which it is
composed. He would find it incomprehensible
apart from the mind of its maker, and would
not regard that mind and watch as two things,
but as matters essentially related. Indeed,
these relations would run wider still, and rea-
son would not rest satisfied until the watch
SELF-SACRIFICE 169
was united to time itself, to the very frame-
work of the universe. Apart from this it
would be meaningless. In short, if a man
comprehends the watch in a rational way he
must comprehend it in what may be called a
conjunct way. The child might picture it as
abstract and single, but it could really be
known only in connection with all that exists.
Of course we pause far short of such full
knowledge. Our reason cannot stretch to the
infinity of things. But just so far as relations
can be traced between this object and all other
objects, so much the more rational does the
knowledge of the watch become. Rationality j
is the comprehending of anything in its rela-J
tions. The perceptive, isolated view is irra-1
tional.
But if this is true of so simple a matter as
a watch, it is doubly true of a complex human
being. The child imagines he can compre-
hend a person too in isolation, but rational
proverb-makers long ago told us, " One per-
son, no person.'* Each person must be con-
ceived as tied in with all his fellows. We have
seen how in the case of the watch we were
almost obliged to abandon the thought of a
single object and to speak of it as a kind of
170 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
centre of constitutive relations. A plexus of
ties runs in every direction, and where these
cross there is the watch. So it is among
human beings. If we try for a moment to
conceive a person as single and detached,
we shall find he would have no powers to
exercise. No emotions would be his, whether
of love or hate, for they imply objects to
arouse them, no occupations of civilized life,
for these involve mutual dependency. From
speech he would be cut off, if there were no-
body to speak to ; nor would any such instru-
ment as language be ready for his use, if an-
cestors had not cooperated in its construction.
His very thoughts would become a meaning-
less series of impressions if they indicated no
reality beside themselves. So empty would
be that fiction, the single and isolated individ-
ual. The real creature, rational and conjunct
man, is he who stands in living relationship
with his fellows, they being a veritable part
of him and he of them. Man is essentially a
social being, not a being who happens to be
living in society. Society enters into his in-
most fibre, and apart from society he is not.
Yet this does not mean that society, any more
than the individual, has an independent exist-
SELF-SACRIFICE 171
ence, prior, complete, and authoritative. What
would society be, parted from the individuals
who compose it ? No more than an individ-
ual who does not embody social relationships.
The two are mutual conceptions, different
aspects of the same thing. We may view
a person abstractly, fixing attention on his
single centre of consciousness ; or we may
view him conjunctly, attending to his multi-
farious ties.
Now what is distinctive of self-sacrifice is
that it insists in a somewhat extreme way on
this second and rational mode of regard. It
is a frank confession of interlocking lives. It
says, " I have nothing to do with the abstract,
isolated, and finite self. That is a matter of
no consequence. What I care about is the
conjunct, social, and infinite self that self
which is inseparable from others. Where
that calls, I serve." The self-sacrificing per-
son knows no interest of his own separate
from those of his father and mother, his wife
and children. He cannot ask what is good for
himself and set it in contrast with what is good
for them. For his own broader existence is
presented in these dear members of his family.
And such a man, so far from being mad, is
172 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
wise as few of us are. Glorious indeed is the
self-sacrificer, because he is so sane, because
in him all pettiness and detachment are swept
away. He appears mad only to those who
stand at the opposite point of view, but in his
eyes it is they who are ridiculous. In fact,
each must be counted crazy or wise according
to the view we take of what constitutes the
real person.
I remember a story current in our news-
papers during the Civil War. Just before a
battle an officer of our army, knowing of what
consequence it was that his regiment should
hold its ground, hastened to the rear to see
that none of his men were straggling. He
met a cowardly fellow trying to regain the
camp. Turning upon him in a passion of dis-
gust, he said, " What ! Do you count your
miserable little life worth more than that of
this great army ? " " Worth more to me,
sir," the man replied. How sensible ! How en-
tirely just from his own point of view, that
of the isolated self ! Taking only this into
account, he was but a moral child, incapable
of comprehending anything so difficult as a
conjunct self. He imagined that could he but
gave this eating, breathing, feeling self, no
SELF-SACRIFICE 173
matter if the country were lost, he would
be a gainer. What folly ! What would exist-
ence be worth outside the total inter-relation-
ship of human beings called his land ? But
this fact he could not perceive. To risk his
separate self in such a cause seemed absurd.
Turn for a moment and see how absurd the
separate self appears from the point of view
of the conjunct. When our Lord hung upon
the cross, the jeering soldiers shouted, "He.
saved others, himself he cannot save." No,
he could not ; and his inability seemed to
them ridiculous, while it was in reality his
glory. His true self he was saving himself
and all mankind the only self he valued.
IX
Now it is this strange complexity of our
being, compelling us to view ourselves in both
a separate and a conjunct way, which creates
all the difficulty in the problem of self-sacri-
fice. But I dare say that when I have thus
shown the reality and worth of the conjunct
self, it will be felt that self-sacrifice is alto-
gether illusory ; for while it seems to produce
loss, it is in fact the avoidance of what entails
littleness. So says Emerson :
174 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
" Let love repine and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply :
'T is man's perdition to be safe
When for the truth he ought to die."
Have we not, then, by explaining the ration-
ality of self-sacrifice, explained away the whole
matter and practically identified it with self-
culture ? There is plausibility in this view
and it has often been maintained but not
complete truth. For evidently the emotions
excited by culture and sacrifice are directly
antagonistic. Toward a man pursuing the ami
of culture we experience a feeling of approval,
not unmixed with suspicion, but we give him
none of that reverent adoration which is the
proper response to sacrifice. And if the feel-
ings of the beholder are contrasted, so also are
the psychological processes of the performer.
The man of culture starts with a sense of
defect which he seeks to supplement ; the
sacrificer, with a sense of fullness which he
seeks to empty. He who turns to self-culture
says, "I have progressed thus far. I have
gained thus much of what I would acquire.
But still I am poor. I need more. Let me
gather as abundantly as possible on every
side." But the thought of him who turns to
SELF-SACRIFICE 175
self-sacrifice is, " I have been gaining, but I
only gained to give. Here is my opportunity.
Let me pour out as largely as I may." He
contemplates final impoverishment. Accord-
ingly I was obliged to say in my definition
that the self-sacrificer seeks to heighten an-
other's possessions, pleasures, or powers at the
cost of his own. Undoubtedly at the end of
the process he often finds himself richer than
at the beginning. Perhaps this is the normal
result; but it is not contemplated. Psycho-
logically the sacrificer is facing in a different
direction.
X
Yet, though the motive agencies of the two
are thus contrasted, I think we must acknow-
ledge that sacrifice. no less than culture is a
To miss this
is to miss its essential character, and at the
same time to miss the safeguards which should
protect it against waste. For to say, " I will
sacrifice myself " is to leave the important part
of the business unexpressed. The weighty
matter is in the covert preposition /or, "I
will sacrifice myself for." An approved ob-
ject is aimed at. We are not primarily inter-
ested in negating ourselves. Only our estimate
176 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
of the importance of the object justifies our
intended loss. This object should accordingly
be scrutinized. Self-sacrifice is noble if its
end is noble, but becomes reprehensible when
its object is petty or undeserving. Omit or
overlook that word for, and self-sacrifice loses
its exalted character. It sinks into asceticism,
one of the most degrading of moral aberra-
tions. In asceticism we prize self-sacrifice for
its own sake. We hunt out what we value
most ; we judge what would most completely
fulfill our needs; and then we abolish it.
Abolish it for what? For nothing but the
mere sake of abolishing. This is to turn
morality upside down; and in place of the
Christian ideal of abounding life, to set up the
pessimistic aim of impoverishment. There is
nothing of this kind in self-sacrifice. Here
we assert ourselves, our conjunct selves. We
estimate what will be best for the community
of man and seek to further this at whatever
cost to our isolated individuality. By this
dedication to a deserving object sacrifice is
purified, ennobled, and made strong. We
speak of the glorious deed of him who plunges
into the water to save a child. But it is a
foolish and immoral thing to risk one's life
SELF-SACRIFICE 177
for a stone, a coin, or nothing at all. " Is the
object deserving ? " we must ask, " or shall I
reserve myself for greater need ? "
Too easily does our sympathetic and senti-
mental age, recklessly eulogistic of altruism,
hurry into self -sacrifice. Altruism in itself is
worthless. That an act is unselfish can never
justify its performance. He who would be a
great giver must first be a great person. Oui
men, and still more our women, need as ur-
gently the gospel of self -development as thai
of self -sacrifice ; though the two are naturally/
supplemental. Our only means of estimating
the propriety and dignity of sacrifice is to in-
quire how closely connected with ourselves is
its object. Until we can justify this connec-
tion, we have no right to incur it, for genuine
sacrifice is always an act of self-assertion. In
saving his regiment and contributing his share
toward saving his country, the soldier asserts
his own interests. He is a good soldier in pro-
portion as he feels these interests to be his ;
while the deserter is condemned, not for refus-
ing to give his life to an alien country and
regiment, but because he was small enough to
imagine that these great constituents of him-
self were alien. I tell the man on the street
178 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
the way home because I cannot part his be-
wilderment from my own. The problem al-
ways is, What may I suitably regard as mine ?
And in solving it, we should study as care-
fully that for which we propose to sacrifice
ourselves as anything which we might seek
to obtain. Triviality or lack of permanent
consequence is as objectionable in the one
case as in the other. The only safe rule is
that self-sacrifice is self-assertion, is a judg-
ment as regards what we would welcome to be
a portion of our conjunct self.
Perhaps an extreme case will show this most
clearly. Jesus prayed, " Not my will, but thine,
be done." He did not then lose his will. He
asserted and obtained it. For his will was that
the divine will should be fulfilled, and ful-
filled it was. He set aside one form of his will,
his private and isolated will, knowing it to be
delusive. But his true or conjunct will and
he knew it to be his true one he abundantly
obtained. It is no wonder, then, that in ex-
plaining these things to his disciples he says,
" My meat it is to do the will of my Father."
/That is always the language of genuine self-
( sacrifice. The act is not complete until the
\A sense of loss has disappeared.
SELF-SACRIFICE 179
XI
Yet while I hold that self-sacrifice is thus
the very extreme of rationality, grounding as
it does all worth in the relational or conjunct
selfhood, I cannot disguise from myself that
it contains an element of tragedy too. This
my readers will already have felt and will
have begun to rebel against my insistence that
self-sacrifice is the fulfillment of our being.
For though it is true that when opposition
arises between the conjunct and separate
selves our largest safety is with the former,
the very fact that such opposition is possible
involves tragedy. One part of the nature be-
comes arrayed against another. We must die
to live. Our lower goods are found incom-
patible with our higher. Pleasure, comfort,
property, friends, possibly life itself, have be-
come hostile to our more inclusive aims and
must be cast aside. It is true that when the
tragic antithesis is presented and we can reach
our higher goods only by loss of the lower,
hesitation is ruin. It is true too that on
account of that element of self-assertion to
which I have drawn attention, the genuine
sacrificer is ordinarily unaware of any such
180 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
tragedy. But none the less tragedy is there.
To suppose it absent would strip sacrifice of
what we regard as most characteristic.
Nor can we pause here. Those who would
call self-sacrifice a glorious madness have still
further justification. A leap into the dark we
must at least admit it to be. For trace it
rationally as far as we may, there always re-
mains uncertainty at the close. There is, for
example, uncertainty about ultimate results.
The mother toiling for her child, and neglect-
ing for its sake most of what would render her
own life rich, can never know that this child
will grow up to power. The day may come
when she will wish it had died in childhood.
The glory of her action is bound up with this
darkness. Were the soldier, marching to the
field, sure that his side would be victorious, he
would be only half a hero. The consequences
of self-sacrifice can never be certain, foreseen,
calculable. There must be risk. Omit it, and
the sacrifice disappears. Indeed nothing in life
which calls forth high admiration is free from
this touch of faith and courage, this move-
ment into the unknown. It is at the very heart
of self-sacrifice.
But besides the unknown character of the
SELF-SACRIFICE 181
result there is usually uncertainty as regards
the cost. The sacrificer does not give accord-
ing to measure. I do not say I will attend to
this sick person up to such and such a point,
but when that point is reached I shall have
done enough. This would hardly be self-sac-
rifice. I rather say, " Here I am. Take me,
use me to the full, spend of me whatever you
need. How much that will be, I do not know."
So there is an element of darkness in our-
selves.
And possibly I ought to mention a third
variety of these incalculabilities of sacrifice.
We do not plan the case. A while ago, meet-
ing a h'terary man whose product is of much
consequence to the community and himself,
I asked him how his book was coming on.
" Badly," he answered. " Just now an aged
relative has fallen ill. There is no other place
where she can be properly disposed, and so
she has been brought to my house. I must
care for her, my home will be much broken
up, and my work must be set aside." I said,
" Is that your duty ? Have you not a more
important obligation to your book ? " But
he answered, " One cannot choose a duty."
I did not fully agree. I think we should
182 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
carefully weigh duties, even if we do not
choose them. Morality would otherwise be-
come the sport of accident. But I perceive
that in the last analysis no duty is made by
ourselves. It is given us by something more
authoritative than we, something which we
cannot alter, fully estimate, or without dam-
age evade. Necessity is laid upon us, some-
times an invading necessity. We are walking
our well-ordered path, pursuing some dear
aims, when harsh before us stands a waiting
duty, bidding us lay aside that in which we
are engaged and take it. I have said I be-
lieve a degree of scrutiny is needful here. We
should ask, what for ? We should correlate
the new duty with those already pledged.
And probably an interrupting duty is less
often the one it is well to follow than one
which has had something of our time and
care. Few fresh calls can have the weighty
claim of loyalty to obligation already incurred.
But, after all, that on which we finally decide
has not sprung from our own wishes. It sub-
jects those wishes to itself. Standing over
against us, it summons us to do its bidding,
and allows us no more to be our own self-
directed masters.
SELF-SACRIFICE 183
XII
Summing up, then, the jarring character-
istics of self-sacrifice, its frequency, ration-
ality, assertiveness, nearness to self-culture;
yes, and its darker traits of risk, immeasura-
bility, and authoritativeness, does it not be-
gin to appear that I have been calling it by
a wrong name? Self-sacrifice is a negative
term. It lays stress on the thought that I set
myself aside, become in some way less than I
was before. And no doubt through all this
intricate discussion certain belittlements have
been acknowledged, though these have also
been shown to lie along the path of largeness.
There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both
negative and positive elements. But why
select its name from the subordinate part?
Why turn to the front its incidental nega-
tions? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature.
Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our
dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication
to a cause, these words mark its real nature
and are the only descriptions of it which
its practicers will recognize. That damage to
the abstract self which chiefly impresses the
outsider is something of which the sacrificer
184 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
is hardly aware. How exquisitely astonished
are the men in the parable when called to re-
ceive reward for their generous gifts ! " Lord,
when saw we thee an hungred and fed thee,
or thirsty and gave thee drink ? When saw
we thee sick or in prison and came unto
thee?" They thought they had only been
following their own desires.
Perhaps the most admirable case of self-
sacrifice is that in which no single person
appears who is profited by our loss. The
scholar, the artist, the scientific man dedi-
cate themselves to the interests of undiffer-
entiated humanity. They serve their undeci-
pherable race, not knowing who will obtain
gains through their toils. In their sublime
benefactions they study the wants of no indi-
vidual person, not even of themselves. Yet,
turn to a man of this type and try to call his
attention to the privations he endures, and
what will be his answer ? "I have no coat ?
I have no dinner ? I have little money ?
People do not honor me as they honor others ?
Yes, I believe I lack these trifles. But think
what I possess ! This great subject ; or ra-
ther, it possesses me. And it shall have of
me whatever it requires."
SELF-SACRIFICE 185
In such service of the absolute is found
the highest expression of self-sacrifice, of so-
cial service, of self-realization. The doctrine
that through union with a reason and right-
eousness not exclusively our own each of us
may hourly be renewed is the very heart of
ethics.
XIII
I have attempted to cut out a clear path
through an ethical jungle overgrown with the
exuberance of human life. I have not suc-
ceeded, and it is probably impossible to suc-
ceed. In the subject itself there is paradox.
Conflicting elements enter into the very con-
stitution of a person. To trace them even
imperfectly one must be patient of refine-
ments, accessible to qualifications, and ever
ready to admit the opposite of what has been
laboriously established. We all desire through
study to win a swift simplicity. But na-
ture abhors simplicity : she complicates ; she
forces those who would know to take pains,
to proceed cautiously, and to feel their way
along from point to point. This I have tried
to do ; and I believe that the inquiry, though
intricate, primarily scientific, and only par-
tially successful, need not altogether lack
186 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
practical consequence. Our age is bewildered
between heroism and greed. To each it
is drawn more powerfully than any age pre-
ceding. Neither of the two does it quite
comprehend. If we can render the nobler
somewhat more intelligible, we may increase
the confidence of those who now, half -ashamed,
follow its glorious but blindly compulsive
call.
REFERENCES ON SELF-SACRIFICE
Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. xi., xii.
Bradley's Appearance and Reality, p. 414-429.
Faulsen's Ethics, bk. ii. ch. 6.
Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, ch. iii., 4 (g).
Sidgwick's Methods, concluding chapter.
Kidd's Social Evolution, ch. 5.
S. Bryant in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1893.
Bradley in Journal of Ethics, Oct. 1894.
Mackenzie, in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1895.
vn
NATURE AND SPIRIT
VII
NATURE AND SPIRIT
. .
AT this culmination of our long discussion,
a discussion much confused by its necessary
mass of details, it may be well to pause a
moment, to fix attention on the great lines
along which we have been moving, and to
mark the points on which they appear to con-
verge. We have regarded goodness as di-
vided into two very unequal parts. The first
two chapters treated of goodness in general,
a species which being shared alike by persons
and things is in no sense distinctive of per-
sons. The last four chapters have been given
to the more complex task of exploring the
goodness of persons.
In things we found that goodness consists
in having their manifold parts drawn into
integral wholeness. And this is true also of
persons. But the modes of organization in
192 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
the two cases were so unlike as to require
long elucidation. Our conclusion would seen^
to be that while goodness is everywhere ex-l
pressive of organization, personal conduct is
good only when consciously organized, guided,
and aimed at the development of a social self.
We have seen how self-consciousness lies at
the foundation of personality, sharply dis-
criminating persons from things. We have
seen, too that wherever it is present, the per-
son curiously directs himself, passing through
all the varieties of purposive activity which
were catalogued in the chapter on self-direc-
tion. But such activity implies a being of
variable, not of fixed powers, a being accord-
ingly capable of enlargement, and with possi-
bilities in him which every moment renders
real. This progressive realization of himself,
this development, he so far as he is good
consciously conducts. And finally we found
in the person the strange fact that he con-
ceives of his good self as essentially in con-
junction with his fellow man, and recognizes
that parted off and in separate abstractness
he is no person at all. Accordingly personal
goodness must everywhere express conscious
organization, direction, enlargement, conjunc-\
NATURE AND SPIRIT 193
V tion. Under our analysis two antithetic worlds
1 emerge, a world of nature and of spirit, the
former guided by blind forces, the latter self-
managed. Unlike spiritual beings, natural
objects are under alien control ; have not the
power of development, and when brought into
close conjunction with others are liable to dis-
ruption.
H
Accepting this vital distinction, we see that
the work of spiritual man will consist in pro-
gressively subjugating whatever natural pow-
ers he finds within him and without, rendering
them all expressive of self-conscious purpose.
For we men are not altogether spiritual ; in
us two elements meet. Our spirituality is
superposed on a natural basis. Like things,
we have our natural aptitudes, blind tenden-
cies, established functions of body and mind.
These are all serviceable and organic ; but to
become spiritual all need to be redeemed, or
drawn over into the field of consciousness,
where our special stamp may be set upon
them. When we speak of a good act, we
mean an act which shows the results of such
redemption, one whose every part has been
studied in relation to every other part, and
194 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
\ has thus been made to bear our own image
\ and superscription.
And this is essentially the Christian ideal,
that spirit shall be lord of nature. I ought
to reject my natural life, accounting it not
my life at all. Until shaped by myself, it is
merely my opportunity for life, material fur-
nished, out of which my true and conscious
life may be constructed. Widely is this con-
trasted with the pagan conceptions, where man
appears with powers as fixed as the things
around him. Indeed, in many forms of pa-
ganism there is no distinction between per-
sons and things. They are blended. And
such blending usually operates to the dispar-
agement of the person ; for things being more
numerous, and their laws more urgent, the
powers of man become lost in those of nature.
Or if distinction is made, and men hi some
dim fashion become aware that they are dif-
ferent from things, still it is the tendency
of paganism to subordinate person to nature.
The child is sacrificed to the sun. The sun
is not thought of as existing for the child.
From the Christian point of view everything
seems turned upside down. Man is absorbed
in natural forces, natural forces are rever-
NATURE AND SPIRIT 195
enced as divine, and self -consciousness if
noticed at all is regarded as an impertinent
accident.
In the Christian ideal all this is reversed.
Man is called to be master of himself, and
therefore of all else. The many beautiful
adjustments of the natural world are thought
to possess dignity only so far as they accept
the conscious purposes put by us in their
keeping. And in man himself goodness is
held to exist only in proportion as his conduct
expresses fullness of self -consciousness, full-
ness of direction, and fullness of conscious
conjunction with other persons. I do not see
how we can escape this conclusion. The care-
ful argumentation through which the previous
chapters have brought us obliges us to count
conduct valuable in proportion as it bears the
impress of self-conscious mind.
Ill
Yet it must be owned that during the last
few centuries doubts have arisen about the
justice of this Christian ideal. The simple
conception of a world of spirit and a world
of nature arrayed against each other, the one
of them exactly what the other is not, the
196 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
world of spirit the superior, the world of
nature to be frowned on, used possibly, but
always in subordination to spiritual purposes,
this view, dominant as it was in the Middle
Ages, and still largely influential, has been
steadily falling into disrepute. There is even'
a tendency in present estimates to reverse
the ancient valuation and allow superiority toi
nature. Such a transformation is strikingly
evident in those sensitive recorders of human
ideals, the Fine Arts. Let us see what at dif-
ferent times they have judged best worthy of
record.
Early painting dealt with man alone, or
rather with persons; for personality in its
transcendent forms saints, angels, God him-
self was usually preferred above little man.
Except the spiritual, nothing was regarded as
of consequence. The principle of early paint-
ing might be summed in the proud saying,
" On earth there is nothing great but man ; in
man there is nothing great but mind." It is
true when man is thus detached from nature
he hardly appears to advantage or in his ap-
propriate setting. But the early painters would
tolerate nothing natural near their splendid
persons. They covered their backgrounds
NATURE AND SPIRIT 197
with gilding, so that a glory surrounded the
entire figure, throwing out the personality
sharp and strong. Nothing broke its effect.
But after all, one comes to see that we inhabit
a world ; nature is continually about us, and
man really shows his eminence most fully
when standing dominant over nature. Early
painting, accordingly, began to set in a little
landscape around the human figures, contrast-
ing the person with that which was not him-
self. But an independent interest could not
fail to spring up in these accessories. By
degrees the landscape is elaborated and the
figure subordinated. The figure is there by
prescription, the landscape because people
enjoy it. Nature begins to assert her claims ;
and man, the eminent and worthy represen-
tative of old ideals, retires from his ancient
prominence.
When the Renaissance revolted against the
teachings of the mediaeval church, the dispo-
sition to return to nature was insolently strong.
Natural impulses were glorified, the physical
world attracted attention, and even began to be
studied. Hitherto it had been thought deserv-
ing of study only because in a few respects it
was able to minister to man. But in the Re-
198 THE NATUEE OF GOODNESS
naissance men studied it for its own sake. Grad-
ually the distinction between man and nature
grew faint, so that a kind of pantheism arose
in which a general power, at once natural and
spiritual, appeared as the ruler of all. We in-
dividual men emerge for a moment from this
great central power, ultimately relapsing into
it. Nature had acquired coordinate, if not su-
perior, rights. Yet the full expression of this
independent interest in nature is more recent
than is usually observed. Landscape paintingj
goes back but little beyond the year sixteen
hundred. It is only two or three centuries ago
that painters discovered the physical world
to be worthy of representation for its own
sake.
As the worth of nature thus became vin-
dicated in painting, parallel changes were
wrought in the other arts. Arts less distinctly
rational began to assert themselves, and even
to take the lead. The art most characteristic
of modern tunes, the one which most widely
and poignantly appeals to us, is music. But
in music we are not distinctly conscious of a
meaning. Most of us in listening to music
forget ourselves under its lulling charms, aban-
don ourselves to its spell, and by it are swept
NATURE AND SPIRIT 199
away, perhaps to the infinite, perhaps to an ob-
literation of all clear thought. Is it not largely
because we are so hard pressed under the anx-j
ious conditions of modern life that music be4
comes such an enormous solace and strength ?|
I do not say that no other factors have con-
tributed to the vogue of music, but certainly
it is widely prized as an effective means of es-
cape from ourselves. Music too, though early
known in calm and elementary forms, has
within the last two centuries been developed
into almost a new art.
Of all the arts poetry is the most strikingly
rational and articulate. Its material is plain
thought, plain words. We employ in it the
apparatus of conscious life. Poetry was there-
fore concerned in early times entirely with
things of the spirit. It dealt with persons,
and with them alone. It celebrated epic ac-
tions, recorded sagacious judgments, or uttered
in lyric song emotions primarily felt by an
individual, yet interpreting the common lot of
man. But there has occurred a great change
in poetry too, a change notable during the last
century but initiated long before. Poetry
has been growing naturalistic, and is to-day
disposed to reject all severance of body and
200 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
spirit. The great nature movement which we
associate with the names of Cowper, Burns,
and Wordsworth, has withdrawn man's atten-
tion from conscious responsibility, and has
taught him to adore blind and vast forces
which he cannot fully comprehend. We all
know the refreshment and the deepening of
lif e which this mystic new poetry has brought.
But it is hard to say whether poetry is nowa-
days a spiritual or a natural art. Many of
us would incline to the latter view, and would
hold that even in dealing with persons it treats
them as embodiments of natural forces. Our
instincts and unguided passions, the features
which most identify us with the physical world,
are coming more and more to be the subjects
of modern poetry.
IV
Nature, meanwhile, that part of the universe
which is not consciously guided, has become
within a century our favorite field of scientific
study. The very word science is popularly
appropriated to naturalistic investigation. Of
course this is a perversion. Originally it was
believed that the proper study of mankind
was man. And probably we should all still
NATURE AND SPIRIT 201
acknowledge that the study of personal struc-
ture is as truly science as study of the struc-
ture of physical objects. Yet so powerfully is
the tide setting toward reverence for the un-
conscious and the sub-conscious that science,
our word for knowledge, has lost its univer-
sality and has taken on an almost exclusively
physical character.
Perhaps there was only one farther step
possible. Philosophy itself, the study of
mind, might be regarded as a study of the
unconscious. And this step has been taken.
Books now bear the paradoxical title t( Philo-
sophy of the Unconscious," and investigation
of the sub-conscious processes is perhaps the
most distinctive trait of philosophy to-day.
More and more it is believed that we cannot
adequately explore a person without probing
beneath consciousness. The blind processes
can no longer be ruled out. Nature and
spirit cannot be parted as our fathers supposed
they might. Probably Kant is the last great
scholar who will ever try to hold that distinc-
tion firm, and he is hardly successful. In
spite of his vigorous antitheses, hints of covert
connection between the opposed forces are
not absent. Indeed, if the two are so widely
202 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
parted as his usual language asserts, it is hard
to see how his ethics can have mundane worth.
Curiously enough too, at the very time when
Kant was reviving this ancient distinction,
and offering it as the solid basis of personal
and social life, the opposite belief received
its most clamorous announcement, resounding
through the civilized world in the teachings
of Rousseau. Rousseau warns us that the
conscious constructions of man are full of
artifice and deceit, and lead to corruption
and pain. Conscious guidance should, conse-
quently, be banished, and man should return
to the peace, the ease, and the certainty of
nature.
V
Now I do not think it is worth while to blame
or praise a movement so vast as this. If it
is folly to draw an indictment against a na-
tion, it is greater folly to indict all modern
civilization. We must not say that philosophy
and the fine arts took a wrong turn at the
Renaissance, at least it is useless to call on
them now to turn back. The world seldom
turns back. It absorbs, it re-creates, it brings
new significance into the older thought. All
progress, Goethe tells us, is spiral, coming
NATURE AND SPIRIT 203
out at the place where it was before, but
higher up. No, we cannot wisely blame or
praise, but we may patiently study and under-
stand. That is what I am attempting to do
here. The movement described is no neg-
ligible accident of our time. It is world-wide,
and shows progress steadily in a single di-
rection.
In order, however, to prove that such a change
in moral estimates has occurred, it was hardly
necessary to survey the course of history.
The evidence lies close around us, and is found
in the standards of the society in which we
move. Who are the people most prized ?
Are they the most self-conscious ? That
should be the case if our long argument is
sound. Our preceding chapters would urge
us to fill life with consciousness. In pro-
portion as consciousness droops, human good-
ness becomes meagre ; as our acts are filled
with it, they grow excellent. These are our
theoretic conclusions, but the experience of
daily life does not bear them out. If, for ex-
ample, I find the person who is talking to me
watches each word he utters, pauses again and
again for correction, choosing the determined
word and rejecting the one which instmc-
0UJL
"t&uu
204
TRE NATURE OF GOODNESS
w
tively comes to his lips, I do not trust
what he says, or even listen to it ; while he is
shaping his exact sentences I attend to some-
thing else. In general, if a man's small
actions impress us as minutely planned, we
turn from him. It is not the self-reflecting
persons, cautious of all they do, say, or think,
who are popular. It is rather those instinc-
tively spontaneous creatures characterized by
abandon men and women who let themselves'
go, and with all the wealth of the world i
them, allow it to come out of itself that w
7
take to our hearts. We prize them for theii
want of deliberation. In short, we give oui
unbiased endorsement not to the spiritual
consciously guided person, but to him, on the
contrary, who shows the closest adjustment to
nature.
VI
Yet even so, we have gone too far afield for
evidence. First we surveyed the ages, then
we surveyed one another. But there is one
proof-spot nearer still. Let us survey our-
selves. I am much mistaken if there are not
among my readers persons who have aU their
lives suffered from self-consciousness. They
NATURE AND SPIRIT 205
have longed to be rid of it, to be free to think
of the other person, of the matter in hand.
Instead of this, their thoughts are forever re-
verting to their own share in any affair. Too
contemptible to be avowed, and more distress-
ing than almost any other species of suffering,
excessive self-consciousness shames us with
our selfishness, yet will not allow us to turn
from it. When I go into company where
everybody is spontaneous and free, easily
uttering what the occasion calls for, I can
utter only what I call for and not at all what
the occasion asks. Between the two demands
there is always an awkward jar. When tor-
tured by such experiences it does not soothes
to have others carelessly remark, " Oh, just be
natural ! " That is precisely what we should
like to be, but how? That little point isj
continually left unexplained. Yet obviously
self-consciousness involves something like a
deadlock. For how can one consciously exertj
himself to be unconscious and try not to try ?
We cannot arrange our lives so as to have no
arrangement in them, and when shaking hands
with a friend, for example, be on our guard,
against noticing. Once locked up in this]
vicious circle, we seem destined to be prison-
o
206 } THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
vJ->7
ers forever. That is what constitutes the an-
guish of the situation. The most tyrannical
of jailers one's self is over us, and from
his bondage we are powerless to escape. The
trouble is by no means peculiar to our time,
though probably commoner forty years ago
than at any other period of the world's history.
But it had already attracted the attention of
Shakespere, who bases on it one of his great-
est plays. When Hamlet would act, self-con-
sciousness stands in his way. The hindering
process is described in the famous soliloquy
with astonishing precision and vividness, if
only we substitute our modern term " self-
consciousness " for that which was its ancient
equivalent :
" Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ;
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."
And such is our experience. We, too, have
purposed all manner of important and service-
able acts ; but just as we were setting them in
execution, consideration fell upon us. We
asked whether it was the proper moment,
whether he to whom it was to be done was
NATURE AND SPIRIT 207
really needy, or were we the fit doer, or should
it be done in this way or that. We hesitated,
and the moment was gone. Self -consciousness
had again demonstrated its incompetence for
superintending a task. Many of us, far from 1
regarding self-consciousness as a ground of
goodness, are disposed to look upon it as a
curse.
vn
Before, however, attempting to discover
whether our theoretic conclusions may be
drawn into some sort of living accord with
these results of experience, let us probe a little
more minutely into these latter, and try to learn
what reasons there may be for this very gen-
eral distrust of self-consciousness as a guide.
Hitherto I have exhibited that distrust as a
fact. We always find it so ; our neighbors
find it so, the ages have found it so. But
why? I have not pointed out precisely the
reasons for the continual fact. Let me de-
vote a page or two to rational diagnosis.
To begin with, I suppose it will be conceded
that we really cannot guide ourselves through
and through. There are certain large tracts
of life totally unamenable to consciousness.
208 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
Of our two most important acts, and those by
which the remaining ones are principally af-
fected, birth and death, the one is necessarily
removed from conscious guidance, and the
other is universally condemned if so guided.
We do not as we have previously seen
happen to be present at our birth, and so are
quite cut off from controlling that. Yet the
conditions of birth very considerably shape
everything else in life. We cannot, then, be
purely spiritual ; it is impossible. We must be
natural beings at our beginning ; and at the
other end the state of things is largely similar,
for we are not allowed to fix the time of our
departure. The Stoics were. " If the house
smokes," they said, " leave it." When life is
no longer worth while, depart. But Chris-
tianity will not allow this. Death must be a
natural .affair, not a spiritual. I am to wait
till a wandering bacillus alights in my lung.
He will provide a suitable exit for me. But
neither I nor my neighbors must decide my
departure. Let Jaws oi-natm^ rp"ir n -
And if these two tremendous events are
altogether removed from conscious guidance,
many others are but slightly amenable to it.
The great organic processes both of mind and
NATURE AND SPIRIT 209
body are only indirectly, or to a partial ex-
tent, under the control of consciousness. A
few persons, I believe, can voluntarily suspend
the beating of their hearts. They are hardly
to be envied. The majority of us let our
hearts alone, and they work better than if we
tried to work them. Though it is true that
we can control our breathing, and that we oc-
casionally do so, this also in general we wisely
leave to natural processes. A similar state of
affairs we find when we turn to the mind
itself. The association of ideas, that curious
process by which one thought sticks to another
and through being thus linked draws after it
material for use in all our intellectual con-
structions, goes on for the most part unguided.
It would be plainly useless, therefore, to treat
our great distinction as something hard and
fast. Nature and spirit may be contrasted 'J
they cannot be sundered. Spirit removed!
from nature would become impotent, while \
nature would then proceed on a meaningless \
career.
Then too there are all sorts of degrees in
consciousness. No man was ever so conscious
of himself and his acts that he could not be
more so. When introspection is causing us our
210 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
sharpest distress, it may still be rendered more
minute. That is one cause of its peculiar
anguish. We are always uncertain whether
our troubles have not arisen from too little
self-consciousness, and we whip ourselves into
greater nicety and elaborateness of personal
observation. Varying through a multitude
of degrees, the fullness of consciousness is
never reached. A more thorough exercise
of it is always possible. At the last, nature
must be admitted as a partner in the control
of our lives, and her share in that partner-
ship the present age believes to be a large
one.
VIII
For could we always consciously steer our
conduct, we should be unwise to do so. Con-
sciousness hinders action. Acts are excel-
lent in proportion as they are sure, swift, and
easy. When we undertake anything, we seek
to do exactly that thing, reach precisely that
end, and not merely to hit something in
the neighborhood. Occasions, too, run fast,
and should be seized on the minute. Action
is excellent only when it meets the urgent
and evasive demands of life. Faltering and
* ' " * .. n*
NATURE AND SPIRIT 211
hesitation are fatal. Nor must action unduly
weary. Good conduct effects its results with
the least necessary expenditure of effort.
When there are so many demands pressing
upon us, we should not allow ourselves to be-
come exhausted by a single act, but should
keep ourselves fresh for further needs. Effi-
cient action, then, is sure, swift, and easy.
Now the peculiarity of self-consciousness is
that it hinders all this and makes action inac-
curate, slow, and fatiguing. Inaccuracy is al-
most certain. When we study how something
is to be done, we are apt to lay stress on cer-
tain features of the situation, and not to bring
others into due prominence. It is difficult
separately to correlate the many elements
which go to make up a desired result. Some-
times we become altogether puzzled and for
the moment the action ceases. When I have,
had occasion to drive a screw in some unusual
and inconvenient place, after setting the blade;
of the screw-driver into the slot I have asked
myself, " In which direction does this screw
turn ? " But the longer I ask, the more un-
certain I am. My only solution lies in trust-
ing my hand, which knows a great deal more
about the matter than I. When we once
212 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
begin to meditate how a word is spelled, how
helpless we are! It is better to drop the
question, and pick up the dictionary. In all
such cases consideration tends to confuse.
It tends to delay, too, as everybody knows.
To survey all the relations in which a given
act may stand, to balance their relative gains
and losses, and with full sight to decide on
the course which offers the greatest profit,
would require the years of Methuselah. Bufcf
at what point shall we cut the process short ?V
To obtain full knowledge, we should pass in
review all that relates to the act we propose ;
should inquire what its remoter consequences
will be, and how it will affect not merely my-
self, my cousin, my great-grandchild, but the
man in the next street, city, or state. There
is no stopping. To carry conscious verifica-
tion over a moderate range is slow business.
If on the impulse of occasion we dash off an
action unreflectingly, life will be swift and
simple. If we try to anticipate all conse-
quences of our task it will be slow and
endless.
Nor need I dwell on the fatigue such con-
scious work involves. In writing a letter, we
usually sit down before our paper, our minds
NATURE AND SPIRIT 213
occupied with what we would say. We allow
our fingers to stroll of themselves across the
page, and we hardly notice whether they
move or not. If anybody should ask, " How
did you write the letter s ? " we should be
obliged to look on the paper to see. But sup-
pose, instead of writing in this way, I come
to the task to-morrow determined to superin-
tend all the work consciously. How shall I
hold my pen in the best possible manner?
How shape this letter so that each of its curves
gets its exact bulge? How give the correct
slant to what is above or below the line ? I
will not ask how long a time a letter prepared
in this fashion would require, or whether when
written it would be fit to read, for I wish to fix
attention on the exhaustion of the writer. He
certainly could endure such fatigue for no
more than a single epistle. The schoolboy,,
when forced to it, seldom holds out for more
than half a page, though he employs every^
contortion of shoulder, tongue, and leg to!
ease and diversify the struggle.
A dozen years ago some nonsense verses
were running through the papers, verses
pointing out with humorous precision the
very infelicities of conscious control to which
214 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
I am now directing attention. They put the
case thus :
" The centipede was happy, quite,
Until the toad for fun
Said, ' Pray which leg comes after which ? '
This worked her mind to such a pitch
She lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run."
And no wonder! Problems so complex as
this should be left to the disposal of nature,
and not be drawn over into the region of spir-
itual guidance. But the complexities of the
centipede are simple matters when compared
with the elaborate machinery of man. The
human mind offers more alternatives in a min-
ute than does the centipede in a lifetime. If
spiritual guidance is inadequate to the latter,
and is found merely to hinder action, why is
not the blind control of nature necessary for
the former also ? Our age believes it is and,
ever disparaging the conscious world, attaches
steadily greater consequence to the uncon-
scious. " It is the unintelligent me," writes
Dr. 0. W. Holmes, " stupid as an idiot, that
has to try a thing a thousand times before he
can do it and then never knows how he does
it, that at last does it well. We have to edu-A
cate ourselves through the pretentious claims!
NATURE AND SPIRIT 215
\ of intellect into the humble accuracy of in-
\ stinct ; and we end at last by acquiring the
1 dexterity, the perfection, the certainty which
; those masters of arts, the bee and the spider,
'inherit from nature."
ex
REFERENCES ON NATURE AND SPIRIT
Green's Prolegomena, 297.
Dewey's Study of Ethics, xli.
Seth's Study of Ethical Principles, pt. i. ch. 3, 6.
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. i. ch. i. iii.
Earle's English Prose, p. 490-500.
Palme* in The Forum, Jan. 1893.
VIII
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS
vm
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS
SUCH is the mighty argument conducted
through several centuries in behalf of nature
against spirit as a director of conduct. I
have stated it at length both because of its
own importance and because it is in seeming
conflict with the results of my early chapters.
But those results stand fast. They were
reached with care. To reject them would be
to obliterate all distinction between persons
and things. Self-consciousness is the indis-
putable prerogative of persons. Only so far
as we possess it and apply it in action do we
rise above the impersonal world around. And
even if we admit the contention in behalf
of nature as substantially sound, we are not
obliged to accept it as complete. It may be
that neither nature nor spirit can be dispensed
with in the supply of human needs. Each
220 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
may have its characteristic office ; for though
in the last chapter I have been setting forth
the superiorities of natural guidance, in spir-\
ifciial guidance there ..are. .ajdrantages^ ioo, ad-
vantages of an even more fundamental kind.
Let us see what they are.
They may be summarily stated in a single
sentence : gfimsinTniTgnpaa alnno giyp,s fresh i p -
itaatJfi~ Disturbing as the influence of con-
sciousness confessedly is, on its employment
depends every possibility of progress. Natu-
ral action is regular, constant, conformed to
a pattern. In the natural world event follows
event in a fixed order. Under the same con-
ditions the same result appears an indefinite
number of times. The most objectionable
form of this rigidity is found in mechanism.
I sometimes hear ladies talking about " real
lace " and am on such occasions inclined to
speak of my real boots. They mean, I find,
not lace that is the reverse of ghostly, but
simply that which bears the impress of per-
sonality. It is lace which is made by hand
and shows the marks of hand work. Little
irregularities are in it, contrasting it with the
machine sort, where every piece is identical
with every other piece. It might be more
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 221
accurately called personal lace. The machine
kind is no less real unfortunately but
mechanism is hopelessly dull, says the same
thing day after day, and never can say any-
thing else.
Now though this coarse form of monotonous
process nowhere appears in what we call the
world of nature, a restriction substantially
similar does ; for natural objects vary slowly
and within the narrowest limits. Outside
such orderly variations, they are subjected
to external and distorting agencies effecting
changes in them regardless of their gains.
Branches of trees have their wayward and
subtle curvatures, and are anything but me-
chanical in outline. But none the less are
they helpless, unprogressive, and incapable of
learning. The forces which play upon them,
being various, leave a truly varied record.
But each of these forces was an invariable
one, and their several influences cannot be
sorted, judged, and selected by the tree with
reference to its future growth. Criticism
and choice have no place here, and accord-
ingly anything like improvement from year
to year is impossible.
The case of us human beings would be the
222 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
same if we \vere altogether managed by the
sure, swift, and easy forces of nature. Pro-
gress would cease. We should move on our
humdrum round as fixedly constituted, as sub-
missive to external influence, and with as little
exertion of intelligence as the dumb objects
we behold. Every power within us would be
actual, displayed in its full extent, and involv-
ing no variety of future possibility. We
should live altogether in the present, and no
changes would be imagined or sought. From
this dull routine we are saved by the admix-
ture of consciousness. For a gain so great
we may well be ready to encounter those diffi-
culties of conscious guidance which my last
chapter detailed. Let the process of advance
be inaccurate, slow, and severe, so only there
be advance. For progress no cost is too
great. I am sometimes inclined to congrat-
ulate those who are acute sufferers through
self-consciousness, because to them the door
of the future is open. The instinctive, un-
critical person, who takes life about as it
comes, and with ready acceptance responds
promptly to every suggestion that calls, may
b_e_as ^popular as the sunshine, but he, is aa
incapable of further advance. Except in at-
THE THESE STAGES OF GOODNESS 223
tractiveness, such a one is usually in later life
about what he was in youth ; for progress is
a product of forecasting intelligence. When
any new creation is to be introduced, only
consciousness can prepare its path.
Evidently, then, there are strong advan-
tages in guidance through the spirit. But
natural guidance has advantages no less genu-
ine. Human life is a complex and demanding
affair, requiring for its ever-enlarging good
whatever strength can be summoned from every
side. Probably we must abandon that mag-
nificent conception of our ancestors, that spirit
is all in all and nature unimportant. But
must we, in deference to the temper of our
time, eliminate conscious guidance altogether ?
May not the disparagement of recent ages
have arisen in reaction against attempts to
push conscious guidance into regions where
it is unsuitable ? Conceivably the two agen-
cies may be supplementary. Possibly we may
call on our fellow of the natural world for
aid in spiritual work. The complete ideal, at
A ^^^^V^HWMMMMMMW^Mr
any rate, of goe-cL CQnduct..,uiiies. the-ssoft-
ness, certainty, and ease of .natural action with
the selectLYe.^iogrSsiveness-ef-sp4ttial. Till
such a combination is found, either conduct
224 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
will be insignificant or great distress of self*
consciousness will be incurred. Both of these
evils will be avoided if nature can be per-
suaded to do the work which we clearly intend.
That is what goodness calls on us to effect.
To showing the steps through which it may be
reached the remainder of this chapter will be
given.
II
Let us, then, take a case of action where
we are trying to create a new power, to de-
velop ourselves in some direction in which we
have not hitherto gone. For such an under-
taking consciousness is needed, but let us see
how far we are able to hand over its work to
unconsciousness. Suppose, when entirely igno-
rant of music, I decide to learn to play the
piano. Evidently it will require the minutest
watchfulness. Approaching the strange in-
strument with some uneasiness, I try to secure
exactly that position on the stool which will
allow my arms their proper range along the
keyboard. There is difficulty in getting my
sheet of music to stand as it should. When
it is adjusted, I examine it anxiously. What
is that little mark? Probably the note C.
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 225
Among these curious keys there must also be
a C. I look up and down. There it is ! But
can I bring my finger down upon it at just
the right angle ? That is accomplished, and
gradually note after note is captured, until I
have conquered the entire score.
If now during my laborious performance
a friend enters the room, he might well say,
" I do not like spiritual music. Give me the
natural kind which is not consciously directed.
But let him return three years later. He will
find me sitting at the piano quite at my ease,
tossing off notes by the unregarded handful.
He approaches and enters into conversation
with me. I do not cease my playing ; but as
I talk, I still keep my mind free enough to
observe the swaying boughs outside the win-
dow and to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers
which my friend has brought. The musical
phrases which drop from my fingers appear
to regulate themselves and to call for little
conscious regard.
Yet if my friend should try to show me
how mistaken I had been in the past, attempt-
ing to manage consciously what should have
been left to nature, if he should eulogize my
natural action now and contrast it with my
226 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
former awkwardness, he would plainly be in
error. My present naturalness is the result
_fif Jong spiritual-endeavor, and cannot be had
on cheaper terms; and the unconsciousness
which is now noticeable in me is not the same
thing as that which was with me when I began
to play. It is true the incidental hardships
connected with my first attack on the piano
have ceased. I find myself in possession of a
new and seemingly unconscious power. An
automatic train of movements has been con-
structed which I now direct as a whole, its
parts no longer requiring special volitional
prompting. But I still direct it, only that a
larger unit has been constituted for conscious-
ness to act upon. The naturalness which thus
becomes possible is accordingly of an alto-
gether new sort; and since the result is a
completer expression of conscious intention,^,
it may as truly be called spiritual as natural. \
III
It has now become plain that our early
reckoning of actions as either natural or spir-
itual was too simple and incomplete. Conduct
has three stages, not two. Let us get them
clearly in mind. At the beginning of life we
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 227
are at the beck and call of every impulse,
not having yet attained reflective command
of ourselves. This first stage we may rightly
call that of nature or of unconsciousness, and I
manifestly most of us continue in it to some
extent and as regards certain tracts of action
throughout life. Then reflection is aroused ; c*
we become aware of what we are doing. The
many details of each act and the relations
which surround it come separately into con-
scious attention for assessment, approval, or
rejection. This is the stage of spirit, or con-
sciousness. But it is not the final stage. As
we have seen in our example, a stage is possi-
ble when action runs swiftly to its intended
end, but with little need of conscious super-
vision. This mechanized, purposeful afitimy- Q
presents conduct in its third stage, that of
second nature or negative consciousness. As
this third is least understood, is often confused
with the first, and yet is in reality the complete
expression of the moral ideal and of that
reconciliation of nature and spirit of which
we are in search, I will devote a few pages
to its explanation.
The phrase negative consciousness describes
its character most exactly, though the meaning
228 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
is not at once apparent. Positive conscious-
ness marks the second stage. There we are
obliged to think of each point involved, in or-
der to bring it into action. In piano-playing,
for example, I had to study my seat at the
piano, the music on the rack, the letters of the
keyboard, the position of my fingers, and the
coordination of all these with one another.
To each such matter a separate and positive
attention is given. But even at the last, when
I am playing at my ease, we cannot say that
consciousness is altogether absent. I am
conscious of the harmony, and if I do not
direct, I still verify results. As an entire
phrase of music rolls off my rapid fingers, I
judge it to be good. But if one of the notes
sticks, or I perceive that the phrase might be
improved by a slightly changed stress, I can
check my spontaneous movements and correct
the error. There is therefore a watchful, if
not a prompting, consciousness at work. It
is true that, the first note started, all the others
follow of themselves in natural sequence.
Though I withdraw attention from my fingers,
they run their round as a part of the associated
train. But if they go awry, consciousness is
ready with its inhibition. I accordingly call
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 229
this the stage of negative consciousness. In
it consciousness is not employed as a positive
guiding force, but the moment inhibition or
check is required for reaching the intended re-
sult, consciousness is ready and asserts itself in
the way of forbiddal. This third stage, there-
fore, differs from the first through having its
results embody a conscious purpose; from the
second, through having consciousness superin-
tend the process in a negative and hindering,
rather than in a positive and prompting way.
It is the stage of habit. I call it second nature
because it is worked, not by original instincts,
but by a new kind of associative mechanism
which must first be laboriously constructed.
Years ago when I began to teach at Harvard
College, we used to regard our students as roar-
ing animals, likely to destroy whatever came
in their way. We instructors were warned to
keep the doors of our lecture rooms barred.
As we came out, we must never fail to lock
them. So always in going to a lecture, as I
passed through the stone entry and approached
the door my hand sought my pocket, the key
came out, was inserted in the keyhole, turned,
was withdrawn, fell back into my pocket, and
I entered the room. This series of acts re-
230 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
peated day after day had become so mechan-
ized that if on entering the room I had been
asked whether on that particular day I had
really unlocked the door, I could not have told.
The train took care of itself and I was not
concerned in it sufficiently for remembrance.
Yet it remained my act. On one or two occa-
sions, after shoving in the key in my usual un-
conscious fashion, I heard voices in the room
and knew that it would be inappropriate to
enter. Instantly I stopped and checked the
remainder of the train. Habitual though the
series of actions was, and ordinarily executed
without conscious guidance, it as a whole was
aimed at a definite end. If this were unat-
tainable, the train stopped.
All are aware how large a part is played by
such mechanization of conduct. Without it,
life could not go on. When a man walks to
the door, he does not decide where to set his
foot, what shall be the length of his step,
how he shall maintain his balance on the foot
that is down while the other is raised. These
matters were decided when he was a child.
In those infant years which seem to us intel-
lectually so stationary, a human being is prob-
ably making as large acquisitions as at any
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 231
period of his later life. He is testing alterna-
tives and organizing experience into ordered
trains. But in the rest of us a consolidation
substantially similar should be going on in
some section of our experience as long as we
live. For this is the way we develop : not
the total man at once, but this year one
tract of conduct is surveyed, judged, mecha-
nized ; and next year another goes through
the same maturing process. Not until such
mechanization has been accomplished is the
conduct truly ours. When, for example, I
am winning the power of speech, I gradually
cease to study exactly the word I utter, the
tone in which it is enunciated, how my tongue,
lips, and teeth shall be adjusted in reference
to one another. While occupied with these
things, I am no speaker. I become such only
when, the moment I think of a word, the
actions needed for its utterance set them-
selves in motion. With them I have only a
negative concern. Indeed, as we grow ma-
turer of speech, collocations of words stick
naturally together and offer themselves to our
service. When we require a certain range
of words from which to draw our means of
communication, there they stand ready. We
232 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
have no need to rummage the dimness o the
past for them. Mechanically they are pre-
pared for our service.
Of course this does not imply that at one
period we foolishly believed consciousness to
be an important guide, but subsequently be-
coming wiser, discarded its aid. On the con-
trary, the mechanization of second nature is
simply a mode of extending the influence of
consciousness more widely. The conclusions
of our early lectures were sound. The more
fully expressive conduct can be of a self-con-
scious personality, so much the more will it
deserve to be called good. But in order that
it may in any wide extent receive this impress
of personal life, we must summon to our aid
agencies other than spiritual. The more we
mechanize conduct the better. That is what
maturing ourselves means. When we say that
a man has acquired character, we mean that
he has consciously surveyed certain large
tracts of life, and has decided what in those
regions it is best to do. There, at least, he will
no longer need to deliberate about action.
As soon as a case from this region presents
itself, some electric button in his moral or-
ganism is touched, and the whole mechanism
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 233
runs off in the surest, swiftest, easiest possible
way. Thus his consciousness is set free to
busy itself with other affairs. For in this
third stage we do not so much abandon con-
sciousness as direct it upon larger units ; and
this not because smaller units do not deserve
attention, but because they have been already
attended to. Once having decided what is
our best mode of action in regard to them,
we wisely turn them over to mechanical con-
trol.
IV
Such is the nature of moral habit. Before
goodness can reach excellence, it must be
rendered habitual. Consideration, the mark
of the second stage, disappears in the third.
We cannot count a person honest so long as
he has to decide on each occasion whether to
take advantage of his neighbor. Long ago
he should have disciplined himself into ma-
chine-like action as regards these matters, so
that the dishonest opportunity would be in-
stinctively and instantly dismissed, the honest
deed appearing spontaneously. That man has
not an amiable character who is obliged to re-
strain his irritation, and through all excitement
and inner rage curbs himself courageously.
234 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
Not until conduct is spontaneous, rooted in a
second nature, does it indicate the character
of him from whom it proceeds.
That unconsciousness is necessary for the
highest goodness is a cardinal principle in the
teaching of Jesus. Other teachers of his na-
tion undertook clearly to survey the entirety
of human life, to classify its situations and
coolly to decide the amount of good and evil
contained in each. Righteousness according
to the Pharisees was found in conscious con-
formity to these decisions. Theirs was the
method of casuistry, the method of minute,
critical, and instructed judgment. The fields
of morality and the law were practically iden-
tified, goodness becoming externalized and re-
garded as everywhere substantially the same
for one man as for another. Pharisaism, in
short, stuck in the second stage. Jesus em-
phasized the unconscious and subjective fac-
tor. He denounced the considerate conduct
of the Pharisees as not righteousness at all.
It was mere will-worship. Jesus preached a
religion of the heart, and taught that right-
eousness must become an individual passion,
similar to the passions of hunger and thirst,
if it would attain to any worth. So long aaJ
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 235
pvil is ffl,fiy flnrl tin/hira! Inr ng ; pnd gft^H dif-
ficult, wq are evil. W A mnst.be born again.
We must attain a new nature. Our right
hand must not know what our left hand does.
We must become as little children, if we
would enter into the kingdom of heaven.
The chief difficulty in comprehending this
doctrine of the three stages lies in the easy
confusion of the first and the third. Jesus
guards against this, not bidding us to be or
to remain children, but to become such. The
unconsciousness and simplicity of childhood is
the goal, not the starting-point. The uncon-
sciousness aimed at is not of the same kind as
that with which we set out. In early life we
catch the habits of our home or even derive
our conduct from hereditary bias. We be-
gin, therefore, as purely natural creatures, not
asking whether the ways we use are the best.
Those ways are already fixed in the usages of
speech, the etiquettes of society, the laws of
our country. These things make up the un-
criticised warp and woof of our lives, often
admirably beautiful lives. When speaking in
my last chapter of the way in which our age
has come to eulogize guidance by natural
conditions, I might have cited as a striking
236 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
illustration the prevalent worship of childhood.
Only within the last century has the child cut
much of a figure in literature. He is an im-
portant enough figure to-day, both in and out
of books. In him nature is displayed within
the spiritual field, nature with the possibilities
of spirit, but those possibilities not yet real-
ized. We accordingly reverence the child and
delight to watch him. How charming he is,
graceful in movement, swift of speech, pictur-
esque in action ! Enviable little being ! The
more so because he is able to retain his per-
fection for so brief a time.
But we all know the unhappy period from
seven to fourteen when he who formerly was
all grace and spontaneity discovers that he
has too many arms and legs. How disagree-
able the boy then becomes ! Before, we liked
to see him playing about the room. Now we
ask why he is allowed to remain. For he is
a ceaseless disturber ; constantly noisy and
constantly aware of making a noise, his ex-
cuses are as bad as his indiscretions. He
cannot speak without making some awkward
blunder. He is forever asking questions with-
out knowing what to do with the answers.
A confused and confusing creature ! We say
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 237
he has grown backward. Where before he
was all that is estimable, he has become all
that we do not wish him to be.
All that we do not wish him to be, but cer-
tainly much more what God wishes him to be.
For if we could get rid of our sense of annoy-
ance, we should see that he is here reaching
a higher stage, coming into his heritage and
obtaining a life of his own. Formerly he lived
merely the life of those about him. He laid
a self-conscious grasp on nothing of his own.
When now at length he does lay that grasp,
we must permit him to be awkward, and to
us disagreeable. We should aid him through
the inaccurate, slow, and fatiguing period of
his existence until, having tested many tracts
of life and learned in them how to mechanize
desirable conduct, he comes back on their far-
ther side to a childhood more beautiful than
the original. Many a man and woman pos
sesses this disciplined childhood through life
Goodness seems the very atmosphere thej
breathe, and everything they do to be exactly
fitting. Their acts are performed with ful
self-expression, yet without strut or intrusion
of consciousness. Whatever comes from them
is happily blended and organized into the
58 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
ptirety of life. Such should be our aim.
r e should seek to be born again, and not to
[remain where we were originally born.
V
In what has now been said there is a
good deal of comfort for those who suffer
the pains of self-consciousness, previously de-
scribed. They need not seek a lower degree
of self-consciousness, but only to distribute
more wisely what they now possess. In full-
ness of consciousness they may well rejoice,
recognizing its possession as a power. But
they should take a larger unit for its exercise.
In meeting a friend, for example, we are prone
to think of ourselves, how we are speaking or
poising our body. But suppose we transfer
our consciousness to the subject of our talk,
and allow ourselves a hearty interest in that.
Leaving the details of speech and posture to
mechanized past habits, we may turn all the
force of our conscious attention on the fresh
issues of the discussion. With these we may
identify ourselves, and so experience the en-
largement which new materials bring. When
we were studying the intricacies of self-sacri-
fice, we found that the generous man is_not_
THE THESE STAGES OF GOODNESS 239
so much the self-denier or even the self-for-
getter, but rather he who is mindful of his
largejLSfllf. He turns consciousness from his
abstract and isolated self and fixes it upon
his related and conjunct self. But that is a
process which may go on everywhere. Our rule
should be to withdraw attention from isolated
minutiae, for which a glance is sufficient.
Giving merely that glance, we may then leave
them to themselves. Encouraging them to
become mechanized, we should use these me-
chanized trains in the higher ranges of living.
The cure for self-consciousness is not suppress,
sion, but the turning of it upon something!
more significant.
VI
Every habit, however, requires perpetual ad-
justment, or it may rule us instead of allow-
ing us to rule through it. We do well to let
alone our mechanized trains while they do not
lead us into evil. So long as they run in the
right direction, instincts are better than in-
tentions. But repeatedly we need to study
results, and see if we are arriving at the
goal where we would be. If not, then habit
requires readjustment. From such negative
240 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
control a habit should never be allowed to
escape. This great world of ours does not
stand still. Every moment its conditions are
altering. Whatever action fits it now will be
pretty sure to be a slight misfit next year.
'No one can be thoroughly good who is not a
flexible person, capable of drawing back his
trains, reexamining them, and bringing them
into better adjustment to his purposes.
It is meaningless, then, to ask whether we
should be intuitive and spontaneous, or con-
iderate and deliberate. There is no such
alternative. We need both dispositions. We
should seek to attain a condition of swift
spontaneity, of abounding freedom, of the
absence of all restraint, and should not rest
satisfied with the conditions in which we were
3orn. But we must not suffer that even the
new nature should be allowed to become alto-
ether natural. It should be but the natu-
ral engine for spiritual ends, itself repeatedly
scrutinized with a view to their better fulfill-
ment.
VII
The doctrine of the three stages of conduct,
elaborated in this chapter, explains some curi-
ous anomalies in the bestowal of praise, and
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 241
at the same time receives from that doctrine
farther elucidation. When is conduct praise-
worthy ? When may we fairly claim honor
from our fellows and ourselves ? There is a
ready answer. Nothing is praiseworthy which
is not the result of effort. I do not praise a
lady for her heauty, I admire her. The ath-
lete's splendid body I envy, wishing that mine
were like it. But I do not praise him. Or
does the reader hesitate ; and while acknow-
ledging that admiration and envy may be our
leading feelings here, think that a certain
measure of praise is also due ? It may be.
Perhaps the lady has been kind enough by
care to heighten her beauty. Perhaps those
powerful muscles are partly the result of
daily discipline. These persons, then, are not
undeserving of praise, at least to the extent
that they have used effort. Seeing a collec-
tion of china, I admire the china, but praise
the collector. It is hard to obtain such pieces.
Large expense is required, long training too,
and constant watchfulness. Accordingly I
am interested in more than the collection. I
give praise to the owner. A learned man we
admire, honor, envy, but also praise. His
wisdom is the result of effort.
242 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
/ Plainly, then, praise and blame are attribu-
(table exclusively to spiritual beings. Nature
is unfit for honor. We may admire her, may
wish that our ways were like hers, and envy
her great law-abiding calm. But it would be
foolish to praise her, or even to blame when
her volcanoes overwhelm our friends. We
praise spirit only, conscious deeds. Where
self -directed action forces its path to a worthy
goal, we rightly praise the director.
Now, if all this is true, there seems often-
times a strange unsuitableness in praise. We
may well decline to receive it. To praise
some of our good qualities, pretty fundamen-
tal ones too, often strikes us as insulting.
You are asked a sudden question and put
in a difficult strait for an answer. " Yes," I
say, " but you actually did tell the truth. I
wish to congratulate you. You were suc-
cessful and deserve much praise." But who
would feel comfortable under such eulogy ?
And why not ? If telling the truth is a spir-
itual excellence and the result of effort, why
should it not be praised ? But there lies the
trouble. I assumed that to be a truth-teller
required strain on your part. In reality it
would have required greater strain for false-
THE THESE STAGES OF GOODNESS 243
hood. It might then seem that I should
those who are not easily excellent, since I ai
forbidden to praise those who are. And some
thing like this seems actually approved.
a boy on the street, who has been trained
hardly to distinguish truth from lies, some day
stumbles into a bit of truth, I may justly
praise him. " Splendid fellow ! No word of
falsehood there ! " But when I see the fa-
ther of his country bearing his little hatchet,
praise is unfit ; for George Washington cannot.
tell a lie.
Absurd as this conclusion appears, I believe
it states our soundest moral judgment; for
jisenever escapes an element of disparage-
haj3pnfiil. If I praise a man for learning, it
is because I had supposed him ignorant ; if
for helping the unfortunate, I hint that I did
not anticipate that he would regard any but
himself. Wherever praise appears, we cannot
evade the suggestion that excellence is a mat-
ter of surprise. And as nobody likes to be
thought ill-adapted to excellence, praise may
rightly be resented.
It is true, there is a group of cases where
praise seems differently employed. We can
244 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
praise those whom we recognize as high and
lifted up. " Sing praises unto the Lord, sing
praises," the Psalmist says. And our hearts
respond. We feel it altogether appropriate.
We do not disparage God by daily praise.
No, but the element of disparagement is still
present, for we are really disparaging our-
selves. That is the true significance of praise
offered to the confessedly great. For them, the
praise is inappropriate. But it is, neverthe-
less, appropriate that it should be offered by
us little people who stand below and look up.
Praising the wise man, I really declare my
ignorance to be so great that I have difficulty
in conceiving myself in his place. For me,
it would require long years of forbidding
work before I could attain to his wisdom.
And even in the extreme form of this praise
of superiors, substantially the same meaning
holds. We praise God in order to abase our-
selves. Him we cannot really praise. That
we understand at the start. He is beyond
commendation. Excellence covers him like a
garment, and is not attained, like ours, by
struggle through obstacles. Yet this differ-
ence between him and us we can only express
by trying to imagine ourselves like him, and
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 245
saying how difficult such excellence would
then be. We have here, therefore, a sort
of reversed praise, where the disparagement
which praise always carries falls exclusively
on the praiser. And such cases are by no
means uncommon, cases in which there is at
least a pretense on the praiser's part of setting
himself below the one praised. But praise
usuaUy proceeds down from above, and then,
implicitly, we disparage him whom we profess
to exalt.
Nor do I see how this is to be avoided ;
for praise belongs to goodness gained by ef-
fort, while excellence is not reached till effort
ceases in second nature. To assert through
praise that goodness is still a struggle is to
set the good man back from our third stage
to our second. In fact by the time he really
reaches excellence praise has lost its fitness,
goodness now being easier than badness, and
no longer something difficult, unexpected, and
demanding reward. For this reason those
persons are usuaUy most greedy of praise
who have a rather low opinion of themselves.
Being afraid that they are not remarkable,
they are peculiarly delighted when people
assure them that they are. Accordingly the
246 THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
greatest protection against vanity is pride.
The proud man, assured of his powers, hears
the little praisers and is amused. How much
more he knows about it than they ! Inner
worth stops the greedy ear. When we have]
something to be vain about, we are seldom]
vain.
VIII
But if all this is true, why should praise be
sweet ? In candor most of us will own that
there is little else so desired. When almost
every other form of dependence is laid by, to
our secret hearts the good words of neigh-
bors are dear. And well they may be ! Our
pleasure testifies how closely we are knitted
together. We cannot be satisfied with a
separated consciousness, but demand that the
consciousness of all shall respond to our own.
A glorious infirmity then ! And the peculiar
sweetness which praise brings is grounded in
the consciousness of our weakness. In cer-
tain regions of my life, it is true, goodness
has become fairly natural ; and there of
course praise strikes me as ill-adjusted and dis-
tasteful. I do not like to have my manners
praised, my honesty, or my diligence. But
there are other tracts where I know I am
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS 247
still in the stage of conscious effort. In this
extensive region, aware of my feebleness and
hearing an inward call to greater heights, it
will always be cheering to hear those about
me say, " Well done ! " Of course in saying
this they will inevitably hint that I have not
yet reached an end, and their praises will dis-
please unless I too am ready to acknowledge
my incompleteness. But when this is ac-
knowledged, praise is welcome and invigorat-
ing. I suspect we deal in it too little. If
imagination were more active, and we were
more willing to enter sympathetically the in-
ner life of our struggling and imperfect com-
rades, we should bestow it more liberally.
Occasion is always at hand. None of us ever
quite passes beyond the deliberate, conscious,
and praise-deserving line. In some parts of
our being we are farther advanced, and may
there be experiencing the peace and assurance
of a considerable second nature. But there
too perpetual verification is necessary. And so
many tracts remain unsubdued or capable of
higher cultivation that throughout our lives,
perhaps on into eternity, effort will still find
room for work, and suitable praises may at-
tend it.
REFERENCES ON THE THREE STAGES OF
GOODNESS
James's Psychology, ch. iv.
Bain's Emotions and the Will, ch. ix.
Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, ch. iii.
Stephen's Science of Ethics, ch. vii. iii.
Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, pt. ii. bk. i. ch. iii.
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