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THE THEOEY
OF GOOD AND EVIL
A TREATISE ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY
HASTINGS
D.LITT. (OXFORD), HON. D.C.L. (DURHAM)
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
VOLUME II
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1907
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OP OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK AND TORONTO
THE 'THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL
BOOK II
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIETY
CHAPTEK I
THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS
I
HAVING now sketched the outlines of a system of Ethics,
I propose in the present book to examine some of the objections
which have been or may be made to the positions heretofore
taken up, and to consider some points of view more or less
opposed to my own. In replying to the objections I hope I may
be able to elucidate and develope, perhaps in some ways to
qualify and to correct, the conclusions at which we have
hitherto arrived.
The first of the objections with which I shall have to deal
cpncerns what has often been called the hedonistic calculus.
It has been maintained in these pages that the criterion of an
action what, constitutes it a right Or wrong is its tendency to
promote for all mankind a greatest quantity of good on the
whole. This implies that ' good ' admits of being measured, and
that particular elements in that good are likewise capable of
being measured, and of being compared with one another in
respect of their ultimate value. This assumption involves the
assertion both that (i) each one of the various goods in which
the ideal human life consists Virtue, Knowledge, pleasure, &c.
is capable of quantity, so that I can prefer one course of action
to another because it will promote more Virtue or more pleasure
than another ; and (a) that a given quantity of one kind of good
can be quantitatively compared with another, at least to this
extent, that there is a meaning in asserting that a given quantity
R ASH D ALL II B
2 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
of Virtue is worth more or le&s than a given quantity of pleasure.
Both of these assumptions have been denied.
I shall deal first with the denial that even goods of the same
kind are capable of quantitative measurement. I hardly know
whether the question has ever been explicitly raised as to the
higher goods Morality, Culture and the like but the possibility
of quantitative measurement has certainly been explicitly denied
with regard to pleasure. That is the first question therefore
with which we shall have to deal.
The doctrine that pleasures cannot be summed, that there is
no meaning in the idea of a sum of pleasures and that conse-
quently the * hedonistic calculus ' is impossible and unintelligible,
has long been maintained by a certain section of anti-utilitarian
writers, among whom it will be enough to mention the late Prof.
T. H. Green and Mr. Bradley. It must be confessed, however,
that it is not very easy to extract from either of these writers
the exact grounds or even the precise meaning of their con-
tention. Prof. Mackenzie in his Manual of Ethics and his
Introduction to Social Philosophy has performed a real service
by putting the doctrine into a form in which it is more easy to
subject it to examination and criticism. In the present chapter,
however, I shall not confine myself to what Prof. Mackenzie has
advanced, as what appear to me the misconceptions which
underlie his reasoning are widely diffused, and seem often to be
assumed in the language of writers who have been less lucid and
less explicit. My object is rather to get to the bottom of the
misunderstanding than to criticize any particular writer; I do
not therefore wish to be understood to hold Prof. Mackenzie
responsible for every argument that I may criticize except where
I expressly quote him.
At this stage of our discussion I need hardly repeat that I am
not in the least interested in the defence either of the hedonisfic
Psychology or of hedonistic Utilitarianism, both of which I
entirely reject on much the same grounds as those which would
be assigned by the writers I am criticizing writers with some
of whom I should largely agree in their general view of Ethics.
This is particularly the case with regard to Prof. Mackenzie, who
is quite free from that sectarian prejudice against Casuistry and
Chap, i, i] CAN PLEASURES BE SUMMED? 3
that dislike to the scientific treatment of practical problems
which are characteristic of several writers by whom the incom-
mensurability of pleasures has been maintained. I agree with
him in holding that pleasure is part of the good, though not the
whole of it, as a good but not the good. It would seem prima
facie to follow that ceteris paribus the course of action which
promises more pleasure must be preferred to one that promises
less ; and that, to ascertain whether an action should bo done,
I must ideally add together the pleasures or amounts of pleasure
likely to be attained by it, and compare them with the pleasure
promised by the alternative course. But here we are met by
a denial that it is possible to sum pleasures at all.
It will be well to quote in full a few attempts to state the
ground of this doctrine,
(i) We will begin with a passage from Green's Prolegomena to
Ethic* : l A " Summum Bonum " consisting of a greatest possible
sum of pleasures is supposed to be definite and intelligible, because
every one knows what pleasure is. But in what sense does
every one know it? If only in the sense that every one can
imagine the renewal of some pleasure which he has enjoyed, it
may be pointed out that pleasures, not being enjoyable in a sum
to say nothing of a greatest possible sum cannot be imagined
in a sum either *. Though this remark, however, might be to
the purpose against a Hedonist who held that desire could only
be excited by imagined pleasure, and yet that a greatest sum of
pleasure was an object of desire, it is not to the purpose against
those who merely look on the greatest sum of pleasures as the
true criterion, without holding that desire is only excited by
imagination of pleasure. They will reply that, though we may
not be able, strictly speaking, to imagine a sum of pleasures,
every one knows what it is. Every one knows the difference
between enjoying a longer succession of pleasures and a shorter
one, a succession of more intense and a succession of less intense
1 It is difficult to reconcile this statement with the admission * that there
may be in fact such a thing as desire for a sum or contemplated series of
pleasures' (Prolegomena to Ethics, 222). All that Green seems anxious to
establish in this section is that without a permanent self there would be no
such desire.
B 2
4 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
pleasures, a succession of pleasures less interrupted by pain and
one more interrupted. In this sense every one knows the
difference between enjoying a larger sum of pleasures and en-
joying a smaller sum. He knows the difference also, between
a larger number of persons or sentient beings and a smaller one.
He attaches therefore a definite meaning to the enjoyment of
a greater nett amount of pleasure by a greater number of beings,
and has a definite criterion for distinguishing a better action
from a worse, in the tendency of the one, as compared with the
other, to produce a greater amount of pleasure to a greater
number of persons.
' The ability, however, to compare a larger sum of pleasure
with a smaller in the sense explained as we might compare
a longer time with a shorter is quite a different thing from
ability to conceive a greatest possible sum of pleasures, or to
attach any meaning to that phrase. It seems, indeed, to be in-
trinsically as unmeaning as it would be to speak of a greatest
possible quantity of time or space. The sum of pleasures plainly
admits of indefinite increase, with the continued existence of
sentient beings capable of pleasure. It is greater to-day than it
was yesterday, and, unless it has suddenly come to pass that
experiences of pain outnumber experiences of pleasure, it will be
greater to-morrow than it is to-day ; but it will never be
complete while sentient beings exist. To say that ultimate good
is a greatest possible sum of pleasures, strictly taken, is to say
that it is an end which for ever recedes; which is not only
unattainable but from the nature of the case can never be more
nearly approached ; and such an end clearly cannot serve the
purpose of a criterion, by enabling us to distinguish actions
which bring men nearer to it from those that do not. Are we
then, since the notion of a greatest possible sum of pleasures is
thus unavailable, to understand that in applying the Utilitarian
criterion we merely approve one action in comparison with
another, as tending to yield more pleasure to more beings
capable of pleasure, without reference to a " Summum Bonum "
or ideal of a perfect state of existence at all ? But without such
reference is there any meaning in approval or disapproval at all ?
It is intelligible that without such reference the larger sum of
Chap, i, i] GREEN'S OBJECTIONS 5
pleasures should be desired as against the less ; on supposition
of benevolent impulses, it is intelligible that the larger sum
should be desired by a man for others as well as for himself.
But the desire is one thing; the approval of it the judgement
" in a calm hour " that the desire or the action prompted by it is
reasonable is quite another thing. Without some ideal how-
ever indeterminate of a best state of existence, with the
attainment of which the approved motive or action may be
deemed compatible, the approval of it would seem impossible.
Utilitarians have therefore to consider whether they can employ
a criterion of action, as they do employ it, without some idea
of ultimate good ; and, since a greatest possible sum of pleasures
is a phrase to which no idea really corresponds, what is the
idea which really actuates them in the employment of their
criterion 1 /
It will be observed that Green's objection is chiefly (i) to the
idea of a greatest possible sum of pleasure and to the theory which
finds in such a sum its ideal of human good. He does not deny
that pleasures are capable of being summed, and that it is
possible to compare the amount of pleasure on the whole which
an action will bring with the probable results of another. Green,
therefore, is in no way responsible for the view of his disciple,
that even such a calculation is impossible. Of this view we
may take Prof. Mackenzie as the representative.
(2) Prof. Mackenzie writes : ' Pleasures cannot be Summed. It
follows from this that there cannot be any calculus of pleasures
i. e. that the values of pleasures cannot be quantitatively esti-
mated. For there can be no quantitative estimate of things that
are not homogeneous. But, indeed, even apart from this consider-
ation, there seems to be a certain confusion in the Hedonistic
idea that we ought to aim at a greatest sum of pleasures. If
pleasure is the one thing that is desirable, it is clear that a sum
of pleasures cannot be desirable ; for a sum of pleasures is not
pleasure. We are apt to think that a sum of pleasures is
pleasure, just as a sum of numbers is a number. But this is
evidently not the case. A sum of pleasures is not pleasure, any
more than a sum of men is a man. For pleasures, like men,
1 Prolegomena to Ethics, 358, 359.
6 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
cannot be added to one another. Consequently, if pleasure is
the only thing that is desirable, a sum of pleasures cannot
possibly be desirable. If the Hedonistic view were to be adopted,
we ought always to desire the greatest pleasure i.e. we ought
to aim at producing the most intense feeling of pleasure that it
is possible to reach in some one's consciousness. This would be
the highest aim. A sum of smaller pleasures in a number of
different people's consciousnesses, could not be preferable to this
because a sum of pleasures is not pleasure at all The reason
why this does not appear to be the case, is that we habitually
think of the desirable thing for man not as a feeling of pleasure
but as a' continuous state of happiness. But a continuous state
of happiness is not a mere feeling of pleasure. It has a certain
objective content. Now if we regard this content as the desir-
able thing, we do not regard the feeling of pleasure as the one
thing that is desirable ; i. e. we abandon Hedonism V
For purposes of criticism it will be convenient to break up
the position of my opponents into three assertions, all of which
seem to be implied by Prof. Mackenzie but of which the last
might possibly be maintained without the second, or the last two
without the first. I shall begin, that is to say, with the more
extreme position, and then go on to the more moderate forms
of the doctrine which I am criticizing. I may say at once that
it is the first two which I am chiefly concerned to deny : the
third seems to me to raise a more subtle and debatable question,
and (while I am prepared to defend my thesis on this point)
I attach little importance to it, and would particularly insist
that failure to establish my position thereon should not be held
in any way to invalidate my argument in relation to the other
two. The three positions which I dispute are these:
(i) That a sum of pleasures is not a possible object of desire.
(a) That while the proposition this pleasure is greater or
more pleasant than that has a meaning, the judgement is not
quantitative.
(3) That even if one pleasure or sum of pleasures can be said
to be greater in amount than another, numerical values cannot,
1 Manual of Ethics, 4th ed., pp. 229, 230. Cf. the same writer's Introduction
to Social Philosophy, 2nd ed., pp. 222-228.
Chap, i, ii] CAN A SUM OF PLEASURES BE DESIRED ? 7
with any meaning, be assigned to two pleasures or sums of
pleasure ; so that there can never be any meaning in the
assertion * this pleasure is twice as great as that. 1
I may add that for the present I am dealing with the com-
parison o*f pleasures of the same kind or quality. Afterwards
I shall have something to say as to the comparison of pleasures
which ' differ in kind/ Meanwhile, the fact that I am confining
myself to pleasures of the same kind may perhaps be my excuse
if I take my illustrations for the most part from pleasures of
a low type, such as those of eating and drinking. I do so simply
because what I contend for is most clearly seen in the case of
such pleasures. I make this remark to deprecate the wrath
of critics who, while apparently not averse to a good dinner,
seem to wish it to be understood that the pleasantness of the
meal is to them a contemptible not to say regrettable accident
involved in the pursuit of some higher end, the nature of which
they never seem able to indicate with any precision. I need
hardly say that I have no desire to emphasize the importance
of the element contributed to human Well-being by those
pleasures of eating and drinking to which the actual conventions
of the most refined societies give a greater prominence than
it is easy to justify. But however low we place them, and
however strictly we think they ought to be limited, it seems
impossible to justify any indulgence whatever in such things
which goes beyond the imperative requirements of health and
efficiency, unless we treat pleasure even such pleasure as
a good.
II
Firstly, then, it is asserted that a sum of pleasures is not
a possible object of desire.
This position would appear to be maintained upon one of two
possible grounds :
(a) It may be regarded as a corollary of the still more
paradoxical doctrine that we never desire pleasure at all. This
may mean that we never desire a pleasure, or that we never
desire pleasure in general but always a particular pleasure.
8 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
Some writers would seem to deny the possibility of desiring
either a pleasure or pleasure in general.
What lies at the bottom of these assertions seems to be the
undeniable fact that it is impossible to enjoy pleasure in general
or pleasure taken apart from everything else. Whatf we enjoy
is always a particular content a pleasant sound, a pleasant
sensation, a pleasant activity, a pleasant idea. A man whose
consciousness was at any single minute full of nothing but
pleasure would be an impossible variety of lunatic : for he would
have to admit that he was pleased at just nothing at all.
Pleasure apart from the pleasant something is of course a pure
abstraction. When a man is said to desire pleasure, it is meant
undoubtedly that he desires pleasant things, and further that he
desires them simply because they are pleasant. Is not this
a possible state of mind ? It would seeni that there are those
who would be prepared to deny even this who would say that
even a particular pleasure, i. e. (of course) a particular pleasant
content, is not a possible object of desire. Such a doctrine claims
the high authority of the Master of Balliol :
' Further, ivhen the desire of pleasure thus arises, it is in us
combined with a consciousness for which pleasure cannot be the
sole or the ultimate end, a consciousness to which, as universal,
pleasure is not an adequate end. This may be shown in various
ways, the most obvious of which is to point out that pleasure
must be had in some object, for which there is a desire inde-
pendently of the pleasure it brings V
Now I have already contended that many probably most
of our desires are not desires for pleasure but 'disinterested
desires' or 'desires for objects/ and that in all such cases
the satisfaction of the desire gives pleasure because the object
has been desired; it is not desired, or at all events it is not
desired solely, because it is calculated that the attainment of the
given object will bring with it pleasure, and more pleasure than
1 Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant, II, p. 229. Prof. Taylor defends
the to me still stranger idea that, though pleasure need not arise from the
fulfilment of desire, * neither worth nor goodness can properly be ascribed to
it unless it is felt to be the realisation, in however unexpected a way, of
some previously formed idea, the satisfaction of some previously experienced
craving ' (The Problem of Conduct, p. 327).
Chap, i, ii] PLEASURES CAN BE DESIRED 9
could be attained by the pursuit of any other object then within
reach. As to what is commonly known as the ' hysteron-proteron
of the hedonistic psychology ' I have already insisted as strongly
on it as I know how to do. But the question before us is not whether
other things can be desired besides pleasures, but whether pleasures
are or are not capable of being desired at all. Certainly I do not
believe that an angry man desires vengeance because he has calcu-
lated from his own experience or the recorded experience of
others that the pleasures of vengeance are the sweetest. Cer-
tainly there are cases where a man gratifies his anger or his
desire of vengeance with the certain knowledge that his act
will entail pains which no impartial calculation of pleasures
could possibly conclude to be outweighed by the pleasure of
satisfied anger or revenge. (We are obliged to use the language
of common life, though of course upon the assumptions of the
hedonistic psychology there could not really be such a thing
as anger or passion of any kind.) Unquestionably there are
cases where the uplifted arm would not be stayed by the most
demonstrated certainty of the greatest sum of pleasures that
earth has to offer. But is all this equally true of cases where
a man desires to eat or drink something which experience has
shown to be pleasant ? The contention we are examining would
seem to involve the assertion that, when a man who is not
thirsty or in quest of health drinks port, he is impelled by
a desire of port port as such, port for port's sake. The
niceness of the port is, it would seem to be hinted, a quite
irrelevant circumstance. What he wants is port because it
is port, not port because it is nice. If that were so, it would
seem that the uplifted glass would not be put down even if some
fellow-reveller warned the drinker, ' Don't drink this, it is beastly.'
If the desire for port were based upon some antecedent desire
other than desire for the pleasure of port-drinking, it would
seem that the warning must necessarily pass unheeded. It may
possibly be urged that what the man wants is both port and
nice port : but that of course is to admit the opponent's case ;
the desire for pleasant sensation is one of his desires : he does
desire pleasant sensation just because it is pleasant, whatever he
desires or does not desire besides.
TO THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
There can be no doubt that many even of what are called our
sensual pleasures are conditioned by the presence of some desire
which cannot be described as a desire for pleasure, or by some
want or appetite of a kind which it is better perhaps to distinguish
from the more rational class of ' disinterested desires/ There is
a pleasure in getting warm when I am cold, in eating when I am
hungry, and so on. But are all pleasures of sense of this kind ?
Such a contention seems to be opposed to the most familiar experi-
ence. I certainly often rise from my chair and stand before the
fire, though I am not in the least cold, simply because experience
has shown me that the practice is attended with pleasure. The
continental stove may more than satisfy our desire of warmth,
but Englishmen persist nevertheless in preferring their un-
economical open fires. The medical profession would be ruined
if there were no pleasure in eating after hunger is satisfied,
or if such pleasure could not become the object of desire. More-
over, the pleasure is in many cases quite independent of any
previous desire at all whether for that pleasure or for anything
else. Where the pleasure arises from the satisfaction of desire,
the pleasure cannot be felt when the desire is absent. If know-
ledge is forced on those who have no desire for knowledge,
its attainment is often found by no means conducive to pleasure.
But the teetotaler's appreciation of rum and milk might be by no
means lessened by the fact that the rum had been surreptitiously
introduced into the innocent beverage for which his soul had
craved. That the pleasures of smell and sight and hearing
are independent of previous desire attracted the especial notice
of Plato. And while this independence of previous desire is
characteristic of certain kinds of mere sensation, it is not limited
to sensual pleasures. It is especially, I think, characteristic
of the aesthetic pleasures. My appreciation of a landscape or
a picture is in no way diminished because it comes in my way
at a moment when I am thinking of something quite different,
And if it be said that it appeals to me only because it satisfies
a permanent desire for the beautiful which is capable of being
aroused by the presentation of that which will satisfy it, one
may ask, How in the first instance is the desire of beauty
aroused ? ' Is it normally the case that people are led to the
Chap, i, ii] DESIRE FOR PLEASURE IN GENERAL n
search for beauty by a craving for what they have never ex-
perienced as many both of the highest desires and of the lowest
appetites do undoubtedly exist before they have received any
satisfaction at all ? Is it not rather some new, some unsought
for, some wholly unanticipated experience of the pleasantness
of beholding beautiful things which first rouses the desire to see
more beautiful things ?
I cannot but think that few even of those who deny the
possibility of a 'sum of pleasures' will agree with Dr. Caird
in holding that even particular pleasures cannot be the object
of desire. But then it may be said : ' Yes, a pleasure may be
desired, but not pleasure a particular pleasure but not pleasure
in general.' I have already admitted that we can never desire
to enjoy pleasure alone ; the pleasure must always come from
some feeling, thought, or volition. So obvious a truism has
so far as I am aware, never been denied. But need we always
set our heart upon the enjoyment of some particular pleasant
thing? There is something in common between all the things
which give us pleasure : and that something is surely capable of
being made the object of pursuit. When a boy begins to smoke,
he is certainly not influenced by the desire of the characteristic
smoker's pleasure, which he has never enjoyed and will not enjoy,
very probably, for some time to come. There can be no image
before his mind of a definite pleasant content ; he does not know
what the smoker's pleasure is, but he knows what pleasure in
general is, and knows that he likes all kinds of pleasure. His
notion of pleasure is made up by abstraction from all the
pleasures he has ever enjoyed ; there is no image of any
particular pleasure before his mind. And, when he has gathered
from the relation of credible witnesses that smoking is a source
of pleasure, that is enough to set him in pursuit of it. If
a booth were set up in a fair with the announcement ' Pleasure
here 6cZ./ it is possible that it would not attract a large number
of sixpences because there might be doubts as to the probabilities
of the promised article being really supplied ; but it does seem
to me a strange position to deny the psychological possibility
of some one individual paying his sixpence, not (as it is very
likely some would do) for the pleasure of satisfying curiosity
12 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
but with the definite expectation of getting a fair sixpennyworth
of enjoyment, and a broad-minded indifference as to the par-
ticular species supplied so long of course as it was a pleasure
to him.
I feel some diffidence in attempting a solemn argument in
defence of a thesis which (with all respect for the eminent
persons who deny it) seems to me so obviously true ; and I
confess I find it difficult to understand what exactly it is that
is really meant to be denied when it is said that pleasure
cannot be an object of desire. Is it the obvious fact that what
we each care about is not all pleasure equally, but the particular
pleasures which appeal to us? That is quite true, but then
of course that which gives me no pleasure will not satisfy my
desire of pleasure ; nor shall I be much influenced by a desire for
the pleasures which, though they are pleasant, I care little about,
or which cannot be attained without sacrificing objects about
which I care more than for such pleasures perhaps more than
for any pleasure small or great. Or is it implied that, though
I do desire all pleasant things which really are pleasant to me,
I do not desire them in proportion to their pleasantness? I
agree, but that is only to say that I desire other things besides
pleasure, and moreover that (speaking generally) the pleasures
best worth having spring from the satisfaction of desires other
than the desire for pleasure. All that has been admitted. What
I contend for is that it is possible for a man to desire and that
all or almost all men do desire pleasant things simply because
they are pleasant, and that, ceteris pavibus (where no difference
of quality enters into the consideration and where no other desire
would be thwarted), they desire the pleasanter things more than
those that are less pleasant. That is what I understand to
be meant by the assertion that pleasure (and not merely par-
ticular pleasures) is a possible object of desire.
There is one more line of argument which I would briefly
suggest. Will those who deny that we desire pleasure, maintain
that we have no aversion to pain? Here it can hardly be
contended that it is merely certain particular psychical states
which merely happen to be painful which inspire aversion,
or that it is not the pain as such that we try to avoid, but
Chap, i, ii] WE AVOID ALL PAIN 13
merely the frustration of some other desire, of which pain is
a mere accidental accompaniment. It is, of course, often the
case that pain is the symptom of something organically wrong,
and again ^hat mental pains do largely result from the frustra-
tion of some desire. Bub there are many conditions of body
to which we should have no objection for any other reason
than that they happen to be painful. Who would care about
being told by a Physiologist that certain thrills are coursing
down his nerves, if they did not reveal themselves in painful
sensation : or that there was caries in his tooth, if he could
be sure that the tooth would never become either painful or
less useful? If you will insist on abstracting the content of
pain from the pain itself, it is surely the pain that we avoid,
not the content. We avoid pains, the content of which we know
nothing about. We do not think it necessary to try new pains
which we cannot without experience even picture to the im-
agination, under the expectation that, though other pains are
to be avoided, it might turn out that this pain was rather
desirable than otherwise. If we know that the psychical state
produced by such and such a bodily affection is painful, that
is quite enough for us. Unless they suppose the pain to be
a means to something other than itself or an inseparable element
in some other good, all rational men avoid it : and it will hardly
be denied that they avoid the severer pains more than the less
severe. All pains are to them an object of aversion, and objects
of aversion in proportion to their painfulness. That is what
is meant by saying that pain as such is an object of aversion.
I do not know that any one who admits that pain is an object
of aversion but still denies that pleasure is a possible object
of desire can be convicted of any actual logical inconsistency :
but the position is, to say the least of it, a singular one.
(6) But, as I have already indicated, there are writers whose
denial that pleasures can be summed or that a sum of pleasures
can be desired does not carry with it the assertion either that
pleasures are not possible objects of desire or even that pleasure in
general may not become the object of pursuit. Their objection to
a summation of pleasures rests upon other grounds ; and seems
for the most part (so far as I can gather) to be based upon the
14 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
very simple fact that we cannot enjoy a sum of pleasures all
at once that a sum of pleasures is not capable of existing
altogether at a given moment of time. Perhaps the best way
of dealing with this objection will be to point out that the
contention is as fatal to the existence of a desire for pleasure,
or even for one single definite pleasure, as to the desire for a sum
of pleasures. The briefest pleasure occupies a sensible time :
and there is no time that cannot conceivably be subdivided into
two halves. If, therefore, I cannot desire anything which I
cannot have all at once, I could not desire either pleasant
consciousness in general or any particular state of consciousness
which is pleasant. The argument in fact goes further than this :
it would prove not merely that pleasure cannot be desired, but
that there can be no such thing as pleasure, since an indivisible
point of pleasure could not be felt at all and therefore would not
be pleasure. If so, of course, cadit quaestio. But I must ask
to be excused from attempting the task of proving to the sceptic
that the word pleasure signifies something which has actual
existence \ Assuming that there is such a thing as pleasure,
it must (at least for human beings here and now) be in time :
and the time or the temporal state that is incapable of division
is not time or in time at all. We have heard, of course, of
the timeless self and its aspirations after a good which, though
it is not in time, is, it seems, to have a beginning, and to be
capable of being brought about by human acts which take place
within the time-series : but I am not aware that the supporters
of the timeless self have usually assigned to it a timeless pleasure 2 .
At all events, if any such thing there be, it must be something
quite different from what I and, I am persuaded, the majority
of my readers understand by the word. AH I understand
a sum of pleasures, every pleasure is really a sum of pleasures :
1 The reader may possibly demand at this point a definition. Something
will be said on this subject at the end of the next chapter. Here I will only
remark that most of the attempts at definition fail so grotesquely that I feel
little inclination to add to the number.
2 It is true that Dr. McTaggart has suggested the possibility for beings
in another state of a ' timeless pleasure,' but he does not regard such a
pleasure as possible in our present condition. As far as this life is con-
cerned, he admits the possibility of a ' sum of pleasures.'
Chap, i, ii] EVERY PLEASURE IS A SUM 15
it is impossible to desire pleasure at all without desiring a sum
of pleasures. What I understand by the assertion that I desire
a sum of pleasures is that I desire to enjoy pleasure as intense
as possible, and for as long as possible that I desire two
minutes' pleasure more than I desire one minute of the same
pleasure, and further that I regard the intensity of one pleasant
moment as something which can be equated with the duration
of another pleasant state ; so that, on comparing the duration and
intensity of pleasure which will be secured by one course of
conduct with the duration and intensity of pleasure which I may
win by another, I can pronounce which on the whole appears
to me to possess the greatest pleasure-value, and can (in so far
as I am in pursuit of pleasure to the disregard of other con-
siderations) determine my action by that judgement.
Professor Green's argument against the idea that something
which cannot be enjoyed all at once can be the swnmnm bonum
does not directly concern us here, but it seems to me open to
much the same objections as have been urged against the denial
that a sum of pleasures is a possible object of desire. His
argument seems to amount to the assertion that a sum of
pleasures cannot be made the object of pursuit because you
can never reach it, while a greatest possible sum of pleasures
is a contradiction in terms, since when you have enjoyed any
given amount of pleasure, it is always still possible to desire
more. I should myself be prepared to contend that any other
view of the ethical end is liable to the same objection, since
any good for man must be in time, and can never be seized
once for all as a Krf/jza t$ &ti\ I am not, however, arguing that
a sum of pleasures is the true ethical end, but only that it is
an intelligible object of pursuit. To aim at a greatest possible
sum of pleasures means to endeavour that as much pleasure
should be got into a given time as possible and that the time in
which we are enjoying pleasure should be as long as possible.
Nobody, I take it, has ever maintained the possibility of arriving
at a sum of pleasures in any other sense. The greater durability
of some sources of satisfaction as compared with others is no doubt
an important reason for the higher value we attribute to them, but
the consciousness which enjoys even the most spiritual good must
16 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
be in time ; the enjoyment of it can never be so far exhausted that
we can say that an addition to it would be no addition to the
good hitherto enjoyed. To argue that a sum of pleasures cannot
be the good because they cannot be enjoyed all at oroe is about
as reasonable as to argue that the virtues cannot be the good
because they cannot all be practised in an ' atomic now ' or even
during the same five minutes 1 .
Ill
(2) It is asserted that whereas the proposition ' this pleasure
is greater than that* has a meaning, the judgement is not
quantitative.
The idea that degree involves quantity has been pronounced
by Prof. Mackenzie a crude notion 2 ; but it is a crude notion
which has commended itself (unless I greatly misunderstand
them) to Kant, to Prof. Bosanquet 3 , and on the whole to Mr. Bradley.
I do not propose to discuss the matter more in detail as a matter
of pure Logic, but will simply refer to Mr. Bradley's very subtle
paper on the question : ' What do we mean by the intensity of
psychical states ? 4 ' I do not underrate the difficulty, insisted
upon by Mr. Bradley with his usual penetration, of saying
exactly what it is that there is more of in one psychical state
a state of pleasure or a state of heat than in another. But
Mr. Bradley, though his discussion is aporetic, seems to be
indisposed to deny that, however this question be answered,
1 ' So long as we exist in time, the supreme good, whatever it is perfec-
tion, self-realisation, the good will will have to manifest itself in a series
of states of consciousness ' (McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 109).
* It will, I believe, be found . . . that, reasonably or unreasonably, we are con-
tinually making calculations of pleasures and pains, that they have an
indispensable place in every system of morality, and that any system which
substitutes perfection for pleasure as a criterion of moral action also in-
volves the addition and subtraction of other intensive quantities. If such
a process is unjustifiable, it is not hedonism only, but all ethics, which will
become unmeaning 1 (ib., p. in).
2 Social Philosophy, and ed., p. 230.
8 ' A quality that changes, and yet remains the same quality, has passed
into quantity * (Principles of Logic, I, p. 118).
4 Mind, N. S., Vol. IV (1895). Cf Ethical Studies, p. 107.
Chap, i, iii] DEGREE IMPLIES QUANTITY 17
the judgement is quantitative. And I find it difficult to
treat seriously the assertion to the contrary. We certainly
say : ' This is more pleasant than that V The position that
the word *more does not involve the idea of quantity is so
startling that I must excuse myself from further discussion
of it until it be developed in more detail than has yet been
the case. It is true that ' intensive quantity ' is not the same
thing as ' extensive quantity ' ; but if ' intensive quantity ' has
nothing in common with ' extensive quantity * why do Philosophy
and Common Sense alike call each of them * quantity ' ?
Whatever be thought of the logical doctrine that degree
does not involve quantity, it is enough for my present purpose
if it be admitted that one whole state of, consciousness of a
certain character is pronounced more pleasant than another,
provided it be conceded also: (a) that the total pleasure in
each case is made up of a number of successive moments;
(b) that a certain degree of intensity is actually judged to
be the equivalent of and may influence desire and volition
as the equivalent of a certain degree of duration : in other
words, that a man in pursuit of pleasure may choose, and may
judge it reasonable to choose, a less pleasure for a longer time
rather than an intenser pleasure for a shorter time ; (c) that
a whole pleasant state may be analysed into various distinguish-
able elements.
The first two of these propositions can hardly, as it seems
to me, be denied without going the length of saying that the
duration of a pleasure, if it only be intense enough, is a matter
of absolute indifference to us. And it has been contended by
1 That Mr. Bradley believes it possible to sum pleasures may, I think, be
inferred from his elaborate discussions as to whether, in the Absolute, there
is or is not a ' balance of pleasure/ Such passages as the following could
have no meaning if it were not possible to add pleasure and pain together,
arrive at their sum and subtract the pleasure from the pain or the pain from
the pleasure : ' We found that there is a balance of pleasure over and
above pain, and we know from experience that in a mixed state such a
balance may be pleasant. And we are sure that the Absolute possesses and
enjoys somehow this balance of pleasure. But to go further seems impossible .
Pleasure may conceivably be so supplemented and modified by addition, that
it does not remain precisely that which we call pleasure * (Appearance and
Reality, p. 534).
j8 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
Prof. Mackenzie that those who maintain the possibility of
adopting the hedonistic calculus as a guide in conduct are involved
in some such absurdity.
* But, it may be said, we can surely estimate pleasures at least
with reference to their duration. I may be aware that at each
of two successive moments I have a pleasure of approximately
the same degree ; and I may thus be entitled to say that the
pleasures of these two moments taken together are twice as
great as the pleasure of one of them alone would have been.
Surely i -f i = 2. Now, to this the obvious answer is that it is
indeed true that i + 1 = 2, but it is also true that i + I i = i.
When the second pleasure is added the first is taken away,
and there is only one left. If I have only one pleasure now,
I am none the richer for the fact that I had another before.
It is true that I may survey my life as a whole, and perceive
that I was pleased at so many different moments ; and it might
be an amiable hobby on my part to try to make the number of
pleasant moments as large as possible. But I should not be
any the better off for such an effort. At the present moment
I am just as happy as I am, and no happier: I am not also
as happy as I was, or as happy as I shall be. In the past, on
the other hand, I was as happy as I was ; and in the future
I shall be as happy as I shall be. Every moment stands on its
own basis ; and the number of moments makes no difference to
the happiness of life as a whole, because, according to such
a view, life is not a whole. " A short life and a merry one " is
as happy as a long one. A moment of blessedness ' [upon the
hypothesis that pleasures can be summed] * would be as good as
an eternity, because the eternity would only go on repeating the
blessedness and not increasing it V
I can only say that most of us would attach considerable
value to what Prof. Mackenzie dismisses with a contemptuous
' only/ If we could attain this moment of blessedness, that is
exactly what we should want that it should be repeated as
often as possible. There is no arguing about these matters of
psychological experience and ethical judgement. I can only say
that as a matter of fact I would not take the trouble to walk
1 Social Philosophy, pp. 231, 232.
Chap, i, iii] NO HUMAN GOOD TIMELESS 19
across the street to get a moment of blessedness if I were
assured that the blessedness would occupy my consciousness
only for ~^ of a second l . I will add once more a reminder
too of tea forgotten in the polemics of an ti- hedonists of the
parallel case of pain. Prof. James has somewhere remarked
that the utmost degree of torture of which human consciousness
is capable would be a matter of supreme indifference to him if he
could be assured that it would last only some intinitesimal time.
Would Prof. Mackenzie be prepared to say that, if condemned to
such a torture, it would be a matter of indifference to him how
long it went on ?
Now it is true that Prof. Mackenzie is here indulging in
what appears to him a reductio ad absurdum of the hedonistic
view of Ethics. But I fail to see how he can himself escape
adopting such a consequence as his own except by insisting that
the good, which is the true end of human life, is something out
of time altogether, a view which, however unintelligible, is open
to writers like Green who did not regard pleasure as a good
at all, but does not seem to be open to those who, like Prof.
Mackenzie, do regard pleasure as a good and part of the good.
There is just the same logical difficulty about any view which
admits pleasure to be a good at all. A pleasure, however brief,
can be enjoyed only while it is there : it can be enjoyed after-
wards only in so far as the recollection of the past pleasure
is itself a fresh pleasure. It is true that the possibility of
such recollection implies the belief in a continuous or permanent
self which is denied by such writers as Hume; but Hume's
view of the self is not involved in the recognition of the hedon-
istic calculus as a possible and (as far as it goes) a rational
proceeding. If pleasure be of any importance at all, it must
follow, it seems to me, that ceterix par'djus its importance must
be proportional to its duration. And, as I have already sug-
1 If what is wanted is a timeless ' blessedness,' though personally I attach no
meaning to such an expression, we may usefully remember Dr. McTaggart's
distinction: 'Absolute perfection the supreme good is not quantitative.
But we shall not reach absolute perfection by any action which we shall
have a chance of taking to-day or to-morrow. And of the degrees of per-
fection it is impossible to speak except quantitatively * (Studies in Hegelian
Cosmology, p. 113).
ao THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
gested, exactly the same line of objection may be taken to
regarding as the good any possible state of a conscious being
which is in time. If it may be argued that, supposing pleasure
to be the good, a moment of it ought to be as good as an
eternity, then why not a moment of holiness or a moment of
'Self -realization 1 ? If the ' self-realization ' which Prof. Mac-
kenzie wants is not in time at all, how can it be an object of
human effort ? If it is in time, would he not think a longer
duration of it better than a shorter ?
If then duration of pleasure is desired as well as intensity
of pleasure, will it be denied that, in choosing between two
pleasures (i. e. between the psychical consequences of alternative
acts of choice), we do balance duration against intensity, and
choose that which promises most pleasure on the whole the
discomforts of a four hours' passage on a good boat against
the horrors of two hours on a bad one, or (if income be severely
limited) the three hours of fierce delight (plus a certain amount
of retrospective pleasure afterwards) which five shillings will
buy at a theatre against the calmer but more prolonged enjoy-
ment of a five-shilling book ? This is all at bottom that is meant
by the much-decried idea of a hedonistic calculus all perhaps
that it is absolutely necessary to contend for. But there is,
as I have suggested, one point more not perhaps absolutely
essential to the idea, but usually implied in it, and it is this
probably which is most apt to be denied by the more moderate
of those who object to the expression ' sum of pleasures '
and that is the notion that the total whole of pleasant conscious-
'ness is made up of distinguishable elements. I say distin-
guishable, i.e. logically distinguishable, not capable of actual
separation. My consciousness at any given moment is no doubt
a whole which cannot be separated into parts like a material
object, but it in possible to distinguish in the total ' psychosis '
many different elements. Sometimes the elements are capable
of being distinguished even to the extent of retaining ap-
proximately when in combination the pleasurableness or pain-
fulness which they have when separate. Thus I may be
conscious at one and the same time of a pain in my toe,
another in my head, and a pleasant interest in the story that
Chap, i, iii] PLEASURES ARE COMMENSURABLE 21
I am reading. At other times, and this is generally the case,
no doubt, where no definitely localized pain enters into con-
sciousness, the elements seem so far fused together that it
is only by ,a considerable effort of reflection (aided by memories
which enable me to apply the method of difference or of con-
comitant variations) that I can distinguish how much of my
total pleasant state is due to the different elements. That
is the case, for instance, when I ask myself how much of
the general sense of exhilaration which I have experienced
at a pleasant party was due to the dinner, how much to the
champagne, how much to the company; or when I attempt
to say how much of my depression is due to biliousness and
how much to the disappointment or annoyance on which at
such seasons I may be apt to brood.
And yet, in spite of all the difficulties of such discrimination,
we do make such distinctions in reflecting upon past pleasures,
and we use the result of such experiences in guiding our choice
for the future. We have two invitations for the same night. We
might say to ourselves : * True, A's dinner will be less sumptuous
than JS's, but I like B's superior wine better than A's superior
cookery, and the conversation will be much better. Therefore
to B's I will go, and A's invitation I will decline/ It is true
of course and this seems to be the only serious difficulty in
treating such cases as a summation of pleasures that the
hedonistic value of a pleasure in combination with others may be
something quite different from its value when taken by itself,
or rather (since we never do enjoy an assignable pleasure
absolutely ' by itself ') when experienced in a different psychical
setting or context. The dinner which helps us to enjoy the
evening in pleasant company would simply bore the man who is
not a gourmand, if consumed in solitude or in the company
of dull persons. The values that we sum are altered by the
summing or rather by the combination. And this objection may
be treated as fatal to the whole idea of a 'sum of pleasures/
But after all it is not the values that they have in separation but
the values that they have as elements in the whole that we are
summing; though our experience of them in separation or in
other surroundings may be more or less of a help in estimating
22 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
how much they will contribute to our enjoyment of the total
consciousness into which they enter. It is true that my enjoy-
ment of a certain man's company may be either greater or less
when I meet him in a Swiss hotel than when I meet him in
a College common-room: but that does not prevent my ex-
perience of his society in Oxford leading me to think that
his presence will be a material addition to my enjoyment at
such and such a Swiss hotel and determining me to go there
in preference to one which I should otherwise have decidedly
preferred. It is then undeniable (as it seems to me) that we can
distinguish elements in a whole of pleasant consciousness. The
society of my friend and the enjoyment of Alpine scenery may
give me a total of pleasure both greater and different in kind
than I should derive from the two taken separately. But that
does not prevent my putting together in my mind the probable
enjoyment which I shall derive from the scenery and the prob-
able enjoyment which I shall derive from the company of my
friend, and recognizing that the two elements go to form a
whole of pleasure which is greater than either. If on comparing
any two whole psychoses I find that one would be preferable to
the other but would become less desirable when a certain assign-
able element is taken away, there is surely a real meaning in
saying that such a whole of pleasure is a sum of pleasures. No
doubt, as the Logicians remind us, the whole is something more
than the sum of its parts ; but the expressions ' whole ' and ' part '
have a real meaning for all that: the whole is the sum of its
parts, though it is something more. Or to take a more concrete
and material parallel, I may judge how many pailfuls of water
it will take to fill a cistern by adding together the capacity
of each pail, though I must not forget to allow for the con-
siderable quantity which will be lost in the process of adding
them together, or the quantity that will be added if it is raining.
IV
(3) There remains for discussion our third and last thesis:
that, though one pleasure may be greater than another, it can
never be described as twice as greatthat degrees of pleasure
cannot be numerically expressed.
Chap, i, iv] NUMERICAL MEASUREMENT 23
The question raised by this assertion is to my mind much
more difficult and debatable than any that we have so far
discussed, and the assertion that pleasures do admit of arith-
metical measurement is in no way necessary to justify us in
talking abdut a sum of pleasure or a hedonistic calculus. I hasten
to add that as a general rule our judgements about pleasure are
expressed in the form of ' more ' or ' less/ not of so many times
more or less. It is only in the simplest cases that we can
attempt to compare pleasures with so much nicety ; and, as such
judgements are of no practical use, we do not commonly make
them. Still, I am prepared to maintain that the judgement
' this pleasure is twice as great as that ' is not absolutely without
meaning. In the first place, it appears to me self-evident that
the value of a pleasure is dependent upon its duration, and that
two minutes of a given pleasure may be fairly said to be twice
as pleasant as one minute of it if it is really the same pleasure
and is not diminished by satiety. Further, if it be admitted
that we are in the habit of equating the intensity of pleasure
with a certain duration of it, it would seem possible to indicate
our sense of the comparative intensity of two pleasures by
expressing them (so to speak) in terms of duration. If it is
a matter of indifference to me whether I enjoy one minute
of one pleasure or two minutes of another, I may reasonably be
said to regard the one pleasure as twice as pleasant as the other l .
Even in far more complicated cases even in estimating the
extent to which various elements contribute to a total state
of continuous pleasure it does not seem to be meaningless
to express one's sense of the comparative value of the different
elements by assigning to them numerical values. In comparing
one friend's dinners with another's there would be nothing
unmeaning though for many practical reasons we rather avoid
such exact mensuration of pleasures in assigning so many
marks to the dinner, so many to the wine, so many to the
conversation with (if you like) a few plus or minus marks
for the arrangement of the table, the post-prandial music and
1 ' I feel no hesitation in affirming that the pleasure I get from a plate of
turtle-soup is more than twice the pleasure I get from a plate of pea-soup '
(McTaggait, I.e., p. 117).
24 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
so on. We might express our sense of the comparative enjoy-
ment afforded by the two entertainments and the extent to
which each element contributes to the total, by assigning marks
to each such element and then adding them together. I admit
that such numerical expressions would in general "be wholly
useless, but it would correctly express the sort of way in which
we do make up our minds between alternative courses by a
mental or ideal summation of the pleasure which we expect
to derive from them. When we have decided on which side the
balance lies, we usually stop, because when we have determined
that we are going to prefer A'n entertainment to J?'s, no purpose
is served by attempting to estimate or to express the degree
of our preference. As a general rule there would be no use
in such an attempt, but it is possible with a little ingenuity
to imagine circumstances in which it would be of use. If
a prize were offered to the host who would give us most pleasure
in the course of six entertainments with or without a certain
limit to the expense, the judges in such a competition would,
I imagine, have to record their impressions of each entertainment
in some such way very much as a man who is judging prize
poems might quite intelligibly (though I do not recommend the
method) arrive at his decision by assigning so many marks for
language, so many for ideas, so many for rhythm, and so on.
To avoid an irrelevant objection I admit at once that it is very
rarely only, perhaps, in regard to the choice of mere amusements,
and not always then that we do make our conduct depend
upon such purely hedonistic calculations, unmodified by other
considerations. But, if there seems to be something rather
tasteless and repellent about the analysis of these hedonistic
calculations for ourselves, we have constantly to make them for
others. A man who has determined to provide a school treat
for a number of children, and to devote thereto a definite sum of
money, aims, I suppose, at producing a maximum of pleasure ;
though I have heard a Moral Philosopher of some distinction
gravely express a doubt as to whether the good will could ever
express itself by giving pleasure to others. The giver of such a
treat knows that, if he provides fireworks, he must cut down the
prizes for races, that if he gives the children a better class
Chap, i, iv] ALLEGED PARALLEL OF HEAT 25
of cake he will not be able to give them sweets too, and so on.
If it helped him (and it is quite possible that it would help
an old Schoolmaster) to express the value of the pleasure which
each shilling expended in different ways would buy by assigning
marks to ach item and then totting them up, I do not see that
there would be anything essentially unmeaning or irrational
about his procedure. No doubt in such cases our estimates are
exceedingly rough, but that does not make it actually impossible
to express our judgement in numbers. It is far easier to say
that one flock of sheep is bigger than another than to say by
how many it is bigger, but that does not alter the fact that
if one flock is bigger than another, it is because it contains more
sheep. Our estimate is none the less quantitative because it
is vague l .
But I have not yet done justice to Prof. Mackenzie's strongest
argument. He tells us that the proposition 'this is twice as
pleasant as that/ is as unmeaning as the judgement ' this is
twice as hot as that/ Now it is to my mind undeniable that in
the case of sensible heat or of any other sensations which admit
of being arranged in a scale, quantitative measurement is essen-
tially impossible. But I contend that pleasure does not belong
to this category at all, and I will try to show why. The reason
why it is impossible to express degrees of sensible heat quantita-
tively is that there is no equivalence between the difference be-
tween any two degrees of sensible heat and the difference between
any two other degrees 2 . Let the line A Z represent the various
possible degrees of sensible heat ranging from a coldest A to
a hottest Z (of course I do not attempt to answer the physio-
logical question whether there is a minimum or maximum of
possible sensible heat).
A B C D E F Z.
The reason why I cannot mark off this line into degrees to which
I might assign numbers like the numbers which express the de-
1 Attempts have been made to show that such judgement may be only
qualitative (e. g. the unreflecting and unanalysed judgements of savages) ;
but they are not convincing.
9 It may be that for many practical purposes it may conveniently be
assumed that the degree of sensible heat will correspond to the degree of
the physical stimulus.
a6 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
grees of physical heat on a thermometer is that I cannot say that
D is as much hotter than C as F is hotter than X *. But in com-
paring pleasures I have no difficulty in doing this 3 . If I would as
1 This position is admirably defended by M. Bergson in his Essav sur les
donntes immtdiates de la Conscience (4 me ed., 1904), pp. 42 seq. I cannot,
however, follow him in his attempt to show that there is no meaning even
in saying that one psychical state is more intense than another that
psychical states differ only qualitatively, and that there is no such thing
as intensive quantity. Is it possible to deny that we can arrange feelings
of heat or sensations of blue in a scale entirely apart from the association of
these sensations with their physical causes ? M. Bergson demands what it
is of which there is more in one such state than another. No doubt this
' something more ' is something which cannot be isolated and experienced
by itself : we do not, in experiencing a sensation of dark blue, experience
a sensation of light blue -f another distinct sensation. That would no doubt
involve the fallacy of * mental chemistry.' But in denying that a sensation
of light blue has in it something in common with a sensation of dark blue,
he seems to fall into the fallacy of psychological Atomism. He does well to
insist on the uniqueness of all psychical experience. It is true that our
concept of blue is not any particular sensation with all its particularity,
and that each degree of a sensation has a quality of its own which cannot be
expressed quantitatively : but, unless conceptual thought could detect some-
thing common in various experiences of oneself or others, it would not only
be an inadequate representation of reality, but would have no resemblance
or correspondence to it whatever : it would be a mere delusion to suppose
that one mind could know anything whatever of another's mental state, or
even of its own past states. Surely psychical states may resemble each
other, and resemble in different degrees : M. Bergson would find it hard
to refute Mr. Bradley's doctrine that resemblance = identity -f difference.
Still more unsuccessful does M. Bergson seem to me in his attempt to show
that there is no quantity even in real ' duration ' (duration as it is actually
experienced). He is highly instructive in pointing out many mistakes
which have originated in the transference to Time of the characteristics of
Space : he is less convincing when he contends that Time and Space have
nothing whatever in common : and that the application of the idea of
Quantity to mental states arises not merely from a transference, but from an
illegitimate transference of spatial ideas to the case of time. But this ques-
tion is too large a one to be discussed here : suffice it to say that I admit it is
only because we estimate a certain duration of a pleasure to be of equal value
to a certain increase of intensity that we can intelligibly think of the
interval between a degree of pleasure A and a degree B as being as great as
that between B and C, and so speak of a greater or less sum of pleasure.
Those who deny this ought to follow M. Bergson in denying that we can
measure even the duration of pleasures.
8 Of course from the merely hedonistic point of view.
Chap, i, iv] ILLUSTRATIONS 37
soon have pleasure X raised to Fas pleasure C (lower down on the
scale) raised to D, then I can intelligibly say that the difference
between X and Y is equivalent to the difference between C and D.
To take a concrete case : if a bank clerk is offered an addition of
50 a year to his salary or a diminution of his day's work
by half an hour, and were, after consideration, conducted wholly
on hedonistic grounds, to say ' I really don't care/ we should be
entitled to say that the pleasure 'which he would obtain by the
expenditure of 50 made up of course by an addition of the
pleasure derived from so much better eating and drinking, so
many more nights at the theatre, or from so many more books
and a more enjoyable summer holiday was the equivalent of
the enjoyment which he would derive from 280 half-hours'
leisure. It may be said that after all we have here only quanti-
tative equality, not numerically defined inequality. But then
it might be argued that the enjoyment of say 280 half -hours'
leisure is made up of the pleasure derivable from the repetition
280 times of the enjoyment derivable from one half-hour's
leisure. The amount of pleasure derived from an extra half-
hour would of course in fact vary on different days ; but he
would expect a certain average of enjoyment on each day : and
it would therefore be quite intelligible to say that the pleasure
derived from 50 of additional income would be exactly 280
times the pleasure derivable on an average from half an hour's
additional leisure. Once again it must be admitted there seems
something rather childish in such calculations which are never
made in practice any more than we attempt to say by how
many grains one heap of sand is bigger than another. Never-
theless, I maintain that in such cases the judgement is quanti-
tative and might (so long as we confine ourselves to quite simple
cases) intelligibly be reduced to numbers T . The fact that we
can have a very decided and well-grounded opinion that one
total is larger than the other total, while any attempt to express
1 It may be suggested that in such calculations our thought becomes more
and more abstract, and BO leaves out elements of which in the concrete we
really take account. This to a certain extent I admit ; but then it must be
remembered that all thought is abstract, and so leaves out elements of
our actual perceptive experience.
28 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
our comparative estimate by numbers would be the wildest and
most unprofitable guess-work, does not affect the question. The
difficulties in the way of any exact mensuration of pleasures
seem to me to be practical rather than theoretical. r Some of
these difficulties are too obvious to mention, but there is one
which it may be well to notice, because it is, I believe, at the
bottom of many people's objection to the whole idea of a sum of
pleasures.
It is sometimes assumed that we cannot sum pleasure unless
we suppose pleasure to be made up of a number of isolated
pleasures, as though quantity were necessarily discrete. But
space and time and everything that occupies space and every-
thing that occupies time possess quantity, and yet space is not
made up of points or time of moments. Pleasure, like time and
space, is a continuum. In measuring things in space and time
we have recourse to arbitrarily chosen units. And, in so far
as we are taking account of the duration of pleasures merely,
the units of time are applicable also to the case of pleasures ;
there is nothing essentially unmeaning in applying these units
to the measurement of pleasures, and saying that a pleasure that
lasts an hour is four times as great as one that lasts only for
fifteen minutes. But such calculations are of little use to us,
because as a rule we cannot assume that the same feelings,
emotions, occupations or what not will continue to produce
pleasure at the same rate for long periods which they produce
for short periods. What interests us for five minutes would
bore us in an hour ; and conversely things which would interest
us if we had an hour to give to them would awaken no interest
in five minutes. There are books which we do not care to read
for less than an hour and others which we should not care to
read for so long. Duration, therefore, though an important
element in the mensuration of pleasures, does not often prac-
tically help us much to an accurate measurement, even where we
are dealing with the same external source of enjoyment: and,
when we turn to the intensity of pleasures, the want of any
satisfactory unit of pleasure is still more obvious. But the
Chap. i,v] PLEASURE A CONTINUUM 29
difficulty of saying how many units of pleasure there are in
a given lot or sum of pleasure does not prevent our arriving
at a mental estimate of its quantity and comparing it with the
quantity of other pleasures just as an ignorant savage engaging
to carry burdens across the Sahara may have very clear ideas
of magnitude and weight without any knowledge of inches or
pounds.
That we make such comparisons and pronounce which of two
stretches of consciousness is the more pleasant on the whole,
seems to be admitted by some who still object to the term * sum
of pleasures/ Such persons seem to mean that our estimate
of the total pleasure that we shall get from one course of action
as compared with what we shall get from another is arrived
at without any previous mental addition or summing of pleasures.
That we do not, as a rule, consciously divide up our prospective
pleasure into units, and then do a sum in arithmetic, I have
already admitted. But how we can arrive at an estimate of the
amount of a whole without putting together a number of parts
is to me unintelligible. When we are deciding in which of two
ways we shall spend a day or a month devoted to recreation,
do we not go over in imagination the various hours of the day or
the probable occupations of the various days in a month, as it
will be spent in each way, and make a rapid estimate (picturable
in imagination, though not actually reduced to terms of any
pleasure-unit) of the amount of pleasure which we shall get into
each portion of it (though no doubt the portions are not neces-
sarily marked oft* from each other by exact time-measurements),
and then think which total is the largest ? If any one tells me he
is not conscious of doing so, I should be quite prepared to admit
that he really makes such calculations in a less conscious and
deliberate way than I am at times conscious of doing myself.
Indeed, I believe that the disputes which have arisen on this
subject are very largely traceable to differences between the
mental habit of individuals ; but the idea of a quantity a quan-
tity occupying time which does not consist of parts, and is not
made up of the addition of parts, will remain to most minds
an unintelligible paradox. If it consists of parts, the parts must
surely all be looked at before we can pronounce upon the
30 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
pleasurableness of the whole. Whether we can take in the
whole quantity of pleasure by (as it were) a single mental
glance, or whether we mentally run over the parts in succession,
is a mere accidental difference of psychological habit, I am no
less summing the number of sheep in a flock when (as may be
done by an experienced shepherd) I pronounce how many they
are by a look at the whole flock together than when I have
laboriously to count them. Further, I am directly conscious
that in estimating the total of pleasure I take into account the
intensity of successive time-reaches as well as their duration ;
and this process can hardly be performed without thinking
of the successive portions of time. If the whole time is likely
to be equally pleasant, I may no doubt proceed at once to
multiply (so to speak) intensity by duration: if the successive
portions are likely to be very variable, I must surely think how
much pleasure or pain there will be in each before I can say
how much there will be in the whole. If such a process of
estimating a total quantity after estimating the constituent
quantities is not to be called addition and subtraction, I should
be grateful to any Logician who will tell me more precisely
what mental operation it is. At all events that is what I mean
by summing pleasures. If anybody means the same thing but
objects to the word, I can only say that I see no objection to
it except the fact that it has been used by Hedonists, and that
some people consider it necessary to object to everything which
has been said by Hedonists : but the question of the word is
of comparatively small importance. And if in the view of some
of my readers I have not succeeded in hitting the exact point of
their objection to the idea of a ' sum of pleasures/ I may bo
allowed to add that I have never yet met two persons who
are exactly agreed as to the grounds of their anathema. And
with some Philosophers, as with some Theologians, the anathema
is the great thing : the grounds of it matter less.
One more of these objections may, however, demand a
moment's notice. For some minds the objection to the notion
of a sum of pleasures seems based upon the alleged impossibility
of adding one man's pleasure to another's. It appears to be
denied that two people's pleasure is more than the like pleasure
Chap, i, vi] DIFFERENCES OF KIND 31
of one person. Of course it may be possible to find senses
in which this might be the case. In the mind of those who
make the objection, the summing of the pleasure of different
persons seems to carry with it some suggestion that pleasure
is a thing that can be actually separated from the consciousness
of the person enjoying it, divided into lots, and handed about
from one person to another. If any one has fallen into such
a confusion, I venture to submit that it is the people who object
to the mental addition of different people's pleasure, and not the
people who contend for its possibility. The objection seems,
in fact, to be little more than a question of words. The question
whether two people's pleasure is not twice the like pleasure
in one person's consciousness must depend on the purpose for
which the addition is to be used. The meaning which I attach
to the assertion is that I regard a certain amount of pleasure
in two persons as twice as important as the same amount in one ;
and ceteris jxiribus I regard it as a duty to promote more
pleasure than less pleasure. If this last proposition is to be
denied, we have arrived at an ultimate difference of ethical ideal :
if it be admitted, I do not see how duty is to be fulfilled without
mentally multiplying the amount of pleasure by the number of
persons enjoying that pleasure or (to avoid cavil) enjoying a like
amount of pleasure. If this is admitted, where is the objection
to the convenient phrase ' a sum of pleasure ' ?
VI
So far I have been dealing with the comparison of pleasures
which are the same in kind that is, as I understand it, in which
the greater or less pleasurableness of the two pleasures is the
only ground upon which we base our judgement as to their
comparative preferability. Is the case altered when one pleasure
is higher than another ? It is impossible to answer the question
without attempting to define what we mean by saying that one
pleasure is higher than another. I have already endeavoured to
show that, when we pronounce one pleasure higher than another,
we mean that, though both of them are pleasant it may be
equally pleasant the one is more valuable than the other for
some other reason than its pleasantness. What I prefer is really
3* THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
the superior moral or intellectual quality of the pleasant psychical
state, not its superior pleasantness. If I compare them simply
as pleasures, I make abstraction of all qualities in them except
their pleasantness. And pleasure in the strict s&nse of the
word the abstract quality of pleasantness can differ from
pleasure only in quantity, extensive or intensive. Hence it
appears that, strictly speaking, there is no difference in quality
between pleasures considered simply as such, though there may
be between pleasures in the popular sense of the word, i.e. there
may be difference in intrinsic value between two states of con-
sciousness equally pleasant. The distinction would be con-
veniently expressed by saying : ' Pleasure can be estimated only
quantitatively, but pleasures may differ in kind ' ; or, ' Pleasures
differ in kind, but not qua pleasures/ Some Philosophers who
are not Hedonists may be prepared to deny that any distinction
can be made between the value which things have as pleasure
and the value which they have on other grounds, and to contend
that our ethical judgement always refers simply to the ultimate
value of a certain state of consciousness. Such a contention
(to which I shall revert hereafter) would seem either ( i ) to bring
back Hedonism under another name, or (2) to get rid of the idea
of pleasure altogether. I am quite clear that in my own mind
I make a distinction between the pleasantness of things and their
value. As I understand the word * pleasure/ the less pleasant of
two states of consciousness sometimes presents itself to me as the
more valuable *.
When it is said (as it is by some, though I cannot point to
any published expression of that view) that pleasures differ
in kind qua pleasures, I do not know what can be meant by the
doctrine unless it be the undoubted and important fact that
the pleasurableness of a total state of mind is inseparably bound
up with the value that it has on other grounds. It is not a mere
accident that various states of mind to which we attribute higher
value than other states of mind on account of their intrinsic
worth do happen to be also pleasant. When I say that the con-
templation of beauty seems to be good as well as pleasant, while
the sensation derived from eating turtle-soup seems to me
1 See below, p. 50 seq.
Chap, i, v] PLEASURE IN ALL GOOD 33
pleasant but to possess a very low degree of goodness or ultimate
value, I do not first form an estimate of the value which looking
at the beautiful picture would have if it were not pleasant, and
then add tj it the additional value which it derives from being
also pleasant. The pleasantness of the aesthetic gratification
is an essential part of my conception of it. I do not know what
beauty would be like if it were not a source of pleasure, or
whether I should attribute any value to it at all if it were not
essentially pleasant ; and yet I am conscious that the pleasantness
is not the sole source or measure of the value that I attach to it.
All this seems to me perfectly true ; and it goes to show that com-
parison between very heterogeneous pleasures simply in respect
of their pleasantness is a very difficult and delicate proceeding.
Fortunately it is for the most part useless and unnecessary, but
not wholly so. It is often exceedingly difficult to say how much
of the value we attribute to some occupation springs from its
pleasantness, and how much from our sense of the value which
it has on other grounds ; and yet that is what we must do when
we compare a higher and a lower pleasure simply as pleasures.
And such comparisons, though difficult, can be made. I may
say to myself in a certain mood : ' I should get more pleasure
from going to this farce than I should from going to that
tragedy ' ; and yet I may say to myself : ' The tragedy is the
nobler and higher pleasure ; therefore to the tragedy I will go/
On the other hand, if I were thinking only of amusement, and
felt that in the circumstances it was right that I should think of
pure amusement rather than of culture and aesthetic gratification,
I might say : ' Though it is the lower pleasure, I will chocse
it/ I do not think it can be denied that we do not unfrequentiy
go through such a process sometimes for ourselves, more often
in choosing pleasures for others. We should prefer to take
a child to this elevating and aesthetic performance rather than to
that somewhat vulgar pantomime, provided he will get a fair
amount, though it may be a less amount, of pure amusement out
of the former. But will he ? We want to satisfy ourselves of
this before we decide against the pantomime. Life is full of such
problems, and however much we may insist on the difficulties oi
such comparisons, they have to be made and are made.
RABHDALL II J)
34 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
It is thus possible, though it is difficult, to compare hetero-
geneous pleasures simply in point of pleasantness. It is un-
necessary to insist further on the difficulty or to analyse its
causes more elaborately. But one very importaQt practical
consideration may be pointed out. It is difficult and frequently
undesirable to compare very heterogeneous alternative pleasures
simply from the point of view of their quantitative intensity
because to do so is to put oneself into a state of mind unfavour-
able to a due appreciation of the higher kind of pleasure even
as pleasure. I may enjoy (say) a sermon by a great preacher
and a light but amusing novel The pleasures are very different
pleasures ; but, as both are pleasures, it must, I should contend,
be possible to say which is the greater pleasure when there is
any very considerable difference in the pleasantness. I am
certainly conscious that I have derived more pleasure from some
sermons than from some novels, and equally so that I have
derived more pleasure from some novelists than from some
preachers. But, if I propose to make the question whether
I will go to church and hear the preacher or stay at home and
read such and such a novel turn wholly on the question which
will be most pleasant, if I deliberately put out of sight all the
considerations other than love of pleasure which may draw me
to the preacher's feet, I should be putting myself into a state of
mind in which I should be very likely greatly to underestimate
the amount of pleasure which I really should get, were I to
throw aside the book and go to church. Nay, more, supposing
me to decide for church on these grounds, and supposing this
voluntarily adopted mood to continue, I should be very likely
to miss the pleasure ; for the pleasure in this case arises largely
from the gratification of other desires than the desire for pleasure
or for such kinds of pleasure as are common to the preacher
and the novelist. These desires will ex hypothesi be in a state
of repression, whereas I shall have stimulated my appetite for
those pleasures which the novel would supply in greater
abundance than the sermon. Considerations like these may
show the inadvisability of frequently permitting ourselves to
make these purely hedonistic comparisons between very hetero-
geneous sources of enjoyment, but they do not disprove the
Chap, i, v] PLEASURE AND PREFERENCE 35
fact that the comparison can be, and in some cases must be,
made.
The higher pleasure is, I have suggested, a pleasure to which
we attribute value on other grounds than its mere pleasantness.
The problem of the commensurability of pleasures has led us up
to the more difficult and, ethically speaking, more important
problem of the commensurability of goods. I have tried to show
that it is possible to compare pleasures no matter how hetero-
geneous and to say which is pleasantest. But is it possible to
compare heterogeneous goods say, Virtue, Culture, and pleasure
and say which is best. It is possible, though it is not always
right, to aim at a greatest attainable quantum of pleasure : is it
possible to aim at the production of a greatest quantum of good?
That such is a possible aim certainly seems to be implied by
those who make the greatest good of society the criterion of
conduct (and there are few Moralists of any school who have
not used some such language), and yet refuse to interpret 'good'
in the hedonistic sense. With this larger problem we shall be
occupied in the following chapter.
But there is one last objection to the idea of a 'sum of
pleasures ' with which I will briefly deal before dismissing the
subject. It is admitted by some (though once more I have to
deal with a class of opponents whose modesty prevents them
putting their views into a form in which they can be criticized)
that we do * prefer one lot of pleasures to another ' ; but it is
said that we are not summing pleasures because the statement
* this amount of pleasure is greater than that ' is merely a state-
ment of our preference. We do not prefer the one alternative
to the other because it contains more pleasure ; it may be said to
give more pleasure simply because we prefer it.
I reply: (i) My preference is not the same thing as my
judgement that I shall get or have got more pleasure out of one
set of experiences than out of another ; for, though the expecta-
tion of pleasure may be the ground of my preference, I may
make my preference turn on other grounds and prefer one
course of action to another in spite of a clear judgement that
it will yield less pleasure.
(2) My preference lies in the present, whereas the pleasure
D 2
36 THE HEDONISTIC CALCULUS [Book II
lies in the past or the future. The present judgement is determined
by the past or the anticipated experience, not vice versa. My
preference for course A is based on my judgement that I shall
get more pleasure from it, but it is not the same thjng as that
judgement. For I may prefer course A under the expectation
that I shall get more pleasure from it than from course B, and
find by bitter experience that I do not get the pleasure. The
amount of pleasure which I shall actually get from an act of
choice is not created by the act of choice, and is quite independent
of my volition. It seems strange to find anti-hedonist and
anti-sensationalist Philosophers confusing the act of choice with
the judgement that it will be pleasant. If it be admitted that
the prospective pleasure in any case or to any degree whatever
influences our choice, we must make such judgements before we
choose ; and since any duration of pleasure is made up of
successive smaller durations, it is impossible to deny that the
Judgement as to its pleasurableness, and pro tanto its preferability,
must depend upon our judgement as to the pleasurableness of
these separate durations. How it is possible to be influenced by
these many distinct judgements without putting them together,
and how it is possible to put quantities together without a
' calculus/ the writers whom I have criticized have never
succeeded in explaining.
CHAPTER II
THE COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES
IN the last chapter I have endeavoured to defend the
possibility of a hedonistic calculus. I maintained that it is
psychologically possible to compare different lots of pleasure
and to say which, on the whole, duration and intensity being
both taken into account, is the greatest. If that be admitted,
the fashioning of life in such a way as to attain either for
oneself or for Society a greatest quantum of pleasure becomes
a possible and intelligible ideal. It is possible to aim con-
sistently at doing what will promote the greatest pleasure on
the whole. But we have already seen reason to reject such
a conception of the ethical end. The argument against Hedonism
need not be repeated. Suffice it once more to remind the reader
that, while I do regard pleasure as a good, I do not regard it as
the good. It seems to me perfectly clear that the moral con-
sciousness does pronounce some goods to be higher, or intrin-
sically more valuable than others ; and that at the head of these
goods comes Virtue, while many other things intellectual
cultivation and intellectual activity, aesthetic cultivation,
emotion of various kinds are also good and of more intrinsic
value than mere pleasure. It is true that pleasure is an element
in every state of consciousness to which we can assign ultimate
value. I can attach no meaning whatever to the proposition,
1 1 find this picture supremely beautiful, and yet it gives me no
pleasure to look at it.' Even with regard to Virtue, it is difficult
to answer the question whether I should judge Virtue to possess
value, if it gave me no sort of pleasure or satisfaction. The
belief in a priori judgements of value must not be interpreted
to mean that we can see what in detail is good for human beings
38 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
apart from the actual psychical and emotional constitution of
human nature. If a being could exist (the very supposition
doubtless involves an absurd abstraction) capable of appreciating
the idea of duty, capable of willing that duty, and yet for ever
by the very constitution of his nature incapable of deriving the
smallest amount of pleasure or satisfaction from the perform-
ance of duty by himself or another, I do not know that I should
attach any meaning to the assertion ' Virtue to such a being or
in such a being is a good/ Another person might no doubt
regard such a being's Virtue as a good, but then he would judge
also that the other person ought to derive pleasure or satis-
faction from his goodness : he would hold that it was a good
inasmuch as it ought to exist, but he would hardly think that
the man himself had attained even that good which consists in
being truly virtuous. Pleasure is an element in everything
to which we attach value : and yet we do not attach value to
consciousness in proportion to its pleasantness : pleasures differ
in kind or quality. And as I endeavoured to show in the last
chapter, this amounts to the assertion that something else in
consciousness possesses value besides its pleasantness : there are
other goods besides pleasure. On what principle then are we to
choose between these different kinds of good? It is to my
mind a perfectly clear deliverance of the moral consciousness,
that no action can be right except in so far as it tends to
produce a good, and that, when we have to choose between
goods, it is always right to choose the greater good. Such
a doctrine implies that goods of all kinds can be compared, that
we can place goods of all kinds on a single scale, and assign to
each its value relatively to the rest. The defence of this
assumption is the object of the present chapter.
In the first place I must begin by distinguishing between
t.ffit4liflfexGnt Souses in which it may be asserted that goods of
different kinds are commensurable.* ^ It may mean that a certain
amount of one good can be regarded as a sufficient and satis-
factory substitute for the other, so that, however much superior
Virtue may be to Culture, a sufficient amount of Culture could
be regarded as an entirely satisfactory compensation for the
absence of all Virtue that, given enough sensual pleasure, the
Chap, ii, i] SENSES OF COMMENSURABLE 39
absence of either Virtue or Culture would cease to be an object
of regret. If this were the only possible meaning of the com-
mensurability of heterogeneous goods, I should fully sympathize
with the assertion that the value of the higher goods (par-
ticularly of Virtue) is incommensurable with that of anything
else. But that is not the only possible meaning of our assertion.
It may mean only that, when we have to choose between
a higher and a lower good when we cannot have both we can
compare them, and pronounce that one possesses more value
than the other.
And this is the only possible interpretation of the formula
which is open to those who hold that no one of the competing
goods, not even Virtue, is by itself the good. The true good of
a human life does not consist either in Virtue only, or in know-
ledge only, or in pleasure only. I altogether decline to pronounce
cvdat/jLaw, or in the highest possible degree ' blessed/ a man who
has enjoyed twenty years of unbroken Virtue in a loathsome
dungeon, cut off from books or human society, and afflicted by
perpetual toothache or a succession of other tortures. Such
a man has not attained the true end of his being. He may be
much more blessed than the successful sinner, but his lot cannot
be pronounced a wholly desirable one ; he is blessed for his
goodness, but he is not altogether blessed. Equally little would
any abundance and variety of sensual pleasures make me
attach high value to the life of a stupid sensualist ; nor will any
amount of refinement or intellectual enjoyment induce me to
regard as supremely desirable the life of a Borgia or even
a Goethe. No -amount of one kind of good can compensate for
the absence or deficiency of the other. But when circumstances
make it impossible for me to secure for myself or for others all
these kinds of good, then I can and must decide which of them
I regard as best worth having ; and that implies that for the
purpose of choosing between them they are commensurable.
It is quite true, as will be indignantly protested in some
quarters, that each of these ' goods ' taken by itself is an abstrac-
tion. No one of them can exist wholly without the other, or at
least without the opposite of the other. Pleasure cannot exist
at least for a human being without some kind or measure of
40 COMMENSURAB1LITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
knowledge or intellectual activity. Knowledge can hardly be
supposed ever to be accompanied by no kind or sort of pleasure,
though the pleasure may in some cases be greatly outweighed
by attendant pains.
And, if you stripped off from a human being all activity of
thought (even that implied in the most mechanical occupation
or the most humdrum routine of duty), and all feeling of satis-
faction in one thing rather than another, it would be difficult to
see wherein the Virtue of such a being could consist. It is not
upon each one of these things taken by itself that we pronounce
our judgements of value, but upon each of them taken as an
element in a whole l . Our ideal of human life is not a certain
amount of the higher goods mechanically added on to a certain
amount of lower goods, but a connected whole in which each is
made different by its connexion with the others. It is not
Virtue -f knowledge -f pleasure that we desire for a man a
waking day, for instance, in which seven hours are devoted to
Virtue, six to knowledge, and four to pleasure but that he may
be virtuous and find pleasure in his virtuous activities ; that he
may study and derive pleasure from his studies ; that he may
enjoy the pleasures of eating and drinking, but enjoy them in
such a manner and degree as may be conducive to the 'develop-
ment of his higher nature, and consistent with the highest good
of his fellows. But, when through unfavourable circumstances
this ideal is not realizable, we can surely distinguish between
the various elements in a human life and form a judgement as
to which of them seems to be more important a large amount
of this, or a small amount of that. If we were not thus
1 It is equally true that we could not pronounce on their value as elements
in a whole unless we found a value at least in some one of them taken
separately, just as we could not find a picture beautiful unless blue, red, and
green were found beautiful in themselves, though the aesthetic value of the
colours may be enormously enhanced or (in the case of unpleasing contrast)
diminished by the combination. Just so pleasure is a good taken by itself,
but it may cease to be so if by its excess it spoils the true proportion of
higher and lower goods in our life. Mr. Moore's remark that the value of
two goods in combination may be very different from the combined value
of each taken separately (Principle* Ethica, p. 214) is a new and striking way
of stating a very old truth.
Chap.ii, iij HIGHER GOODS HAVE QUANTITY 41
capable of distinguishing between various elements in human
life 1 , all thinking or talking about the moral ideal, or indeed
about practical aims or objects of any kind, would be estopped.
And if, wjien we have distinguished them, we are not to say
which of them is best and to act upon our answer, there is an
end to the possibility of any -ethical system which admits that
the morality of an action depends upon its consequences. The
latter admission is now generally made by the most anti-
hedonistic writers. There is a general consensus that Ethics
must be 4 teleological,' though not hedonistic. And this admission
seems inevitably to carry with it the further concession that all
values must be, in the sense defined, commensurable. If the
morality of an act depends upon the value of all its consequences
taken together, we must be able to say which of two sets of
consequences possesses the more value ; and, if different kinds of
consequence are to have any weight assigned to them, we must
be able to attribute more or less weight to each of them. To
deny this seems to amount to the denial that there is any one
fixed and consistent meaning in the word ' value ' or ' worth ' or
' good/ and to make impossible any system of Ethics which is
based upon this conception.
II
The only way of escaping the admission that different kinds
of good are commensurable would be to assert that it is always
right to choose the highest. Now (if we assume that Virtue is
the highest of goods) this contention involves all the difficulties
of the formalistic Ethics (to use Prof. Paulsen's term) of Kant
and his stricter disciples. If nothing in the world possesses
value except the good will, we cut ourselves off from the possibility
of assigning a rational ground for regarding one volition as
better than another. To repeat once more the stock criticism,
1 It is true, of course, as has been admitted above, that we never get one
element tvholly apart from the other. The greediest bon-vivant, with his
attention wholly concentrated on his food, is thinking of something, and
the student absorbed in his books may be enjoying the carnal pleasure of
sitting in a comfortable chair, but we may make abstraction of these things
sufficiently to ask ' Which is best eating or study ? '
4* COMMENSUEABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
a will that wills nothing but itself has no content. The term
' right ' is meaningless except in reference to the good. The good
will may possess infinitely more value than any consequence that
it wills ; but, unless that consequence be good, the will cannot be
good either. Charity is no doubt better than the eating of food
by hungry persons, but unless that eating be good, there is no
reason for applying the word ' right ' or ' good ' to the charitable
act. To deny that anything possesses value but a good will
(which Kant after all did not do) is to deny that such a thing
as a good will is possible. The attempt may, indeed, be made
to escape the force of this criticism by pleading that it is only
where some lower good is incompatible with the higher that it
must be treated as possessing no value at all. But, in the first
place, it seems difficult to escape the admission that, even when
we assign some value to the lower and a value to the higher
which always overweighs any conceivable amount of the former,
we are in a sense treating them as commensurable: we do in
a sense measure the value of the one against the other, even
when we pronounce that their values are related as finite
quantities are related to infinity. But the question arises
whether we do always pronounce that the smallest quantity of
the higher is worth more than the largest quantity of the lower.
And here of course the appeal can only be to the actual moral
judgements of mankind.
. So long as I confine myself to my own Virtue, it seems clekr
that it can never be right for me to prefer any quantity of
a lower good to the doing of my own duty. And if goodness,
Morality, a rightly directed will, be the thing of highest value
in the world, I shall always be choosing the greatest good for
myself by doing my duty. If in any case it is right or reason-
able for me to choose a lower good rather than a higher one,
then eo ipso I shall not be violating my duty by pursuing it,
and therefore I shall not be postponing my own Morality to
anything which is not Morality. The principle that all values
are commensurable can never in practice bring the morality of
any individual into competition with any other good, so long as
his own voluntary acts alone are concerned. It can never compel
us to say, ' For an adequate quantity of some other good it is
Chap, ii, ii] MORALITY AND OTHER GOODS 43
reasonable for me to commit a sin.' So much results from a mere
analysis of the idea of duty.
But can we say that there are no cases in which we have, in
judging of the effect of our conduct upon others, to institute
comparisons between the intrinsic worth of goodness and the
intrinsic worth of other and lower goods knowledge, culture,
bodily pleasure, immunity from pain? Can we say that it is
always right to regard the very smallest amount of moral good
in that sense of moral good in which one man's goodness may be
increased and diminished by the act of another as preferable
to the utmost conceivable quantity of any lower good ? It seems
to me that to maintain that such is always our duty would
involve an austerity or rigorism by which few would even
pretend to guide their judgements of conduct outside the pages
of an ethical treatise. Take the case contemplated by Cardinal
Newman. Cardinal Newman, in defending himself against the
charge of depreciating Veracity because lying is only, according
to Roman Catholic Moral Theology, a venial sin, has laid it down
that it would be better for millions of the human race to expire
in extremest agony than for a single human soul to be guilty of
the slightest venial sin. Mr. Lecky has declined to endorse this
tremendous judgement l . And, I believe, few who in the least
realize the meaning of the words which they are using would do
so either. And what does this mean but that we judge that
a little Morality (so far as Morality may be the result of another's
conduct) possesses less value than an immense quantity of
pleasure or the prevention of a vast amount of pain that it is
from the point of view of Reason more important that so many
thousand people should not suffer torments than that one man
should not commit a small sin ?
It will perhaps be objected that such an alternative could
never be presented ; but such a contention would, it seems to me,
betray an extraordinary blindness to some of the most difficult
practical problems with which we are confronted every day of
our lives. I have a limited sum of money to spend on charity.
I believe that spiritual good can be promoted by efficient Curates,
that intellectual good can be promoted by education, and that
1 Hist, of European Momls (1877), I, p. HI.
44 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
pain can be saved by hospitals. Shall I give it to an Additional
Curates Society, or to education, or to a hospital ? I have a son
who wishes to enter the Civil Service of India. Shall I send
him to a ' crammer's/ which (in his particular case) may give him
the best chance of getting in, or to a Public School and University,
which will be best for his moral and intellectual well-being?
A problem more exactly resembling the hypothetical case pro-
pounded by Newman arises when some great material benefit can
only be obtained by the bribery of an official. Few people would
hesitate to bribe a Chinese Mandarin to be unfaithful to his
superiors, a traitor to his country, disloyal very possibly to his
own highest ideal (which may enjoin relentless hostility to
foreigners) in order to set free a score or so of Europeans who
would otherwise be exposed to torture and death. By such an
act a man would distinctly be causing a small amount of moral
evil in order to produce a large amount of hedonistic good.
Such an admission could only be escaped if we were to adopt
the extravagant position sometimes taken up by extreme Liber-
tarians the position that the virtue of one man can never be
increased or diminished by the action of another. The admission
that in some cases it is right to prefer a larger amount of lower
good to a smaller amount of a higher in no way involves, be it
observed, the principle ' to do a great right do a little wrong/
The individual must himself always do right : the moral evil
that he causes is not even a little wrong in him, if (as the view
I am defending maintains) it is right for him to cause in another
that little moral evil rather than be the cause of an immense
amount of undeserved physical suffering. And I fail to see how
moral judgements which would in practice be assented to and
acted upon by the holiest of mankind can be explained or
justified upon any other view.
There are, I must freely admit, very many more cases in
which I am certain that the accepted morality of our time and
country implies such a preference of much lower to a little
higher good than there are cases in which I am certain that
such a preference is really justifiable. We compel large masses
of young men to remain unmarried, well knowing the moral
consequences which are likely to ensue from such a state of
Chap, ii, ii] APPEAL TO ACTUAL JUDGEMENTS 45
things, because we hold that the country must be defended and
that it would be too expensive to allow all soldiers to marry.
We allow the children of the working classes to be withdrawn
from schopl at the age of twelve or thirteen, though no one
doubts that they would benefit morally and intellectually by
staying till sixteen, because we think it would be too great
a strain upon the resources of the country and of the individual
parents here, now, for the moment, under existing social and
economic conditions to compel them to keep their children at
school any longer. In other words, we hold the enjoyment of
luxuries by rich taxpayers, of Culture by the educated, of com-
forts by poor taxpayers, of the necessaries of life by poor parents
to be of more intrinsic importance than the higher moral and
intellectual advancement of the children. I need not pursue
such illustrations further. There is, in fact, no single expenditure
of money public or private upon material enjoyment which
goes beyond the bare necessaries of life which can justify itself
upon the theory that it is never right to promote lower good
when we could promote ever so little of some higher good l .
It is quite true, and it is important to remember, that the
opposition between higher and lower good is seldom so absolute
as has been here assumed. It is seldom, in such practical
problems, that all the higher good is on one side and all the
lower good on the other. When we insist that, given certain
circumstances, the claims of national defence must take pre-
cedence of education, and even of certain branches of personal
Morality (in so far as Morality can be promoted or hindered by
external influences), we may plead that we attach importance to
national defence, not only in the interests of commerce and
material well-being, but in the interests of national independence,
national character, and international Morality. When we refuse
1 * If we ask whether I ought always to choose to slightly elevate another
person's ideals, at the cost of great suffering to him, or if I ought always to
choose to slightly elevate my own ideals, at the cost of great suffering to
some one else, it becomes clear that happiness and development are ethi-
cally commensurable, and that we have no right to treat a loss of either as
ethically indifferent' (McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology , p. 122). It
will be seen from what follows (p. 47) that it is only in a very restricted
sense that I should admit that the second possibility can ever arise.
46 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
to burden poor parents beyond a certain point for the education
of their children, it may be suggested that further pressure
would involve the semi-starvation of the children, which would
not be ultimately in the interests of their moral and intellectual
Well-being. And, more generally, we may contend that a certain
indulgence of the lower appetites and desires of human nature-
an indulgence going considerably beyond the paramount require-
ments of health is in average men more conducive to moral
Well-being than a semi- compulsory asceticism with the inevitable
reaction which such asceticism is apt to provoke. All this is
very true; but still we cannot, as it seems to me, avoid the
admission that in some cases the balance of moral good is on
one side, and that of lower good on the other. Give that bribe,
and the moral character of your Mandarin will have taken
a downward turn : withhold it and twenty European men, women,
and children will die in torture and dishonour. It is only
a fanatic to whom the small deterioration of one Mandarin, ex
hypbthesi not a character of the highest order, will seem a more
valuable end than the saving of twenty European lives with all
their possibilities of happiness. It may be said that there are
possibilities of goodness also. Then let us suppose that death
is unavoidable, and that it is only a question of torture. No
doubt the prevention of injustice may have good moral effects.
But all these are vague possibilities as contrasted with the
certain moral evil of corrupting the Mandarin with all the
incidental moral effects which that corruption may carry with
it. Our moral judgement is not really determined by these
speculative possibilities. We really think it more important to
spare so much suffering than to avoid the slight deterioration of
one Mandarin's character.
For the agent himself it can never, we have admitted, be right
to prefer his own lower to his own higher good, for the simple
reason that to do right is always his own highest good. And
yet, even in considering one's own moral good, there may be
cases in which it may be right, just in order to do one's duty, to
adopt a course of action which may be likely on the whole to
have an injurious effect on one's own character, in that sense of
character in which a man is made better or worse by influences
Chap, ii, iii] CULTURE AND PLEASURE 47
not under the immediate control of his own will. It may some-
times be right for a man to adopt a profession which in the long
run may have a lowering effect upon his ideals and upon his
conduct, in preference to one which would be likely to have
a more elevating influence; or in innumerable other ways to
face temptations which he does not know that he will always be
able to resist rather than to purchase his own moral purity at
the cost of other people's Well-being. Our own future Well-
being, in so far as it lies beyond our own immediate control, is
in the same position as other people's moral Well-being to be
weighed against the other kinds of good, and assigned a value
which, though enormously transcending that of lower goods,
cannot be held to be absolutely incommensurable with them.
But still, this admission does not involve any abandonment of
our previous contention that it can never be right for a man
to do an immediately wrong act for the sake of any other
advantage to himself or others. By choosing the greater good,
he has done his duty (even in choosing a course which may in
the long run react in some ways unfavourably upon his own
character), and by doing his duty he has chosen the greatest
good for himself. He would have become a worse man by
taking the opposite course. Paradox as it may seem, he would
have become a less moral man on the whole by attaching too
high a value to his own Morality. In reality he is only pre-
ferring one element in his own moral good to another a higher
element to a lower since the preference of the greatest good is
itself the highest Morality.
Ill
So far, we have been comparing the value of Morality or
character with that of all other goods. When we come to the
weighing of higher goods other than the highest of intellectual
and aesthetic goods for instance against the lower, there will be
perhaps less objection to admit that a small amount of the
higher may sometimes have to give way to a large amount of
the lower. At all events the task of showing that this is the
principle upon which ordinary good men act is here an easy one.
Some of the instances already given will serve to illustrate this
48 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
case also the sacrifice of education to health and comfort, the
spending of national money upon armies and guns instead of
Universities, libraries, and scientific expeditions, the cutting
down of the British Museum grant in the interest of ,the South
African War. However much we may regret and condemn the
indifference which our own Parliaments and Governments (more
than any other Parliaments and Governments in the civilized
world) show to such intellectual objects, few of us would be
prepared to push the expenditure of public moneys upon them
to a point which would on the material side lower the general
standard of comfort to the level of bare health and subsistence.
And here there will be little scruple in admitting that it is not
merely in conduct affecting others but in conduct affecting
primarily only ourselves that we act, and feel that we do right
in acting, upon the principle that the quantity as well as the
quality of various heterogeneous goods must be taken into
account in choosing between them. We feel that Art is higher
than comfort and good eating, but we do not feel bound to
lower our standard of comfort below a certain point in order to
buy books and pictures. We recognize that study is intrinsi-
cally more valuable than ordinary conversation, but we feel
justified in spending on the enjoyment of society a considerable
amount of time which might be spent upon study. We acknow-
ledge the claim of Culture, but we do not feel bound to pursue
Culture when it would interfere beyond a certain point with
health and comfort and the ordinary enjoyment of life an
enjoyment consisting in the following out of natural tastes and
inclinations which, however harmless, we cannot upon reflection
pronounce to have a very high intrinsic value. We may admit
on reflection that we do not care for and pursue our own
intellectual improvement as much as we ought to do ; but in our
most serious moments of self-examination we hold that it is
sometimes lawful to spend half an hour upon some lower amuse-
ment without proving that the giving up of that amusement
would injuriously affect our health or cause some other evil
than the mere loss of the amusement. In such cases there is,
indeed, no great disproportion between the amount of the higher
and of the lower goods. If we think of cases where the dis-
Chap, ii, iii] HETEROGENEOUS GOODS 49
proportion would be very great, the verdict of the practical
Reason will be still more unhesitating. If we had to weigh the
sufferings of some thousand tortured rabbits against the purely
intellectual t gain of some theoretically unimportant and prac-
tically unfruitful piece of scientific knowledge 1 , or a woman's
heart broken and her life wrecked against the scientific or
aesthetic advantage to a Philosopher or a Novelist in being
enabled the better to analyse the passion of love in cases like
these there will be little doubt what the verdict will be on tho
part of any person of common humanity not sophisticated by
the gospel of Self-realization.
All these judgements then imply that we do actually weigh
very heterogeneous goods against one another, and decide which
possesses most value, and in making that estimate we do take
into consideration the amount of the two kinds of good as well
as the quality. We do hold that a little of some higher good is
too dearly bought by a great sacrifice of some lower good, and, on
the other hand, that a very small quantity of one good is sometimes
worth a great deal of another. If a facetious opponent forthwith
challenges us to produce a graduated table of goods, a tariff by
reference to which we may at once say how much headache
ought to outweigh the Culture implied in the reading of
a Shakespearean play or the like, the answer is the one which
the opponent will probably urge against the whole scheme
that there are no means of measuring with exactitude such
things as Culture or Charity, and, again, that the value of
a 'good' is relative to many circumstances. The reading of
a play of Shakespeare may be an intellectual revolution the
beginning of a new intellectual and (it may be) moral life to
one man, while to another it will be of less value than the same
number of pages of Miss Marie Corelli. But, as I have so often had
occasion to point out, the impossibility of reducing to numerical
precision judgements of this kind does not imply that the judge-
ments are not made, or that they are not quantitative. It is
only in quite recent times that mechanical methods have been
invented for instituting exact comparisons between lights of
1 I have nothing to say against Vivisection duly regulated in the interests
of Humanity.
RA8UDALL II E
50 COMMENSURABIL1TY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
different strength l : yet, long before such methods were invented,
men judged that one light was stronger much stronger,
moderately stronger, or a little stronger than another light,
and acted on their judgements. A little ingenuity might
perhaps find cases in which we could with some meaning say
that one higher good possessed twice the intrinsic value
possessed by another. But I have admitted that even in com-
paring pleasures, and pleasures of the same order, such exact
measurements are rarely possible and never of use. It is
a characteristic of these higher goods that their value, or rather
the value of goods springing from the same objective source, varies
with circumstances more even than is the case with simple physical
pleasures and pains. And therefore here the attempt to find cases
in which such a mensuration might have a meaning is too far
removed from anything which actually takes place in our
practical life to be worth attempting, even by way of playfully
illustrating the quantitative character of these judgements.
IV
There is one really formidable objection to the position taken
up in this and the last chapter which I must attempt briefly to
meet. Among those who strongly hold that all goods can be
compared, that * value ' must always have the same meaning,
and that the true way of deciding between two alternative
courses of action is to ask, 'By doing which shall I produce
good of most value?' there are some who will object to the
distinction which has here been drawn between pleasure-value
and value of a higher kind. It has been assumed that we some-
times say, ' This course will produce the most pleasure, but the
pleasure is not sufficient to outweigh the evil of another kind
which is involved in it : the course which produces least pleasure
will produce most good/ But it may be urged that if we are
really to be faithful to our doctrine that all values are com-
parable, we must refuse to recognize more than one kind of value:
and that if we reject the doctrine that pleasure is the only
thing that has value, we cannot really compare states of con-
1 Even here the comparison is only made by the aid of an assumption
which perhaps cannot be strictly defended. Cf. above, p. 25.
Chap, ii, iv] PLEASURE AND VALUE 51
sciousness as pleasures, and then override that judgement by
a second valuation as goods. ' The ideal or rational standard of
comparison/ it may be urged, ' is the only one. Whether it is
pleasure oij Culture or Morality that we are comparing, all that
we can do is to say which appears to us to be worth most.'
I have some sympathy with the spirit in which this objection is
made. For I freely confess that I find it impossible either to
get hold of a satisfactory definition of pleasure or to distinguish
in any sharp or scientific way between pleasure- value and that
higher kind of value which, though doubtless normally accom-
panied by more or less pleasure, is not (for the developed moral
consciousness) measured in terms of pleasure. It would be easy
to show how wildly wide of the mark are most of the definitions
of pleasure which have been put forth by eminent authorities.
After each of them one exclaims, * Well, whatever I mean by
pleasure, it is certainly not that/ And yet I cannot readily
bring myself to believe that pleasure is simply a vox nihili ; for
nothing less than that would be the logical consequence of
saying, * Pleasure is neither identical with value nor one of the
things which possess value: we can compare values, but we
cannot compare pleasures/ It might be possible for an ascetic
to say, * I know what pleasure is, but it has no value' : but those
who hold the view which I am criticizing are not ascetics. They
do attribute value to pleasant things. The value of some things
is not measured by their pleasantness, but the value of other
things surely does cease to exist when they cease to be pleasant.
We must, therefore, be able to estimate their pleasantness before
we can pronounce upon their value, and compare that value with
the value of things which do not owe their value entirely to
their pleasantness. It has been fully and frankly admitted that
pleasure is an abstraction, that it is one particular aspect of
consciousness ; but it is not the only one. Now I do not think
it possible to define what this aspect is sufficiently to mark
it off with absolute precision from those other aspects which
we have in view in pronouncing upon the absolute or ultimate
value of some state of consciousness. And yet it is certain
that it does represent one of the aspects under which we are
practically in the habit of considering and valuing such states.
5* COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
I tremble at the thought of putting forth a new definition of
pleasure, and protest that what follows is not intended as such :
but I venture to suggest that, when we try to estimate the value
of a state of consciousness as pleasure, we are thinking of its
value simply as immediate feeling, abstracting as much as
possible from all reference to the other parts of our nature.
Our appreciation of the value of duty does not depend merely
upon the immediate feeling that accompanies the doing of duty : to
hold that is the ' moral sense ' view of the matter which (as Hume
has shown once for all), when fully thought out, ends in Hedon-
ism. It depends upon our appreciation of the relation between
this present consciousness of ours and our own past and future,
upon our consciousness of our relation as persons to other persons,
upon the presence of all sorts of desires and aspirations which go
beyond the moment beyond even our own consciousness at all.
The same may be applied in a modified degree to the value which
we find in intellectual or aesthetic cultivation. All these things
are put aside when we estimate our consciousness simply as
present feeling. This is most clearly seen in the case of those
conscious states which have no value except what they possess
simply as so much pleasant feeling. If we found that the
drinking of a certain liquid not required for purposes of health
was not satisfactory simply in and for itself, we should pronounce
it to have no value at all. It would be easy and tempting to
essay a definition of pleasure by making it consist in the
satisfaction of our lower as distinct from the satisfaction of our
higher desires. But this will not express what we really mean
by pleasure. For pleasure is clearly something which the lower
sources of satisfaction have in common with the higher. When
we compare the glow of satisfaction which sometimes attends
a conquest over temptation, we feel at once that the resulting
feeling has something in common with the state of mind into
which we are put on other occasions by a cup of tea.
It is this something which we seek to indicate by the term
pleasure. And yet I do not feel that the value of that good will
of ours is wholly dependent upon the satisfactoriness of the
present feeling, or of any future succession of such feelings.
Apart from that, we judge that the good will has value ; and 3
Chap, ii, iv] VALUE AND PLEASURE- VALUE 53
indeed, it is this recognition of its value which is the cause, or at
least one condition of the pleasure quite otherwise than in the
case of the tea ; there we cannot say what value it has till we
try it, and, if we do not like the feeling, it has no value at
all. To the man who desires goodness, or cares about doing his
duty, the doing of it must bring some pleasure, for there is
pleasure in the satisfaction of all desire; and it would be (as
I have admitted) meaningless to ask whether we should attach
value to Morality for a being who was for ever incapable of
feeling, or being brought to feel, any such satisfaction in good
conduct. But we can equally little assert that the value of the
good act depends upon the amount of the resulting pleasure.
For, while a good act must bring pleasure to him who has any
sense of its value, the amount of the pleasure is dependent upon
very many other things than the amount of the good will upon
health, temperament, spirits, surrounding circumstances of all
kinds. But these variations in the actual pleasantness of the
good will exercise no influence upon our estimate of the higher
value which goodness possesses as compared with the drinking
of good wine. And we judge that those who do not experience
this pleasantness at all, whatever other pleasures they enjoy, are
in a state of mind which we cannot wholly approve. They
ought to feel this pleasure. We hold that goodness has a
pleasure- value which may be compared with the pleasure- value
of champagne, which may sometimes exceed and sometimes fall
short of that value, but that it possesses besides a value of its
own which it does not share with the champagne. We are
brought back at last to the simple fact of consciousness. The
only way of defending the possibility of a judgement, or the
existence of a category, is to show that we do actually think in
that way ; and it is clear to me that each of the three attempts
(i) to analyse all value into pleasure- value, or (2) to merge
pleasure-value into value in general, or (3) to deny that some-
times we are driven to compare pleasure- value with some higher
kind of value fails to represent the actual verdict of our moral
consciousness.
If the view which we have taken of the relation in which the
idea of pleasure stands to the idea of value be well founded, it
54 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
will be obvious why, from the nature of the case, no very sharp
distinction can be drawn between them, Among the things to
which we attach value, some appeal so entirely to the higher or
rational part of our nature that, except for the bare fact that they
do satisfy desire, they seem to have nothing in common with the
lower. When a man does his duty at the cost of toil and suffer-
ing, it is so exclusively the higher part of his nature that impels
him to the sacrifice that we should feel it unnatural to say that
it is the pleasure to which he attaches so high a value. This
higher nature of his is, indeed, so closely connected with his
lower that it is impossible that the satisfaction of that higher
impulse can fail to excite some pleasant feeling, but it is not
valued simply as feeling. On the other hand, the mere * prick
of sense ' ceases to have value when it ceases to give pleasure.
The vast majority of those states of consciousness to which we
attach value are intermediate between the two cases. They
appeal to our higher and to our lower nature at the same time.
The performance of duty, even at the sacrifice of much that
under other circumstances would be valued, the activity of our
intellect in an interesting profession or an interesting study,
social intercourse with those whom we really care for all these
under favourable circumstances are accompanied by feeling of
a kind which has much in common with the feeling that one
gets from bathing or basking in the sunshine. They appeal to
the higher and to the lower part of our nature at one and the
same time. It would be ridiculous to talk as if we valued them
simply as pleasures; for, when, through unfavourable circum-
stances or interfering unpleasantness, they practically cease to
appeal to the lower nature at all, we value them still. It would
be equally impossible to pronounce that our judgement of their
value is wholly independent of that which they have in common
with the merely animal satisfactions. In these cases it is
practically impossible to say how much of the value is due to
one source and how much to the other. If we supposed the
lower side of this satisfactoriness progressively diminished, it
would be virtually impossible to say exactly when we had
reached the point at which we had ceased to prefer them as
pleasant states of mind, and begun to prefer them only fts states of
Chap, ii, iv] INDEFINITENESS OF PLEASURE 55
mind which we value apart from their pleasurableness. It is
only when we attempt by a deliberate effort of abstraction to
compare the higher and the lower from the same point of view
the point of view of immediate feeling that we do actually
distinguish between the value of our mental condition on the
whole arid its value as pleasure. And such efforts, being seldom
useful, are seldom made. It is only when the higher and the
lower elements of interest get violently separated when the
value which some object of desire has for us as rational and
reflecting beings gets very far removed from the value which it
has for us as sensitive beings 1 , that it becomes natural to say, * We
prefer this to that, but we do not prefer it simply as pleasure/
It is probable that in practice different people use this term
* pleasure' with considerable differences of meaning. Some
people, even among Philosophers, seem to be unable to dissociate
the term pleasure from bodily indulgences : while the existence of
high-minded Hedonists seems to show that others really use it
almost or entirely in the sense of ' intrinsically valuable con-
sciousness/
On the whole, then, it is clear to me that we cannot do without
this distinction between value and pleasure. To merge the idea
of value in that of pleasure practically involves all the fallacies
of Hedonism ; to merge the idea of pleasure in that of value
involves the refusal to distinguish different elements in the
supremely valuable kind of conscious life which the moral con-
sciousness undoubtedly does distinguish. Practically we cannot
get on without both the idea of value and that of pleasure. Yet
it may be admitted that the idea of value belongs to the
language of strict philosophical thought, the idea of pleasure
rather to the region of those popular conceptions which the
Philosopher must take account of, which he is bound to use
but which are from their very nature incapable of exact
definition, and which, therefore, must necessarily be used without
exact scientific precision. We want a term to express that in
value which is common to the higher and the lower of those
states of consciousness in which we recognize value : but, just
because higher and lower shade off into one another, pleasure
* Of ponrsp WP are never in realitv merely sensitive.
56 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
must needs shade off into something that is not pleasure, or at
all events not mere pleasure. We may speak of pleasure as the
value which feeling possesses simply as feeling ; yet, just because
feeling does not exist apart from the other elements in con-
sciousness, but is one aspect of an indivisible reality the think-
ing, feeling, willing self it is impossible sharply to distinguish
the value which we attach to consciousness simply as feeling
from the value which we attach to it because it satisfies our
rational nature : for the lower kind of satisfaction often
depends upon and arises from our consciousness of the highest
kind of value. Enthusiasm for an idea religious or other
may produce some of the emotional, even some of the
physical, effects of the keenest sensuous enjoyment. It will no
doubt be urged that Philosophy has nothing to do with such
a vague and indefinable conception ; but a Philosophy which
fails to take account of the vague and inadequate language in
which alone it is possible to express our moral experience
must be a Philosophy which deliberately refuses to deal with
one side and that the most important and fundamental side
of that spiritual experience in which Reality consists. It is all
very well to protest against abstractions, but without abstractions
there is no thought. A Philosophy that would avoid abstrac-
tions must be speechless : and the Moral Philosophy of some of
my friends would seem to be practically speechless, except in so
far as it indulges in splenetic outbursts of abuse or contempt
against those who humbly endeavour to put their ethical views
into intelligible words. It is right no doubt to protest against
' one-sided abstractions ' ; but every abstraction must be one-sided
while it is actually being made. The only way to neutralize the
abstraction involved in looking at one side of a thing apart from
the other side is to look at the other side also at another time.
I trust that in contending for the indispensability of the
distinction between the pleasure-aspect and other aspects of
consciousness, and in contending that both have value, though
one has a higher value than the other, I have not violated this
doubtless important principle. The ideal end of life does not
consist in a mere aggregate of goods piled together without
mutual influence or interaction upon one another. No one
Chap, ii, v] HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE 57
of them indeed can be enjoyed or can exist in absolute isolation
from the other. And yet the nature of this ideal can only be
indicated for thought and for language by describing it as a
whole made up of distinguishable elements a good made up of
an hierarchy ] or ascending scale of goods.
There is another concept which seems to demand a brief
treatment in this connexion that of happiness. If we repudiate
the hedonistic identification of pleasure and happiness, what
account, it may be asked, are we to give of the latter? If we
regard pleasure as part, though not the whole, of the life that has
supreme value, is not this last, it may be suggested, very much
what we mean by happiness ? If we attempt (apart altogether
from theory) to analyse what as a matter of fact we commonly
mean when we talk of happiness, the answer will, I think, be
something of this kind. Happiness represents satisfaction with
one's existence as a whole with the past and the future as well
as with the immediate present. Happiness certainly cannot be
identified with pleasure, not even with the higher or more
refined kinds of pleasure. It is possible to get an enormous
amount of pleasure into one's life of pleasures that are recog-
nized as having a value and even a high value and yet to be
on the whole unhappy through the presence of desires which
are unsatisfied, dissatisfaction with the past 2 , anxiety as to the
future, unfulfilled aspirations, baffled hopes and the like 3 . It
1 Cf. the great Theologian Albrecht Hitachi's conception of the King-
dom of God : * The task of the Kingdom of God . . . includes likewise all
labour in which our lordship over nature is exercised for the maintenance,
ordering, and furtherance even of the bodily side of human life. For unless
activities such as these are ultimately to end in anti-social egoism, or in a
materialistic overestimate of their immediate results, they must be judged
in the light of those ends which, in ascending series, represent the social,
spiritual, and moral ideal of man' (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and
Reconciliation, Eng. Trans., 1900, p. 612).
2 Thus St. Augustine holds that ' perfecta beatitudo ' is impossible in this
life on account of the moral failures of the past and the present.
8 This distinction between happiness and pleasure is no doubt present to
the minds of those who make the end of life to be satisfaction of a 'timeless
58 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
is possible to endure a considerable amount of hardship, of
positive pain both bodily and mental, and yet to be on the
whole happy ; though we should certainly say that the removal
or mitigation of those pains would add to the happiness even of
those who are most ' self-sufficient for happiness/
There is therefore a difference between happiness and pleasure.
And yet it is impossible without paradox to dissociate the idea
of happiness altogether from that of pleasure. A happy life
must include some pleasure : all happiness is pleasiirable, though
not all pleasure is happiness. The pleasure which is an essential
part of happiness is no doubt pleasure of the kind which is
most dependent upon the man himself and least dependent upon
circumstances the kind of pleasure which, as Aristotle con-
tended, the higher activities necessarily bring with them. But
happiness is by no means altogether independent of external cir-
cumstances : there must, as Aristotle puts it, be that unimpeded
exercise of the higher faculties which is very much dependent
upon circumstances. Happiness depends largely upon health,
upon suitable work, upon a congenial marriage : and these are
emphatically things which are not in our own power. It is true
that some kinds of ill health or of uncongenial environment are
in some men compatible with a considerable measure of happi-
ness; and the people who are most capable of such happiness
are, no doubt, on the whole the best men. But nobody would
self. 5 But, apart from other objections, happiness, though it is distinguished
from pleasure (a) by being commonly attributed only to some considerable
period of a man's life and (b) by involving the satisfaction of desires which
* look before and after,' the satisfaction of the more permanent and dominant
aims and desires of a man's life, is still emphatically something in time.
Some people, it is probable, would say that parts of their life have been
happy, other parts unhappy, and most people that some parts have been
more happy or less unhappy than others. The objections which I make below
to regarding even a sublimated happiness as the end may be urged also to the
attempt to make the end consist in satisfaction of any kind. It is true no
doubt that any experience which we pronounce valuable must give satis-
faction, but to make satisfaction the end almost inevitably suggests that things
are valuable in proportion as they satisfy this or that individual's actual
desires, irrespective of their nature, whereas in fact we feel that it is better
to be 'a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied ; better to be Socrates
dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied 1 (Utilitarianism, p. 14).
Chap, ii, v] HAPPINESS AND GOODNESS 59
contend, ( except when defending a thesis/ that those complaints
which bring extreme depression with them as a mere physiological
consequence are compatible with any high degree of happiness.
And there. are 'blows' public or private calamities, failures,
bereavements which make the recovery of happiness impossible
to most men ; nor can it be laid down as a general proposition
that all good men are happy. To say how far a bad man can
be happy would involve pushing the definition of an essentially
vague conception further than it is commonly pushed. We
should have to talk of different kinds or different senses of
happiness. The bad man is no doubt generally unhappy because
any better desires that he has are unsatisfied, and because very
often his desires and inclinations are of a kind that are incom-
patible with one another, so that one part or aspect of his
nature is always unsatisfied : his life has no wholeness or unity.
But this is not perhaps always the case: the bad man no
doubt cannot get the same happiness as the good man, but he
may get what he wants, and so may attain a kind of happiness.
At all events we may say that, though, on the whole, goodness
tends to make people happy (far more generally than it tends
to increase the sum of their pleasures), men are not happy in
proportion to their goodness. We cannot, therefore, without
using words in unusual and unnatural senses, so far sublimate
the idea of happiness as to identify it with the end of life in
general, with consciousness that has value, with Well-being. It
is a most important element no doubt in true Well-being
a far more important one than pleasure ; or (if we say that
happiness is a particular kind of pleasure) it is a far more
valuable kind of pleasure than any other, and far more
inseparable than most other pleasures from the goods to which
we ascribe the very highest value. And yet it is not by itself
the good. We cannot say that it actually includes all forms of
pleasure that are valuable, high intellectual or aesthetic develop-
ment or even goodness, though the most complete kind of
happiness may presuppose the last. Still less, when the good
is unattainable, can we say that, among goods or elements of the
good, happiness is always the one that possesses the most value,
or is the one to which all others should be sacrificed. The
60 COMMENSURABILITY OF ALL VALUES [Book II
noblest kinds of self-devotion do involve a real sacrifice not
merely of pleasure but of happiness.
Happiness has this much in common with the good that for
most of us it represents an ideal which we can hardly pay that we
have ever enjoyed in the undiluted and unruffled fullness which
we picture to ourselves as possible and desirable ; that we can only
form an ideal conception of it by putting together, amplifying,
idealizing moments or periods or elements of our actual ex-
perience, supposing them continuously prolonged, and leaving
out all that disturbed or qualified the joyous moments while
they were actually there. Perfect happiness is no doubt an
ideal, but it is a different ideal from that of perfect Well-being.
It is an ideal which, at least for people who have in their way
higher desires and aspirations, is closely connected with the
highest elements in life, but still it cannot safely be made the
sole and direct object of pursuit by each individual for himself.
Perfect Well-being would doubtless include perfect happiness,
but it would include much more than we ordinarily mean by
happiness. The idea of happiness can no more be dispensed
with in any concrete account of the ideal life than the idea of
pleasure, and can equally little be identified with that of value.
It is not the whole of the ideal life, but an element or an aspect
of it. The ideal life or the good is an ultimate conception
which does not admit of further definition, and the content of
which we can only express by enumerating the various elements
or aspects of it, and then explaining in what way they are to
be combined. Among these elements happiness and pleasure are
both included, but they are not the whole; though no doubt
the kind of happiness and the kind of pleasure which do
enter into the ideal life are inseparable from those other
elements of it which we call goodness or the good will, know-
ledge, thought, the contemplation of beauty, love of other
persons and of what is best in them.
CHAPTER III
SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
AT this point it seems desirable to define further the attitude
towards two opposite views with regard to the end of human
life which is implied in the preceding chapters, although the
question has not yet been raised in its conventional form. On
the one hand we are met by a doctrine very fashionable in
philosophical circles which finds the key to all ethical problems
in that comfortable word ' self-realization ' ; on the other hand
we have a doctrine, hardly ever expressly adopted in modern
Europe as the basis of a Moral Philosophy, but prominent in
much of the popular religious teaching, and some of the highest
religious teaching, of our age the doctrine which resolves all
Morality into self-sacrifice.
With the psychological doctrine that some form of personal
good is the object of every desire (though that good need not be
pleasure) I have already dealt. It seems to be open to exactly
the same objections as those urged by its supporters against
psychological Hedonism, into a refined form of which the doc-
trine of self-realization shows a strong tendency to degenerate.
I shall here therefore confine myself to the purely ethical
aspect of this fascinating formula ' Self-realization is the end
of life/
In order to subject the doctrine to any profitable criticism, it
seems necessary to attempt the by no means easy task of dis-
tinguishing the various possible senses in which this watchword
seems to be used by its devotees. The formula would probably
have proved less attractive, had these various senses been distin-
guished by those to whom it presents itself as a ' short and easy
way ' out of all ethical perplexities.
62 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
(1) Firstly, then, we may suppose that the upholder of self-
realization means exactly what he says. If he does, it seems
easy to show that what he is committing himself to is mere
self-contradictory nonsense. To realize means to ^make real.
You cannot make real what is real already, and the self must
certainly be regarded as real before we are invited to set about
realizing it 1 . Nor is the task to which we are invited rendered
easier when we are assured that the self, which is to become
something that it was not, is out of time, and consequently (one
might have vSupposed) insusceptible of change.
(2) But of course it will be said that what is actually meant
by self-realization is the realization of some potentiality or
capacity of the self which is at present unrealized. In this
sense no doubt it is true enough that Morality must consist in
some kind of self-realization. But to say so is to say something
'generally admitted indeed but obscure' (o^oKoyov^vov n aAA'
a<ra</K9), as Aristotle would have put it. In this sense the
formula gives us just no information at all. Fpr whatever you
do or abstain from doing, if you only sit still or go to sleep,
you must still be realizing some one of your capacities : since
nobody can by any possibility do anything which he was
not first capable of doing. Morality is self-realization beyond
i doubt, but then so is immorality. 'JJhe precious formula leaves
out the whole differentia of Morality; and it is a differentia
presumably which we are in search of when we ask, * What is
Morality? ' and are solemnly told, * It is doing or being something
which you are capable of doing or being V
(3) It may be maintained that Morality is the realization of
all the capacities of human nature. But this is impossible, since
one capacity can only be realized by the non-realization or
sacrifice of some other capacity. There can be no self-realization
1 It is of course possible to hold that the self is not real in an ultimate
metaphysical sense, but in that sense it is hard to see how it can be
made more real than it is, unless * real ' is used as a mere synonym of
1 good.'
2 '" Self-realisation " has always impressed me as a conundrum rather
than as its solution 1 (Adamson, Development of Modern Philosophy, II,
p. 109).
Chap, iii, i] MEANINGS OF SELF-REALIZATION 63
without^self^sacrifice. The good man and the bad alike realize
one element or capacity of their nature, and sacrifice another.
The whole question is which capacity is to be realized and which
is to be sacrificed. And as to this our formula gives us just no
information.
(4) Or more vaguely self-realization may be interpreted to
mean an equal, all-round development of one's whole nature
physical, intellectual, emotional. To such a view I should object
that, interpreted strictly and literally, it is just as impractic-
able as the last. It is impossible for the most gifted person to
become a first-rate Musician without much less completely
realizing any capacity he has of becoming a first-rate Painter.
It is impossible to become really learned in one subject without
remaining ignorant of many others : impossible to develope one's
athletic capacities to the full without starving and stunting the
intellect, impossible (as a simple matter of Physiology) to carry
to its highest point the cultivation of one's intellectual faculties
without some sacrifice of physical efficiency. There is a similar
collision between the demands of intellectual cultivation and
those of practical work. Up to a certain point it is extremely
desirable no doubt that every man should seek to improve his
mind, and also to engage in some sort of practical, social activity.
There is no practical work, except that which is purely mechan-
ical, which will not be the better done for a little study of some
kind or other : and, even where a man's ordinary work in life
is most purely practical, he has, or ought to have, a life of
practical citizenship outside his daily task which will be enriched
and enlarged by some kind of intellectual cultivation. It is
scarcely possible to exaggerate the extent for instance to which
the efficiency of the clerical or of the scholastic profession
would be increased if every clergyman and every schoolmaster,
however much absorbed in the work of his profession, were to
devote a few hours a week to serious study. And equally
valuable to the intellectual man is a certain measure of practical
experience equally valuable, at least in many cases, even in the
interests of his purely intellectual work. Familiar illustrations
are to be found in the value to Hume of his diplomatic appoint-
ment, the value to Macaulay and Grote (as is acknowledged by
6 4 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
the critics of a nation which has little experience in free political
life) of their parliamentary careers, the value to Gibbon even
of a few months' home service in the Hampshire militia. And,
even in spheres of intellectual labour less connected with practice
than the writing of History, a literary life may gain some-
thing from more active occupations. Up to a certain point it is
no doubt desirable that a man should endeavour to develope
different sides of his nature : but that point is soon reached.
Beyond that point there must come the inevitable sacrifice of
body to mind or of mind to body, of learning or speculative
insight to practical efficiency or of practical efficiency to learning
or insight.
It is the same within the intellectual sphere itself. There too
the law of sacrifice prevails. Up to a certain point no doubt
the man who is a mere specialist will be a bad specialist, but
that point is soon reached. Charles Darwin found that the
cultivation of reasoning power and observation had extinguished
his once keen imagination and aesthetic sensibility. And yet
who would wish whether in the interests of the world or in the
interests of what was best worthy of development in Charles
Darwin's own nature that his work should have been spoiled
in order that one of the three hours which was the maximum
working day his health allowed should have been absorbed
by politics or philanthropy ? Who would decide that the origin
of species should have been undiscovered, in order that the
man who might have discovered it should retain the power
of enjoying Wordsworth ? This notion of an equal, all-round,
' harmonious ' development is thus a sheer impossibility, excluded
by the very constitution of human nature, and incompatible with
the welfare of human society. And, in so far as some approxima-
tion to such an ideal of life is possible, it involves a very
apotheosis of mediocrity, ineffectiveness, dilettantism.
And there is a more formidable objection to come. If the
ideal of self-realization is to be logically carried out, it .guiat
involve the cultivation of a man's capacity for what vulgar
prejudice calls immorality as well as of his capacity for Morality.
It is quite arbitrary to exclude certain kinds of activity as ' bad/
because what we are in search of was some definition of the good
Chap, iii, i] ALL-ROUND DEVELOPMENT 65
in conduct, and we were told that it was the development of all
his^capacities. Mr. Bradley would really appear not to shrink
from the full acceptance of this corollary :
'This double effort of the mind to enlarge by all means its
domain, to widen in every way both the world of knowledge and
the realm of practice, shows us merely two sides of that single
impulse to self-realization, which most of us are agreed to find
so mystical. But, mystical or intelligible, we must bow to its
sway, for escape is impossible V
( To widen in every direction the sphere of knowledge/ That
may, in the abstract, be accepted. It would perhaps be hyper-
critical to suggest that there are some things not worth knowing,
that it would be an unprofitable employment to count the grains of
sand upon the sea- shore, and that even the pursuit of knowledge
must be governed and controlled by a certain selection based
upon an ideal comparison of values, which is the work of the
practical Reason. And again it might be well to remember that
there are things of which (with Mill) we may say that ' it is
necessary to be aware of them ; but to live in their contempla-
tion makes it scarcely possible to keep up in oneself a high
tone of mind. The imagination and feelings become tuned
to a lower pitch; degrading instead of elevating associations
become connected with the daily objects and incidents of life,
and give their colour to the thoughts, just as associations of
sensuality do in those who indulge freely in that sort of con-
templations 2 ' a reminder which, in view of Mr. Bradley's plea
for the apparently unlimited ' freedom of Art/ might seem to
be not wholly irrelevant. But to ' widen in every direction the
sphere of practice ' ! In the name of common sense, would not
an occasional incursion into the higher branches of crime vary
the sameness of Virtue and the dull monotony of Goodness ?
Is not a life compounded of good and evil 'wider' than an
experience which includes only good ? Could the attempt to
widen ' in every direction ' the sphere of practice end otherwise
than in a prison or a lunatic asylum if not in both? A
German thinker has urged that the failure of most Moral
1 The Principles of Logic, p. 452.
2 Three Essays on Religion, p. 248.
(56 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
Philosophers may be set down to the fact that as a class,
they have been rather exceptionally respectable men : the Moral
Philosopher should have experience both of Virtue and of vice l .
If * wideness * is to be sole criterion of practice, one does not see
why this catholicity of experience should be confined to pro-
fessional Moral Philosophers 2 .
(5) One possible interpretation of our formula remains, gslf-
tioa may mean the realization of a man's highest capacities
.sacrifice of the lower. No doubt, in a sense every school
of Moral Philosophy which allows of the distinction between
a ' higher ' and a ' lower ' at all would admit that Morality does
mean the sacrifice of the lower to the higher though it might
be objected that this ideal, taken literally, is too ascetic : the
lower capacities of human nature have a certain value: they
ought to be realized to a certain extent to be subordinated, not
' sacrificed/ except in so far as their realization is inconsistent
with that of the higher. But then there is nothing of all this in
the word ' self-realization/ And even with the gloss that ' self-
realization' means realization of the 'true' or 'higher' self, it
tells us just nothing at all about the question what this true
1 See Simmel's article on ' Moral Deficiencies as determining Intellectual
Functions' in the International Journal of Ethics, Vol. Ill, July, 1893, p. 490.
Of course I do not profess here to do full justice to the distinguished writer's
argument.
2 'The sinner realises capabilities in this broad sense as much as
the saint. I lay stress on this, because it is important to recognise that one
of the subtlest and deepest of the impulses that prompt intellectual natures
to vice is the desire for full and varied realisation of capabilities, for rich-
ness of experience, for fulness of life ' (Sidgwick, Ethics of Green, Spencer
and Martineau, p. 64).
In a recent article on 'Truth and Practice* (Mind, N. S. no. 51, 1904,
p 322) Mr. Bradley writes, ' I have of course not forgotten that there are
" developments " of human nature which are undesirable and vicious. Why
these are undesirable is a question which I cannot discuss here. The answer
in general is that such things not only are contrary to the interest of our
whole nature, but also are hostile to the realisation of that very side of it
to which they belong.' If Mr. Bradley had always remembered this and
iome other things which he says in this article, the above criticism would
have been unnecessary. A thinker who is so ready to find contradictions or
absurdities in other people should surely be a little more precise in his own
use of language.
Chap, iii, i] HIGHER AND LOWER SELF 67
self -realisation is. In fact the formula which is presented to us
as the key to the ethical problem of the end of life, turns out
on examination to mean merely ' The end of life is the end of
life/ No .doubt it has been said that every attempt to define
Morality must have the appearance of moving in a circle. In
a sense that may be the case. The moral cannot be defined
in terms of the non-moral. But then that is just what
our formula attempts to do, and that is just the source of its
futility. Moreover, when the word ' self-realization ' is presented
to us, not merely as an account of the end, but also as the
immediate criterion for the individual's conduct, it is open to
the objection that it says exactly nothing about the fundamental
question of Ethics the question of the relation of my end to
that of others.
(6) This last difficulty would be removed if, with Mr. Bradley
in one of his phases (a phase difficult to reconcile with the
definition given above), we contend that the_&elL which ie
realized in Morality, actually includes in itself all the selves in
wlioinj ,_feel au interest:
* If rny self which I aim at is the realization in me of a moral
world which is a system of selves, an organism in which I am a
member, and in whose life I live then I cannot aim at my OWE
well-being without aiming at that of others. The others are
not mere means to me, but are involved in my essence V
Now to the adoption of self-realization in this sense as an
answer to the ethical problem I should object (a) that the in-
terpretation is not the one which is naturally suggested by that
term. IJLtlie., end of life is (in part or in whole) to attain the
ends of others besides myself, that is a most important truth
which should surely be emphasized in any answer, however
summary, to the question, ' What is the end of life ? ' ; and not
left to be understood in a formula which takes no explicit account
of it. (b) We are as far off as ever from knowing what the
' realization ' of the other selves, which is included in the realiza-
tion of mine, really is. (c) The proposition that I cannot attain
my end without promoting the end of others is at all events
1 Ethical Studies, p. 105.
68 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
an intelligible proposition. Not so, I respectfully submit, the
proposition that ' others are involved in my essence V Such
an assertion seems to me to ignore the very essence of self-
hood, which excludes an absorption or inclusion in otjier selves,
however closely related to us. Of course, Mr. Bradley will reply
that we cannot distinguish a thing from its relations. And yet
Mr. Bradley has himself taught us no one more effectively
that there cannot be relations without something to relate. No
doubt a thing, which does not exist for itself, but only in and for
a mind, cannot even in thought be abstracted from its relations :
the thing is made what it is by its intelligible relations, if we
include in its relations the content which it has for a mind
other than itself. But this is not so with a self. Unquestion-
ably there can be no subject without an object ; the very nature
of a subject is constituted by its knowledge of such and such
objects. The objects that it knows are part of the self ; in the
view of a thorough-going Idealism, indeed, the subject and its
experiences make up one spiritual being. But, all the same, of
such a spiritual being it is not true that it is made what it
is by its relation to other spiritual beings in the same way as
a mere thing, which exists for others and not for itself, is made
what it is by its relations. The thing has no exse except to be
felt, thought, experienced ; the way it enters into the experience
of minds is the only sort of being it possesses. On the other
hand, the * esse f of the soul is to think, to feel, to experience.
This thinking, feeling, experiencing does undoubtedly include
relations to other selves ; but such relations are not the whole of
its being. The experiences of a soul may be like those of another
soul : they may be caused by and dependent upon the experiences
of another soul. But the experiences of one soul cannot be or
become identical with the experience of another soul : the content
of two consciousnesses may be the same the universal abstracted
from the particular, but not the reality 2 : neither, therefore, can
the good of one soul or self be the good of another, or be included
in or be part of the good of another. Hence, if we are to avoid
1 A position further developed in the Chapter on ' Good ' in Appearance
and Reality.
8 I have further discussed this matter below in Bk. Ill, chap. i.
Chap, iii, i] SELF CANNOT INCLUDE OTHERS 69
a mysticism which frankly takes leave of intelligibility, we
cannot include any realization of the capacities of others in our
conception of self-realization, however essential to such realiza-
tion the good of others may be. If all that is meant is that
other selves may be ends to me, not mere means, that is pre-
cisely the point which is usually disguised, if it is not denied, by
those who employ the formula * self-realization.' The tendency
of. the phrase is to represent all moral conduct as motived by
a jlesire for my own good, into which consideration of others
can only enter as means to the realization of my end. Even if
there be a more ultimate metaphysical sense in which my self
and others are really the same self, that is not in the sense with
which we have to do with selves in Ethics : in Ethics at least we
are concerned with the relations between a plurality <3f selves l .
Further defence of this last objection would carry us more
deeply into the metaphysical region than it would be in place
to go at present. But I trust that what has l>een said will be
enough to suggest that there is nothing to be gained by. the use
of this ambiguous, mysterious term. It tells us nothing im-
portant, nothing that could not be better expressed in some other
way. It is an attempt to evade the real problems of Morality
instead of answering them. That is sufficiently indicated by the
fact that it is equally popular with writers whose real ethical
ideals are as wide apart as the poles with the school of the late
Professor Green and with the school of Mr. Bradley, with those
whose ideal is austere to the point of Asceticism and with those
by whom a large part of what the plain man calls Morality is
regarded as an exploded superstition. For some people it has the
attraction of a vague, imposing technicality, acting like ' that
comfortable word Mesopotamia ' upon the mind of the pious old
woman. With others ijLls. a mere cover for a more or less
refined Hedonism ^ What they really mean is 'the end of life
1 * From " self-seeking " to disinterested benevolence there is no road, and
the apparent subsumption of both under a common name by the theory of
self-realisation, turns out at closer inspection to be little more than a piece
of verbal legerdemain ' (Taylor, The Problem of Conduct, p. 193).
2 I do not say that this is so with any English Philosopher of repute , but
bhe possibility of thus understanding the phrase accounts for the enthusiasm
Df some of its younger votaries.
70 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
is to have a good time/ but they do not quite like to say so
because there is a vulgar prejudice against that view; and
besides, in academic circles there is a general consensus that
Hedonism is unphilosophical. To minds of a highep order no
doubt the term appeals simply because it is a protest against the
practical exaggerations and the logical difficulties of the attempt
to exalt ' self -sacrifice 1 into an all-sufficing expression of the moral
ideal. The best way, therefore, of bringing out the truth
expressed as it seems to me, badly and cumbrously expressed
by the use of the term * self-realization ' will be to examine the
claims of the counter-ideal of self-sacrifice to sum up in itself
the essence of all Morality.
II
Why cannot the ideal of self-sacrifice be accepted as the last
word in Ethics ?
(1) For the same reason that we saw to be fatal to the
antagonistic formula of ' self-realization.' Just as there can be
no self-realization or (to use a term less open to objection) ' self-
development ' without self-sacrifice, so there _can be jjojself-
sacrific^ witliouk,&eUriaBali^jaition. In denying or sacrificing one
part or element or jcapacity of the self, a man is necessarily
asserting or developing another. Complete or absolute self-
sacrifice is possible only in the form of suicide, if even so ; for
after all suicide is always a kind of self-assertion, and often a
kind of selfishness. What-of course is meant by those who use
the term is that the highest self is to be asserted or developed,
and that the individual attains his true end by the sacrifice of
his lower inclinations or desires for the sake of other people.
To gain the lower life is to lose the higher : to lose the lower is
to gain the true life. That is the very essence of the highest
moral teaching that the world has known. But then the formula
'self-sacrifice' only expresses one half of that doctrine; and
the one-sided formula often leads to much one-sidedness and
exaggeration in ethical thought and even in practical Morality.
(2) It needs little reflection to show that sJlrsaGi?ific& 0* its
ooaoi #ke ia always irrational and immoral. It is the object for
which the sacrifice is made that gives it its moral value. Ijjig
Chap, iii, ii] IDEAL OF SELF-SACRIFICE 71
aiway*.SQme good of another or some higher gcxxTaf the indi-
viduaLthat is the object of legitimate self-sacrifice. On reflection
this would probably be admitted by the austerest of ascetics.
The fleshes to be subdued to the spirit that is the theory
of Asceticism. And to a large extent the fallacy of Asceticism
in its ordinary sense consists in a sheer psychological mistake
about the tendency of bodily austerities or privations to promote
a higher and more spiritual life. That long-continued hunger
will eventually lead men to see visions and dream dreams which,
in minds educated in a certain way, will assume a religious form,
is no doubt a psychological fact, which is of great importance
historically as supplying at least a partial explanation of the
practice of fasting as a religious rite. But (waiving the ques-
tion of the religious value of such psychical states or of the
less vivid ecstasies which may sometimes be produced by fasting
of a less extreme character) it is the testimony of countless
ascetics in all ages 1 that the more they scourged and tormented
themselves, stood up to their chins in swamps or rolled themselves
among thorns, the more gross became their sensual imaginings
the more clamorous and insistent their passions. In less extreme
cases it is probable that there has been an enormous exaggera-
tion of the spiritual value, for the great majority at least, oi
solitude, hardship, and privation. The tendency of such self-
conscious effort to crush the appetites is simply to concentrate
attention upon them. In general, a man's mind is not raised
above the level of the lower desires and animal inclinations bj
austerity, but by healthy preoccupation with social or intel-
lectual activity. Of course there may be room for Asceticism
by way of discipline. We may deny ourselves in things that dc
not matter in order to strengthen the will in resistance tc
inclination where it does matter, But it may be doubted
whether the self -consciousness attendant upon such self-inflicted
disciplinary privations at least in communities where they are
not recognized by social custom is not a grave objection to them.
The real needs of our fellow men afford the completest scope
1 Even to the attenuated fasts of modern times these remarks are not
wholly inapplicable. There is a sermon of Cardinal Newman on * -Fa sting a
Source of Trial/ Ought temptations to be artifically multiplied ?
73 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
for rational curtailment of the lower kinds of self-indulgence,
whether this takes the form of periodical abstinence, of habitual
moderation, or of self-denial in other things besides eating and
drinking.
But, whatever may be thought about the kind and degree of
self-denial which really promote the higher life, there will be
little quarrel with the general principle that sglj^sacrifice is not
the end, but a means to the good of others or to the higher good
qf the mail himself : and perhaps it will even be admitted that self-
denial for our own spiritual good is more likely to attain its end,
the more directly the indulgence which is surrendered stands in
the way of something higher for instance, by wasting time
or money which might be employed upon self-improvement or
social service. This will generally be conceded : and yet there
can be no doubt that in practice the greaching^of Asceticism has
a tendency to degenerate into the idea that self -inflicted pain
h&a ia ;& something intrinsically virtuous or meritorious and is
therefore well-pleasing to God, even when God is conceived of
as a righteous and loving Father. And at one point such a
notion may find formal defenders among Christian Theologians 9
There has been in various ages, if there does not now survive,
a widespread belief in the expiatory value of suffering. Such
a notion seems to be implied in the retributive theory of
punishment which has already been examined and rejected. If
punishment really does wipe out guilt or assert the Moral Law
or what not, there seems no reason why it should be confined
to. the case of legal offences or why it should not be self-inflicted ;
and it might even be contended plausibly enough that its ex-
piatory value need not be diminished when the penalty is paid
by some one other than the sufferer \ As I have already discussed
1 It is a deeply significant fact that, according to some authorities, the
original idea of ritual sacrifice was not expiation, but communion with the
Deity through participation in the common meal originally the blood of
the Totem-animal. The idea of expiation only came in because the natural
way of renewing the tie between the tribe and the god when it had been
weakened through an offence seemed to be a special repetition of the act by
which the blood-bond had been created and kept alive. Thus the idea of
expiation as the dominant idea in sacrifice represents a degradation of the
original conception. (See Robertson Smith's Chapter on ' Sacrifice ' in his
Chap, iii, ii] LIMITS TO SELF-SACRIFICE 73
what is virtually the same question in connexion with the theory
of punishment, I need only add that I can see no meaning in
expiation except the tendency of suffering (under certain con-
ditions) to. make the sufferer morally better. Even within the
limits of severely orthodox Theology much support might be
found for the proposition that the remission of sins necessarily
follows upon repentance, and that repentance ultimately means
change of will or character.
(3) Not only does a one-sided doctrine of self -sacrifice
exaggerate the value of thwarting lower desires as a means to
the gratification of the higher, but it errs by denying all value
to those lower goods the surrender of which it advocates. In
the first place it fails to appreciate the fact that desires other
than the pure impulse to do one's duty for its own sake have
a value of their own, and may become, when duly regulated,
the basis of the highest virtues : and that is the case not merely
with such purely intellectual impulses as the love of know-
ledge, but with many which, in themselves and apart from their
subordination to a higher purpose, are purely animal, and may
degenerate into the inspiring motives of crime and vice. The
raw material, so to speak, of Virtue and Vice are the same
i. e. desires which in themselves, abstracted from their relation
to the higher self, are not either moral or immoral but simply
non -moral 1 . Anger in some forms is the most an ti- social of all
passions : while indignation against vice is an essential element
in the ideal character. To hate the right things, to hate that
in persons which is worthy of hatred, is as essential an object
of all moral education as to love the right things, and to love
those possibilities of higher things which exist in the vilest. An
animal impulse is to many men the basis of the most powerful
temptation and of the highest affection that they ever know.
Religion of the Semites, p. 213 sq., and Jevons, History of Religion, p. 144 sq.)
Whatever may be thought of the chronological order of the ideas,
the corruption and degradation of Religion at every stage" of its develop-
ment is closely connected with the prominence of the idea* of expiation as
compared with that of communion or fellowship between the Deity and his
worshippers.
1 *E* rS>v avT&v KOI ftia TG>*> avr&v KOI ytWrni nava iiptrrj KOI <0eipeTcu. Aris-
totle, Eth, Nic. II. i. (p. 1103 &).
74 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
The gregarious instinct that prompts us to seek the society and
approval of our fellow-men is the most fruitful source of moral
failure when it attaches itself to narrow social circles and low
social ideals : duly developed in a certain direction and cultivated
in a certain way it blossoms into the ' enthusiasm of humanity/
The denial of this truth forms the great fallacy into which the
ascetics of all ages have fallen. The principle was inadequately
grasped by Plato, who, while recognizing the moral usefulness
of the combative instinct (TO 0v/xoei6^$) as the ally of Reason
against the lower passions, did not see that these too were
capable of being, and ought to be in various degrees, educated
and guided by Reason, instead of being merely crushed and
suppressed. It was ignored by Kant when he thought that
every wise man would fain be wholly free from desire. It was
ignored by the Stoics when they recommended the suppression
of emotion. It is the great glory of Aristotle, and of his dis-
ciples the mediaeval Schoolmen, to have grasped firmly the idea
that Reason should control, discipline, regulate the desires instead
of extinguishing them, and that rightly regulated desire is as
essential an element of the ideal character as the paramount
supremacy of Reason or Conscience l .
(4) In certain directions and to a certain extent, then, all
natural impulses are susceptible of being taken up into, and
actually transformed into, those more social tendencies of the self
the predominance of which is ordinarily spoken of as self-sacri-
fice. But, even where this is not the case, moral Reason does no<
seem to sanction the idea that these lower desires, or the good*
which are the objects of them, possess no intrinsic value at all
The ideal human life does demand a certain amount of these
1 This constitutes the real meaning and importance of the doctrine that
Virtue is a mean nepl nadrj KO\ irpd&is, a mean between the excess and defect
of each kind of feeling or acting, however inadequate such a doctrine may
be as a moral criterion. Aristotle's mistake was to give an exaggerated
prominence to one of the most important ways in which Reason regulates
the irdOr) and Trpnf etf, that of quantity ; this made it necessary to find two
vices between which to place each virtue. This can generally be done, but
not always. The inadequacy and unsatisfactoriness of Aristotle's list of
virtues arises largely from the necessity of excluding all virtues which cannot
conveniently be squeezed into the form of a mean between two vices
Chap, iii, ii] ASCETICISM 75
lower goods. The ideal human life is not a life of pain and want
and discomfort. The ascetic seldom suggests that we should
promote such a life for others. To be virtuous on the rack is
better thap^ to be vicious off' it ; but there is one thing that is
better than being virtuous on the rack, and that is to be virtuous
off it. c It is better ' (according to the admission of J. S. Mill)
'to be Socrates dissatisfied than to be a fool satisfied:' but there
is one thing that is better than either to be Socrates satisfied.
What is the relation of the higher and the lower goods, what
amount or degree of the lower is consistent with or most con-
ducive to the due predominance of the higher in human lives,
is a question about which men may reasonably differ, but it
must not be assumed that it is always the irreducible minimum.
And the true answer will of course be different for different
men. The great practical mistake of the more moderate ascetic
teaching has been to lay upon average men burdens too great for
them, to require a repression of natural instincts and desires which
in them (whatever be the case with exceptional natures) does not
promote the healthy development of character and the efficient
conduct of life. The necessity of exercise, amusement, society,
even in the interests of moral Well-being, is recognized by the
best religious Ethics of the present day as it has hardly been
recognized by the religious teaching of the past. This of course,
it may be said, implies merely the treatment of those lower
goods as means to a higher end : but it would be perhaps hard
to defend the place which the best men of our day would assign
to them in the life which they want to promote for the mass of
men without admitting that there are elements in the ideal life
elements possessing an independent, though subordinate, worth
of their own other than the cultivation of the good will, other
than socially useful activity or high intellectual cultivation. And
even for the best men it is hardly felt that it is wrong to eat or
drink more than is absolutely essential to health, to spend time
in conversation or light reading that might without mental
breakdown be devoted to work. Or, if for exceptional persons
it is felt that this indulgence of lower goods ought to be cut
down to the minimum point that is compatible with the maximum
of social efficiency, we should probably on reflection justify this
76 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
course, partly on the ground that such men will attain the
greatest good for them in exertions which go beyond the powers
of most ; and partly on the principle that, if for some persons
it is a duty to sacrifice much that is not normally inconsistent
with the predominance of the highest interests, the sacrifice is
demanded by the value of the other lives which are helped by
their exertions, without any disparagement or contempt for the
ordinary sources of healthy human enjoyment. The ascetic life
which is devoted to the procuring of an enjoyable life for others,
for the sake of that life, is no longer ascetic in principle.
(5) And that brings us to a last necessary qualification of the
one-sided ideal of self-sacrifice. Normally and in the abstract,
Reason does not demand that a man should give up any good of
his own except for the greater good of some one else. And, in
estimating the greatness of the good, we must of course not
include the good implied by the sacrifice itself. The test would
become nugatory if we held that the man who sacrifices himself
always gets the greater good, just because his act is one of self-
sacrifice. Speaking broadly and generally, Reason does not (as
it appears to me) hold that it is good to promote (say) the
comfort and convenience of another person by the sacrifice of
a much greater comfort and convenience of one's own. Of
course the .stronger altruistic impulses will tend to overleap this
restriction, to
reject the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.
And there may be times and circumstances in which the calmest
reflection may discern such a beauty and propriety in the sacri-
fice that it will pronounce { good on the whole ' to result from
it, as when a mother, not grudgingly or of necessity but willingly
and spontaneously, gives up much more for her child than he
will gain by the sacrifice : but normally and apart from any
special circumstances or relations of the persons, I do not think
it can be said that we do on calm reflection approve the sacrifice
of more for less. If Sir Walter Raleigh's act in spreading his
cloak in the mud to make a dry place for Queen Elizabeth to
walk on be approved in spite of the fact that the gain to the
Queen was probably smaller than the damage to Sir Walter's
Chap, iii, ii] INCONSISTENCY OF ALTRUISM 77
cloak, it must be on account of the special relation in which
a Queen stands to her subject.
(6) The requirement of unlimited Altruism would involve
self -contradiction. If I judge that another's pleasure is a good
thing for me to promote I cannot logically deny that my own
pleasure is a good too a good intrinsically worthy of being
promoted. It cannot be right for me to spend my labour in
producing that which it is wrong for another to receive in
growing fruit, for instance, which it would be wicked for another
to eat. At some point or other enjoyment must begin: the
end of life cannot be a continual passing on of something to
another. It may be urged that the ideal is that I should be
producing something for another, and find my good in doing so:
while lie is working in turn for my good, and finds his good in
doing so. That is no doubt the true ideal a life in which
work for lower needs is elevated by becoming social or reciprocal,
enjoyment of lower goods consecrated by being shared. But
common sense will clearly set some limit to this exchange of
services : some things each of us does better for himself than
another can do them for him. The greater part of most ordinarily
good men's lives resists this sharp distinction into an egoistic and
an altruistic part : it is egoistic and altruistic at the same time.
But this very interchange of services, which is at the basis of
all social life, would be impossible if men would not consent to
be served as well as to serve. We may share enjoyment with
another, but not the enjoyment of the very same thing; two
people cannot possibly eat the same apple. If the apple is ever
to be eaten instead of being passed on, that implies a limit to
Altruism 1 . If it were never right for me to eat it, it would not
be right for me to encourage the egoism of my neighbour by
inviting him to do so.
So Long as we confine ourselves to the higher goods, the
limitation of altruistic self-sacrifice in the interests of personal
1 I am here thinking of the normal or average man. What is said about
limitations to self-sacrifice (and to Asceticism in so far as self-sacrifice involves
Ascfeticism) must be qualified by what is said below in the chapteron* Vocation.'
In particular cases much sacrifice may be right which would become irrational
if imposed upon all.
78 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
culture will readily be admitted. It will be conceded that
the whole energy of a community ought not to be absorbed
in the production of material goods ; nor can it well be conceived
of as being entirely absorbed in the work of mutual, edification,
in the direct improvement of each other's characters. What is
to be done then with the rest of it ? Various forms of intellectual
or aesthetic self-development and enjoyment seem to remain as
the only possible object of rational pursuit. No doubt most
intellectual activities are capable of assuming a social direction.
I can write books or compose poetry or research or play the
piano for the benefit of others, and not merely for my own
enjoyment. But then it cannot be right for me to play or com-
pose music which it would be sinful waste of time for another
to listen to. It is clear, therefore, that some portion of an
individual's time and energy may rightly be given to the enjoy-
ment of higher goods for their own sake without any further
social object.
With regard to lower goods, more scruple may be felt at the
employment of this argument. It may be said that there is
really no inconsistency in holding that it is always better to
surrender to another any lower object of enjoyment which is
not positively demanded by my own efficiency, and therefore,
ultimately, the good of others : for it is not because it is good
for another to enjoy himself that I think it right to make the
sacrifice, but because it is a charitable act and beneficial to my
character to give him that pleasure. But, onco agairi A if pleasure
is not to be thought of as a good, how can it be morally good to
spend time and labour in producing it ? And, if it is good for
another, it must be good up to whatever point, within whatever
limits for me also. The ideal of unlimited self-sacrifice involves
obvious and inevitable self-contradiction.
Ill
Considerations like these may easily be pushed to the point of
representing that the idea of self-sacrifice forms no essential
part of the true moral ideal. That ideal, it may be urged, is
always the subordination of the lower to the higher the
development of the different parts of the man's nature not,
Chap, iii, iii] MORALITY INVOLVES SACRIFICE 79
indeed, in all directions equally, but in the true order of their
relative worth or importance. And in this subordination there
need be nothing which can be properly called sacrifice at all
no sense of pain or contraction, no struggle or resistance to
inclination. For the good man will recognize in social service
the opportunity of developing his truest self. It will cost him
no pain to be temperate, to control his appetites, to be (within
reasonable limits) unselfish and hard-working : for he sees that
these things are for his own good. All his desires are so com-
pletely dominated and directed by Reason that he has no desire
for indulgences which would interfere with perfect intellectual
clearness and perfect control of appetite : he loves work, occupa-
tion in the service of the community, or some intellectual pursuit
for its own sake. This perfect 'harmony' between the various
elements of a man's nature, it may be urged, is the true ideal.
Self-sacrifice must be at most an incident of imperfect ' adjust-
ment ' between the individual and his environment. The require-
ment of it must belong to the imperfect Morality of youth ; to
the youth of the race, or at most to the defective organization
of human society. This line of thought is in various forms so
prevalent that, at the risk of some repetition, it may be worth
while to consider what amount of truth we can recognize in it.
Briefly I should reply that the kind of harmony which such
speculations bid us seek is rendered for ever impossible (i) by
the nature of man, (2) by the nature of things, (3) by the nature
of human society.
(i) The extinction of self-sacrifice, felt as such, is inconsistent
with the attainment of the highest character owing to the
constitution of human nature.
That Virtue cannot be attained without a struggle was
admitted even by Aristotle. But then to Aristotle the man was
not. good until the virtuQiwu-UwUttt^^ fully formed. He
assumed, .that the imperfectly virtuous acts by which the habit
of virtuous action was formed would be done from some non-
moral motive. How the repetition of a series of acts influenced
by ivholly non-moral motives would result in a habit of acting
frqm moral motives, of doing the virtuous act for its own sake,
is never satisfactorily explained; that is the great hiatus of
80 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
Aristotle's ethical system. So far is it from being true that
there is no moral value in the struggle against temptation
so long as the pleasantness of the pleasure renounced is felt,
that moral value seems to the modern mind to be at its maximum
in such struggles l . The amount of struggle which goes to the
formation of a virtuous character is no doubt very various. To
some men goodness seems more or less to come naturally ; to
others only after long and strenuous conflict. That natural
tendency to evil which Theologians have called 'original sin'
seems to be very unequally distributed ; and very unequal
in different men is the strength of those purely animal impulses
which, though in themselves not evil, do not at once submit
to rational control. The needful struggle is doubtless pro-
portionately unequal. But it is difficult- t^-8ee~4io:
some struggle a virtuous eh&r&eter eaB-be-logttiecl at all.
tainly, in the absence of temptation the character cannot fee
tested ; and until the character has been tested, there would
seem to be rather the potentiality of Virtue or character tk&*t
the actuality of it. The struggle need not be always kept up,
but it must have been gone through. Perhaps we may have
in this consideration some glimpse of a clue to the real meaning
of evil in a rationally governed Universe. But at all events,
confining ourselves to human life as we know it, we may
say that it is in and through the struggle that the good will
most emphatically asserts itself. In this sense at all events
Morality can never lose the aspect of self-sacrifice.
But is this alU When is this education of the character
to stop? Even Aristotle admitted that for the mass of men
the necessity of moral discipline, in the shape of Law, was
not confined to youth ; and that implies that for them at least
the desirable harmony could not be practically attained in
absolute perfection. It was probably the extreme moderation
of the demands which, under ordinary circumstances, Aristotle's
1 It is curious to find a writer so little prone to any form of Rigorism as
Simmel exaggerating this aspect of Morality so far as to maintain that
there is no merit except where the virtuous impulse has had to struggle
against another, and that the merit is proportionate to the effort (Einleitung,
T, p. 264*5.).
Chap, iii, iii] PERFECT HARMONY IMPOSSIBLE 8j
ethical code imposed upon the inclinations of a cultivated Greek
gentleman that prevented his recognizing that that desirable
condition in which nothing that waa wrong would ever present
itsalLaa4ll^aant was practically not attainable in this life even
by the best of men. This consideration will at least suggest
the practical danger of making * harmony ' the primary aim
of moral effort : the feeling of ' harmony ' in the self-satisfied
man of culture, like the 'peace' of conventional religionism,
is quite as likely in practice to be the outcome of a low ideal
as of a perfected * habit ' of Virtue. Still, it may be urged,
however far off and difficult of attainment it may be, ' harmony '
is the ideal : the feeling of struggle is always a note of imper-
fection. But is this always and necessarily so ?
Aristotle's account of the formation of the virtuous ' habit '
with the consequent disappearance of struggle is no doubt
a fairly accurate description of the inner life of the good
man under favourable circumstances, so long as we confine
ourselves to the very limited range of moral experience which
was probably present to Aristotle's mind. We should not think
highly of a man who continued to feel very painfully throughout
life the struggle to prevent the more violent explosions of
temper or to avoid grossly over-eating and over-drinking
himself. No doubt the effort to overcome the more vulgar
or animal temptations does normally become indefinitely easier
after a certain period of resistance. But does it always do so ?
And is not the extent to which it does so quite as much de-
pendent upon physiological constitution as upon character?
Can we say that a man's character is defective because a healthy
appetite would always prompt him to eat somewhat more than
a sedentary life or a weak digestion or a slender purse or the
claims of others may make it his duty to take? Is a man
intemperate because he could always enjoy one more glass of
wine or a better wine than it is right habitually to indulge
in ? No doubt in normal cases, where the mind is duly occupied
with higher interests, and where outward circumstances are
favourable, the struggle does become something which it sounds
a little ridiculous to call pain or sacrifice. But, however small,
the struggle is sufficient to prevent our talking of perfect
RASHDALT, II G
8a SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
harmony. It must be remembered, however, that there are
other passions against which in some men the struggle is longer
and fiercer; and then again we cannot limit our attention
to these grosser temptations. There are temptations which
are closely connected with the development of the higher part
of a man's nature. Every moral conquest brings subtler tempta-
tions with it spiritual pride, love of power, love of every-
thing good (other than the supreme good) above its true
value, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. It would
not be a note of perfection but of imperfection not to feel
temptations such as these. However attenuated in the higher
oharaciers^the struggle may become (though I am not sure that
it is in the highest characters that the struggle is mildest), $till
tb.e mere feeling that something which in not right would
be in itself very nice is enough to preclude the possibility of
absolutely unruffled ' harmony/ and to compel us to regard self-
sacrifice as a necessary element in all Morality as it exists under
present human conditions. And that brings me to my second point.
(2) The extinction of self-sacrifice is inconsistent with the
nature of things with the actual conditions of life on this planet.
Even Aristotle admitted that it was only under perfectly
favourable circumstances that the exercise of Virtue brought
with it complete and perfect eiSatfxoria. ' External supplies
to a greater or a lesser extent ' were necessary freedom from
pain and grave misfortune ; free scope for the energies and
activities, moral and intellectual, in the exercise of which true
happiness was to be found. And this was not all. There
was at least one virtue whose exercise was normally painful.
The courageous man would no doubt feel the joy of battle ;
he would feel pleasure at the accomplishment of his desire to do
brave deeds : but toil and wounds and death were not less
painful to him than to other men nay, more so, inasmuch as
it is to the best men that life is most desirable l . Now the
1 Aristotle, Eth. NIC. III. 9 ( p. 1117 1). The passage concludes : ot> bfj iv
and<rais ralf aptrats TO qdc'o? cixpyiiv \mdp\t ^ n\r)i> *'<' 8vov rot) rcXou? f 0a7rrercu.
The last words contain the truth which the psychological Hedonists and
the ' self-realizers ' exaggerate. They forget that this pleasure is often, as
Aristotle points out, very small in comparison with the surrounding pain.
Chap, iii, iii] 'EXTERNAL SUPPLIES' 83
absence of favourable circumstances, which from the point of
view of the affluent Greek gentleman might be fairly treated
as exceptional, is in truth with the mass of human beings
the normal state of things. What presented itself to Aristotle
as a somewhat anomalous characteristic of a particular virtue
is, to an age which recognizes social obligations in excess of
Aristotle's standard, the normal accompaniment at least of
the higher kinds of moral effort. The virtue no doubt brings
pleasure, but the circumstances of the struggle are painful.
Opposition, unpopularity, failure, ill health, boredom, monotony
these at the lowest (to say nothing of the graver ills of more
strenuous and heroic lives) good men must normally be prepared
to face in greater or less degree, and the acceptance of such
evils often the direct consequence of their goodness consti-
tutes self-sacrifice. The amount of such things which the good
man has to face varies no doubt enormously. A man is not
necessarily to be thought less good because the circumstances
of his life make the exercise of his capacities pleasant and
interesting to himself: but still in a rough way it is true
that what are in our view tlisi- _noblet .-qualities of human
ctuuaiiter less so no doubt in Aristotle's view, still less so
in that of modern paganizing Moralists have normally to
be exhibited in ways which involve a good deal that is un-
pleasant. And in the most fortunate lives the mere necessity
of working when one is tired would be enough to prevent
our taking the pleasantness of our activity as an all-sufficient
index of the degree to which a virtuous 'habit' has been
formed. Aristotle, it is probable, would hardly have recognized
under normal circumstances the necessity of a man working
when he would rather rest. It is doubtful whether even a
leading statesman in ancient Athens was required to pass many
more hours in an office than was agreeable and hygienic : and
as to theoretic activities, why should a Greek gentleman of
independent means (and no one else could be truly virtuous),
who studied, and researched, and talked for his own pleasure
and not for the sake of others, go on thinking or reading or
writing when he was tired 1 In Aristotle's view working when
one was tired might be left to slaves. By any one who is
84 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
not prepared to admit either that it is always right to stop
work when one is tired, or that physical weariness is a sign
of moral imperfection, the idea of the complete correspondence
between duty and inclination, even in the best men, must
be given up. And if so, we must look upon self -sacrifice as
no mere accidental, temporary, or occasional accompaniment
of Morality, but as a very important element in the normal
virtuous life. Inasmuch as it asserts this fact, the popular
tendency to identify Morality with self-sacrifice possesses far
more and far deeper truth than the ' self-realization ' doctrine
of our ethical exquisites.
(3) The attempt to banish self-sacrifice from the virtuous
life is inconsistent with the structure of human society.
The nature of man and of his material environment is such,
we have seen, that even the effort to develope his own highest
capacities cannot always, even in the best men, be altogether
free from painful struggle. Still more obvious and still more
serious is the collision between the claims of the individual and
the claims of his fellows. The fullest development of what
might (apart from such social considerations) be regarded as
the highest capacities of the individual is, not exceptionally
but normally, inconsistent with the development of those same
capacities in others. Both the material and the higher interests
of mankind constantly demand of the individual the sacrifice
of his personal culture and self-development physical, emo-
tional, and (in a sense) even moral, i. e. many sides of character
which it would in the abstract be good to cultivate. The fullest
development of the individual must be sacrificed in order that
there may be some development of other individuals. Or,
if we say that the social self which is cultivated by the
sacrifice of intellectual growth and emotional culture is after
all the highest self, still the sacrifice of lower capacities to
capacities in themselves good and noble must be made long
before the point at which it could be said that they positively
interfere with the higher, except in so far as their further
cultivation is incompatible with the highest principle of all
the principle of submission to that moral Reason which dictates
the subordination of the individual's good to the requirements
Chap, iv, iv] RECONCILIATION 85
of social Well-being. If that * harmony * or wholeness in the
moral life on which it is the fashion to insist means the
subordination of all other impulses to this, then indeed the
harmony is possible. If it is this self that is to be ' realized/
then indeed self-realization is possible, but such a self-realization
is necessarily also a limitation : it involves, that is to say, much
of what ordinary men call self-sacrifice sacrifice not merely of
the bad self but of much that is intrinsically good and noble l .
There is no realization of the ' self ' as a whole, or even of
the ' higher self as a whole: and, if that is so, it were best
surely to avoid putting forward the catch- word ' self-realization '
as the essential feature of the moral life.
IV
Arid yet, as I have already endeavoured to show, the ideal of
self-sacrifice, though it undoubtedly insists on what is from a
practical point of view a more important aspect of the moral
life than ' seJirJ^alizaiion/ is no less one-sided. It failalQ. ex-
press ,the fact that Morality is the individual's highest good
and Jgu-therefore not altogether sacrifice : and it fails to express
the truth that the i<igaL.life does include other elemental. besides
self-sacrificing social eefviee some of them elements of high
intrinsic worth. HOW T then are we to reconcile these two prin-
ciples ? The general line of the reconciliation cannot be doubtful
if there be any truth in the conclusions which we have tried to
establish. Reason clearly pronounces that even what would other-
wise be the highest good of the individual ought to give way to the
like good of others. If so, it is clear that individual self-develop-
ment 2 ought to bow to the claims of the like self-development
in others ; and from that it follows that the individual must find
hiSLQ.\Y n highest good in the cultivation of such capacities as can
1 * The hardest choice which Christian self-denial imposes is the pre-
ference of the work apparently most socially useful to the work apparently
most conducive to the agent's own scientific and aesthetic development 1
(Sidgwick, Ethics of GWH, p. 70).
2 In future I shall use this word alone, as it seems to me to express all
that there is of real meaning in * self-realization/ while free from some of
the objections that have been urged against that term, even as expressing a
one-sided aspect of Morality.
86 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
b^ subordinated to the supreme- requiremfints^rf social WeU*being,
The kind and the limits of this self-development and the self-
sacrifice which this principle will demand of the individual will
depend on the nature of his vocation. But, in vi^w of the
prominent place which this question has assumed in recent
ethical speculation, it will be well to develope a little further
our attitude towards it. Mr. Bradley has made the alleged
inconsistency between the claims of self-development or (as
he sometimes prefers to call it) self-assertion and self-sacrifice
into a ground for preferring an accusation of hopeless and
irresolvable internal contradiction or * dualism ' in the deliver-
ances of the practical Reason. Our moral ideas are therefore
doomed to go the way of the rest of human knowledge, and
are pronounced to belong to the region of mere ' Appearance/
not of true knowledge the knowledge of ( Reality.' A brief
examination of this thesis may serve to elucidate what has
already been said on this subject.
Here are Mr. Bradley 's words:
'I am far from suggesting that in morality we are forced
throughout to make a choice between such incompatible ideals.
For this is not the case, and, if it were so, life could hardly be
lived. To a very large extent by taking no thought about his
individual perfection, and by aiming at that which seems to
promise no personal advantage, a man secures his private welfare.
We may, perhaps, even say that in the main there is no collision
between self-sacrifice and self-assertion, and that on the whole
neither of these, in the proper sense, exists for morality. But,
while admitting or asserting to the full the general identity of
these aspects, I am here insisting on the fact of their partial
divergence. And that, at least in some respects and with some
persons, these two ideals seem hostile no sane observer can deny.
1 In other words we must admit that two great divergent
forms of moral goodness exist. In order to realize the idea of
a perfect self a man may have to choose between two partially
conflicting methods. Morality, in short, may dictate either self-
sacrifice or self-assertion, and it is important to clear our ideas
as to the meaning of each. A common mistake is to identify
the first with the living for others, and the second with living
Chap, iii, iv] MR. BRADLEY'S VIEW 87
for oneself. Virtue upon this view is social, either directly or
indirectly, either visibly or invisibly. The development of the
individual, that is, unless it reacts to increase the welfare of
society, can certainly not be moral. This doctrine I am still
forced to consider as a truth which has been exaggerated and
perverted into error. There are intellectual and other accom-
plishments, to which I at least cannot refuse the title of virtue.
But I cannot assume that, without exception, these must all
somehow add to what is called social welfare; nor, again, do
I see how to make a social organism the subject which directly
possesses them. But, if so, it is impossible for me to admit that
all virtue is essentially or primarily social. On the contrary, the
neglect of social good, for the sake of pursuing other ends, may
not only be moral self-assertion, but again, equally under other
conditions, it in ay be moral self -sacrifice. We can even say that
the living " for others," rather than living " for myself," may be
immoral and selfish.'
' The ends sought by self-assertion and self-sacrifice are, each
alike, unattainable. The individual never can in himself become
an harmonious system. And in the wider ideal to which he
devotes himself, no matter how thoroughly, he never can find
complete self-realization. For, even if we take that ideal to be
perfect and to be somehow completely fulfilled, yet, after all, he
himself is not totally absorbed in it. If his discordant element
is for faith swallowed up, yet faith, no less, means that a jarring
appearance remains. And, in the complete gift and dissipation
of his personality, he, as such, must vanish ; and, with that, the
good is, as such, transcended and submerged. This result is but
the conclusion with which our chapter began. Goodness is an
appearance, it is phenomenal, and therefore self-contradictory.
And therefore, as was the case with degrees of truth and reality,
it shows two forms of one standard which will not wholly
coincide. In the end/where every discord is brought to harmony,
every idea is also realized. But there, where nothing can be
lost, everything, by addition and by rearrangement, more or
less changes its character. And most emphatically no self-
88 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
assertion nor any self-sacrifice, nor any goodness or morality, has,
as such, any reality in the Absolute. Goodness is a subordinate
and, therefore, a self -contradictory aspect of the universe V
I must not now attempt to discuss as a whole the metaphysical
position of the most brilliant and original thinker of our time.
I venture only to make a few remarks exclusively upon the
ethical side of the difficulty here presented :
(i) I trust it will not be thought in any way disrespectful
to Mr. Bradley if I say that the whole of this charge of
* inconsistency ' in the deliverances of the Practical Reason seems
to me to turn upon a confusion between the idea of good and
the idea of right. ML. Pradlfiy.!. 54 doctrine is not merely that
each of these modes of action is good, but that they are equally
virtuous and right 2 . If Practical Reason really said that two
inconsistent courses of action were both right, its * dualism '
would no doubt be hopeless enough. But there is no incon-
sistency in raying that two things are both good, though (where
you cannot have both) it is right to choose that which is best
-4fld Practical Reason, as I hold, does not pronounce that
self-development and self-sacrifice are both right in all circum-
stances. It pronounces to my mind unequivocally that it is
always right to choose that which is from the universal point
of view the greatest of goods : and, though to determine what
is the greatest of goods constitutes the gravest of practical
difficulties, Reason is not essentially incapable of this task of
distinguishing the value of goods, and so of pronouncing which
of two courses is for a given individual under given circumstances
the one and only right course of action.
Therefore, if the question be put nakedly, * Which is to give
way self-assertion to self-sacrifice or self-sacrifice to self-
assertion when there is a collision between a smaller good of
mine and a larger good of my neighbours ? ' I have no hesitation
in saying that it is I and not Society that should be sacrificed.
Or, if it be said that this is begging the question whether my
intellectual cultivation may not be sometimes the greater good
of the two, I should contend that no self -development of mine can
1 Appearance and Reality, Ed. ii, pp. 415-420.
2 Ib., p. 418.
Ohap.iii,iv] ALLEGED DUALISM IN MORALITY 89
ever be so great a good as to justify me in pursuing it to the
total neglect of all social considerations. It has, indeed, to be
admitted that men's capacities are not equal ; and that unequal
capacity <J es > in the abstract, constitute unequal value. One
person may be entitled to more consideration than another ; and
it may be urged, as a speculative possibility, that there might be
a person of such exalted capacities that his intellectual well-
being might be held to justify an exclusive devotion to his own
improvement; but then I should hold (a) that even then the
subordination of his own self-development to that of his fellows
would always be demanded in the interest of his own highest
Well-being, for the man's capacity for love and social service is
higher than any intellectual capacity however exalted; and (b) that
practically there are no such monsters of intellectual superiority.
Even if it were suggested that the majority of his countrymen
were so much inferior to him that the claim of their development
could not practically count in comparison with his own, yet there
must be at least a minority whose capacities must be such as to
enter into some sort of comparison with his own. These at
least must be considered, nor should I for one admit that any
human beings were so low in the scale of creation as to be of no
importance at all, though undoubtedly they may be of smaller im-
portance than others. Practical Reason demands some measure of
self-sacrifice of the highest towards the lowest. To hold otherwise
would be to hold that they might lawfully be treated as mere
opyava instruments of the higher culture of their betters in
other words, be made their slaves *. Possibly, some of the apostles
of self-realization might not shrink from the conclusion that
this is (in principle) the true function of ' the lower classes '
in a modern society. At all events there is a very observable
tendency for a hyper-intellectual ideal in Ethics to associate
itself with anti-popular or reactionary political views.
(2) If as a matter of fact Society were so constituted that
1 This has been practically maintained by Nietzsche, who often says
straight out what some of our English self-realizers only hint. He carries
his principle out to its logical consequence, and appears to hold that the true
ultimate end is the enslavement of the whole world to a single purely
egoistic 4 Ubermensch.' Any one who is inclined to take Nietzsche seriously
should read the scathing criticism by Hartmann in Ethische Studien, pp. 34-69.
99 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book n
the cultivation of the higher intellectual or artistic capacities
really had no tendency to promote the good of any one but the
possessor of them, the position would be an awkward one. So
far as one can answer hypothetical and abstract questions which
postulate a human nature different from any we know, I should
be prepared to say, ' In that case, to the extent of the incom-
patibility between social and private good, the higher faculties
must remain uncultivated/ On that supposition intellectual
cultivation must simply be treated as we treat those lower goods
the enjoyment of which by one is normally inconsistent with
their enjoyment by another : each must take his just share and
no more. The share may vary with the individual's capacity,
but in no case can we rationally allow one man to ba treated as
an end only, while another is treated merely as a meaua -to-his
enjoyment. Even on this supposition, there would be no formal
'dualism' in the moral judgement: the ethical problem would
still be answered. But we should in that case have to admit
that some of the highest desires and impulses of our nature
would be divided against themselves ; that some of the highest
capacities in the race (and not only in the individual) would
have to go unrealized ; that some of the highest values in human
life would be known only, from the point of view of Ethics, as
values condemned on account of their conflict with yet higher
values. But, as a matter of fact, the true Well-being of human
society does riot demand this vast sacrifice of intellectual goods.
In a number of distinct ways the highest intellectual goods do
conduce to social Well-being, and so are not incompatible with the
attainment by the individual of that other and higher good
which lies in the subordination of self to others.
It will be unnecessary to dwell at length upon the high
intellectual qualities which are cultivated and exercised by
callings useful in the most commonplace sense of the word in
political life, in administration, in literature, in Physical Science
and its more advanced applications, in the professions, in the
mere giving of amusement. But it must not be forgotten that
in our view the true good of human society does not consist
either in mere ' edification ' or in the enjoyment of material good
things. The cultivation of the intellectual and artistic faculties
Chap, iii, iv] NO REAL SELF-CONTRADICTION 91
is itself part of the social end. Consequently, the man who in
any way communicates the results of his intellectual activity to
the world is thereby performing his share .of social service, and
the subordination of his own ends to those of others involved
in such communication will effect that reconciliation between
'self-assertion 1 ' and self-sacrifice which his own moral life
demands. And fortunately things are so constituted that the
development of the intellectual and aesthetic nature in the many
to that moderate pitch which seems alone to be practicable in
their case imperatively demands a much higher cultivation of
them in the few. The pleasure and the culture which the
average man derives from an occasional visit to a picture gallery,
and from the constant contemplation of good copies or less
valuable originals on private walls, is only possible if the Artist
is allowed to devote a laborious lifetime to the study and practice
of Art. The comparatively uneducated can only find intellectual
enjoyment if there is a leisured literary class to produce books
for them to read ; and the leisured literary class that produces
the books which such men actually read, if they are good of
their kind, is one which could not itself exist unless there were
a small class in which a still higher, or at least a less popular
and more specialized, culture or learning prevailed. The teacher
must know more than those whom he teaches ; the writer must
know more of his particular subject than the average reader;
the man of letters utilizes and absorbs the labours of numerous
specialists. The maintenance, in short, of a highly cultivated
class is an absolutely essential condition of healthy cultivated
life in the nation at large. And the study of History would
further seem to suggest that the connexion between intellectual
health on the one hand and social and moral Well-being on the
other is much closer than is sometimes supposed. The attempt
to substitute an ideal of pure Morality for an ideal of wider
human good, the attempt to confine culture within the limit
wherein it directly subserves personal goodness, is always
suicidal. The 'dark age* was an age of moral anarchy and
wickedness. The moral and religious progress of the twelfth
1 Mr. Bradley more often uses the word * self-assertion * than * self-realiza-
tion,' but he does not appear to attach importance to the distinction.
92 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
and thirteenth centuries was intimately connected with a great
intellectual revival. Moral progress is largely dependent on
intellectual progress, and it is impossible to determine in advance
what kinds of intellectual advance will react on ethical ideals
and ethical practice. But nothing can be further from my
intention than to rest the defence of intellectual pursuits upon
their moral influence in the narrow sense, i. e. their tendency to
promote for Society some good other than themselves. The
different elements in human Well-being can undoubtedly exist
to some extent apart. Intellectual development is none the less
a part of the true ideal for society or individual because it is
not the whole good or the highest good of human life. The
ideal which would pronounce moral a life of absolutely self-
centred culture or study is to my mind an irrational and immoral
one 1 . But the student even of the most ' useless ' branches of
knowledge can socialize and moralize his life by communicating
his discoveries or stimulating other students, even though the
gain to the world may be a purely intellectual gain, and though
the persons capable of directly and immediately benefiting by
his work may be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is no
paradox to say that there is nothing more useful to the world
than * useless ' knowledge.
In no case, then, can it be right for a man to disregard social
Well-being. In many cases a man's social duty may consist, so
far as is compatible with the ordinary duties of the man and the
citizen (themselves involving, of course, some measure of self-
sacrifice), for the most part in the highest intellectual self-develop-
ment. Even the man of genius must renounce that exceptional
license to be immoral which the ideal of self-realization sometimes
seems disposed to concede to him. And generally of course the
communication to the world of the results of his studies on which
I have insisted will take off something from the absolutely pos-
sible maximum of intellectual development something varying
1 Here for once (which ia very rarely the case) I prefer Mr. Bradley's
earlier to his later self: 'It is quite clear that if anybody wants to realize
himself as a perfect man without trying to be a perfect member of his
country and all his smaller communities, he makes what all sane persons
would admit to be a #reat mistake ' (Ethical Studies, p. 182).
Chap, iii, iv] SOCIETY AND CULTURE 93
from an occasional week spent in the sort of literary jpomposition
or proof-reading which does not promote intellectual advance-
ment to the self-sacrifice of the man who deliberately accepts a
far lower position than he might have achieved as a scholar
or a thinker to make himself an effective teacher or the
apostle of some unpopular cause. It is unnecessary to dwell
on the compensating gain which human interest and practical
sympathies bring to the student even within the intellectual
sphere itself. It is perhaps only in the region of the most purely
physical sciences that there is no such compensation, and in
the pursuit of these sciences complete detachment from all
human interests is for the most part avoided by the enormous
possibilities of conquest over Nature which they bring to the life
of man, and by the much greater opportunities of really adding
to the intellectual wealth of the world which are in this region
open to the most commonplace student than is the case in the
'humaner' studies. The student of many other subjects may be
weighed down by the consciousness that the world really wants
no more books of the kind that he can write ; but the world can
never know too many facts of physical Science or despise the
attempts at scientific explanation which lie within the reach of
every competent investigator.
Thus, when we turn from the individual to the society, there
is no ultimate collision between intellectual self-development and
that positive moral goodness of which self-sacrifice is the negative
side. For the individual there is no doubt a collision ; but the
problem which the collision raises is one which Reason is not in-
competent to solve. Reason recognizes that the direction and the
degree of each individual's capacities must be, if he wants to be
moral, limited by the equal value of the like capacity in others.
And, that being so, it follows that the highest life for the individual
isjQflJy attainable by that subordination of self to Society which
constitutes self-sacrifice. The measure and degree of that sacri-
fice must itself be determined by the requirements of social Well -
being. Each individual must develope the capacities which will
realize on the whole the good of greatest intrinsic worth *, having
1 To avoid repetition I ignore the question of distribution of good which
has already been dealt with in Book I, chap. viii.
94 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
regard to tfce fact that social good is best realized on the whole
by some specialization of social function. If there be any truth
in the theory of Vocation, Reason is not incompetent to determine
what, under a given set of circumstances, is the vocation of the
individual. The course dictated by that principle, the particular
balance between self -development and self-assertion which in each
case social Well-being demands, is the one and only course which
for that individual is right.
So far I have felt bound to deal with Mr. Bradley's indictment
against the Practical Reason. I have tried to show that Practical
Reason is never reduced to saying, ' Two inconsistent plans of life
are good, and I cannot decide which of them is the right one for
any individual at any one time to adopt/ If that be established,
that is as far as it is necessary to carry the discussion in any
ethical interest. Into the wider metaphysical implications of the
controversy it is not necessary to go at the present moment.
I need only remark that if the ethical question is not beyond the
capacities of the Practical Reason, any metaphysical conclusions
which may be based upon the assumption of its irreconcilable
dualism must so far be unfounded. If the position which I have
taken up be accepted, the allegation of self-contradiction in the
moral consciousness can only come to this -that there are many
things which would be good if the nature of things had only not
made their enjoyment incompatible with the enjoyment of still
better things. Under these cii'cumstances the question may be
raised, 'Are they really good?' How that question may be
answered is a matter of no directly ethical importance. The
only metaphysical consequence which might result from the
admission that one good is sometimes incompatible with another
would be the admission that it is possible to conceive of a better
world than actually exists. This is a position which it is no
doubt highly unphilosophical to adopt at a period when a ' cheap
and easy optimism* is regarded in many quarters as almost
essential to the philosophical character. But it is a position
with which few will quarrel except professed Philosophers,
But, once more, any ethical difficulties that there may be about
this collision between self-realization and self-assertion are
difficulties created for Ethics by Mr, Bradley's particular system
Chap, iii, v] CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR TAYLOR 95
of Metaphysic not difficulties created for Metaphysp by Ethics.
From the ethical point of view there is no difficulty about the
admission that goods are sometimes inconsistent with one
another. So long as it is admitted that it is possible to choose
the greatest good, and that such a choice and this only is
always right, there is no latent contradiction in our ethical
judgements : and, if that be admitted, one at least of the counts
in Mr. Bradley 's indictment against Reason is pronounced bad.
V
Since the greater part of this chapter was written Mr. Bradley 5 s
thesis has received an elaborate development at the hands of
Professor A. E. Taylor. My reply to Professor Taylor's argument
is substantially the same as that which I should make to
Mr. Bradley, with this addition, that in Professor Taylor's case
it is much more easy than in Mr. Bradley 's to reply to him out
of his own mouth. Mr. Bradley evidently does believe in the
* duality ' or internal contradiction of the Practical Reason, and
he docs not believe in either of his fundamentally opposed ethical
creeds overmuch. I do not mean, of course, that he is practi-
cally indifferent to ordinary moral interests, but he is not one of
those thinkers in whose speculative outlook confidence in the
dictates of the Practical Reason occupies a paramount position.
In Professor Taylor, however, the divorce between the man and
the philosopher is carried much further than with Mr. Bradley.
Professor Taylor as a man is evidently inclined to an enthusiastic
belief in the Practical Reason. So long as he confines himself
to the ethical point of view, he demonstrates with admirable
effect the unreality of the alleged ethical antinomy. He shows
nobody more conclusively that neither the ideal of self-realiza-
tion nor the ideal of absolute and exclusive self-sacrifice is
Morality as we know it. He is never tired of exhibiting
the fact that each of these ideals pushed to its logical extreme
would land us in what every unsophisticated Conscience
would pronounce to be hopelessly and irredeemably irrational
and immoral. The true moral ideal includes both elements:
a truly moral man will choose now one, now the other, whenever
96 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
(which, af ttr all, is the exception rather than the rule) * there is
a real necessity of choosing before them. If Professor Taylor has
not done much to analyse the principles upon which the moral
consciousness chooses between the two, he constantly assumes that
it is possible to choose, and that there is a right and a wrong
answer to the question. Some of the alleged contradictions find
admirable solutions in Professor Taylor's own pages. It is only
in exceptional cases that he even alleges that there is any real
difficulty in making a right choice; and the existence of such
difficult cases is no argument against the inherent capacity of
the moral consciousness or the validity of its decisions, any
more than the difficulty of discovering the laws of Nature, or
the existence of different opinions on historical problems, is an
argument against the validity of physical law or the existence
of objective historical truth. Sometimes, indeed, it seems difficult
to acquit Professor Taylor of failing to see (or perhaps of finding
it convenient to ignore) the difference between the claim of
validity for the moral judgement as such and the claim for
personal infallibility or omniscience on the part of the individual
Conscience. At all events it is only on the basis of such a con-
fusion that the existence of difficult questions of Casuistry on
which no wise or charitable man will care to pronounce with
much confidence still less to judge severely those who pronounce
otherwise can be regarded as the smallest argument for an
inherent and irremovable internal contradiction in the moral
consciousness itself.
VI
There is one other view connected with the collision between
self-development and self-sacrifice about which I should like to
add a word. It is sometimes assumed as a sort of postulate that
the good must be good not only for one but for all that there
can be no real discord between my good and another's. We
have already adopted many positions which preclude us from
1 ' There is probably no single virtue of all those recognised by popular
nomenclature which can be satisfactorily accounted for by either the require-
ments of full self-development or of social justice considered by themselves '
(The Problem of Conduct, p. 218).
Chap, iii, vi] INCOMPATIBLE GOODS 97
sharing that assumption. It is one which is hardly intelligible
except upon the assumption that the good, wilHr the -only*trne
good. If things like Elfiafii?rp *md-CWfrirft araadmitt&d to. be good,
the assertion that one man's pleasure or culture cannot be incon-
sistent with another's is clearly opposed to experience. To say
that, when the enjoyment of such things by the individual is in-
consistent with the good of another, it is not really good for the
former, implies that confusion between the idea of good and the
idea of right which lies at the root of so much chaos in more than
one system of Moral Philosophy. If the distinction between good
and right is to be kept up, it is clear that it is often right for the
individual to make a sacrifice which is not for his good in all
respects. Inasmuch as the doing right is for him the highest good,
he does promote his own highest good by the sacrifice : but to say
that it is not a sacrifice of good is to deny that the conception of
good is logically prior to that of right. I fail to see how any clear
ethical thinking is possible except upon the assumption that many
things are good which nevertheless the actual conditions of life
prevent our attaining, and that therefore the only possible object of
moral effort is to attain the greatest possible good not all conceiv-
able good. It may no doubt for some extra-ethical reason be held
that there is a sense in which, when the right course has been
chosen, we must assume not merely that the adoption of that
course is the greatest good attainable by the individual in the
given circumstances, but that all its consequences and concomi-
tants as well those in spite of which it is chosen as those
for which it is chosen are wholly good, and involve no evil at
all to any one. But that is a metaphysical theory with which
we are not now concerned : and it is so far from being a ne-
cessary postulate for Ethics that it may rather be pronounced
to be unethical or anti-ethical. There are many bad things in
the world besides bad voluntary actions; some of the conse-
quences of the best actions are consequences which our judge-
ments of value undoubtedly pronounce to be bad. If any one
pronounces that they arc nevertheless very good, that is an
assertion which cannot be made on ethical grounds ; it must
bo maintained on the basis of some Metaphysic (like that of
Mr. Bradley) which denies the ultimate validity of our moral
1U8HOALL II
98 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
judgements, not from the point of view of those who believe in
the validity of our practical judgements. To this subject I hope to
return in the chapter on * Metaphysic and Morals/ Meanwhile,
a word must be said about a form of this denial of* all collision
between my good and another which does rest apparently upon
purely ethical grounds 1 .
The assumption that what is good for one man must be good
for all has found its most explicit expression in that theory of
the 'common good' which plays so large a part in the ethical
teaching of Green and his followers. The phrase 'common
good ' is so loosely used by Green himself that it is sometimes
doubtful whether to him it always meant anything more
than ' the general good 2 ' ; but, in other passages and still
more as used by the disciples who have turned Green's vague
but stimulating Mysticism into hard arid rigid dogmas, it is
quite clear that the idea of the common good means some-
thing which is equally my good and that of every one else.
Nothing, it is assumed, can be moral which produces any evil
1 To meet an objection which would, I think, here be irrelevant, I may
say that I fully recognize that in strictness nothing can be good for one
person which is not a good absolutely, since the term could always imply
objectivity ; but, since nothing can (as it seems to me) be good but a state
of some consciousness, I think it would be pedantic to object to calling
a good state of a certain person's consciousness ' his good ' or a ' good for him,'
even where that good involves a greater evil in some other consciousness.
2 Sidgwick points out how far Green is from consistently maintaining
this idea of a 'common good. 1 After quoting Green's account of the just
man as one who ' will not promote his own wellbeing or that of one whom
he loves and likes ... at the cost of impeding in any way the wellbeing of
one who is nothing to him but a man, or whom he involuntarily dislikes, 1 he
remarks, * How, after writing this description of an ideally just man, Green
could possibly go on to say ( 232), that "the distinction of good for self
and good for others has never entered into that idea of a true good on
which moral judgments are founded," I cannot imagine ' (Ethics of Green,
p. 67). If Green were prepared to stick to the position that there is no
good but a good will, the contention that one man's good can never be in-
compatible with that of another might be plausibly (only plausibly) made,
but the extravagance of the position becomes glaring when (as he often
does) Green includes Art and Science in his conception of the end in spite
of his declaration that * the only good which is really common to all who
may pursue it, is that which consists in the universal will to be good*
(PwUgomena, 244).
Chap, iii, vi] HIGHER GOODS LESS EXCLUSIVE 99
at all for any living soul 1 . Now I readily admit and of
course from a practical point of view it is most important to
insist that it is a characteristic of the higher goods that they
are capable of being enjoyed by a larger number of persons
than the lower. In promoting knowledge I am not promoting
something which is necessarily my gain and another's loss.
I am exercising my faculties, attaining my good, getting my
enjoyment (or, as our friends will have it, * realizing' my
higher self) by the very same acts which are also adding to
the common intellectual wealth of the world. Knowledge is
not a thing which, like champagne or plum-pudding, becomes
less by being shared. My enjoyment of Shakespeare does not
diminish the amount of Shakespeare which there is to be en-
joyed by others : rather it has a tendency, so far as my
conduct has any effect on others, to stimulate, encourage, and
facilitate in them the reading and appreciation of Shakespeare.
No less clearly is that the case with a charitable action which
' blesses him who gives and him who takes.' This very simple
fact is, I take it, the real basis of the assumption that what
is good for me to do cannot be bad for another. But I would
observe that this is not universally the case even with the higher
goods. A picture can, it is true, be looked at by several people at
the same time, and by several hundred people one after the other,
in the course of a day. Practically, a Londoner can get a sight of
any particular picture in the National Gallery as often as he
wants to see it. But, if the passion for Art were equally dis-
tributed throughout the inhabitants of the Metropolis, if every
Londoner wanted to refresh his soul by gazing on a particular
Turner once a week, the crowding around that picture would
become highly inconvenient : the enjoyment of this privilege by
one certainly would be incompatible with its equal enjoyment
1 The assumption reminds me of the much-ridiculed doctrine of Mr. Herbert
Spencer that ' conduct which has any concomitant of pain, or any painful
consequence, is partially wrong ' (Data of Ethics, p. 261). The extrava-
gance is not really diminished when a similar assertion is made by those who
exclude pleasure from their idea of good. Many right acts the preaching
of really good sermons, for instance often do some moral harm to persons
to whom they do not happen to appeal.
H 2
ioo SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
by others. Even as matters actually stand, it is not the case that
the accumulation of pictures in Trafalgar Square is a ' common
good ' to the world in general. What is London's gain is cer-
tainly Italy's loss, and cannot, except in a very restricted sense,
be set down as Cornwall's gain. Still more easy is it to show
that the enjoyment of higher goods by one involves a loss of
lower goods by others. The Artists and the Connoisseurs eat
and drink a good deal, and the necessity of supporting them adds
to the toil and diminishes the profits or enjoyments of many
thousand working men. Doubtless the encouragement of Art
is good on the whole for the world, but it is not all gain. More-
over, it is important to remark that even in the typical case of
the charitable act which ' blesses him who gives and him who
takes,' the good of him who gives is not the same as that of him
who takes. The good Samaritan gets exercise for his Benevo-
lence, the man fallen among thieves gets the healing of wounds*
The Surgeon exercises his intellectual faculties and professional
skill ; his patients benefit by that skill, but what they get is
quite another good from his. This seems to make the term
* common good ' unsuitable. The end of Morality is a just dis-
tribution of goods, not the simultaneous enjoyment by all of one
and the same good.
In the case of those lower goods which nevertheless we have
agreed to call good, it is clear that the enjoyment of a good by one
is, not exceptionally but normally, incompatible with its enjoy-
ment by another. Two men cannot eat the same cake. We all
live at the expense of some one else's labour. No doubt it is
true that if we look at the whole effect upon Society at the
whole social system or reciprocal exchange of services which
Morality enjoins we may say that when two men treat each
other justly, the one gains as much in one way as he loses
in another. The ideal of human society is precisely a state of
things in which each contributes to the good of Society in one
way as much as he gets from Society in another, and so
constitutes that * kingdom of ends ' in which we have already
discovered the sanest and most workable of the Kantian for-
mulae. And it is naturally an element of this ideal that, as
far as possible, each should find his own pleasure in something
Chap, iii, vi] THE COMMON GOOD 101
which is as good for others as for himself. But this is only an
ideal, and the conditions of human life permit but a distant
approximation to it. The harmonizing of one man's interest
with that qf another must to a very great extent be effected
simply by the choice of the least evil an evil which really is
evil to some, though good for the whole.
I am not quite clear, however, whether in these somewhat
obvious reflections I am not really expressing what is meant by
many of those who profess the philosophy of the ' common
good/ If I am doing so, I can only submit that the phrase
' common good ' is badly chosen to express their meaning ; and
as used by some it certainly suggests the ideas which I have com-
bated. The doctrine of the ' common good/ strictly interpreted,
really implies Green's doctrine that nothing but the good will is
good at all (for only so can it soberly be asserted that goods
never collide with one another) a doctrine in which many of
those who inherit his phraseology decline to follow him. And
the position of Green on this matter is really open to the very
objection which he himself urged with so much force against
Kant the objection that it leaves the good will without content,
This position is merely disguised by talking about ' character '
or * perfection ' as the end instead of ' the good will.' If nothing
but the good will is good, there is no reason why one act of will
should be considered as better than another. And the good will
is the only good of one man which can never be actually incon-
sistent with the like good in another ; though after all it may be
doubted whether one man's good will is actually in itself the
good of another, and it is quite easy to imagine cases in which
one man's moral good could only be promoted by the neglect ol
another's.
In some of the writers with whom the ' common good ' theory
is popular, it is connected with a further metaphysical theory
the theory that not only the good but the self which is to be
realized is a common self common to each individual and to l the
Absolute ' so that in promoting his own true good the individual
is necessarily promoting the good of every other individual.
And it is further suggested at times that it is only upon this
assumption that there can be any logical basis for obedience to
102 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
the moral law. Altruism can only be justified by showing that
it is really Egoism l .
I have already touched on the metaphysical aspect of the
theory, and shall return to it hereafter. But even t if there be
a sense in which we may treat individual men and women as
being 'manifestations' or * appearances ' of an all-embracing
Absolute, Ethics surely has to do with the ' manifestations ' or
' appearances/ and not with the Unity. Ethics is concerned with
the relations of these apparently different and mutually exclusive
'appearances': and it is impossible to give any meaning to the
simplest ethical conceptions except upon the assumption that
I and my neighbour are (for ethical purposes) different persons,
and that my good is distinguishable from his good. I am told
to promote my neighbour's good because, since I and my neigh-
bour are really the same being, his good is really my good. But
I may quite reasonably reply that upon that supposition I have
only to promote my own good, and need not trouble about my
neighbour's, for in promoting my own good I must necessarily
be promoting his also. The theory can be used as a defence of
Egoism quite as reasonably as against it. Nor does the con-
sideration that I and my neighbour equally derive our being
from the same Absolute seem to me to constitute any ground or
basis for moral obligation which would not exist apart from that
supposition. If all that is meant by the theory is that when the
1 I have noticed above Mr. Bradley's use of this doctrine (Vol. I, p. 67), but
the most explicit formulation of the assumption which I have met with is to be
found in Bishop d 1 Arcy's Short Study of Ethics (pp. 102, 120 et passim). 'Why,*
he says (p. 143), ' should a man sacrifice his desires for the sake of a common
good ? The religious view of morality answers the question at once : Be-
cause all are one in God, and the common good is the true good of every
individual.' I should not deny the truth of the last proposition in a
certain sense, because my moral consciousness does judge that action for
the general good possesses value, but if my moral consciousness did not
so judge, Bishop d'Arcy's Metaphysic certainly would not convince me of
the duty. Would the Bishop (with Schopenhauer) hold that I must also im-
pute to myself (and to the Absolute) my neighbour's sins ? The last con-
tention would seem to be quite as reasonable as the former. Dr. d'Arcy,
being a Bishop, shrinks from pronouncing the absolute identity of every
individual (good or bad) with his neighbour and with God (and uses the
vague phrase 'one in God'), but his Logic requires the omission of the
1 one in. f
Chap, iii, vii] DISTINCTION OF SELVES 103
idea of objectivity inherent in the very nature of all moral
obligation is thought out to its logical consequences, it implies
Theism, that is a doctrine with which I fully sympathize, and
on which I hope hereafter to insist. But the idea of moral
obligation is no deduction from the idea of God, whether con-
ceived of in a purely theistic or in a more or less pantheistic
sense. Rather it is one of those immediate data of consciousness
from which the idea of God may be inferred. If the notion of
obligation or intrinsic validity or objectivity were not inherent
in the immediate affirmation of the moral consciousness, no
demonstration of the metaphysical unity of God and man or self
and neighbour could possibly put it there. If the practical
Reason did not recognize an intrinsic value in my neighbour's
personality, no demonstration as to the common metaphysical
origin and the actual identity of the two selves could possibly
convince me of such value. Ethical truths may, and, I believe,
do, contain metaphysical implications ; but no ethical truth can
possibly be deduced from or proved by any metaphysical con-
siderations which are not ethical. Ethical truth can rest upon
nothing whatever but the actual deliverances of the moral con-
sciousness. And the moral consciousness certainly knows nothing
of any metaphysical identity between myself and my neighbour.
On the contrary it assumes that we are two and not one. If in
any sense it is to be shown that we are one, that is a position
which must be established on grounds independent of Ethics.
VII
There is another conception of the ethical end which has
many analogies with the ideal of 'self-realization/ Professor
Simmel, the most brilliant of recent ethical writers, has attempted
to find an ethical criterion in the idea of a ' maximum of Energy '
(Thdtigkeit) 1 . It is not merely pleasure which gives life ita
value; a life in which there is much pain and much pleasure
would be positively better than one in which there is only
1 Einhitung, I, p. 371 sq. He wholly fails to show that in any natural sense
there is a greater * Quantum von Zwecksetzung ' (II, p. 359), or a ' Willens
maximum ' in good rather than in bad conduct.
104 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
pleasure. The most desirable kind of life is one in which there
are many ups and downs, plenty of excitement, many a ' crowded
hour of glorious life/ a maximum ' swing ' or oscillation between
the heights of exaltation and the depths of depression l . Now
in some ways it may be freely admitted that Simmel's ideal is
a great improvement upon the ideal of ' self-realization/ His
formula is far less of a mere form ; it is to some extent a concrete
ideal. And it emphasizes many points which we may recognize
as important aspects of a high ethical ideal. Unlike the ' self-
realization ' ideal, it is riot purely self-regarding : it is not only
for himself that the good man will promote a 'maximum of
activity/ but also for others ; and there is no confusion between
one's own good and that of otEers. Simmers ideal man will
promoteTTKeEin3 of life that has most value on the whole,
though in particular cases he may judge that an exciting career
for himself is really so good a thing that he may sacrifice to it
large masses (as it were) of inferior life. Moreover, the doctrine
exhibits impressively some of the differences which would exist
in detail between a hedonistic standard of Ethics resolutely
applied and one which recognizes other elements of value in
human life besides pleasure. As against the ideal of ' harmonious
development/ it insists that what is best in human life as we
know it is often a state of violent internal discord, of struggle
and unquiet, rather than of smug and contented spiritual self-
complacency. And again it is valuable as a reminder that we
cannotjinj/^^ maintain a sharp and rigid dis-
tinction between ends andjrneans ; the means are part of the end.
AlPethical thought becomes, indeed, impossible, unless we do
recognize a distinction between ends and means: it is because
the end has value that the means to it are justified. But
Moralists who have thoroughly grasped this doctrine are beset
by the temptation to suppose that the character of the means is
unimportant, and may be ignored in estimating the lightness or
wrongness of the act. All human activity does, indeed, consist
in the pursuit of ends, but the end is often in itself far less
valuable than the pursuit. Human life consists chiefly in the
1 ' , . . die Schwingungsweite zwischon der Lust und dem Schmerz eines
Lebens der GrOsse seiner Thfttigkeit proportional ist.' Einleitung, I, p. 388.
Chap, iii, vii] SIMMEL'S ETHICAL END 105
doing of things which are means to ends: the end must have
value, but whether it is worth pursuing or not must depend
very often upon the character of the activities which will lead
to that end. From one point of view such activities must be
looked upon as means ; from another they are part of the end.
That is obviously the case even from the hedonistic point of
view, as is seen most conspicuously in the case of games. ' Sport'
has been well defined as the overcoming of difficulties simply for
the sake of overcoming them : and from a non-hedonistic point
of view it must be still more emphatically recognized that the
activity which is involved in the pursuit of an end is often
something much higher and more valuable than the end that it
attains, as that end would be apart from the activity. Man does
not live by bread alone. His energies are largely absorbed in
the pursuit of bread, but the bread-winning is often a higher
and nobler thing than the bread. The true good of human life
(as we know it) does not consist in the pursuit of some end
which we first pursue and then enjoy at leisure, but in activities
which are constantly seeking to satisfy needs which, even if
satisfied, are only supplanted by fresh needs. Both the enjoy-
ment and the nobleness of life often lie in the pursuit. When
people have no unsatisfied needs, they can only give a value to
life by more or less successful efforts to invent new ones.
Simmers theory brings out, too, the fact that in detail the
duty of one man even, it may be said, the concrete ideal which
it is right for one man to pursue is not the same as that
of another. It insists on the need for varieties of individual
development and practical activity. All these elements of truth
we may freely recognize in SimmeFs formula, but when it is put
forward as an exclusive and adequate ideal, it is too hopelessly
vague to be worth serious examination. How can ' amount of
activity ' be measured ? I can, indeed, compare the value of the
very dissimilar activities ; I can even by a considerable effort of
abstraction estimate the amount of pleasure which there is in
each. But how am I to say whether there is a greater quantity
of activity in the most exciting kind of historical research or in
a steeplechase, in Philosophy or in football? So far as quan-
tities of activity can be estimated, no one probably ever crowded
io6 SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE [Book II
more of it into his own life or caused more of it in others than
Napoleon Buonaparte, but no one who attaches any meaning to
the idea of Morality can well recognize in Napoleon his
highest ethical ideal. Simmel's doctrine is one of those which
spring from the desire to invent new theses, without which it is
impossible to write sensational works on Moral Philosophy.
The airing of new ideas is often, no doubt, more exciting, more
full of activity (of Thatigkeit) than the elucidation, correction,
and harmonization of older and truer ones. Acts can only be con-
sidered right or wrong relatively to some end other than the acts
themselves, however true it may be that the will which wills that
good is a greater good than the good which it wills. Neither
'duty for duty's sake' nor 'activity for activity's sake' is a
rational ethical watchword, unless each is supplemented by the
doctrine that the end which duty aims at promoting must be
a good one, and that the ' activity ' which is a good must be
either part of the end which we pronounce good or a means to
it. Such formulae as ' activity for the sake of activity ' or ' self-
realization ' spring from an unwillingness to admit the simple,
ultimate, and unanalysable character of the idea of good, without
the admission of which there can be no such thing as Morality.
The contents of our moral consciousness cannot be translated or
paraphrased into any language which does not contain the word
1 good ' or its synonym.
Both the difficulties which have been raised as a ground for
accusing Morality of internal contradiction, and some of those
which lie at the root of Simmel's exaggerated theory of maximum
activity, are, we have seen reason to believe, met by the due
recognition of the fact that though duty is incumbent upon
every one, though the good of society is the end for all, that
good demands and includes a great variety of individual goods,
and that not all these goods can either be promoted or enjoyed
within the compass of a single life. This represents a side of
ethical truth which is generally expressed by the doctrine that
different men have different vocations a doctrine which will be
further examined and developed in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV
VOCATION
I HAVE tried to establish the position that acts are virtuous
in so far as they tend to promote and to distribute justly
a Well-being which consists in various elements possessing
very different degrees of intrinsic value. The ideal life would
be a life into which the different elements of 'good' should
enter in the degree appropriate to their intrinsic worth; in
which, roughly speaking, intellectual should be subordinated to
moral well-being, while lower desires are indulged in such a way
and to such an extent as are most conducive to the due predomi-
nance of the higher ; or, more simply, in which every desire,
every element in consciousness is accorded the place which is
due to its own intrinsic worth. It might seem to follow that
the ideal of Morality in its narrower sense, the ideal aim of the
virtuous will, must be to realize these various * goods ' in propor-
tion to their relative importance for each and every human
being. But such an account of human duty takes no account of
the fact that for Society in general the highest amount of good
cannot be realized by each individual endeavouring to secure for
himself and to promote for every other all sorts of good. In no
one life is the gratification, in any high degree, of all even
among the better desires possible; while the very attempt to
gratify all equally makes impossible the attainment of any one
of the best kinds of life. And, again, from the point of view of
Society, a certain specialization of function, or what, looked at
from the economic point of view, is known as division of labour,
is equally imperative. Not only is it practically impossible for
the same individual in every case to devote his time and energy
to the promotion of highest . and higher and lowest goods in
io8 VOCATION [Book II
the proportion of their intrinsic worth, but even among goods of
the particular rank which it is his social function to promote, he
must devote himself to the promotion of some one particular
good, if a maximum return, so to speak, is to be, produced.
The labourer must devote the bulk of his time not merely to
producing food but to producing a particular kind of food.
And the conditions of human life are, unfortunately, such that
a very much larger proportion of the energies of most men
have to be devoted to producing the lower kind of goods than
to the production of the higher.
Moreover, this specialization of the good-producing energies
of each individual carries with it a further specialization of the
good which he must himself enjoy. For, though the abstraction
is useful and legitimate for some purposes, we cannot treat the
production of good as though it were really a totally distinct
thing from the enjoyment of good ; as though a man simply
produced by his social activity one sort of good, while the good
that he himself enjoys is something wholly distinct and separable
from it, something produced by other people for him, and given
to him in exchange for his services by the other members of his
society, just as the wages received by a husbandman are some-
thing quite distinct from the corn which he produces. We
have seen that a large part of the good which can be enjoyed in
human life consists precisely in these socially directed activities.
Both moral and intellectual goods are attained by contributing
in some special way to the good of Society. And, consequently, if
a man concentrates his energies on the production of some one
kind of good, that will largely determine the nature of the good
which he will enjoy, when good life comes to be looked at as the
individual's share in a social Well-being. The nature of his
contribution to social good must largely determine, so to speak,
the nature of his dividend. If a man's social function is to
plough the fields, that energy of ploughing will not be so much
energy taken off from the production of higher good and con-
centrated on the production of lower, but it will determine to a
large extent the nature of the Well-being that will fall to his
share ; for it is in and through this social function of ploughing
that he will attain that highest good which consists in the
Chap, iv, i] DUTIES RELATIVE TO VOCATION 109
direction of his will towards good, or, more simply, in the
performance of his duty. And, though in the particular case of
ploughing, the limitations which it sets to intellectual activity
are more conspicuous than the scope which it affords, it is none
the less true that even mechanical occupations involve some
intellectual activity. The ploughman, even when ploughing, is
at least doing something that cannot be done by a beast. He
will attain his highest good in ministering to the bodily wants
of others; while, though it is obviously desirable that the
ploughman should enjoy some of those higher goods of life
which have no special relation to his function, the kind and
amount of other goods higher and lower alike which will
fall to his lot must be largely such as are incidental to or com-
patible with the occupation of- ploughing. As compared with
the town workman in a factory for instance, the country
labourer enjoys a more varied and interesting occupation, an
occupation which brings with it a greater variety of mental
activities and a greater development of individual initiative,
the pleasures and the health that come from life in the open air,
the use of a less crowded house and a garden of his own; he
cannot enjoy the social and political life, the social interests
(outside his work) and the exciting amusements which partially
atone to the townsman for the squalor and discomfort of his
surroundings. Of course some of these limitations in either case
are due to defective and improvable social arrangements ; but it
is clear that in any society different individuals must enjoy, as
they promote, different kinds of good. Hence a large part of
human duty consists in acts which are not the duty of all men.
A large part of human duty consists in the duties of one's
* Vocation/
It is not only in the discharge of his formal social function, the
function which constitutes (as we say) his business or profession
or ' state of life/ that there must be some specialization. Even in
the kinds of good that it is not the business of any recognized
profession to promote, it is clearly desirable and necessary that
different men should contribute to social good in different ways.
In philanthropy, in social service, in the choice between different
modes of life, there is room for different vocations. An exhaustive
i io VOCATION [Book II
treatise on Casuistry would have to deal not merely with the
duties of different vocations, but also with the question, on what
principles a man should determine what is his social function,
whether in the way of formal or official calling, or in the
direction of his own voluntary energies within the limits
allowed by universally binding moral obligations and by those
which are incident to his profession or occupation. Moreover,
in resolving duty into an obligation to contribute to general
Well-being, it is not merely the kind but the amount of such
contribution that is undetermined. Here there is another group
of questions upon which Moral Philosophy ought to have some-
thing to say, if it is to aim at a complete analysis of the contents
of the moral consciousness. It must give some answer to the
question, ' What are to be the limits of the individual's self-
sacrifice ? ' And if there are limits which a man is not bound
to pass, the question may further be raised whether he is at
liberty, if he pleases, to do more ? If not, must we admit that
it is possible for a man to do more than his duty ? Can there
be works of Supererogation ?
II
There is yet another reason for devoting some special con-
sideration to this question of Vocation. In the question ( How
am I to know and recognize my Vocation ? ' we have a peculiarly
good illustration of the inadequacy of Intuitionism in any of its
various forms to formulate the procedure by which reasonable
men really do determine, and feel that they ought to determine,
their duty under particular circumstances. This difficulty is well
illustrated by the treatment of the subject by James Martineau,
a writer whose Intuitionism takes the form of a theory that a
man's duty is always that course of action to which he is
prompted by the highest motive, a motive which is recognized
as such by the immediate affirmation of Conscience. Let us see
how such a test would work as applied to this very important
duty that of choosing one's Vocation rightly.
Martineau's ethical criterion is thus formulated: * Every
action is RIGHT which, in presence of a lower principle, follows a
higher : every action is WRONG which, in presence of a higher
Chap, iv, ii] THEORY OF MARTINEAU in
principle, follows a lower V The moral order of precedence
among the possible principles or 'springs' of action is elabo-
rately determined by that writer, while immediately after the
table in which he sums up the results of this enquiry there
follows a section on the question, ' How far a Life must be
chosen among these/ Martineau here distinctly faces the
objection that it rests in great measure on our own action which
motives shall be presented to the mind and which shall not.
Unless the higher motive be actually present to the mind, the
action motived by the lower ' spring ' cannot, according to him,
be wrong. ' Ought we to content ourselves/ he asks, ' with
treating the springs of action as our data, with which we have
nothing to do but to wait till they are flung upon us by circum-
stance, and then to follow the best that turns up ? ' 2 The
objection could not be more aptly stated. Martineau meets it
by admitting that ' if there be at the command of our will, not
only the selection of the better side of an alternative, but also a
predetermination of what kind the alternative shall be, the
range of our duty will undoubtedly be extended to the creation
of a higher plane of circumstance, in addition to the higher
preference within it/ But on what principle is a man to make
his choice between the higher and the lower ' plane of circum-
stance ' ? How is he to recognize the higher plane ? From
Martineau's fundamental principle it would seem to follow that
a man is always bound to choose that ' plane of circumstance '
on which he will be likely to find the higher motives streaming
into his consciousness in the richest abundance and with the
greatest force. Martineau himself raises the question : * If com-
passion is always of higher obligation than the loce of gain or
family affection, how can a man ever be justified in quitting his
charities for his business or his home ? ' But to this question he
has supplied no adequate answer. The only way in which he
strives to beat down the difficulty which he has himself so
forcibly raised is by the contention that ' the limits . . . within
which the higher moral altitudes can be secured by voluntary
command of favouring circumstances are extremely narrow/
1 Types of Ethical Theory, 3rd ed., II, p. 270.
2 Ib., p. 267,
H2 VOCATION [Book II
This view he supports by insisting upon the undoubted fact that
a man cannot entirely alter his nature by artificial change of
environment, upon the moral advantage of the ' various clashing
of the involuntary and the voluntary/ upon the moral ill effects
of setting aside ' relations human and divine ' by the choice of
an apparently higher walk of life. Now, in the first place, I
remark that, in so far as a man deliberately turns a deaf ear to
the solicitation of a higher motive from regard to the considera-
tions insisted upon by Martineau, he is deserting the fundamental
principle of the system. In urging a man to repress his benevo-
lent aspirations for fear of the moral effects (social and personal)
of the neglect of family relations and the like, Martineau is
distinctly transferring the object of moral discrimination from
the motives to the consequences of the alternative courses of
action. He is deserting the Highest-motive criterion for the
principle (to use terms invented by Sidgwick) of individualistic
or of universaliatic Perfectionism, He bids the seeker after
moral truth in certain particular cases act upon the lower
in preference to the higher motive ; l and yet no adequate rules
are given for the discrimination of these exceptional cases. If
in one particular instance a man is permitted to disobey
Martineau's fundamental canon from fear of the moral ill
consequences which might subsequently ensue, how can he obey
it in any case in which he foreseen that the net moral results of
acting on the higher motive will be less satisfactory than those
which result from choosing the lower motive ? The method of
Ethics to which such a principle would lead would be a very
different one from the method of introspection into motives.
But we must return to Martineau's contention ' that the limits
within which the higher moral altitudes can be secured by a
voluntary command of favouring circumstances are extremely
narrow ' Here I venture very decidedly to join issue. It is
all very well to point to the moral failure of monastic systems,
and the danger of neglecting natural ' relations, human and
1 Types, II, p. 270. It might, indeed, be pleaded that the desire of doing
right as such is higher than the benevolent desire ; but Martineau does not
admit the existence of a desire to do the light thing in general, as distinct
from an impulse to satisfy some particular good desire.
Chap, iv, ii] CHOICE OF PROFESSION 113
divine '. But what relations does Martineau mean 1 It may be
true that a man cannot desert ' his business or his home for his
charities ' without neglecting ' relations human and divine/
when once he has got a business or a home. But it rested with
himself to create or not to create the business or the home in
the first instance. And on what principles is he to decide
whether to create them or not ? Practically, Martineau's advice
to any one in doubt as to the choice of an employment or
profession seems to be, ' Don't choose one at all/ ' Let him
accept his lot/ he tells us, ' and work its resources with willing
conscience, and he will emerge with no half-formed and crippled
character V This might be good advice to one born heir to an
estate or a great business; it would be intelligible advice
though there are cases in which its morality would be question-
able to a son brought up by an arbitrary father for a particular
profession ; but to the man who is really free to choose between
half a dozen different ' lots/ and in anxious doubt which of them
to adopt, the precept ' Accept your lot ' will seem but a mocking
echo of the problem that distracts him. If 'one's lot' means
one's actual profession, the advice is meaningless to the boy or
the man who has not entered upon any ; if ' one's lot ' means the
lot to which one is called, the precise difficulty lies in knowing
what that lot is. The maxim ' Perform the duties of your
vocation ' is of no use to a man grappling with the tremendous
problem to many a man the most difficult practical problem
which he ever has to face of finding out what his true voca-
tion is.
The duty of choosing a profession has been well called I
think by Sir John Seeley the most important of all duties, and
the same writer very reasonably complains of the almost total
neglect of this department of Ethics by Moralists. And the
neglect is not the least conspicuous in the writers who most
tend to limit the whole duty of man to the ' duties of one's
station.' ' My Station and its Duties ' is the title of the only
chapter of Ethical Studies in which Mr. Bradley faces the
question of the moral criterion. ' My station and duties ' is
the formula by which he seeks to answer that question ; and yet
1 Types, II, p. 270.
RA8BDALL II I
i J4 VOCATION [Book II
in the whole chapter there is not a word as to the principles
upon which a man's station must be chosen except what is
contained in the lines :
One place performs like any other place
The proper service every place on earth
Was framed to furnish man with 1 .
It should be observed that this question of choosing a pro-
fession is precisely one to which the ordinary objections to the
systematic treatment of questions of Casuistry do not apply at
all. Against such a treatment it may plausibly be urged in
ordinary cases that the decision, when the difficulty actually
arises, has to be taken without prolonged and self-conscious
deliberation ; that to deliberate in the face of an apparent duty
generally means to seek an excuse for evading it ; that there is
something morally unwholesome in elaborate introspection and
self-analysis, and still more in the anticipation of abnormal moral
perplexities, or even in dwelling upon them when they arise ;
and, finally, that the details of Morality as opposed to its general
principles do not admit of scientific adjustment : * the particulars
are matters of immediate perception,' as Aristotle puts it 2 . But
the choice of a profession is precisely a question which from the
nature of the case mutt be deliberated on, and about which, in
numerous instances, conscientious men do deliberate long and
anxiously. Here, if anywhere, it would appear reasonable to
expect that a system of Moral Philosophy might have some
guidance to offer to anxious seekers after Right. Even if the
scientific discussion of such a subject were of little direct use to
the doubting Conscience of the individual (as no doubt must
generally be the case with theoretical determinations of practical
questions), it might at least be expected to be of some value in
determining the advice which should be given to others upon
a subject upon which more than on any other moral question
men are wont at times to seek for counsel and advice. The
Moral Philosopher as such is no more capable of answering such
a question than any one else ; but he ought surely to be able to
point out the considerations upon which its solution turns, and
so to state the question in a manner in which it admits of an
1 Ethical Studies, p. 183. 2 aifftirjra yap ra Kaff f*aora.
Chap, iv, ii] THE HIGHEST MOTIVE TEST 115
answer. I need hardly say that in the present chapter I make
no pretension to contribute to the discussion of the subject any-
thing which would be likely to be of much value either to
enquirer QJ: adviser in such cases. I merely wish to point out
that the question of choosing a profession is a peculiarly good
test of any philosophical criterion of Morality, and to show that
Martineau's criterion is one which could not practically be
applied to its determination, or at least that the results of its
adoption would be such as would not commend themselves
to the practical moral judgement of thoughtful and reasonable
men.
It will be well perhaps, at this stage of my argument, to call
attention to the psychological grounds upon which Martineau
bases what I must respectfully call his evasion of this problem :
' The limits, however, within which the higher moral altitudes
can be secured by voluntary command of favouring circumstance
are extremely narrow. Go where we may, we carry the most
considerable portion of our environment with us in our own
constitution ; from whose propensioiis, passions, affections, it is
a vain attempt to fly. The attempt to wither them up and
suppress them by contradiction has ever been disastrous : they
can be counteracted and disarmed and taught obedience only by
Ereoccupation of mind and heart in other directions. Nothing
ut the enthusiasm of a new affection can silence the clamours of
one already there V
Martineau's treatment of the whole subject seems to have been
warped by the assumption that the only way in which a man
can attempt to raise himself to ' the higher moral altitudes by
the voluntary command of favouring circumstance ' is by ' going
out of the world ' in the monastic sense. He insists with much
force upon the folly of attempting to suppress the lower ' pro-
pensions, passions, and affections' by one tremendous sacrifice
of the external goods or surroundings which seem most obviously
to call them into activity. It is quite true that * it is a vain
attempt to fly' from one's natural ' propensions, passions, and
affections/ by change of external environment ; but it is entirely
possible to give a wholly new direction to them by such a change.
> Types, IT, p. 268.
I 2
ii6 VOCATION [Book II
It is precisely because ' the affections can be counteracted and
disarmed and taught obedience only by preoccupation of mind
and heart in other directions ' that the influence of environment
upon character is of such decisive importance. It is jjist because
' nothing but the enthusiasm of a new affection can silence the
clamours of one already there, 1 and because some occupations
are so much more favourable than others to the growth of ' new
affections ' of the right kind, that a man's character is so largely
determined by himself determined by himself, but determined
in ordinary cases once for all by the choice of his walk in life.
Without denying to every honourable and worthy calling
either its characteristic virtues or its characteristic vices, it is
surely undeniable that some professions are as a rule more
favourable to the development of character than others. It is
not to the purpose to allege that all callings are compatible with
the highest Morality. Exceptional men may lead exceptional
lives in any walk of life; the very obstacles to Virtue which
some careers present will become so many occasions for moral
achievement to those who are capable of triumphing over them.
But we are not dealing with exceptional men, but with ordinary
men, though (since ex hypothesi they are desirous of regulating
their choice on the highest principles) with ordinary good men.
And the characters of ordinary men are enormously moulded
by their environment by the nature of their work, by the
people with whom it will bring them into contact, and by the
nature of that contact. To such men when hesitating as to the
choice of a profession such alternatives as these are constantly
presenting themselves. A man hesitates between the profession
of a physician and that of an officer, more or less clearly fore-
seeing that if he becomes an officer there lies before him (in time
of peace) a life of idleness just disguised and sweetened by a
moderate quantity of routine work, a life of comfort and pleasure,
if not of luxury and self-indulgence, to say nothing of the actual
temptations naturally associated with such a life. Against this
there may seem to him (rightly or wrongly) little to be set except
the rare opportunities of heroism and patriotic service which may
from time to time present themselves in war. As a doctor there
lies before him a life of hard work and great usefulness a life in
Chap.iv, ii] MORAL EFFECTS OF PROFESSIONS 117
which there will be daily and hourly calls for the exercise of sym-
pathy, self-denial, and devotion. Or again, take the case of a man
hesitating between the life of a parish clergyman and some
commercial occupation. Of course the temptations of the
highest callings the degradation of the man who cannot in some
measure rise to the moral level which they demand are great in
proportion to the opportunities which they offer. But it will
hardly be denied that most men who have adopted the profession
of a parochial clergyman from not wholly unworthy motives
sometimes even that exception might be omitted are made
better by the demand which such work incessantly creates for
sympathy, for self -judgement, for moral effort, for charity in the
highest sense of the word. How constantly does one find the
highest qualities developed by a few years of serious clerical
work among the poor in a man who certainly showed no signs
of their possession as an undergraduate l ? Can it be doubted that
those virtues might very probably have remained, to say the
least of it, equally dormant and unobtrusive had he gone into
business ? It is not, however, necessary for my argument to
show that the actual moral performance of one profession is on
an average superior to that of another, though I should myself
have little doubt of the fact. The question is, whether some pro-
fessions do or do not make greater and more frequent demands than
others upon the higher ' springs of action ' and so create a ' higher
plane of circumstance/ Here I should have thought there could
not be room for the smallest doubt. Professions which bring
a man into contact with human suffering must surely more
frequently suggest benevolent impulses than those whose work
is done in the study or the office, whatever be the response
which is actually made to such higher suggestions. Professions
which offer opportunies for work not wholly dictated by personal
interest call for these higher motives more frequently than work
1 Of course, to other men the opposite choice might be morally the more
successful. I am assuming the case of the man who possesses in some measure
the particular capacities which clerical work might call out. It must be
remembered that I am myself contending that the character of the f springs
of action ' to which the work appeals is not the right principle on which to
base the choice of a profession.
Ji8 VOCATION [Book II
in which there is comparatively little room for any honesty
except the narrow honesty which is the best policy. Professions
which necessarily involve an attitude of antagonism to moral
evil must clearly be more likely to excite those sentiments of
compassion and reverence which Martineau places at the head
of his table of ' springs of action ' than professions in which the
existence of evil is either kept out of sight or has for the most
part to be accepted as a datum instead of being grappled with.
If that be so, I cannot see how, on his principle, a man to whom
the profession which will secure the presence of these higher
motives has once suggested itself, could ever be justified in adopt-
ing one which will place him on a lower ' plane of circumstance. 1
Whether he possesses the capacity or taste for the work, whether
it is probable that he will succeed in making as frequent response
to these higher springs as he might make to the good but inferior
springs of action suggested by work of a less morally exacting
kind, whether he will be more useful to Society by adopting the
calling which makes the greater demand upon the higher springs
all these are, as it seems to me, utilitarian considerations with
which the Intuitionist of the 'highest motive' school cannot
logically concern himself. Whether the moral value of the
motives immediately prompting a man to choose the one calling
or the other be considered, or whether we have recourse to
Martineau's supplementary rule of choosing the ' higher plane of
circumstance,' nothing could, as it seems to me, justify a man in
choosing what we may for the wake of convenience call the lower
profession in preference to the higher, but the fact that the
desire of adopting the latter had never occurred to him, or that
he had never had one moment's experience of those higher
desires which would be gratified by the adoption of the higher
profession. Exactly the same difficulties would arise if we
assigned a higher value than Dr. Martineau to the intellectual
and aesthetic impulses, and attempted to base the choice of a
profession upon the extent to which it would promote the man's
own self -development.
It must be remembered that the collision of motives respec-
tively impelling a man to the choice of two alternative walks of
life is not commonly limited to the collision between one higher
Chap. iv,ii] POSSIBILITY OF MIXED MOTIVES 119
motive and one good but somewhat lower motive. Martineau,
indeed, shows a disposition to deny the possibility of action
impelled by a mixture of motives ; but whatever be the case
with actions actually performed, there can surely be no doubt
that, so long as alternative courses are still in contemplation, it
seldom happens that the man is impelled to the one or other
course by one motive alone. This is eminently the case with
the choice of a profession. Sometimes, indeed, some of the
lowest inducements will persist in arraying themselves on the
side of the highest of all. What more common in religious
men than a coincidence between the * love of power or ambition '
(placed seventh on Dr. Martineau's list), or even ' love of gain/
and the promptings of ' compassion ' or ' reverence ' ? So again
in the familiar struggle between intellectual and philanthropic
impulses, the lowest desires of all will commonly take the side
of the former. ' Love of ease and sensual pleasure ' will ally
itself with ' love of culture ' in deterring a man from those
active professions to which he is prompted by 'generosity 5 and
' compassion ' in the present, and in which those motives of
action are likely to be most frequently called into activity in
the future. It must be remembered that where a higher desire
and the wish to provide for a future supply of such desires
point one way, and the lower desires the other, the higher
desire is by no means always a predominant, habitual, or over-
mastering desire. Where that is the case, it may be a man's
duty to adopt it irrespectively of inclination. The thought of
the higher vocation may, indeed, be a mere transient, inter-
mittent aspiration. The man may shrink from the higher
vocation (though willing to accept it if proved to be his duty)
with an aversion in which dislike of its hardships, felt incapacity
for its duties, and the overmastering attraction of some less
exalted though not unworthy passion or ambition will mingle
almost inextricably. Yet, if it be once admitted that the moral
value of the impelling motives must determine the choice, it
must follow that no man attracted to the army by 'love of
power or ambition ' could ever conscientiously devote himself to
that profession if a ' love of culture ' had once suggested to him
the thought of being an artist ; that no man who had ever felt
120 VOCATION [Book II
sincere compassion for the sorrows of the poor, and recognized
the supreme nobleness of philanthropic work, could ever devote
himself conscientiously to the cause of Science or learning ; that
no woman who had ever aspired after the usefulness of a hospital
nurse or a schoolmistress could ever conscientiously consent to
marry a squire or a man of business l .
In fact, since the profession to which a man is most strongly
attracted commonly presents itself to him in an agreeable light
i. e. as likely to satisfy some of his lower desires as well as one
or more of the higher ones it would scarcely be an exaggera-
tion to say that on Martineau's principles it will generally be a
man's duty, when hesitating between two or more professions, to
choose that which he dislikes most 2 . Such a preposterous con-
clusion would, of course, have been rejected by Martineau as
emphatically as it would by any other sensible man. Yet from
the perplexities and paradoxes which we have been considering
there seems to be no way of escape so long as we confine
ourselves to a purely subjective criterion, and refuse to consider
the consequences of our action upon social Well-being.
It is true, indeed, that Martineau might point to not a few
passages of his book where the calculation of consequences is
admitted to have a place in morals ; but the relation of the
1 The following words from a letter of Ruskin may illustrate the situation
I am contemplating : ' I am . . . tormented between the longing for rest and
lovely life and the sense of this terrific call of human crime for resistance
and human misery for help ' (Collingwood, Life and Work of John Buskin,
1893, II, p. 7). And yet it may be safely asserted that, even if we measured
its value solely by its effects upon the condition of the poor, Ruskin's
actual career accomplished far more than he would have done had he
turned his back upon Literature and Art and devoted his life to some
directly philanthropic cause : but such indirect social effects could not of
course be expected in all cases.
2 It is difficult to bring within Martineau's table some of the motives
which frequently have most weight in disposing a man to one or other
profession. Perhaps the strongest likings or dislikings for particular
callings commonly rest upon a love of society or of society of a particular
kind, or upon dislike of a particular kind of society. (By society I mean all
kinds of intercourse with one's fellow men.) It is hard to explain such
likings or dislikings by any of Martineau's ' springs,' whether taken singly
or in combination. The only love of pleasure which he recognizes is ' love
of sensual pleasure.'
Chap, iv, iii] THE UTILITARIAN TEST iai
' canon of consequences ' to the canon of motives is nowhere
adequately explained. In one passage 1 , indeed, it is admitted
that such a ' computation is already more or less involved in the
preference pf this or that spring of action ; for, in proportion as
the springs of action are self-conscious, they contemplate their
own effects, and judgement upon them is included in our judge-
ment of the disposition.' If this admission be pressed, it seems
to me to amount to the practical adoption of a consequential or
teleological criterion of the morality of at least all deliberate
actions. All action must affect some one, and if a man is
reflecting upon the course of conduct which it is right for him
to pursue, it must surely occur to him that the consequences of
one course of action will be more socially beneficial than those
of another. How, then, can he fail to be moved to the adoption
of that alternative by * Compassion ' ? And Compassion 2 in the
table before us takes precedence of all other springs of action
except * reverence/ Except, therefore, in so far as its dictates
may be modified by those of reverence, compassion seems to be
practically erected into the ethical criterion. This, however, is
not explicitly admitted by the f ramer of that table, and we are
obliged to assume that comparison of motives is meant to be his
working criterion.
III.
It may be urged that, however unsatisfactory Martineau's
criterion for the determination of cases of Conscience such as
these may be, no more satisfactory guidance is to be obtained
from any other. If we adopt tendency to promote social good
(however understood) as our test, is not the difficulty, it may be
asked, quite as great ? If a man's duty is to adopt the course of
conduct which produces the greatest amount of good on the
whole, how is it possible to set limits to the self-denial, the
asceticism, which such a principle of conduct seems to demand ?
How is it possible, except by a cynical or pessimistic disbelief in
the usefulness of all social or philanthropic effort, to justify the
1 Types, II, p. 255.
2 This is not a suitable word to denote the impulse to promote all kinds of
social good, but Martineau's list of motives supplies no other.
VOCATION [Book II
adoption of a less useful in preference to an intrinsically more
useful or laborious profession the expenditure of time upon
abstract thought or study which might be spent in teaching the
ignorant and brightening the lives of the wretched, the expendi-
ture of money upon the conventional comforts of a middle-class
home (to say nothing of the luxuries of ' the rich ') when it
might be spent upon hospitals and young men's clubs ?
I do not pretend to offer a complete solution of this most
difficult problem of practical Morality. I only wish to point out
that, on the theory which makes universal Well-being the
supreme end, it is not incapable of a solution which may com-
mend itself to ' common sense ' without in any way repressing
the highest moral aspirations. I propose to notice a few of the
more prominent of the considerations which must be taken into
account in a solution of this question, whether in its application
to the choice of a career or the choice of a mode of life in so far
as such a choice remains open to those who have already adopted
some recognized profession. However obvious they may seem
(as most of them certainly are), an attempt to enumerate them
will be the best way of illustrating the practical adaptability to
such cases of our method of ideal Utilitarianism.
(i) In the first place, there are those considerations of what I
have called ' moral prudence/ on which Dr. Martineau has as
I venture to think quite inconsistently with his main principle
sufficiently insisted. Before embarking under the influence of
some higher motive upon a course of action not required by
strict duty, which will require for its maintenance the continued
presence of such higher motives, a man should have a reasonable
prospect that the necessary inspiration will hereafter be forth-
coming ; otherwise the adoption of the higher course of life will
lead to a moral fall rather than to a moral advance. In such
cases the surrender to the ' higher motive ' will not be conducive
to the man's own moral Well-being on the whole, and therefore
not conducive to the good of Society. Of course this principle
will not hold where for some reason or other the course of action
to which man is called is one of plain duty. But if the true
canon of duty be, 'Act always on the highest motive/ it is
difficult to see how any aspiration after some more heroic or
Chap, iv, iii] EXCEPTIONAL VOCATIONS 123
more saintly walk could ever be rightly repressed from a fear of
its possible moral consequences. In that case the answer to
such fears would be, ' Better do right now, even if you will not
be able to Iwe up to the level of your present enthusiasm here-
after/ If, on the other hand, it be the duty of the individual
to realize the highest attainable moral and other good for
himself and others, he will recognize that, though the career of
a philanthropist may be higher than that (say) of an honest
lawyer, he will himself attain a higher moral level as a lawyer
than by the more imperfect fulfilment of a higher ideal.
(2) These considerations naturally lead us to the observation
that certain social functions require for their adequate fulfilment
that they should be done in a certain spirit. Such functions
demand the possession of certain qualities of mincl or heart or
character which cannot be summoned up at the command of the
will, and cannot be satisfactorily performed merely as a matter
of duty. Common sense agrees with Roman Catholic Moral
Theology in recognizing that it would be positively wrong for
any one to enter upon certain careers which make great demands
upon the moral nature, merely from a strong sense of duty,
when they have no ' internal vocation ' for them. The principle,
no doubt, requires to be extended to many careers beyond those
afforded by the priesthood and the religious orders, or the
modern equivalents of such orders ; and the true ultimate ground
of such a distinction must, from our point of view, be found in
the social advantages (moral and hedonistic) which flow from its
observance, and the social disadvantages which would be entailed
by its neglect. The average sister of mercy is, no doubt, a more
valuable member of Society than a Belgravian lady who is
somewhat above the average ; but a sister of mercy with no
natural love or instinct for her work, with no natural love for
the poor or the sick or the young to whom she ministered,
would be far less useful to Society than the Belgravian lady who
performs respectably the recognized duties of her station, even
though she may devote what must in the abstract be considered
a somewhat excessive amount of time to domestic trivialities
and social dissipation.
(3) While the principle just laid down applies pre-eminently
124 VOCATION [Book II
to certain special callings such as those of the artist, the scholar,
the man of letters, the clergyman, the teacher it applies in
a certain measure to all work which is capable of being liked at
all, or for which any special aptitude is possible. It is for the
general good that every man should do the work for which he is
most fitted ; and, as a general rule, a natural liking for the work
or kind of life adopted is one of the most important qualifi-
cations for it. There are, of course, obvious limitations to the
principle thus laid down. The highest tasks are necessarily
repulsive to the lower part of a man's nature. A due distinction
must be drawn between the kind of dislike which there is
a reasonable prospect of overcoming and the dislike which is
insurmountable ; and, again, between the dislike which interferes
with the due performance of the work and the dislike which
does not interfere with it. A surgeon who could not overcome
a physical squeainishness at the sight of blood would be more
useful to Society as a billiard-marker. On the other hand,
absolute callousness to human suffering, though it might increase
his love of his profession, would scarcely, I presume, be a qualifi-
cation for its duties.
(4) Regard must be paid not only to the effects of the indi-
vidual's conduct, but to the effect of the general adoption of
a like course of conduct on the part of others. Thus it would
not be socially desirable to encourage all high-minded men to
forsake the careers which seem from some points of view to
stand upon the lowest moral level. A life of money-making
(abstracted from the use which is to be made of the money
when accumulated) may from some points of view seem one to
which nobody could lawfully devote himself who had ever felt
an aspiration after some higher kind of work ; for, however
necessary to society may be the work of merchants and stock-
brokers, there would always (under existing conditions) be
forthcoming a sufficient supply of duly qualified persons who
would be attracted into these professions from purely mercenary
motives. Against this, however, must be set the demoralization
which would result to such classes or professions, and the conse-
quent injury to Society, if all men of high character were led to
avoid them. It may be questioned whether, upon this principle,
Chap, iv, iii] PERSONAL EXPENDITURE 125
it may not sometimes be a positive duty on the part of some
good people to continue in, if not to adopt, professions which
may be in various degrees unfavourable to the improvement of
their own personal character, or which at least involve much
that is disagreeable to what we may call their moral taste,
provided that they minister to legitimate social needs. The
most extreme ill effects of the adoption of a contrary prin-
ciple were experienced in the Middle Ages. The ' religious ' life
being assumed to be the highest of all careers, every man or
woman anxious about his or her soul was driven into a religious
house, unless, indeed, they were wealthy enough to found one.
The consequence was an appalling relaxation of the standard of
ordinary < secular ' morality a complete de-spiritual ization of
all ' secular ' life, including that of the secular priest. Even the
work of the pastor had to be abandoned to worldly men,
because it was not disagreeable enough to satisfy the religious
man's hankering after self-mortification.
(5) Similar considerations are applicable to the innumerable
difficulties which beset the Conscience of every man possessed
with something of the ' enthusiasm of humanity ' in the matter
of personal expenditure, conventional luxury, and so on. In the
first place, he will apply the principle of ' moral prudence ' to
the effects of his conduct upon himself and his capacity for
work. He will make recreation subordinate to work, social
pleasures to social usefulness, and so on. There is, however,
room for as many different vocations, so to speak, in respect of
the use that may be made of leisure hours as there is in the
choice of a life-work : and some of them are higher than others.
It is no doubt a morally higher thing to spend one's evenings
in teaching a night school than to spend them in amusement or
light reading. But if a man to whom some higher motive suggests
the idea of taking up with the former occupation feels that the
work would be excessively distasteful, and that as a consequence
he would be less capable of efficiently discharging his duties in
the day, and probably become irritable, discontented, and dys-
peptic, he will do much better to play whist of an evening
instead, even in the interests of his own moral Well-being. Still
more evidently will such a course be recommended when we
126 VOCATION [Book II
extend our view first to the direct effects of the two alternatives
on the happiness of others, and then to the effects which would
follow an extensive imitation of a conscientious but uncheerful
philanthropy. On Dr. Martineau's principle, it is difficult to see
how it is possible to justify a rich man under any circumstances
living the life of a country gentleman, even as such a life might
be lived under the inspiration of a ' social Conscience ' far above
the average, when once it has been suggested to him that he
might spend his fortune on some great work of social usefulness.
He would certainly be prompted to the last course by 'com-
passion' and deterred from it (among however many other
and better motives) by ' love of ease and sensual pleasure.' On
the other hand, when once the appeal is made to social Well-
being, a number of other important considerations suggest
themselves which may well justify a man who does not feel
strongly moved to make such a sacrifice in accepting the more
agreeable alternative. He will reflect that the habits of a class
cannot be suddenly changed, but that they may be gradually
modified. He will remember that certain kinds of work can
only be done in connexion with certain social positions : a hard-
working professional man may do much more work than a
resident squire, but he cannot do precisely the same work that
a good squire may do. He might therefore do more good by
setting an example of liberality, care for dependents, devotion to
public duties, and moderation in amusement and personal
expenditure, than by letting his country house and giving the
proceeds to public works or well-administered charities. He
will reflect that some forms of luxury have good social effects,
such as the encouragement of art and superior workmanship,
which ultimately benefit the community at large. He may feel
that it is better to indulge to some extent in forms of luxury
demanded by the customs of his class, but difficult to reconcile
with abstract ideas of Justice, such as good dinners, expensive
wines, a large house and numerous servants, rather than
abandon great opportunities of social or political influence and
usefulness.
It is not my intention here to discuss from a practical point
of view the extent to which this principle should be carried. It
Chap, iv, iii] STANDARDS OF COMFORT 127
is probable that, while the existence of different standards of
class expenditure and of considerable inequalities in the
expenditure of individuals is socially beneficial, a vast amount
of the coaventional expenditure of the rich and well-to-do
classes, in view of the surrounding sordid misery, is wholly
unjustifiable ; and that a still larger amount is only provisionally
and relatively justifiable, because under existing conditions the
non-conformity with established usage would on the whole, for
such and such persons and in such and such circumstances, be the
greater of two evils. But it is clear that very different standards
of expenditure must be admitted, unless we are to pronounce
many occupations or professions absolutely barred to persons
whose social Conscience has once been aroused. If a man cannot
justify to his Conscience the provision of champagne for his
guests, it is clear that diplomacy is an impossible profession for
him. If he cannot make up his mind to mess and contribute to
regimental amusements as other officers do, he cannot enter the
army; and in many other positions in life it is impossible to
escape the choice between total isolation with much loss not
only of pleasure but of influence and professional effectiveness
and acquiescence in some kinds of expenditure which we may
feel to involve a very unjust and socially inexpedient distribu-
tion of external goods. No doubt these 'necessities of one's
position ' should be duly weighed before the position which
necessitates them is accepted. In many cases they might con-
stitute a good reason for refusing to accept that position, and,
when it is accepted, the duty remains of reducing them within
reasonable limits; but I do not believe that it would be for
the general good, and therefore I do not believe that the
moral consciousness allows us to lay it down, that all positions
involving a high standard of personal expenditure should be
closed to any one whose eyes had once been opened to the
responsibilities of wealth.
I need hardly add that the other side of the matter the
enormous need for men who will adopt exceptional modes of
life, and devote themselves to public or philanthropic work in
ways which do demand exceptional self-sacrifice is an equally
important one, and that for men who feel that need strongly
VOCATION [Book II
and their capacity for meeting it, the exceptional sacrifice may
become the most imperative of duties. On this side of the
matter I shall have more to say hereafter.
(6) Another consideration which must be borne, in mind is
that, if Well-being or Good in general be the supreme end, my
good is a part of that end: and my happiness is a part of my
good, though not the whole of it. It ought not, therefore, to be
sacrificed to promote a less amount of it in others. And up to
a certain point the general Well-being is best promoted by the
principle that within the limitations demanded by strict duty
every one shall exercise a reasonable care for his own happiness,
and shall not make such complete sacrifices of material goods or
advantages as will (he being what he is) involve the destruction
of his tranquillity and contentment, although such sacrifices
might be compatible with happiness in better men. This prin-
ciple may be admitted even for the guidance of the individual
Conscience and still more when there is a question of incul-
cating such sacrifices on people in general without going the
length of saying, with the late Mr. Justice Stephen, that * human
nature is so constituted that nearly all our conduct, immensely
the greater part of it, is and ought to be regulated much more
by a regard to ourselves and to our own interests than by
a regard to other people and their interests V It is obvious that
the extent to which this principle can be admitted will be very
considerably narrowed by the acceptance of a non-hedonistic
interpretation of Good. As soon as Morality is recognized as an
end in itself and an essential part of true Well-being, it becomes
impossible to admit that a pursuit of his own happiness,
unmixed with and unregulated by a desire for other people's,
could ever be the vocation of any man, even if in his particular
case such a course of conduct should chance to be coincident
with that dictated by the public Well-being. The individual
should pursue his own Well-being as part of the general Well-
being, but he will recognize that his moral Well-being demands
a measure of self-sacrifice.
(7) The principle that the rationality of self-sacrifice logically
implies a limitation to self-sacrifice, may be used to justify not
1 In the Nineteenth Century, No. 118, p. 783.
Chap, iv, iii] NEED OF INEQUALITY 129
merely some enjoyment on the part of every individual, but
even a very unequal enjoyment on the part of some individuals.
In proportion as we hold that competition, the struggle to raise
the personal or family standard of comfort, the indulgence and
development of individual tastes and inclinations in ways which
involve considerable expenditure of wealth, the increase of
differentiation in modes of life, and the like are good for Society,
the individual must in some cases be justified in allowing himself
an amount of luxury and enjoyment which would not be possible
for all under the most ideal socialistic regime. It is possible
to admit that civilization and progress demand considerable
inequalities without accepting von Hartmann's doctrine that to
promote maximum inequality is necessarily and under all cir-
cumstances to promote true social progress. The principle must
be balanced by the complementary principle that such inequali-
ties of enjoyment have a tendency to increase beyond the point
which is socially expedient. To what extent this principle will
justify the individual in choosing the easier and more enjoyable
careers, and enjoying an exceptionally favourable social position
or exceptional good fortune, will depend partly upon the answer
he gives to a number of social and economic questions, and
partly upon his personal circumstances and disposition. It is
unnecessary to repeat once more that this consideration cannot
possibly justify any individual under any circumstances in being
merely an enjoyer of other men's labours. It may be good for
Society that the wages of different classes and individuals should
vary, even to a very large extent : it cannot possibly be to the
advantage of Society or to the moral advantage of any individual
that his wages should be wholly unearned.
(8) And, lastly, there is the fact that some kinds of work
which do not call into activity the very highest ' springs of
action' are as useful as, perhaps more useful than, those that
do : and that in reference to some of these kinds of work it is
even truer than of more distinctly spiritual kinds of work that
'the harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few/ In
England at least this is notably the case with all the higher
kinds of intellectual labour. I for one cannot assent to that
beatification of intellectual pursuits and even of the most
130 VOCATION [Book II
selfish forms of intellectual sybaritism which is not unknown
among persons of literary and speculative tastes, but a demon-
stration of the supreme social value of such work when it
really is work will be superfluous in the eyes of cmy one who
is at all likely to read this book. All history is against the
attempt to encourage intellectual Obscurantism in the interests
of a narrow moral or material Utilitarianism. All history testi-
fies to the intimate connexion, in the long run and within certain
limits, between moral and intellectual vitality. The darkness
of the dark ages was not merely intellectual darkness ; the
stagnation of China is not merely intellectual stagnation. And
if an appeal may plausibly be made to a few brilliant periods,
such as the Renaissance, as an exhibition of the possibility of
high intellectual development in combination with a low morale,
it must be remembered that the early phases of the Renaissance
were periods of high moral as well as intellectual enthusiasm,
and that the intellectual decay which set in so soon in those
countries where the Renaissance was not also a period of moral
and religious progress may be distinctly traced to the moral
corruption. High excellence in Art involves such a long period
of technical training that the greatest technical perfection of an
Art movement often comes long after the decline of the moral
and intellectual forces which produced it.
It is obvious that these reflections might be spun out indefi-
nitely. Enough, it is hoped, has been said to illustrate the kind
of guidance which may be afforded in the solution of such
problems of vocation by the adoption of a consequential but
non-hedonistic criterion of Morality.
IV
It will by this time have become evident that the course of
our argument has led us from the discussion of a particular
duty, that of choosing an occupation, into the discussion of a much
larger and more fundamental question of ethics the distinction
between Duty and the morally good, between what are sometimes
called duties of * perfect ' and those of * imperfect obligation/
the question whether there are or are not such things as ' works
of supererogation,' I have already contended that there are
Chap, iv, iv] WORKS OF SUPEREROGATION 131
cases where it is good for a man to contribute in certain ways to
the general good, though it would not be wrong for him to
refuse to contribute to it in those ways that there are cases
where a man may rightfully decline to perform socially bene-
ficial actions for the reason (among others) that he does not feel
a natural inclination or strong desire to perform them. On the
other hand, it has been assumed (as it must be assumed by every
system which recognizes moral obligation at all) that in some
cases no amount of disinclination, no consideration of the sacri-
fice involved, will justify a refusal to adopt the course of action
which will make the largest contribution to social good. But
how, it may be asked, can such a distinction be admitted without
involving ourselves in the jyrima facie immoral corollary that
a man can do more than his duty? I believe that we have
already by implication arrived at something like an answer to
the question. One course, and one only, can ever be a man's
duty ; but duty itself requires in certain cases that regard shall
be paid to the inner dispositions and inclinations of the indi-
vidual. It is always a man's duty to do what conduces most to
the general good ; but the general good itself demands that,
whereas some contributions to social good shall be required of
all men placed under the same external circumstances, in other
cases contributions differing both in kind and in amount shall
be demanded of different men. It will be well, however, to
dwell a little more at length upon the difficulty and importance
of the problem under discussion.
The case for and against works of supererogation shall be
stated by two modern French philosophers of the last genera-
tion, fimile Beaussire and Paul Janet. The contrast between
their views on this point is the more striking on account of
their general agreement in philosophic tendency. In the former
writer's works we find such utterances as these :
' Merit and virtue arise from accomplished duty, but in their
highest degrees they tend to pass the limits of duty : they rise
to the point of devotion. ... To surrender one's children to the
service of one's country, when she claims them in the name of the
law, is a duty of obligation (devoir de droit). To offer them for
it, when the law allows one to keep them, is a duty of virtue, or
133 VOCATION [Book II
rather an act of devotion which goes beyond duty. To withdraw
them from the legal obligation of a public education where one
sees a danger for their faith or for their morality, is perhaps
the most imperious of duties V
On the other hand, Janet, a typical representative of the
* spiritualistic ' Philosophy once dominant in France, writes as
follows :
* The distinction of two domains, the domain of good and
that of duty, would conduct us to the inadmissible supposition,
that between two actions, of which one would be manifestly
better than the other, the individual is at liberty to choose the
less good. From what source could this privilege be derived?
Is it not under another form that opinion of the Casuists so
severely condemned by Pascal and by Bossuet, the opinion, that
is to say, that between two probable opinions one is allowed to
choose the less probable ? * '
The writer then proceeds to explain the apparent collision
between the verdict of reflection and the verdict of what
Sidgwick would call ' common sense ' on this head by the
following considerations :
(a) The degree of self-sacrifice demanded for the performance
of a man's duty depends upon his circumstances, especially upon
his ' r61e * in society. When it is demanded either by that ' rdle '
or by the exceptional circumstances under which any man may
find himself placed, ' devotion ' becomes in the strictest sense
a duty. This is the principle on which I have myself insisted.
What I desiderate in Janet's admirable treatment of this sub-
ject is some discussion of the principles by which a man is
to determine his * rdle ' in society. A theory of duty requires
a theory of Vocation as its necessary complement.
(b) The highest degrees of moral perfection are not attainable
by all men. It is a duty to strive after the highest degree
of moral perfection that circumstances permit. ' No one is bound
to do what is impossible : all are bound to do what is possible/
(c) The popular distinction between duties and acts which it is
good to do but not wrong to omit, depends mainly upon a par-
ticular characteristic of the subject-matter or content of certain
duties, i. e. their indeterminateness.
1 Lea Principes de la Morale, pp. 169, 241. 2 La Morale, p. 227.
Chap, iv, iv] VIEW OF JANET 133
(d) The development of the moral consciousness in different
men being unequal, the same actions do not always suggest
themselves to all men; acts of extraordinary heroism, ideals
of extraordinary self-devotion, present themselves only to rare
and exceptionally endowed natures.
' Further, in so far as the idea of an action has not presented
itself to our minds, it is evident that it cannot be obligatory on
us; that ceases to be the case as soon as this idea has been
conceived by our consciousness. The action, once represented in
thought, presents itself to us with all the characteristics of duty ;
and we cannot refuse it without remorse V
Thus the popular distinction between duties and acts which
it is good to do is to a certain extent justified, while the immoral
deduction that it is possible to do more than one's duty, and
sometimes right to do less, is avoided. With this position
I should in the main agree. At the same time, I do not think
that Janet has quite got to the bottom of the difficulty. He is
no doubt right in holding that it is a duty to aim at doing
the utmost amount of good that lies in one's power : and there-
fore it is not possible for a man to do more than his duty.
Moreover, it is an essential characteristic of the moral law that
it should be (in the Kantian phrase) 'fit to serve for law universal/
i. e. that what is right for one must be right for every one else
in the same circumstances when they are really the same. But
it is perfectly consistent with this principle to include a man's
character, moral, emotional, and intellectual, among the ' circum-
stances ' or conditions upon which his duty in the particular case
depends. The neglect of this distinction between external and
what I may venture to call ' internal ' circumstances or conditions,
has been the main source of the vagueness and uncertainty
which has generally characterized the treatment of the distinction
between duties, and actions that it is good to do but not wrong
to omit. By Janet the principle of internal or subjective con-
ditions is to a certain extent recognized ; but the interpretation
which (here approximating to the position of Martineau) he
would give to the principle seems to me at once too wide and
too narrow. The only subjective circumstance, according to
1 La Morale, p. 232.
i 3 4 VOCATION [Book II
Janet, which could ever justify a man in omitting a good action
which it would have been good for another to perform seems to
be the circumstance that the good action did not happen to
occur to him. Similarly, according to Martineau, aji act done
from the highest motive actually present to the agent is always
right ; an act is never wrong unless a higher motive than that
which prompted his actual choice was present to the agent's
consciousness. Now. it seems to me that the practical maxims
of such a system would under certain circumstances fall very
much below, at other times rise too far above, what would
generally be recognized as the requirements of duty properly
understood. A crowd stands by while a child is drowned in
three feet of artificial water in a London park. Would it
altogether remove the moral disapprobation with which we
regard the act of one of the individuals concerned if he pleaded
that it never occurred to him to jump in and save the child ?
It seems to me that it is quite conceivable that to many persons
in that crowd the thought did not occur. But it surely shocks
all common sense to say that in that case they did not fail in
their duty. There are surely many cases in which a man is
ignorant of his duty, but in which we cannot deny that such and
such a course was his duty, whether he knew it or not. From
Martineau's point of view, indeed, such a statement would be an
absurdity : since his criterion of duty is wholly subjective, it is
impossible for a man to be ignorant of his duty. There is,
according to his view, no objective right or wrong in actions ;
only a higher and a lower. But Janet insists strongly on the
necessity of an objective criterion of Morality. It would seem,
therefore, that we must exclude from the internal conditions
that may vary the duty of two men placed in similar external
circumstances the want of knowledge of what the duty is as
well as the want of will to perform it, however much ignorance
may in some cases mitigate the culpability. In asking under
what subjective conditions A may be right in omitting an act
which it would have been right for B in like external circum-
stances to perform, we must exclude the absence of sufficient
devotion to duty on the part of A, or sufficient care to find out
what his duty is : when we ask what is A's duty, we assume
Chap, iv, iv] INCLINATION VARIES DUTY 135
that he is anxious to find out his duty and willing to do it when
found. But we may include in the internal conditions that vary
duty the presence or absence of all moral qualities which are not
under the immediate control of the will which may be more or
less cultivated, but which are not producible to order. Now,
there are some good actions which do and there are others which
do not require for their fulfilment moral qualities of this kind.
A man's duty under all circumstances is to do what is most
conducive to the general good: but, while the general good
demands that certain good things shall be done by all men
irrespective of their natural disposition and the degree of moral
perfection which they have attained, there are other good things
which the general good only demands that persons of a certain
disposition and moral character should perform. Thus the social
value of truth -speaking is not dependent upon the strength of
the agent's natural love of truth, or the degree of moral advance-
ment which he has attained in other respects. However
reluctantly he speak the truth, Society gets the same advantage ;
if he lies, the injury to Society is the same. The public Well-being
demands that all shall speak the truth. A man cannot therefore
plead that he has no vocation for contributing to social good
in that particular way : the general good demands that to this
rule of conduct there shall be no exceptions *. Indeed, the more
exceptional be the lie, the more harm it is likely to do. On the
other hand it is good for a rich man (with no obvious private
claims upon his purse) to sell all that he has, and to give the
whole of his time and money (in ways consistent with sound
economical principles) to the service of the poor. But this only
becomes a duty in persons endowed with a sufficient love of the
poor to do this not grudgingly or of necessity, and placed in
certain perhaps rather exceptional external circumstances. In
that sense it might even be called a work of supererogation,
though the term is on the whole an objectionable one : not only
is it not an action demanded by social Well-being of all men
placed in similar circumstances, but this is one of those cases in
1 I mean of course exceptions in favour of particular persona ; I recognize
the existence of exceptional cases when it is the duty of all not to speak the
truth.
136 VOCATION [Book II
which (as Janet says of the voluntary adoption of celibacy from
the highest motives) ' it is even evident that this state cannot be
chosen by some, except on condition of its not being chosen by
all V The good of Society demands that there should be different
vocations, some of them morally higher than others. A man can
never do more than his duty, or without sin do less when once
he knows what his duty is. But it is sometimes right, because
desirable in the highest interests of Society, that a man should
choose what must still be recognized as being from many points
of view the lower vocation. It is morally as well as socially
desirable that there should be a great liberty of choice as to the
particular way and as to the extent to which he will contribute
to social good ; but that liberty of choice is conditioned by the
duty and that the most imperative of all duties of adopting
the vocation to which upon a fair review of all circumstances,
internal and external, a man believes himself to be called. It is
conditioned also, I may add and this is a consideration which
would demand much fuller treatment were I writing primarily
with a practical object by the duty of moral progress; that is
to say, of gradually fitting himself (so far as the external con-
ditions of his life allow) for a higher degree of devotion to social
good than any to which, being what he is, he could at present
wisely aspire.
The general tendency of non-utilitarian Philosophy has been
either to assume that there is in all cases some one course of
action which all moral men placed under the same external
circumstances would recognize as their ' bounden duty/ or to find
in the mere definiteness or indefiniteness of the received rules of
conduct a sharp and fundamental distinction between ' duties '
and acts which it is good to perform if one likes between the
terms ' right ' and ' good ' in their application to actions. On the
other hand, it has been the tendency of Utilitarian Philosophy
to reduce all duties to a general obligation or encouragement of
a philanthropy the extent and limitations of which are usually
left undefined. By means of the principle of Vocation it is
possible to justify the popular distinction between duties and
charitable actions, without detracting either from the imperative-
1 IM Morale, p. 229.
Chap.iv,iv] PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM 137
ness of duty or from the claims of a more abounding charity,
and to find the basis of that distinction in the requirements of
social Well-being itself.
The positions at which I have arrived in the foregoing pages
may be summarized by the following definitions :
(1) It is always a man's duty to adopt the course of action
most conducive to the general Well-being. A man can never do
more than his duty, nor can he ever (when he knows his duty)
without sin do less.
(2) The name of absolute duties may be given to those rules
of conduct which the general Well-being requires to be observed
by all men under given external circumstances, irrespectively of
the subjective condition or character of the agent.
(3) Acts or omissions which the general good only requires
under certain internal circumstances or subjective conditions
may be termed duties of Vocation.
The question has been one of the traditional subjects of debate
between Protestant and Roman Catholic Theologians. Catholicism
has formally asserted, Protestantism has formally denied, the
possibility of ' works of Supererogation/ If we look to the
practical effects of the two one-sided doctrines, it would seem
that Protestantism has in its periods of austerity and enthusiasm
imposed upon all men a standard too rigid, too restrictive of
natural and innocent pleasure, to be attainable or morally
wholesome for the majority of men ; while in its periods of
dullness and spiritual lethargy it has reduced its moral ideal for
all men to one of mere respectability, and tended to discourage
acts or careers of exceptional self-denial and devotion. Catholi-
cism, on the other hand, has at no period of its history failed to
give all due encouragement to exceptional missions and high
religious or social enthusiasms * ; while it has at times relaxed
the minimum standard of Morality required as 'necessary to
salvation* to a dangerous and deplorable degree. A true and
1 It has of course too often sought to bring the ideals and the practice of
exceptional men into conformity with a single too narrow ecclesiastical type.
The result has been either rebellion and schism, or (as with St. Francis)
that the enthusiast's work was largely spoiled by the transformation which
ecclesiastical authority imposed upon it.
138 VOCATION [Book II
healthy view of the matter will combine the two one-sided
doctrines. With the Protestant it will insist on the necessity
of a high standard of social duty for all ; with the Catholic it
will encourage and find room for any amount of self-devotion
of self-devotion of a kind which really conduces to social Well-
being in those who find within themselves the capacity and the
call for such sacrifices.
V
The theory that there exists a certain sphere for the indulgence
of the individual's spontaneous impulses and aspirations seems
to me the germ of truth involved in the principle which in the
hands of Prof. Hoffding has been developed into a system which
may be called one of ' Optional Morality V He has rightly
insisted on the fact that duties in detail may be different for
different persons, and that the difference depends upon natural
character and not merely upon external position, but he leaves
out what appear to me to be the necessary qualifications of the
doctrine. Upon his view, it would appear that the requirements
of sexual Morality will be just what any one likes to make
them. Prof. Taylor has also rightly insisted upon the idea of
Vocation, but he seems to me to go much too far when he says
that such a problem as that of Isabella in Measure for Measure,
called upon to choose between her chastity and her brother's
life, is ' altogether a problem for the agent herself to decide, and
to decide by reference to her own personal feelings V It may
be quite true that ' what might in one woman be an act of heroic
self-sacrifice might in another be a cowardly desertion of duty ' ;
1 See his interesting and instructive article ('The Law of Relativity in
Ethics ') in the International Journal of Ethics, Vol. I (Oct., 1890).
Prof. Simmel has also insisted much on the fact that the * ought* (sollen)
for one individual is quite different from that of another, a principle which
he pushes almost to the point of allowing the superior individual to dis-
regard the conditions of social Well-being, but at the same time he very
strongly insists that there can be only one duty for a given individual at a
given time and in given circumstances (Einleitung, II,p.39,&c.). All the writers
mentioned (Hflffding, Simmel, Taylor) seem to me to ignore the limitations
which must be put to the application of a principle very sound in itself.
2 The Problem of Conduct, p. 43.
Chap. iv,v] MEANING OF VOCATION 139
but that would be in all probability because of the partial
knowledge which each would possess of the circumstances and
consequences of her act, and of like acts, upon general Well-being ;
or because, .though the ideal of each might have much in it that
is valuable, one or both of them may have been more or less
imperfect and one-sided. The case seems to be by no means
a good example of a matter in which duty is really dependent
upon subjective inclination. I see no reason to doubt that the
ideal woman ideally informed of the situation would know
what to do under the circumstances; though, when considera-
tions are so evenly balanced, the external critic would do well
to respect, or at least to shrink from severely condemning, either
choice conscientiously made. But, though the instance seems to
be an unfortunate one, there can be no doubt that there are
other cases where the duty really is different for different people.
The best that is in one man is different from the best that is in
another, and in order that the best in each should be developed,
it is desirable not only that there should be limits to the extent
to which uniform rules of conduct should be externally imposed
by law or social pressure, but that, even from the point of view
of the highest Morality, it should be recognized that the duty
of the individual depends within certain limits upon his individual
tastes, inclinations, aspirations. The same considerations of
social Well-being which prescribe this liberty will prescribe also
its limits.
We have so far discussed the subject without reference to
those religious considerations which actually underlie the use
of the word Vocation to indicate those particular spheres of
social activity which are different for different individuals.
A fuller discussion of the relations between Religion and Morality
must for the present be postponed. Here it may be enough to
remark that the religious or teleological view of the world,
insisting on the idea that every human being is intended to
realize some end, and an end in some measure perhaps different
from that of every other individual, encourages the view that
the individual is within certain limits allowed a choice between
different kinds and different degrees of self-sacrifice ; but it will
emphasize also the fact that there is some one course of action,
140 VOCATION [Book II
if only he can find it out, which is the individual's duty ; and it
will encourage also the disposition to assume that a strong
prompting towards or aspiration after a particular kind of social
service constitutes a presumption that that particular kind of
social service is one to which the individual is really called
by God.
VI
This chapter may conclude with a brief reference to a rather
curious thesis of Professor Simmel 1 the doctrine that a man
ought to choose his social function in such a way as to utilize his
moral deficiencies in the public interest. I should quite admit
the principle as far as it goes. A man with a love of arbitrary
power might be well advised in making himself an Indian
civilian or a schoolmaster ; a man in whom the passion of
curiosity is strongly developed, a detective ; a man with a great
distaste for regular work might justify his existence as an
explorer ; and so on. On the other hand, a man exceptionally
sensitive to other people's sufferings would be disqualified for
the profession of a soldier or criminal judge, while he might
make a good clergyman. What I should not admit is that the
deficiencies would actually make him better in the work of his
profession, if they are really moral deficiencies and not merely
intellectual or emotional capacities which have a value in some
men but which it might not be desirable for every one to possess
in the same degree. The soldier will not be the worse soldier
for being tender-hearted if he has also a strong sense of duty
and a strong will, though a hard-hearted soldier will not be so
useless or pernicious as a hard-hearted doctor or clergyman.
The clergyman will be less valuable even as a clergyman if his
philanthropy overpowers zeal for righteousness or his sense of
Justice. What makes the man socially useful is not really the
absence of certain good qualities but the presence of certain
good qualities in spite of the absence of certain others. A
merely one-sided emotional development may from a rough
practical point of view seem a positive help to a man's usefulness
1 'Moral Deficiencies as determining Intellectual Functions,' in Inter-
national Journal of Ethics, Vol. Ill, 1892-3, p. 490 sq.
Chap.iv, vi] THEORY OF SIMMEL 141
in a particular position, because human nature is so constituted
that extreme and yet valuable developments of this kind are
frequently found in persons who lack the complementary quali-
ties (which* may be relatively unimportant for that particular
place in life) ; but still the man would be nearer the ideal if he
did combine both sides of character.
It might be possible, indeed, to contend that even the ideal
man's character (and not merely his conduct) must be to some
extent relative to his vocation. There is a sense, no doubt, in
which this is true. We might perhaps adequately recognize this
truth by saying that in the ideal man the qualities less required
by his special vocation would be there potentially, if not to any
great extent actually. The student cannot be so often under
the influence of strong social or humanitarian emotion as the
preacher of social reform or the worker in slums, but he may
be (though unfortunately he tends not to be) equally capable of
such emotions upon occasion, and just as ready to perform such
social or humanitarian duties as are actually duties for him.
And so he will not be the better student on account of any
defect which can strictly be called a moral defect. A strictly
moral defect would be, in fact, by definition, the absence of a
quality which ought to be present in some measure in all
men.
The question how far there is any single ideal of human
character is one which deserves a little further consideration 1 .
If by ' character ' we mean actual, developed tendencies to feel
and act in a certain way, it may be freely admitted not merely
that there is an ideal character appropriate to each particular
vocation or position in life, but that even within the ranks of
the same occupation, or in matters which have no special relation
to any particular mode of life, there is room for considerable
variety of character. The perfection of human society demands
the interaction of many different types of human excellence,
moral as well as intellectual. Some kinds of conduct are good
only in so far as they are exceptional, and would become socially
pernicious if they were practised too frequently or too exclu-
1 That there is such a single ideal has been denied by von Hartmann,
D. sittL Betvusstsein, p. 131.
14* VOCATION [Book II
sively ; and there are, as we have seen, certain departments of
conduct in which a certain type of conduct only becomes right,
as it is practically only possible, for persons of a certain tempera-
ment. There are duties peculiar to particular vocations that is
to say, not merely duties connected with particular offices or
professions or classes, but duties incumbent on individuals of
a certain temperament or certain capacities without being incum-
bent on all ; and there are divergent types of intellectual and
emotional constitution which qualify a man for one occupation
or mode of life rather than for another, and make it his duty to
adopt one rather than another. Within a certain range, Society
wants for its perfection men of very divergent qualities and
tendencies. Society requires born Radicals and born Conserva-
tives. That everybody should exhibit the ideal mean between
the two would not answer its purposes so well as a division of
labour between men of different temperaments. The ideal
' moderate ' in a state of society ripe for revolution would
be too moderate for a revolutionary, and too progressive for
a functionary. The moderate Liberal may have his place and
his work, but he cannot perform the function either of the
revolutionary or of the good Conservative who makes the best
of a bad system, or tries to mend it by unheroic improvements.
Both social functions are useful, but they cannot both be per-
formed by the same person ; the fact that a man performs one
makes it impossible that he should perform the other. A man
cannot be a religious or political reformer of the more thorough-
going kind and at the same time a guide of timid consciences
and a gradual improver of existing institutions. There is room
for a Luther, and there is room for an Erasmus ; but the same
person cannot undertake both r61es. No doubt a man more
reasonable than Luther and less timid than Erasmus might
conceivably have taken either line, though it would have been,
doubtless, the same with a difference ; but sooner or later there
must have come the alternative to break with the Roman
Church or not to break with it. Good might have been done by
either course, but not the same good ; and, though it is possible
to think of an ideal man who might have done more good than
either a Luther or an Erasmus, it is possible, also, that one task
Chap, iv, vi] PLURALITY OF IDEALS 143
was best done by a man of a vehement or violent temperament
and the other by a man of somewhat timid character.
All this may be fully and freely admitted * ; but there remains
a sense in which we may nevertheless speak of a single ideal of
human character, and cannot refuse to do so without contra-
dicting the most essential deliverances of the moral consciousness.
In no individual whatever, no matter how circumstanced, can
there be too great a devotion to duty or to the good, though that
devotion will show itself in different ways, varying not merely
with outward circumstances but with intellectual and emotional
constitution. Moreover, among the emotions, desires, or tenden-
cies to action which inspire men to promote the good, or which
are recognized by the moral consciousness as having an intrinsic
value of their own, there are some which, we feel, ought to exist
in all men, and without which no man can attain the ideal in any
position of life, though within certain limits the relative promi-
nence or strength of them may sometimes vary without making
one a better man than the other. But there are other desires,
emotions, and inclinations which may be pronounced good,
though in this or that individual they may be almost entirely
absent or undeveloped without his being on that account placed
on a lower level than those who have them. Under this head
will fall not merely purely intellectual or aesthetic tendencies,
but also many qualities which do in a sense belong to character,
though they are practically inseparable from certain intellectual
or aesthetic capacities. The capacity to produce or to ' under-
stand ' music is an intellectual gift which possesses value, but
the love of music is in a sense a quality of character. Still, it is
a quality of character which we do not recognize it as a duty for
all individuals in all circumstances to possess or to acquire, since
in some cases it either could not be acquired at all, or could only
1 To a large extent of course the one-sided man is only made more effective
by the moral and intellectual defects of other people ; in a more perfect
society there might be no need for such men. But I do not think we
could suppose the need for such one-sidedness altogether eliminated in
a society which should still be human. I am here speaking in a merely
popular way, and do not profess to draw a sharp distinction between a differ-
ence of qualities or ' characteristics ' and different degrees of development
of one and the same characteristic.
144 VOCATION [Book II
be acquired at the cost of certain other qualities of equal or
greater value both intrinsically and on account of their social
effects. In such cases we do not regard the man who possesses
these qualities as necessarily a better man than the man who
lacks them.
With regard to those qualities which are more closely con-
nected with the state of the will, and have a bearing upon the
performance of duties which are duties for every man, we
recognize a certain ideal scale of values. We pronounce that such
and such qualities are morally higher and better than certain
others ; but inasmuch as these qualities are not always under
the immediate control of the will, we do not say that a man has
necessarily failed in his duty because in his character this ideal
scale of relative prominence has not been reached. But still,
I think, we should recognize that, so long as we confine our-
selves to these more general and universal ingredients, so to
speak, of human character, there is an ideal balance of these
qualities which a man cannot fall short of without being a less
ideal man than he who exhibits it, though in one position the
higher qualities may be less frequently called into activity than
in others. For the man of higher nature it might be wrong to
accept positions in which these higher qualities would have
small opportunities for their due development and influence
upon Society. But the ideal man would not be actually dis-
qualified by the possession of these qualities for any position in
life whatever ; though, no doubt, in point of fact their presence
is often found to be accompanied by other qualities or defects of
quality which might make him less efficient in some positions
than a less good man. Not only could no man have too much
devotion to the good in general, but such qualities as love, truth-
fulness, purity, courage, and the like are qualities which no man
in any position could have too much of, or be deficient in
without falling proportionately below the true human ideal.
Without some measure of those qualities he could not have that
devotion to duty without which he could not be a good man at
all. And even with regard to their relative prominence there is
to some extent an ideal, and a man cannot fall short of the ideal
without being a man of lower character than the man who
Chap, iv, vi] DIFFERENT SENSES OF CHARACTER 145
approximates to it more nearly, though he may succeed in doing
his duty just because for a man of lower type duty may be
something different than for the man of higher type. Of these
universal qualities there can be no excess. A man could not be
too brave, so long as bravery means simply a willingness to face
danger when duty calls. On the other hand, there is a kind of
intrepidity, of positive delight in danger, which the ideal scholar
might well be without, but which might be an excellent quality
in a soldier. Nobody can be too charitable, i.e. too desirous to
do good to his fellows ; but the positive longing for disagreeable
kinds of service exhibited by a man of the St. Francis type,
though an excellent and beautiful thing, is not a necessary part
of the ideal character. It is a quality which makes an excellent
Friar, but would be a disqualification for the career of a states-
man or a scholar. We should wish all men to have as much
goodwill for their fellows as St. Francis of Assisi ; we should
not wish them all to have the same liking for disagreeable duties
or the same dislike of learning. All good men must have some
love of humanity, but a special liking for the young or for the
old, a desire to save one's country collectively or to save indi-
vidual souls, a special zeal for Temperance or for Justice or for
the relief of suffering these are qualities which may be present
in a high or a small degree without the man being any the
better or worse than other men somewhat differently constituted.
A certain respect for knowledge or beauty is a characteristic of
the ideal good man, as also is a disposition to subordinate them
to the more imperative claims of Justice and Humanity. In
so far as men of the philanthropic type altogether lack such
respect, it must be pronounced a moral defect, though not
a breach of duty or a sin; in so far as its relative non-
development is merely incidental to the strength of the humani-
tarian impulse and the demands of a particular occupation, the
man with this defect is not morally worse than the man who is
without it. Indifference to human suffering in an Artist is a defect
of character; the ideal Artist would possess the potentiality
of caring for human suffering, which on proper occasions would
be called into activity. But an Artist might be habitually occu-
pied with the pursuit of his Art, his mind might be habitually
146 VOCATION [Book II
occupied with dreams of beauty and his will absorbed in realizing
them, while he was comparatively seldom occupied with reflecting
on human suffering or with efforts to relieve it, without being in
any wise a worse man, or even representing a lower type of
humanity, than the ideal Philanthropist.
We may thus recognize three meanings in the term character
when used in this connexion: (i) Character in the narrower
sense means the degree of a man's devotion to the good in
general. In this sense the ideal is the same for all. To be less
devoted to the good must always mean to be lower man, while to
fall below that measure of devotion to good which is necessary
to the performance of the man's particular vocation is to fail in
duty. (2) By character may be meant the possession of those
emotions, desires, tendencies to action, likings and dislikings which
we always recognize as good (irrespectively of any particular
occupation or course of life), a measure of which is demanded by
the true moral ideal for all men, but which may be present in very
different proportions without occasioning failure in duty, and
sometimes even without placing the man on a higher or lower
moral level. (3) Character may be held to include those qualities,
desires, inclinations, likings and dislikings, or more specialized
applications and developments of the more universal qualities,
which, though they may be good in themselves, are incompatible
with others equally good, and which, therefore, we do not recog-
nize it as good for all men to possess in all circumstances. Here
even the total absence of some qualities which we cannot deny
to possess high value may be compatible with the highest moral
excellence in the ordinary sense of the word ; that is to say, we
recognize that the defect has nothing to do with the will, though
for particular persons it may, of course, be a duty to seek to
overcome the defect.
That these three kinds of excellence run into one another, that
a high development of each of them presupposes some develop-
ment of the others, and so on, I not only do not want to deny
but should strongly assert. Any more exact account of them
would involve elaborate psychological analysis for which this is
not the place. The sole purpose of this enumeration is to draw
a distinction between a sense in which there is only one moral
Chap. iv,vi] UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR IDEALS 147
ideal and a sense in which there are many, all of them excellent
but to a greater or less degree incompatible with one another.
That devotion to the good or to duty which is the crowning
excellence of all is one and the same, however diverse are the
particular forms in which it manifests itself ; and some other
qualities and characters are so closely connected with this
devotion to the good in all its forms that no one could be alto-
gether without them, or could depart from a certain ideal balance
or proportion between them, without falling below the highest
ideal of humanity, though it is passible to fall below the highest
ideal of humanity without actual sin or failure in duty. As the
qualities assume more and more specialized forms, have less and
less connexion with that devotion to the good in general which
is incumbent upon all, become more and more dependent upon
intellectual and purely emotional (as distinct from moral) char-
acteristics, have more and more special reference to particular
circumstances of life and the specialized activities which corre-
spond with them, absolute or relative failure in some of them
becomes more and more compatible with high excellence of the
man on the whole. In the human ideal there are universal
elements and particular elements ; the ideal man must be a good
man in general, but on the other hand there is no such thing as
goodness in general which does not express itself in one or more
alternative types or specialized kinds of good activity. In each
of these types some common characteristics can be discovered,
but also some elements peculiar to itself. Nay more, since both
the natural endowments and the external circumstances of each
man are in some degree unlike those of any other man, there is
even, we may say, an ideal for each particular individual.
To deny either of these sides of the truth leads to exaggera-
tion and one-sidedness. To make the degree of a man's devotion
to the good in general the only thing that is excellent in human
character is to set up an empty abstraction a universal with no
particulars, to make into our ideal a universal man who is not
and cannot be a real man at all, to forget that devotion to good
in general can only be realized by devotion to some particular
kind of good in detail. Or at best it is to substitute an abstract
sense of duty for the human affections and emotions which are
L a
148 VOCATION [Book II
really better motives of conduct than a sense of duty which is
without love. On the other hand to deny absolutely that there is
any such thing as a single ideal for Humanity is virtually to deny
the objectivity of our moral judgements, or at the very least to
deny the unique value of Morality in the stricter sense the
supreme value of the rightly directed will, and of those more
universal qualities of character without which there cannot be
a rightly directed will in any man or in any circumstances.
Since Morality means contribution to the true good of Society, a
defective devotion to that good, and the absence of qualities which
impel to the promotion of it, could not be positively demanded in
the interests of true Well-being, and therefore could not in any
individual, however circumstanced, constitute no moral defect^
Plato seems to have hit the essential truth in this matter when
he demanded Justice of all, and a certain measure of the other
Virtues, while he insisted that the same measure or development
of them was not demanded of all men. This principle of the
specialization of character corresponding to a specialization of
social function must be carried much further than he carried it
so far indeed that we may perhaps regard it as probable that
for each man there is an ideal which is not exactly the same as
any other man's ideal ; and for Justice, as the one indispensable
and dominant Virtue for all, we should perhaps substitute a love
which may assume very varied forms, but which will always be a
love of Humanity which is also love of all that is good as such.
CHAPTEE V
MORAL AUTHORITY AND MORAL AUTONOMY.
WE have hitherto conducted our enquiry as though each man
actually arrived at his moral judgements by the independent
workings of his own moral consciousness, thinking out each
problem as it arises de novo in complete independence of his
fellows and their moral judgements. Now it is obvious that this
representation entirely fails to correspond with the facts. Every
individual finds himself from the earliest dawn of moral con-
sciousness a member of a society in which there are established
rules of conduct, standards of praise and blame, social institutions,
accepted models, recognized ideals. And the morality of the
society has been most emphatically enforced upon the individual
by all kinds of social pressure, ranging from actual or threatened
punishment down to the most faintly indicated ' disapproval ' or
the mere withholding of positive commendation.
The beginning of the process by which the individual becomes
indoctrinated with the ideals of his society is of course to be
found in the earliest education of children. The Intuitionism
which supposed that the young child finds written upon his con-
sciousness a ready-made code of right and wrong, the whole
content of the Ten Commandments or of the Ethics of Aristotle
or of the Sermon on the Mount, is an Intuitionism which, in
so far as it ever existed outside the imagination of utilitarian
critics, is a thing of the past. Without entering upon the
difficult question how far moral ideals or predispositions towards
them are matters of actual inheritance, it may confidently be
denied that a child deserted in the woods and suckled by wolves
would have any moral ideas at all, or that an English child
brought up by savages would, on attaining the age of twenty-one,
find himself in possession of the same moral ideas as his father
and mother. Nobody attains to his moral ideas without moral
education, and this education is more or less continued through-
150 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
out life. The difference between an Englishman's moral ideas
and a Chinaman's is enormous. There is a difference even between
the moral ideas of European nations on much the same plane of
civilization. There are very few Englishmen, even among the
highly educated (on whom the pressure of the immediate environ-
ment is weakened by familiarity with a wider range of moral
ideas through literature, itself of course a kind of social influence),
who can suppose that their moral ideas on all points would be
exactly what they are, had they lived entirely among French-
men from their earliest years. And with the great majority of
men the influence of the immediate environment is paramount.
Their dominant or operative ideal (though there may be some
higher view of life which shares the secret homage of their
hearts) is to a greater or less extent the morality of their school,
their class, their social circle, their profession, their neighbour-
hood.
Now in the admission that people come by their moral ideals
through education there is nothing whatever to encourage moral
scepticism, to encourage the doubt whether Morality is after all
anything more than what other people de facto think about our
conduct, the doubt whether there is such a thing as an absolute
Morality discernible by Reason. The discovery that men's
moral ideas are in a sense the result of education is often in
actual fact a very fruitful source of moral scepticism, both in
theory and in practice, but some moral scepticism is a necessary
condition of moral progress. It was the discovery of the fact
that the morality of the Persians was not quite the same as that
of the Greeks, nor the ideal of Sparta precisely that of Athens,
which originated the crude scepticism of certain Sophists, and
the theory that Justice was a matter of convention, not of Nature
(j/o/ma>, not </w<m), with which Plato does battle in the Republic.
But after all the necessity of moral education supplies no more
reason for thinking that Morality is purely arbitrary than the
fact that Mathematics have to be taught is any reason for doubt-
ing the truth of that Science. I do not, of course, suggest that
the influence of education upon moral ideas is precisely the
same in kind or in degree as the influence of education upon the
development of mathematical capacity. The Science of Mathe-
Chap, v, i] INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION 151
matics was, indeed, slowly developed, and that not by experience
in the ordinary sense of the word, but by mere thinking out of
the consequences of very simple, self-evident truths ; but it has to
be laboriously communicated to each individual who wishes to
become a Mathematician. So far the parallel is complete. But,
although people do not become Mathematicians without teaching,
they do all ultimately come to have the same mathematical ideas
if they have any mathematical ideas at all. Some men are
incapable of coming to see mathematical truths, but they seldom
attempt (though I should imagine that such cases might be
found l ) deliberately and consciously to deny what have become
accepted truths of Mathematics. Yet, even in Mathematics, it is
the consensus of practically all persons endowed with adequate
mathematical capacity who have seriously applied their minds to
the subject, that causes that Science to be accepted as the type of
scientific certainty an explanation which, however, is not com-
plete without the addition that the tests of adequate capacity
and adequate study are here simple and unmistakable. But the
moment we leave pure Mathematics and the physical Sciences
which have reached a mathematical form, this consensus of the
competent begins to disappear. Even in the less advanced
branches of physical Science, and in the higher reaches even of
the most advanced, there is room for wide difference of opinion ;
and be it observed, this difference is partly due to purely
intellectual causes, to the different degrees of intellectual insight,
lucidity of mind, logical power, observation and judgement
possessed by different men, but only partly. Even here in a
region comparatively remote from the great practical interests
which inspire passion and distort judgement every one knows
to what an enormous extent men's opinions are liable to be
swayed by such influences as personal loyalty, personal anta-
gonism, fashion, party spirit, caprice, carelessness, laziness,
ambition, conceit. Still more obviously do those influences the
1 As for instance when Hobbes, finding * almost all geometers' against him
in his controversy with Wallis, declared that * either I alone am mad, or I
alone am not mad ; other alternative there is none, unless, perchance, some
one may say that we are all mad together ' (quoted by G. Groom Robertson
in Hobbes, FhiL Classics for Eng. Readers, p. 183).
15* AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
influence of the environment on the one hand and the ' personal
equation ' on the other mould men's views upon such matters as
speculative Philosophy, History, Social Science, Politics. And
yet, in these departments of knowledge nobody seriously doubts
that there is a truth to be found, and that it is discoverable by
a proper use of the intellectual faculties which we possess, or
supposes that there is any remedy for these defects of our
thinking, any infallible criterion by which to distinguish truth
from prejudice, except a further, more thorough, more conscien-
tious use of the very facilities whose limitations we acknowledge.
In so far as the differences of ethical opinion turn upon the
question of the right means to be adopted with a view to a given
end, this difference is of exactly the same kind as differences of
opinion on any matter of common life. The fact that people
at one time did not see the wrongness of indiscriminate charity
could hardly be supposed to weaken our confidence in the validity
of moral judgements, any more than the Science of Heat is dis-
credited by the fact that the steam engine is a modern invention.
But when we turn to the question of ends, there are special
reasons why in this matter, more than in many others, differences
of opinion should be peculiarly frequent and why one man's
opinion should be emphatically not as good as another's.
Although the power of judging of moral value is, I believe,
essentially an intellectual faculty, it is a highly special intel-
lectual faculty. Sensitiveness to the moral ugliness of drunken-
ness or impurity or appreciation of the moral beauty of un-
selfishness are qualities which vary in different individuals to
an enormous extent. And these differences of moral insight, like
the differences of aesthetic appreciation, by no means correspond
with differences of general intellectual capacity. Like the power
of musical appreciation, it appears to be almost wanting in some
individuals not destitute of high intellectual powers. Moreover,
intellectual as it is, its actual exercise is, as I have endeavoured
to show 1 , largely conditioned by the emotional capacity and the
emotional development of the individual. The judgement
* Suffering ought to be relieved ' might indeed be made on purely
intellectual grounds by one who had little or no sympathy with
1 Cf. above, Bk. I, ch. vi, p. 154 sq.
Chap, v, i] INDEPENDENCE IMPLIES EDUCATION 153
suffering. But in practice the clearness with which this truth
has beenseen,and the intensity of conviction with which it has been
accepted, depend at least as much upon the emotional as upon the
intellectual endowments of the race or the generation or the
individual. Moreover, to a great extent, our moral judgements
are judgements upon the intrinsic value of certain kinds of
feeling, and in these cases the judgement of value cannot be
made unless the feeling is actually felt, except so far as a man
may (on account of some inferred analogy with what he has
felt) judge that a certain feeling in another deserves respect, even
though he may not chance to experience it himself, or may condemn
it on account of its incompatibility with a feeling which he has
felt and values. Here again differences between the emotional
capacity of different individuals affect the value of their ethical
judgement. Not only do the indi viduaPs powers of correct ethical
judgement vary, but, except in those in whom this power is strong
and in the particular directions in which it is strong, these
judgements of value (like aesthetic judgements) are peculiarly
liable to be swayed by the judgements of others, and by the
influence of those emotions and associations through which the
judgements of others appeal to us. It should be observed that
some moral or aesthetic capacity is actually presupposed in this
sympathetic influence, and there are limits to the extent of such
influence. A man who really does not know what Beauty is, will
probably not be induced by the ipse dixit of the connoisseur to
grow enthusiastic, unless it be as a piece of conscious hypocrisy,
over the work of some fashionable school. It is the man of dim,
confused, undeveloped aesthetic perceptions, who will grow into
an admiration for what he is told to admire. He may be induced
to admire what is less worthy of admiration, and to depreciate
what is more worthy ; but he could not be induced to admire
that which possesses no merit or beauty whatever. He would be
imposed upon by a fairly good copy of an Old Master, but not
by an execrably bad one. It is just the same in the moral sphere :
only here the modifying influence of environment is multiplied
a thousand-fold by all the influences, the emotions (some of them
of high moral worth), even the moral principles which link us to
our fellow men.
154 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
There is another important difference between moral and other
judgements. Not only is the power of judging rightly as to
ultimate moral values dependent upon a faculty distinguishable
from a man's general intellectual capacity, but it is to a large
extent dependent upon the degree in which his will responds to
those judgements. That moral discernment is the outcome of
a habit of moral action was the theory of Aristotle. No doubt
it is much more possible than Aristotle supposed to judge well,
not merely about means but about moral ends or ideals, and to
act badly ; but it remains true that to a large extent the power
of moral intuition may be improved or impaired by our voluntary
conduct, and therefore the truth of men's moral judgements
depends not merely upon insight, but upon character. Here we
have an additional source of inequality in men's powers of dis-
cerning between right and wrong.
In view of all these facts, it must appear that the attempt on
the part of the individual to think out his moral code a priori,
in entire independence of his environment, is an impracticable one,
and one which would be disastrous, if it were practicable l . That
this is so with the great mass of men is sufficiently obvious.
They have not the knowledge, the experience, the leisure to trace
out all the advantages and disadvantages of conflicting courses
of action, whether in detailed circumstances or with regard to
general principles of conduct. They could not have become
moral beings at all without moral education ; and yet that moral
education has been gradually unfitting them for the impartial
exercise either of their ordinary understanding in dealing with
means or of their moral Reason in choosing ends. They can only
have learned to approve and disapprove by actually approving or
disapproving particular things, and such approval or disapproval
has been making it more and more difficult for them to approve
J Dr. McTaggart writes : * Nothing can be more important to me, in
respect of any branch of knowledge, than my own immediate certainties
about it. Nothing can be less important than the immediate certainties of
other people ' (Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 72). But surely even in
other branches of knowledge than Ethics a man may have to rely on other
people's immediate certainties e.g. a dyer or a Physicist investigating the
cause of colour might well consult an Artist who would see shades of difference
in colour which he could not perceive himself.
Chap, v, i] NECESSITY OF PRIVATE JUDGEMENT 155
or disapprove something markedly different. Other men's moral
judgements, sympathetically appropriated by them, have given
a bias to their emotions, and the emotions have reacted upon
their judgement. It may be suggested that, on attaining years
of discretion, the individual would do well to emancipate himself
from the distorting influence of his social environment, and
school himself into thinking entirely for himself on moral
questions. And to some extent this is no doubt desirable ; but,
if it were done completely, the individual would be thereby
withdrawing himself from the school in which alone Virtue is
teachable. Once more the aesthetic analogy may help us. It is
only by studying great Masters that a man can himself become an
Artist ; and that study implies that he is submitting himself to
influences which are moulding his taste and judgement, which
are every moment limiting in certain directions his power of
impartially and independently judging between their ideals and
other ideals. And yet without such education he would never
acquire any power of independent judgement at all 1 .
1 Von Hartmann, with his accustomed ethical insight, recognizes that the
ordinary Morality of the average man is not and cannot be ' reine Autonomie
noch reine Heteronomie' but 'eine Konkurrenz beider,' and that in the
average individual intrinsic moral activity must necessarily present itself in
the form of an external rule which represents an autonomous Morality in the
community to which he belongs: such Morality is ' nur fiir das Individuum
als solches eine Heteronomie, aber fur das ganze Volk als Individuum hflherer
Ordnung betrachtet ist sie Autonomie, nanilich ein Integral aus alien auto-
noinsittlichen Individualwillensakten ' (Ethische Studien, pp. no, 114). At
the same time he strongly insists upon Autonomy as the ideal. In much that
is said in some quarters about Heteronomy and Autonomy there seems to be
a certain confusion between two senses of the word. A man's will may be
autonomous enough to satisfy Kant himself, although in some of the details
of Morality he defers to the judgement of others. Nobody but a lunatic
refuses to accept the judgement of others in matters of which he knows
nothing : and nobody can have an independent judgement in every depart-
ment of conduct. It is only when we come to the most general principles of
Morality that lack of Autonomy necessarily implies a low level of personal
Morality. A man is not the less moral because he allows Church or State
to decide for him the morality of marrying his deceased wife's sister ; though
he would be an undeveloped moral being if his respect for unselfishness were
wholly based upon authority. If this be denied, it can only be in the sense
that absolutely ideal Morality would imply an ideally complete intellectual
development.
156 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
Are we then to condemn the attempt to think for oneself in
moral matters ? Are we to say that a man must simply submit
himself wholly and unreservedly to the maxims, the traditions,
the ideals of the society in which he finds himself ? A moment's
reflection is enough to negative the suggestion. A principal
object of moral education is to form the habit of judging for
oneself. The ancient philosopher who most emphasized the
necessity of moral education by habituation insisted no leas
strongly that the moral education was not complete until the
man had come to see and appreciate for himself the reason,
the ground, the principle of the maxims which he at first
accepted on authority 1 . And if the man's moral education has
been a success, if he really has been taught to use his moral
Reason, it cannot invariably stop in its exercise at the exact
point which would prevent the deliverances of his own moral
consciousness coming into collision with those of his moral in-
structors. The majority of men, of course, are not likely to rise
on the whole far above the moral ideal of their society ; but, if
we do not confound Morality with the mere observance of a few
traditional, and for the most part negative, maxims of conduct, it
is clear that very ordinary men must have some moral originality
or individuality. A man who thought and felt with the majority
on every detail of life and conduct would be, as nearly as it is
possible to be, a man without a character. And it is precisely to
the men in whom moral education has been most successful, who
have absorbed most completely all that was best in the teaching
and example by which they were educated, that there are most
certain to come moments at which they are impelled to question
the teaching they have received ; and to apply the principles
which they have imbibed to the criticism of those principles them-
selves, or to carry them out into applications not dreamed of by
those from whom they learned them. Moral innovations of this
sort may of course take a great variety of forms. Sometimes
there will be a violent reaction against morals that have been
taught ; and yet the greatest of moral revolutionaries have owed
not less to their environment than the most rigid traditionalists.
The environment of Athens produced Socrates as much as it
1 Aristotle, Ethic. Nicomach., VI. 12 (p. 1144 a).
Uhap. v, ij AUTUJNUMY AND FKOUKESS 157
produced the Sophists. Ruskin appeared to his average con-
temporaries from one point of view as a dangerous reactionary,
from another as a dangerous revolutionary. And yet Ruskin
can easily be shown to owe as much to an early Victorian
education as Macaulay. The most violent reaction often owes
much to the ideas against which it reacts, and the reaction in
turn often contains within itself the germs of the most startling
revolutions. And in more ordinary cases moral improvement
takes place through the expansion, the development, the intensifi-
cation, the fresh application of principles already acknowledged,
the clearer vision of truths of which there have been already
at least many glimpses.
It is not necessary for our present purpose to analyse further
the nature of these new stages in moral progress. Sometimes
the innovation is a purely intellectual discovery, a recognition
that such and such a principle must necessarily lead to such
and such a consequence, or that such and such an end could
be best attained by some hitherto undreamed-of means ; some-
times it is an emendation of the fundamental axioms (so to
speak) of moral thought, as when the civic morality of the
Hellene or the tribal morality of the Jew is supplanted by
a comprehensive principle of universal Benevolence ; sometimes
it is some signal increase of the emotional intensity with which
a quite accepted principle is realized ; sometimes it is the revision
of the values recognized in ultimate ends or elements of Well-
being, as when it is seen that a stricter restraint of appetite
than pagan Ethics required is better worth having than its
indulgence, or that Christian Humility (properly understood) is
more beautiful than the self-assertion of Aristotle's jxeyaActyvxos.
To tie the individual down to absolute acquiescence in the judge-
ments of his predecessors or his contemporaries would be to put
a stop to the possibility of moral progress. To tell the man of
the least gifted moral nature that he is never to think for
himself about what he ought to do would be to doom him to
moral stagnation or sterility. Mr. Bradley (who seems rarely
to touch upon practical matters without violent and obvious
exaggeration) has laid it down that for a man ' to wish to be
better than the world is to be already on the threshold of
158 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
immorality 1 / It would be truer to say that the man who is
content to be as moral as his neighbours has already passed
considerably beyond that threshold. Would not any one who
really supposed that at all times ' wisdom and virtue consist in
living agreeably to the Ethos of one's country ' inevitably have
voted for the condemnation of Socrates, and have joined the
crowd which shouted ' Crucify him, crucify him ' ?
II
How, then, are we to adjust these two principles the prin-
ciple of moral authority and the principle of private judgement,
both in their way essential to a sound Morality in society and in
individuals? At the earlier stages of moral development the
question can never arise ; for to a large extent the influence of
the Authority is unconscious : to question it already implies the
first stage of emancipation. Authority achieves its most com-
plete success when it is no more felt as Authority than we are
directly aware of the pressure which the atmosphere is at every
moment exercising upon our bodies. But if we suppose a child
or a man who has arrived at the stage of intellectual and moral
development at which he is capable of asking, ' How far should
I obey Authority in Ethics ? ' we should have to say to him just
what we should have to say to a man who asked, ' How far am
I to rely upon Authority in matters of historical criticism or of
aesthetic judgement ? ' In the latter case, for instance, we should
tell him, * You must begin by accepting provisionally the judge-
ment of the best guide you can find. If you begin to paint
Nature without the assistance of those who have studied Nature
before you, it is unlikely that you will ever paint better than
some crude predecessor of Cimabue. On the other hand, if you
try to form your taste by studying all the pictures that you
1 Ethical Studies, p. 180. Elsewhere Mr. Bradley quotes with approval
Hegel's commendation of a purely particularistic morality (ib. p. 169) :
' Hence the wisest men of antiquity have given judgement that wisdom and
virtue consist in living agreeably to the Ethos of one's people.* This nearly
approaches the doctrine of Kirchmann (' Jedes Volk muss sein Sittliches fiir
ein Unbedingtes und Unveranderliches halten '\ against whom von Hartmann
polemizes as the typical representative of the * moral principle of Hetero-
nomy ' (Das sittliche Bewmstsein, p. 63).
Chap, v, ii] LIMITS OF AUTONOMY 159
come across without allowing your judgement to be warped by
the suggestion that you will probably find the best pictures in
the National Gallery, you would be in great danger of never
finding your way to Trafalgar Square at all. And even at
Trafalgar Square it is not every boy or man who would learn
to think the Old Masters better than an average English
Academician if he had never been told that they were generally
so considered. But it is in vain to suppose that in following
this course you will not have contracted a bias. The greatest of
the great Masters show the influence of their teachers. But in
course of time you will learn from your chosen guides them-
selves, in proportion as you have chosen them well and in
proportion as you are capable of learning it, how gradually to
correct that bias, and to judge for yourself what is beautiful.
You will give up your reliance upon Authority just where
and in so far as you see reason to suspect that your chosen
guides were wrong, and that you are more likely to be right/
There are, indeed, differences between Morality and other
matters which tend to increase the necessity of caution in
attempting to strike out a new line in practical Ethics.
I have already emphasized the much greater liability of moral
as compared with other judgements to be distorted by our
private passions and wishes ; and this is a consideration which
may recommend Green's useful maxim that, while a man may
not go far wrong in imposing on himself some new restraint
which is not generally recognized by his contemporaries, he
ought to hesitate very much longer before he allows himself
any indulgence which the accepted Morality condemns. Wo
must likewise bear in mind the very much greater importance
of such innovations in Morality as compared with judgements
on mere matters of opinion. The publication of a new theory
may aid the progress of Science even when it is ultimately
refuted ; the harm which may be done by a word lightly spoken
against accepted moral standards may be great, even when the
particular scruple which is derided may chance to be a baseless
one ; though we have also to remember the tendency which un-
necessary restrictions have to weaken men's respect for those
which are necessary, particularly when the unnecessary restraint
160 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
is no longer really approved by the consciences of those on whom
they are imposed. It is not every occasion on which we fail to see
the reason of some established rule, or even every occasion on which
we think we see a reason against it, that calls upon us to break
the commandment and teach men so l . Just the same considera-
tions which make it a duty in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred
to obey a law even if we think it pernicious may often make it
a duty to fall in with some social convention which we think
irrational. There are many matters in which it is of more impor-
tance that there should be a rule universally accepted and obeyed
than that the rule should be the best possible. This is, of course,
the case with the great mass of petty matters regulated by the
etiquette of Society, or the custom of nation or class, or, again,
with matters so fundamental that they can only be altered by a
legal or social revolution. Sometimes, even when we think the
rule pernicious, there may be many circumstances in which the evil
consequences of compliance are less than those of non-compliance.
We are bound, again, to take account of established moralities,
even when we ourselves feel it a duty to protest against them.
We may feel that the evil of gambling makes it desirable that
even moderate playing for money should be banished from
respectable society ; but, till the rule is established, we are not
justified in treating a man who breaks it as an offender against
acknowledged Morality or good manners. It is impossible to
define the degrees of clearness and conviction on our part which
will make it a duty to violate some established rule of our
society. It is only important to insist that the ultimate
standard of right and wrong should be the individual's own,
and that he should exercise his own moral judgement even when
he ultimately decides that respect for some authority compels him
1 Simmel, a by no means conservative Moralist, has pointed out how,
through association with acts really immoral, the doing of acts merely con-
ventionally wrong may produce upon the consciousness of the agent all the
effects of real wrongdoing and so lead to real moral deterioration (Einleitung,
II, p. 406 sq.). The fact may be used on both sides as a warning both
against lightly disturbing accepted rules of conduct, and against binding
unnecessary burdens upon Consciences which do not really acknowledge
their obligation, though they may not be sufficiently clear-sighted deliberately
to repudiate them.
Chap, v, iii] THE CONFLICT OF IDEALS 161
to act otherwise than he would do if he had no such authority
before his eyes. And that brings me to a consideration which
has hitherto been left out of account a consideration of vital im-
portance, which is, however, too generally neglected in discussions
as to the relation between the society and the individual in the
sphere of Ethics.
Ill
I have hitherto written as though each individual found
himself a member of a single homogeneous ' society ' confronted
with some one clearly defined, universally accepted moral code
or ideal, professed and more or less practised by every member
of that society (subject to modification only by his own personal
and individual aberrations), commended to his acceptance equally
in all its parts by the united weight of that society's authority,
and enforced upon him by its 'social sanctions/ In practice
we know that this is very partially the case. In a very primitive
tribe, or within the limits of an Indian caste, there may be some
approach to such a concentration of social Authority ; in such
societies there may be found a single standard of conduct,
unanimously accepted, and in its more important articles
enforced with such uniformity that transgression of established
custom is almost unknown. But such is not the case at any
more advanced stage of moral development. Least of all does
this representation correspond with the circumstances of any
modern man in any civilized modern community ; in any such
society there is not one moral ideal but many ideals, more or less
exalted, more or less conflicting. It is not merely that different
individuals have different ideals ; there is in truth no such
single ' society ' as is contemplated by the conventional way of
speaking. The individual is not a member of one ' society,'
but of a network of (if we may so say) interlacing ' societies/
each of which has its far more or less clearly defined and more
or less peremptorily enforced ideal. The schoolboy is a member
of one society called his family ; the adult outside world is for
him largely represented by his Schoolmaster ; through literature
he is brought into connexion not with one but with a number of
more or less harmonious, more or less discordant moral worlds ;
BA1HDALL II M
162 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
while he is also the member of a society with a quite distinct
ideal of its own, an ideal forced upon his attention with far
more peremptory insistence than either of the former i. e. the
society of his schoolfellows ; and even here there may be
a collision between the ideals of many conflicting sets or strata
of school society. These considerations are of importance for
our subject in several ways. On the one hand, it should be
observed that the environment which exercises the maximum of
social pressure upon the individual is generally the immediate
environment. Now the moral level of this environment may be
considerably below that of the surrounding society, and yet its
'sanctions' are enormously more powerful. The only public
opinion that matters much to an unmarried officer is that of
his mess, and there is no guarantee that the public opinion of
a mess will be up to the level even of that entirely vague
and indefinite ' public opinion* which is supposed to exist in
Society at large. Moreover, in certain particular points and
respects the public opinion of a man's immediate society is
nearly always paradoxical as it may appear below the level
of that of the surrounding society. For the public opinion of
each of the particular groups of which Society is composed is
likely to be weakest precisely on those points on which for that
particular group the temptation is strongest. The opinion of
the 'general public' on the subject of adulteration and tricks
of trade is sound enough; but what practically presents itself
as public opinion to the average grocer is the public opinion of
grocers, or at most of tradesmen at large. The general public
condemns in the clergy the practice of preaching sermons stolen
wholesale without acknowledgement, and taking credit for their
originality ; it is among the clergy that the condemnation of it,
though not non-existent, is least strong. In many cases the
public opinion of a man's own particular group is absolutely
opposed to the interests and to the public opinion of the wider
society around. It is probable, of course, that every member of
this smaller group is more or less aware of the wider opinion ;
and this wider public opinion will often present itself as an ideal
which his own higher self respects, however little he may seek
to live up to it. But still it is the lower and narrower ideal
Chap, v, iii] PUBLIC OPINION NOT SUPREME 163
that is most conspicuously illustrated by the conduct of a man's
' neighbours/ and to which the ' sanctions ' of public opinion
are for the most part attached. It is this fact which renders
so futile the Utilitarian attempt to find in public opinion a
' sanction ' which will identify the interest of the individual
with the interest of the whole, and which renders so deeply
immoral (if it is to be taken seriously) the teaching of ' ideal
Morality ' when it bids a man take as his ultimate moral
criterion the average practice of his neighbours not (be it
observed) the ideal of his neighbours, but their actual practice.
The truth is that Philosophers like Mr. Bradley habitually write
about Ethics as though the average man were perfectly moral, that
is to say the average man of the * respectable* classes, for they seem
usually to leave out of account the most numerous class of their
fellow citizens. It is the man who reads the Times or the
respectable shopkeeper who always does duty for ' the plain man '
in practical matters, though (in Mr. Bradley's own case) this
apotheosis of middle- class respectability jostles oddly enough
with pleas for very startling innovations or revisions in certain
departments of Morality. Now this way of representing the
moral life is not merely defective ; it betrays a want of sympathy
with all efforts after anything higher than the conventional ideal,
with all forms of moral enthusiasm, with all intenser forms of
moral life in every age with the more enthusiastic Christianity
of past or present, with the heroism of Russian revolutionaries,
with what is best in socialistic or labour movements nearer
home. It misrepresents and caricatures that moral life of the
average man which it affects to find so satisfactory. For
that average man is deeply conscious for the most part of a
higher ideal than that which is realized in his habitual conduct.
His conduct would fall below the level which it actually attains
if it were not for the partial and occasional influence of the ideal
with which his higher self identifies itself : and yet it is not the
strivings of the higher self so much as its defeats which most
obviously force themselves upon the notice of any one who is
prepared to take average practice as representative of the
average man's ideal and therefore of his own. The public
opinion of our neighbours is not the source of what is best in
M 2
1 64 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
the lives of most men: for those who are really struggling
towards the light * the world ' often becomes synonymous with
all that is evil. It is the public opinion of the immediate
environment which is practically most important to a man, and
that public opinion often assumes the form of persecution in its
dealings with the individual who aims at an ideal higher than
its own, all the more because it is secretly conscious that it is
higher and truer than its own *.
The average man is thus normally more or less conscious of,
and more or less influenced by, an ideal or ideals higher than
that of ' his neighbour's ' average performance. But it is none
the less important to remember that this ideal is as much a social
ideal as the other. The Conscience that accepts it, with whatever
degree of clearness and consistency whether as the deliberately
chosen rule of life, or with distant homage as an ideal almost
too high for daily practice, or with confused and intermittent
allegiance is not indeed the passive reflection of other people's
opinions which it is represented to be by those who insist most
upon the social origin of our moral ideals ; for (as we have seen)
it is only a consciousness that has in it some power of recogniz-
ing right and wrong for itself that is capable of education by
Society. But still it is a Conscience moulded and educated by
Society. Its ideal is for the most part though not without
more or less of modification through the independent exercise of
the individual's trained faculty of moral judgement an ideal built
up for it by a society, and received from a social environment.
But it is an ideal deliberately chosen and selected by the indivi-
dual from a number of competing social ideals. Take any person
whose actual conduct is in some particular markedly above the
level professed and the practice of his immediate surroundings
the schoolboy who stands out against the all but universal bad
custom sanctioned by the school opinion, the trader who is
impoverished by his honesty, the member of a worldly family
1 'Each little society, distinguished from the background of universal
humanity by reason of certain ideas and endeavours that are common to its
members, represents a social will, which has all the characteristics of an
independent reality, in that it operates as a self-active force both on the
individuals comprising it and on the regions of life above it* (Wundt, Ethics,
B. T., Ill, p. 36).
Chap, v, iii] SOCIAL ORIGIN OF IDEALS 165
who gives himself or herself to good works. In most cases you
could definitely tell where this apparently isolated individual
has got his ideal from. No doubt in many cases he has, in a
sense, got it from the very persons who commended it so little
by their habitual maxims or their usual practice. For mere
ordinary common sense may be sufficient to detect the inconsis-
tency of the schoolboy who is indignant enough against other
kinds of falsehood or deceit but introduces an illogical exception
in favour of ' cribbing ' : the dishonest trader has himself
denounced the corruption of government officials : the worldly
mother may herself have taught her children that it is good to be
charitable to the poor. But if there is really nothing in the
immediate environment to suggest the higher ideal, the social
source of the ideal could still in general be traced in the wider
environment. In most cases it could be discovered in an actual
personal or social influence a teacher, a friend, a social group, or
a ' movement ' with which the person has been in some kind of
contact, a book, a preacher, or the higher ideal to which the
dullest, the deadest, the most conventional worship bears witness.
Even where the individual seems most completely cut off from
the society in which the highest ideal is formally professed or
actively lived out, there is still through education or literature
some contact with a wider environment. The most 'secular 1
education can hardly keep the pupil in entire ignorance of a
literature that is steeped in Christian ideas: the most mun-
dane circles read newspapers which communicate a knowledge of
the existence of human suffering and of active efforts to relieve it.
The individual Conscience, however active, still almost in-
variably finds its highest ideal, or at least the suggestion of its
highest ideal, not in any actually new creation of its own, but
in an ideal already active in some other soul, more or less
realized in other lives, more or less accepted by some actual
society of human beings. If any doubt remain on this matter,
one may point to the fact that the most original moral
teachers nevertheless generally betray the source of their moral
inspiration. No doubt the very existence of an absolute moral
truth which human Reason has the faculty (more or less of it in
different individuals) of discerning for itself implies that those
j66 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
in whom the faculty is most active should exhibit some tendency
towards an approximation in quite independent moral judge-
ments. Nothing is more childish than to assume that every
coincidence between the teaching of early Christianity and some
other literature shows that one borrowed from the other. But
still in the emphasis which is laid on this or that aspect of
Morality, in the form which is given to their moral theory, in
the more subtle and delicate tones of character, the men of
highest moral genius and strongest moral faculty will still show
the influence of the social ideal by which their own moral
capacity has been evoked. To say nothing of the broad contrast
between Hellenic and modern civilization, the best men even
within the pale of civilized Christendom rarely fail to show
where they got their ideals. The ideals of the best Roman
Catholics and of the best Protestants approximate to each other
much more closely than those of the worst in each faith, but
they are never the same. The difference remains even where
the strictly theological side of Christianity has been abandoned.
Comte's ideal was Catholicism without Christianity : Carlyle's
was Puritanism without its Theology. The difference remains
even in the mast powerful, the most individual, the most erratic
of moral natures. The ideas of Count Tolstoi are steeped in a
Christianity which is palpably Eastern, ascetic, half Manichean.
IV
And yet all this talk about the social character of our moral
ideas and the social education of the moral conscientiousness
must not blind us to the fact that after all the sole ultimate
source of moral truth is the immediate affirmation of the
individual moral consciousness. No matter how widely diffused
a moral idea may have now become, it was once probably the
judgement of an individual at variance with the whole of bis
environment. No doubt when an idea is ' in the air ' as we say,
it seems to have occurred to a great many minds at once with-
out any one of them owing it to the others ; and, when that is so,
each of those minds must have been itself working (to whatever
extent it went beyond the accepted standard or the new sugges-
tion received from outside) independently of any other mind.
Chap, v, iv] MORAL CAPACITY UNEQUAL 167
But quite as often the individual was at first a vox clamantw in
deserto to the people immediately around him, though other
scattered individuals were at the same moment thinking much
the same thoughts. Minds may react on one another, but there
must be action first or there can be no reaction. No doubt some
great steps of moral progress do take place in a spontaneous,
collective way in which it is scarcely possible to trace the con-
tributions of individual minds. This is usually the case with
the later phases of great movements. But the greatest of all moral
revolutions have definitely originated with the conscious work
of an individual mind l , and at all events they originate with the
few, not with the many. It is of fundamental importance to
recognize the unequal distribution of moral capacity. The men
of moral genius are few, and yet it is to them that we owe what
now passes for the accepted moral code or ideal of Society. The
power of recognizing a moral truth when it is once pointed out
is much more widely diffused than the power of independently
discovering it, just as the power of recognizing and appreciating
good music is more widely diffused than the power of composing it.
And yet even this power of recognizing and appropriating moral
truth is by no means uniformly diffused. Some measure of it is
probably possessed by nearly every human being, though there
may conceivably be such a thing as actual moral insanity even
where there is no general insanity ; and there probably exist large
1 Wundt is one of the few formal writers on Ethics who, in talking
about 'society/ do not forget the 'enormous importance of leading minds,'
in the formation of the moral code. 'In the totality of psychical develop-
ment all individual wills have not the same importance. . . . Hence a theory
like Hegel's historical philosophy, which regards the social will as the sole
objective ethical force, and holds that the function of the individual will is
merely an unconscious partaking in and fulfilment of the social will, is
an exceedingly partial view of the truth. Such a theory is a complete
antithesis to the equally one-sided individualism of the preceding centuries *
(Ethics, E. T., Ill, pp. 34-5). So again : ' the majority of individual wills
represent the passive and receptive element ; the real force that occasions
every alteration and transformation [of social institutions] being exerted
by the leading minds. The original, creative intellectual power is thu
always the individual will* (ib., p. 36). All this is the more significant
inasmuch as Wundt goes to the verge of mysticism in recognizing the
'reality ' of the social will.
168 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
numbers of people in whom the capacity, though existing, has
never actually been awakened l . But the higher degrees of moral
susceptibility are the possession of the few. When an ideal or
a moral rule is said to be accepted by a society (in so far as any
beyond the most negative and elementary conditions of social
life ever are accepted by so heterogeneous a society as a modern
nation), it is accepted with infinitely various degrees of indepen-
dence and of intensity. It is often only the few whose moral
consciousness actually sees the truth of the ideal for itself ; the
many accept it on authority from the many, and this acceptance
may vary from a clear and whole-hearted recognition to a mere
reluctant acquiescence which commands obedience only in so far
as the rule or ideal is enforced by an adequate sanction.
This unequal distribution of moral faculty prevails as regards
all the various elements of which the moral faculty (in its wider
sense) is composed the purely intellectual power of applying
means to ends or of applying a principle to the particular case,
the power of discerning and realizing universal moral truths, the
capacity for pronouncing the judgement of comparative value in
the concrete case, the capacity for those various kinds of emotion
which are the condition of our passing those judgements. But
it is especially and pre-eminently in the power of comparing
the moral value of the various elements of our Well-being, and
most of all in duly appreciating the higher of those elements,
that this inequality is at its greatest. It is here that the
acquiescence of the many in the accepted moral standards is
most obviously due to the influence of Authority. The great
majority of men in a modern community really do believe not
very consciously or analytically, nor with very profound depth
of conviction or emotional fervour but still do see for them-
selves that it is good to promote the Well-being of Society, or at
all events to avoid what is grievously detrimental to it ; and
they have no difficulty in recognizing that Well-being includes
health and food, clothing, shelter and the like. But when
we come to the intrinsic value of intellectual goods, how
far can this be said to be actively recognized by the majority
1 Aristotle recognized the existence of men nfrrrjpupwoi npbs ap<rf)v (Eth.
Nfc. I. 9, p. 1099 b).
Chap, v, iv] INFLUENCE OF AUTHORITY 169
even of fairly educated persons? There is a more or less
distinct feeling that the more intellectual kinds of amuse-
ment are better than the coarser or more sensual perhaps not
much more. Certainly the idea of serious study (except when
directly ' useful ') is a common subject of open derision in much
society which is supposed to consist of educated men. Many of
our professional teachers are constantly enforcing the unimpor-
tance of intellectual culture in comparison with athletic exercises
and a certain boyishness of demeanour which they call manliness.
The judgement that study is good is one which is not actually
made except by a small number of intellectual persons, and not
by all of them. The influence of the minority which believes
in such things is (in many circles) only just sufficient to prevent
a life devoted to such pursuits (at least when unpaid) being
treated as positively immoral and this, perhaps, only because
* public opinion ' has hardly yet risen to the point of treating any
form of idle life as immoral. By the narrower religionists a life
of study is often explicitly condemned. When we come to
the intuitive judgements on which the duties of Purity and
strict Temperance are based, who shall say what proportion of
men really see for themselves the moral value of the good
implied, the moral worthlessness of the pleasures condemned?
And what proportion of those who acknowledge and who
practise these virtues would judge the same apart from the
influence of the authority by which they were commended ?
In the vast majority of cases in which these virtues are practised
there is, no doubt, a consciousness of the moral obligation which
goes far beyond mere submission to an externally imposed rule ;
in the vast majority of those who do not even aim at practising
these duties, and who would loudly protest to themselves and
to others that they ' see no harm ' in disobedience, there is
probably an uneasiness of Conscience which is much more than
a mere consciousness that their conduct would be condemned by
their stricter contemporaries. But it is probable, also, that in
these cases the dimmer intuitions of the many are in a peculiar
degree dependent for their own existence, and for the influence
which they exert upon conduct, upon the clearer and more
powerful intuitions of the few.
i;o AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
That the more obvious moral problems are already settled for
the individual by the accepted rules of his country, or class, or
profession, and that it is, as a rule, not wise for the average man
to transgress these universally accepted rules, will be generally
admitted by all but the very fanatics of moral 'Autonomy. 1
But it is often forgotten that it is only in the region of the most
elementary Morality that there is this universal consensus. It
is agreed that a man should earn his living if he has no c private
means ' ; that he should support his wife and children, and not
ill-treat them; that he should pay his debts, with a possible
exception in favour of persons of very exalted social rank ; that
he should keep the letter of the seventh commandment (some-
times with a similar reservation) ; that he should not tell any
lies or practise any dishonesties except those sanctioned by the
customs of his class or profession. That is almost as far as this
accepted morality of the community will carry him. But when
he gets beyond this, it is often assumed (so far as it is admitted
that any further morality is desirable, or even allowable) that
the individual who is anxious to do his duty should fall back
upon the unassisted deliverances of his own moral conscious-
ness. It is forgotten that, just as it is only by the ordinary
discipline of social life that the Conscience of the individual is
educated up to the low minimum standard which receives
a pretty general recognition, so it is only by a higher social
education by contact with characters, ideals, socially accepted
standards of a higher type that he can hope to carry his
own moral education further. The mere preaching of the rule
'Obey your Conscience/ as the whole duty of man, tends to
make men satisfied with their actual performance, and to
obscure the duty of educating the Conscience. It is often for-
gotten, even by people who are conscious of the existence of
a higher standard of conduct than their average performance,
and are not without desire to rise above it, that they are only
likely to come nearer to their own ideal by seeking to elevate
the ideal itself. For practical purposes, the process of educating
the will to more faithful obedience to Conscience, and that of
Chap, v, v] MORAL SELF-CULTURE 171
increasing the sensitiveness of Conscience itself, are, if not
actually identical, at least very closely connected. More than
this I must not say as to the practical importance of a due
recognition of the necessity of what we may call the higher
education of Conscience. I must be content with pointing out
certain corollaries in the region of strict ethical theory which
flow from what has been said as to the influence of Authority on
ethical ideals and ethical practice :
(i) There is a whole group of duties which hardly find a place
in most recognized classifications, the duties which may be com-
prehensively included under the duty of moral self-culture.
This will include the duty of doing all the things which the
individual has reason to believe (from his own experience or his
knowledge of other people's experience) will tend to elevate
his moral ideals, enlighten and strengthen his moral judgement,
cultivate and discipline the emotions in the way most favourable
to the growth of high ideals of his duty, and to the influence
of those ideals upon his will. For the believer in any form of
Religion, this duty will include worship of the kind dictated
by that faith, and all religious practices which really tend in
the direction indicated; for the non-believer they will include
whatever forms of self-examination, meditation or reflection,
instruction or association with persons influenced by the same
ideas and pursuing the same ideals as himself may have
been found morally beneficial by such persons. Some of the
forms of Comte's ritual may fairly excite a smile ; but he
ought not to be ridiculed for recognizing that disbelief in
Theology (whether well founded or otherwise) does not dispense
with the necessity of moral culture, and that such moral culture
must be essentially social. But I would not be supposed to be
merely pleading here for a recognition of the duty of going to
Church. The forms and instruments of moral self-culture must
vary enormously with time, place, circumstance, and individual
disposition, and in no case can the duty be considered to have
been exhaustively discharged by simply * going to Church/
valuable and important as that undoubtedly is to those who
share the beliefs which make it possible. The duty is only
a particular application of the principle that a man has not
i;a AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
performed his duty until he has considered and adopted the best
means of knowing his duty better, and of caring more intensely
to do it
(a) In considering any question of duty on which doubt may
have arisen, a man should give due weight to Authority ; but
the authority to which he should attach weight will not be the
authority of the majority, of ' public opinion ' (e. g. the Times
newspaper), or of his neighbours (i. e. the little circle of persons
by whom he happens to be surrounded), but the authority of the
best men and of the best circles, of the rules and maxims which
they have prescribed, of the ideals which have commanded and
still command the greatest weight and have inspired the noblest
action in such persons and circles. Aristotle was not wrong in
the weight which he attributed to the judgements of the Wise ;
he did not adequately emphasize the fact that when a man's
own moral judgement is clear and strong enough he ought
to defy the judgement even of the Wise, after he has
duly endeavoured to educate and instruct himself in their
school.
(3) Of course in the majority of cases at least where the
doubt relates to some question of moral principle as distinct
from a mere doubt about the wisdom, say, of some political
measure, or some technical matter on which he may avail himself
blindly of expert advice the individual, after availing him-
self of the instruction and advice of his authority, will come
to see for himself the truth of the rule or principle which
comes to him commended by the greater weight of moral
Authority, though he may not always be sure that he would
have found it out for himself, or have assented to it if it had
been propounded to him by an authority for which he felt no
reverence. But there are cases where it may be right for a man
to bow to moral Authority when he finds no clear answer to
problems in his own moral consciousness, or even when he feels
that his own judgement (in so far as he can isolate it from the
influence of his authority) would have been the other way.
Whether a man should act on his own view of right and wrong
against a consensus of the best men whom he knows will of course
depend (a) upon the clearness and strength of his own con-
Chap, v, v] LOGICAL BASIS OF AUTHORITY 173
viction, (6) upon the nature of the alternative before him. It
might often be right for a man to forgo an indulgence in which
he sees himself ' no harm ' in deference to Authority, where it
would not be right to take upon himself the responsibity of
what presents itself to his own mind as an act of injustice.
The logical basis of this submission to Authority in the more
strictly moral sphere is exactly the same as that upon which it
is reasonable to rely in any sphere of life upon the authority of
others, and it is needless to observe that nine-tenths of our
actions are in practice based upon knowledge which we accept
upon authority without being able to explain the grounds upon
which it rests. We act upon the judgement of the man who
seems to us most likely to know; and, when we are unable
directly to test the fact of a man's possessing the knowledge he
claims, we assume that the man who is most often right where
we can test his judgement will be right in similar questions
which our own insight or experience is insufficient to decide.
We have found that the judgement of the artistic expert has
proved right so far as we have been able to follow him ; we
think he is likely to be right even when we have not succeeded
in admiring what he admires. We know by the way he sings
and plays that another man's musical powers are much in advance
of ours ; we infer that he is likely to be right when he tells us that
we are singing out of tune, though we were unable ourselves to
perceive the fact. And so in the ethical sphere it would be quite
right for a man who saw no harm in occasional drunkenness to
defer to the consensus of persons whom he recognizes in other
ways as men of more delicate moral perceptions than himself l .
It can hardly be seriously doubted that most good acts of
most good men are done without deliberate and self-conscious
reflection on the reason why they are good. In most cases
their belief is really (as the outside observer can see) dictated by
Authority ; in some cases the agents are themselves well aware
1 A friend suggests that it is a mistake to assume that the ' most delicate '
conscience is always most likely to be right. I certainly do not mean that the
person who has most scruples is the most likely to be right : I should myself
regard the ultra-scrupulous person as one of the worst /ossible advisers in
some kinds of moral difficulty.
i 7 4 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
of the fact. They could give no reason why this or that act is
wrong except that it had always been thought so. As a rule,
of course, the same tradition, or habit, or example, or association
which psychologically explains their conduct causes them also
to think that their dislike of such and such an act is the result
of their own judgement. The more completely their moral con-
sciousness is moulded into accord with the ideal of their
authority, the less are they aware of its influence. But some-
times, in moments of reflection, a man must say to himself,
* I do not know any reason why this is wrong except that it is
forbidden by an authority which is likely to know better than
I do/ In some cases the considerations which make a particular
act detrimental to the general good are too complicated to be
intelligible to the unreflecting or uneducated. A great many
honest men, for instance, could give no adequate or coherent
answer to the question why it is wrong to steal. They would
entirely fail if they attempted to construct a clear and consistent
theory of Property. In other cases, where the question relates
to the goodness of the end, the individual must often either lack
the experience necessary to pronounce upon the matter, or be
unable to appreciate that the end is good, even when he knows
what it is. It is only by submission to Authority that a very
ignorant person can recognize that it is not a waste of time to
spend many hours a day in study ; and there are probably many
people besides children who would frankly confess that they
could not, if it were not forbidden by the Bible, or the Church,
or general opinion, ' see the harm ' of polygamy. Without some
measure of submission to Authority in moral matters Society
could not be kept together.
VI
I know that there are many persons to whom the very
suggestion that anybody is ever in his moral action to defer to
any external authority whatever will present itself as positively
immoral ; and who will be quite unable to dissociate the con-
trary thesis from the idea of ' Priestcraft ' or ' State Socialism '
(according as the Authority is ecclesiastical or secular), tyranny
over Consciences, ' spiritual bondage ' and the like. With a view
Chap, v, vi] EXPLANATIONS 1 75
to meet such objections it may be desirable to make a few
additional explanations and reservations :
1 i) It is a curious fact that the people who assert with peculiar,
if not exaggerated, emphasis the social origin of the individual Con-
science are often the people who most strongly repudiate the idea
of Authority in Ethics. Yet if a man is never to trust any other
moral consciousness than his own, he ought to distrust even his
own Conscience, which has been moulded by the moral conscious-
ness of other men. It is admitted that at least in the period of
early education a man must accept the undemonstrated assertions
of the wise the ipse dixit of parent or teacher. But can it be said
that a man's moral education is always complete because he has
attained the age of legal manhood ? Are not many people, in
the moral sphere, children throughout life, and are not the great
majority of us children in such matters in comparison with the
Saint or the Sage ?
(2) Even if it were admitted that the act done in obedience to
Authority has no moral value in itself, it has consequences ; and
the good man will wish to avoid the bad consequences to others
of his wrong acts, even if his own assisted judgement would have
failed to anticipate them. Everybody admits that it is right to
obey the Physician though we cannot understand the reasons for
his advice ; and it is surely not merely in technical matters that
one man's opinion is likely to be better than another's.
(3) But it is not true that there is no value in an act done
from respect for Authority. There will be a moral value in an
act motived by a desire to do the best, even though a man may
come to the conclusion that such and such an act is the best
merely because some one else thinks so. If this were not so, we
should have to deny all moral value to the acts of whole genera-
tions whose morality has been to an enormous extent based
upon obedience to a book or other authority believed to be
infallible *.
(4) It must be remembered that the man has already per-
formed an act of independent moral judgement in choosing his
authority, in so far as he has chosen it on truly ethical grounds.
1 Of course the submission, even when nominally absolute, has always in
practice had limits.
176 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
It was because such and such a man's character or the known
rules and actual practice of such and such a society or of such
and such a Religion appealed to himself as the noblest that was
within his ken that he placed himself under their guidance, even
when in detail he could not feel confident that they were right.
To choose one's moral authority wisely is at least the beginning of
wisdom in the moral sphere. Acceptance of an authority vaguely
discerned (or at first merely suspected) to be the highest this in
ultimate analysis would be found to be the real source of a large
part of the best conduct that the world has known, and must
still be more or less the case, though the guidance by Authority
naturally and rightly tends to diminish with the maturity of
individuals, classes, and races.
(5) The respect which the judgement of any ethical authority
ought to command must depend upon the extent to which it
rests upon really ethical grounds. If another man's advice to
me is itself dependent upon an authority which I do not respect,
the value of that advice disappears, however much better or wiser
I may know a particular adviser to be than myself. For
instance, the authority of a good man who may recommend such
and such a practice or rule of action is seriously weakened for
me if I discover that his judgement is so far enslaved to an
ecclesiastical system, accepted on non-ethical grounds, that a doubt
arises whether he recommends it as the result of his own moral
judgement or moral experience, or merely because he finds it
prescribed by the Fathers and Canons of the Church, which
a theory of the Church's infallibility compels him to accept:
while equally good men who have been brought up in a different
ecclesiastical tradition seem blind to the moral advantages of the
practice or the obligation of the rule.
(6) It is assumed throughout that our acceptance of Authority
does not, and never can, imply a total abdication of individual
judgement. Not even the most mechanical moral code could
possibly be lived out without the constant exercise of such judge-
ment, and a true moral ideal will emphatically condemn the
incessant dependence either upon some traditional body of
Authority or upon a living ' director.' Moreover in the last
resort, if only the ' voice within ' is clear and decided enough, it
Chap, v, vii] THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 177
is a duty to hearken to it, no matter what the weight of con-
trary Authority. It is only asserted that it is often right for
a man to act upon the intuitions of others when he has none
of his own, and sometimes even where his own contrary
intuitions are weak and confused. The extent to which confi-
dence in one's own ethical judgement should overrule any weight
of antagonistic authority is of course as little capable of exact
definition as any other ethical question which assumes the form
of a ' how much ' or a ' how far.'
VII
The aspects of ethical truth which we have been dwelling on
are, as it appears to me, of great importance in dealing with the
relation between Morality and Religion. That subject must
hereafter be considered more at length. But the view which we
have taken will help us to appreciate certain aspects of that rela-
tion as it has actually existed in History. It will enable us to
appreciate and to justify, at least on their purely ethical side,
two important elements in all the historical religions, and
especially in Christianity (i) the authority of exceptional
personalities ; (a) the authority of the religious community. It
is largely because these influences are so completely ignored in
the treatment of Morality by professed Philosophers that their
accounts of the moral life are often so widely removed from the
facts which History reveals.
If the moral consciousness is formed and moralized by the
social environment and particularly the influence of the persons
in whom the moral capacity of the human soul has reached its
highest development, if it is right that in all moral judgements
great weight should be accorded to the authority of the best
men, sometimes even in preference to the man's own spontaneous
ideas of right and wrong, when he finds them confused or defec-
tive, then we are able to justify the reverence with which the
highest ethical religions of the world have regarded the teaching
of their founders, and particularly the altogether unique
authority which Christian Theology has ascribed to the life,
teaching, and character of Jesus Christ, an authority which is
often recognized in practice by many who would refuse to accept
178 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
any theological formulation of it. There is no supersession or
surrender of a man's own moral judgement in ascribing this
position to Christ, if it is by the individual's own moral judge-
ment (seconded and confirmed by that of others in whose
moral insight he believes) that the moral value of the authority
is discerned.
But while the principles which have already been laid down
will fully justify such a submission to the authority of the moral
consciousness at its highest, it will also suggest the limits of such
submission. Even in respect of this highest kind of moral
Authority it is important to bear in mind the limitations within
which alone it can be morally healthful for individuals or for
communities to acquiesce in obedience to an external authority
in conduct. It is clear that such submission can only be morally
healthful when the authority is accepted, at least in part, upon
ethical grounds. When a certain stage of intellectual or moral
development has been reached, it may even be said that the
acceptance ought to be based solely upon an independent accept-
ance of the ethical ideal set up by the authority. For the
individual it may, indeed, be quite reasonable that, when a certain
moral Authority is once accepted on ethical grounds, respect
should be paid to it even in details which may not actually
commend themselves to the private judgement of the individual.
But this cannot well be permanently the case for the community,
or for that inner circle of ethical intelligence from which the
community really derives its highest ethical ideas. By the
community at large a moral authority can only be healthily
recognized because and in so far as the social consciousness
accepts and ratifies the ideal set before it by the authority.
To accept it beyond this point would put a stop to that indepen-
dent working of the moral consciousness upon which all ethical
progress is dependent. And that comes to very much the same
thing as saying that it is only in respect of the widest and most
fundamental ethical ideas that we can expect the judgements
of any ethical teacher permanently to commend themselves to
the world. Even for the individual the acceptance of moral
ideas or rules on authority must not and cannot preclude some
independent exercise of his own moral intelligence. For even
Chap, v, vii] AUTHORITY OF CHRIST 179
the most precise moral rules cannot be applied without such an
exercise of the independent value-judging faculty. A moral
rule may say ' be kind/ but a person whose reverence for kind-
ness was wholly based upon authority would be quite unable to
recognize what particular actions were kind. The results of
attempting to treat the ipse dixit of some moral code no matter
how true and venerable as a mere external authority to be
applied to the particular case after the manner of a parliamen-
tary Statute has been summed up in the adage that the devil
can quote Scripture to his purpose. But still more in the case of
the community it is clear that changing circumstances and events
are continually bringing about the need for fresh applications
and developments of existing moral rules, for the revision of old
applications of such rules, and for passing judgements upon wholly
new questions of Ethics upon which no rules at present exist.
The idea of a unique crisis or turning-point in the moral
history of mankind has nothing in it in the slightest degree incon-
sistent with a due recognition of the principle of development,
or even with the idea of perpetual progress in any sense in which
it is rational to cherish the hope of such progress. It will be
unnecessary to dwell upon the existence of certain unique crises
in the evolutionary history of the Universe. Such crises are
constituted by the beginning of organized life, still more em-
phatically by the beginnings of consciousness, and (though here
the crisis must be assigned to a definite era of considerable
duration rather than to a definite moment of time) to the first
beginnings of the moral life. It will perhaps be more to the
purpose if we point to analogous crises in the growth of the
Sciences. It is quite misleading to treat scientific progress as if
it consisted in the perpetual revision of traditional views, in the
constant giving up of old theories, and the acceptance of new
ones. There are discoveries in the Sciences which constitute
epochs, and which are practically final. That these discoveries
should always be open to criticism and be held liable to revision,
should any need for it present itself, goes without saying, but in
many cases there is no reason to apprehend that any such
necessity will occur: nor is it even considered desirable to
encourage the expectation that it will.
i8o AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
Copernicus, Newton, Darwin are the names which most con-
spicuously associate themselves with such epochs. After such
an epoch there is no going back. Mistakes in detail such heroes
of scientific achievement have made, but their main ideas have
not been revised ; there is no reason whatever for thinking that
they ever will be. Not only so, but such discoveries gradually
narrow the ground of possible fresh discovery. It may safely be
said that in the realm of Physics, for instance, there is no room for
any new discovery of the same magnitude with the discovery of
the Newtonian Laws. For all time Physics must be based on
the discovery for which Copernicus prepared the way, and which
Newton actually made. Equally little room is there, I imagine,
in Biology for a new idea which can be so new or revolutionary
as the idea of Darwin in its most general form, apart from the
details of his theory which are and may long be matter of dis-
pute. Such parallels may suggest the kind and measure of the
finality which may reasonably be expected in Ethica That such
a crisis in the spiritual history of mankind occurred in connexion
with the rise of the Christian Religion, is almost universally
admitted; and it is the general verdict of sober criticism that,
when all due allowance is made for the long evolution of ideas
which prepared the way for that crisis and for the existence of
a certain amount of development even in the earliest records of
its Founder's life, that crisis was chiefly due to the personality
of that Founder. Considering the enormous place in the entire
moral life of the world that is occupied by the idea of the
paramount authority of the teaching of Christ, it will not,
I trust, be thought an irrelevant digression in an ethical treatise
definitely to raise the question whether there is anything
opposed to a due recognition of the ideal of ethical Autonomy
in the recognition of a certain finality and completeness in the
' Christian ideal/
VIII
It is clear that in many senses of the word there can be no
finality in Ethics. The details of right conduct are obviously
relative to changing circumstances of time and place. So long
as we confine ourselves to means, every new piece of knowledge
Chap, v, viii] NECESSITY OF DEVELOPMENT 181
in the world alters the details of many duties. It became wrong
for a busy man to travel from London to Oxford by coach as
soon as a quicker way of reaching his destination was invented.
And discoveries as to the relation of means to ends discoveries
in Physiology, in Psychology, in Economics are continually
revolutionizing whole regions of duty. It is needless to give
illustrations of the way in which increased knowledge of
physical and social laws has modified our conception of our
duty to the poor, to the sick, to the insane, to children and the
like. And it is not only in respect of the means, but also in
respect of the end, that we must expect indefinite change and
development. If the view taken in these pages be well founded,
duty consists in promoting the true good of all human beings in
proportion to their intrinsic worth or capacity. But wherein
does that true good consist? At any given moment in the
history of the world the individual (in so far as he relies upon
his own judgement) must fix for himself the content of that good
by his own judgements of value. But, even if his intuitions of
value were incapable of improvement, his power of passing
such judgements would still be relative to his experience. He
can only estimate rightly the value of such things as he knows.
But human experience is constantly growing. In all departments
of human activity we are continually hearing of the new this or
the new that the new humour, the new Trade Unionism, the new
Art, the music of the future, and so on. Each of these new ideas
introduces fresh moral problems, which cannot possibly be
settled in detail by appealing to any existing canons, any more
than it would be possible to apply the old rules of tactics to the
altered conditions of modern warfare. It is not that any old
rule or principle has necessarily been found to be wrong, but
there is no rule at all which is applicable to the new case. The
most gifted moral nature cannot possibly say whether the listen-
ing to Wagner's music forms an element in true human good till
he has heard at least a little of it. The question must be
settled by a fresh exercise of the value-judging faculty. In
this way and in this sense our ideal of human life is constantly
growing and expanding in its actual content. The proposition
that it is good to be charitable remains as true as it ever was ;
1 82 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
bnt Charity must now mean promoting for our neighbours a
very different kind of life than any that could have been lived
in the Palestine of the Christian era.
Now, in view of these considerations, it is clear that it is only
in respect of the most general ethical principles that any finality
can be claimed for the Christian ideal. The law of Brother-
hood the supreme duty of promoting the true good for every
human being may, indeed, be treated as occupying in Ethics
very much the position which the law of universal gravitation
occupies in Physics. 1 The law must be accepted simply in the
last resort because it appeals to our Moral Reason, and only so
long as it does appeal to the Moral Reason of successive ages.
But it is as gratuitous to contemplate the coming of a time
when it shall be superseded as it would be to expect the advent
of a second Newton who will overthrow and supersede the dis-
coveries of the first. And yet, as we have seen, this law would
mean comparatively little for us apart from some idea of what
the good is. It would mean little to assert the finality of the
Christian ideal if we did not include in our conception of that
ideal some conception of what the good is that is to be promoted
for each individual soul. And for the central elements of Christ's
estimate of goods the supreme value of love, the superiority
of the spiritual to the sensual, the value of personal purity, the
subordination of sensuous gratification to higher things without
any ascetic condemnation of natural and healthy pleasure there
is every reason to expect as much permanence as for the law
of Brotherhood itself. But from the nature of the case it is
impossible to define more exactly the line which separates the
essential from the unessential, the permanent from the tem-
porary, the germ from the full-grown organism. Within the
limits thus indicated there is room for a very large development
in the moral ideal. The attitude of Christians towards intel-
lectual and aesthetic culture has, for instance, varied considerably
1 How far this idea can be found in other ethical systems earlier than, or
independent of Christianity, it is not necessary for us here to consider.
Broadly speaking, I believe the answer to be that it is to be found in other
ethical systems, but side by side with a great many ethical ideas which are
quite inconsistent with it.
Chap, v, viii] RITSCHLIANISM 183
at different times in the history of the Church. That develop-
ment has taken place in the past is a matter of history. That it
will take place, and ought to take place, in the future results
from all that has been said about the impossibility of detailed
finality in any ideal, the necessity for the constant exercise of
the value-judging consciousness, and the consequent need for
development in the ethical code. Only in so far as it is supple-
mented by this principle of development can we regard the
association of a moral ideal with a certain epoch and a single
great historical Personality in the past as morally healthful and
intellectually defensible. That Christianity accepts, and always
has accepted, this principle of development through its doctrine
of the Holy Spirit would be a leading topic in any reasoned
apologetic for Christianity as the absolute Religion.
The dominant school of liberal Christian Theology in Ger-
many the school which takes its name from Lotze's great
disciple and colleague, Ritschl rightly bases the claim of Christ
and of Christianity upon the permanent truth and unique value
of the ideal taught by Christ in work, act, and character 1 , as recog-
nized by the value -judgements of the individual moral conscious-
ness. That school, rightly to my mind, regards Christian dogma
as the progressive effort of the Christian consciousness to express
in the philosophical language of the time its sense of the supreme
and unique value to humanity of the moral and religious con-
sciousness of Christ, and makes its fidelity to that idea the
ultimate test of dogmatic truth. But unfortunately the
Ritschlians have exaggerated this ' Christo-centric ' tendency in
a way which is as inconsistent with historical facts as it is with
sound ethical theory. Their tendency to disparage Metaphysic,
whether in the form of modern Philosophy or of ancient dogma ;
their suicidal attempt to rest the truth not merely of Christianity
but of Theism wholly and solely upon the emotional experience
of the individual Christian soul ; their depreciation of all know-
ledge of God such as is derivable from philosophical reflection or
is contained in other historical Religions, it would be irrelevant
1 Including of course his religious consciousness, his sense of union with
the Father and his teaching about Him, of which it would here be out of
place to speak more in detail.
i8 4 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
here to criticize in detail. What it does concern us here to insist
upon is that an Ethic is fundamentally erroneous which refuses
to recognize the necessary and healthful interaction between the
moral consciousness of the individual and that of the community
the need for constant development in the ethical ideal, the
impossibility of a final or supreme ethical revelation which is
not also a continuous and progressive revelation. On ethical
grounds alone we may say that the doctrine of the Son requires,
as its indispensable complement, a doctrine of the Holy Ghost.
It must not be supposed that in asserting that the true ground
for the acceptance of the Christian ideal is the fact that it com-
mends itself to the moral consciousness we are in any way
disparaging the importance of the life and teaching of Christ in
the moral evolution of mankind, or the value of a knowledge of
that life and teaching to individuals and communities at the
present day. The Conscience of the average man is quite capable
of accepting ideals which he could never have thought out for
himself. The moral level once attained by a community can
only be kept up by the continued operation of the influences
which raised it to that level. It is true that ideas m&y some-
times live when their origin is forgotten. But even in the
region of Physical Science education consists largely in the
history of past discovery. And there is this difference between
scientific ideas and moral ones, that moral ideas and ideals are
far less separable from the personality of those who have
taught them. The strongest ethical influences are personal
influences. To say that the truth of the moral ideal presented
by the teaching of Christ must rest upon the appeal that it
makes to the moral consciousness of mankind is a very different
thing from saying that the influence which that ideal has exer-
cised and still exercises over the world has been or ever can be
separated from the influence exercised by the character and
personality of Jesus. It is as well established a fact of history
and of sober criticism that the Christian ideal, in the form in which
it would be recognized by any modern Christian, even if he be
a Ritschlian Theologian, does represent much ethical teaching not
explicitly to be found in the teaching of Christ, as that the develop-
ment has flowed from that moral new birth of the world which is
Chap, v, ix] AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH 185
to be associated with his work. It is childish to dispute whether
the fountain-head or the stream be the more important to the
thirsty traveller ; nor need a due recognition of the fact that
the main stream of Christian ethical thought can be traced back
directly to the historical Christ prevent us from recognizing
that it has received not unimportant accessions by the way.
The very capacity for absorbing into itself what is most valuable
in ethical teaching outside itself constitutes one of the chief
qualifications of the Christian * deposit ' of ethical truth to be
the basis of a universal Ethic and a universal Religion.
IX
From the point of view here suggested, the notion of an
authority residing in the Christian community, so far from
being regarded as part of that ' Aberglaube ' which it is the
business of an emancipated Theology to sweep away, will pre-
sent itself as a vital condition of our being able to recognize in
any historical Religion a claim to finality and to universality.
The authority of the Church in ethical as in religious matters
means the authority of the Christian consciousness the growing
and expanding moral consciousness of those who in the full and
deliberate exercise of their own faculty of moral discernment
have recognized in the fundamental Christian ideas the highest
moral truth which the Spirit of God has revealed to the world.
What from the point of view of the individual is Authority
becomes, as I have already insisted, when looked upon from the
social point of view, liberty or Autonomy. The ideal purpose of
the visible Christian society is to serve as the organ of this
consciousness. The Church in its ultimate idea is a society for
the promotion of the highest ideal of life, under the guidance of
a true theory of the relation of man to God. All that has been
said about the existence of many conflicting social ideals, repre-
senting a variety of distinguishable though mutually interacting
* societies/ within each geographical or political * society ' tends to
emphasize the necessity for a society specially concerned with the
promotion of the highest life. That each and every one of the
societies commonly known as Churches have fallen very far short
of being adequate organs for this purpose is too obvious a propo-
1 86 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
sition to need historical justification. They have all been more
or less imperfect realizations of a high ideal. In dealing with
the State we have long found it possible to believe in the divine
right of Government without believing in the divine right of any
particular ruler or any particular constitution. We have found
it possible to recognize side by side a divine right of Govern-
ment and a divine right of Rebellion to recognize the duty of
the individual to submit himself to the society, and to recognize
none the less that that submission has limits. It is high time
that a similar mode of thinking were applied to the relations
between the individual and Society in all its forms and all its
organs and not least in that most important organ of all
(according to the true ideal of it) which we call the Church
or the Churches.
All that has hitherto been said as to the limit of the authority
which the society can claim over the individual needs to be
remembered and emphasized with peculiar distinctness in regard
to the religious society. A prejudice against the very word
Authority has sprung in part from its confusion, both by friend
and foe, with the totally different idea of Infallibility. All that has
been said about the right and the duty of individual judgement,
about the necessity for progress, of self-assertion in individuals
and in societies, about the process by which the moral discoveries
of the individual spirit are appropriated and enforced by the
community, constitutes a protest against that confusion. Some-
times the social consciousness itself is misrepresented by the
official organization whose function it is to serve as its expression :
sometimes it is the right and duty of the individual to rebel
against what really is for the moment the dominant ideal of his
society. But, all the same, we must recognize the idea of an
ethical authority residing in the society, and the need of a
definite organ or organs for the expression of that authority, as
a counterpoise and complement to the authority which is rightly
ascribed to the highest embodiments of the moral consciousness
in the past. For Christians the authority of the Church is
required as the necessary complement and development of the
unique and paramount authority which with ample justification
they have ascribed to its Founder.
Chap.v,ix] AUTHORITY IMPLIES AUTONOMY 187
The true ideal of human nature is undoubtedly the ideal which
has been expressed by the word Autonomy. The ideal is that
each individual should do what in the exercise of his own con-
sciousness he sees to be right. But the education of the moral
consciousness up to this level is only possible through the action
of a strong social Conscience, and the recognition of its authority
by the individual, up to the point at which his present knowledge,
experience, and ethical insight require its support. It is only
through the principle of Authority that the individual enters
into the accumulated ethical inheritance bequeathed to him by
the past. Apart from social education, each individual would
have to start at the level of the savage, and by his own unassisted
efforts he could scarcely avoid sinking even below that level.
It is the object of social education to quicken and develope the
individual's power of independent ethical thought and feeling to
an extent which shall make him not so much independent of
Authority as unconscious of its influence except in so far as he sees
the necessity for going beyond it. If in a sense the individual in
the course of his moral growth becomes less and less dependent
upon social Authority, in a sense he becomes more and more
identified with it. The commands to which he once submitted
as mere external commands now become to him the commands
of his own higher self : he who was the subject over against an
actual legislator now becomes himself the legislator as well as
the subject legislator for himself and, as a member of the
society, legislator for others. But this very growth of inde-
pendent ethical power will have fitted him and compelled him
to develope existing ideals further than they have been de-
veloped, and even to correct and contradict them when necessary.
Even to the last this ideal of Autonomy is one which no indi-
vidual can fully reach : in a sense it is one which he ought not
to reach. The limitations of his knowledge and experience,
sheer want of time for enquiry and reflection, the impossibility
of becoming an expert in a hundred different directions, must
compel him to take on trust the judgements of others as to
means, and to a large extent even as regards elements in a true
ideal of the good. He must continue, he ought to continue,
sensitive to the ethical ideas of the people about him, of the
i88 AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY [Book II
society as a whole, and, above all, of the best people in it ; but he
ought also to criticize them and to react upon them. The attempt
to deny or ignore the principles of Authority in Ethics altogether
would mean moral anarchy : to prohibit the individual from
going beyond, and, if need be, rebelling against the accepted
moral standard, would mean ethical stagnation and abject
' heteronomy.' In truth the ideal of Authority and the ideal of
Autonomy both become absurd and self-contradictory if either
is pushed to the point of excluding the other. Reliance on
Authority can only justify itself by the assumption that there
exist individuals or societies which are ethically autonomous,
and there could be no Autonomy in the society if there were no
relatively autonomous individuals, or if they exercised no
authority over their fellows.
BOOK III
MAN AND THE UNIVERSE
CHAPTER I
METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY
THE relations of Moral Philosophy to Metaphysic may be
conveniently treated under three heads: the two subjects are
connected :
(i) Because any true and adequate account of the nature
of Morality must involve certain metaphysical postulates or
presuppositions.
(a) Because some of the conclusions of Metaphysic, even
though Morality might in a sense exist if they were not true, are
of high importance to Morality and seriously affect our attitude
towards it ; so that, if not postulates of any Morality whatever,
they are postulates of a rational and coherent ethical system.
(3) Because Moral Philosophy involves certain metaphysical
consequences, or supplies some of the data which it is the
business of Metaphysic to interpret.
Like every other branch of knowledge Moral Philosophy
implies or assumes certain ultimate conceptions which it is the
business of the Metaphysician to examine. But we do not
usually consider it necessary to begin the study of a Science by
an enquiry into its ultimate metaphysical implications. Mathe-
matical Science assumes that there are such things as space and
quantity, and that our ideas about their nature constitute in
some sense knowledge of Reality. Physics assume the existence
of matter and force : Psychology assumes the existence of mind
or consciousness. The ultimate meaning of all these conceptions
is matter of grave metaphysical controversy ; and yet the
190 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
Physicist at least, if not to the same extent the Psychologist,
is content to leave metaphysical controversy severely alone. In
the same way the ultimate nature of Morality and its relation to
other kinds or elements or aspects of Reality are questions
which open up the most momentous metaphysical issues. It
is no doubt possible simply to assume the existence of the moral
consciousness, and to analyse its contents. That is the task with
which for the most part we have so far been concerned, though
at times (as for instance in the chapter on Reason and Feeling)
it has been impossible altogether to maintain the attitude of
indifference to metaphysical problems. And that task repre-
sents, I believe, the primary aim of Moral Philosophy. That
it is a possible task, the object of a possible Science, is proved by
the existence of many books on the subject in which there is
hardly any explicit metaphysical discussion : while, even in
those writers who are most in the habit of insisting upon the
intimate relation between Moral Philosophy and Metaphysic,
we do not find as a rule that their arguments turn on any
metaphysical considerations so long as they are engaged on
the questions which have so far occupied our attention. Let
the question be * What is the moral criterion ? ', * Is pleasure
the chief good ? ', ' Is Casuistry possible ? ', ' Why is it a duty
to speak the truth ? ', or the like so long as they are dis-
cussing matters like these, we do not find that their arguments
turn upon any explicit metaphysical assumption : they are
arguments of precisely the same kind as those which are em-
ployed by writers combining the same ethical views with a
different metaphysical basis or by their opponents in support of
opposite ethical theories. Metaphysic does not contain in itself
the solution of any of these questions ; and it requires no meta-
physical knowledge to follow the arguments commonly employed
in discussing them. It is no doubt true that the views of such
writers as Kant or Green upon such questions imply certain
metaphysical presuppositions ; but only in the sense in which
every Science assumes metaphysical postulates. Morality, as
understood by them, would have no reality or validity if certain
metaphysical theories inconsistent with their own could be re-
garded as true. But then speculatively these writers would also
Chap. i,i] METAPHYSIC AND THE SCIENCES 191
hold that the same or certain other metaphysical positions are
inconsistent with the ascription of any objective significance to
the truths of Mathematics or Physical Science. In so far as such
writers have used metaphysical propositions for the determina-
tion of purely ethical questions, their Metaphysic has often proved
a source of error and confusion rather than of enlightenment,
as for instance when Green argues that pleasure being in time
cannot satisfy a self which is out of time. So long as the Moral
Philosopher confines himself to this analysis of the moral con-
sciousness, he is only forced to make metaphysical assumptions
in the sense in which the Mathematician makes metaphysical
assumptions in asserting that we know certain things about
space and quantity and number.
Are we then to say that the real connexion between Moral
Philosophy and Metaphysic is no more intimate than the con-
nexion between Metaphysic and any of the so-called * positive '
Sciences ? If such an assertion were well founded, it would
certainly imply that the majority of Moral Philosophers have
been the victims of some strange illusion or some extraordinary
accident. There are not unimportant Moral Philosophers who
have written practically nothing on Metaphysic, but theirs are
hardly the greatest names in the history of Moral Philosophy :
and there are few Metaphysicians who have not dealt with
Ethics in however incidental a fashion. The reason of this is
not far to seek. Speculatively, indeed, it is impossible to deny
a very close connexion between sound ideas on the subject-
matter of Metaphysics and sound ideas about the subject-matter
of Mathematics. Sensationalism, and perhaps some other forms
of Empiricism, deny all meaning or objective validity to those
necessities of thought with which Mathematics are concerned.
But practically we find that a man's views as a Metaphysician
exercise no influence upon his treatment of Mathematics.
Mathematicians of the most opposite views, or of no views
at all, about the ultimate nature of space and time are content to
assume the truth of the same axioms ; and the different sense in
which (if they are Metaphysicians at all) they interpret these
ultimate assumptions exercises no practical effect upon the con-
clusions which they reach as Mathematicians. It is the same
i 9 2 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
with the Physicist, and possibly even with the Biologist 1 , so
long as they really confine themselves to the subject-matter
of their respective Sciences. It ought theoretically to be the
same with the Psychologist, though in his case the isolation
of the psychological problem from the metaphysical involves
a degree of abstraction which in practice only a trained Meta-
physician, if any one, can keep up 2 , and which it is perhaps not
very desirable to keep up. Nobody in practice doubts that it is
shorter to go across the grass in a quadrangle than to walk
round two sides of it, no matter how sceptical or sensationalistic
may be his theory of space. No physical law is ever in practice
questioned on the ground of some idealistic or sceptical theory
about matter 3 ; nor does the most materialistic of psychologists
who has passed beyond the stage of elementary confusion ever
ignore in practice the difference between a wave of ether and
a perception of blue. In Ethics it is far otherwise. Particular
theories about the nature of knowledge, or of matter, or of mind
are constantly made into grounds for the denial of the Moralist's
primary assumption, the existence of the moral consciousness
and the validity of its dictates ; or at least for admitting them
only in a sense which revolutionizes the meaning of every proposi-
tion included in the Science itself. So long as he is content to
assume the reality and authority of the moral consciousness,
the Moral Philosopher can ignore Metaphysic ; but, if the reality
1 Here, indeed, at a certain point metaphysical differences (conscious or
unconscious) about the nature of Causality are likely to emerge, but they
need not emerge till an advanced stage has been reached in the study of
the subject.
2 The same remark may certainly be made with regard to some of the more
speculative questions to which the higher Physics lead up, but the ideal of the
two Sciences is that they should be as distinct as possible. The uncertainty
of division only exists when the Physicist's conclusions are speculative. So
long as that is the case, the Physicist is always liable to become, or to be
accused by the Metaphysician of having become, a Metaphysician without
knowing it. Physical facts, when once established, have simply to be
accepted by the Metaphysician. To interpret them in their relation to
other aspects of Reality is his business, and not that of the Physicist.
8 The tendency of Physicists to deny the possibility of an actio in distans
may perhaps be accounted for by the unrecognized influence of metaphysical
assumptions.
Chap, i, i] ETHICS AS A SPECIAL SCIENCE 193
of Morals or the validity of ethical truth be once brought into
question, the attack can only be met by a thorough-going enquiry
into the nature of Knowledge and of Reality ; we have to clear up
the relation between the particular sort or aspect of Reality
with which the Moralist deals and all Reality, between ethical
truth and truth in general. In practice it is hardly possible
to write many lines about some very fundamental questions
of Ethics from which some people would not dissent on meta-
physical grounds.
Each of the special Sciences deals with some particular aspect
of Reality taken in abstraction from the rest. In Moral Philo-
sophy, in so far as we are considering the nature of the moral
consciousness apart from other aspects of Being, we are still in
a sense abstract ; we are dealing with a departmental Science ;
but the discussion cannot practically proceed far without touch-
ing upon the most ultimate of all questions. We are dealing
with such a large and fundamental aspect of ultimate Reality
that it is practically impossible to deal with it thoroughly with-
out taking a very important step towards the determination
of our attitude towards Reality as a whole. It is impossible
that our views on the ultimate problems of Ethics should not be
influenced by our attitude towards Reality as a whole, or that
our view of Reality as a whole should not be influenced by our
attitude towards Morality. It is not from any doubt about the
importance to Ethics of certain metaphysical ideas that the
treatment of our subject was not preceded by an exhaustive
enquiry into the nature of Knowledge and Reality ; but rather
because it would have been extremely difficult to draw the line
between the specially ethical side of Metaphysics and the whole
of that Science. The metaphysical * prolegomena of Ethics ' tend
to become identical with the Science of Metaphysic itself, or
at least with the main outlines of it. All that can be attempted
here, consistently with the plan of this work, is to indicate,
without fully justifying, the metaphysical positions which in my
view are necessary either as presuppositions or as corollaries
of a reasonable system of Ethics.
RASHDALL II
194 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
II
The first point of contact between Ethics and Metaphysics
lies, as we have seen, in the fact that the former Science involves
certain metaphysical presuppositions. There are two directions
in which ethical conclusions such as those at which we have
arrived might be directly l impugned on metaphysical grounds.
The attack might be based upon a theory of the nature of
knowledge or upon a theory as to the nature of that self with
which in Morality we are concerned. It need hardly be said
that the two lines of objection are very closely connected. We
will look at the matter first from the epistemological point of
view.
The tendency of all theories which make experience the sole
source of knowledge is to undermine belief in that element
of our moral ideas which most obviously cannot be derived from
experience : and that is, if we are right, precisely the element
which constitutes the essence of Morality. By the doctrine that
all knowledge comes from experience is very likely to be meant
the doctrine that alMl]^3Y^reJJy_jg^^ JibouLJJiings^is^the
feelhjgsJJiat they give us : Empiricism does not perhaps in every
sense of the word necessarily involve Sensationalism, but the
historical ' school of Ejcgsrjence,' i n proportion to its thoroughness
and self-consistency, has tended to identify experience withjnere
sensation. Now if we know ultimately nothing but feeling, the
knowledge of right and wrong, so far as it is knowledge of any-
thing real, must also be based upon a kind of feeling, or rather,
it (like every other kind of knowledge) must be, at bottom,
nothing but a mode of feeling. The attempt may, indeed, be
made to show that moral approbation represents a specific
feeling different in kind from all other feelings: but the up-
holders of a ' Moral Sense ' wholly fail to show why this feeling,
however distinct, however much sui generis, should have any
better claim to be attended to than any other feelings. Of
course the constructive Moralist of the Moral Sense school 2
1 Later in the chapter I shall deal with the metaphysical or theological
questions which have an indirect bearing on their validity.
' 2 Such a man as Hutcheson. The ultimate meaning of Shaftesbury is more
ambiguous.
Chap, i, ii] CONNEXION WITH METAPHYSIC 195
really takes his subjective feeling of ' approbation ' to be an
index of some objective reality, but this is just what he has
no right to do so long as he attempts to analyse all knowledge
into mere feeling. Mere feeling can testify to nothing beyond
itself. Feeling g^ain e*m appeal only to him,, who feels jfr: the
Sensationalist cannot logically recognize any ideal of what men
ought to feel, whether this or that man actually feels it or not.
As long as feeling is treated simply as feeling, it is arbitrary to
assign to one feeling a higher value than another for any other-
reason than its actual intensity or the actual strength of the
impulse which it excites: all distinctions of quality between
feelings imply a reference to an ideal or rational standard which
mere feeling can neither set up nor acknowledge. The logical
Sensationalist must also be a Hedonist, and an egoistic Hedonist 1 .
He may (with Hume) recognize as a psychological fact that
in persons of a certain mental constitution the pleasures and
pains of others have a tendency to cause pleasure and pain
by sympathy : but this (as it is Hume's great merit to have
recognized) constitutes no reason for attending to these sympa-
thetic pleasures or pains, or allowing oneself to be influenced by
them beyond the point to which one is inclined to go by one's
natural taste for this particular source of pleasurable feeling.
The consistent Sensationalist can know nothing of an absolute
or objective Morality, of intrinsic value, of moral obligation. 2
Even if Empiricism does not take the form of pure Sensation-
alism even when it recognizes (that is to say) that knowledge
is something more than subjective feeling it still puts great
difficulties in the way of a constructive system of Ethics. So
long as Reality is supposed to reside in ' things ' conceived
1 It is, indeed, possible for the merely * naturalistic ' Moralist to avoid
Hedonism by defining the good as that which we actually desire, and
measuring the amount of the good by the strength of the desire, without
assuming that that something is always pleasure, but the distinction between
desire and feeling is a difficult one for the Sensationalist.
2 Strictly speaking, of course, even the calculating pursuit of a maximum
pleasure would be impossible if knowledge were mere sensation. I am
assuming that the Sensationalist does not see that his position is destructive
to the possibility of any knowledge whatever, even of what is necessary
in order to aim at a maximum of pleasure on the whole.
2
196 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
of as" having their nature altogether independently of our minds
or of any mind (even though it may be recognized that the
knowing mind must possess powers other than a mere capacity
for feeling), it remains difficult to recognize truth or validity
in a kind of knowledge for which obviously no such basis
can be found in ' external ' Nature. It may no doubt be
contended that the Empiricist is not necessarily a Materialist.
He may acknowledge the existence of mind and of mental states
in himself and others ; these are facts of experience no less than
outward ' things. 1 But if nothing is supposed to be knowable
about mind except { mental states ' known by immediate ex-
perience and abstracted from all reference to any Reality beyond
themselves, there is no possibility of comparing these * states'
with any ideal standard not given in experience, and the ' states
of mind ' tend to be valued merely in proportion to their ex-
perienced intensity, and that is very much the same thing
as valuing them merely as sources of pleasure or pain: and,
so far as this is the case, the Empiricist's position in regard
to Morality becomes identical with that of the Sensationalist.
Indeed, strictly speaking, so long as he really confines himself
to experience, the question of value cannot arise at all. The
Empiricist can know by experience whether things are pleasant :
he cannot attach any meaning to the assertion that pleasure
is a good unless he understands it to mean that people actually
do pursue pleasure. We have already seen that no accumulation
of experiences of pleasure and pain can give us the ultimate
major premiss which is implied by all Morality ; from * is ' to
' ought/ from existence to value, from the actual to the good,
there js no way by the road of ^experienced No doubt It is
possible to take up the position that this one particular kind of
knowledge has a different origin from that of any other know-
ledge: that other knowledge does, indeed, come only from
experience of external and material ' things/ but that in this
one function the human soul is in contact with a Reality which
is not material. And, in so far as the Empiricist passes into
the dualistic Realist in so far, that is, as he recognizes the
activity of the mind in knowledge and the reality of mind side
by side with that of matter the resulting Metaphysic ceases to
Chap. 4, ii] IDEALISM AND ETHICS 197
have any direct or immediate tendency to undermine the reality
and authority of a non-empirical l moral law, except in so far
as its inherent unsoundness may end in its own collapse, and so
in the collapse of any ethical superstructure which may be built
upon it. All that we can say is that the more moral judgements
are treated as a solitary exception to the rest of our knowledge,
the more difficulty there is in explaining their character and
justifying their validity ; and the more is suspicion apt to be
excited that, in assigning them an origin so different from that
of all other recognized knowledge, we are seeking to bolster
up a mysterious, 'mystical/ or unintelligible theory in some
practical interest.
The more fully it is recognized that in all knowledge even in
knowledge of the most ordinary matter of fact mind is active
or creative or constitutive of Reality and not merely a passive
recipient of impressions from the outside, the more fully it is
recognized that in knowledge the mind is building up or con-
tributing an essential factor to Reality, and not merely recognizing
a Reality which is what it is quite independently of itself or of any
other subject, so much the more intelligible does it become that
there should be a truth which has no external ' thing-in-itself '
corresponding to it, a knowledge which is not derived from mere
' sensible experience/ a Reality or aspect of Reality which cannot
be expressed in the language of merely physical Science or
of mere psychological experience. The bare supposition that
there is an ' external ' and independent thing behind our ideas
about the thing, that the 'active powers' of the mind merely
recognize what is already there ' in the thing/ independently of
such recognition by itself or any other mind, has no doubt by itself
nothing in it to provoke distrust of the conclusions to which the
Moralist may be led by an examination of the moral conscious-
ness. At the same time a position much more favourable to
a cordial acceptance of moral objectivity is reached when from
admitting the activity of mind in the recognition of the objects
1 Of course I do not mean to deny that all moral ideas, like all other
ideas, are derived from human ' experience ' if that word is used in a suffi-
ciently wide sense -to include the power of building up knowledge and
ideals which are something other than immediate presentation.
198 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
of our knowledge we pass on to the view that these objects exist
only for mind, and have no reality of their own apart from
mind. Hence the imperishable value of the Kantian analysis of
our knowledge, which shows that those special properties which
the plain man regards as constituting the very essence of the
' thing ' as it is apart from mind are really a creation of mind
and unintelligible apart from it that the ' oneness,' the
i substantiality/ the * causality/ the ' actuality/ the ' quantity/
which to common-sense seem wholly independent of mind, turn
out on reflection to be mental relations unintelligible and in-
conceivable except in reference to a knowing mind, so that the
things that we know have no independent existence apart from
our own or some other experience of them. It is true that Kant
acknowledged, like all Idealists, the necessity of sensible ex-
perience for the constitution of this phenomenal world : though,
unlike most of his successors, he assumed that the sensations
which (with the relations) go to constitute the world as we know
it are derived from an unknown and unknowable world of things
in themselves. But these spaceless and timeless ' things-in-
themselves ' of Kant have so little in common with the ordinary
man's idea of ' matter ' l that the practical effect of this modified
or 'critical' Idealism is for Morality much the same as that
of the more thorough-going Idealism which absolutely denies
the existence of ' things ' which are not either rnind or essentially
relative to mind. And when it is recognized that the very
' things ' which the plain man is apt to take as the absolute
antithesis of thought, the very ' matter ' beside which all mere
ereations of the] mind are apt to appear unreal and phantasmal,
&re nevertheless in a true sense the ' work of the mind/ the
difficulty disappears of realizing that moral judgements may be
none the less true and trustworthy, because they are not ' induc-
tions from experience/ or of discerning in the Moral Law a reality
or validity which is none the less real because it is ideal. Idealism
in Metaphysics, though not logically necessary to Idealism in
Ethics, is its natural support and ally. Such a Metaphysic
is, as leading up to the recognition of the activity of mind in
1 At certain moments Kant himself is disposed to identify the 'thing-in-
itself ' with God, or the world as it is for God.
Chap, i, iii] POSTULATES OF MORALITY 199
knowledge, the natural groundwork and basis of a Moral Philo-
sophy which is to be proof against sceptical objections. In
Ethics, as in many other branches of knowledge, the plain man
who is content to know particular things without knowing the
ultimate meaning and basis of knowledge itself, can get along
without any Metaphysic at all ; but when we are confronted
by difficulties or objections based upon a bad Metaphysic, the
only solution of them must be found in a better one. And,
when once the common-sense knowledge of Morality begins
to pass into a systematic study of Ethics, these objections are
likely to meet us very early and very persistently. There may
be a practical Morality, or even a more or less scientific attempt
to analyse and formulate practical Ethics, without Metaphysic,
but a purely ethical Science which attempts to avoid Metaphysic
must correspond very imperfectly with our idea of Philosophy.
A sound theory of Morality implies a sound theory of know-
ledge.
Ill
From another point of view our metaphysical difficulties may
take the form of doubts about the reality of that self which
is presupposed by every constructive Morality. And the answer to
those doubts must be the same which has to be made to empirical
theories of knowledge. To show that in talking about a self we
are talking about something real, we must begin by proving that
the existence of a continuous self is implied in all knowledge.
Knowledge comes to us piece by piece ; and, if we cannot treat
the successive moments of our conscious life as successive moments
of a continuously existing self, these successive experiences can
never be built up into a single world. Deny the reality of the
self, and you have no ground for believing in the existence of
a world which is only known on the assumption of that reality.
Or, from a slightly different point of view, we may urge that
objects are known to us only as the correlative of a subject ; at
least therefore we may contend that the subject is as real as the
object, even if we do not (with the thorough-going Idealist)
go on to infer that the object exists only in relation to, or
as the ' other ' of. a subject. Given the existence of a self which
200 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
cannot be broken up into a succession of isolated feelings or
ideas or psychical atoms of any kind, and which cannot be
treated as the mere attribute or accident of a material organism,
Morality becomes possible. The actions of the individual can be
treated as the work of a single self which has a definite character
of its own, a spiritual character which expresses itself in those
actions, and which is susceptible of spiritual changes and
amenable to spiritual influences.
And something more must be implied than simply the
existence of the self and its activity in knowledge. It is a pre-
supposition of all Morality that the self is the cause of its own
actions. In what sense precisely this must be asserted we shall
have to consider further in our chapter on Free-will. Meanwhile
I need only notice in passing that this postulate of Ethics is
implicitly or explicitly denied by two schools by the school
which regards the self as a mere accident or attribute or bye-
product of material processes (a view which cannot be further
discussed in this place), and by the school which so completely
merges Will in Reason and the individual Reason in the uni-
versal Reason that there ceases to be any difference between the
acts of the man and those events in Nature or those actions of
other men l for which no one dreams of holding the individual
himself to be in any sense ' responsible/ All alike natural
events, the actions popularly spoken of as those of other men,
1 This objection is not removed by the simple admission that the mind that
makes Reality is Will. Schopenhauer, while he avoids the mistake of identi-
fying the Absolute with Reason, destroys the ethical value of his position by
so completely identifying the individual with the universal Will that he*
regards the individual's sufferings as a just punishment for the original sin
committed by the universal unconscious Will in giving birth to consciousness
and so to the world, before he, the individual sufferer, was born a position
to which orthodox Theologians have sometimes approximated in their des-
perate attempts to justify immoral theories of Atonement. Schopenhauer
quotes with approbation Calderon's saying, that * the greatest crime of
man is that he ever was born * (The World as Will and Idea, trans, by Haldane
and Kemp, I, pp. 328, 458). Where a man is made in some transcendental
sense responsible for the sins which he did not commit, the practical effect
is to relieve him from responsibility for those which he did commit. Von
Hartmann has pointed out that Schopenhauer's acceptance of Kant's
'noumenal freedom' in Ethics implies the existence of an individual self
which is not recognized by his general Metaphysic.
Chap.i,iii] AN ACTIVE SELF 201
and his own individual actions become according to this view
mere happenings of which he is conscious but of which he is not
the cause, or of which he is only the cause in the sense in which he
may equally be called the cause of all other happenings in Nature.
By this school the most splendid compliments are indeed paid to
c the Ego/ The Ego makes * Nature/ but only in the sense that
it knows Nature in the sense, that is, that apart from know-
ledge there would be no Nature. The self makes Nature not
because it determines of what sort Nature shall be, but just
because it cannot help Nature being what it is. The very
identity of principle between God or the ' Universal Self -con-
sciousness ' and the individual self is made the ground for
despoiling the latter of any responsibility for its own actions
which it does not possess for the events of the world in general.
Nor can an illusory share in the responsibility for the Universe
and its history be regarded as any satisfactory equivalent for
the loss of any individual causality ; for, when we turn to the
relation between God and the world, we discover that that
relation too is resolved into a relation between the knowing
subject and the things which it knows. No Causality is recog-
nized in the Universe except the necessary connexion of thought
between phenomenal antecedent and phenomenal consequent,
Between the events of the world and the subject without
which it would not be, there is no relation of Causality at all,
God is the universal Thinker (if indeed He is not resolved intc
Thought without a Thinker), but He is not a Universal Wilier,
In the same way the actions which the individual self knows
are not in any case whatever the events which it causes, but just
the events which it cannot help. If Causality is recognized at
all in regard to human actions, it is recognized only in the same
sense in which Causality is recognized between one natural event
and another. The fact that the antecedents of human action are
facts of consciousness makes no difference to their essential
character. We have a 'psychological mechanism* instead of
a physical mechanism ; that is the only difference. It is not the
self (individual or universal) that is the cause of the action, but
an event in consciousness which is the cause of other events in
consciousness. The self does not cause these events, but simply
METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
looks on while they happen. Actions are regarded as causing
one another in just as mechanical a way as that in which the
movements of a billiard ball are determined by antecedent move-
ments. If the series of events which make up the conscious life
of the individual may in a sense be spoken of as a kind of self,
this is merely the so-called ' phenomenal self T ' ; quite a different
self from the self to which the categories of knowledge, and con-
sequently in some sense the existence of Nature itself, are attri-
buted. This phenomenal or empirical self is persistently degraded
to the level of a merely animal sensibility ; it is the tendency of the
school in question hardly to distinguish between the individual's
voluntary actions and events in unconscious nature. No doubt
the presentation to the self of the successive events which we
call human actions is necessary to their happening, but this self
is not individual but Universal, and the presence of this world-
making Self is only necessary to human actions in the same
sense in which it is necessary to other events in the world's
history. It causes neither the one nor the other.
How fatal are these ideas to the conception of duty, of moral
responsibility or imputability, of an objective moral law to which
the individual self is subject, need hardly be pointed out ; nor
will it have escaped the reader how nearly we have arrived by
a different route at the same position as that which is involved in
the theory of a purely materialistic Automatism according to
which spirits and spiritual or psychical states are never causes
but always effects the accidental bye-products or 'epipheno-
mena' of physical changes which determine one another (and
their psychical concomitants) in a purely mechanical manner.
Both theories refuse to attribute human actions to a self;
both attribute them to the Absolute or ultimate Reality. That
Reality may be differently conceived of by the two theories ; the
one may conceive of it materialistically, and the other spiritual-
istically ; but in either case we have no room for attributing the
causality of any human action to a real human self. And this
is exactly what the ethical point of view involves. In what
3 For the school in question tends to abolish the individual ' noumenal
self of Kant. It recognizes no * noumenal 1 self but the Universal Self-
consciousness.
Chap, i, iii] UNIVERSAL AND INDIVIDUAL SELF 203
relation the individual life and its activities may stand to the
Universal Will and its volitions, in what sense all the events of
Nature may be attributed to the Universal Self, what is the
relation between the Reason and the Will in the Universal Self
these are no doubt matters about which many questions may
be asked. But that in some intelligible sense, primarily and
immediately, actions may be attributed to the individual self
as their cause and are good or bad according as the self is good
or bad that is the starting-point and primary postulate of
Ethics. Wherein and in what sense this ethical point of view
may be regarded as ultimate, whether it is the truth and the
whole truth, or merely a truth which holds at a ' certain level of
thought,' are questions of which something will be said here-
after. But that these propositions possess objective truth, and
are not as a mere seeming which adequate philosophic insight
can reduce to a delusion, must be declared to be a primary and
absolutely essential presupposition of every system of Ethics
which can attribute any meaning to the word * ought/ And
the very fact that this assumption is a postulate of Ethics is by
itself a sufficient reason for declaring that it possesses meta-
physical truth. It is implied in the idea of Morality, and the
idea of Morality is a datum of the moral consciousness ; and the
data of consciousness are the only ground which we have for
believing anything at all. No doubt this, like all other im-
mediate data of consciousness, has to be harmonized and recon-
ciled with other data of consciousness, if it can be shown that
there is any prim a facie collision or irreconcilability between
them, but there is, to say the least of it, an enormous presump-
tion against any ' harmonization ' or ' conciliation ' which turns
such an ultimate datum of consciousness into a mere illusion.
To this subject we shall return hereafter: meanwhile I shall
merely insist that the existence of our moral ideas has as good a
right to be taken into consideration in the construction of our
ultimate theory of Universe as any other kind of fact. We must
not reject the deliverances of the moral Consciousness merely
because they are inconsistent with some metaphysical theory
which has been arrived at without taking those deliverances into
consideration.
204 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
It may be asked against precisely what school or what in-
dividual writers these criticisms are directed. I will not attempt
to discuss how far they are justly attributed to Hegel l . I will
only say that it is a point of view which is implied in at least
one interpretation of Hegel ; and that interpretation of Hegel is
precisely the one which has most powerfully influenced, to say
the least of it, those through whom Hegelian ways of thinking
have become common among English students of Ethics. To
say without qualification or reserve that the mode of thought
above indicated was that of Thomas Hill Green would be unfair
and one-sided. As a Moralist, no one recognized more earnestly
than Green the facts of moral responsibility and imputability ;
but that there is a logical hiatus between Green's ethical system
and the metaphysical system with which he sought to connect it
is coming to be very generally recognized both among those who
sympathize with, and by those who dissent from, Green's practical
attitude towards Morality 2 . If no individual self is recognized
except a merely phenomenal or psychological self, if the self
which is active in Morality is identical with the ' spiritual prin-
ciple not in time ' implied by all our knowledge, if this * principle
not in time ' is further identified with a Universal Self -conscious-
ness which is regarded as Reason and is denied Causality or
volition, it is difficult to see how Green can escape the conse-
quences which I have suggested. No doubt much is to be found
in Green's writings which is inconsistent with such a view. We
read much of the strivings of the self (presumably of the indivi-
dual self) after ' self-satisfaction/ of the self imputing to itself
its own actions, of God as a Mind which, though He does not act
or will or feel or love, has some vague and undefined connexion
with the moral law. But how a timeless self can find a satis-
1 If we substitute for a ' Universal Self-consciousness ' the idea of God
considered under the attribute of Thought, and recognize that (in his view)
the Thought manifests itself only in individual selves, it may be said fairly
to represent (as far as it goes) Spinoza's attitude toward Ethics. Here, as in
other matters, Spinoza held, with full and explicit consciousness, the view
of the world to which Hegelianism tends, but which the practical aims of
its exponents have often prevented their explicitly recognizing.
9 Green's ethical views are most fully expounded in his Prolegomena to
Ethics, 1883.
Chap, i, iii] THE EGO IN GEEEN 205
faction, not previously experienced, in human actions which
have a beginning in time ; how a self which is not differentiated
(except perhaps on the side of the animal organism) from the
Universal Self-consciousness can impute to itself its good or bad
acts without imputing them in exactly the same sense and
degree to the Universal Self-consciousness ; how any events at
all can be ' imputed ' to a self which thinks all things but origi-
nates nothing these are questions which it would be difficult to
answer in a satisfactory manner without glossing the text of
Green's writings altogether past recognition.
Many minds will no doubt regard a system of Moral Philo-
sophy as very incomplete which does not set out with a much
more detailed and elaborate analysis of the self than is to be
found in these pages. No doubt a Moral Philosopher may, if he
chooses, properly devote much more time than I have done either
to the metaphysical, or again to the psychological, treatment of
the self. I am far from depreciating the importance of either
sort of enquiry. I can only repeat that I have not gone into
greater detail because (a) it seemed to me that an elaborate and
detailed investigation of the nature of the self from a moral
point of view cannot easily be separated from the whole body
of metaphysical and psychological questions which can be raised
about the self; and (b) because I should contend that in the
whole of the preceding pages I have really been engaged in
examining the nature of the self, in so far as that nature is a
matter of directly ethical import. The conclusions to which we
have come have most important metaphysical consequences
consequences which it belongs to Metaphysic proper to develope
and trace out. But I do not consider that these conclusions are
prima facie inconsistent with any metaphysical theory about the
self which recognizes (a) that the self is a permanent reality ; (6) that
that reality is spiritual, in so far as it has a permanent life of its
own not identical with the changes of the material organism with
which it is (in whatever way) connected ; (c) that the acts of the
man really proceed from and express the nature or character of
the self *. I call the existence of such a self a primary postu-
late of Ethics, because without it we can recognize no meaning
1 This point will be dealt with more at length in the chapter on Free-will.
2c6 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
in the language which we are compelled at every moment to use
in all ethical discussion. It is the postulate without which we
cannot even set out on our ethical journey. Whether there are
any other postulates of Ethics ; whether, as we proceed with our
attempt to understand and systematize the facts of our moral
life and to co-ordinate them with other facts, we are not irre-
sistibly led on to make further metaphysical demands ; whether
there are not in this secondary sense some further ' postulates of
Ethics/ we must now proceed to enquire.
IV
We have seen that certain metaphysical presuppositions as to
the nature of knowledge and the nature of the self are necessary
to the very existence of an ethical system which can be regarded
as representing and justifying the deliverances of the moral
consciousness. When we have admitted that knowledge is not
mere subjective feeling or passive experience, that the self is as
real as or more real than any ' thing ' of which Physical Science
can tell us, and that the self causes certain events which are
commonly spoken of as its actions, then we are able to recognize
the reality of duty, of ideals, of a good which includes right
conduct. And prima facie it might appear that the truth and
validity of these ideals are independent of any particular con-
clusions as to the ultimate nature of things which go beyond
these simple presuppositions. The man who wishes to see any
meaning in the deliverances of his own moral consciousness and
to represent to himself the attempt to live up to the ideal
which they set before him as an intelligible and rational aim,
must assume this much about knowledge and about the self;
but it may possibly be contended that he need assume nothing
further about the ultimate nature of things, except that it is
a Universe, part of whose nature is to produce this moral con-
sciousness of his. And it is no doubt true that the Agnostic
(in Metaphysic or Theology) cannot be convicted of any positive
inconsistency, if he simply accepts the dictates of his moral con-
sciousness as final, and says : ' I know nothing as to the ultimate
source of these moral ideas, except that they come to me in the
same way as the rest of my knowledge, or anything as to the
Chap, i, iv] MORALITY AND AGNOSTICISM 207
ultimate outcome of this moral life which I feel to be incumbent
upon me. I simply know the meaning of the good, and that
it is right for me to aim at it, and that I can. to some extent,
bring it into existence by my voluntary action.' Psychologically
this attitude is a possible one. The term ' good ' or ' right ' does
not contain any explicit reference to any theological or meta-
physical theory of the Universe. The proposition that some
things are right, others wrong, is not in any sense an inference
or deduction from any such theory ; it is an immediate datum or
deliverance of consciousness. The truth is assented to, and acted
upon, by men of all religions or of none, by persons who hold
most dissimilar views as to the ultimate nature of the Universe,
and by men who profess to have no theory of the Universe at all.
And it is impossible to say that the words ' good ' and ' right '
have no meaning for such persons or an entirely different mean-
ing from what they have for the Metaphysician who refuses
to acquiesce in Agnosticism. In this sense it is of the highest
possible importance to recognize what is sometimes spoken of as
the ' independence of Morality/ But it remains a further ques-
tion whether the true meaning of Morality is capable of being
made explicit, and of being reconciled or harmonized with other
facts of our knowledge or experience without necessitating
the adoption of certain views concerning the ultimate nature
of things and the rejection of certain other views. If this should
turn out to be the case, Morality will be in exactly the same
position as any other part of our knowledge. So long as we
refuse to bring any piece of our knowledge or experience into
connexion with any other part of it, the particular piece of
knowledge cannot be shown to be either consistent or incon-
sistent with such other parts of our knowledge. So long as that
is the case, it may no doubt from a high metaphysical attitude
be maintained that this knowledge may not be altogether true,
since it may require to be corrected and limited in order to bring
it into harmony with other parts of our knowledge : for the only
test that we have of the validity of any part of our knowledge
is its capacity for being harmonized or co-ordinated with the rest
of it. But, from a rough practical point of view, it is possible to
be certain of the truth of Science without holding any meta-
ao8 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
physical position at all : and in that sense it is equally possible
to combine a strong conviction of the reality or objective validity
of moral distinctions with complete Agnosticism as to the general
nature of the Universe, though in practice Agnosticism is very
apt to involve negative assumptions the irreconcilability of which
with what is implied in the idea of moral obligation, can with diffi-
culty remain unrecognized. But after all the question remains
whether this refusal to bring one part of our knowledge into con-
nexion with the rest is a reasonable attitude of mind. It is always
easy to escape inconsistency by resolutely shutting our eyes to a
portion of the facts, by refusing to think or by arbitrarily stopping
the process of thought at some particular point l . When we ask
whether a certain intellectual attitude is ultimately reasonable,
we presuppose that we are making up our minds to look at the
whole of the facts. Agnosticism is not a reasonable attitude
of mind when it is possible to know. And the question arises
whether, when the attempt to harmonize and so to justify our
beliefs is honestly made, the man who wishes to defend and
rationalize his practical recognition of moral obligation may not
be forced into the alternative of giving up his ethical creed or of
giving up certain views of the Universe which reflection has
shown to be inconsistent with that creed.
Are there then any metaphysical positions about the ultimate
nature of things which logically exclude the idea of an objective
Moral Law ? Let us suppose, for instance, that, without giving
up that bare minimum of metaphysical belief about the self
which we have found to be absolutely presupposed in the very
idea of Morality, a man has nevertheless adopted a materialistic
1 The strongest assertion of the validity of the idea of duty that has ever
been made from an agnostic point of view is perhaps to be found in Huxley's
brilliant Romanes Lecture on Evolution and Ethics (Collected Essays, Vol. IX).
It is interesting to see how near the contention that Natural and Moral Law
have equal validity brings him to the admission that they have ultimately
a common source. What Huxley refuses to ask is whether the validity of
the Moral Law does not throw some light upon the nature of that Reality
which is revealed both by Physical Law and by Moral Law whether the
belief that we ought to resist the ' cosmic process ' and the impulse to act
upon that belief are not as much a product of the Cosmos, and a revelation
of its ultimate nature, as those physical and psychological tendencies which
Morality bids us resist.
Chap, i, iv] MORALITY AND NATURALISM 209
or naturalistic view of the world to this extent that he believes
that the origin of the self, and of the knowledge which resides in
the self, may actually be traced to certain material processes
of a Reality in which previously no mind resided except as
a 'promise and potency* of the future. Such a man is not,
indeed, technically in the most thorough-going sense of the word
a Materialist if he admits that after all a true view of the
Universe must include a recognition of the spiritual nature which
the Universe has ultimately, by whatever process, evolved. And
it is quite right to emphasize the difference between a position
of this kind and the old confused puzzle-headed Materialism which
was inclined to look on matter and motion as real things and on
thought, feeling (with perhaps some not very logical exception in
favour of pleasure and pain), emotion, aspiration, ideals as mere
arbitrary inventions or hallucinations. But, putting aside for
the present the purely metaphysical difficulties of such a position,
we have to ask how it must affect our attitude towards Morality.
So long as the ultimate reality of things is regarded as purely
material, so long as material process is regarded as the sole cause
or source or ground of mind and all its contents, there is always
the possibility of scepticism as to the knowledge of which this
material world has somehow delivered itself. Our knowledge
may be conceived of as representing, not the real truth of things,
but the way in which it is most conducive to the survival of the
race that we should think of them. Error and delusion may be
valuable elements in Evolution ; to a certain extent it is un-
deniable, from any metaphysical standpoint, that they have
actually been so. But on the naturalistic view of things the
doubt arises not merely whether this or that particular belief
of ours is a delusion, but whether human thought in general may
not wholly fail to correspond with Reality, whether thought
qua thought may not be a delusion, whether (to put it still more
paradoxically) the more rational a man's thought becomes, the
more faithfully the individual adheres to the canons of human
Reason, the wider may be the gulf between his thinking and
the facts. Arguments might no doubt be found for putting
away such an ' unmotived ' doubt as to the trustworthiness of
our knowledge about ordinary matters of fact its self-con-
RASHDALL II P
210 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
sistency, the constant correspondence of the predictions which it
makes with subsequent experience, the practical serviceableness
for the purposes of life of its assumed validity, and the useless-
ness of entertaining doubts as to, the trustworthiness of our
faculties which from the nature of the case can be neither con-
firmed nor refuted ; though after all such arguments at bottom
assume the validity of thought. But these considerations do not
apply in the same degree to moral knowledge. It is often possible
to explain in a sense this or that particular ethical belief by the
history of the race, the environment of the individual, and the
like. Such considerations do not shake belief in the ultimate
validity of moral distinctions for an Idealist who believes that the
Universe owes its very existence to the Mind which assures him
of these distinctions (though he is aware that the evolution of his
individual mind has been conditioned by physical processes and
social environment) ; but they wear a totally different aspect for
one who has no general a priori reason for assuming a corre-
spondence of thought with things *. The Idealist has every reason
for believing the ultimate moral ideas to be true that he has for
believing any other ideas to be true, though he realizes that he
does not know the whole truth, and that his knowledge of this or
ignorance of that element in the moral ideal (like his knowledge
or ignorance of ordinary scientific truth) is in part explicable by
the accident of antecedents or environment. But to the man
who regards all spiritual life as a mere inexplicable incident in
the career of a world which is essentially material (were it not
for the human and animal minds which it is known to have
produced) and as a whole essentially purposeless, there is no con-
clusive reason why all moral ideas the very conception of
1 value/ the very notion that one thing is intrinsically better
than another, the very conviction that there is something which
a man ought to do may not be merely some strange illusion due
1 I am quite alive to the difficulties involved in the 'correspondence
theory ' as to the nature of Truth, which have been brilliantly developed by
Mr. Joachim in his recent Essay on The Nature of Truth, and it is one which
no Idealist can well regard as the final and ultimate account of the matter,
but any discussion of such a question would be quite out of place in an
ethical treatise. Mr. Joachim would no doubt admit that we cannot help
employing such language in such a connexion as the present.
Chap. i,iv] OBJECTIVITY OF MORAL LAW
to the unaccountable freaks of a mindless process or to the
exigencies of natural selection. It cannot be said that a man
who allowed such doubts to shake or modify his allegiance to
the dictates of Morality, where they do not happen to coincide
with his actual desires or inclinations, would be doing anything
essentially unreasonable. Reasonable conduct would for him
mean merely ' conduct conformable to his own private reason ' :
intrinsically or absolutely reasonable or unreasonable conduct
could not exist in a world which was not itself the product
of Reason or governed by its dictates.
Another way of putting much the same difficulty is this. We
say that the Moral Law has a real existence, that there is
such a thing as an absolute Morality, that there is something
absolutely true or false in ethical judgements, whether we or
any number of human beings at any given time actually think
so or not. Such a belief is distinctly implied in what we mean
by Morality. The idea of such an unconditional, objectively
valid, Moral Law or ideal undoubtedly exists as a psychological
fact. The question before us is whether it is capable of theo-
retical justification. We must then face the question where such
an ideal exists, and what manner of existence we are to attribute
to it. Certainly it is to be found, wholly and completely, in no
individual human consciousness. Men actually think differently
about moral questions, and there is no empirical reason for sup-
posing that they will ever do otherwise. Where then and how
does the moral ideal really exist ? As regards matters of fact or
physical law, we have no difficulty in satisfying ourselves that
there is an objective reality which is what it is irrespectively of
our beliefs or disbeliefs about it. For the man who supposes
that objective reality resides in the things themselves, our ideas
about them are objectively true or false so far as they correspond
or fail to correspond with this real and independent archetype,
though he might be puzzled to give a metaphysical account
of the nature of this * correspondence ' between experience and
a Reality whose ease is something other than to be experienced.
In the physical region the existence of divergent ideas does not
throw doubt upon the existence of a reality independent of our
ideas. But in the case of moral ideals it is otherwise. On
212 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
materialistic or naturalistic assumptions the moral ideal can
hardly be regarded as a real thing. Nor could it well be
regarded as a property of any real thing : it can be no more
than an aspiration, a product of the imagination, which may
be useful to stimulate effort in directions in which we happen to
want to move, but which cannot compel respect when we feel
no desire to act in conformity with it. An absolute Moral Law
or moral ideal cannot exist in material things. And it does not
(we have seen) exist in the mind of this or that individual.
Only if we believe in the existence of a Mind for which the true
moral ideal is already in some sense real, a Mind which is the
source of whatever is true in our own moral judgements, can we
rationally think of the moral ideal as no less real than the world
itself. Only so can we believe in an absolute standard of right
and wrong, which is as independent of this or that man's actual
ideas and actual desires as the facts of material nature. The
belief in God, though not (like the belief in a real and an active
self) a postulate of there being any such thing as Morality at all,
is the logical presupposition of an * objective ' or absolute Morality.
A moral ideal can exist nowhere and nohow but in a mind ; an
absolute moral ideal can exist only in a Mind from which all
Reality is derived *. Our moral ideal can only claim objective
validity in so far as it can rationally be regarded as the revela-
tion of a moral ideal eternally existing in the mind of God.
We may be able,perhaps,to give some meaning to Morality with-
out the postulate of God, but not its true or full meaning. If the
existence of God is not a postulate of all Morality, it is a postu-
late of a sound Morality ; for it is essential to that belief which
vaguely and implicitly underlies all moral beliefs, and which
forms the very heart of Morality in its highest, more developed,
more explicit forms. The truth that the moral ideal is what it
is whether we like it or not is the most essential element in what
the popular consciousness understands by * moral obligation/
Moral obligation means moral objectivity. That at least seems
to be implied in any legitimate use of the term : at least it im-
1 Or at least a mind by which all Reality is controlled. Want of space
forbids my discussing the ethical aspect of Pluralism or of a theory which
regards spirits other than God as having no beginning.
Chap, i, v] MORALITY AND THEISM 213
plies the existence of an absolute, objective moral ideal. And
such a belief we have seen imperatively to demand an explana-
tion of the Universe which shall be idealistic or at least spiritual-
istic, which shall recognize the existence of a Mind whose
thoughts are the standard of truth and falsehood alike in
Morality and in respect of all other existence. In other words,
objective Morality implies the belief in God. The belief in God,
if not so obviously and primarily a postulate of Morality as the
belief in a permanent spiritual and active self, is still a postulate
of a Morality which shall be able fully to satisfy the demands
of the moral consciousness. It may conveniently be called the
secondary postulate of Morality.
That belief in God involves something more than the belief
that there is a universal Mind for which and in which the moral
ideal exists. There can be no meaning in the idea of Morality for
a Being who is mere Thought and not Will. If human Morality is
a revelation, however imperfect, of the ultimate nature of Reality,
it must represent, not merely an ideal existing in and for the
Mind which is the ultimate source or ground of Reality, but also
the nature of the end towards which that Reality is moving.
The very idea of Morality implies action directed towards an
end which has value. If the value of 'good' has its counter-
part in the divine Mind, the course of events is itself governed
by the same Mind which is the source of our moral ideas, and
must be ultimately directed towards the end which the true moral
ideal, disclosed however imperfectly in the moral consciousness
of man, sets us up as the goal and canon of human conduct.
The Universe itself must have a purpose or rational end, a pur-
pose which commends itself as reasonable to the Mind which
wills it : and the nature of that end must be at least in part
disclosed by our moral judgements. What valid human judge-
ments pronounce to be good must be part of the divine end, and
the rest of that end must be such as could, consistently with the
principles governing these human judgements of value, be pro-
nounced good.
That an objectively valid Morality implies belief in the funda-
METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
mental rationality of the Universe will no doubt be admitted by
some thinkers whose belief about its ultimate nature falls more
or less short of what is commonly understood by Theism, who
do not believe that Nature is (as a genuine Theist, like Lotze,
holds) an effect whose cause is God, or at least who decline to
think of that God as ' personal/ Intense belief in a rational
principle behind nature combined with much vagueness about
the personal, or even the self-conscious nature, of that principle
meets us already in the writings of Plato. And a similar vague-
ness, which might have been supposed to belong to a stage of
human thought in which the distinction between subject and
object, mind and matter, thought and will, was still imperfectly
grasped, has beset the path of philosophic thought in later times.
I have not space to defend the position here taken up, or to meet
the objections which will at once be raised in many quarters ;
but I will simply state that to my own mind the only form in
which belief in the rationality of the Universe is intelligible is
the form which ascribes the events of its history to a self-con-
scious rational Will directing itself towards an end which
presents itself to Him as absolutely good l . However inadequate
our conceptions of 'Will/ < Mind/ < Purpose/ ' Reason/ Personality/
may be to express the nature of such a Being, they are the best
we have. Thought does not become more adequate by becoming
vaguer. It is not the limitations inherent in human personality
that we imply when we ascribe personality to God ; but all the
positive attributes that constitute man's superiority to the beasts
carried to a much higher level and freed from the limitations by
which they are in us conditioned 2 . Applied to God, all such
1 Creation in time, though possibly involving no greater difficulties than
any other solution of the Antinomy which arises from the attempt to think
of the beginning or non-beginning of the existing world (an Antinomy which
has never been satisfactorily * transcended '), is not necessarily implied by
this belief. All that I mean is that the events (whether the series be endless
or not) are caused by the Will of God. I quite recognize the difficulty of
thinking of the divine Will as antecedent to the series or as a cause which is
not antecedent to its effect. This consideration forms one of the difficulties.
The impossibility of solving the Antinomy rests upon our ignorance of the
true relation of Reality to Time, as to which see below, p. 245 eq.
2 It may be asked why Morality itself should not be one of the limitations
Chap, i, v] THE END MUST BE ATTAINABLE 215
terms must be understood (as the Schoolmen said) ' sensu emi-
nentiori.' And if the end imperfectly revealed in Morality be
the end of the Universe or the end of God, it must, it would
seem, be fulfilled. In what sense and to what extent it must
be fulfilled, is a question on which much might be said, and I
shall return to that question hereafter l . But at least it would
seem that the end which presents itself to the divine conscious-
ness as good must be so far fulfilled as to make the being of the
world better than its not- being : otherwise, we have no explana-
tion as to why it should be willed at all 2 . But can any one
seriously maintain that the world as it is human life as it is
is so good as to account for its having been willed by a per-
fectly good and perfectly rational Being, except as a means to an
end beyond itself ? Is human life, whether we look at its moral
side or its hedonistic side, so good as to seem an adequate end
for such a Being to have willed ? If it be admitted that human
life, as it is, is not adequate to the justification of the Universe,
it may perhaps be suggested that in the future it is going to be
so. But apart from the difficulty of regarding as reasonable an
arrangement by which countless generations of human beings
have been called into existence merely as a means to the Well-
being of other generations, there is as little empirical justification
for an optimistic view of the future of humanity as for an
optimistic view of its past or its present. Only if we suppose
that the present life of human beings has an end which lies in
part beyond the limits of the present natural order, in so far as
that order is accessible to present human observation, can we
incident to human personality. I should answer, * Because the other limita-
tionssuch as partial knowledge, intermittent consciousness, liability to be
thwarted by other persons over whom one has no control, the distinction
between present feeling and the thought of an absent feeling, and so on
we can ourselves see to be connected with limitations which cannot apply
to God. There is no reason for supposing this to be the case with ultimate
moral principles any more than for supposing that 2 f 2 = 4 is only true
from a human point of view/
1 Below, chap. iii.
2 It has been suggested that the not-willing of any world at all may be
one of the inherent impossibilities or limitations in God. I should reply
that a Being obliged to cause what seemed to Him bad could not be said in
any intelligible sense to will at all.
ai6 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
find a rational meaning and explanation for human life as we
see it ; and by far the most natural and intelligible form of such
a world-end is the belief in Immortality l for the individual
souls which have lived here. If human life be a training-
ground and discipline for souls wherein they are being fitted
and prepared for a life better alike in a moral and a hedonistic
sense than the present, then at last we do find an adequate explana-
tion of the willing of such a world by a Being whose character
the moral consciousness at its highest presents to us as Love.
And it is not only the actual amount of moral badness and the
actual amount of pain in the world that make it so desperate
an attempt to claim rationality for the Universe on the assump-
tion that the life of the individual ends with death. It is the
distribution of good and evil the relation in which goodness
and happiness, badness and misery, stand to each other which
it is so difficult to reconcile with that postulate of a rational
Universe which is implicitly contained in the claim of the moral
consciousness to objective validity. We have, indeed, examined
and rejected the idea that Virtue carries with it an intrinsic
title to reward, or that vice demands punishment for punishment's
sake, but we have discovered in the popular belief about reward
and punishment a crude testimony to the rationality of an order
of things in which goodness and happiness should go together.
The real meaning of the belief that Virtue should be rewarded
is that Virtue is not by itself the whole of human good ; the real
meaning of the theory that vice should be punished, not merely
as a measure of social protection but as a demand of absolute
Justice, is that happiness without goodness is not the true good.
The good, we have seen, is neither goodness nor happiness, but
both together 2 . If the Universe does not tend to promote the
good, it cannot be rational. And another element in rationality
is the Justice which prescribes that, as far as possible, beings of
equal capacity shall be equally treated in the distribution of good.
A coincidence between goodness and happiness is, according to
1 As to the reasons for preferring * Immortality ' to a simple * future life,'
see below.
2 For the sake of brevity we may for the moment ignore all the other
elements in the Universe of Good.
Chap. i,v] POSTULATE OF IMMORTALITY 217
the deep-seated popular conviction, a necessary characteristic of
a rational world-order ; and that conviction is one which, sub-
ject to the explanations already given, justifies itself to philoso-
phical reflection. In present human life nothing but the roughest
and most general tendency to such a coincidence, if even that,
can possibly be discerned. The good the ideal life of our highest
ideals is unknown to human experience. Goodness as we
know it, if it brings with it some internal sources of happiness,
brings with it also (in its own nature and apart from external
circumstances) much internal pain the pain of sympathy, the
anxiety of the scrupulous Conscience, the pain of failure to attain
its ends : in fact, in so far as happiness is regarded as including
pleasure and the absence of pain, there is hardly any connexion
between the possession of it and the moral character of the
possessors. Christendom has found its highest moral ideal in one
? who was a man of sorrows. Whatever be the explanation of
such "UB^oixler of things as a temporary or partial phase or
aspect of the world's life, the deeper our conviction of the
rationality of the Universe, the stronger becomes our unwilling-
ness to believe that such an order can be final and permanent.
Hence it is that a sincere Theism has nearly always carried with
it a belief in Immortality. The belief in Immortality has not
been due merely to a defective appreciation of the intrinsic good-
ness of Virtue or of the intrinsic badness of vice ; on the contrary
it is a belief which is usually held with an intensity proportional
to that appreciation. It is a necessary corollary of the rational-
ity of the Universe that its course should be so directed as to
bring about an ultimate coincidence between the higher and the
lower kinds of good, which are both alike essential to the full
and true Well-being of a human soul. So long as it was possible
to believe that happiness and misery, prosperity and failure,
were distributed in this life on principles of absolute Justice,
belief in the rationality of things did not necessarily carry with
it belief in Immortality. The Jews were at one time behind
other nations in the distinctness of their belief in personal Im-
mortality, just because (it would seem) of the intensity with
which they believed that obedience to Jehovah's laws would be
rewarded by national victory and agricultural prosperity a
ai 8 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
belief ultimately shattered by the experiences of the Exile 1 .
A further knowledge of History and of Physical Science
has taught us that, however much we may recognize a general
tendency to make man under ordinary circumstances happier
with goodness than without it, no complete or even general coin-
cidence between the higher and the lower kinds of good can be
traced in the actual course of human affairs. When this fact is
clearly recognized, belief in Immortality becomes a postulate of
the belief in a rational world-order or (what is for most minds
the same thing) of belief in God. And therefore belief in Im-
mortality comes to be (for those who share that view of the
empirical facts) a postulate of Ethics in the same sense as the
belief in God.
I may sum up the position at which we have arrived by
saying that a certain belief about the self and its relation to
human action may be described as the primary postulate of
Ethics, since the incompatibility between its negation and a real
belief in an objective or absolute Ethic is obvious on the face of
it, obvious at the level of common-sense thought. The belief in
God may be described as a secondary postulate of Ethics, since,
though no explicit reference to it is contained in the ethical
iudgement itself, its implication in that judgement discloses
itself as soon as the attempt is made to develope what is con-
tained in the actual moral consciousness and to harmonize it
with other parts of our experience. And finally belief in Im-
mortality may be described as in a tertiary sense a postulate of
Ethics, inasmuch as it is a postulate of belief in God for all
minds to whom the actual constitution of things without that
hypothesis presents itself as one which could not possibly be
willed by a Being whose nature, character, and purposes are of
the kind implied by the ideals revealed to us in our own moral
consciousness.
1 It must be remembered that the Jewish Theology only reached the level
of pure Monotheism a very little before a developed belief in Immortality
(as distinct from a mere survival which could hardly be called life in
a shadowy Sheol) began to appear. And if Theism be held to include belief
in a God who is just and impartially benevolent to all mankind, it was
certainly not attained by the Jews before the Exile, even if it was ever
reached by pre-Christian Judaism at all.
Chap, i, v] RATIONALITY OF THE UNIVERSE 219
The course of events must itself be governed by the same
Mind which is the source of our moral ideas, and be ultimately
directed towards the ends which the moral ideal, disclosed, how-
ever imperfectly, in the moral consciousness of man, sets up as
the goal and canon of human conduct. The Universe itself
must have a purpose or rational end, a purpose which a perfect
Reason would pronounce to be good. The end which our
Reason sets before us as the true end of conduct must be the end
likewise of the Mind from which that Reason is derived. This
seems speculatively necessary if Morality is to be regarded as
ultimately and in the fullest sense rational rational not merely
from the point of view of this or that actual intelligence, or even
from the point of view of all human intelligences, but from the
point of view of all Reason whatever, universally, absolutely. And,
as it is speculatively necessary, so it is, if not practically ne-
cessary in every individual case, at least highly conducive to
Morality in practice that it should be believed that the ends which
Morality sets before itself are destined to be realized. Unless the
Universe be rational, no course of conduct can be said to be wholly
and absolutely rational ; we could only say * I am so constituted ' or
at the very most ' we are so constituted that this or that seems
rational to me or to us/ And the Universe is not rational
because there is a rational intelligence for whom it exists ; if it
is to be in the true sense rational, it must be directed towards
ends which a rational intelligence would pronounce good l . I do
not say that without this belief Morality would become irrational;
moral conduct would still be as rational as anything could be in
1 Much confusion has been caused by the ambiguity of the word ' rational.'
It may mean * intelligible ' or ' reducible to a coherent system such that one
part of it could (with adequate insight) be inferred from another. 1 In this
sense the Universe might be rational if it were a sort of infernal machine.
Or it may mean (and that is the only sense in which we ought to talk about
a reality which includes events as ' rational ') realizing an end which is
absolutely good. It has been part of the legerdemain of a certain school to
prove that the Universe is rational in the first sense, and then to assume that
it must be rational in the second, and therefore, it is urged, anything in it
which strikes us as bad must be mere appearance. In this way a Universe
in which Sin and Misery habitually triumph over goodness is represented
to us as eminently * rational 1 and therefore as a satisfying object of moral
and aesthetic contemplation, if not of religious Worship.
METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
an irrational Universe, i.e. it would seem rational to some
persons who think that they see clearly. And a man to whom
it appeared good to diminish human suffering, and who desired
that which he saw to be good, would still allow himself to be
influenced by the desire, even though he thought or suspected
that the Universe was very bad though of course if his view of
the ultimate badness of things reached a certain intensity, the
encouragement of universal suicide might present itself to him
as the only way to attain his end 1 . But a belief of this kind
is obviously one not calculated to encourage or stimulate what
is ordinarily called Morality. To some minds no doubt the im-
pulse to fight against the evil in a world in which evil was the
stronger power would always seem good and noble. But Pessi-
mism is not the belief about the Universe which is best calcu-
lated to call forth the highest energies even of the noblest souls.
Still less is it calculated to foster the ethical education of those
(and they are the vast majority, especially as regards the earlier
stages of the individual's moral life) who recognize the intrinsic
goodness of the Moral Law, but whose desire to fulfil it is faintly
and fitfully struggling against a host of conflicting impulses.
The belief that the Universe has a rational end is speculatively
a postulate of an absolute or unconditional Morality : and the
speculative necessity is one which is evident enough to minds of
by no means a highly speculative cast. A Morality which is
not absolute or unconditional is not Morality as it presents
itself to the developed moral consciousness.
VI
We have been investigating the metaphysical postulates of
Morality. There remains the question ' how far can such postu-
lates be reasonably granted ? ' We have seen that a system of
Ethics such as is here defended assumes a certain metaphysical
1 Pessimists like Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann only escape this conse-
quence by the assumptions (a) that such a universal extinction of conscious-
ness is impossible, because the Absolute would create fresh individuals to
prevent it, (b) that there is such a complete identity between all individual
manifestations of the Absolute that there would not be really less suffering
even if the number of sufferers were greatly reduced.
Chap.i, vi] ARE THE POSTULATES TRUE? 3*1
position : there remains the question * Is that metaphysical
position a time one ? ' To answer that question in full is the
business of Metaphysic itself, and it is a task which cannot here be
attempted. But there is one aspect of it which must be touched
on in even the most meagre sketch of the relations between
Ethics and Metaphysics. We saw that Ethics were related to
Metaphysics not merely because certain metaphysical positions
are essential to Ethics, but also because some of the conclusions
of Ethics are of importance for Metaphysic. We have dealt with
the debt of Ethics to Metaphysic : we must go on to ask what is
the debt of Metaphysic to Ethics. And in answering that ques-
tion, we shall be to some small extent contributing towards
a solution of the question how far the metaphysical view of the
Universe which we have seen to be essential to our ethical
position is on its own merits a true and reasonable theory of the
Universe. For the bare fact that the moral consciousness re-
quires certain metaphysical postulates that without them we
cannot explain and justify an important part of our actual
thought supplies by itself a strong ground for inferring that
those postulates are true, and for accepting a theory of the
Universe which admits their truth. Cardinal Newman has made
the assertion that the bare existence of Conscience is by itself
a sufficient reason for believing in the existence of God, 1 It
would be hard to say how much we should be entitled to infer
as to the ultimate constitution of the Universe from the existence
of Conscience taken entirely by itself. For the very idea of
Conscience, or of the Morality which Conscience proclaims, is
unintelligible in complete isolation from other elements in our
1 Compare Von Hartmann's statement: 'The bare fact that we possess
moral instincts is, even taken by itself, the refutation of all anti-teleological
views of the Universe ' (Z>. ittl. Betvusstsein, p. 465). Most of those who
accept Von Hartmann's convincing demonstration of the teleological character
of the Universe will fail to find a sufficient explanation of the facts in an
Unconscious Absolute who, however, becomes conscious in the act of Creation
and, though declared to be identical with individual selves, has apparently a
pain which is not merely the pain of any particular individuals, since sym-
pathy with the sufferings of the Absolute is appealed to as a powerful motive
for Morality, not only in this or that individual, but in humanity collectively.
Humanity is invited to bear its own sufferings patiently because they are so
much less than those of the Absolute !
METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
knowledge both of ourselves and of the world. The idea of
Morality implies a good deal of other knowledge. It implies
the existence of a self which knows and feels and wills, of other
selves which know and feel and will, of a world which we are
capable of modifying to some extent but only to some extent.
And, even if this much non-ethical knowledge be admitted,
it would be too much to say that the existence of God was
sufficiently established if, though apparently demanded as the
presupposition of one part of our experience, it should turn out
not to be required by, or even to be inconsistent with, other
parts of it. If the last were the final verdict which Metaphysic
found it necessary to pronounce, we should be confronted with a
hopeless antagonism between our practical and our scientific
beliefs. If we thought that Morality pointed to a God and
Nature did not, we might be obliged (with Kant in his more
sceptical moments 1 ) to declare that such a belief is indeed
a postulate of Ethics, but does not justify our turning this postu-
late into a piece of speculative knowledge. And even this
position, full of difficulties both practical and speculative as it is
generally admitted to be, is only open to us so long as we assume
that there is at least no positive inconsistency between the view
of the Universe to which we are led by our examination of other
aspects of our experience and that which seems to be pre-
supposed by our moral consciousness. If the apparent postulates
of our ethical nature should prove positively inconsistent with
the view of things to which the rest of our experience conducts
us, we might be placed under the necessity of admitting that the
interpretation of our ethical experience which involved such
postulates must be a mistaken one. This is exactly what
actually happens with those Philosophers whose Metaphysic
does not allow them to concede the postulates to which the
1 At other times Kant admits that the postulate does give us even
theoretical knowledge that God exists, though it does not enable us to know
speculatively what He is. How we can know that anything is without some,
however imperfect, knowledge of what it is, is a question the bare state-
ment of which is now generally felt to be fatal to the Kantian position. We
must either go forward to a more constructive, speculative Theology, or give
up an ethical position which compels us to assume speculative positions
which we are forbidden to assert to be objectively true.
Chap, i, vi] MORAL OBLIGATION
admitted contents of their moral consciousness would naturally
point. Recent writers who tend towards a purely psychological
or naturalistic view of Ethics writers like Simmel, Hoffding,
and Prof. Taylor 1 have corrected the crude Psychology of
their predecessors so far as to admit as a psychological fact the
idea of an absolute ' ought ' : but they see also that from the
standpoint of Naturalism this ' ought ' can have but a purely
subjective validity in other words, that it is, from the point
of view of the person who has discovered its purely subjective
character, no 'ought* at all. Undeniably the conclusions to
which the examination of some one part of our nature or our ex-
perience might seem to point have constantly to be corrected
in the light which is supplied by other parts of our experience.
And therefore I can neither (with the believers in ' ethical
culture ' as a substitute for Religion) pronounce a complete
divorce between Metaphysic and Ethics, and declare that
Ethics have no need of any metaphysical background or pre-
supposition whatever; nor (with Kant or Newman) attempt
to erect a Theology on an exclusively ethical basis 2 . Our belief
about the ultimate nature of things must be founded upon an
examination of our experience as a whole not upon any one
part of it. It is of the utmost importance to insist that the
facts of the moral consciousness shall be duly taken into con-
sideration by any one who attempts to frame a theory of the
Universe as a whole : but we cannot exclude the possibility that
our examination of the universe as a whole might forbid us
to accept the view of things to which Morality, when looked
at by itself, might seem to point. We are therefore obliged
to ask whether the presuppositions which our Moral Philosophy
requires are such as a sound Metaphysic can concede.
1 Prof. A. E. Taylor has adopted a purely psychological view of Ethics,
though it would be unfair to describe his attitude towards the Universe in
general as purely * naturalistic. 1 He is very decidedly an Idealist.
2 This attitude of the mind is sometimes described as a recognition of the
1 primacy of the Practical Reason.' I should myself be quite prepared to
accept the phrase so long as it is dissociated with Scepticism or Agnosticism
as to the powers of human thought in general, and is held to imply merely
the idea that Practical Reason makes the largest contribution to our know-
ledge of the ultimate meaning of the world.
334 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
A full answer to this question is one which cannot be given in
a mere appendix to a treatise on Ethics. I can only direct the
reader to the line of thought which he will find developed else-
where in formal treatises on Metaphysic or the Philosophy of
Religion. Amid much disagreement there is a general tendency
among those who have really faced the metaphysical problem to
recognize the inherent contradictions and uathinkability of
matter without mind. An analysis of our knowledge reveals
the fact that all that we know is essentially relative to mind.
Feeling cannot be except for a consciousness that feels ; equally
little can an abstract ' idea ' or ' content ' derived from feeling
have any meaning except in reference to a consciousness which
at some time or other actually feels. Whatever in the content
of our consciousness l is not feeling, or a content ultimately
derived from feeling 2 , is found to consist in relations which are
only intelligible to a consciousness which can grasp those re-
lations. The so-called primary qualities of matter form, magni-
tude, solidity, and the like are (as Berkeley was the first to
see) just as essentially related to consciousness and unintelligible
without it as those ' secondary qualities ' colour, sound, and the
like which the most superficial reflection shows to reside in our
mind and not in any supposed thing-in-itself, though Berkeley
was doubtless wrong in failing to recognize the importance
of the distinction between feeling and thought. The Idealism
which begins with Kant has shown that the relations, for instance,
which constitute space cannot be analysed into a mere subjective
feeling of the individual. It is of the very essence of space that
all its parts should be thought of as co-existing and having
a relation to each other, whereas our feelings of touch and sight
(considered merely as feelings) follow one another in time, and
cease to be as soon as they cease to be felt. In the Kantian
1 Except what is Volition. I put aside, as unimportant for the present
purpose, our knowledge of other minds and of what they experience.
8 e. g. the thought of a blueness which is not at the time being perceived.
It is quite true that this general idea, which is neither light blue nor dark
blue, but inclusive of both, is something which the eye of man has never
seen and never can Bee, but the judgement that this or that is blue would
have no meaning, except as a symbol or representative of the blue sensations
which have been or under certain conditions might be actually perceived.
Chap, i, vi] THE IDEALISTIC ARGUMENT 225
analysis of our knowledge th& relational character of space
points to its essentially subjective character, in the sense that it
exists for mind only, while it is essentially objective in so far as
it is not mere feeling but a system of relations and a system of
relations valid for all minds whatever l . Relations cannot exist
in things as they are apart from thought, but only in things
as they are for thought ; and often the relations are relations
between what exists only in or relatively to experience. And
the subjective character of space, its essential relativity to
consciousness, carries with it the subjective character (in that
sense) of all that is in space in other words, of what is
commonly meant by ' the material world.' Moreover, the
whole tendency of post-Kantian thought is to show the im-
possibility of stopping exactly where Kant stopped on the
path which leads to pure Idealism. If the world that we know
is essentially relative to mind, the suggestion that there may
be another world that we do not know and which is not
relative to mind becomes as meaningless as the doubt whether
after all we know the real nature of this mind which all our
experience implies and of that world which we have shown to be
essentially the experience of that mind. And yet it is quite
clear that the world itself cannot be supposed to exist merely in
the individual mind. Thought itself necessarily leads the in-
dividual up to the idea of a world which is not merely his world,
of a world which exists independently of him, of a world which
is common to all minds, but which no human mind knows all at
once and in all its completeness. Things exist only for mind,
and yet the things that the individual knows he does not create
btJit only discovers. He discovers that they existed before he
knew them, before he was born, before (so far as he knows) any
mind like his existed upon this or any other planet. And yet, if
matter can exist only for mind, there must be some mind for
which all that is exists ; and if the world is one, that mind must
1 Kant arbitrarily, as later Idealists hold practically limited this ob-
jectivity to all human minds : for, though he always held that the Categories
were valid for all intelligences, he held that we are only capable of applying
them to matter given under the forms of time and space, which are the forms
of human perception only.
RA9HDALL II
2a6 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
be one Mind. That the world implies a Mind to think it is the con-
clusion to which almost all Idealists l feel driven by an imperious
necessity of thought. That that necessity has not always led tc
an unequivocal acceptance of that view of the Universe which is
usually called Theism has been due largely to the one-sidednese
with which idealistic thought has fastened upon the cognitive
side of our conscious being to the exclusion of that side of it
which is revealed in our voluntary action. Recent Psychology
and recent Metaphysic have alike directed attention to the will
as a no less essential element in our consciousness than thought
and feeling. If we are justified in inferring a universal Thinkei
from the analogy of our own thought, we are surely justified in
inferring a universal Will from the analogy of our own wills,
however fully we may recognize the inadequacy of such terms to
express the different sides or aspects of the One Spirit 2 in which
1 There are a few thinkers (Prof. Bosanquet is perhaps one of them) who seem
to find it possible to accept the idealistic view of things, and yet to suppose
that the only thoughts for which the world exists are the limited minds which
began to be so long after the world began. Such writers never seem to me to
have made even a serious attempt to meet the difficulties which such a view
involves. In the system of Dr. McTaggart, with whom the Absolute is simply
the sum of individual minds, its difficulty is to some extent lessened by the
assumption that individual minds are pre-existent as well as immortal, but
still I fail to find in Studies in the Hegelian Cosmology, or in anything which
Dr. McTaggart has written, a real answer to the question for what mind the
world (which as an Idealist we must admit to exist only for some mind)
really exists. To insist on the timelessness of the Absolute does not help
us, since (according to him) the Absolute as such is not self-conscious, but
only the individual minds which are differentiations of the Absolute, and
such individual minds, each or any of them or all of them together, cannot
reasonably be regarded as omniscient. The idea of a Mind which is simul-
taneously omniscient in its timeless or universal aspect and limited in
the knowledge possessed by its differentiations in time is one which I cannot
grasp or think it reasonable to postulate. In his more recent Some Dogmas
of Religion Dr. McTaggart has attempted to meet my difficulty in a some-
what different way. I may refer to my review of this work in Mind (N. S.,
Vol. XV, No. 60) as an apology for not having dealt in this place with a system
which, though to my mind involving far more difficulties and improbabilities
than Theism, seems to me the only non-theistic system which it is difficult
to meet with an absolutely conclusive metaphysical refutation.
2 I should equally strongly assert the necessity for admitting the existence
in God of feeling, without which, indeed, the idea of Will is unintelligible,
but the argument does not require that I should here insist upon this
Chap, i, vij WILL THE ONLY CAUSE 227
we must recognize the ultimate cause or ground of the world's
existence and of all the other spirits which (with Him) form the
totality of real Being in the Universe.
And this line of thought is supported by another to which
I can now only barely allude the argument which (accepting
from Hume the position that we can discern no such thing as
Causality in external nature) refuses to accept the denial that in
our own minds we are immediately conscious of exercising
Causality, and sees in will the only actual realization of that
causal idea which is as essential a category of our thought
as the idea of Substance or the idea of Quantity. It is a self-
evident axiom of our thought that everythiug which begins to be
must haye a caus. The only cause that we immediately know
of is the self. If the events of the Universe are not caused
by myself or by any human or other self of similarly limited
capacity, it is reasonable to infer that they are caused by some
other spiritual being or beings, and the order and consistency
which we discover in Nature is a reason for supposing that the
cause of natural events is not many such beings but one Being.
The idealistic argument and the argument from Causality thus
support one another: both lead to the conclusion that the
natural Universe exists only in and for a mind which is both
Thought and Will l .
This bare sketch of the argument on which theistic Meta-
physicians rely for the proof of their idea of God will not of
course be sufficient to explain it to those to whom it has pre-
point. I may add that I quite recognize the impossibility of supposing that
Thought, Feeling, and Will stand side by side one another and occupy
exactly the same relation to one another in God as they do in us, but each
of these aspects of Experience which even presuppose one another has
as good a right as the others to be taken as revealing aspects of the Divine
experience.
1 I have explained and defended the idealistic Theism here assumed in
a volume of Essays ('by six Oxford Tutors*) entitled Contetttio Veritatis
(1902) and in an Essay on the 'Personality of God' in Personal Idealism
(edited by Mr. H. Sturt, 1902), but I am, of course, aware that these two
Essays taken together form a very inadequate sketch of a religious Philo-
sophy. I may refer to Prof. James Ward's Naturalism and Agnosticism
and Prof. Pfleiderer'g Philosophy of Religion for a fuller development of
the line of thought here suggested.
228 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
viously been unfamiliar. Still less will it remove the objections of
those by whom it has been considered and rejected. These few
sentences must be regarded merely as a personal confession
of faith as a bare statement of the grounds by which the
present writer is led to the belief that the view of the Universe
which our moral consciousness demands is also the view to which
we are led by an examination of all other parts of our experi-
ence in short, that the postulates of Ethics are identical with
the conclusions of Metaphysic. The fact that our moral con-
sciousness demands the idea of God as the source of our own
moral ideas and the justification of their objective validity lends
additional and independent support to these conclusions.
VII
Though our idea of God cannot be built up on the basis of the
moral consciousness taken by itself, the moral consciousness does
contribute one most important element to that idea. That the
Universe has its ultimate ground in a Spirit who must be thought
of as Will, Reason, and Feeling 1 , is a view which a rational
Ethic presupposes, but which it cannot by itself be held to
establish. It is established, I believe, by metaphysical considera-
tions. But a purely metaphysical analysis (so long as it excludes
from its purview the data supplied by the moral consciousness)
can tell us nothing further about the nature or purposes of that
Spirit. That the Universe has a purpose is, indeed, implied in
the assertion that it is the work of Reason. The mere analysis
of the causal idea may lead us to the belief that it must have an end.
No conception of Causality will satisfy that demand for a cause
or * sufficient reason ' set up by Reason, in its attempt to explain the
world, which does not include final Causality. Even in setting up
the bare, abstract idea of a final cause Reason has already, indeed,
1 To discuss in what way these three activities are related to each other
in God is no part of my present task, though after all little could be said
except that we do not and cannot know. I fully accept Mr. Bradley's
demonstration that we cannot think of God's thought as consisting in the
clumsy processes of abstraction and inference from immediate feeling which
are involved in human knowledge. But the divine experience must include
elements analogous to those which present themselves in our experience in
these three distinguishable ways.
Chap, i, vii] FINAL CAUSALITY IMPLIES VALUE 229
gone beyond the region of merely speculative activity,and borrowed
a concept from the moral consciousness an important warning
against the attempt to erect sharp barriers between the specu-
lative and the ethical activity of the one spiritual self. For the
idejjuof- affinal cause implies the distinction between ends $nd
means, and that distinction the distinction between that which
is brought into being for the sake of something else and that
which we value and seek to produce for its own sake is entirely
unintelligible apart from that idea of Value or Worth which we
have seen to be the root-idea of the moral consciousness. The
distinction between means and end lies not in the fact that the
former precede the latter, but in the fact that the former is
valued for the sake of the latter. Even therefore the pro-
position that the world has a purpose is one at which the purely
speculative reason is incompetent to arrive in entire abstraction
from the Practical Reason. It is one for which Logic or Meta-
physic must be held indebted to Moral Philosophy, or rather
it can only be arrived at by that wider Metaphysic which in-
cludes the study of the moral nature of man in its due relation
to the other sides of the one Reality. But if, in the ordinary
sense of the words, the considerations which lead us to the idea
that the world has an end are rather logical and metaphysical
than ethical, it is certain that, apart from the facts of the moral
consciousness, it could say nothing whatever as to the nature
of that end, or as to the character of the Being whose end it
is. Hence speculative Reason, if it attempts to answer that
problem at all, must borrow not merely from the form but from
the content of the moral consciousness.
Is such a borrowing justifiable ? It has been assumed through-
out this chapter that it is, and we have already added on the
strength of it the postulate of Immortality to those of self and
God. But it is of great importance to define the exact sense in
which we are prepared to say, not only that the world has a purpose,
but that we know what that purpose is. It is right to insist (as
has been done by Von Hartmann) that the mere idea that the
world has a purpose is of infinite value for Ethics, even if we did
not regard our moral ideal as disclosing the nature of that pur-
pose, For, if the world has a purpose at all, the ideal which
230 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
presents itself to us as a necessity of thought must be m some
rcay included in the purpose. The realization of our ideals may
not be the ultimate end of the Universe, but it must at least be
% means to that end, and it would be difficult to suppose that it
was merely a mean, and not one of those means which (like
most of the means which we employ in human life) is also a part
sf the end. Arid this would be enough to give an objective
significance and validity to our judgements of value which they
3ould not possess upon a non-teleological view of the Universe.
But the suggestion that what presents itself as a necessity of
ethical thought may nevertheless turn out to contain no revela-
bion as to the ultimate nature of things seems to me to be as
entirely gratuitous and unreasonable as any other kind of
ultimate scepticism. To infer from the existence of our own
moral consciousness the existence of a good-in-itself or good
from the point of view of the Universe, and then to say that
our ideas of good tell us nothing about that good-in-itself, seems
just as unreasonable as it would be to declare that the laws
of Mathematics are valid only relatively to us, that they convey
to us a mere knowledge of phenomena which may turn out to be
a mere self-consistent system of error containing no information
as to the real nature of the Universe or ' things-in-themselves.'
It is suggested in many quarters 1 that, while the category of good
is one which is valid for God as well as for man, the whole con-
tent of that category as it works in us might turn out to be
a complete illusion, and that consequently no one of our moral
judgements, even the most fundamental, can be supposed to
be valid for all intelligences and therefore for God. That seems
to be very like arguing that the category of Causality or of
Quantity may, indeed, be regarded as unconditionally valid
for all intelligences, but that no single concrete conclusion of
Mathematics or Physical Science can reasonably be supposed
to represent anything but a way of thinking which is imposed
upon ourselves by the constitution of human nature, but which
contains no information at all as to the real nature of things or
the real content of the Mind which expresses itself in Nature.
1 A more detailed criticism of the writers in question will be found in the
next chapter.
Chap, i, vii] VALIDITY OF MORAL JUDGEMENT 231
The ethical scepticism of the present day seems to be repeating
all the mistakes of the Kantian ' Phenomenalism ' the very side
of the Kantian Philosophy which, in other departments of
thought, modern Metaphysicians are most generally agreed to
give up. \Ke have every bit as much right to assume that the
conclusions to which we are led by the proper use of our ethical
faculty are valid for God and for all intelligences as we have for
assuming that the laws of pure Mathematics and the calculations
which are based upon those laws must be no mere local prejudice
of a particular race of human beings who have flourished during
a ' brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest
of the planets V but part of the eternal nature of things. Our
Moral Eeason is the same Reason as that which gives us the laws
of thought, and the concrete results which flow from them, though
a different side or aspect of that Reason. And we have every
right to say that the judgements derived from both sides or
activities of our Reason must be equally a revelation of that
objective truth which is ultimately the thought of God.
Of course there is all the difference in the world between the
assertion that in principle our moral faculty is an organ of truth
and contains a revelation of Reality and the assertion that
infallibility may be claimed for any particular moral judgement
of any particular person. We may make mistakes in Morality
just as we may make mistakes in Science or even in pure
Mathematics. I trust I have already insisted sufficiently upon
this distinction. In so constantly comparing the judgement
of Morality to those of Mathematics, I do not mean to imply
that the possibilities of error are in practice as small in the one
case as in the other. It may be admitted at once that these
possibilities are very much greater in the case of Ethics.
I will not ask at the present moment in what amount of
uncertainty or inadequacy the truths of Physical Science may
be involved by the speculative principle that to know anything
thoroughly you must know all its relations and therefore must
know the Universe as a whole. Mathematical truth is of so
abstract a character, the abstraction so complete, and the limita-
tion which that abstraction places to the application of its
1 Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, ed. ii, p. 33.
23* METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
results so clearly discernible that there seems no re&son for
supposing that the fullest knowledge would ever reveal any
actual error in conclusions arrived at by what human Reason
recognizes as the valid use of the Categories and self-evident
principles of Mathematics. They avowedly express only one
particular aspect or side of Reality ; but there is no reason
to suspect that this one-sided ness involves positive error. They
are one-sided, but the one-sidedness does not involve actual
falsity just because the limits within which the truth holds
good are so well understood. In Physics the liability to error
is greater, both because of the imperfection of the experience
on which the conclusions rest, and because by the mind of
a particular enquirer at a certain stage or level of scientific
development the one-sidedness and abstractness of the particular
department of truth with which each special Science is concerned
are not so sure to be remembered, allowed for, and corrected.
But even here the errors arising from incomplete knowledge
are errors which in the progress of knowledge human thought
may hope to correct. The admission of these possibilities of
error does not involve an indictment against human Reason
as such, still less Mr. Bradley 's paradox that all thought, just
because it is thought, is necessarily false to an unknown and
unknowable extent l .
Absolute certainty and completeness of knowledge is, no
doubt, when you have got beyond the most abstract truths of
Mathematics, unattainable enough ; but it is a goal to which
we are continually approximating, and to which we may hope
to approximate more and more nearly as we reach conclusions
of the most general character, and conclusions which rest upon
the largest mass of experience. The possibility of inadequacy,
and such error as may be involved in inadequacy, does not
justify the position that Science itself possesses a merely relative
or subjective or human or phenomenal validity. Now, when
we turn to Morality, we must acknowledge this peculiarity
of ethical truth, that in an exceptional degree ignorance of the
whole may involve mistake in any particular judgement. To
1 Of course I am omitting here the explanations and reservations by which
the paradox is qualified.
Chap, i, vii] MORAL JUDGEMENT FALLIBLE 333
claim absolute certainty and absolute adequacy for a judgement
as to what a man ought to do in any given collocation of
circumstances, it would be necessary for the individual to have
a complete knowledge of all that is contained in the moral ideal
as well as a complete knowledge of all those facts and laws
which may possibly affect the suitability of the means adopted
to promote that ideal on any particular occasion. He would
have to know that the particular end which he is now aiming
at is a part or element of the ideal end, that it is a more
important part or element or representative of the ideal end
than any other particular object at which in the given circum-
stance he might aim, and also that the particular means that
he adopts are the best adapted to attain that end. I need
not insist on the impossibility of attaining in practice any such
certainty. Our judgement as to the relation of means to ends
may always be mistaken ; our judgements as to the value of any
particular element in that end, and still more as to its relative
value as compared with other elements, may be erroneous and
one-sided.
And there are many other circumstances which tend to make
impossible in Ethics the kind of certainty and adequacy which
is practically attainable in the region of pure Mathematics or
even of the concrete Physical Sciences -the dependence of moral
judgement upon the emotional, aesthetic, and other capacities
of the individual pronouncing them ; the difficulty of explaining
and communicating to others the results of any one individual's
moral experience ; the difficulty of distinguishing between real
judgements of our Reason and the dictates of passion or impulse ;
the absence (when we go beyond certain very broad generalities)
of even an approximate consensus, and the like. But all these
admissions throw no doubt upon the validity of our moral
thought as such, and supply no ground for the suggestion
that from the point of view of God or the Universe our existing
moral code might turn out to be precisely the contradictory of
the true. It is impossible to define the limits of the possible
discrepancy between our moral judgements and the perfect
moral ideal as it exists in the mind of God. We can only
say that in proportion as ethical truth becomes more and more
234 METAPHYSTC AND MORALITY [Book III
general, more and more universally admitted by developed minds,
more and more internally consistent and coherent, we approach the
same kind of practical certainty which we justifiably claim for the
main conclusions of Science or History. The judgement that there
is a good is a necessity of thought as much as the principle that
for whatever happens in the Universe there must be a cause,
though there are individuals who have denied both truths.
That this good is the ultimate aim of the Universe is a proposi-
tion which rests upon the same kind of evidence as the belief
that the world and our knowledge of it can only be explained
by the existence of a universal Spirit in whom are united
Thought, Will, and Feeling. When we come to the detailed
filling up of this formal idea of Good, and still more to
the question of the means to be taken to realize that good, there
is room for much difference in the degree of certainty and
adequacy which we ascribe to our judgements. When I pronounce
that the election of a particular candidate at an election will
promote the true, ultimate end of the Universe, I may myself
see many grounds for doubt and hesitation even at the moment
that I make up my mind that it is my duty to vote for him.
And I know that many sensible and virtuous persons will vote
for his opponent. It is extremely probable therefore that I may
be mistaken. That my judgement as to the exact degree of
relative importance which we should in our own lives or in
that of the community assign to the promotion of Art and
to the prevention of physical suffering corresponds exactly with
the degree of relative importance which a perfect moral intelli-
gence would assign to them is no doubt extremely improbable,
though I may hope that the limits of probable error may be
relatively small. But when we come to such extremely general
propositions as that pleasures, or some pleasures, are better
than pain, or that love is better than hatred, then we may claim
for such judgements exactly the same practical certainty as we
do for the law of gravitation or for the proposition that an
event called the Norman Conquest actually occurred. There
may no doubt be a sense in which all scientific knowledge
may be regarded as abstract, and therefore inadequate to
the reality; in that sense moral ideals may be imperfect and
Chap, i, viii] DIFFICULTY OF EVIL 235
6 abstract/ but to say that in the Absolute our judgement
that cruelty and pain are bad must be turned into the
judgement that thy are very good would be like saying
that in or for the Absolute the denial of universal gravitation
is as true as its affirmation.
Doubtless the judgements of a particular individual as to
a particular moral question may be mistaken and his whole
ideal narrow and one-sided. Doubtless the highest ideal that
is at this moment entertained by the most perfect ethical intelli-
gence living on this planet represents but a part of the whole
aim and plan at which the Universe is aiming; but we have
every reason for asserting, and no reason at all for doubting, that
the moral ideal which is summed up in Humanity's highest ideal
of J1PJ versal T*we y and in a certain estimate of the relative values
to be assigned to the various goods which this Love will promote,
does represent a revelation, ever growing and developing, of
the ideal which is present to the mind of God and towards
which therefore the Universe is directed.
VIII
To consider all the difficulties, real or imaginary, which may
be found in the view of ultimate Reality which is here pre-
supposed, would lead us further into the province of Metaphysic
and religious Philosophy than lies within the scope of this work,
but there is one difficulty so obvious and so fundamental that
it seems scarcely honest to pass it over without indicating the
general lines on which in a metaphysical treatise I should
attempt to deal with it. I~tl^world is rational, how (it will
be asked) can we account for the presence of so much which our
moral consciousness pronounces to be evil, and which, if our view
of the relation between the human consciousness and the divine
be right, we may suppose to be evil also for the mind of God ?
To attempt to show empirically the necessity of evil in the
world is a task which I for one have not the smallest inclination
to attempt. It is true that we can show without difficulty how
some of what we call wil in this world, as it is actually consti-
tuted, is the condition of the goad. We can see that much good
implies a struggle against both, moral- and, physicoije vil ; and
METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
that that dependence of one individual upon another out of
which arise all the higher moral or social qualities of man
implies also the possibility of constant injury and injustice,
and the like. Goodness 13 developed .by .opposition ; happiness,
as we know it, depends on the satisfaction of wants which imply
imperfection and, in their intenser form, positive pain, and so on.
But it is not so much the existence as the nature and quantity and
distribution of evil in the world that constitute the difficulty.
So much evil seems wholly unnecessary: so much smaller a
measure of it in quantity and quality would have sufficed, so
far as we can see, to satisfy these necessities. A different dis-
tribution of it would seem far more conducive to the highest
welfare of humanity than the present distribution of it. Even
to attempt to show that there is more good than evil in the
world whether the good be understood in a some higher ethical
or in the purely hedonistic sense would be a very bold under-
taking. If we were to confine ourselves to empirical evidence
alone, I confess that I should see very little to lead us to the
conclusion that the world was even good ' on the whole/ or that
it had any good end or object in the future. From this point
of view the complaints of the more moderate Pessimists only seem
to me exaggerated. It is not when they insist on the existence
of evil in the world or even on its amount, but when they
insist on the non-existence of good, the impossibility of happiness
even for some, the worthlessness and vanity of the best that this
world affords, that their diatribes seem to represent merely the
idiosyncrasies or circumstances of the particular writer. It is
only the evidence of the moral consciousness, taken in con-
nexion with the idealistic or theistic argument as a whole,
that forces us to believe that the world must have an end, that
that end is good, and that the good is in principle the same good
of which, in the moral judgements of the developed moral nature,
we have a doubtless inadequate but not fundamentally misleading
revelation. On this supposition whatever evil exists in the world
must be supposed to exist because it is a necessary means to the
greatest good that the nature of things makes possible.
Chap, i, ix] QUESTION OF OMNIPOTENCE 237
IX
But, it will be said, in thus talking about the best possible,
in justifying the world's existence because it is good on the
whole* in speaking of evil as the condition of good, are we not
limiting God ? I answer : ' If Omnipotence is to be understood
as ability to do anything that we choose to fancy, I do not
assert God's Omnipotence/ I am content to say with sober
divines like Bishop Butler that there may be some things
which, with adequate knowledge, we should see to be as im-
possible as that God should change the past. And if it be urged
that the existence of conditions limiting the possibilities of
the divine Will is inconsistent with the idea of a God who
is infinite, I answer that neither Religion nor Morality nor,
again, reasonable Philosophy have any interest in maintaining
the infiniteness of God in the sense in which a certain tradition
of the schools is accustomed to assert it 1 . The limitation must not
be conceived of as a limitation imposed by the existence of some
other ' being ' some other spirit or a { matter ' with definite
properties and an intractable nature of its own. The suggestion
that a limit necessarily springs from without is due to that
ever-present source of metaphysical error, the abuse of special
metaphor. The limitations must be conceived of as part of the
ultimate nature of things. All that really exists must have some
limits to its existence ; space and time are unlimited or infinite
just because they are not real existences. And the ultimate nature
of things means, for the Idealist, the nature of God. All that
we are concerned with from the ethical point of view is that
Gpd should be regarded as willing a Universe that is the best
that seems possible to a Mind to whom all the possibilities of
1 I am pleased to read in a work by a learned Theologian of unimpeach-
able orthodoxy, the Dean of Christ Church : ' This word [Infinite] is purely
negative in its associations ; it means literally nothing but the absence
of all limits. And there is nothing in it to show that it does not include
the absence of all positive existence. Positive existence involves limitations
of a certain kind ; it is impossible to imagine a being who has not some
definite character, i.e. who is not also necessarily without certain other
definite characters, and if all positive characteristics are equally derogatory
to an Infinite Being, there is nothing for it but to deny His existence '
(Strong, Manual of Theology (1892), p. 203).
338 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
things are known, and who wills the existence of all that is
actual because he knows it to bg best.
I cannot here discuss all the objections which have been urged
against the idea of possibilities which cannot be realized. Putting
aside for the moment the question of human Free-will (which
I reserve for later treatment), I should admit that this possibility
is merely a possibility when looked upon from the point of view
of limited, human knowledge. To perfect knowledge nothing
could seem possible except that which is or will be actual.
Doubtless a God so conceived is not the traditional Infinite or
Absolute of Philosophy. The Absolute is the Being which alone
truly is and of which all other beings may be treated as
attributes or predicates. Our consciousness cannot intelligibly
be treated as the mere attribute or predicate of another con-
sciousness. The Infinite is that Being besides which and beyond
which no being exists : our consciousness cannot intelligibly be
treated as included in or a part of a divine consciousness, though
undoubtedly there is a totality of Being in which both are com-
prehended. Even a single moment of consciousness whether the
most evanescent sensation of an amoeba or a moment of highest
insight in the soul of Plato possesses a certain uniqueness, and
is no mere predicate or adjective of something else, though it is
also an element in, and so far supplies a predicate of, a larger
being 1 . Still less can a permanent and conscious self, combining
together and relating to one another a succession of such unique
experiences, be treated as the same thing as another more
comprehensive consciousness, no matter how well the content
of the lesser consciousness is known to, or ' penetoated ' by,
the greater. The notion that God includes in Himself all the
individual selves of the Universe seems to have arisen chiefly
from a forgetfulness of the essential difference between our
knQwJ^dge of a thing and our knowledge of other selves. Jk
thing is simply what it is for the mind that knows it ; it exists
for other, not for itself ; what it is for the experience of a mind
is therefore its total being. The essential characteristic of
a conscious self is that it exists not for others only, but for
1 That is, in the sense in which we may speak of that which is included
in a whole as qualifying that whole.
Dhap.i, ix] GOD NOT THE ABSOLUTE 339
itself. Its true being is not merely what it is for another mind
that knows it, but what it is for itself. Uniqueness belongs
to the very essence of consciousness. The ' content ' of the
consciousness may be shared by another consciousness, may
be common to many minds ; but this is only because a c content '
consists of abstract universal qualities taken apart from the being
whose experience they describe. The content is ' common ' to
many minds just because in speaking of it we have made abstrac-
tion of the uniqueness which belongs to the experience when it
was living, present, conscious experience, not yet reduced to
abstract universals by the analytic work of thought. Two
minds may experience, as we say, the ' same ' sensation because,
in calling the sensation the same, we have made abstraction
of the fact that two people have experienced it. The blueness
of which I think is a universal experienced by many minds ;
blueness as it is actually felt belongs only to the mind that feels
it. Even the blueness that I think is the same with what
another mind thinks only in respect of its content; the fact
remains that my thinking of it and the thinking of it by my
neighbour, as pieces of conscious experience, are different.
Thoughts as abstract contents are common to many minds ;
thinking as a psychological phenomenon is always peculiar
to one mind. But the Reality of the world is not abstract
content, but living experience. Further discussion on this
question must be reserved for other occasions. I can only hero
indicate the view that one mind or conscious experience cannot
fojrm a part of another mind.
The Absolute cannot be identified with God, so long as God
is thought of as a self-conscious Being. The Absolute must
include God and all other consciousnesses, not as isolated and
unrelated beings, but as intimately related (in whatever way)
to Him and to one another and as forming with Him a system
or Unity. And, in so far as God is not any of these spirits
(when once they have come into being), however they may
be ultimately related to Him, He is not, in the most obvious
sense of the word, infinite. We may, if we like, call Qodmfinite
in the sense that there is no other Being but what proceeds
ultimately from His will and has its source or ground in Him ;
240 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
and this seems to be all that is meant by many of those who are
attached to the term ; but the term ' infinite ' would seem more
properly to belong to that Absolute which includes God and other
spirits. It may even be doubted whether it is well to apply the
term infinite to anything but space and time (which are not real
beings), and whether it is possible to apply it to anything that
has real being without being more or less misled in our inter-
pretation of the term by the analogy of space and time. There
must be a definite amount of Being in the world l . Whether we
say that from some point of view transcending time there is
eternally a definite amount which can be neither increased
nor diminished, or whether we content ourselves with maintain-
ing that at any one moment there is a definite amount of Being
in the world, will depend upon the view we take of that most
difficult of all metaphysical problems the ultimate nature of
time 2 . Avoiding any attempt to deal in a summary way with
that profound question, I will only say that io^JPay view
metaphysical and ethical considerations alike require us to
recognize a real distinction between God and the lesser spirits
wlio derive their being from Him, yet remain in intimate relation
to and dependence upon Him, and with Him make up the totality
of real Being in the world. If we must use a word which might
well be dispensed with, God and the spirits are the Absolute
not God alone. Together they form a Unity, but that Unity
is not the unity of self -consciousness ; nor can it, without serious
danger of misunderstanding, be thought of as even analogous
1 We might of course say that the Absolute is infinite in so far as
time and space form aspects of its being. It will be observed that I do
not here assert that God is finite, for experience shows that (in spite of all
protests and explanations) it is impossible to use the term without being
supposed by careless or prejudiced critics to imply the idea that God is limited
by a plurality of independent, unoriginated, and isolated centres of con-
sciousness, and provoking pleasantries about polytheism and the like.
2 The notion that the total amount of ' Being ' in the world cannot be
increased seems to arise either (i) from a mere misapplication of the
physical doctrine of the indestructibility of Matter, or (2) from taking
1 Being* to mean not consciousness but the ultimate ground of consciousness.
That the amount of ' consciousness ' or * conscious being ' in the Universe is
increased or diminished at different times is a truth which we prove every
time we go to sleep,
Chap.i,ix] CAN ONE MIND INCLUDE ANOTHER? 241
to that personal unity which is characteristic of consciousness
in the highest form in which we know it.
I cannot but suspect that thoseLwho insist that all minds are
ulimately_Qjje, with, each other and with the divine mind are
partly under the influence of a confusion between ' consciousness '
and ' mind ' understood in some sense in which it is regarded not as
equivalent to consciousness or the conscious, but as the ultimate
ground or basis of consciousness. That a certain unity of ' sub-
stance ' or ' essence ' may be ascribed to all minds in the Universe
is an intelligible proposition. And there is no harm in such
language if we can only keep the idea of Substance free from
spacial and naturalistic associations, and also interpret it
in such a way as not to exclude the idea of * activity' or
' power ' or * will/ It is no doubt quite true that every con-
sciousness in the Universe at every moment of its existence,
while it may be looked upon as itself power or will, must
also be looked upon as an effect or manifestation of the
single Will to which all things and all spirits owe their being,
though qua consciousness it is distinct from that and every other
consciousness. From this point of view the * unity of substance '
doctrine expresses only what the old Theology expressed in
holding that the world (including souls) was upheld by a
continuous act of divine conservation.
The ultimate Being, we may say, is One a single Power,
if we like we may even say a single Being, who is manifested
in a plurality of consciousnesses, one consciousness which is
omniscient and eternal, and many consciousnesses which are
of limited knowledge, which have a beginning and some of
which, it is possible or probable, have an end. We may, if
we like, regard all the separate ' centres of consciousness ' as
' manifestations ' of a single Being ; but if so, we must distinctly
remember, if we are Idealists and refuse to regard as ultimately
real any being which is not conscious, that this * Being ' has
no existence except in the separate centres. God may be con-
ceived of as the cause or source of all the centres except Himself,
and may know them through and through ; but to deny that
qua consciousness He is distinguishable from those other centres
of consciousness represents a line of thought which, when
RASH D ALL II R
24* METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
thoroughly followed out, must end (as historically it always does
end) either in the denial of all reality, permanence, independence,
or personality to the individual souls and the reduction of all
individuality to a mere delusive appearance, or to a conception
of God which no longer includes the idea of self -consciousness
at all. And both ideas God and the self are necessary to
Morality and to any Religion that is to be consistent with the
demands of our moral consciousness.
The ethical importance of this view of the relation between
God and individual souls, which it is impossible here further
to develope or to defend, lies in the following considerations :
(a) Only where a real distinction can be recognized between
fjip. individual minds to which it has given
being can .we attribute good or bad acts to the individual man
without attributing them in the same sense and degree to God.
Whether in any more ultimate sense God may or may not be
regarded as the cause of our good and bad actions is a question
which I reserve for separate treatment. I only insist here that
there must be a real meaning in regarding them as acts of the
individual.
(6) Only if it is recognized that our moral judgements.are
expressive of the real nature of things, and that therefore
the evil of the world is not evil merely from our point of view,
is there an intelligible meaning in ascribing to God the character
which our moral consciousness recognizes as good. The ethical
necessity of this conception has already been dealt with.
(c) Only where it is recognized that God's action, though
directed to the best that is possible, is limited by those eternal
necessities which are part of his own eternal nature, is it possible
to combine the assertion of iiis moral perfection with the
recognition of real objective validity in those judgements of
our moral consciousness which pronounce many things in the
world to be intrinsically evil, however much they may ultimately
be conducive to a higher good. Only,, when this is admitted,
does it become possible to acknowledge that a rightly directed
human action, is conducive to the true, abjective good of the
Universe, If it be supposed that bad actions, just in proportion
are actually committed, tend to the good of the Universe
Chap, i, ixfj REALITY OF EVIL 243
as much .as good ones, we immediately remove all motive for
abstaining from any so-called bad act to which we may be
inclined. On such a hypothesis the fact that the bad act occurs
is a sufficient proof that a good act in the like place would have
retarded the true end of the Universe. On this view there
is no answer to the suggestion that it were well to * continue
in sin that grace may abound/ On our view the bad may
be the necessary means to a greater good, but it remains bad
all the same. The Universe without that act (had its absence
been possible or in accordance with the actual nature of the
world) would have been better still. The whole value of Meta-
physic or Theology to Ethics lies in its allowing us to ascribe an
objective significance to the moral law. And this objective
significance is destroyed the moment it is admitted that what
our moral Reason pronounces, and rightly pronounces, to be bad
may nevertheless from the point of view of a higher and
completer view be very good. A Metaphysic that is optimistic
in this sense is as fruitful a source of acute demoralization as
the Theology which makes moral distinctions depend upon
the arbitary will of God l . In certain of their manifestations
the two forms of thought tend to become absolutely indis-
tinguishable. Once let it be admitted that a bad act can under
no conceivable circumstances really take anything away from
the true good of the Universe or be really opposed to the
ultimate aim of the Spirit to which the Universe owes its being,
and Morality, as it presents itself to the unsophisticated moral
consciousness, exists no more 2 . Hence to the three postulates
1 I confess I feel strongly tempted to adopt the words of Schopenhauer :
' I cannot here avoid the statement that, to me, optimism, when it is not
merely the thoughtless talk of such as harbour nothing but words under
their low foreheads, appears not merely as an absurd, but also as a really
wicked way of thinking, as a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of
humanity* (The World as Will and Idea, Eng. Trans., I. 420). Of course
Optimism must here be understood to mean the belief that the world and
everything in it are perfectly good not the creed that the world on the
whole is tending towards the good.
2 The point of view against which I protest is forcibly expressed by
Prof. Taylor : * Hence for Religion the classification of acts and men as
"good" and "bad" must appear unsatisfactory and superficial. For, on
the one hand, ultimately all acts and all characters are good as fulfilling,
R 1
244 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
of Ethics which I have already enumerated I propose to add
a fourth the negation of Optimism, the assertion that not
everything in the Universe is very good, and that the distinction
between good and evil belongs to the real nature of things and
npt merely to appearance.
X
I am quite aware how incomplete such a treatment of the
relation between Metaphysics and Ethics as the present must be in
the absence of a complete discussion of those logical and meta-
physical questions as to the relation of knowledge to Reality
which lie at the root of the whole matter. On that momentous
question I will only make one remark. That all our human know-
ledge is inadequate to express the true nature of the ultimate
Reality will be universally admitted by Metaphysicians of almost
each in its own place, the perfect world system, and on the other every act
and every character is bad as failing to realise the perfect world-system in
more than an infinitesimal fragment of its concrete fullness. Religion thus
knows nothing of merit and demerit. Instead of the customary classification
of men as on the one hand respectable and good, and on the other hand as
disreputable and bad, it substitutes a double estimate according to which, on
the one hand, the outcast and the sinner are already, as members of the
perfect world order, really perfect if they only had the faith to perceive it, and
on the other all men alike the man of rigid virtue and strict habits no less
than the reprobate are equally condemned and equally guilty before God '
(The Problem of Conduct, pp. 473, 474). But why the qualification I have
italicized ? On the premisses they must be as good whether they have faith
to perceive it or not ; and some (perhaps fortunately) have not this faith.
Optimism always breaks down somewhere. If Professor Taylor means that
the world is equally perfect whether they perceive it or not, he has omitted
to show that they are likely to be the better if they do perceive it, and if he
admits that they are not, he has failed to point out any ultimate justification
for the relative authority (as regards human beings) which he himself claims
for Morality. If Religion (as Professor Taylor assumes) makes men think
a bad act to be really (if actually committed) equally conducive to the true
end of the Universe with a good one, and so more likely to commit bad acts,
what right have men (on whom human Morality is, by his own admission,
binding) to be religious ?
It is instructive to notice that Dr. McTaggart has now retracted his
former view as to the perfection of the Universe. To any reader who is
unsatisfied by this slight and fragmentary treatment of the question I may
commend Dr. MeTaggart's chapter on * God as Omnipotent * in Some Dogmas
of Religion. As to Professor Taylor's change of view, see below, p. 285.
Chap.i,x] TIME NOT MERELY SUBJECTIVE 245
all schools, The only serious question must be as to the kind and
the degree of the inadequacy, and as to the answer that is given
to the enquiry how far it is possible to arrive at any clearer and
more adequate knowledge of Reality by denying and seeking
to ' transcend/ as the phrase is, distinctions which are admittedly
inherent in the very nature and constitution of human thought.
That question will be further dealt with in the following chapter,
but meanwhile there is one particular source of imperfection
in our knowledge to which a momentary reference must be made.
It will, doubtless, be contended that my argument has assumed
the absolute validity of our ideas of Time. Here, too, the real
problem is as to the amount and kind of inadequacy which
is involved in this particular condition of human thought.
What I should contend, if I had the opportunity, would be
that our time-distinctions must express, however inadequately,
the true nature of Reality, and that the attempt to think of
Reality as out of time or timeless is certain to lead us further
astray from the truth than the assertion that time-distinctions
are valid, though we cannot tell in what way they present
themselves to God or how far they express the full truth about
Reality as a whole. If the position that Reality is out of time
makes it impossible to ascribe objective validity to our judge-
ments of value, compels us to distort and virtually contradict
the ethical part of our thought, and forbids us to give its proper
weight to that side of our nature in our speculative construction
of ultimate Reality, that is one further objection to such
theories. The doctrine of a timeless Reality makes the world's
history unmeaning and all human effort vain. The Buddhists,
whose Creed is often patronized by our modern believers in
a timeless Absolute, at least have the merit of admitting that
corollary of their system, however much inconsistency and
contradiction there may be in the anti-social ascetic's effort
to escape from effort. The Western who uses this language
about the vanity of all that is temporal neither believes it nor
acts as if he believed it. Time and its distinctions, as we know
them, may not express the whole truth about the Universe and
the ultimate spiritual ground of it, but at least they must express
more of it than a to us meaningless negation like tiinelessness.
246 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
If there be any meaning in the idea of transcending time-
distinctions, that meaning must be something other than that
of merely negating and abolishing them, and it is only on
the assumption that from the point of view of absolute knowledge
time-distinctions are simply negated and abolished that the
temporal character of our moral thinking can be used as
an argument for denying its objective validity and refusing
to admit the postulates which that objective validity carries
with it.
NOTE ON THE TIMELESS SELF'
So much prominence has been given to the doctrine of the ( timeless self '
in the writings of Green and his disciples that it seems hardly possible
to pass over the matter altogether, though a full discussion of it does
not enter into the plan of this work. The doctrine seems to me to be
mainly traceable to the following misconceptions and confusions :
(1) The necessity, for knowledge, of a permanent self, persisting through
change, is often treated as proving what is quite a different thing a self
which is out of time altogether.
(2) The doctrine is founded upon the fact that for two events, past and
present, to enter into and become the basis of knowledge, they must
be compared together, and to be compared they must both in a sense
be 'present 1 to the mind which compares them. But this presence is
a presence in idea: to make the reality of a past event consist in its
presence to my mind now would involve a worse extravagance than can
be attributed to any sort of ' subjective Idealism ' that has ever been
explicitly maintained. It is no doubt real as an 'idea in my headland
considered as an ' idea in my head ' it has its own time, the present, which
is different from the time in which the event which I think really
occurred. There is, no doubt, in the judgement a reference to reality
to the real event, but the real event is not my judgement about it or any
present experience of mine. Prom this point of view the doctrine repre-
sents a monstrous distortion of the ultimate fact that a being who is now
in one time can know events which were in another time. This may or may
not be difficult or unintelligible or mysterious, but it is not made more
intelligible by using language which plainly distorts the facts. I did
not exist in the eighteenth century because I can know events which
occurred at that period, nor am I now in the nineteenth century because
some of my personal experience occurred in that century.
(3) Another way in which the idea of a 'timeless self seems to be
arrived at is by a mistaken inference from the discovery that the relations
Chap, i, x, Note] THE TIMELESS SELF 247
between facts are themselves not in time at all. The fact that A occurred
after B is not a fact which can be said to be in A's time or B's time or
in both together. The relation of posteriority is out of time altogether. But
then it is forgotten that this relation of A to B taken apart from A and B
themselves is not a reality at all but a mere abstraction. Considered as
knowledge it is of course out of time, but all knowledge implies abstraction.
Knowledge is not real apart from the thing known on the one hand or
the knowing mind on the other. Abstract knowledge is out of time, just
because we have made abstraction both of the time in which the knower
is and of the time in which the events known occurred, and think of
the knowledge apart in abstraction from its presence to any particular
knower. * The system of relations/ the interconnected judgements which
make up Science are no doubt out of time when, and in so far as, we make
abstraction both of the knower and of the events related. But the abstract
system of relations, when taken apart from the events related, is not
the actual events, and the events related are in time. This confusion leads
up to that view of the Universe which identifies the real world with a
* system of relations,' supposed to be real without anything to relate,
with a world timeless, changeless, static, existing for thought only and
consisting of nothing but thought according to some, of thought without
even a thinker. Such a mode of thinking seems to culminate in the
doctrine that the Universe is nothing but a ' continuous judgement. 1
(4) The system of categories which the self, in Kantian language,
imposes upon the data of sense, and which are supposed to be derived from
the Ego, has been confused not by Kant but by Green and others with the
self by which these categories are, in the Kantian system, imposed upon
the matter of our knowledge. This system of categories, abstracted from
the matter which is known by means of them and from the concrete thought
in which they are manifested, is no doubt out of relation to time: but
then this system of thought-relations is still less capable of identification
with Reality than the concrete judgements in which those categories
are used. The real self certainly knows abstract truths which are ab-
stractions and therefore out of time, and events which are in other times ;
but it is itself born at a certain time and may (so far as actual experience
goes) be out of existence at another, while every moment of its thought
or volition is in some time or other.
(5) If it be said that the 'self which is present in knowledge is not
the individual but the universal self, I should reply (a) that God cannot,
any more than the individual self, be identified with a system of abstract
categories, and (b) that the self with which we are concerned in Morality
must be the individual, and not the universal, self-consciousness. The
fact that God is ' out of time/ if it be a fact, cannot be used as an argument
against considering pleasure as any part of human good on the ground that
it cannot satisfy a * timeless self/ The self which desires and wills and
is satisfied in Morality is assuredly the individual self, and that is a self
which has a beginning and which might (so far as any merely metaphysical
consideration goes) be supposed to have an end.
348 METAPHYSIC AND MORALITY [Book III
The question whether in any sense God is ' out of time * or * above time '
is a far more difficult problem. And, as it is not a matter of any directly
ethical import, I do not intend to discuss it here at length. Here we have,
it must be confessed, a real difficulty to face - the ' antinomy * involved in
the impossibility either of thinking of a first event, a beginning of the world's
history, or of supposing an endless succession of events. But this * antinomy *
is not really solved by talking about the whole series being simultaneously
or extra-temp orally present to a timeless consciousness : for, even if God
contemplates the whole series at once, He must contemplate that series
as having a beginning and an end or as endless : and we cannot understand
how either is possible. The antinomy remains unsolved. The existence
of the antinomy does constitute a good ground for saying that we do
not fully understand the nature of time, and that God's relation to time
must be different from our relation to it. But it does not justify us in
talking about God being timeless ' or * out of time ' as though we really
knew what such phrases meant, and could ourselves attain to this extra-
temporal view of things ; or in talking about time-distinctions as merely
* subjective,' as though the events of the world's history had their real
being out of time but only appeared to us to be in time because of the
imperfection of our knowledge as though all difference between past and
future were merely apparent, as though the idea that human acts really
effect any change in the Universe were a simple delusion, as though the
reality of the world were something static and unchangeable, and the
like.
All these positions seem to me to involve at bottom (i) a confusion
between knowledge and reality, and (2) the idea that the individual
self is timeless. From no possible point of view can human experience
appear to be out of time, except a point of view which does not look at
things as they really are. If we admit that the individual self is not timeless,
I can attach no meaning to a point of view from which the experiences
of beings in time whose experience comes to them in time shall be seen
to be really timeless. Any point of view from which God may in any sense
be said to transcend time must at least be a point of view which admits
of the possibility of his knowing the experience which is in time and of
knowing it as in time that is to say, as it really is, and not as something
which it is not. If God supposed that the pain which I suffered in the past
really exists in the present or eternally or out of time, He would be thinking
of things as they are not.
It is impossible to discuss the question of the relation of God or the
Absolute to time more fully, and I am far from thinking that it is one
which can be disposed of in a few sentences. To discuss the question
at all adequately would involve a whole Metaphysic : all Metaphysical
questions are, indeed, apt to run up into this supreme difficulty. It is
not necessary here to do more than to justify my refusal to admit
the validity of any arguments or theories about Ethics or otherwise
which assume that time is 'subjective.' There is, as I have said, no
direct connexion between this question and any ethical problem, but
Chap, i, x, Note] TIMELESSNESS AND MORALITY 249
indirectly the connexion is considerable. Theories of the merely subjective,
apparent, delusive character of time and all that is in time underlie, or
have a strong tendency to associate themselves with, the ethical scepticism
which declines to recognize the objective validity of our ethical judge-
ments, or to admit that the ethical point of view (admittedly implying
the temporal point of view) contains any trustworthy revelation of the
ultimate nature and meaning of the Universe. Such theories I have
to some extent examined in other chapters, especially Book II, chap, iii,
and Book III, chap. ii.
CHAPTER II
RELIGION AND MORALITY
I
IN the last chapter I tried to explain the sense and degree
in which a sound system of Ethics presupposes certain meta-
physical beliefs. It may be well briefly to recapitulate the
results, (i ) We saw that certain beliefs about the self may be
described as postulates of Ethics in the first degree, that is to
say, in the sense that no real meaning whatever can be given to
Morality without assuming the truth of those beliefs, though
they may not be explicit in every individual consciousness.
(3) The belief in God was found to be essential to the logical justi-
fication of that idea of objective validity which is implicit in the
moral consciousness, at least in the higher stages of its develop-
ment. The idea of God may, no doubt, in particular persons of
strong moral convictions not only not be explicit, but may be
formally denied. The tendency, however, of its denial l is and
must be in the long run (since all men are in some degree
rational beings with a desire for rational self-consistency) to
weaken or destroy belief in objective Morality and so the influence
of ail higher Morality in the world. (3) The idea of a future life
seemed an equally essential implication of Morality for those who
find it impossible without it to reconcile the facts of life with
such a conception of God and of the world as is essential for the
rational interpretation of the moral consciousness.
It is not pretended that these metaphysical implications of
Morality have always been apparent either to systematic thinkers
or to all those in whom moral ideas have been operative. To
1 In strictness we should say the denial of God's existence or of some other
form of the belief in a rational Universe, such as is involved (however
imperfectly and inadequately) in Buddhism. Reasons have been given for
regarding the theistic view as the only one which fully and adequately
satisfies the implications of an objective Morality.
Chap, ii, i] THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 251
many individuals these truths, presented in an abstract meta-
physical form, have been no more apparent than any other
metaphysical truths which are nevertheless no less really implicit
in the ordinary thought of ordinary persons. Nevertheless the
history of practical Ethics tends to support the belief that
there is a real connexion between certain principles of action,
and certain metaphysical verities. The way in which meta-
physical truths have been held by and have impressed the great
mass of men is in the form of what we call Religion. Religion
represents an element in the life of all nations which have
risen above a very low stage of savagery 1 , and the Morality
of a people has always been very closely connected with its
Religion, though the closeness of the connexion has varied at
different stages of moral and religious development. This
Religion has not always been Religion of the kind which we
have attempted to represent as the logical presupposition -of
a sound Morality, any more than the Morality connected with
them has always been the Morality of civilized man. We are
not concerned here with the historical aspect of the connexion
between the lower forms of Morality and the lower forms of
Religion. But the nature of the connexion between developed
Morality and developed Religion is of such great importance,
both theoretical and practical, that it will be well to devote
a separate chapter to its consideration.
I shall not in this chapter ask what is the ethical value of
religious systems other than those which recognize the three
fundamental principles which we have already seen reason for
regarding as logical postulates of Ethics belief in God who wills
the highest good and in the Immortality of the soul or at least
of such souls as are worthy of Immortality. In the present
chapter I propose to ask how far such beliefs are practically
necessary or useful to Morality, and in what relation Religion
and Morality ought to stand to one another in the ideal human
life.
1 Probably even this exception need not be made. Where travellers or
Anthropologists have attempted to point out the existence of a people
without Religion, the attempt is generally based either upon insufficient
information or upon a too narrow conception of what Religion is.
25* RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
The first of these questions is of course to some extent distinct
from the question on which we have been engaged, Religious
belief might possess an important and beneficial moral influence
without being in any sense speculatively necessary to a complete
and self-consistent ethical creed : or again theistic belief might
be speculatively necessary, although the absence of it might have
no important practical influence upon those who are content to
do without speculative justification for their practical beliefs.
But though distinct, the two questions are not unconnected.
For no absolute line can be drawn between speculative or
scientific Metaphysics and popular Theology. Popular religious
beliefs, positive or negative, represent an implicit Metaphysic,
though often no doubt, for their adherents, resting partly upon
grounds which could not in the ordinary sense of the word be
described as metaphysical. Metaphysic represents the reflective
and articulate form of beliefs which may quite well be held in
a more or less chaotic, a more or less unreflective, way by un-
metaphysical and even uneducated persons. All Religion is,
always has been, and always must be essentially metaphysical.
The crudest savage ' Animism ' is a metaphysical theory as
much as the most esoteric Brahminism or the most cultured
modern Theology. The modern Theologians of the Ritschlian
type, who declaim against Metaphysics and propose to reduce
Theology to a belief in the Fatherhood of God, are Metaphysicians
as much as the most elaborately technical Schoolman or the
most speculative Hegelian. The belief in the Fatherhood of God
is none the less a metaphysical belief, because it may be shared
both by unlearned men who are entirely without metaphysical
training and by learned men who are not good Metaphysicians.
Metaphysic after all has no data but the facts of outer and inner
experience, and no instrument but human Reason ; and all men
have some experience, and use their Reason to a greater or less
extent in interpreting that experience. The beliefs of those who
think for themselves gradually spread, and influence those who
think little or not at all. This is particularly the case with the
Metaphysic which deals with the facts of the moral conscious-
ness, and with matters in which the moral consciousness has an
especial interest. And the practical influence of religious belief
Chap, ii, ii] PRIMITIVE RELIGION 253
or its absence upon Morality is due, as I believe, in a large
measure to an instinctive consciousness of its necessity as the
presupposition of that objective validity in ethical judgements
on which I have already dwelt. The 'plain .jnxaoA fiudguit,
difficult or impossible to believe in Morality as anything more
than the actual opinion of his neighbours about his conduct,
unless he can believe that it is the law of the Universe; and
this belief is for him, at least, and I have tried to show that in
the main he is right, possible only in the form of a belief that
Morality is the will of God : and, if God is just, He must (so he
will argue) reward the good and punish the bad. So the plain
man argues ; and any weakening of this conviction is apt to
react upon the intensity, if not upon the detailed content of his
ethical creed. Reflection may bring him hereafter to a more
refined view of what is crudely represented as c reward ' and
' punishment ' ; but the heart of his belief is right, and may be
expressed more exactly in the form that the Universe is directed
towards the working out of an ideal end for individual souls.
II
But here, perhaps, exception may be taken to my seeming to
identify Religion with Monotheism, and even with a Monotheism
which carries with it the belief in personal Immortality. I have
already disclaimed the attempt to give any historical account of
the relation between Religion and Morality, which is in many
respects a very different relation at different stages of human
culture. Historically, of course, the origin of Religion may be
said to be almost independent of Morality, except in so far as all
primitive Religion was closely connected with that family and
tribal sentiment which was the earliest form of Morality. In
primitive times Religion and Morality represented two streams
of human thought and feeling which were indeed to a large
extent parallel and independent, but which were never without
frequent points of contact and interaction. Elements in primitive
Religion were quite unconnected with Morality ; elements in it
were contrary to Morality, or at least contrary to what would
have been regarded as moral but for the influence of those
religious ideas. Still more emphatically elements or aspects of
254 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
Morality have at certain periods of History had nothing or very
little to do with Religion. This has been the case especially at
certain times and places where the ethical development has
temporarily gone beyond the religious development.
We are apt to underestimate the closeness of the habitual
relations between Morality and Religion through our familiarity
with just those periods of ancient civilization in which for a very
small class the ethical development was most conspicuously in
advance of the religious l . But, even for the average pagan outside
the small cultivated class, religious duties (in so far as they were
recognized as duties) were also moral duties, although the act
prescribed might be an act which at other times and places
might be regarded as immoral, and necessarily affected (for good
or for evil) his general ideas about Morality. Some moral duties
at least were at all times specially connected with, and encouraged
by, Religion, even when the highest ideals of the community had
little connexion with and exercised little influence over its
religious ideas except by undermining them. And on the whole
the tendency of progress both moral and religious has been to
bring Religion and Morality ever more and more closely together,
until in the * ethical religions ' there is professedly a complete
coincidence between the requirements of Religion and those of
Morality; though only in the more spiritual forms of these
completely perhaps only in the purest forms of Christianity is
this coincidence fully, systematically, and consciously realized.
These higher Religions may all be fairly described as monotheistic
with one exception ; and they all teach a future life of the
soul. Buddhism in its pure and original form was certainly not
theistic ; though it probably tends to become so in the popular
consciousness 2 . But Buddhism is certainly not an instance of
1 How small this section was we are reminded by Mark Pattison : * We
are apt to speak as if in the Roman world of the first century A.D., pagan
worships had died, or were dying out. This is an illusion generated by
literature' (Sermons, p. 151). Another * delusion generated by Literature*
has restricted our conception of Religion in the ancient world too much to
the official State worship ; it takes too little account of the more popular
and the more ethically influential cults such as Orphism and Mithraism.
9 So difficult is the experiment of a non-theistic Religion that Buddhism
has had practically to deify its atheistic Founder. An exception ought
Chap. ii,ii] NON-THEISTIC RELIGION 255
a Religion which is independent of metaphysical belief, nor yet
of a Religion without the idea in a future life, and its belief
about that life is no doubt one great source of the beneficent
moral influence which it has exercised. It is true that in its
orthodox form Buddhism regards the extinction of consciousness
as the ultimate goal of human aspiration ; but even this implies
the conception of a future good which depends upon present
conduct, though that good is conceived of as a negative good or
escape from evil. And for the great mass of Buddhists many
lives intervene between the present and the soul's final goal:
while the best authorities seem to doubt whether even Nirvana
has ever really been regarded, except by a few thinkers in their
most speculative moments, as an actual extinction of conscious-
ness. The ethical influence of this non-theistic Religion is
undoubted, but it may quite well be contended that its negative
Theology is largely responsible for its ethical defects. The
comparative history of the two Religions Christianity and
Buddhism would seem to confirm the suspicion that the ethical
results of a Religion which makes death its highest ideal must
be inferior on the whole to those of a Religion which finds the
end of man in a more abundant and satisfying life.
Comparison of particular Religions is, however, quite beside
my present purpose. I am concerned here only with estimating
the ethical value and importance of Religion in what I regard as
its highest form, the only form (as I believe) in which Religion
is fully in harmony with a sound reflective Metaphysic, and at
all events the only form in which its influence is practically felt
in civilized Western societies. I have added these remarks on
account of the wild language in which an eminent thinker has
indulged about the unhistorical mistake of those who assume
that there can be no Religion without a personal God or personal
Immortality. I have not overlooked the possibility of a Religion
without either a God or a future life : but it remains a question
what would be the ethical results of such a Religion. There
perhaps also to be made of the old Persian Religion, inasmuch as its
admission of an independent principle or power of evil is inconsistent with
Monotheism : but even there the good Spirit is thought of as more powerful
than the evil.
256 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
may undoubtedly be such a thing as Religion which is positively
unfavourable to the moral life. I am not sure that the Religion
which Mr. Bradley has sketched for us is not of that character,
The worship of an Absolute which is conceived of as non-moral
could hardly be of much positive ethical value. The worship of
an Absolute who has a moral character and that the moral char-
acter which Mr. Bradley (if he is to be taken seriously l ) in his
more anti-orthodox moods attributes to the object of his esoteric
cult might well lead to ethical results not unlike those associated
with the worship of the less respectable deities in the pagan
Pantheon. Fortunately the experiment of such a Religion has
never been tried on any large scale at an advanced stage of
civilization.
Ill
What then are the ethical advantages of Theism ? To deal
with the subject adequately would really involve an examination
of Religion itself, not only in the form of an abstract Philosophy
but in its historical manifestations, and particularly in the form
which even those who do not regard it as in any sense final will
for the most part admit to be the highest which has hitherto
exercised any widespread influence on mankind. The following
remarks must be regarded as the merest indication of the main
heads under which the very manifold and far-reaching influences
of Religion upon Morality may be grouped the main grounds
on which I reject the tendency to regard an ethical creed as
a satisfactory substitute for a theological creed based upon
Morality.
First, however, let me repeat what I have already more than
once insisted on, I trust with some emphasis that the moral con-
sciousness itself contains no explicit or immediate reference
to any theological belief whatever. A man's consciousness of
1 Recent utterances of his, e. g. in an article on ' Truth and Practice ' in
Mind, N. S., Vol. XIII, No. 51 (1904), seem to suggest that the mood in question
is passing away. At all events I find it quite impossible to reconcile the
reverent and theistic spirit of those remarks with such a suggestion as that
which he makes in Appearance and Beality, Ed. ii. p. 194, that human error
is justified in the world-plan because of the contribution which it makes
to the amusement of the Absolute.
Chap, ii, iii] ETHICAL ADVANTAGE OF THEISM 257
value, and in particular of the supreme value residing in the
good will, does not necessarily include, as a matter of simple
psychological fact, any recognition of duty as the will of God,
or any expectation of happiness or misery in another life as the
consequence of duty performed or neglected. Nor can the con-
sciousness of duty be regarded as in any sense a logical deduction
or inference from such beliefs, ^hese beliefs logic^Ji^jgresup-
]3OfiJJhe moral consciousness. It is for the rational interpreta-
tion of the moral consciousness that metaphysical or theological
beliefs are required; just as they are required for the rational
interpretation of Science, though eminent men of Science may
be innocent of all conscious metaphysical theory or indulge
in metaphysical speculations really fatal to their own Sciences.
Where no such interpretation presents itself as reasonable or
where it is deliberately rejected, the good man in proportion
to his goodness will still no doubt aim at that which seems
to him the highest ; and no difficulty which he may experience
in metaphysically interpreting his conduct will lead to the
cessation of his efforts if only he is good enough and strong
enough. In proportion to his goodness and his strength he will
cling to his ethical ideal. The absence or rejection of meta-
physical justification seems, however, to have a tendency varying
in strength according to circumstances and temperament, a ten-
dency which shows itself in the spiritual life of communities
even where it does not immediately tell upon the spiritual life of
individuals, to^3Yfi&ken the hold of the belief in Morality itself
upoajife and conduct. It does not necessarily involve a direct,
conscious, immediate alteration of ethical creed. In the majority
of cases a man who has given up every form of theological
belief will continue to say ' I believe in Morality ' ; and if you
ask him what Morality means he will possibly give much the
same account of it as he did before his rejection of the theo-
logical belief. He does not, except perhaps as regards certain
particular points of Morality which for him may have been
specially connected with some organ of religious Authority,
reject anything that he believed before : he does not consciously
and deliberately make up his mind to aim no more at what
he aimed at formerly, or to drown scruples which he once
RASH BALL II S
RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
respected. But the intellectual hold of Morality upon his mind is
weakened when he can give no account of it except that it
is a way of thinking that Evolution has somehow produced
in creatures of his species. It ceases to occupy the place that
it did in his habitual thoughts about the Universe and his own
place in it. For the only form in which the majority of men can
grasp tenaciously the idea of an objective Moral Law is by regacd-
ing.it. JW the will of a spiritual Being to whom they feel them-
selves, responsible l . Even among highly-educated persons it is
doubtful whether many find it possible to realize the belief in an
abstract Morality, and to make the aspiration after it the domi-
nant aim of their lives with as much intensity as the best of
those who have believed in a living God. For after all ration-
ality exercises some influence over human conduct ; and a belief
which the holder of it is forced to regard as irrational or non-
rational will exercise in the long run, in proportion as its non-
rational character is realized, less influence on a man's conduct
than one which justifies itself to his Reason as well as to his emo-
tions. Nor can it well be denied that most of those who reject the
idea of God do advisedly and deliberately reject also as a matter
of speculative belief the idea of an absolute or intrinsic moral
obligation, though some of them may more or less successfully
endeavour to prevent that rejection from having any practical
effect upon their conduct. But in the long run speculation does
affect conduct. To state the practical connexion between Re-
1 At least this may be said of Western men. If it does not hold of
Buddhists, it must be remembered that the Buddhist very distinctly regards
the Universe as morally controlled, though by an impersonal law. I should
fully admit that such a creed as that of Dr. McTaggart the belief in
Immortality without a belief in God does supply a metaphysical justifica-
tion for Morality. Whether it does this so well as Theism, whether the
creed is intrinsically as reasonable as Theism, and whether its influence over
life and conduct is likely to be as powerful, these are questions which
I cannot here explicitly discuss. It seems hardly necessary for a Theist who
thinks a belief in Immortality with Theism more reasonable than a belief in
Immortality without it to attempt to decide exactly how much of the ethical
influence arising from belief in God and Immortality could be secured by
belief in Immortality and a morally governed Universe without God. The
reader will see that some of the considerations urged in this chapter could be
equally urged from Dr. McTaggart's point of view, while others could not.
Chap, ii, iii] THE LOVE OF GOD 259
ligion and Morality as its lowest, the belief in a personal God
represents the form of belief about the Universe in which the
intellectual hold of Morality upon the human mind tends to
attain its maximum intensity. And the firmer or weaker in-
tellectual grasp of a belief reacts upon its emotional influence.
Theism of the Christian type is the creed which secures the
maximum emotional hold of human Morality upon the mind.
Action motived by no other desire than the desire to fulfil the
Moral Law for its own sake, accompanied by no emotion but
what is produced by the direct consciousness of duty, is un-
doubtedly not impossible. But such a desire is not commonly
the sole or (unless reinforced by other feelings or emotions)
the habitually dominant motive of action even in the best men.
Morality seldom excites the strongest emotion till it is embodied
in a self-conscious Being. Personal influence is the strongest of
all moral motive powers. And yet there is clearly no kind
of personal affection or social emotion except the fear or love
of God which can be trusted to range itself invariably on
thejjicle of, the Moral Law. It is not easy to exaggerate the
increase of emotional intensity which the Moral Law acquires
when the reverence for it fuses inextricably with a feeling of
reverence for a Person who is conceived of as essentially and per-
fectly good. Aud this reverence is almost independent of the
hope of reward or fear of punishment, except in so far as
a belief in the divine Justice is necessary to the individual's
conception of God as a Person worthy of reverence. This is
a consideration often forgotten when advocates of a purely
' ethical Religion ' expatiate on the additional purity which
a non-theistic creed gives to moral aspiration. It is forgotten
that the love of God means simply love for a Person who is the
highest good and the source of all other goodness.
There is, indeed, one sort of emotion and only one which can
be compared in its intensity and its moral efficacy with religious
emotion and that is Patriotism and other forms of social feel-
ing 1 . John Stewart Mill has declared that, though he enter-
1 Historically Patriotism, when it has practically acted as a moral motive
power of great intensity, has usually been associated with some form of
religious belief in the moral sense of the word. That is so even with the
260 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
tains 'the strongest objections to the system of politics and
morals set forth 1 in Comte's Systems de Politique Positive,
that treatise ' has superabundantly shown the possibility of
giving to the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief
in a Providence, both the physical power and the social efficacy
of a religion V I do not doubt that the love of country or of
Humanity is capable of producing in particular natures even
in whole nations moral results comparable in strength with those
which spring from the fear or the love of God. But it must not be
forgotten that this social enthusiasm is extremely difficult to
cultivate, and that when cultivated it is not always a security
for a sound Morality. For the effect of good conduct on social
Well-being is often very remote and indirect: affection for
individuals or for small groups of men even for the whole
present generation may inspire conduct which is really anti-
social. The strongest temptation to most men lies in the dis-
position to conform to the moral standard, and to win the
applause, of their immediate environment. Moreover, even the
philanthropy which is really inspired by a love of Humanity at
large may be divorced from the love of moral goodness. What
we desire for others may be mere pleasure or contentment, not
the highest sort of life. Against these dangers there is no more
valuable counteractive than the faith which identifies Morality
with the love of a God who wills exclusively the true and
highest good of all his creatures. The love of God is at once
a stimulant, a complement, and a corrective to the love of man.
Th_true love of Humanity is the love of Humanity at its
highset ' the love not of all men nor yet of every man, but
of the man in every man V And love of the ideal man becomes
modern Japanese. Vague as the creed of the average Japanese appears to
be, it does eminently tend to produce the conviction that Morality is the law
of the Universe, and not simply the public opinion of a particular com-
munity. Both Buddhism and Shintoism, in the form in which they are
popularly accepted, conduce to that result by producing belief in the future of
the soul after death, and in a communion with still living ancestors. The
pessimistic, ascetic, and anti-social side o( Buddhism appears to have exercised
little influence on the Japanese mind.
1 Utilitarianism, p. 49.
8 Seeley, Ecce Homo, ed. xiii, chap, xiii, p. 145,
Chap, ii, iv] INFLUENCE OF IMMORTALITY 261
a stronger force the more the ideal end for man is identified
with the end of the Universe. In the Christian or the Theist
the love of the ideal man is the love of man as God wills him
to be.
The belief in ajutura-life I regard as of the highest value
both as a postulate or a corollary of belief in God, and for its
own sake. The idea of such a life is simply caricatured when it
is spoken of as a mere belief in the distribution of posthumous
' rgjvards and punishments/ Even in this aspect its educational
influence is not to be despised. Theists need not be ashamed to
acknowledge that they do regard it as a gain to Morality that
that ' education by pleasure and pain ' which thinkers like Plato
and Aristotle regarded as the function of the State should be
continued in another life ; and that men should act habitually
with the thought before them of a future in which the principle
of ' reaping what they have sown ' to some very imperfect
extent the law even of life here shall be far more fully and
adequately realized. It is true that conduct motived wholly
by fear of punishment or hope of reward has little or no moral
value *, so long at least as the reward and punishment are con-
ceived of in a purely hedonistic sense ; and that the ideal is not
reached till this motive is supplanted by or merged in other and
higher motives. But we do not despise such influences in
ordinary moral education. What parent or schoolmaster would
say to a young child, ' My good child, enlightened Philosophers
are agreed that conduct motived by fear of punishment or hope
of reward is worthless ; therefore henceforth I shall leave you
to be guided by your own innate sense of right and wrong.
I will not corrupt the purity of your will by threats or promises.
Your virtues shall be their own reward ; your misdeeds shall
never interfere with your pleasures or cause the withdrawal
of my favour ' ? What child would flourish morally under such
treatment as this ? And yet it would be a very cynical view of
human nature to suppose that the average schoolboy is actuated
1 And yet after all Prudence does represent a higher motive than mere
animal impulse.
RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
by no motive higher than selfish hope or fear. He has higher
motives, but he requires to be aided in his efforts at self-conquest
by lower ones. And_after all-most, of us are a great deal more
like^^hi]dren than it is fashionable among Philosophers to be-
lieve at least in our moments of weakness and strong tempta-
tion. How many people could honestly assert that the promptings
of their internal Conscience require or derive no support arid
assistance from the ' external Conscience ' their fear of social
disapproval or the disapproval of those whom they most respect ?
How many of us will pretend that it would be morally good for
them to have all such restraints suddenly withdrawn ? And
yet, as we have seen, the ' external Conscience ' does not always
echo the promptings of the inner Conscience. It is just at such
times that the external conscience which is supplied by a belief in
a God who rewards and punishes becomes most valuable. Plenty
of non-religious Moralists will admit that it is wrong to fight
a duel : it may be doubted whether a duel has ever been declined
upon conscientious grounds, where the social sanction insists on
its being fought, except by religious men.
We do not hesitate to appeal even to the coarser physical
pains and pleasures in moral education just so far as this may be
required. If a man does not see that drunkenness is disgusting,
we do not think it degrading to point out to him its physical
ill-effects still less its ultimate tendency to weaken his will and
paralyse every energy that he possesses. It is difficult to see
how moral education can be conducted in any other way than by
associating pleasure and pain with the right objects, and gradually
appealing to more and more remote and refined pleasures and
pains pleasures and pains more and more intrinsically connected
with the good or bad conduct itself ; while at the same time, as
moralization advances,we more and more allow the highest motives
the repeat for duty and regard for others to take their place
or to transform all lower motives. Moral ' Autonomy ' is no doubt
the ideaU but it is only at a very advanced stage of moral and
intellectual growth that pure Autonomy is attainable. At the
lower levels of moral education, there is no objection to insisting
on the mere reward and punishment aspect of the future life, so
long as these are never represented as constituting the true
Chap. ii,iv] IDEA OF FUTURE JUDGEMENT
ground for moral conduct. But even at this stage the value
of this idea of a future 'judgement' consists even more in its
tendency simply to emphasize the reality of moral obligation,
the idea of an objective Moral Law and of personal responsi-
bility, than in the actual influence which the terror of personal
ill-consequences exerts over the mind *. AncLj^jajoral education
advances, it will first sink into the background or he evoked
only as an aid to resist the force of violent temptations, and then
with the highest souls be altogether superseded by a love of God
andTman of that perfected kind which is said to f cast out fear.'
In its highest form a Morality based on the idea of God is only
a personal, and therefore a far more practically influential, form
of ' ethical Autonomy.'
In the higher religious life the anticipation of future rewards
and punishments passes into the expectation of a better life
in which greater perfection of character and greater oppor-
tunities of exercising our highest capacities than are attainable
in the present stage of existence shall be combined with all the
other elements that constitute our highest conception of the
good. Belief in another life enhances the value of the life that
now is and the importance of the moral struggle of which it
is the scene. The conviction that a man's present conduct will
influence his future is the very beginning of all Morality : the
larger that future, the more influence does that principle exercise
upon conduct. Moreover, it is not only in regard to ourselves
but in regard to others that the vision of eternal consequences
emphasizes the importance of every act of moral choice. The
promotion of human pleasure and the prevention of human
misery would not be ignoble things to aim at, even though the
days of man were but threescore years and ten ; nor is the value
of the higher spiritual life wholly dependent upon its duration.
1 I suspect that, when the fear of Hell plays a prominent part in the
more ardent and emotional kind of religious conversion, it does so mainly
by breaking down the apathy and the slavery to immediate sensation which
has hitherto prevented moral reflection. It awakens reflection : after that,
it is rather the sense of the justice of the punishment depicted by authority
or imagination than the actual fear of it, which effects the moral re-
generation, though the one idea may often be psychologically inseparable
from the other.
264 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
But it does seem to me the mere obstinacy of philosophical dog-
matism to minimize tha infhifa) yyfa mh is likely to flow from
the thought of endless consequences not merely for Society at
large but for our own individual souls and the soul of each
individual whose character is affected by our acts. Is not that
reflection 'eminently calculated to strengthen our sense of the
importance of the moral life ? And is not th thought that after
all in a few years' time it will not matter a straw to myself or to
any one else now living whether I have struggled against tempta-
tion .or yielded to it, a thought eminently calculated to depress
the moral energies, and to reinforce every passion or inclination
which may suggest that it is our wisdom to live only for the
passing hour ? ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die/ was
not indeed a necessary or logical deduction from the denial
of Immortality, but it is undoubtedly the inference which the
natural man is very apt to draw from it.
It is riot, be it remembered, the absolute importance of the
moral struggle and the spiritual life for ourselves and others so
much as its relative importance when compared with all lower
enjoyments and interests which may stand in its way that is so
enormously enhanced by the conviction that character lasts
beyond the grave. In persons not of a highly imaginative
or emotional temperament it is perhaps more in this way than
in any personal sense of craving either for future happiness
or future perfection that the need for a belief in Immortality is
most powerfully felt. They quite recognize that their efforts toj
be useful ought not to be diminished by any loss of faith in Immor-
tality, and yet the feeling of the poverty and unsatisfactoriness
of human life, as it is for the great mass of men, will tend to
make their philanthropy unhopeful and uncheerful ; and still
more probably it will tend to lower their ideal of the good which
they desire for their fellows. To the non-believer in Immortality
the lower goods will seem a more attainable and a more solid
aim than that effort to improve character which often produces
so little immediate fruit. And after all it is not wholly a ques-
tion of ' seeming. 1 For the superiority of the higher goods
to the lower does in part depend upon their duration. The
superior duration of the higher goods is one of the most familiar
Chap, ii, iv] ARGUMENT FOR IMMORTALITY 365
topics of the least theological Moralists. In particular when the
possibilities of life are narrowing in, a man's estimate of the
superior value of higher goods is likely to be vitally affected by
his Eschatology. The belief in Immortality ought not to revolu-
tionize our estimate of moral values, but it may rationally enough
be held in some cases to alter to an appreciable degree our com-
parative estimate of values. When the hope of Immortality
is treated as irrational, it is hard to believe that men will think
it worth while to spend time and labour upon the improvement
of character in themselves or others at an age when their work
in life ia done, and when their powers of social influence on other
lives may be treated as a negligible quantity. I have already
dwelt upon the influence which a thoroughly realized belief
in human mortality would be likely to exert, and perhaps ought
to exert, upon the general estimate of Suicide and some depart-
ments of Ethics connected therewith 1 . There is no need to
repeat them here.
There is yet another way in which Morality seems to crave, if
it does not logically demand, the belief in Immortality, or rather
one other way of re-stating the connexion which we have already
been studying. On the supposition of universal mortality the
contrast between the capacities of human nature and its actual
destiny, between the immensity of the man's outlook and the
limitations of his actual horizon, between the splendour of his
ideals and the insignificance of his attainment, becomes such as
to constitute, in a mind which fairly faces it, a shock to our
rational nature sufficient to destroy belief in the rationality of
things, and to imperil confidence in the authority of Moral
Reason as a guide to human life. To those who have once
accepted the rationality of things, and most emphatically to
those who have once accepted the faith in a personal God, the
improbability that a being of such capacity should have been
created to be simply the creature of a day, that 'cometh up,
and is cut down, like a flower, and never continueth in one stay,'
has almost invariably amounted to an absolute impossibility.
It is the favourite argument alike of reasoned Philosophy and
of the intensest moral intuition. It is the argument implicit in
1 See above, p. 209.
266 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
the intuition of Jesus Christ, that beings once admitted to
spiritual communion with the Eternal Father, like the traditional
fathers of the Jewish race, could not be doomed to extinction
after so brief and so imperfect a vision of Him. * God is not the
God of the dead but of the living.' Plato and Cicerp are full of
the same thought. It is the argument drily and somewhat
abstractedly expressed by Kant when he made it a postulate of
the Moral Law that its commands should be capable of fulfilment,
and argued that, as in this life only distant approaches to the true
ideal are possible to the best, there must be a hereafter in which a
progressively closer approximation to it should be possible. It is
at bottom the basis of that faith in Immortality which, in greater
or less intensity, is to be found in nearly all modern thinkers in
whom ethical convictions have been profound and paramount l .
And, be it observed, it is not among those whose ideas of
Morality are such as to demand a * trinkgeld ' for Virtue, but
precisely among those whose sense of the intrinsic worth of
goodness is strongest, and whose appreciation of the higher side
of the present life is keenest, that we find the most passionate
conviction that this cannot be all. If this conviction, this
necessary inference from the existence of the Moral Law, should
be shown to be false, it would tend to throw doubt upon the
validity of all their higher thought, upon the worth of all higher
ideals, even upon the validity of the moral judgement itself. It
can hardly be doubted that psychologically it would have this
effect. And, if there be any validity in the argument of the
last chapter, that effect would only be the psychological expression
of legitimate metaphysical considerations. It is not only the
' sense of obligation ' that would disappear, but also the reality
of it, that is to say the objectivity which at bottom is the
ultimate meaning of moral obligation 2 .
1 The natural tendency of such minds, when the drift of their thought
takes them away from the belief in God and Immortality, is towards
Pessimism. I should certainly include Von Hartmann among the thinkers in
whom ethical considerations have been profound and paramount.
2 Or, at least, the basis of it. In popular thought the idea of ' moral
obligation ' usually includes not merely the belief in an objective mind or law
but the belief that the Universe is ultimately governed in accordance with
that law.
Chap. ii,iv] LOVE OF GOD AND OF MAN 267
Belief in a future life is, I hold, an essential element of
Religion in any form which is likely to satisfy a modern
Western intelligence whose Ethics are not those of Asceticism,
and whose conception of the Universe is not pessimistic. But at
the same time I should strongly insist that this belief derives its
moral value largely from its close connexion with the highest
form of the religious emotion the love of God. Fjcui-God to be
loyecLHe .must be thought of as worthy of love, and it is difficult
tq believe that He is worthy of love if He wills such a world as
ours except as a means to some better one, for those at least of
his creatures who are worthy of it. But I would once more
emphasize the fact that the religious motive at its highest is the
love of God for his own sake, and not merely for any reward
that is to be expected from Him, however sublimated be our
conception of that reward. 1^ the love of God the two strongest
emotional forces which make for Morality in this world find
their fullest and most harmonious satisfaction reverence for
the moral ideal and love of Humanity. When God is conceived
of as the realization of our highest moral ideals, love of God and
love of duty become one and the same thing, with all the
additional strength which love of a person can claim over
the love of an abstract law. Love of a person includes the
desire to promote that person's end : and the end of God,
as we have thought of Him, is the highest welfare of his
creatures l . Devotion to the moral ideal and to the true good of
Humanity is, indeed, at bottom identical with the love of God.
But it is hardly possible to exaggerate the reinforcement which
that devotion receives, both on the rational and the emotional
side, when it is identified with the love of a person in whom our
highest ideal is realized, and on whose side we are called upon
to contend in a real, and not a merely illusory, battle for the
realization of that same ideal in others. That the love of God
may be implicit in all reverence for the moral ideal and all true
love of Humanity, even when the thought of God is not
consciously present to the agent's mind, I should be the first to
1 So far as known to us and so far as it can be promoted by human action.
I do not of course deny that this may be in reality but a small part of the
ultimate world-end.
268 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
assert l ; but implicit beliefs are generally not so strong as
explicit beliefs. Implicit beliefs tend to wither away when
they are never made explicit; still more so, when in their
explicit form they are scouted and ridiculed. Belief in the
moral ideal attains its maximum momentum when it is identi-
fied with the love of a Person.
It would involve an artificial and unreal separation between the
spheres of natural and of what is popularly known as ' revealed '
Religion were I to abstain from pointing out how Christianity
satisfies the demand for a personal object of the highest reverence
by concentrating it upon an historical human being who is
regarded at once as the supreme and typical revelation of the
divine Will and character and as the truest type of the human
race. Love of God and love of man meet in the love of Christ.
The love of Humanity cannot degenerate into an unethical
humanitarian sentiment when Humanity is represented by its
worthiest type. Love of God cannot degenerate into an other-
worldly or anti-social pietism when God is thought of as
represented by Humanity at its highest ; while, according to the
Christian view of Ethics, social enthusiasm receives its highest
satisfaction in the pursuit of that ideal of a regenerated human
society which Jesus bequeathed to the world, and which has
taken outward and visible form in the organized communities of
his followers.
There are some to whom the view which has been taken of
the relation between Religion and Morality will seem to concede
too little to Religion and too much to Morality. They will con-
tend that the sphere of Morality and the sphere of Religion are
1 Von Hartmann points out that just as the love of particular animals
(e. g. in children) is often an undeveloped love of man, so the love of man is
an undeveloped love of God. ' . . . er in seinem Bruder das Ebenbild oder die
Inkarnation Gottes sieht. Die Gottesliebe 1st die Wahrheit der Nachstenliebe,
wie die Nachstenliebe die Wirklichkeit der Gottesliebe 1st * (Ethische Studien,
p. 207). The writer is here only developing principle implied in Christ's
own ' Forasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it
unto me,' whether we regard these words as the ipsissima verba of Christ,
or as representing the working of his spirit in the mind of the early
Church.
Chap.ii, v] SUPER-MORAL RELIGION 269
wholly distinct, the sphere of Religion being the higher of the
two. The sphere of , Morality is that of human action and of
human action alone. Morality cannot reasonably be attributed
to, God. It implies the coexistence of evil and good. It implies
that some things happen which ought not to happen; whereas
frojpk the religious point of view nothing can happen but that
whiojti God will*, and what God wills is what ought to happen.
The good and the bad alike contribute, it will be urged, to the
fulfilment of the divine Will. It is merely owing to the limita-
tions of human nature that we present some things to ourselves
as bad aud others as good. Not only must we suppose, therefore,
on speculative grounds that the divine Will is ' super-moral/ and
that acts and principles of action which to us seem immoral
are in God perfectly good, but it is possible to some extent even
for the human mind, in a general way, if not in detail, to see that
they are good ; and by an effort of not irrational faith to trust
that they are so even where it cannot point out how and why they
are so. The religious consciousness can rise above the abstract
and one-sided point of view to which the mere moral conscious-
ness is confined ; it can acquiesce, not only with pious resignation
but with joy and exultation, in the perfect order which faith
reveals; and pronounce that in this world, wherein there are
many things which it is wrong to do and much evil which it is
a duty to struggle against, there happens nevertheless ultimately
nothing which ought not to happen ! .
Now in this contention it is extremely important to distin-
guish between two possible senses in which such language may
be used. It is one thing to maintain that our Morality is de-
fective, and inadequately represents the true and final aim of
the Universe: it is another thing to maintain that ..moral dis-
tinctions of any and every kind are transcended in the mind of
God> and in the soul of the religious man who has managed to
think himself or feel himself out of the moral into the super-moral
1 Indeterminists will of course except what is due to the ' free-will 'on
any view a very small part of the total evil in the world. This point
of view is not usually adopted by Indetermmists, but it is occasionally
approximated to by a few Indeterminist Theologians who have picked up
a philosophy which does not suit them.
370 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
sphere. That our conception of the ethical ideal is a more or less
imperfect one will be admitted in some degree by thinkers of every
school. The def ectiveness of our moral notions might be asserted
in a very much stronger way than I see any reason for doing
without implying that for God there is no Morality l or that our
moraljudgements, not because they are bad and erroneous moral
judgements but just because they are, from the ethical point of
view, sound and reasonable, are nevertheless from the goint, ,of
view of the Absolute false or meaningless. To maintain this
last position implies the denial of all objectivity to the moral judge-
ment, and reduces all Morality not merely to ' an appearance '
but to a false and delusive appearance. It is of the essence of
the moral consciousness, as it actually exists, to claim universal
validity; if it possesses no such validity, it is not merely par-
ticular moral judgements that are false and delusive but the
whole idea that there is such a thing as an end which absolutely
ought to be promoted, and that we have a power (more or less
adequate) of determining what that something is.
Now it seems to me that many of those who indulge in the
now fashionable talk about a ' super-moral sphere ' are not clear
in their own minds as to the sense in which they maintain it.
Mr. Bradley, for instance, has used much language which could
only be justified if he meant to uphold the second and more
destructive of the two positions above indicated. But, when he
pronounces that, though the Absolute is not moral, he or rather
' it ' is nevertheless * in a sense * good 2 , or that, though both good-
ness and badness ' are good alike, . . . they are not good equally V
he is as much implying the validity of that category of good
from which Morality derives all its meaning as he would be if he
made the less startling assertion that human Morality is an
imperfect revelation of the divine. When he pronounces that
the Universe as a whole is perfectly good, I may dissent from
1 Of course if by Morality is meant the choice of the good in spite of
inclination to the contrary, there is no harm in saying with Kant that God's
Will is a ' holy ' and not a moral Will. Kant of course was as far as possible
from the point of view which I am attacking. He made a * holy will ' the
ideal goal even of human character-development, and he never hesitates
to speak of God as a moral Being.
2 Appearance and Reality, p. 412. * Jb., p. 440.
Chap, ii, v] MR. BRADLEY'S VIEW 271
his Optimism ; but he is as much assuming the absolute validity
of his own moral judgements, and consequently of that category
of good which those judgements involve, as I do when I assert
that the whole is not perfectly good, though God's Will is for the
best possible. When he supposes that the Absolute may enjoy
something much better than Morality in willing not merely
particular acts (which in God may be means to a greater good)
but ends at which it would be cruel and malicious for a man to
aim, I may dispute his reasons for making such an assumption ;
but, if the promotion of divine laughter at human ignorance be
really better than love, it would follow not that God was not
moral but that our judgements in detail were wrong 1 . There
would in this view be such a discrepancy between our actual
moral judgements and the true ones that the question might well
be raised why we should trust them at all. Nay, if a Philosopher
like Mr. Bradley is clever enough to find out that the real end of
the Universe is something very different from what kindly and
merciful men aim at, I fail to see why we should not, under his
tuition, aim at co-operating with the aims of the Absolute, and
universalize the maxim that heartless practical joking is better
than kindliness and mutual goodwill. Mr. Bradley would doubt-
less reply that he does not seriously pretend to have discovered
what the absolute end is : but, if he does not know what it is
why should he assume that it is so fundamentally different from
1 See ib., p. 194. I am here using more theistic language than
Mr. Bradley would himself use, for I can attach no meaning to the
terms * good ' and * bad ' as applied to mere things ; but, since he admits
that the Absolute is as much Will as Reason (without actually being either)
I do not think I am seriously misrepresenting him or at least one side of his
thought. Mr. Bradley 's whole doctrine about the Absolute seems to me to
represent an impossible compromise or see-saw between a genuine theistic
Idealism (which represents, I believe, his real mind), and a Spinozism into
which he is led partly, no doubt, by his imagined discovery of fundamental
contradictions in all thought (not merely human thought but all thought as
such), but probably much more by his anxiety to differentiate his positions
as much as possible from that of all Theologians, orthodox or liberal. There
are many less unorthodox thinkers who play with Mr. Bradley's doctrine of
a super-moral sphere, while professing to believe in a deity who is not (as
with Mr. Bradley) an ' it ' (though, it would appear, an * it * which possesses
or is consciousness or ' experience ') but a spiritual Being to which some of
them do not even hesitate to ascribe personality.
27* RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
that which we think it to be? I have already attempted to
show that there are no such fundamental contradictions in our
actual moral judgements as to make it inconceivable that they
should in principle be a true revelation of the absolute end *.
But whatever may be thought about Mr. Bradley's reasons
for doubting the validity in actual content of our moral judge-
ments, he does not at bottom in such passages as have been
referred to deny the validity of our moral categories. It is
not a super-moral sphere that he has called into existence so
much as a sphere in which a different Morality holds good not
a ' non-moral ' or ' super-moral ' Absolute so much as an Absolute
with a truer and higher Morality. He who rejects Mr. Bradley's
reasons for assuming this fundamental discrepancy between the
divine end and that approved as good by our moral consciousness,
and who likes Mr. Bradley's own Morality much better than that
which he attributes to his Absolute, has on that Philosopher's
own showing a right not merely to call the Absolute good but to
regard the Morality of the best men as a revelation of his. By
his doctrine that the Absolute is good and cannot be described
as bad, he has precluded himself from saying that the words
good and evil have no meaning in reference to the Absolute.
Morality means aiming at the good ; and Mr. Bradley does not
deny that the Absolute aims at the good. Even on his own
view of our actual, partly self-contradictory, Morality, there seems
no reason why he should not admit that Morality has as_good
a right -forfe regarded as a revelation of the Absolute as our
scientific consciousness 2 ; and even the doctrine that both are
riddled with contradictions would fail to reveal such a dis-
crepancy between the moral and the religious point of view as
he is anxious to discover. Morality would supply us with the
1 See above, p. 209.
3 Mr. Bradley goes near to admitting this when he says that 'higher,
truer, more beautiful, better and more real these, on the whole, count in the
universe as they count for us. And existence, on the whole, must corre-
spond with our ideas ' (ib. p. 550). But why should we be right when we
judge that one thing is lower than another, wrong when we judge that
a thing is ' bad ' something which ought not to exist at all ? And how
can an Absolute be perfect which produces something lower instead of
epraetbing higher, unless he or it is limited in power?
Chap, ii, v] ME. BRADLEY'S VIEW 273
best and truest way of thinking of the Absolute, though the
inadequacy of such a view might be greater according to him
than Moralists with a less keen eye for ' contradictions ' see any
reason for admitting 1 .
It will be suggested, no doubt, that I am here overlooking
that doctrine of degrees_of JTruth and Reality by which the
doctrine of the non-morality of the Absolute is qualified.
Mr. Bradley admits that to say that the Absolute is immoral
or bad would be more untrue than to say that he is moral or
good. The question which suggests itself is, 'how does
Mr. Bradley know even that much, if our moral judgements are
untrustworthy ? ' There are no doubt many strong assertions of
the goodness of the Absolute side by side with the denial of his
or 'its' morality many strong assertions of the superiority,
even from the point of view of the Universe, of goodness over
badness. I ask on what Mr. Bradley's handsome testimonial to
the goodness or perfection of the Absolute is supposed to rest,
when the verdict of our own moral consciousness is discredited ?
To say that our moral judgements fail to some extent to corre-
spond with moral judgements as they are in the Absolute 2 is
one thing ; but to say that we can correct their deficiencies is
another. And it is the last that Mr. Bradley attempts to do
when he pronounces whfljM^A^Ql] AVJ! fn HA rp.]1y gi**l To
admit the probability that our ideals are defective is one thing :
to attempt their correction by directly contradicting them is
another. To declare that the judgement cruelty is bad must in
1 When Mr. Biadley in his chapter on Ultimate Doubts' (Appearance
and Reality, chap, xxvii) admits the possibility (though not the probability)
of an ultimate element of evil in things, he seems to assume that the evil
must be found in the Will which wills the Universe (in so far as Will may
be taken as an imperfect and one-sided aspect of the Absolute). It does not
seem to occur to him that the evil may be something which, in language as
inadequate but no more inadequate than that which he is himself compelled
to use, may be described as a lack of Power which may be compatible with
a Will for the good a Will which wills the evil only as a necessary means
to the good.
2 Mr. Bradley, of course, will not admit there are judgements at all in the
Absolute. This is too wide a subject to discuss here ; but, at all events, he
will admit that we cannot think about the Absolute without talking as
though there were.
BASHDALL II T
474 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
the Absolute be transformed into the judgement ' cruelty to the
exact extent to which it actually exists is good/ is not merely
to pronounce that our moral judgements are inadequate and are
' somehow ' transcended in the Absolute, but dogmatically to say
that they are false and that others, which are admitted not to
commend themselves to our actual moral consciousness, are true.
Any inadequacy, or doubt, or invalidity that may cleave to the
former judgement must cleave surely a fortiori to the last.
And on what does the supposed intellectual necessity for this
reversal of all our canons of value turn ? Upon an ideal of our
thought. It makes a neater, tidier, more compact and coherent
system of the Universe to think of the whole as perfectly good
than to think of as a whole in which, though good predominates,
there is some evil. But why should this intellectual ideal of
self -consistency or harmony be regarded as a safer guide to the
true nature of things than that ideal of Morality which claims in
us to be of absolute and objective validity, and so to represent
the true end of a rational will ? There can be no real ' harmony '
or 'perfection/ or 'coherence/ or absence of contradiction, in
any picture or ideal or system of the Universe in which our
highest ideals of value are flatly contradicted.
The only way in which, as it seems to me, Mr. Bradley could
escape the force of these objections would be by absolutely
giving up the use of the terms good and evil in thinking of the
Absolute, and cancelling all that he has said about the goodness
of the Absolute, and, I must add, all that he has said about
the intrinsic reasonableness of the Universe ; for a reasonable
Universe means a Universe which realizes ends that are intrinsi-
cally good, and it is only from our judgements of value that we
know anything about goodness or indeed about 'ends/ And
on one side of his thought Mr. Bradley certainly goes very near
to an avowed adoption of this position. When Mr. Bradley
pronounces the Absolute good, we naturally suppose him to
mean something by the assertion ; but eventually, in the last
paragraph of his book, he comes near to admitting that he means
nothing by it. For there he tells us that 'the Reality is our
criterion of worse and better, of ugliness and beauty, of true and
false, of real and unreal. It in brief decides between, and gives
Chap, ii, vi] VON HARTMANN'S VIEW 275
a general meaning to, higher and lower V If, then, the real is
our sole criterion of worth, if a thing is good in proportion to
the amount of real being in it, the assertion that the Absolute is
good means no more than the assertion that the Absolute is real.
Now for us it is quite certain that the word ' good ' does not mean
the same as ' real/ unless Mr. Bradley chooses, by definition, to
make the word * real ' include our idea of good. If it be said that
in the Absolute this difference is to be transcended, at all events
our idea of good must be allowed to represent as important an
aspect of the Absolute as our idea of real. It must not be
simply cancelled, as is done when it is suggested that in or for
the Absolute cruelty is good. The idea of good has as much
right to be taken into consideration in our speculative con-
struction of the ultimate nature of things as our idea of the real.
I will sum up this necessarily brief and inadequate criticism
of Mr. Bradley's position in the form of a dilemma. Either our
moral consciousness is a guide to the ultimate nature of Reality
or it is not. If it is, some things in the Universe pain and sin
for instance are bad, and are none the less bad because they
may be means to a greater good. If it is not, Mr. Bradley has no
right to assert that the Absolute is good, for the idea of good is
derived from the moral consciousness and cannot be derived from
any other source. To say that our ideas of 'higher* and
' better ' ' count in the Universe as they count in us/ and at the
same time to speak of the ' good ' as meaning merely the ' real/ is
(if I may be pardoned for using language which Mr. Bradley
has used in another connexion) ' to trifle indecently with a subject
which deserves some respect/
VI
The theory of a super-moral sphere assumes another form in
the writings of the great Pessimist, Eduard von Hartmann a . And
1 Appearance and Reality, p. 552. This passage seems to involve formal
contradiction with the statement that ' that which is highest to us is
also in and to the Universe most real * (p. 560). In the first passage we are
bidden to interpret goodness by Reality, in the latter Reality by our notions
of goodness.
2 These views are expounded in his best-known work, The Philosophy of
the Unconscious (trans, by W. C. Coupland, 1893), and in his elaborate
T 0,
276 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
here the collision between the religious and the moral point of
view is avowedly far less complete. Von Hartmann recognizes
the existence of three spheres or stages in moral development.
There is the sphere of mere Nature, the stage below Morality that
of the beasts and, it may be, of purely ' natural man ' ; the moral
stage ; and the super-moral. He contends that everything that
happens, what we call moral and what we call immoral, is
equally tending to the furtherance of an end the ultimate end
of the Universe , that is (according to him) the extinction of
evil and therefore, since consciousness necessarily brings with it
more evil than good, the extinction of consciousness l . But
the great modern Pessimist recognizes also that each of these
views of the Universe, if taken by itself, is one-sided and imper-
fect ; that either the first or the third, taken alone, would lead
to immoral consequences in practice, and in theory to the
negation of all objective moral obligation, in the existence of
which there is no more convinced or more convincing believer
than Von Hartmann himself 2 . Animals and infants are
furthering the true end of the Universe by yielding to their
natural instincts and impulses as each comes uppermost
instincts and impulses which are unerringly guided to an end of
which they are themselves entirely unconscious. But a moral
being would not be promoting the true end of the Universe by
so acting ; he can only further that end by being moral. It is
true that from the third or super-moral point of view it must
appear that the bad man's acts are also furthering the ends of the
Absolute Will. But Von Hartmann recognizes that to say this
treatise Das slttliche Betvusstsein, but the clearest expression of his views as
to the relation between Morality and Religion is to be found in his shorter
Ethische Studien, 1898.
1 It is, however, according to Von Hartmann, no use to attempt this
extinction by individual or even universal Suicide, because the same Absolute
which has produced the existing number of men would immediately
[why ?] produce other individuals to take their place (Das sittl. Bewusstsein,
p. 476). Would he say that when by celibacy or other checks on population
the number is restrained, the Absolute must necessarily create a corre-
sponding number in other parts of the Universe ? The contention really
reminds one of the old scholastic idea that the number of the saved must
exactly equal the number of the fallen Angels.
2 ' . . . Ethik ohne Objectivitat keinen Sinn hat ' (D. sittl. Beuwsstsein, p. 92).
Chap, ii, vi] VON HARTMANN'S VIEW 277
alone would be fatal to the very idea of moral obligation. He is
not one of those who think it possible for a rational being to go
on acting as a man upon moral principles the vanity of which he
has as a Philosopher himself exposed. He recognizes that the
end which Morality prescribes to man is not only the true and
valid end for man, but part of the true and absolute end of the
Universe. 1 When the moral consciousness assures us that
Morality is an end-in-itself, that the diminution of human sufter-
ing is better than its promotion and the like, the Absolute is not
playing a trick upon us, or promoting its ends by a delusion of
which all but Philosophers at least are the victims. The
Absolute is telling us what is strictly and finally true. But
there is a further truth which the moral man, as such, has not
discovered that Morality, though an end-in-itself for man, is
also something more. It is also a means to a further end the
supreme end of the Universe.
The immoral man is no doubt also promoting that end. And
the religious man recognizes that fact, and acquiesces in the will
of the Absolute. But such an admission carries with it no such
destructive moral consequences as it does for the Optimist. For,
though the general tendency of things is towards the good, it is
not true, according to Von Hartmann, that all things are very
good. The end which the Absolute is pursuing is only relatively
good ; it tends towards the minimization of a radical evil, due to
the fatal blunder of the Unconscious in giving birth to the
world and with it to consciousness. And therefore, though in
his way the bad man may possibly be promoting that end, he is
never promoting it as much as the good man. Von Hartinann's
philosophically enlightened religious man can never be tempted
to do evil that good may come. He can never avail himself of
the excuse to which no logical Optimist has ever succeeded in
giving a satisfactory reply, ' Why should I not sin, when all will
be the same in the end, since my sin will in the end contribute
to the glory of God or true end of the Universe quite as much
as my victory over temptation ? ' 2 The Hartmannian Pessimist
1 'So hat das sittlich Gute seinen Ursprung immer unmittelbar oder
mittelbar in der iibersittlichen Sphere ' (Ethische Studien, p. 23).
8 It has been urged in reply to this line of thought (a) that the fact that
278 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
must feel that, if he sins, he really does keep back the true end
of the Universe ; the true end of the Universe may ultimately
be attained, but not so soon, and therefore in a sense not so com-
pletely as it would be if he had resisted that temptation instead
of yielding to it.
What then, it may be said, does Hartmann's doctrine of
a super-moral sphere amount to ? It seems to involve two
positions :
( i ) That Morality is a means to a further end beyond itself,
and an end in which Morality itself is not included. It is,
indeed, relatively an end-in-itself inasmuch as, upon the hypo-
thesis of a radical evil, it is an end-in-itself to minimize it ; but
the good to which the Absolute is tending can only be attained
by the extinction of consciousness, and therefore also of Morality
in the sense in which we know it l .
the sin if it occurs will make the Universe better supplies no reason why it
should occur, and (6) that to the good man vice is distasteful perse, and there-
fore he will avoid it even though its avoidance will not improve the Universe.
I should reply (a) that my argument is that, on the optimistic hypothesis,
there is no reason against sin if a man feels inclined to it, and (6) that the
second argument really implies that this distastefulness of vice to the good
man is a make-weight, so that the world without the wrong act is better
than the world with it. According to the hypothesis, this must be a delusion
which a rational man will surely seek to get rid of.
1 It is true that Von Hartmann sometimes seems to treat even the
minimization of evil in the present as having no objective value as an end
but only as a means to the further ultimate end (e. g. Ethische Studien,
p. 156). Elsewhere, however, he recognizes that the minimization of
human pain and the promotion of human Culture (which between them
represent his view of the end for man) are a part of the absolute end
(ib. pp. 182, 183). Here and in Das sittliche Beivwstsein he seems to
oscillate between making Morality an end which it is moral to promote
merely as a means and making it intrinsically valuable, though also a means
to a further end. The statement that * der Mensch nicht Selbstzweck ist,'
but ' nur ein relativer Mittelzweck im universalen teleologischen Organismus
der Welt 1 (Das sittliche Bewusstsein, p. 442) seems to me formally incon-
sistent with the admission that ' Allerdings ist jedes Individuum selbst ein
objectiver Partialzweck im Reiche der Zwecke' (p. 461). His difficulties
arise in part from features of his system which it is impossible here to
criticize in detail. While, in dealing with human Morality, he insists upon
* autonomy ' and self-denial to the point of Rigorism, all this suffering is
supposed to be imposed upon man merely as a means to the Well-being of
the Absolute, whose end is purely ' eudaemonistic ' (i. e. hedonistic or selfish).
Chap, ii, vi] VON HARTMANN'S VIEW 279
(2) It involves the denial of Morality to the Absolute, but then
Von Hartmann quite consistently refuses to pronounce that the
Absolute, or the world in which the Absolute has revealed his
unconscious essence, is perfectly good. The present course of
things is, indeed, directed towards the best possible, since it is
doing its best to get rid of the original evil ; and so far there
seems no reason why the Unconscious should not be looked upon
as perfectly moral or good (as we are expressly told that it is
perfectly wise), but then after all the Absolute as Will is itself
the cause of that original evil of which as Reason the same
Absolute is consistently endeavouring to get rid. Whatever
may be thought of this strange cosmogony, which recalls some
fantastic gnostic system rather than a sober philosophical thesis,
Von Hartmann is not involved in the difficulties of those who
believe in a conscious Absolute who is perfectly good, and
yet wills things contrary to a Morality which in nevertheless
pronounced reasonable.
It is clear that any objection which may be taken to
Von Hartmann's position from our point of view turns upon his
pessimistic view of the world and not upon his theory of a super-
moral Absolute taken by itself. He has what seems to me
fundamentally the right conception of the relation between
Morality and Religion, though his Religion is not mine. Whether
an unconscious Will, which by a strange freak of irration-
If there is any real validity in our moral judgements, how can we escape
condemning the Absolute for his selfishness? The only answer which
Von Hartmann supplies is (i) that the suffering of the Absolute, if it could
not work out its redemption, would be endless, and therefore greatly in
excess of those which it imposes upon man as a means to deliverance ; and
(2) that, in some sense which he wholly fails to explain, the sufferings of
the Absolute are also the sufferings of the individual, who is therefore after
all only redeeming himself by the sufferings which are (after his own
extinction) to work out the redemption of the Absolute. The fundamental
difficulty in Von Hartmann seems to be this : either the Happiness of the
Absolute is an end in itself or it is not. If it is, so in its measure must be
the happiness of men. If human happiness is intrinsically worthless, so
must be that of the Absolute. Moreover, if happiness, though part of the
end, is not the whole end for men, it can only be part of the end for the
Absolute. Von Hartmann can only escape this dilemma by treating as
a delusion that objectivity of the moral judgement on which his whole system
reposes.
280 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
ality in the past created the evil against which that same
Unconscious, under the guidance of Unconscious Reason, is in
a state of continual strife, can be an object of religious emotion,
and whether such an emotion as He or it may be capable of
kindling can be a powerful moral lever, we may be allowed to
doubt. Whether again a creed which holds that the ultimate
end is extinction of consciousness and conscious Morality can
emphasize the value of goodness, and invite to the pursuit of it,
as effectually as one which represents the good of all conscious
beings as the end, and Morality as an element in that end, is
another point on which my view differs fundamentally from
Von Hartmann's. But at bottom that very acute writer admits
the fundamental postulate of all rational Morality and all ethical
Religion that the ultimate end of human conduct is (albeit,
according to him, somewhat indirectly) to promote the true end
of the Universe. And he realizes the futility of attempting to
find an adequate theoretical justification or an adequate motive
in practice for a Morality going beyond compliance with the
conventional requirements of one's immediate circle in any view
of Ethics which does not involve this intimate connexion with
Religion,
VII
The two eminent thinkers whom we have last examined have
been found to be after all not thorough-going in their doctrine of
a super-moral Absolute ; and I have attempted to contend that
this want of thoroughness involves inconsistency. In the case
of Professor Taylor, however, it is otherwise. With him the
contradiction between the moral point of view and the ' absolute '
point of view inadequately adumbrated in the religious con-
sciousness is final and irreconcilable, unqualified by the doctrine
of ' degrees of truth and reality,' of which in other connexions
he makes so much *. I have already pointed out that Professor
Taylor, in refusing to accept Mr. Bradley 's doctrine that the moral
consciousness pronounces all self-sacrifice and all self-realization
to be good and equally good, has really given up the principal
ground on which Mr. Bradley seeks to convict Morality of
1 The Problem of Conduct, chap. viii.
Chap, ii, vii] PROFESSOR TAYLOR'S VIEW 281
internal contradiction, and therefore refuses to attribute it to the
Absolute. Professor Taylor's indictment against Morality seems
to me, if I may say so with sincere respect, to turn upon more
obvious confusions than those which I have had the temerity to
suspect in Mr. Bradley. In the first place, he confuses the
practical difficulty which the moral consciousness experiences in
deciding questions of Casuistry with the intrinsic impossibility
of such a solution. He fails to see that our mistakes and
difficulties in this department constitute no more ground for
doubting the objective validity of Moral Reason as such than
the blunders or perplexities of a schoolboy do for attributing
a merely subjective validity to the multiplication table. On this
point I have already dwelt. Secondly, Professor Taylor seems
to think that the position of those who attribute objectivity to
the moral judgement, and consequently moral goodness to God, is
sufficiently refuted by pointing to the undoubted fact that the
details of human duty depend in part upon the circumstances
and physical organization of human nature that the Seventh
Commandment, for instance, would have no meaning in reference
to the conduct of sexless beings, and so on. But to maintain
that for beings otherwise constituted the details of the Moral
Law might be different from what they are for us does not
impugn the objective validity of the judgement that for men
adultery is wrong. By saying that the judgement is objectively
true we mean that every intelligence, divine, angelic, or other-
wise, must recognize its truth, or, if it does not recognize it, is in
error. And the judgement as to what is right or wrong for man
must ultimately be based on judgements of value which ought
to govern the volition of all rational beings in all circumstances.
The judgement that the mutual love of husband and wife in an
ideal marriage is one of the noblest things on this planet is
none the less true because the lower animals are incapable of it,
or because beings of a higher order may be above it. And the
truth of that proposition depends ultimately upon the judgement
which asserts the value of Love in general a judgement which
we have every reason for believing to spring from one, and that
the most important, element in the character of God.
Against the position taken up by Professor Taylor I can only
282 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
refer back to those arguments in favour of the objective character
of the Moral Law, and against the Moral Sense position of
which his ethical system is virtually a revival, which have
already been developed in the chapter on ' Reason and Feeling/
If by giving up the attempt to recognize in Morality even
an imperfect revelation of ultimate Reality, Professor Taylor
has avoided some of the difficulties which beset the position
of Mr. Bradley and Von Hartmann, it is hard to see what
grounds a writer who takes so thoroughly naturalistic or
' psychological ' a view of Ethics can have left for the assumption
which is intelligible in ethical Rationalists that, though God is
not moral, the Universe as a whole is good. If our moral judge-
ments are, not merely (as they are to Mr. Bradley) riddled with
contradictions, and so very inadequate and untrustworthy
presentments of Reality, but purely and unmitigatedly sub-
jective, what reason has Professor Taylor for pronouncing that the
Universe as a whole is perfectly good ? Mr. Bradley has never
denied that moral judgements are rational ; he has not even
denied them a kind of objectivity ; Professor
them fc> modes of fueling. This seems to follow from the
declaration 1 that our moral judgements are simply ' feelings of
approval and disapproval/ while it is further admitted that ' to
say that I approve such and such an action or quality is, in fact,
to say that when I imagine its entrance into the course of my
future experience my state of mind is a pleasant one V Yet if
the idea of value is not a category of thought, what can be
meant by the judgement that the world is perfectly good on the
whole ? What can ' good ' in such a connexion mean ? For
Professor Taylor it ought only to mean that it excites a particular
kind of feeling in the genus homo or some of its members. But
Professor Taylor admits that it does not excite this feeling in him,
for to him as a man sin and pain appear bad. On what ground
then can he pronounce that for the Absolute or in the Absolute
they appear good? If the judgement of value be merely
a feeling, why should we suppose that the Absolute shares the
peculiar mode of human feeling which we style moral ; or if we
do think that the Absolute shares these human emotions, or
1 The Problem of Conduct, p. 104. 2 Ib. p. 124.
Chap, ii, vii] PROFESSOR TAYLOR'S VIEW 283
something analogous to them, why should we suppose that they
are excited in Him by different courses of action from those
which excite them in us ? To oppose to our deliberate judge-
ments of value an a priori construction about the requirements
of absolute harmony and the like in a perfect or absolute or
' pure ' experience seems to me to put mere intellectual aspirations
in place of the rational interpretation of actual experience.
Professor Taylor does not seem to me to escape the difficulties of
his position by the admission that, though the moral judgement
does not actually constitute a revelation of pure truth, it does tell
us something about the nature of absolute Reality. He pro-
nounces not merely (like Mr. Bradley) that frm^ fhf pnini o f
th^-Arbeelute badness is good r but that it is o&^good
. The paean in praise of wickedness with which
Professor Taylor has concluded his book is as eloquent as any that
was ever sung in praise of Virtue. Now this seems to imply that
Professor Taylor has not made up his mind whether Morality
is self -contradictory and one-sided (i) only in the same sense as
all the Sciences, or (2) unlike ordinary scientific knowledge.
The former contention, even if established, would not justify the
assertion that the bad man in his place contributes as much to
the good of the Universe as the good man, any more than
a theoretical admission of abstractness or * one-sidedness ' in
scientific knowledge would justify the assertion that the denial
of the law of gravitation is as true as the assertion of it. And
when Professor Taylor pronounces that the vice which the moral
consciousness pr<gnonno.efl hml is a.s yj^fthlp. RSI fog vjrt uft which it
good he ji^decjaring not that our moral judgements
are_&n inadequate ^expression, of the nature of Reality, but that
the nainre jjf Reality is the opposite of that which the ijporal
consciousness pronounces it tq^be^ And in so pronouncing he
claims (let me urge once more) to possess precisely that know-
ledge of absolute truth which his theory disclaims. Once more,
to all forms of the assertion that what we call badness is
actually good I oppose the verdict of the moral consciousness.
If that verdict is to be trusted, the assertion is false : if it is not
to be trusted, it is impossible for Mr. Bradley or Prof essor Taylor
to know that badness is good : for it is only by an exercise of
RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
bhe moral consciousness that we can know whether a thing is
good or not.
Professor Taylor will no doubt appeal to the testimony of the
religious consciousness. It would take too long to examine here
all the astounding things which Professor Taylor and other super-
Moralists have told us about the religious consciousness. It
is true that in flights of religious rhetoric and ecstasies of
Mysticism religious minds have sometimes involved themselves
in all the difficulties of philosophic Optimism. But, speaking
broadly, the religious consciousness has never really ' transcended '
the distinction between good and evil in the way in which it is
assumed to do by Professor Taylor. It has never declared that
the distinction between moral and immoral is already abolished,
and has for the religious man no existence l . It has always
recognized the existence of evil in the present. Its faith has
been not, indeed, that the distinction between moral and
immoral is to be done away with but that, for all or for some,
evil is already partially and will hereafter be more completely
turned into good. Its faith has been
that good shall fall
At last far off at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
This has been at bottom in greater or less degree the real
attitude of the deepest religious thought and feeling towards the
evil in the world. And in so far as that faith has been accepted,
Religion has, I venture to think, done more for the world than
it would have done by persuading it that the difference between
virtue and vice is a mere human delusion.
It is difficult to understand how Professor Taylor can believe
that the Moral Law can, either from the point of view of reflective
Reason or as a matter of psychological fact, retain its full force
and validity for minds which have seen through it, and know
that from the absolute point of view, and therefore for God,
that Law possesses no validity whatever. If the Absolute had
kept its own secret, one might understand how the delusion
might have done its work in furthering the Absolute's ' super-
1 Always excepting the Theologians who make Morality dependent upon
the arbitrary Will of God.
Chap, ii, vii] PROFESSOR TAYLOR'S VIEW 385
moral ' purposes ; but, now that Professor Taylor has found it out,
must not people put to themselves the question whether the
absolute point of view is not the right point of view, and whether
they can be blamed for doing what will promote the absolute
end, and ignoring distinctions which for the truly rational con-
sciousness have no existence or meaning whatever ? Professor
Taylor is not, indeed, very anxious to claim Religion as an ally of
Morality : that, he appears to consider, would involve a kind of
degradation for Religion. And yet, as he does not disavow
a real sympathy not merely with the highly esoteric ' Religion '
of our super-moral Philosophers but with the ordinary ' Evan-
gelical Christianity ' which is known to history and common life,
he would, I presume, regard Religion as not wholly unconnected
with, or, at all events, as not antagonistic to, ordinary human
Morality. How belief in a deity who, it would appear, delights
in wickedness at least as much as he delights in goodness can be
in any way favourable to the moral life it is difficult to under-
stand. Some connexion at least between the end for man and
the end of the Universe is essential to the recognition of an
objective significance in the moral judgement, and without the
recognition of such an objective significance, Morality becomes
a very different thing from what it is for the developed moral
1 In justice to Professor Taylor I ought to say that the attitude which he
adopts towards Morality in his later Elements of Metaphysic seems to me
materially different from that taken up in the Pwblem of Conduct. In the
former he is willing even to accept (doubtless with reserves and apologies) the
idea that one side of the Absolute's nature may be expressed by the word
Love, and generally appears not merely in his character as a man, but
also as a Philosopher to interpret the nature of the Absolute in terms of
our moral ideals. Whether he would attempt to reconcile these asser-
tions with the position taken up in his earlier work I am unable to say.
I will only add that the Optimism of the former work seems to be much
qualified. It would now appear that Reality is only 'good on the whole,'
and that it is not better because that would be impossible. These pro-
positions, with which I for one should not be disposed to quarrel, seem to
me quite different from the through and through perfection which, in the
Problem of Conduct, is ascribed not merely to the world as a whole, but to
everything in it. Since writing this note I have seen Professor Taylor's review
of Dr. McTaggart's Some Dogma* of Religion in the Philosophical Review (July,
1906), in which he explicitly gives up the view which I have criticized.
386 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
VIII
We have, then, discovered no reason in the arguments of the
super-moral Religionists for abandoning the position that the
end prescribed to man by his own moral consciousness must be
part of the true end of the Universe. That there is one absolute
standard of values, which is the same for all rational beings, is
just what Morality means. Nothing less than that is implied
by the idea of absolute value which underlies the simplest
moral judgement, when its implications are analysed and
reflected on.
It may, indeed, be suggested that we do possess in human
intelligence the form of the Moral Law the bare idea of an
end, the bare notion of something which ought absolutely to be
done without any power of giving a content to that form, of
saying what things in particular possess this value, and what
things therefore ought actually to be done. But such a view
implies a more than Kantian divorce of form from content.
The form or category of the Moral Law is only got by abstraction
from actual concrete moral judgements. To maintain that we do
know that the Universe has an end, though we are wholly
without the power of determining what that end is, would be
(as I have already suggested) like maintaining that we have
indeed a conception of number which is of objective validity,
but that we have no reason to believe that the actual contents
of the multiplication table belong to any region but that of mere
'appearance/ Neither in the ethical nor in any other depart-
ment of human thought is it possible to prove that our thought
does not deceive us : and in this as in other spheres our thought
is doubtless inadequate. The wide differences of opinion which
are found even in the developed human intelligence in the
matter of Ethics constitute a reason, indeed, for supposing that
our conception of the ultimate end the conception hitherto
reached by any actual human being represents an inadequate
view of the truth; but they supply no reason for assuming
a total and fundamental discrepancy between a moral truth,
which is merely human, and a metaphysical or religious truth,
which is divine. Our ethical, like all our knowledge, is inade-
Chap, ii, viii] PROBLEM OF EVIL 287
quate more inadequate no doubt than the knowledge already
attained in some branches of Physical Science, which is less
inexact within its own limits just because it is more abstract
and incomplete. It is not enough to say, as Von Hartmann l at
times seems disposed to say, that moral judgements do represent
a particular means to the ultimate end, but that the end itself
may be quite different. For the very essence of the moral
judgement is that the end towards which we conceive it to be
right to direct our actions possesses absolute value. If we are
fundamentally deceived as to that, we have no reason to believe
that these acts are even a means to the true end 2 . That the
ends to which we attribute value may be ends which ought not
in particular cases to be attained because their attainment would
make impossible the attainment of ends still more valuable, may
very well be the case. That in some such direction is to be
found the ultimate explanation of the existence of evil has
already been asserted, but that evil is a means to the greatest
attainable good is a proposition which is only maintainable upon
the hypothesis that there is in the ultimate nature of things
that is to say the ultimate nature of God an inherent reason
why greater good should not be attainable. It may be im-
possible to prove even in the sense in which any ultimate meta-
physical truth is capable of proof that that ultimate reason is
not to be sought in a defect of goodness in the Being from
whom all Reality is derived. But the dilemma forces itself
upon us that the explanation must be sought either in such
a moral limitation or in some other kind of limitation a limita-
tion which, in the doubtless inadequate and analogical language
which we are always compelled to use in speaking of ultimate
1 I have pointed out above (p. 278) that this is only one aspect of his
thought.
* This is quite consistent with maintaining that, when there is no
consciousness of an end at all, in the lower animals and in men so long and
so far as they have impulses which are independent of their rational
judgements, such impulses may be directed towards the true end of the
Universe. The savage's passion of Kevenge tends no doubt in many ways
to the true end of the Universe, but, as soon as he is capable of feeling that
he ought to restrain it, the restraint must tend to that end more than the
unlimited indulgence of it.
388 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
Reality, may bo best described as a limitation of Power. To
adopt the former alternative would involve the strange idea that
the Being from whom all our ideas are derived, and who cannot
reasonably be thought of as subject to the limitations which are
connected with the life of the bodily organism, deliberately acts in
a way contrary to the dictates of his own thought, to judgements
which present themselves to Him as necessary truths : the latter
view has nothing against it but a groundless assumption. To
this consideration may be added the extreme improbability (on
any theory which represents the Universe as rational) that the
derived human consciousness should be superior in reasonable-
ness of insight or in reasonableness of will to its source, or at
least under an unavoidable necessity of thinking itself so a far
greater improbability than is involved in supposing that the power
of realizing its ideals possessed by the ultimate Will, while enor-
mously transcending that of the derived will, should still fall
short of a power to produce good only with no evil at all.
Not only is the hypothesis of pure Optimism not necessary
to Morality ; it is positively hostile to it. It is a postulate of
Morality that the ends that we feel ourselves bound to work for
should be in some measure attainable if we will them, but it is
a postulate of Morality also that they should not be completely
attainable, if we do not will them. The very essence of the moral
judgement is not merely that the right act promotes the end, but
that the wrong act retards it. The judgement that the act is
really a means to the end may of course be erroneous like any
other particular human judgement ; but it is the very heart of
all our ethical thinking that, if and in so far as the judgement is
ethically justified, it is a real means to the absolute end. Even
the really bad act may of course be a means to an ultimate good,
but it must be a means to a less good than might have been
attained if the action ethically right in the circumstances had
been done. Had the agent a full knowledge that his act would
produce more good than harm, the action would have been a
right action. When more good than harm comes out of an
action which it was sinful in the agent to will, that must be
because he did not know of the good effects, or because he willed
them for some other reason than these good effects. So the moral
Chap, ii, viii] IMMORALITY OF OPTIMISM 289
consciousness pronounces, and its pronouncement can only be a
true one if a wrong act really makes the world worse than it
would otherwise have been 1 . Only if the Universe is less good than
a Universe which we can imagine, can the alternative which is
presented to us in every act of moral judgement be, as our moral
consciousness assures us that it is, a real alternative. It is not
here asserted that in every or any such choice between alter-
natives the possibility of the alternative actually rejected was,
even from the point of view of absolute and complete knowledge,
a real possibility 2 : but only that, if the act ethically right had
been done instead of the act ethically wrong, the Universe on
the whole would have been a better Universe than it actually is.
Such is the postulate implied by every moral system which
really accepts the idea of an objective Morality reflected, how-
ever imperfectly, in our ethical judgements reflected imperfectly,
but reflected less and less imperfectly as those judgements become
ethically more advanced and more reasonable. The end of the
Universe must be the evolution of souls in which what our moral
consciousness pronounces good shall be more and more realized.
If less good is at any time realized in preference to more good,
that represents one of those inherent limitations without the
assumption of which we cannot give any reasonable or intelli-
gible account of the Universe being what it is.
In speaking of the end of the Universe we must not of course
assume that the realization of this end lies only in the future,
that it is literally a * far off divine event ' : whatever has
any value in the present forms part of the end. In so far,
for instance, as the lower animals enjoy pleasure, that is good
a partial realization of the ultimate end, though it may be
also a means to some further and greater good. When an
1 If the ' felix culpa ' of the Roman Liturgy is to be justified, we should
have to say that, had Adam known the consequences (according to traditional
Theology) of his sin, it would not have been a sin. I do not deny that
a particular wrong act, done with bad intentions, might sometimes inciden-
tally leave the world better than it would have been without that particular
wrong act, but then a world in which the good effect would have been pro-
duced without the sin would have been still better.
8 I am not here arguing for a 'liberurn arbitrium indifferentiae,* as is
explained in the next chapter.
HASHDALL II U
RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
animal suffers, that must be a means to a good otherwise unattain-
able for itself or its fellows or for some higher race yet to be
evolved. If the animal is incapable of the higher goods which
human beings enjoy, that must be because the inherent limita-
tions of Reality make it impossible that that animal should have
been a moral being without a larger loss of good upon the whole.
The end which we must suppose to be the end of the Universe
must be the greatest good on the whole, the greatest good that
is possible ; that is to say, the good that necessarily flows from a
Will of perfect goodness but limited power. And human duty
must consist in co-operation with that Will. Only the Religion
which proclaims that identity between the divine end and the
end revealed in the moral consciousness at its highest can be
regarded as finally and absolutely valuable either as an aid to
Morality or as an end in itself, though, of course, Religions which
more or less fall short of this ideal may have their relative and
temporary justification. And if a Religion is not of use in the
interests of Morality that is to say, of that end which Morality
bids us promote it is of no use at all, upon the assumption
which we have throughout made and attempted to justify the
assumption that our moral judgements possess objective validity.
It may be objected that we have no right to oppose the
Goodness of God to his Power, as though they were distinct
qualities controlling and limiting one another, and to pronounce
the one unlimited, and the other limited. I should reply that
every distinction of elements or of aspects in the divine nature
based upon the analogy of human experience must necessarily
be an inadequate representation of the ultimate nature of Reality.
We can distinguish between thought and feeling and willing in
men : and we cannot think of the divine Mind at all without
supposing that in that Mind, too, there is thinking and feeling
and willing, or something analogous to each of them. And yet
it is impossible that thought and feeling can be related in
God as they are related in us that in God the object of
thought should be, as it is in us, something not actually
experienced, something merely representative of a reality without
being that reality; that God's thought consists in making
abstractions which (as Mr. Bradley has taught us) necessarily
Chap, ii, ix] THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 291
leave out so much of the actual fact l , in inferences which
imply that something has become known which was previously
unknown; or again, that feeling should be in God exactly
what it is in beings whose experience is limited and conditioned
by a material organism. And yet without these distinctions of
thought and feeling we cannot attach any significance to the idea
of Mind, and could mean nothing when we say that God is Mind
or Spirit. All human thinking implies abstraction that is to say,
the separation in thought of aspects of Reality which in actual
fact are not apart but together. When we oppose God's Goodness
to his Power, we are using exactly the same kind of abstraction
which we use in distinguishing between feeling and thought and
will in God. And there is this further justification of our
procedure. I can attach a definite meaning to the idea of perfect
goodness as definite as any conception that I can form of a
Spirit in which the limitations and imperfections of the spirits
actually known to my experience are left out. The idea of
* infinite ' or * unlimited ' power is a meaningless expression.
It implies an ultimate Reality a Will which has no definite
characteristics or properties at all. And further, such a concept
implies a contradiction to what we mean when we say that
God is perfectly good. However much good there was in any
actual world even if that good were unqualified by any evil,
we could always ask * why should there not have been twice that
good ? * And to that question there could never be an answer as
long as we regard God as a Being in whom there are infinite or
unlimited potentialities of creation.
IX
To ask what is the truth and value of the various historical
Religions in accordance with the standard here set up, is an
enquiry which would carry us far beyond the limits of the
present work. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that Re-
ligion has never exercised any great or widespread moral
influence over mankind in a purely abstract or philosophical form.
1 e.g. the statement 'trees are green, 1 or even ' this tree is green,' does
not tell us anything about the particular kind of green : no tree is green in
general, and yet all thought involves the use of Universals.
U 2
RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
In their historical form the higher Religions of mankind have
always been, and are likely to be for the most part, the creations
of great personalities, developed and appropriated by societies.
In this social appropriation of Religions which have been founded
by a particular Founder or have gradually evolved at a particular
epoch in time, the criticism, the interpretations or the corrections
supplied by Philosophy, and particularly by ethical Philosophy,
have played an important and conspicuous part. But the busi-
ness of the Philosopher who has any belief in the power and
value of Religion is rather to determine the attitude of the
reflective mind towards existing Religions and Churches than to
substitute some system of his own for them. An examination
of the actual contents of the higher Religions is the business of
religious, and not of purely ethical, Philosophy. But a few
remarks may be made on the attitude which ought to be adopted
towards existing forms of Religion by any one who has so far
followed the present writer's argument.
All theistic Religions have more or less consciously and con-
sistently asserted that view of the relation between the absolute
end and the moral end which has been set forth in this work.
They have all asserted that the Will of God, is a Will for the
best possible. The religious consciousness has at all times been
exposed to the temptation to distort this proposition into the
assertion that wjxat God wills is, justjrecause it is actually willed,
the ethically be$t. But, though many historical Religions have
tended towards Theism and consequently towards that identifi-
cation of Religion and Ethics which I have here pleaded, only
three great historical Religions have completely and consistently
realized that goal : Judaism, the Christianity which has grown
out of Judaism, and the Mohammedanism which, if not actually
a mere corruption of Judaism and Christianity, would certainly
not have been what it is without them. Only perhaps in Chris-
tianity, and in Christianity at its best, has that identification of
the ethically best with the actual Will of God been fully realized
and kept free from degenerating into the immoral proposition
that the Will of God, as revealed not in the moral consciousness
but in the actual course of events, is the ethically best l . The
1 I do not, of course, deny that at certain periods this idea has appeared
Chap, ii, ix] CHRISTIANITY 293
claim of Christianity to be the 'absolute' or ' final' Religion
must rest in the long run firstly upon the superior clearness and
definiteness with which it proclaims a conception of God based
upon the ethical ideal ; secondly, upon the fact that its ethical
ideal represents the moral ideal at its highest.
It may be asked ' where is this Christian ideal to be found, and
how is it known to be the highest V To the second of these
questions I need only answer that the moral consciousness alone
can be the final judge of the truth, validity, and sufficiency
of a moral ideal. The first is an historical question which
I have here no room to answer, except by expressing my belief
that the ideal alike of human life and of the divine Nature
actually to be found in the critically sifted records of the life and
teaching of Jesus Christ is, in its essential principles, the ideal
which the moral consciousness of Humanity still accepts and pro-
claims l . At the same time it is only in principle and not in detail
(as has been already insisted 2 ) that there can be any finality
about any moral ideal whatever, and consequently in any
Religion which is to include a moral ideal. The idea of a
development through the consciousness of the religious com-
munity is as essential to a just conception of Christianity as the
assertion of the unique importance of the historical Christ. If
there were no development of the moral ideal, and of the Theo-
logy which is based upon the moral ideal, the inherited and
stereotyped ideal of the past would no longer express the living
convictions of a world which moves. In proportion as any
development should not be in its essence a real development
in harmony with the spirit of the historic Christ, that develop-
ment could not claim to be really Christian, but it is impossible
to define a priori what degree of development would involve
in Christian Theology, or that it is familiar to individual enlightened
adherents of other Religions, particularly to the late Judaism which can
hardly have been uninfluenced by Christian ideas.
1 If I should be wrong in this view, I should have made a mistake as an
Historian, and as a Theologian in so far as the content of Theology is
necessarily in part derived from History, but the mistake would leave my
Moral Philosophy unaffected. I make this remark to avoid a possible
misrepresentation of the above pages.
* Book II, chap. v.
294 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
such a new departure as to render the Religion that admitted it
no longer entitled to the distinctive name of Christianity. That
the ideal which is still approved by the most developed moral
consciousness of the present day is such a legitimate develop-
ment of the teaching and character of Jesus is a proposition
which could, I believe, be supported by a critical examination of
the historical facts. If the reasons which have been given in an
earlier chapter l for believing that that ideal in its essence will
not be transcended, the Religion of the future will remain Chris-
tianity, however much it may hereafter be developed by growing
experience on the one hand and by the development of the moral
consciousness on the other. If the essence of true Religion
be the identification of the Will of God with the highest ethical
ideal, every development of the moral ideal will necessarily
carry with it a corresponding religious development. Both on
the religious and on the ethical side, therefore, Christianity can
only claim to be the final or absolute Religion by showing itself,
at the same time, also a constantly growing and developing
Religion. And the belief in such a development is historically
an essential and characteristic element in the Religion itself.
Belief in the Holy Ghost is as much an article of the Christian
Creed as belief in the historic Son of God.
The view that the religious, attitude carries us into some
super-moral region and enables us to attain_a point of view
from_ which_ moraLjiifltinctions aj^'ii&usjided ' has already
been sufficiently dealt with. That such a Religion is possible
may be freely admitted. But such Religion is, an I contend,
a Religion which, even from the point of view of those who
regard Morality as of merely human and subjective validity,
ought not to be encouraged. Such is precisely the kind of
Religion which at every age of the world's history exists in
sufficient abundance to supply no little justification for the
Lucretian verdict upon Religion in general :
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
1 Above, p. 177 sq.
Chap. ii,x] IS RELIGION WHOLLY ETHICAL? 295
If the value of everything is determined by the moral judge-
ment, there can be no value in a Keligion which is opposed to
Morality. But even those who believe in a Morality which is in
essential harmony with Religion, and in a Religion which does not
seek to ' transcend ' Morality, may possibly object to our limiting
the contents of the religious consciousness entirely to the moral
ideal. And no doubt a certain amount of explanation or quali-
fication is required to justify the language which I have used.
It has already been pointed out that we cannot isolate the moral
consciousness. Every moral ideal implies a great deal besides
itself. If the end which it is a moral duty to pursue includes
the effort to attain a true view of the Cosmos and a true appre-
ciation of everything in it which there is value in knowing
or beauty in contemplating, the assertion that our knowledge of
God is based entirely upon the moral ideal will not necessarily
imply that our idea of God must owe nothing to the develop-
ment of the scientific or the aesthetic consciousness, or foster
that narrowness and austerity of view which is often associated
with strong assertions of the importance of c moral/ ' ethical/ or
' practical ' interests. An adequate recognition of the value
which our Moral Reason discovers in Science and in Art, in the
beauty possessed by the world of Nature and of imagination,
is part of true Morality, and therefore must contribute its share
to our conception of God and of the divine end. If God wills
Nature, every part of Nature must tell us something of God.
And every change in our scientific or aesthetic attitude towards
the world must bring with it some change in our attitude or
subjective feeling towards God. If by Religion we mean a man's
total attitude intellectual, emotional, and practical towards
the Universe as a whole, it cannot be denied that intellectual
progress is continually bringing with it changes in Religion,
even apart from the changes which increased knowledge of
Nature necessarily brings with it in the details of human duty.
It is of great importance, no doubt, to recognize that, while the
detailed knowledge of scientific law affects very slightly either
our emotional or our practical attitude towards the Universe as
a whole or the Mind of which that Universe is the expression,
the larger changes in man's attitude towards Nature know-
296 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
ledge of the vastness of the Universe, belief in the universality
of natural law, the substitution of evolution for special creation
and the like -do affect in important ways our attitude towards
God. But after all it remains true that it is only from the
moral consciousness that we can gather any idea of the character
or final purpose of God. Nature -ieils --Hs^-souifithmg^ about what
God[ actually wjll&jiut knows nothing of the difference between
ends and means : it tells us nothing about values ;"" and ^therefore,
by itself , it tells us nothing about the character of God_and the
deeper meaning- .of the Universe. For it is not merely because
tilings ffgg>but because ^he^Lbftyft^fthiftj that we believe that they
form part of the end for God. And our knowledge of the
character or will of God is based upon our conception of his end.
The scientific consciousness may tell us that a law is true ; the
aesthetic consciousness may tell us that the world is beautiful.
But that Truth and Beauty in general, or that particular truths
and particular beauties, have value, is revealed to us only by the
moral or value-ju^ingconsciQusness. And it is our ideas of
value that determine our practical attitude towards God and the
world, and that inspire those emotions which are capable of
affecting the will. It is the attitude of the will, together with
the knowledge and the emotions which affect the will, that we
generally understand by the term Religion.
That mere intellectual knowledge of Nature's laws does not
by itself constitute Religion or even what we call religious
belief, there is a general consensus. There is perhaps a tendency
in some quarters to give the name of Religion to the emotion
which is inspired by the scientific knowledge and the aesthetic
appreciation of Nature, even when the emotion does not in any
direct and immediate way affect action J . Whether such emotion
can be called religious, is a question of words which it is hardly
worth while to discuss. Knowledge and aesthetic appreciation and
the emotions associated with them are no doubt elements in the
ideal relation towards God, and so far they may be called religious.
But they can only be regarded as constituting a very subordinate
element in Religion for two reasons. In the first place, religious
belief is, according to the ordinary use of language, belief about
1 e, g. in Seeley's Natural Religion.
Chap, ii, x] IS RELIGION END OR MEANS? 297
the ultimate nature of things, not about their detail. In the
second place, there is a pretty general disposition to recognize
that even belief about the ultimate nature of things is not
religious except in so far as it has, directly or indirectly,
some bearing upon practice. And, though the pursuit of Truth
and Beauty are elements in the practical ideal, they are so
only in a very subordinate degree for the great majority of
men. Though for artists or scholars the pursuit of these things
forms a large part of their duty (just as detailed knowledge
of particular Sciences may have an important bearing upon the
duties of particular professions), it is only that part of a man's
belief and that kind of emotion which have some bearing
upon human duty in general which we commonly regard as
religious. Knowledge of the Universe in general and the emo-
tions which its Beauty excites do, indeed, contribute something
to our knowledge of God, and to the ideal feeling towards Him ;
but, since such knowledge and feeling form only in a restricted
degree the duty of every one, we shall not be far wrong in saying
that the value of right religious belief and religious emotion lies
chiefly in their tendency to promote right action. Itjs only_the
kiruLoLtruth which is.capable-of affecting_practice, and thejkind
of emotion which, conduces to right practice, that we can mturally
g-to Religion. Such an account of the matter
is no doubt vague, and anything but a vague definition would
necessarily misrepresent the facts : for a man's Religion is not
marked off by any sharp dividing line from other aspects of his
life. Religious belief is one particular aspect of a man's total
belief about the world ; religious emotion is not any one specific
emotion, but a particular aspect of his emotional attitude
towards the Universe or its ultimate source ; religious conduct
is good conduct in general when looked upon as representing
a right attitude of the will towards the ultimate source of
Reality.
If, therefore, we ask whether we are to regard Religion as merely
a means to Morality, we shall answer that we shall do so only
upon the condition that our idea of Morality is wide enough to
include the duty of seeking for Truth, and of aiming at a right
state of the emotions, for their own sakes. Truth and ideal
298 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
emotion no doubt include much that has no direct and immediate
bearing upon the duty of the individual man, except his duty
towards the true and the beautiful. And, inasmuch as we do
not recognize the pursuit of all kinds of truth and the cultivation
of every kind of emotion as the duty of every man, we are not
accustomed to include detailed knowledge of the world and the
cultivation of every kind of emotion in our conception of Re-
ligion, though no doubt the cultivation of these things forms the
duty of some people. But we do hold that some knowledge
about the world in general and some kind of emotion connected
with that view are essential to the ideal life of every one : and it
is just that knowledge and emotion which we regard as religious.
Not every one need be or can be a Philosopher or an Artist, but
everybody can be and ought to be religious. The objection
to speaking of Religion as a mere means to Morality is that
it seems to suggest an ideal of life in which Knowledge and
Beauty have no place. On the other hand, the tendency to
emphasize the ' religious ' character of mere intellectual insight
and ordinary aesthetic emotion tends to an underestimate of the
supreme value which the healthy moral consciousness accords to
the rightly directed will. By general consent of those who take
the religious view of life at all, Religion is the most important
thing in the world. Any view of Religion, therefore, which
encourages the disposition to give a higher place to any other
aspect of life than that which is taken by the moral consciousness
must be a false or one-sided view of it on the supposition which
has been defended in these pages ; namely, that the moral gon-
sciqusness is the organ of truth, and ih&jchiefjsource in a sense
the sole source of religious .knowledge. Religion can only be
tbffjgiost important thing inJifejf it includes Morality and the
feelings, emotions, desires to which the moral consciousness
attributes supreme value, and excludes those which the moral
consciousness condemns. We are dealing here with a question
of values, and if jmr moral cousck>usness_does_ not give, uajany
true information-Jirbout valuer assuredly we can know nothing
a^all about values : for the moral consciousness means that side
of our consciousness which judges of values.
Chap, ii, xi] FUNCTION OF WORSHIP 299
XI
We have been dealing so far with the question of the relation
between Religion and Ethics in general. But the subject leads
on to the discussion of a particular ethical question the nature
of what are usually called, in a narrower sense, religious duties.
Are worship and other religious observances of a similar character
ends in themselves, or are they merely means to the performance
of duty ? The answer is substantially implied in the view we
have already taken of the relation between Religion and Ethics
in general. If our conception of God be grounded upon our
moral ideal, it is impossible to suppose that He has arbitrarily
prescribed duties which have no bearing upon our relation to the
highest moral ideal. To fear God, as the perfectly righteous
Will, and to keep those commandments which necessarily flow
from a perfectly righteous Will, must literally constitute the
whole duty of man. We cannot after the fashion not so much
of the older Christian thinkers as of the semi-deistie eighteenth-
century divines speak as though, by a kind of arbitrary
appendix to the moral law, a duty of going to Church had been
imposed, as a sort of personal compliment to the Almighty, inde-
pendently of its effects upon the mind and character of the wor-
shipper. There is nothing substantially wrong in saying that
UCJl, Observances P.onaisf.s solely in thp.ir ftffapta
jmtl Jiie* Only it must be remembered that the
cultivation of right ideas about the world in general and a right
emotional response to those ideas is a part of the true ideal
of life. The outward acts of worship the saying or singing of
words, the performance of ceremonies, the utterance of prayer
or praise, the listening to exhortation or instruction can only
be regarded as valuable because they express and tend to culti-
vate a right state of the soul, but that right state of the soul is
in a sense an end-in-itself . If the Will of God is that we should
serve our brethren, the right state of the soul will be one which is
dominated by that desire ; but inasmuch as a certain state of
intellect and emotion as well as of will forms part of the true end
for man, acts of worship which tend to promote true knowledge
of God and a sense of the beauty of God's world will have a value
300 RELIGION AND MORALITY [Book III
of their own independently of the utility which they possess as
a direct incitement and preparation for action. In the ideal love of
God there are aesthetic and intellectual elements knowledge of
God's nature, awe and reverence for the wonder of the world,
admiration of its beauty, considered as a revelation of the Mind
which makes it as well as the distinctly moral element (in the
narrower sense of the word) which consists in reverence for the
character of God. In so far as these things enter into Religion,
there is a meaning in saying that Religion is an end-in-itself,
and an end which does not consist exclusively in practical
Morality ; and, in as far as worship is a means of cultivating
such a religious state of mind, it may be regarded as more than
a means to an end beyond itself. It becomes a kind of spiritual
culture, which, like the more purely intellectual and aesthetic
culture, is both a means and an end a means to the ideal life of
the soul but also one of those activities in which that life con-
sists. I need not repeat here what has been said about the
duty of subordinating the pursuit of truth and of beauty to the
true love of our fellow-men that is to say, the desire to promote
for them also a good which includes the love of truth and of
beauty. Only when thus subordinated do they form elements
in the love of God, and become part of the end which worship
promotes, and of which in a sense it forms a part.
Socrates was wont to ask whether Virtue can be taught.
Whatever exact sense be given to the word ' teach/ few reflect-
ing persons would deny that it is possible for people to make
themselves and one another more virtuous by systematic cultiva-
tion of the ethical side of their nature. In the history of the
past by far the most successful means of direct moral culture
which the world has succeeded in inventing, among peoples
which have risen to the level of ethical Religion, have been the
societies called Churches and the institution called public Wor-
ship in all its forms 1 . It is hardly possible to exaggerate the
1 If we except the influence of Education, which, where it has possessed
sufficient power to be compared in its influence on life with that of ethical
Religion, has seldom been unconnected with a more directly religious
influence. If it be suggested that private devotion is often a still more
powerful influence than that of public Worship, I should admit the fact,
Chap, ii, xi] WORSHIP AND THE CHURCH 301
naiveti of the idea that individuals as a rule or societies in any
case can give up this means of moral culture, and put nothing in
its place, without a more or less serious descent to a lower moral
level. We may smile at some of the Positivist imitations of
Catholic worship, but the Positivists are assuredly right in
holding that Morality requires the support of instruction and
exhortation, of spiritual self -expression and recollection, of social
observance and mutual encouragement. A comparative survey
of the moral condition of different civilized countries at the
present moment supplies strong empirical evidence in favour of
such a view. Those who believe that the institutions of
Church and Worship in their old forms have lost their efficacy,
or that they are incapable of a reform which will restore it, are
bound to give serious consideration to the question how they
can be replaced. For those who do believe in their efficacy and
value, there is no more pressing or more obvious duty than
to consider how they may be made more efficient organs for the
discharge of their absolutely indispensable social function.
but should add that there is little reason to believe that on any large scale
such habits of private devotion have survived, or ever will survive, the entire
desuetude of public Worship. Just as the internal Conscience is only
created and educated by a powerful * external Conscience, 1 so private
Religion is created and educated by the external manifestations, and social
organization, of Religion.
CHAPTER TIT
FREE-WILL
IN dealing with the metaphysical postulates or presuppositions
of Morality, we came to the conclusion that there can be no
Morality unless our theory of the Universe is such that the
acts of the individual can in some real sense be ascribed to the
self. But as to the exact sense in which these acts are to be so
ascribed, nothing has yet been determined. A full discussion
of the problem usually known as that of Free-will belongs, in
my opinion, rather to a general system of Metaphysic than to
a treatise on Ethics. Yet the idea of Free-will is, or has been
supposed to be, so intimately connected with our ultimate moral
ideas that the Moral Philosopher must at least give some account
of his own attitude towards it, although it may be an attitude
which could only be adequately justified by a complete exposition
of his theory of the Universe.
What then is the question of Free-will? There can be no
doubt that the plain man, prior to reflection, does habitually
assume that his actions are not the necessary results of preceding
actions or of anything else in the Universe before those acts
took place ; that no knowledge of his previous actions, or even
of his previous character at least of his original character
before it was gradually moulded by his own acts of voluntary
choice could possibly enable any one else, or even himself, to
predict with certainty how he would act in any given com-
plication of circumstances. When he looks back upon past
misdoing, he declares that that misdoing is something which
need not have occurred. No matter what he was or what he did
before that act, no matter what original nature or character he
brought with him into the world, all else up to that moment
might have been the same, and yet that act might have remained
Chap, iii, i] STATEMENT OF PROBLEM 303
undone. If a small amount of reflection will induce some
hesitation as to the unconsidered or impulsive acts which seem
traceable to habit formed, as he may still be disposed to con-
tend, by previous acts of free and undetermined choice he will
at least insist that acts of deliberate and reflective choice between
alternatives of real moral significance are strictly undetermined
and essentially unpredictable, at all events by any intelligence
which can only arrive at a knowledge of the future by inference
from the past and the present. This is what the plain man
understands by freedom of the will : and there are Philosophers
who declare that the plain man is right, and are ready even to
follow him into his further assertion that, if Free-will in this
sense did not exist, Morality would lose all its value, its meaning,
its very existence. On the other hand, it is maintained by the
Determinist that actions are the necessary results of the man's
original nature or constitution, as modified by the whole series
of influences, social and physical, which have acted upon him
from the moment of birth up to the moment of action. Actions
are the necessary result of original character and environment.
Original character and environment being the same, the act
could not have been different. Given an adequate knowledge of
both, the act could always have been predicted. An easy way
of realizing the problem, the nature of which is frequently
misconceived, and that by no means only by beginners in
Philosophy, is to suppose (per impossible no doubt) two twin
brothers endowed originally with absolutely identical natures,
and exposed from the moment of birth to exactly the sameljocial
and other influences. At the age of twenty, according to the
Determinist theory, their characters would be precisely the same,
and in any given circumstances they would act in precisely the
same way : according to the libertarian view one of them might
have become a saint, and the other a scoundrel.
We may assume for the present that the question of Free-will
or Determinism turns upon this question of predictability, though
hereafter some qualification of this assumption may be required.
It must not, indeed, be supposed (as is often done in popular
argument on both sides) that the Determinist imagines that an
adequate knowledge of psychological or sociological law would
304 FREE-WILL [Book III
enable him to predict a man's future conduct from his past
actions. Whatever we understand by character, and however
we envisage its relation to brain and nervous system, no man's
character is fully expressed by his actual conduct in the past.
Character must always include undeveloped possibilities. The
response which a character will make to a new stimulus, or even
to the repetition of an old stimulus l , can never be inferred with
absolute certainty from the response it has made to previous
stimuli. Nor need a sudden alteration in a man's habitual
conduct necessarily imply that some fresh and unusual external
influence has been brought to bear upon him. For a man's
character may be such as to react in one way to a given stimulus
ninety-nine times, and in a different way to the hundredth, just
because it is the hundredth. A man may be so constituted as to
listen unmoved to a thousand sermons, and yet to have his whole
life altered by the thousand and first not essentially different
in its general character from the former ; while another, whose
outer and even inner life has been to all appearance previously
similar, may remain equally inaccessible to any number of such
appeals. A more frequent experience is the abandonment of
a mode of life simply because a certain experience of it has
proved its unsatisfactory character. There is, therefore, no
ground for the idea often suggested both by supporters and
opponents that Determinism is inconsistent with conversion or
change of character, or even that such change can only take
place in consequence of some palpably new feature in the
external environment. Change of character, whether gradual or
sudden, is as easily explainable on Determinist grounds as con-
tinued identity of character. It is not only the outward behaviour
that may change, but the character also in the sense in which
we are accustomed to use that word in ordinary life or ethical
discussion though doubtless some characteristics of the man
must remain even after the most startling of such changes if he
1 Of course the repetition is by itself a new feature in the environment.
It may very plausibly be suggested that the earlier experiences have already
modified the character or (as modern Psychologists say) the ' sub-conscious
self, 1 but these effects may not have risen above the ' threshold of Conscious-
ness.* This principle has been used by Professor James in his Varieties of
Religious Experience to explain the phenomena of religious conversion.
Chap.iii, i] DETERMINISM AND CONVERSION 305
is to remain the same man. Not only his acts, but his motives,
his emotions, his principles of action may become quite different
from what they were before the hitherto latent capacity of his
nature was called into activity. Of course, if by ' character ' we
choose to understand the whole of man's capacities for reacting
to different stimuli *, the original man with all his possibilities,
then it must be admitted that on Determinist principles character
is unchangeable. But this is not what we mean by ' character '
in ordinary ethical judgements. To maintain that a man
gradually or suddenly ' converted ' is still a bad man because,
but for some change in his circumstances, he would still have
been a bad man, is to confound character with some ultimate
psychological or metaphysical ground or basis or source of
' character/ true or false. It would be better to say that the
' self ' remains the same identical through differences, the same
and yet not the same though character may change. From the
point of view of Ethics real change of character is undoubtedly
a fact of experience one of the facts which each side in the
controversy must take as data for the discussion. It is only
a very crude Determinism which denies this, and only a very
crude or unfair Indeterminist who can suppose that his opponent
is logically bound to deny it.
Another unfair mode of statement often adopted by Deter-
minists is to accuse their opponents of admitting the possibility
of ' unmotived willing. 5 The Indeterminist, if he knows how tc
do justice to his own case, admits that action is always inspired
by motives. But it must be conceded on all hands that the
' motive ' cannot be identified with some factor in the external
environment taken by itself, or even with some imagined object
of desire as it would be apart from the individual's reaction
upon it. It is unquestionable, not only that in the same external
environment two different men will act very differently, but that
the same imagined pleasure or pain 2 , the same anticipated
1 The change of stimulus need not always be intellectual, as Schopenhauer
assumes when he says * Repentance never proceeds from a change of the will
(which is impossible), but from a change of knowledge ' (The Wortd as Will
and Idea, Eng. Trans., I. p. 382).
9 It might no doubt be maintained that in strictness it never is the same :
it is made different in the two cases by the difference of the psychical context
BASHDALL XX X
306 FREE-WILL [Book III
personal experience or external event, will call forth a very
different response in different individuals. Both sides must
admit that conscious and deliberate action (we may for con-
venience here ignore all other kinds of human behaviour) is
always instigated by a desire : nor ought there to be any hesita-
tion on either side to admit that it is always the strongest desire
that determines action. It need not be the desire which seemed
strongest to the man at the moment before he acted ; but, when
he has acted, that fact shows that the desire which prevailed was
the strongest. We have no criterion for estimating the relative
strength of conflicting desires except the influence which they
exercise upon action. But unquestionably the relative strength
of the desire is not due to anything in the desired object (as it
is when taken apart from the consciousness of the individual),
but to something in the man himself. The question about which
the Determinist and the Indeterminist are at issue is precisely
this : ' What is it that makes one desired object appeal more
strongly to one man than it does to another ? ' The man always
acts in obedience to the strongest motive, but the question remains :
1 What is it that determines the greater strength of one desire
as compared with another in different individuals ? ' ' Clearly
something in the man himself/ both sides will reply. But to the
Determinist that ' something in the man ' must mean ' something
in the man as he was at the moment before the alternative was
presented something itself the result of his original constitution
(material or spiritual) as he was at the moment of birth together
with the whole environment of his life up to the moment of
action/ To the Indeterminist it will mean * something which
came into existence at that instant, which had never been in
existence before, which was not the necessary result of anything
that had been in existence before, which could not be inferred
by any sagacity from anything that was in the world up to that
moment, an absolutely new creation/ The action on this view is
due to the man certainly, but not simply to the man as he is
born, or even the man as he has made himself by previous acts
in which it stands in the two cases. This is the same thing as saying that
a particular * object of desire ' has no existence which is independent of the
whole personality of the desiring subject.
Chap, iii, i] MODERATE LIBERTARIANISM 307
of choice, but to the man as he makes himself at that minute.
It is this power of making himself anew by successive acts,
unfettered even by his previous self, which more than aught else
constitutes him (according to the lQ(J^tgiBflainist) a moral being.
The acts flow from the self, but the self is a self-creative self.
Whether such a conception is ultimately intelligible, we shall
have hereafter to examine. But that is the fairest way of
presenting the Indeterminist case.
The case has so far been stated as though the Libertarian
maintained that every act at least every act of deliberate and
reflective choice between alternatives morally significant were
wholly uninfluenced either by original character, by environ-
ment, or by previous acts of free choice that every such act
is undetermined; and equally undetermined. A position so
obviously inconsistent with the most familiar experience has
never perhaps been deliberately maintained by any human
being, but it must be confessed that till very recently advocates
of Indetermmism have taken little pains to protect themselves
against such a travesty of their position. A moment's reflection
will be enough to show that such a contention would amount to
the denial that there is such a thing as character, that there is
any permanence or continuity at all about the self to which
action is referred. All that the Libertarian is bound to maintain
is that these acts of undetermined choice constitute one of the
factors which determine the character of the man's life, a factor
whose moral significance from the Indeterminist point of view
need not be diminished even if it were admitted that externally
considered it is the smallest of these factors. Ninety-nine
hundredths (so to speak) of a man's life might be due to
heredity, education, environment, and original constitution ; but
provided there were a hundredth part referable only to undeter-
mined acts of choice, that would be enough to satisfy the
postulate of Freedom. On this view it would be that hundredth
p ar t some difference scarcely visible to superficial observation,
a little more or a little less of kindliness or family affection in the
man whom circumstances have turned into an habitual criminal,
a little more or less conscientiousness and self-denial in the
man whom circumstances have made respectable that stamps
x a
308 FREE-WILL [Book III
him as morally good or bad in the true ethical sense, or at least
in the truest sense, of those words. This point of view was once
paradoxically expressed by an able advocate of Indeterminism
the late Professor Chandler of Oxford when he said that it
was enough that one act of a man's life should be free. But in
truth it is not necessary that even an isolated act should be
referable wholly to the free will. It would be enough that it
should enter as a factor into the determination of a man's acts or
some of them, that a man's acts and matured character should
be referable not to two factors but to three birth-character,
environment, undetermined choice.
Much confusion has been caused in this matter by the use
of the term * Freedom ' in a variety of senses which are not
always clearly distinguished from one another by those who use
them. In particular the word Freedom has been employed in
the following three sharply distinguishable senses :
(i) Sometimes it means that an act is one done in obedience to
Reason or to the higher self : because only in such acts is the
agent conscious of no discord between the higher and lower self,
because only then is the man's deliberate conviction of what is
highest and best for him not dominated and controlled by passing
desires, capricious lusts, and fleeting passions. In this sense it
is clear that good acts alone are free. The idea that goodness or
the service of God is ' perfect freedom ' is from a practical point
of view an extremely valuable and stimulating idea. But it
obviously involves a metaphor, and its introduction into the
controversy between Determinism and its opposite has led to
endless confusion. The idea is one which, in works of technical
Ethics at least, had better be expressed in some other way *.
1 This usage is in modern times due to the example of Kant, who regarded
every good act as motived by respect for the Moral Law and so as determined
by pure Practical Reason ; but, since at the same time that act qua event
was a link in a series of causally inter-connected phenomena, it was really,
according to him, not the particular act but the whole series that was
determined by a single act of timeless, undetermined choice. In supposing
that a man determines his own character by an act of timeless choice, Kant
was an Indeterminist. His followers have mostly followed more or less
closely his use of the term * free ' in the sense of ' rationally determined,'
while dropping the Indeterminist side of his doctrine. Kant's position
Chap. iii,i] SENSES OF FREEDOM 309
(3) Good and bad acts alike may be regarded as free by all
who recognize a difference between mechanical causality and
the causality of a permanent spiritual self. In this sense
Freedom implies the power of self-determination, but does not
necessarily involve the existence of undetermined beginnings in
the stream of volitions which make up a man's inner life.
That Freedom in this sense is an absolutely essential postulate
of Morality, I have already insisted in the chapter on 'Meta-
physic and Morality/
(3) Freedom may be used to imply a power of absolutely
undetermined choice in the self a power of originating acts
which have absolutely no connexion with or relation to the self
as it was before the act.
It is of extreme importance to distinguish the kind of Deter-
minism which recognizes the existence of a spiritual self and
refers human actions to the character of that self from the
mechanical Necessarianism which regards actions as caused by
one another, or by the physical events of which what we call
' actions ' are the physical concomitants. But the ambiguous
use of the terms ' free ' and * freedom ' has been responsible for vast
confusion. Many writers have supposed themsel ves to be defending
involves the difficulty of applying the category of Causality to something
which has no beginning. That which has no beginning cannot be caused
by itself or anything else : it can only be uncaused. The only intelligible
sense which can be given to the idea of ' noumenal freedom ' is to interpret
it as meaning that the individual is uncreated, and either ' out of time ' or
4 pre-existent.' But there seems to be no evidence that that is what
Kant intended by it. He probably meant merely that the timeless self
is the cause of the series of acts in time. How there can be a timeless
individual self which is not also uncreated he did not ask himself.
Bad acts were to Kant apparently free in the sense that the rational
self could have interfered with the causally determined series of natural
events in time, but left them to be determined by motives of pleasure
and pain, which Kant always assumed to be the only possible motive of
non-moral or immoral acts, and to be of a purely ' natural ' character
just like cases of mechanical or physical causality. But the dis-
tinction between the first and second senses of the term 'free' is never
clearly stated by Kant or by most of his followers. Leibniz has also added
much to the confusion by trying to persuade other people, and perhaps
himself, that he was an Indeterminist when most of his arguments only go
to establish freedom in the second of the senses distinguished in the text.
3io FREE-WILL [Book III
Indeterminism when they were really Determinists themselves in
the sense of Self-Determinism. Still more have been so under-
stood by readers not unwilling to be deceived. St. Thomas
Aquinas, and Hegel, and English Idealists like Green have
often been taken for Indeterminists or defenders of Free-will in
the popular sense. The materialistic, hedonistic, and other mis-
leading associations which have gathered around the word
' Necessity ' certainly justify the use of the word Freedom for
any doctrine which allows that the actions are really determined
by a spiritual self capable of being influenced by ethical, as
opposed to purely hedonistic, motives. Only, those who avail
themselves of this usage should make perfectly plain the sense
in which they do so. I shall myself claim the right of using the
word ' Freedom ' to include belief in ' Self-determination ' in
a sense which is not inconsistent with one kind of Determinism :
but with a view of avoiding ambiguity I shall usually speak
of the creed which denies Determinism altogether as * Indeter-
minism/ The word Libertarianism is also so definitely associated
with Free-will in the indeterministic or popular sense that it had
better be allowed to remain synonymous with Indeterminism,
even by those who give a wider significance to the term
' free/
II
Having thus tried to make plain the nature of the question,
I shall proceed to glance at the arguments used on both sides.
At different periods in the history of thought different lines
of argument have played the largest part in the controversy.
Putting aside the ancient world, which, even in the Stoic-
epicurean period, was, perhaps, hardly alive to the real difficulties
of the problem, we may say that the controversy has passed
through three stages. In the earlier stage it was primarily
a theological controversy: the difficulty was to reconcile the
Freedom which Morality prima facie seemed to require with
the Omnipotence and Omniscience of God: and at this stage
it may be observed that it was generally the more emancipated
or Humanist thinkers who defended the cause of Freedom, while
it was the more enthusiastic representatives of authoritative
Chap, iii, ii] HISTORY OF THE CONTROVERSY 311
Religion who took the deterministic side. The philosophically
educated Greek Fathers were on the side of Liberty l : the half-
cultured Africans and other Westerns on the side of Predestina-
tion. Si Thomas in a slightly disguised form, Wycliffe and
Huss avowedly, were Determinists of the Self-determinist type :
the critical and sceptical Occam was a Libertarian. Luther and
the Reformation Theologians were Predestinarians : Erasmus
and the champions of Humanism were Indeterminists. In the
^concLstage of the controversy the arena was chiefly meta-
physical. The difficulty was to reconcile moral Freedom with
the idea of Causality and the universality of Law. From the
time of Hobbes it may broadly be said (subject no doubt to
many exceptions and reservations) that the sceptical intellect has
been on the side of Determinism, while the champions of Re-
ligion and Morality have usually been the upholders of Inde-
terminism. If among the Philosophers as many great names
can be claimed for some form of Indeterminism as for Deter-
minism, their advocacy has been for the most part based wholly
and avowedly upon ethical grounds. In recent .tiroes, while the
old difficulties continue to play their part in the controversy,
the most powerful impulse towards the deterministic mode of
thought has been derived not so much from a priori meta-
physical difficulties as from empirical considerations from the
discovery of the close connexion between capacity and tempera-
ment on the one hand and the structure of brain and nervous
system on the other, from the emphasis which modern Evolu-
tionism has given to the always familiar influence of heredity,
from the constancy of statistics, and in general the more vivid
appreciation of the intimate relation in which individual conduct
stands to social environment.
I will postpone for the moment any further exposition of the
speculative difficulties (which perhaps after all remain the most
formidable), but will add for the benefit of readers who may be
very unfamiliar with the controversy a few words as to the way in
which these empirical considerations have tended to bring about
a state of things in which, if common sense has not given up its
1 Only later Greek Philosophy and Theology invented a word for * free-
will 'an idea which Aristotle never succeeded in expressing a
312 FREE-WILL [Book III
instinctive Indeterminism, the prevailing tendency both of Science
and Philosophy is towards the deterministic view of the question,
(i) Without exaggerating the extent of our knowledge as
to the relation between mind and brain, it is a well-ascertained
fact that there is some correspondence between the shape, struc-
ture, or quality of the brain and nervous system on the one hand
and the character and conduct of the man on the other. With
regard to purely intellectual characteristics this will hardly
be disputed by any one, and it can hardly be denied that this is
to some extent the case with moral characteristics also. Southern
Italians and Spaniards are usually more irascible, emotional,
and impetuous than Englishmen or Scandinavians, not because
they all happen to use their freedom in that way, but because
they are born with a different cerebral and nervous constitution.
It will be said (and justly), that we have to do here with the
emotional or pathological constitution of different individuals, and
not with their moral character proper with the impulses which
excite them to good actions or bad and not with their actual
conduct. But we observe also that on the average the resulting
conduct of the respective races is what might be expected from
this difference in their emotional tendencies, and it is easy to
infer that further knowledge of such physiological facts might
explain the actual volitions as well as the impulses against which
the inmost self of each individual reacts the extent to which he
yields to his good or bad impulses as well as the nature of those
impulses themselves. As the physical difference between races
becomes wider, moral differences widen also, We should be
almost as surprised to find the moral qualities of a Kant or
a Gladstone as we should be to find the intellectual powers of such
men in combination with the physical characteristics of a Toda.
And when we turn to the widest moral differences between men of
the same race, the same correspondence between character and
physique is traceable to a greater or less extent. -No one now
doubts that insanity is due to a disease or original malformation
of the brain and nervous system a disease sometimes engendered,
and to some extent curable, by purely spiritual influences, but
nevertheless a physical disease when once produced, and one often
traceable to purely physical causes. And insanity reveals itself
Chap, iii, ii] INFLUENCE OF PHYSIOLOGY 313
in erratic morality as well as in erroneous judgements about
matters of fact. The influence of brain upon character is seen
most conspicuously in those cases where a physical injury
a blow on the head or a sunstroke is followed by violent or
criminal behaviour in persons of previously irreproachable char-
acter. It is probable that Lornbroso and his followers have
failed to establish their theory of a ' criminal type ' of head ;
there is, at least, much exaggeration about the definiteness and
certainty of their results : but it cannot be denied that a majority
of criminals at least, criminals of the kind who usually find
their way to penal servitude are persons of exceedingly low
mental calibre with a low facial angle and the caste of features
which commonly accompanies very low mental development. In
these exceptional and abnormal instances the correspondence
between character and constitution becomes so glaring that it is
hardly possible to avoid the recognition of some causal con-
nexion in that sense of the word in which we usually speak
of causal connexion in the physical Sciences l : and it is at least
plausible to argue that further knowledge would reveal a like
correspondence in the case of those less glaring differences of
character and conduct which the Libertarian refers to the free
will of the agent. It must be remembered, indeed, that all this
evidence is quite inadequate to prove that purely physical
characteristics are the sole cause of intellectual and moral
characteristics, but it tends to show that these physical charac-
teristics must be included among the antecedents of human
actions, and to suggest that, if not wholly determined by physical
causes, they are at least determined by causes.
(3) There are the familiar facts of heredity, emphasized by
modern biological investigation, but not really much better known
1 We have no experience of brain by itself: it is always brain plus
something which is not brain with which we have to do, and it must, of
course, be remembered that when he treats brain as a cause, the Idealist
does so only in a relative and not an ultimate sense, since the brain itself
exists only for mind. But the question of the relation between mind and
body does not fall within our subject. No view of it is inconsistent with
the position taken up in this chapter provided that it admits (i) the real
causality of the individual self, (2) the spiritual character of Ultimate
Reality.
3 " 4 FREE-WILL [Book III
to us than to those who lived before Darwinism and the ideas
associated with it were dreamed of. The hastiest empirical
observation taught men that people had a tendency to resemble
not only in their mental but in their moral characteristics one
or both of their parents :
Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis :
est in iuvencis, est in equis patrum
virtus, neque imbellem feroces
progenerant aquilae columbam 1 .
Observation a little more extended and careful taught them
that, even when there is a glaring contrast between child and
both parents, a resemblance may often be traced between the
character of the child and some remoter ancestor or collateral
relative. The observation of this familiar fact is by itself fatal
to the crude Libertarianism (if such has ever really been main-
tained) which represents each act of every individual as wholly
and equally due to the use which he makes of his free will ; and
it is at least plausible here again to use the argument from
analogy, and to contend that, had we full and adequate know-
ledge of the causes which determine the course of embryonic
development, we should be able to account for the original con-
stitution with which a man is born into the world in those cases
in which the earliest manifestations of character are prima facie
least like what we should have expected as easily as we do
in those cases in which they most obviously recall the parental
type. Just as the generalizations which have enabled meteor-
ologists to make rough predictions with regard to the weather
have, in spite of many inaccuracies and some total mistakes,
convinced the general public that there is such a Science as
Meteorology, so it may be contended that a man's birth-character
could with adequate knowledge of data and laws be predicted
with as much certainty as the weather : and that by the birth-
character is explainable everything in the man's conduct that is
not due to his social and other environment.
(3) There is the argument from statistics. Though we can
seldom obtain sufficient knowledge of the individual's character
to enable us to predict with great certainty and accuracy how
1 Horace, Odes iv. 4. 2Q-32.
Chap, iii, ii] CONSTANCY OF STATISTICS 315
he will act, we are in many cases able to foretell the action
of masses of men not only with certainty but with a high degree
of quantitative accuracy. We can be tolerably sure, indeed,
that some individuals will be late for dinner, but we cannot say
to a minute or two how much, and such calculations are always
liable to be upset by disturbing causes : the most unpunctual of
men may be in time when his watch goes wrong. But with
masses of men it is otherwise ; we are able by the examination
of the statistics to predict with a very small margin of error
how many people in London will commit suicide in a year.
If one country shows a higher rate of suicide than another,
we seek to account for it by something in its social conditions, as
for instance by its Religion being Protestant rather than Roman
Catholic, or by the cruelties connected with its system of com-
pulsory military service, or by the prevalence of Landlordism
instead of peasant Proprietorship. And fluctuations in the
statistics we try to account for in a similar way. Within small
areas or periods the fluctuations are of course considerable.
They become smaller as we extend our view to larger areas
of time and place. Or, if a sudden variation occurs, the instinct
of every man be he Determinist or Libertarian is to account
for it by some change in the environment ; and in many cases
we can so account for the sudden or gradual variations of
statistics of this kind with at least as much success as we meet
with in the attempt to account for variations in the statistics of
death or disease, which everybody admits to be due to fixed,
ascertainable, and calculable causes l . If we find a sudden increase
in the number of offences punishable on summary conviction at
a particular date, we ask ourselves whether any legislative or
social change took place at the time, and we find it in the growth
of bicycling and the consequent necessity for the prosecution
of highly respectable persons for riding upon footpaths. If
the statistics of desertion in the English Army show a rapid
and startling change in a certain year, we are not satisfied with
accounting for it by a freak of Free-will, and find it more satis-
1 Even Insurance statistics involve the assumption that we can to a large
extent predict human conduct. An uncaused outbreak of murder on a large
scale might involve the winding-up of the safest company in Europe.
316 FREE-WILL [Book III
factory to connect it with some change in the manner of dealing
with such offences or with the state of the labour market. Moral
statistics in short statistics of crime or pauperism for instance
are almost as constant as vital statistics. The conduct of men in
masses can be predicted with more certainty than the weather.
How can this fact, it may be asked, be reconciled with the
hypothesis of Indeterminism ? Upon that hypothesis, it may
be urged, we ought to regard it as quite conceivable that in one
year vast numbers should freely will to commit larceny, in the
next year none at all.
It may be suggested that on the doctrine of probabilities the
number of undetermined bad volitions might be supposed, in
the absence of disturbing circumstances, on an average to bear
about the same proportion to the number of undetermined good
ones, though it will always be uncertain upon which particular
persons it falls to keep up the average. But the doctrine of
probabilities is itself based upon degrees in our knowledge
of causes; and the question arises whether, in regard to any
class of phenomena not governed by causes ! , we should have
any rational ground for expecting such a constancy of averages.
The idea of pure chance, understood as a matter of objective fact,
is open to exactly the same difficulties as the idea of undeter-
mined volition. To refer the constancy of statistics to the opera-
tion of chance is therefore no explanation of their approximate
constancy. It is quite true that the explanation of moral statistics
by social causes taken in connexion with the original con-
stitution of individuals is not made out with sufficient complete-
ness to constitute positive proof ; but it can hardly be denied
1 I do not identify the law of Causality with the law of the Uniformity of
Nature. But our belief in the universal prevalence of Uniformity within
the mechanical sphere is itself based upon a probable inference as to the
modus operandi of the ultimate Cause which logically presupposes that the
events must have some Cause. We assume a priori that events must have
some cause : we learn by experience that the cause is one which operates
within a certain sphere in accordance with a mechanical * uniformity of
succession,* and even in the biological sphere with a certain regularity
which, however, cannot be reduced to a mechanical 'uniformity of suc-
cession.' For further explanation of my meaning I may refer to Mr. R. B.
Haldane's Pathway to Reality, Vol. I, p. 240 sq., and Dr. J. S. Haldane's two
Guy's Hospital lectures on Life and Mechanism.
Chap, iii, ii] ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 317
that the whole of our information points to the conclusion that
with complete knowledge we should be able to see an exact
correspondence as clearly as we now see a rough correspondence.
In the present state of our knowledge it might safely be
affirmed that, while unreflective common sense may retain its
instinctive Indeterminism, such a theory would never even
occur to a scientifically trained mind acquainted with such
facts as I have mentioned and accustomed to deal with social
and psychological phenomena, unless it were in the first instance
suggested by ethical or religious considerations. The most im-
portant question to be discussed is, therefore, the question whether
any demand of the moral and religious consciousness really
necessitates, or even strongly recommends, the theory of Indeter-
minism. Our knowledge of the empirical facts is far too small
to enable us to say that, if it were so recommended, the hypothesis
would be indefensible. If we could not explain or justify the
facts of our moral consciousness without this hypothesis, we
should have as good a right to assume Indeterminism as we
have to accept any other postulate which is required for the
rational interpretation of our experience. The facts of our
moral consciousness are as certain as any other facts, and logical
inferences from or implications of those facts have as good a right
to be believed as any isolated fact accessible to immediate ex-
perience. There would still remain, indeed, the speculative
question which we have hitherto waived whether the very
idea of undetermined choice is really thinkable ; but, if we found
it impossible to understand or explain an important department
of our thought without such an hypothesis, it might well be
urged that any logical or metaphysical presuppositions which
stand in the way of doing so would stand in need of re-examina-
tion and revision. We might even feel driven to acquiesce for
the nonce in an unresolvable contradiction between two sides
or elements in our knowledge and experience. Such an admis-
sion of irresolvable antinomies would be a far more rational
proceeding than to dismiss as fictitious the intellectual implica-
tions of one part of our experience because we cannot at present
reconcile them with those of some other part, even without
taking into consideration the greater importance for practical
3 i8 FREE-WILL [Book III
life of the moral as compared with the scientific side of our
conscious life. The question before us is then this Does
Morality postulate Indeterminism ?
Ill
The best way of raising the question will be, I think, to state
as clearly as possible the position of those who assert the
necessity of Indeterminism for Morality in the most extreme
form. They do not deny that men are born with natural
tendencies to good or evil, or that such tendencies are modified
by education and environment, physical and social. And these
inborn or acquired tendencies exercise an influence upon their
actual conduct. But, in pronouncing a man good or bad, we
must, it is contended, make abstraction of all that is due either
to original endowment or to subsequent environment. It is not
these things that make a man good or bad, but only that portion
of his actual conduct and character which can be traced to the
use that he makes of his own free will. It is only that part of
a man's conduct which (his original nature and all surrounding
circumstances being the same) might still have been different,
that stamps the man as good or bad in the true, moral sense of
the word. No doubt a man who is born so that he cannot fail,
with such and such a social environment, to turn out what is
commonly called a good man, is a more desirable citizen, more
useful to his fellows and more at peace with himself, than one
so constituted as, under like circumstances, to turn out a ruffian :
but, morally speaking, he is not one whit the better man. We
may bestow upon him a utilitarian, a social, perhaps a kind of
aesthetic approbation : but to strictly moral approbation he is no
more entitled than a clock which keeps time or an animal whose
physiological constitution forbids it to indulge in aggressive or
predatory behaviour. It is not only that the man's actions are
materially correct ; they may be done from the right motives
from motives of humanity, of charity, of duty and yet they
are morally worthless, so long as these sentiments are due to his
original nature or his fortunate surroundings. It is not only, be
it observed, the man of natural good tendencies who is pro-
nounced to be destitute of moral worth if his actions are not
Chap, iii, iii] INDETEBMINISM AND COMMON SENSE 319
free ; every moral system must recognize some difference (what
difference will depend upon the system) between the man of
natural good qualities and the man who is good on principle
between (for instance) natural good nature and a hot temper
duly controlled : and it may conceivably be contended that the
latter represents the higher type of character. But this is not
all. The extreme Libertarian is prepared to maintain not
only that a man's natural sentiments, desires, inclinations may
be of the best possible quality, but that his will may be steadily
directed, in the presence of the fiercest temptations, towards the
good for its own sake ; and yet that, if that will be itself the
outcome of birth and education, it possesses no moral value
whatever. It earns no merit ; and, according to this School,
moral value and merit are synonymous terms. The determined
saint is no better than the determined sinner.
Now it will, I think, be easy to show that, stated in this extreme
form, the Libertarian position is totally at variance with the deepest
moral convictions and the clearest of moral intuitions. Granted,
for the moment, that there is such a thing as undetermined choice,
and that for certain purposes in order to pronounce our final
judgement upon a man it may be necessary to take into con-
sideration, not merely the character of his volitions but also the
extent to which his will was undetermined ; yet it is certain that
we do not attribute exclusive moral value to that part of a man's
character which would have been the same, no matter what his
original character and his subsequent environment. Supposing I
meet with a man of whose antecedents I know nothing, but whom
I find spending his life in the practice of every virtue under the sun.
He not merely does virtuous actions, actions externally in accord-
ance with the Moral Law, but he does them from the highest
motives : he is conscientious,chari table, self -denying, free (quantum
humanae potest fragilitati) from any vices that the most intimate
acquaintance can discern. But one day he tells me his history.
His father and mother belonged, it appears, to the salt of the
earth : he can point back to a long line of equally exemplary
ancestors ; no member of his family, for generations back, is
known to have been selfish or unconscientious : he has enjoyed
the best of educations, and been fortunate in his teachers, his
320 FREE-WILL [Book III
friends, and his professional associates. Now I do not deny
that a knowledge of these facts may somewhat weaken my
admiration for his character. They may suggest, not only that
under less favourable circumstances he might have acted
differently, but that his will is really not so strong as it appears
to be : that he would not be able to resist stronger temptations
than those which have fallen to his lot, and that a less ' sheltered '
life might even now produce a serious lowering of his moral
level, and reveal the existence of faults hitherto unsuspected by
himself or by others. But if I were sure that his will would
now be proof against the strongest temptations, the mere know-
ledge that, without that excellent ancestry and education, his
will would have been different would produce surely not the
smallest lowering of my moral esteem. A virtuous family
commands my respect no less than a virtuous individual.
Certainly, the Philosopher who proposes to base his Indeter-
minism upon the spontaneous deliverances of the unsophisticated
moral consciousness will find it difficult to support the contention
that in the case contemplated our esteem would be turned into
total indifference or contempt. Or take another case the case
of ' conversion.' I have already protested against the notion
that Determinism is inconsistent with change of character. As a
matter of fact the greatest believers in conversion have been
Determinists St. Augustine, Wycliffe, the Reformers (of every
school), the Jansenists, the English Puritans l . There may indeed
be cases of conversion, as I have already suggested, in which no
great visible change of environment accounts for the moral revolu-
tion. But that is not the common type. The change usually con-
nects itself either with some striking event in the man's personal
history an escape from great danger, an illness, or a bereave-
ment, or, more commonly still, with the influence of another
person brought to bear upon him through a sermon, a book, or
private intercourse. Suppose then I meet with another char-
1 The Methodist movement, or rather one half of it the section which
followed Wesley and not Whitefield -was the first great religious revival
that was based on a Libertarian Theology. Perhaps we ought to add that
the Franciscan Theology, though its origin is later than the great missionary
successes of the movement, was Libertarian.
Chap, iii, iii] DIFFICULTIES OF INDETERMINLSM
acter such a-s I have already contemplated, but find on enquiry
that in this case the man has not always been so. He used to be
a selfish and self-indulgent profligate, and (as he will tell you him-
self) would doubtless have continued so but for the fact that on
such an occasion he listened to the sermon of such and such
a preacher, came into intimate relations with such and such a
friend, or chanced to peruse such and such a book. Since then
not merely his outward life but the inner life of his soul has
been altogether different. Am I then, in estimating his real
character, to make abstraction of all that has been due to that
externally conditioned crisis in his life, and say that his true
moral status is just what it would have been, had some accident
stood in the way of his hearing the preacher or falling in with
the friend or the book ? It is true no doubt that the fact that,
when he does hear, he hearkens and heeds that the seed sown
is not carried away by the fowls of the air or withered by the
stony ground of his heart or choked by the growth of tares
does show that even before that event he was not altogether the
frivolous being that he seemed. There were potentialities of
goodness in him already ; but there will be an end of all possi-
bility (even for the profoundest insight) of classifying men into
good and bad, better or worse, if possibilities are to be treated as
of the same moral value as actualities. If that were so, what
would be the use of preaching or other efforts to make men
better ? If the possibilities are to be counted for righteousness,
why try to develope them into actualities ? It may be admitted
also, without any undue suspiciousness as to the value of religious
conversion, that the tendencies which previous to the moral
crisis were dominant and unchecked very often prove to have
been less entirely eradicated than the stock phraseology of
revivalist movements may sometimes suggest. In the language
of a dogmatic formula the old * infection of nature doth remain,
yea, in them that are regenerated,' and its influence may some-
times be traced in altered forms throughout the man's subse-
quent life. But the position that the true moral status of the
man is really what to a discriminating moral vision it would
have appeared to be, had his old and bad mode of life continued
unaltered, is assuredly not one which can base itself upon the
RASHDALL II Y
322 FREE-WILL [Book III
ordinary judgements of mankind. The only really logical form
of such extreme Indeterminism would carry with it (as it did
avowedly for Kant) the startling consequence that no man can
really be made better by the influence of another. A mode of
thinking which compels us to deny the sanctity of St. Paul
because it might never have existed but for the influence of
Christ, of St. Augustine because it would not have existed but
for St. Ambrose, of St. Francis because he was once a profligate,
or of his own disciples because without him they would in all
probability never have risen above the low average level of their
contemporaries, is more flatly opposed to the deepest moral con-
victions of mankind than the crudest and most mechanical
theory of human conduct by which Determinism has ever been
caricatured.
Equally startling deductions might be arrived at if we were
to invert this line of argument, and to trace out the consequences
of treating as really good all the people who under favourable
collocations of circumstances might have become good. At that
rate all the bad men who failed to become good, because the
preacher who might have converted them did not happen to
come their way, would have to be set down as paragons of
Virtue. And on this mode of thinking the question might
be raised where we are to discover men really bad. There are
some personalities of such transcendent spiritual energy that it
seems scarcely possible, given circumstances under which their
influence could have a maximum play, for any human being
altogether to resist that influence assuming that it was brought
to bear upon them at a sufficiently early age and that there
were no counteracting influences. Granted that there are a small
minority on whom no good influence could have any effect, it
must be remembered that present environment is not the only
factor of which the view under examination would compel us to
make abstraction. The influence of heredity must be eliminated
also. And how many of the actually bad would have been bad
if they had enjoyed the advantage not only of the education best
calculated to develope their possibilities of good but also of the
best possible parents and ancestors for many generations ? Even
if there were any meaning in such a question, it is obvious that
Chap, iii, iii] VALUE OF DETERMINED GOODNESS 323
the enquiry into any particular person's * real character ' becomes
one with which not only the most profound and trained insight
of the 'disinterested spectator/ but even the most penetrating
self-examination, is quite incapable of grappling. Indeed, if we
push the argument far enough, we might even have to go the
length of denying that the moral value of a man was greater
than that of an animal in so far as his evolution from the animal
condition was due to influences independent of his own undeter-
mined choice.
These considerations do not by themselves disprove Indeter-
minisrn. But they do show, I submit, that Indeterminism of
this extreme type can gain no support from the ' common-sense '
Morality to which it generally appeals. They do show that the
element in a man's character and conduct which is due to
undetermined choice (if any such element exists) cannot without
paradox be regarded as the only element which possesses not
merely value but that particular kind or degree of value which
we are in the habit of bestowing upon a good character or
a good will. Granted that an inmost kernel of undetermined
choice exists, it is something which is wholly inaccessible to
human observation. Granted that the significance of this fact
be admitted, and the inference drawn that in the last resort we
have no materials for a final and adequate pronouncement upon
the total character of any man, still that is a very different thing
from saying that those elements of character which are accessible
to observation have no value at all in so far as they are due to
anything else but this hypothetical element of undetermined
choice, the existence of which in any particular person we have no
data even for conjecturing. Such a contention would carry with
it the consequence not only that our estimates of character our
own or other people's are often erroneous and always inade-
quate, but that they bear no relation whatever to the realities
of the case. In venerating the saint, we may mistakenly be
venerating a bad man to whom a good father and favourable
circumstances may have given a benevolence and a self-denial
which are morally worthless because ' determined/ In morally
condemning a Caesar Borgia, we may be condemning actual
bad tendencies which are no more deserving of moral censure
Y 2
324 FREE-WILL [Book III
than physical disease, while all the time acts of Free-will
sufficient under favourable circumstances to have made a
Socrates or a St. Paul were wholly prevented from taking
actual effect because the poor man chanced to be the illegiti-
mate son of a Renaissance Pope, and to have breathed the most
polluted moral atmosphere that social evolution has ever
generated. If such extravagances are to be avoided, we must
at the least admit that besides this inaccessible kernel of
character the actual character and volitions of human beings,
as they stand revealed directly to introspection or indirectly to
observation, have a real value, and a very different value from
that attributed to the hedonistic or other consequences which
character and volition may produce for the persons themselves
or for others. Granted that the undetermined choice may
possess moral value it may be supreme and unique moral
value it is not the only thing which possesses such value. We
can no longer say that in a determined world there would be no
such thing as value or moral value, and consequently no such
thing as Morality. Granted the existence of some higher sphere
of transcendental Morality for which Indeterminism may be
a necessary postulate, we cannot say that without it our ordi-
nary moral judgements would be destitute of all meaning and
significance.
Now, if this much be admitted, it is obvious that the argument
for Indeterminism as a postulate of Morality is at least very
seriously weakened. The strength of the case for Indeterminism
lies in its appeal to common sense : that case is therefore enor-
mously weakened when it is found that its logical consequences
are such as to shock common sense and that, to become capable of
rational defence, it has to assume a form which common sense
would not recognize. We have seen that, unless we are to
substitute for the moral judgements of our ordinary moral
consciousness a kind of moral judgement the very existence of
which has. never been suspected except by a few Indeterminist
Philosophers, we cannot say that Morality would be destroyed
by the admission that this element of undetermined choice does
not exist at all. Morality would still remain : our judgements
of value would remain, and there would be no reason for denying
Chap, iii, iii] MISLEADING ASSOCIATIONS
their validity. We should retain our conception of * the good/
and should still ascribe a peculiar value to acts voluntarily
directed towards the good. Morality would not be destroyed ;
would it in any way be weakened ? The suggestion that it
would, might mean one of two things : either it might mean
that the validity of the Moral Law would be affected for the
reflective consciousness, or that in practice a general conviction
that Determinism is true would bring with it some weakening
of the motives which work for Morality and deter from
Immorality.
Let us assume then that we knew for certain Determinism
to be true. Ought that logically to make, and would ifc practi-
cally make, any difference to us? First, let us get rid of
some misleading associations. In the first place, Determinism
does not imply psychological Hedonism, though psychological
Hedonism does imply Determinism. The 'motives' which
determine conduct may be of the most unhedonistic or rational
or spiritual character. It is a mistake to assume (with Kant)
that, because a motive is ' pure ' a pure desire to obey the
Moral Law the resulting act can be due to nothing but undeter-
mined choice, or that because the act is determined its motive
must be purely ' natural/ The fact that, with sufficient know-
ledge of a man's character and of the spiritual dynamic possessed
by a given sermon, we could predict that he would be con-
verted by it, does not show that the operation of the sermon was
due to self-interest. Secondly, Determinism, does not imply any
particular theory as to the relations between mind and body.
There can be no doubt that certain features of physical constitu-
tion are among the causes or conditions which determine character
and conduct, but these need not be the only ones. Prima facie,
and without any attempt to offer a complete solution of the
problem, the influence of mind upon body is at least as obvious
a fact of experience as the influence of body upon mind. A blow
on the head may be the new factor which turns a man of given
physical and mental constitution into a criminal. But it is equally
certain that a thought may cause blushing or death, that cheerful
society aids digestion, and that elevating spiritual influences will
alter the whole expression of a man's face. It is even possible
326 FREE-WILL [Book III
that there may be the same mental interaction or concomitance
between the, at present, unconscious soul and physical facts even
in embryonic life. But, whatever may be thought of such a
suggestion, it is enough here to say that Determinism postulates
nothing as to the nature of the ' original constitution ' which, in
conjunction with environment, determines the bent of a man's
character and actions. It merely asserts that, given a certain
original constitution of mind and body, whatever is not due to
the environment is due to that original constitution. And,
thirdly, it must be remembered that in asserting that a man's
acts are caused, we do not say that they are caused in the same
way and sense in which mechanical events are caused by one
another. It is totally misleading to assume that a man's acts in
the present are determined by his past acts, just as the motions
of a billiard-ball at a given moment are determined by its past
movements. It may be true that rough predictions as to a man's
future conduct may be made on the basis of past acts, but these
past acts never reveal the whole of the man's character. The act
is not caused by previous acts, but by the same self which caused
the previous acts l . And the way in which a self causes is quite
different from the way in which mechanical events cause one
another. It is possible (and I for one should maintain) that even
in mechanical action the real and ultimate cause of the event is
not the previous event or any mysterious necessity of thought
which requires that like physical antecedents should have like
physical consequents, but the Will of God which within the
region of Mechanics works invariably (we have every reason to
believe) according to this law of uniform succession. But I am
not writing a treatise on Causality, and it is enough to say that
the causality of motives is in most important respects a very
different thing from the causality which in the ordinary language
of Physical Science is attributed to events. The self is not an
event or a series of events. The desires, emotions, and other
1 That the idea has arisen from a completely unjustified application to
the relation between successive acts of the idea of mathematical necessity
has been admirably shown by M. Bergson, Essai sur les donnf.es immtdiates
de la Conscience, p. 158 sq., though I cannot accept all his views which seem
to involve actual Indetermmiflm.
Chap, iii, iii] CAUSALITY NOT MECHANICAL 327
psychical influences which are said to move the self have no
existence of their own apart from the self. The self is present
in each of them, and makes them what they are. Moreover,
even if we regard the desires or inclinations which successively
enter into the consciousness of the self as causes which determine
its successive volitions, these are not mere events which act on
succeeding events as it were a tergo, but presented objects
which influence the self after the manner of final causes. In
Mechanics the present is determined by the past : in the region
of human action it is in a sense the future which determines the
present.
It is true that for the future to determine the present, that
future must become an idea in the present 1 . But the causality
of ideas ideas inaccessible to psychical observation is a very
different thing from the causality of physical events. And
after all the idea does not produce the consequent by itself
in isolation from the whole nature of the self for which it
is an idea ; we say, no doubt, that the idea acts upon the will and
thereby causes the resulting action, but it would be just as true
to say that the will acts upon the idea. The act results not
1 By this I do not mean to deny that in animal or even vegetable organisms,
or again in unreflecting human behaviour, final causes may not operate with-
out being present in consciousness. But this implies that there must already
be a striving or tendency towards this end, even though it is not a conscious
striving. The postulate of the ' Uniformity of Nature,' as we use it in the
purely Physical Sciences, is precisely the assumption that we may exclude
all conditions except antecedent physical conditions. A striving which is not
yet revealed either in consciousness or in any physical change is, even more
than a fact of consciousness, something very different from the ' conditions '
of which Physical Science takes account. I should venture to add further
that, though this causality of ends should not be spoken of as something
miraculous or outside the laws of nature (as long as we avoid the assump-
tion that mechanical ' uniformity of succession ' is the only kind of natural
law), the causality of an end not present to the individual consciousness
seems to me ultimately intelligible only on the supposition that it is already
present to the divine consciousness. The views on Causality with which I am
most in sympathy are to be found in Professor James Ward's Naturalism and
Agnosticism, especially I. p. 108 sq., II. 189 sq. See also Professor Taylor's
Elements of Metaphysics, Book IV, chap, iv, and the works mentioned above,
p. 316, note. I have dealt with the subject somewhat more at length in an
Address to the Aristotelian Society on * Causality and the Principles of
Historical Evidence' (1906).
328 FREE-WILL [Book III
merely from the idea which occupied the mind the moment
before, but from the whole state of the man, and the man is not
merely a knowing and feeling but a striving being l . Much of
the dislike commonly felt for deterministic modes of thought
arises from the use by Determinists of expressions which suggest
that the man himself is simply the theatre upon which a certain
action and reaction between ideas take place, an action and
reaction of which he the man himself is the passive victim.
But Determinism is not at all bound up with the mode of
thought which denies real causality or activity to the self : on the
contrary some Determinists would contend that there is no real
causality in anything but a self or a spirit, and that when we
say that this or that physical or psychical event causes another
such event, we are really describing merely the mode or order in
which some conscious will acts; so that, when such events are not
determined by some human or similarly limited will, they must
be really willed by God. But confining ourselves to the case of
the human will, we may say that the very essence of the Self-
determinist's case is that it is the real nature of the self (as modified
by its environment) which determines of what sort its successive
acts shall be. It is not because I have acted in a certain way in the
past that I am necessitated to act in a certain way in the future, but
because I am at this moment the sort of spiritual being to whom
such and such an enjoyment, such and such a reform in my
society, such and such a moral ideal presents itself as attractive.
Now let us assume that we have accepted Determinism in the
' Self-determinist ' sense : what ethical consequences will such an
acceptance involve ? It will not destroy the meaning or validity
of my judgements of value : that is a suggestion which we have
already dismissed. Voluntary acts (in any sense of ' voluntary ')
are not the only things which possess value. Hurricanes and
1 ' C'est done une psychologic grossiere, dupe du langage, que celle qui
nous xnontre I'S-me determinee par une sympathie, une aversion ou une
haine, comme par autant de forces qui pesent sur elle. Ces sentiments,
pourvu qu'ils aient atteint une profondeur suffisante, represented chacun
r&me entiere, en ce sens que tout le contenu de I'&me se reflete en chacun
d'eux. Dire que Tame se determine sous 1'influence de Tun quelconque de
ces sentiments, c'est done reconnaitre qu'elle se determine elle-meine.'
Bergson, lib. cit., p. 126.
Chap, iii, iii] IS DETERMINISM IMMORAL? 329
eruptions are bad that is to say, the suffering they cause in
conscious beings is bad ; and it is not the less bad because it is
not due to human volition. Knowledge is good and a very much
better thing than sensual pleasure, though nobody asserts that
stupidity is due to Free-will or denies that ignorance is due to
many causes besides lack of goodwill. And as knowledge has
a higher value than mere pleasure, so a benevolent act or
a benevolent character has a higher value still. That value of
act or character is no doubt dependent on the fact that the
particular act is willed, and character means the whole sum of
psychical forces which produces a tendency to voluntary action
of a certain kind : the difference between a crime and a disease
is exactly the same for the Ueterminist as it is for the
Indeterminist. The difference lies just in the fact that a better
will would have prevented the one, while it could not have pre-
vented the other. We cannot prove of course that there is this
superior value in voluntary good conduct. It is an immediate
affirmation of the moral consciousness. If the Indeterminist
chooses to dispute this, it is he and not his opponent who is
indulging in ethical scepticism, and contradicting the verdict of
his own moral consciousness. If he likes to say that the same
moral consciousness which assures him that his acts have value
tells him also that these morally estimable acts are undetermined,
the reply is that this apparently immediate affirmation of con-
sciousness generally disappears for those who understand the
nature of the question ; and that even Indeterminists fail (as
I have endeavoured to show) to carry their theory to its logical
consequences, and to withhold all moral approbation from that
enormous proportion of human conduct and character which is
obviously not due to the alleged undetermined choice of the
individual will. At all events, I can only say for myself that,
while I am conscious of the immediate judgement or intuition
that a charitable act has value and a much greater value than
a good dinner, I have no such immediate intuition that the
charitable act was an undetermined act, nor can I by any
analysis whatever discern the slightest logical or psychological
connexion between the two propositions 1 . If judgements of
1 I have against me the high authority of the late Professor Sidgwick, who
330 FREE-WILL [Book III
value are not to be trusted, then the whole basis of indeter-
ministic Morality disappears as well as that of deterministic
Morality. If they are valid, their validity cannot be upset by
any theory as to how the moral act or immoral act came to be
done. An act inspired by such and such a character is good, no
matter what be the historical explanation of the genesis of such
a character.
IV
The denial of Indeterminism then does not affect the logical or
metaphysical validity of our value-judgements. Neither need
it, so far as I can discover, psychologically have any effect in
undermining any possible motives that may impel me to perform
acts which rny moral consciousness recognizes as good or to
abstain from the contrary acts. Detenoipism is not Fatalism.
The Fatalist (in so far as so confused a belief admits of analysis)
believes that he is preordained to perform certain acts or that
certain events are preordained to happen, no matter how much he
may struggle against them. The Turk, we are sometimes assured,
will sit down and calmly watch his house burn without making
any effort to extinguish the fire, because, if it is the will of Allah
that it shall be burned down, it is of no use for him to struggle
against it ; while, if Allah wills that it shall be saved, Allah does
not want his assistance. What the rational Determinist tells
him is that the question whether the fire is extinguished or not
will depend (in part) upon the question whether he brings a hose
to bear upon it or not : and that depends upon what sort of man
he is. If he is an active and energetic sort of person with a
strong desire to save his house, he will certainly make the effort,
and the amount of the effort will depend upon the strength of
his desire. No doubt it is impossible to deny that mental
confusion, such as is implied in Fatalism or misunderstood Deter-
minism, is sometimes a cause of inertia or other moral obliquity.
But so may all sorts of true ideas the goodness of God, the
attributed great weight as an argument for Indeterminism to the ' immediate
affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate action ' (Methods of
Ethics, Bk. I, chap, v, 3). I can only say that I never was strongly
conscious of this * affirmation of consciousness ' in my own case, even when
I thought that Morality, or at all events Religion, postulated Indeterminism.
Chap, iii, iv] THE IDEA OF MERIT 331
possibility of forgiveness, the discovery that there is a ' soul of
goodness in things evil ' be abused to justify and encourage
indulgence in wrongdoing to which people are already inclined.
What is denied is that there is anything logical or rational about
such arguments. If I have a real desire to be better, that will
and must influence my conduct : how much it will influence it,
depends upon the strength of that good desire relatively to other
desires and impulses. If on account of my discovery that I owe
this good desire to my parents or my education I abandon
the effort to be better, that shows that there could never have
been any very earnest desire to be better, but only perhaps
a desire to escape punishment, or at best some form of self-
reproach, which I have persuaded myself would no longer be
deserved if my evil tendencies could be shown to be determined.
If it be true that the value of good character and conduct is not
really affected by the question of its genesis, it is impossible
that, except under the influence of intellectual confusion, any
doctrine as to that genesis could destroy or weaken any reason
for moral effort which I can possibly give to myself or urge upon
another.
Not only cannot the theory of Indeterminism weaken any of
the influences which make for Morality in the world : it cannot
even affect the character of that Morality. There is, indeed, one
particular branch of Morality which may perhaps be supposed
to be so influenced. The disappearance of the idea that a man's
moral worth is (at least in the highest and fullest sense of the
word) dependent upon the use which he makes of his power of
undetermined choice may introduce a certain change into our
ideas of merit and demerit. But we have already discovered that
the amount of a man's action which is really due to this power
of undetermined choice cannot be even roughly and approxi-
mately ascertained. The man who is the maker of his own
virtue (as it were) and the man whose virtue is due to the
psycho-physical law which has caused him to reproduce the
character of some remote ancestor behave (it may be admitted)
exactly alike : their internal impulses, desires, emotions, and so
on exhibit even to the closest introspection still more to
another person not the smallest difference. Hence a standard
33* FREE-WILL [Book III
of * merit ' based upon the theory which pronounces the one kind
of Virtue to be of the highest value and the other of no value at
all must be entirely unavailable for the guidance of human
conduct for the distribution of praise and blame, reward and
punishment, even of self -approval and self-condemnation. How
far the idea of merit and demerit is really (apart from the
question of its practical availability) based upon the theory of
Indeterminism, will depend in part upon the question whether
we were right in the interpretation which we gave to that notion
in our chapters on ' Justice ' and ' The Theory of Punishment/
The notion of merit in so far as it does not involve the retri-
butive view of punishment in no way presupposes the theory of
Indeterminism.
But the mention of punishment brings me to another form of the
ethical objection to Determinism. It is said that that doctrine
can give no meaning to the idea of remgrse or repentance or
to the idea of responsibility. First, as to the idea of remorse. It
is probable that the acceptance of Indeterminism may introduce
a slight psychological difference into this feeling, or rather into
the way in which the individual articulately formulates the state
of his consciousness in moments of remorse and repentance. It
is probable that the common-sense person who has more or less
consciously and deliberately adopted a theory of philosophical
Indeterminism may sometimes say to himself, ' My Ego was the
sole cause of that wrong action, and my Ego as it was simply at
the moment of action, No matter how I was born, no matter
what my education, no matter how I may have acted previously,
no matter what I was at nine o'clock that morning, the sin that
I committed at ten o'clock might perfectly well not have
occurred/ Such a view of the facts must be admitted to be on
determinist principles a delusion. But it may be doubted what
(apart from such confusions as have already been exposed) is the
real moral value of that conviction. It is not the conviction that
his previous self had nothing to do with the act that inspires
remorse, but the fact that his present self abhors it. The man
who repents of the act is a man in whom ex hypothesi good and
bad impulses are struggling for the mastery, or in whom a good
impulse has permanently, or for the moment, got the better of the
Chap, iii, iv] DETERMINISM AND REPENTANCE 333
bad. If the man had no bad impulses, he would not have done
the act ; if he had no good impulses, he would never have
repented of it l . On the deterministic view what the man will
say to himself will be something of this kind : ' No doubt it is
quite true that, I being what I then was, my antecedents being
what they were, circumstances being what they were, it was
inevitable enough that I should have acted as I did. The fact
that I should be the sort of being that the act showed me to be
is precisely what causes me pain when I think of it. In the
light of further reflection, in an altered mood, through the
" expulsive power of a new affection " or in consequence of some
other psychological change, I now loathe that side of my char-
acter which was uppermost at that moment. I regard it as bad,
and desire to be rid of it.' Could any theory about the genesis
of that bad self cause the man now to repent of such a * godly
sorrow/ or weaken the tendency of such sorrow to improve his
conduct for the future ? If such a theory did have that effect,
this would seem to show that the sorrow was less sorrow for sin
than a desire to throw the blame of it upon somebody else God,
or Nature, or ' circumstances/ or the like or a desire to escape
the punishment which he thinks would be no longer due, if it
was really his permanent self that was partly bad and not
a momentary act of undetermined choice which might reveal
nothing as to the character of that self.
But it may be alleged that it is not remorse or repentance in
itself that cannot be explained on deterministic principles, but
that consciousness of responsibility which is presupposed by thafi
experience. What does responsibility really mean ? Etymo-
logically the word signifies of course the liability to be called
upon to answer for an act, with the implication that, if the
agent cannot make a satisfactory defence of it, the doer may
justly be punished. A man is said to be responsible for an act
for which he might justly be punished. We hold that a sane
man is responsible for a crime, because it is just to punish him
for it, if he cannot disprove the allegation that he committed it.
1 I here substitute * repentance ' for * remorse,' since a mere wish that we had
acted otherwise inspired by no moral aversion for the past, and accompanied
by no desire to be better, has confessedly no moral value.
334 FREE-WILL [Book III
We hold that a man is not responsible for a fever not caught
through any neglect of duty, because it would be unjust to
punish him for it. The suggestion that Determinism under-
mines the idea of responsibility means at bottom that on the
deterministic view punishment would be unjust. Whether that
is so or not, must depend upon the view we take of the nature
of punishment. And that is a subject which has already really
been sufficiently discussed. If the true object of punishment be
retribution, there might be something to be said for the sugges-
tion that Determinism would make it unjust. It is true that such a
connexion between Indeterminism and retributive punishment has
not always been recognized : some peculiarly truculent supporters
of vindictive punishment are Determinists. Still it may, perhaps,
be admitted that retribution would be slightly "more intelligible
and less irrational upon an indeterministic than upon a deter-
ministic basis. But if we were right in rejecting the idea of
retribution, the fact that a man ' could not help ' being born as
he was, or educated as he was, is no reason why he should not
be punished. If the judgement of value is to be trusted, he is
(to the extent of his actual wrongdoing) a bad man ; and (again
assuming the validity of our moral judgements) a bad man is a
being who ought not to exist or who, if he does exist, ought to
be turned into a good one by every means in our power. The
protection of Society is of course another reason why he should
be punished, the protection of Society meaning the true good of
other individuals, each of whom may be worth as much or more
than the offender. Ideally punishment ought to secure both
ends : practically, in the administration of ordinary criminal law,
the social object has to be the prominent one. But, whichever
side of punishment we look at, Determinism does nothing to
make it unjust or irrational. To allow the man guilty of a crime
freely to prey upon Society, because that crime was in the cir-
cumstances the inevitable consequence of a bad character, would
be unjust, because it would be treating that individual's freedom
from pain as of more value than the Well-being of many thousands,
which it is not ; and Justice means treating every one (as far as
possible) according to his true worth. To refuse to make him
better because the process of making him so is one which involves
Chap, iii, iv] RESPONSIBILITY 335
some pain would be to treat freedom from pain as of more impor-
tance than moral character, which it is not. No greater kindness can
be shown to a bad man than to make him a better one, though the
process may be a painful one. If punishment be ' social surgery '
or a moral medicine for the individual, the fact that a bad man was
produced by causes is as poor a reason for refusing to apply it
as it would be to condemn a needful operation because the
patient's disease or accident was no fault of his own. In saying
that wrongdoing is a disease, we must always bear in mind the
immense difference between physical disease and spiritual disease,
and the consequent difference in the necessary remedies. It is
not only from the point of view of Society and legal punishment
that Indeterminism is not necessary for responsibility, but from
the point of view of the individual himself. If he is sincerely
penitent, the discovery that he has got a bad self will not make
him ask for the remission, but for the infliction of punish-
ment, if haply by that means the bad self may be turned into
a better one.
Not only is Determinism not inconsistent with responsibility,
but it may even be maintained with much force that it_i In-
determinism which really undermines responsibility. A free acfc
is, according to the Indeterminist, an absolutely new beginning,
not springing from, or having any necessary connexion with, the
past 1 . The question may be raised, What is the meaning of
holding me ' responsible ' for some past act of mine if that act
did not really proceed from and reveal the true nature of the
self which I still am ? If the act sprang up of itself (so to speak)
without having any root in my previous being, no goodness of
my previous self could possibly have prevented its perpetration.
And, as it revealed nothing of my past self, so it would be
unwarrantable to regard it as reflecting upon my present
character; since the present self is, in so far as free, simply the
momentary new beginnings which from time to time intervene
in the series of my actions without springing from those actions,
1 This is sometimes evaded by saying that the act is not wholly unconnected
with the past. The answer is that so far as it is free, it is so unconnected :
in so far as it is not unconnected with the past, it is not free in the
Indeterminist sense.
336 FREE-WILL [Book III
or from the permanent self revealed in them. It is proposed, for
instance, to punish me for a theft which I committed five years
ago. On the determinist hypothesis it is reasonably held that
the self which stole is the same self which I now am. It is
proposed to punish me either (from the retributive point of view)
because the Categorical Imperative says that those who steal
shall be punished, or (from the medicinal and curative point
of view) because it is presumed that the same thievish tendencies
which revealed themselves are still there, and may be removed
or counteracted by punishment. But from the indeterminist
point of view I might protest : 4 It is true that this is the same
animal organism in connexion with which five years ago
a regrettable incident occurred. But that theft did not spring
from the same Ego as that which now directs the movements of
these hands. It was not a self with thievish tendencies that
stole. Previous to that act I was not thievish. You, my Inde-
terminist Judge, admit that so far as that act was free, it did not
spring from anything in my character, but from some extraneous
and incalculable force which had never revealed itself in me till
that unfortunate moment. And, as it was not my past self that
committed it, so neither was it my present self. You admit that
so far as anything in my past may have necessitated or deter-
mined what I am now, I am not free ; and you say it is only
free acts for which people are responsible. But I, the present
free-willing self, am quite a different sort of person from the self
of five years ago which stole. I now deeply deplore the strange
behaviour of the undetermined volition which caused my hands
to steal, but you might just as well punish any other person for
the act as myself. And, as punishment would be unjust from
a retrospective point of view, so it would be useless as regards
the future. In so far as my present self determines my future,
my acts are not really free, and it is (you say) only free acts
that are of any moral value. No efforts on my part, no efforts
on the part of my punisher, can possibly prevent an undeter-
mined theft taking place to-morrow in connexion with my
organism : but they might equally take place in connexion with
yours. What is the use of punishing and reproving me if, in so
far as my present self determines my future, my acts are unfree
Chap, iii, iv] FREEDOM AND CHANCE 337
and therefore morally worthless ; while, in so far as they are
really free, they cannot be influenced by anything that I or you
can do now ? '
On indeterminist premisses it seems to me that this line of
argument is absolutely unanswerable. The Indeterminist will
attempt to evade its force by admitting that character does
influence, though it does not completely ' determine ', our acts ;
that there is always a possibility of action not in accordance
with previous character, a possibility which the gradual forma-
tion of character is progressively diminishing and perhaps may
ultimately extinguish altogether; while the character and the
resulting acts still retain their moral value because they are
(in so far as free) the results of the previous undetermined acts.
But, when such a plea is urged, it is forgotten that ' chances ' or
'probabilities' are not real things, but merely modes of our
judgement based on imperfect knowledge of the causes at work.
In so far as we believe in events undetermined by causes, we
believe in pure chance ; and in pure chance we have no ground
for estimating degrees of probability at all. Pure chance is as
irrational and unthinkable an idea as Fate : and to admit that
any acts are whether wholly or partially determined by pure
chance is surely as fatal to the idea of responsibility as to
ascribe them to an external, overruling Fate. And if there were
such things as human acts determined by pure chance, they
could not with any reasonableness be regarded as acts for which
any particular person is responsible. We have now come round
from the purely ethical to the metaphysical aspect of the ques-
tion. Without entering in detail into the idea of Causality, we
may say that all accounts of that category agree in this that
everything which has a beginning must be accounted for and
explained as the necessary outcome of something already in
existence before that beginning. There are such things as new
beginnings in the world, but every new beginning has the reason
or ground of its occurrence in that which was before. In that
sense the law of universal Causality quite a different thing
from the mechanical uniformity of Nature does present itself
to my mind as an absolute necessity of thought. An absolutely
new beginning, unconnected with the past, is unthinkable. No
RA8HDALL II Z
338 FREE-WILL [Book III
indeterminist theory has ever been able to get over that diffi-
culty, so far as I (with the strongest predisposition to believe in
a theory so often associated in other people's minds with the
beliefs which I hold most firmly and cherish most reverently)
have ever been able to discover.
Nevertheless, so great are the difficulties of the subject, so
small is our human capacity for adequate and self-consistent
thought when we reach these profound questions as to the ulti-
mate nature of things, that I should be quite willing to acquiesce
in an ultimate antinomy between our speculative and our ethical
thinking, if the idea of Indeterminism presented itself to me as
in any sense a postulate of Ethics. Antinomies cannot both be
true, but we may sometimes be unable to resolve them ; though
the belief in unresolvable antinomies or contradictions more
often springs from intellectual laziness or intellectual cowardice
(when they are urged in a conservative interest) or love of
paradox (when used for destructive purposes) than from real
intellectual humility and love of Truth. Any one to whom the
idea of Indeterminism still seems ethically necessary has the best
of rights to declare his belief in it (for our ethical thinking is as
trustworthy as any other kind of thinking), even though he
should be unable to reconcile it with that idea of Causality
which is the postulate of his scientific thinking. But for myself
I am unable to discern any ethical objection to Self -determinism,
or any ethical advantage in Indeterminism, which does not spring
from misunderstanding.
Indeterminism is then to my mind no postulate of pure
Ethics. But there is another point of view from which it may
be urged that the idea is essential to the rational interpretation
of the Universe. It may be regarded as essential to the true
appreciation of the relation between the human will and that
universal Will from which a sound Metaphysic sees reason to
believe that the human will is ultimately derived. And here let
me admit that, in dealing with this aspect of the matter, I should
wish to speak in a less confident tone. Here we are approaching
the * greatest wave ' not merely of the Free-will debate buC of
Chap, iii, v] DETERMINISM AND RELIGION 339
all metaphysical controversy. A full discussion of such a ques-
tion cannot be expected in a purely ethical treatise ; but neither
can all reference to it be avoided by a writer who believes that
a true theory of Ethics should connect itself with a true theory
of the Universe. ' We must do what we can/
When the theory of Determinism is held in connexion with
a philosophy which finds the ultimate ground and source of all
being in a rational will, it is impossible to escape the inference
that the Will of God ultimately causes everything in the Universe
which has a beginning including therefore souls and their acts,
good and bad alike. There is nothing in this admission which
can compel us to take back anything that has been said about
the idea of self-determination, and the responsibility of the
individual soul for its own acts. That we are the cause of our
own acts is a matter of immediate experience l , as well as
a necessary implication of our ethical consciousness. And that
truth is not in the least affected by the undeniable fact that we
did not make ourselves, and consequently are not the sole causes
of those acts. Whatever difficulties there may be (especially
from an idealistic point of view) in the old distinction between
the ' first Cause ' and ' second causes ' as applied to purely
natural events, some distinction of the kind is certainly required
in dealing with the causation of human acts. Human acts are
not merely acts which succeed one another in a necessary order
imposed from without (like events in the world of matter), but
events the character of which is really determined by the nature
of that soul whose acts they are, a nature which is active, which
is ever growing and modifying its own nature by its own self-
development. And yet the development is a development of an
original nature which the individual did not create for himself,
and is dependent for its continuance from moment to moment
upon the continued existence of a world which the individual
did not create. Theologians usually express this twofold aspect
of human acts by speaking of the ' co-operation ' of God in every
act of human volition. Philosophers may prefer some other
mode of expression, but in one way or other we have to recognize
1 For a defence of this position I may refer to Dr. Stout 's chapter on * the
Concept of Mental Activity ' in Analytic Psychology, Vol. I, Bk. II, chap. i.
Z 2
340 FREE-WILL [Book III
that the individual is the real cause of his own acts, and yet that
(on the determinist hypothesis) he is not the sole or only or
ultimate cause of them. From any philosophical standpoint 1
the ultimate cause of every particular event is the original
nature of a Whole which has no cause and no beginning. If
the idealistic Theist is right, the Whole consists of God and the
system of souls, including the world which is their experience :
and, if the souls have a beginning, then (though in some ultimate
metaphysical sense they may conceivably be regarded as part of,
or of one substance with, God) the beginning of their conscious
individual life, as well as all subsequent stages of that life, must
be regarded as ultimately due to the Will of God. There is
nothing in all this to alter the fact that the individual is the
cause of his own acts : the individual is immediately conscious
of his own activity. If God causes those acts, He causes them
in quite a different way from that in which He causes other
events events in the natural world, or even the acts of non-
moral animals. For purely ethical purposes we need not look
beyond the immediate cause of the acts : the cause why a bad
act is done really is the fact that there is a bad soul in the world.
Nothing can alter that, and that is all that we want from a purely
ethical point of view. Yet from the metaphysical or theological
point of view we must admit also that the soul is made or caused
by God : and one cannot help asking oneself the question why
God should make bad souls, and so cause bad acts to be done 2 .
I have already explained that I find the answer to that ques-
tion, in so far as any answer to it can be given, in the theory
1 Except in a certain sense that of Pluralism, which I deal with below.
3 Many Philosophers will attempt to evade the difficulty by merely
protesting against the use of such terms as ' making ' or ' creation.' But the
objection, when applied to the beginning of souls, seems based upon some
idea of the eternity of Substance which (if it is to be admitted at all) is
really applicable only to matter. It is possible to find a meaning for the
idea that souls are all parts or manifestations of a single Substance, but
I can find no meaning for the idea that they are parts of a single con-
sciousness (see above, p. 238). Any one who admits that the individual
consciousness is not without beginning, and is in time, and is the cause
of acts in time, must admit that God causes that consciousness to begin, and
is so far (if only so far) the cause of each successive event in its subsequent
development.
Chap, iii, v] GOD AND EVIL 341
which expressed in the inadequate and analogical language
which the Philosopher of any school is obliged to use when
attempting to explain the ultimate nature of things must be
described as the union in one and the same Being of absolute
Goodness with limited Power. Inasmuch as the limitation of
Power springs not from outside but from within, we may con-
tinue to speak of God as the Infinite, if it makes us any happier
to do so ; but, in view of the pantheistic tendency of this mode
of speech, when adopted in its strict philosophical sense, it may
be well to avoid the term altogether. The point of the theory
which I advocate is that God causes bad souls to appear as
a means to an ultimate good, a good which is unattainable
without them. The bad is willed, or (if we like to use that
rather anthropomorphic term) ' permitted/ by God as a means
to a greater good, without on that account ceasing to be really
bad. A better Universe is imaginable, but a better Universe is
not possible, because nothing is really possible but what is
or will be actual. If we say that God might possibly have
created a worse world than that which He has created or does
create, we can mean only that, if we looked only to his Power
and not to his Goodness, we should see no reason why the
world should not be worse than it is; and, if we say that
God might possibly have created a better world than ours, we
mean that, if we looked only to his Goodness and not to his Know-
ledge and his Power, we should see no reason why the world
should not be better than it is. It must be admitted that the
world is made what it is by a divine volition or series of voli-
tions which is made what it is by the positive and eternal
nature of God. That all things flow with rigorous necessity
from that nature might truly be said, were it not that the use of
the term ' necessity ' is generally associated with the denial of
just that doctrine which is here asserted that whatever happens
in the world is really willed by a self-conscious Spirit for the
attainment of the ends which He knows to be essentially best.
It will be contended by some that we are still making God the
author of evil, though He wills it only as a means, and not as an
end. But how far, after all, would our theory of the Universe
be improved by the admission of undetermined choice, side by
342 FREE-WILL [Book III
side with original character and circumstance, as a source of
human conduct with a resulting reaction upon character?
Undoubtedly, if we could bring ourselves to believe in Indeter-
minism, we could regard the possibility of sin (but not its
actuality) as a necessary condition of real Morality, which is
the highest kind of good. So far the difficulty of accounting for
evil in a God-willed Universe would be diminished. And, if the
difficulty were wholly removed by such a hypothesis, that might
be a sufficient reason for accepting it, while frankly acknow-
ledging our inability to reconcile it with the self-evident law of
Causality. But, unfortunately, the difficulty is not removed,
but only a little attenuated or disguised. Only a small part of
the evil in the Universe can, on any view which does not refuse
to look at the facts, be traced to the abuse of our power of
undetermined choice. The hypothesis will not account for the
sufferings of animals, or for that enormous proportion of human
suffering which does not in any way arise out of moral evil l : in
so far as the human suffering is accounted for as necessary for
discipline and formation of character, that explanation is equally
open to those who reject Indeterminism. Nor will it account
even for all moral evil. Such an enormous proportion of the
moral evil in the Universe is clearly not due to the abuse of
Freedom that the difficulty is only slightly attenuated by the
introduction of an undetermined factor into the well-springs of
action. It may, indeed, be alleged that much of the evil, which
in the individual is due to inheritance and environment, origin-
ally sprang from the acts of undetermined wrongdoing. But
our knowledge of the actual causes of human wrongdoing is
sufficient to make it extremely improbable that, if such an
element of undetermined choice exists in human life, it can
account for any large proportion of the moral evil which in the
individual arises immediately from inheritance and circum-
1 This has been so strongly felt by Renouvier that in La Nouvelle
Monadologie he has elaborated a theory of a pre-natal Fall. Renouvier'g is
perhaps the ablest modern attempt to think out the Indeterminist position ;
but it is unconvincing, and involves much which strikes the unconvinced
reader as pure mythology. That the idea of a possible sinless evolution of
humanity under the actual conditions of this planet is unthinkable, no one
shows more convincingly than the Neo-Leibnizian Philosopher.
Chap, iii, v] FREEDOM AND OMNISCIENCE 343
stance : certainly it cannot account for all. And we have
already seen that to declare that only the undetermined good
volition is truly and morally good, or the undetermined bad
volition truly evil, contradicts the plainest deliverances of the
unsophisticated moral consciousness. And if we admit the exis-
tence of any moral evil whatever which the individual * cannot
help ' (in the sense in which the Indeterminist alleges that
Determinism makes sin something which we cannot help), that
evil is really for ?iim determined, and springs in the last resort
from that ultimate constitution of the Universe which to the
Theist is identical with the nature of God. The Indeterminist
at least cannot blame the objector for following a too anthro-
morphic line of thought, when he urges that God is as much
responsible for evils which He foresees will certainly flow from
the use which some individual will actually make of the freedom
with which He has endowed them, as a human being would be
responsible for the consequences if he placed loaded fire-arms
in the hands of people who would be sure to commit murder
with them. If it be said that God does not know that the
freedom will be abused, and we frankly give up the idea of
Omniscience *, it may be asked whether we should consider that
his responsibility was much diminished if a man put the fire-
arms into the hands of children without knowing whether they
would or would not make a proper use of them. And after
all a doctrine of Free-will which involves a denial of God's
1 As is done by Professor James in The Will to Believe, p. 180 sq., where
the attempt is made to reconcile this undetermined element with the
rationality of the Universe by the suggestion that God is like a consummate
chess-player encountering a novice : he does not know what move the novice
will make, but he does know that, whatever move the novice makes, he will
beat him in the end. This is perhaps the best attempt that has ever been
made to deal with the difficulty, but it does not get over the objection that
these estimates as to what is possible are based upon the assumption of
Causality. The expert knows all the moves that the laws of nature and the
rules of the game permit the novice to take. Where there is an absolutely
undetermined element, it is difficult to see on what grounds its limits can be
fixed. If God cannot foresee what use the creatures will make of their
freedom, how could He foresee that they will not all choose evil, and per-
sistently choose it so far as and so long as they are free ? And such a choice
would presumably defeat the purpose of God.
344 FREE-WILL [Book III
Omniscience cannot claim any superiority over such a theistic
Determinism as I have defended on the score of avoiding
a limitation of the divine Omnipotence. Omniscience need not
involve Omnipotence, but Omnipotence (in the popular sense)
certainly includes Omniscience. These are old difficulties ; but
they have never been satisfactorily met either by Philosophers
or Theologians, except in so far as they have candidly admitted
a limitation of divine power. Indeterminist theories introduce
that limitation quite as much as determinist theories. Not to
be able to cause good without a possibility of evil is as much
a limitation as not to be able to cause good without the certainty
of evil. All the Theodicies really admit such a limitation, except
those which frankly throw Morality to the winds, and save the
divine Omnipotence or the divine * Infinitude ' at the expense of
the divine Love. In this case either Morality degenerates into
obedience to the arbitrary and capricious commands of a being
who pursues ends not intrinsically good (or at all events an end
in which Morality finds no place), or the idea of a divine Will
disappears altogether and with it all possibility of attributing
Love or any other ethical character to God. An unethical Deism
and an unethical Pantheism are the Scylla and the Charybdis
between which religious thought can only steer its way by
admitting that God's ends can only be attained by the adoption
of means which, in themselves and abstractedly considered, are
bad, and which remain bad from whatever point of view we
look at them ; however much they may be justified as involving
less evil on the whole than the omission of those means and the
non-attainment of the ends to which they are means. In truth
the very idea of means to an end is unintelligible when the means
are supposed to be adopted by a being who can attain any end
whatever without any means at all. The idea of a being who is
omnipotent, in the popular sense of the word, is the idea of a being
who has no determinate character or nature whatever. A
Universe in which everything might happen would be a Universe
in which nothing was caused. The idea of a Universe in which
there was an ' infinite ' amount of good contains a cgntradictio
in adiecto. However much good there was in the world, we
could still ask/ Why not more good ? ' and so on ad infinitum.
Chap, iii, vi] PRE-EXISTENCE 345
Real being must be being of a definite amount. A God who was
unwilling to create more good for any other reason than inability
to do so would not be perfectly good. On the other hand, there
is no similar contradiction in the idea of a Will or a Being
who is perfectly good inasmuch as He causes all the good that
his own nature makes it possible for Him to cause.
We have seen then that the only point at which a difficulty is
created either for Morality or for Religion by the acceptance of
Determinism lies in its tendency to make God in a sense the
1 author of evil ' a sense which in no way excludes the equally
true proposition that man is the author of it. In a sense, indeed,
man is the sole author of evil ; for man alone wills the evil
otherwise than as a means to the true good. God wills the evil
only as a means to the good, and to will evil as a means to the
good is not to be evil, or to will evil as such, or to exhibit any
defect of Goodness. And we have seen that this is a difficulty
which Indeterminism has equally to admit, since to cause a possi-
bility of evil is equally to be the author of evil, while the plea
that the evil is a means to the good is equally open to the
Determinist.
After all that can be said on this side I admit frankly that it
would be more satisfactory to be able to say that God was in
no sense the cause of evil. That is only to say that I could wish
the Universe were better than it is ; and, if God be the God who
is revealed to us by our moral consciousness, He wishes that
too. All Libertarian Theologies represent God as wishing ends
which are not fully attained : and a Self-determinist Theology
which is content to maintain that the end is attained sufficiently
to justify the means involves no further limitation of the divine
power.
VI
The desire to avoid the admission that God originates souls with
evil potentialities which must necessarily develope into evil
actuality is the inspiring motive of those theories of Pre-existence
which, from the days of Plato and of Origen to those of modern
4 Pluralism/ seem always to have sprung up wherever men
have grappled in earnest with the problem of evil. According
346 FREE-WILL [Book III
Jto such theories souls are uncreated; while the world-process
is one by which a good but not omnipotent God is getting
rid of the evil in those souls, and bringing them to the highest
perfection of which they are intrinsically capable l . We thus
get rid of the necessity of tracing any evil, even indirectly
and as a means, to the Will of God. We trace it to the limitation
of souls on their ethical side, instead of to the limitations of God
on his non-ethical side. We are thus able not only to trace all
moral evil to human willing (we can do that without Pre-
existence), but to nothing else ; the individual soul is not only the
cause, but the sole and ultimate cause, of its own sin. In that way
we do seem to meet the instinctive demand which has found
expression in the popular indeterminist theory. For even Indeter-
minism has seldom found it necessary to attribute undetermined
choice to God. In proportion as Theologians have done so, they
have tended towards a non-moral view of God's nature, and have
ended by making a non-moral divine caprice the sole standard
of right and wrong in human conduct 2 . Ethically minded
Theologians have generally found it enough to insist that God's
actions are limited by no necessity but what arises from his own
goodness, that (in the words of Hooker) 'the being of God is a kind
of law to his working V And the theory of eternal Pre-existence
ascribes to man as much freedom as it allows to God. This is so
far satisfactory. But for one difficulty which the theory of Pre-
existence removes it creates a hundred. The connexion between
mind and body, between character and organism, between
parental or racial character and individual character, is so close,
that, if the real inmost core of a man's character be due to an
original eternal nature modified by the acts of previous lives,
1 e. g. in Professor Howison's Limits of Evolution and Mr. Schiller's The
Riddles of the Sphinx and other writings. These last write rs, however, so far
as I understand them, think that Pre-existence is not a sufficient explanation
of the origin of Evil without Indeterminism, thereby giving up what would
seem to my own mind the chief attraction of the system.
1 This tendency is exhibited by Duns Scotus, who based the second table
of the Decalogue upon the arbitrary Will of God, and by Occam, who
subsequently referred both tables to such a Will a course in which he was
followed by many ultra-Calvinistic Divines.
8 Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. I, chap. 2.
Chap, iii, vi] DIFFICULTIES OF PRE-EXISTENCE 347
we must suppose that every soul after each successive death
is kept waiting in some extra-corporal limbo till Evolution has
developed parents to whom it can suitably be assigned, and
an organism which will serve as a faithful expression of its
present moral status no less than as an adequate discipline for its
future moral advancement. The theory is certainly not capable of
positive disproof, but it is unsupported by the obvious and prima
facie evidence of experience ; and involves, the more it is worked
out, a ramifying network of difficulties only to be disguised
by some mythological structure which itself is the greatest
difficulty of all. And in the end it seems to give us no ethical
advantage which we cannot have without it. If the bad acts
of the eternal soul do not spring from its own eternal nature,
we have all the difficulties of Indeterminism just as acutely with
Pre-existence as without it. If they do spring from that nature,
the evil springs from the inherent limitations of a Universe
which tends towards the good but has not fully attained it,
and so far contains an inherent element of evil. Why should
it be more satisfactory to account for this evil as due to the
uncaused limitations of the individual, instead of being due
to the uncaused limitation of the divine nature on its non-ethical
side ? Pre-existence limits God, arid limits Him from the outside.
Determinism without Pre-existence limits Him from the inside
only, without limiting the perfection of his moral nature. God
is limited, but only by his own nature and by the existence
of other beings which owe their existence to that nature, and
such a limitation is one which involves no ethical imperfection.
On the speculative difficulties apart from Ethics which the
theory of Pre-existence involves, I forbear to dwell. It is
enough to say here that the order of the Universe is more easily
accounted for by a Monism which does not deny the reality
of individual selfhood than by the Pluralism which recognizes
a number of entirely distinct and independent sources of
Being. 1
1 Most of the difficulties urged against pluralistic theories seem to apply
equally to Dr. McTaggart's system, according to which the Absolute consists
in a society of eternal souls, none of which is sufficiently superior in power
to the rest to be exalted to the name of God, or to be invested with the
348 FREE- WILL [Book III
VII
I believe that at bottom the unwillingness of ethical natures
to acquiesce in Determinism of the kind which I have indicated
arises from their inability to get rid of the idea of a determina-
tion from the outside a suggestion which is really no doubt
involved in the more materialistic varieties of Determinism.
They cannot get rid of the suggestion of an external coercion
constraining the man to act in a way in which he the real man,
who is (as they rightly hold) no mere product and plaything of
purely physical forces does not wish and desire to act. And
that is to confuse the causality of a self -developing self with the
causality of mechanical forces which always is determination
ab extra 1 . Or, if they do realize that it is the nature of the
self that determines the particular act, they limit their idea
of the self to the self already revealed in present consciousness,
and suppose that Determinism negatives the possibility of
repentance, improvement, change of character. They forget that
the self is a being whose whole nature is at present unrevealed
by anything outside itself at present existing in the Universe
unrevealed either to self-observation or to any human observa-
tion, though (we may suppose) not unrevealed to the Universal
Mind. And this consideration sets strict limits to the possibility
attributes usually associated with the idea of Godhead. The speculative
difficulty of Pluralism is, indeed, nominally removed by the declaration
that the souls collectively form a ' unity ' or * system ', but the difficulty of
accounting for the unity and order of a material world which is admitted to
exist only in the experience of selves is still greater on this view than it is
on the hypothesis of a God ominiscient and enormously superior in power to
other spirits, but not limited by their independent existence. According to
Dr. McTaggart the spirits simply happen to find their experience partially
identical and capable of being reduced to an intelligible system, though it
never actually exists as a system in any one mind, does not completely exist
(so far as we know) even in all of them taken together, and is (except as
regards the infinitesimally small portion of the Universe known to consist in
the voluntary acts of human or similar spirits) not willed by any or all of
them. These difficulties will be felt with peculiar force by those who (like
the present writer) regard the causality of Will as the only true causality.
1 Except in so far as the successive changes of the material Universe are
regarded as ultimately willed by God, and are so due to the successive
volitions which are the unfolding of his eternal Nature.
Chap, iii, vii] DETERMINISM AND PREDICTION 349
of that prediction of future conduct which is instinctively
resented by minds for which ethical considerations are pre-
dominant 1 . The possibilities of gradual improvement, or,
occasionally, of apparently sudden new departures which look
as if they were unconnected with everything in the previous
life, can never be estimated with certainty by any knowledge
of the character as it has already unfolded itself in the man's
actual consciousness. Experience does no doubt show us that
the question whether and how far those possibilities shall unfold
themselves is largely determined by the nature of the environ-
ment, and there is no ethical advantage in denying that
1 This possibility is further limited by the consideration that our psychical
states differ qualitatively, and that what we call the same psychical event
(emotion, feeling, desire, &c.) in two different persons, or at two different
times in the same person, is not really the same. There is a certain
uniqueness about each person, and even about each mental state of
each person. Hence it may safely be said that we shall never succeed in
framing * laws ' from which all human actions could be predicted : the
principle that the same cause will always produce the same effect will not
help us in the psychical sphere, for the same cause can never recur. All
this has been admirably pointed out by M. Bergson (Sur les donne'cs
immtd. de la Conscience, passim). But (i) that writer seems to ignore,
and even to deny, the fact that there is something alike in psychical states
as well as something different : we can therefore to a certain extent discover
laws or uniformities, both in the connexion of the psychical states inter se
and in their relations to physical events, though the laws will express
tendencies which are always liable to be modified within certain limits by
the unique peculiarities of individual persons. (2) M. Bergson hardly seems
to recognize that there may be causal connexion even when there is unique-
ness. It is true that no knowledge of the 'laws of character ' would enable
us completely to say how a given individual (in so far as he differs from all
other individuals) is going to act without a knowledge of the fact that he
will actually act in a certain way, but that does not prevent us from
regarding the act as the necessary result of what he originally was: to an
intelligence that knew him through and through the future act would be
seen, as it were, latent in the character, though such a knowledge is
absolutely inconceivable for an intelligence such as ours. M. Bergson 's
own position, which he regards as the opposite of Determinism, is one
which seems to be fairly describable by the word * Self-determinism.'
I know of no better definition of Freedom (in the true sense) than his
' nous sommes libres quand nos actes cmanent de notre personalite entiere '
(p. 131), but it is desirable for the sake of clearness to admit that this is
not the liberty which the Indeterminists want, and I am not sure that this
would be admitted by M. Bergson himself.
350 FREE-WILL [Book III
determination. From this point of view Determinism is far more
encouraging and stimulating to moral effort than a logically
thought-out Indeterminism. Even if we do not push the
demand for Freedom to the point of denying that a man can
ever be made really better by another's efforts, the prospect of
ridding the world of at least its worst evils must be small
indeed, if no spiritual influence from outside, no response to that
influence from within, no continuance in well-doing, no education
of character can ever exclude an unmeasurable possibility that
sudden and undetermined moral evil may break out afresh in
the apparently purified will, and be followed by all the determined
moral and other evil which such an outbreak must necessarily
bring with it for other beings.
The deep-seated moral repulsion against Determinism which
used at one time to characterize the most zealous champions of
the rights of Conscience was, I believe, largely due to the
association of Determinism with a gloomy and unethical The-
ology, and in particular with the idea of everlasting punishment.
The attempt to vindicate the ways of God to man on the
assumption that He makes bad men only in order that they
may be tortured everlastingly, and that not as a means to the
moral improvement or future Well-being of themselves or others,
was indeed a desperate task \ Even now Indeterminism is often
maintained by conservative Theologians because it seems to
make the doctrine of everlasting torment a trifle less repulsive
to the moral consciousness. When we once get rid of such
baseless figments, the idea that God creates men with some bad
elements in their characters, and societies containing some men
on the whole bad, in order that in the end a good greatly over-
balancing that evil should be realized, is one which has nothing
in it offensive to the religious consciousness or depressing to
the moral energies. Indeterminist Theologies and determinist
Theologies alike represent the history of the world as a divine
education of souls. According to indeterminist systems that
1 It is rarely that the idea of everlasting punishment has been defended,
as it was by A be lard, on Utilitarian grounds as an example to the rest so
valuable as to make the everlasting punishment of a certain number of
pinners productive of a maximum of good as the whole.
Chap, iii, viii] ESCHATOLOGY 351
education may, and (some would add) must, fail in a certain
number of cases : the older Theologians did not hesitate to say
the vast majority 1 . To admit that, is to admit a limitation of
the divine power : God, it is represented, wishes that all should
be saved, but some are not saved. Their explanation is the
intrinsic impossibility of the greatest good without this pos-
sibility of evil a possibility which we know, and which God
foreknew 2 , to be actual. And that constitutes a limitation.
VIII
When once we admit any kind or sort of inherent limitation
to the possibilities of divine action, it becomes impossible, no
doubt, dogmatically to determine the extent to which the ends
desired by the eternally loving consciousness will actually be
realized. To declare that every soul will, immediately on death,
or even eventually, attain the same kind or the same level of
moral, intellectual, and aesthetic excellence would be a very
foolish assertion, completely opposed to all the analogies of our
present experience. Souls are not the same, and it does not
look as if they ever would be. To say that every soul will
reach some particular level of happiness or moral perfection
which we may choose to understand by the term ' salvation '
would be going beyond what we have a right to affirm, though
perhaps, in so far as we can distinguish between positive moral
evil and a limitation of moral goodness, the ultimate extinction
of the former is not beyond what we may hope. What we have
a right to affirm is that the Universe must be moving to an end
which is good on the whole in the sense that its existence is
better than its non-existence, a good which is worth the evil
that it costs. That there is at no point a final sacrifice of the
part to the whole is more than we can positively affirm ; but the
more profoundly we believe in the ultimate rationality of things,
the more strongly we shall be disposed to believe that for each
1 It was not only Calvinists who took this view. See Newman's appalling
sermon ' Many called, few chosen.'
* From the point of view of Orthodoxy. Few modern Libertarian
Theologians are bold enough to admit that Indeterminism is incompatible
with complete foreknowledge : if foreknowledge is denied, we have limita-
tion again.
352 FREE-WILL [Book III
soul once born with the consciousness of a moral ideal an end is
realized which will on the whole make it good for that soul to
have lived. We must not push such a reasonable hope beyond
the limits prescribed by the actual and undeniable facts ; but,
within those limits, the more completely any theory of the
Universe allows for such a final triumph of good, the more
probable will it become for a mind which has once taken the
initial step of recognizing in the objectivity of the moral con-
sciousness a revelation of the ultimate meaning and nature of
the Universe.
How far this principle will allow us to believe in the
immortality of animals we have no adequate data for determin-
ing. In the case of the lowest animals the continuity of their
existence is so small that it becomes difficult to suppose that
any future destiny of theirs would intelligibly allow us to
regard their existence as ' good on the whole ' in the case of
those (we may hope, the comparatively few) who have failed in
their present existence to attain an overplus of good (such good
as they are capable of) on the whole. If we suppose a creature of
a very low type rewarded hereafter by elevation to a higher kind
of existence, such a being would not seem to be the same as its
original germ in any sense which would permit us to regard its
bliss as a compensation to it for its previous sufferings. Here it
does seem probable that there must be some sacrifice of particular
individuals to the good of the whole. As we ascend the scale of
existence, the greater the worth of their life becomes, the greater
becomes the probability that no individual will be treated wholly
as a means. There we must leave the matter. It is perhaps too
dogmatic to assert that every individual will attain Immortality
even among human souls. It may, no doubt, be said that all
that we need for a rationalization of the Universe is a future,
and not an immortal, existence. That is quite true, but the
difficulty of believing in Immortality either the real speculative
difficulty or the merely psychological difficulty of imagining or
envisaging it is not greater than that presented by the idea of
a future but not unending existence (except perhaps for those
who regard all temporal existence as a mere delusive 'ap-
pearance '). The hypothesis of Immortality for all souls whose
Chap, iii, viii] MAIA
actual or potential capacity reaches a certain level of value
is the one which most completely rationalizes the Universe.
Hence, upon the presuppositions already explained, it is the more
reasonable hope.
To deal with the difficulties presented by the antinomies
involved in the nature of time would carry us far beyond the
limits proper to an ethical treatise. From the point of view of
Ethics at all events human life is in time, and any completion of
the existing life which is to supply a meaning and justification
for the defects of the present must be represented as a continu-
ance of the present life in the future. That all our ideas about
time are inadequate, and that from the point of view of a divine
knowledge the inadequacy must in some way disappear, may
be freely admitted. But that is a very different thing from
affirming that time belongs to the region of mere ' appearance '
and that the only Reality is one which is out of time. The idea
of an existence out of time is one which for us can possess no
meaning, unless it be taken in a merely negative sense as
implying an existence in which the difficulties inherent for an
intelligence in the idea of endless succession are 'somehow 1
transcended, we know not how. These difficulties cannot be
here discussed. Suffice it to say that all our judgements of value,
and consequently all our moral ideas, presuppose that a good
which is not now real may by willing be made real. The fact
that that is so is by itself a sufficient reason for distrusting
theories of the Universe which tend to make all that is in time
a mere delusive 'Maia,' and to represent the real Universe as
one in which, as nothing really happens, inertia must be as
reasonable as action ; or perhaps more reasonable, in so far as the
approach to inertia may be thought (however inconsistently) to
bring a man nearer to that timeless and changeless state from
which temporal existence is a lapse. For the Philosophies in
which that which becomes is mere appearance, values too should
be merely apparent and unreal l . The ethical theory which
insists on the vanity of all striving is the natural ally in the
1 This will no doubt be denied. It may be said that timeless existence
may have value. But our judgements of value pronounce that there is
a real difference in value between a worse present and a better future : if
K ASH D ALL II
354 FREE-WILL [Book III
sphere of practice of the speculative theories which represent
the world or God as an ' is ' in whom and for whom there is no
' was * or c will be ' and therefore no becoming. That has been
the general tendency of the great historical Religions which
are based upon this conception : it would be the tendency of
modern pantheistic philosophies if anybody ever thought of
taking them seriously enough to attempt living by them. In so
far as such theories have entered into the stream of the Western
religious consciousness, they have frequently resulted in soul-
destroying Quietism. Those who believe that Morality consists
in striving, and that Morality is a good-in-itself , will find inspira-
tion in a Theology which represents God too as striving, but as
striving for an end which will hereafter be realized in such
a measure as to make the striving reasonable.
That the view of Free-will which I have taken involves no
difficulties is more than I shall assert. The man who declares
that he has got a theory of the Universe which involves no
difficulties is simply a man who does not think. I can only say
that an idealistic Theism, rooted and grounded in Ethics and
developed on the lines which I have endeavoured faintly to
sketch, seems to me to involve enormously fewer difficulties than
any other theory constructive, destructive, or agnostic with
which I am acquainted. Nothing appears to be gained by the
assumption of Indeterminism. That there is some further
solution of the difficulties connected with Free-will and the
existence of evil, that some further element of truth in Indeter-
minism unrecognized by determinist theories might reveal
themselves to a more thorough examination, I think extremely
probable. I hope that such a further solution of this supreme
problem will in time be thought out. But I should myself be
inclined to look for such a consummation in any direction
rather than in any theory which could properly be called
indeterministic.
Once more, I submit, Determinism of the kind I have suggested
has nothing in it paralysing or depressing to the most strenuous
that is pronounced to be a delusion, it is difficult to see why any part of the
judgement should be retained. At all events the value of the timeless cannot
well supply a reason for change in the temporal.
Chap, iii, viii] LIFE A STRUGGLE 355
moral effort. To my own mind it is far more inspiring than
most Indeterminist theories of the Universe. It represents God
as the ultimate source of all being in the Universe that has
a beginning, and as directing the world-process towards the
goal which shall attain as much of the highest ideally conceiv-
able good as can become actual. He calls upon the higher spiritual
beings who have derived their existence from Him to aid in this
process. It is a real, and not a merely apparent, struggle to
which their God-derived moral consciousness invites them. The
evil is a real evil, though an evil destined to be more and more
diminished. The rapidity with which and the extent to which
the evil will be diminished and the good attained really does
depend in part upon human effort. It is true doubtless that
God knows how much each of us is capable of aiding towards
the process, and how much he will aid ; but we do not know, and
no human being ever can know until he has acted. And there
is nothing in these considerations to paralyse, but everything to
quicken and reinforce, all those desires and aspirations which
determine the extent and manner in which we shall actually be
permitted to take part in the great process of world-redemption l .
1 The only modern writer fairly describable as an Indeterminist pure and
simple who impresses me with the idea of thoroughly appreciating the
question at issue is Lotze (Microcosnnts, Eng. Trans., I. p. 256 sq. ; Practical
Philosophy, Chap, iii ; Phil, of Religion, Chap. vii). I do not feel the
same in reading Dr. Martineau (Study of Religion, II. p. 215 sq.). Nor
can I quite understand whether Prof. Ward, whose vindication of the real
causality of Will (in Naturalism and Agnosticism) seems to me of the highest
importance, means to be an Indetenninist or not. The two most convincing
arguments against Indeterminism which I know are to be found in Schopen-
hauer's treatise in Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, and in Dr. McTag-
gart's Some Dogmas of Religion (Chap. v). The position which I have
adopted is in the main that of Hegel and his followers, except (i) that their
treatment of the subject (especially that of Green) seems to me often
unsatisfactory on account of their vagueness as to the distinction between
the particular and the universal Ego; and (2) that their theories of a
timeless Reality and their views of Causation tend to reduce the causality
of Will to be a mere seeming. I feel much in sympathy with Prof. A. E.
Taylor's treatment of the subject in Elements of Metaphysics, Bk. IV, chap. iv.
An admirable account of the real meaning of 'Free-will* (in the Self-
determinist sense) is also given by Dr. Shadworth Hodgson (The Philosophy
of Experience, Vol. IV. p. 118 sq.), though in connexion with a Metaphysic
which I cannot accept.
A a 2
CHAPTER IV
MORALITY AND EVOLUTION
I
I TRUST that the account already given of the nature of our
moral judgements will by itself have dispelled the notion that
there is anything in the position here advocated inconsistent
with a frank and cordial acceptance either of the doctrine of
Evolution in general or of the particular form given to it by the
great discovery of Charles Darwin. The idea of Morality in]
general which we have seen to be at bottom the idea of
value is an a priori idea in exactly the same sense as that in
which the idea of Quantity or Cause or the laws of thought are
a priori. And every particular moral judgement involves an
a priori element just as every particular judgement about
Quantity or Causality and every particular act of inference
involves an a priori element. If the term a priori is open to
objection, the term ' immediate ' will do as well. What is meant is
that in these judgements there is an element of knowledge which
cannot be explained as sensation or any generalization from
sensation. It is undeniable of course that our ideas of Quantity
and our powers of reasoning have developed gradually, nor are
they equally developed in all races or all individuals. And yet
no one thinks of doubting the truth of the multiplication table
because there are some savages who (it is said) cannot count ten :
nor does any one with a rudimentary training in Metaphysics
think this any objection to their a priori character. Nor, again,
are the varieties of individual judgement inconsistent with the
authority that has been claimed for moral judgements as such.
In short, all that has been said as to the difference between the
objectivity of the moral judgement and the infallibility of the
individual Conscience, all that has been said in explanation of
Chap, iv, i] DEVELOPMENT ADMITTED 357
the variations in moral opinion even among individuals brought
up in the same community and at the same stage of moral
development, is applicable a fortiori to the differences between
different races at various stages of moral and intellectual
development. And it need hardly be pointed out that the
development of the moral consciousness is not merely analogous
to the general intellectual development, but is very closely
connected therewith. Moral judgements and moral reasonings
(though they do involve ideas which cannot be derived from or
analysed into other ideas) do also involve every other kind of
intellectual activity 1 . That power of abstracting and univer-
salizing which forms to so large an extent the differentia of the
human intelligence is eminently necessary in ethical thinking.
In ethical matters, as in others, this capacity is gradually
developed. Such abstract ideas as ' duty/ ' right/ ' good in
general/ ' the duty of man to man as such/ can only be reached at
all at a comparatively high stage, and in their most abstract and
reflective form only at a very advanced stage, of intellectual
development. In the present state of ethical thought it will be
perhaps unnecessary further to labour the point that our moral
ideas are gradually developed in exactly the same sense, and in
exactly the same way, as any other of the capacities of the
human soul, and that this forms no more reason for doubting
their validity than in the parallel case of the multiplication
table.
These considerations might be held to dispense us from any
further treatment of the relation of Evolution to Ethics. The
Moral Philosopher is no more bound to deal with the history of
ethical development than the Geometrician is bound to preface
a geometrical treatise with an anthropological or psychological
discussion upon the genesis and development of the idea of space
and its various determinations. The business of the Moral
Philosopher is simply to analyse the contents of the moral
consciousness as it is. No true account of what the moral
consciousness actually is can possibly be vitiated by any true
account of its genesis. No doubt accounts are sometimes given
1 This point is well brought out by Mr. L. T. Hobhouse in his Mind in
Evolution, Chap, xiii sq.
MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
of the genesis of Morality which do seem to be destructive of the
authority claimed for the moral faculty. Where this is the case,
it must be due to one of three causes: (i) Either the facts
alleged are true as far as they go but they will not by them-
selves really explain the ideas which they are supposed to
explain, or (2) the moral historian must be mistaken in the facts
on which the theory is supposed to rest, or (3) what purports to
be a mere statement of historical facts really implies already
a theory about the actual nature of Morality and the developed
moral consciousness which goes beyond the mere statement of
historical or psychological facts.
An illustration or two may be desirable. It is asserted that
' Altruism ' has grown out of ' Egoism.' But if I am right as
a matter of psychological fact in asserting that I do now desire
another's happiness, no history of the process by which a supposed
primitive ' Egoism ' passed into Altruism can possibly alter the
fact that I am now altruistic, or require me to modify any
ethical judgement which may be based upon the value of
altruistic conduct. Any theory which purports to require such
a modification must be one which at bottom implies that I do
not now really desire another's good, but only appear to do so,
while in fact I concern myself for my neighbour's good only as
a means to my own : and that is a theory which can be refuted
by mere introspection. Or take the attempts made to show that
the idea of moral obligation is nothing but an inherited fear of
the police. No demonstration that there were once people whose
moral ideas were limited to a fear of the police, living or
ancestral, human or ghostly, can alter the fact that I have
now an idea of value which is quite different from a mere
feeling or dread of some powerful being, visible or invisible.
The theory either misrepresents what I now feel, or fails to
account for it, or accounts for it in a way which implies (on the
basis of some tacitly assumed metaphysical theory) that, even if
I do now, as a matter of psychological fact, think an idea of
Tightness which is other than fear of an imaginary police, my
belief is a delusion which has no basis or foundation in Reason
or Reality. The psychological theory (with its ethical implica-
tions) does not really rest upon the history ; the history rests
Chap, iv, i] HIGHER EXPLAINED BY LOWER 359
either upon mistaken observation of present psychological fact or
upon some mistaken metaphysical interpretation of it.
And that brings us to another reason against mixing up the
question of what Morality is with theories about the process of
its development. The sole data for any ethical theory are those
supplied by the actual contents of the moral consciousness.
And we know a great deal more about the moral consciousness
as it is than we do about the moral consciousness or pre-
moral consciousness of savages and animals. We are told by
Sgenper in regard to Ethics that c as in other cases, so in
this case, we must interpret the more developed by the less
developed V Within certain limits the statement no doubt
holds to a large extent in the region of physical Science. Much
light has no doubt been thrown on the actual nature of animals
in the higher stages of Evolution by the study of the lower ; but
even here the converse statement would be at least equally true.
That the undifferentiated protoplasm of the Amoeba discharges
the function of nerve as well as of muscle is a fact which could
scarcely have been discovered except by enquirers starting with
the knowledge of what nerve is and what muscle is in their
higher, more differentiated forms. And with regard to Morality
and psychical life generally this is still more emphatically the
case. For the minds of savages and of animals do not lie open
to the direct observation which is possible in the case of their
bodies. The simplest statements that we can make about them
are arrived at only by inference from our own self-knowledge :
and the difficulty of mentally picturing mental states lower than
any that we know (to know them would at once make them
different from what they are) is so great that there must be a
considerable presumption against any method of ethical enquiry
which pretends to explain the more developed by the less
developed. No subject is more speculative than prehistoric (or
even historical) Psychology. It is scarcely possible that any
account of the genesis of Morality should not presuppose some
view as to the actual nature of the developed moral conscious-
ness. If that account is a false one, it must vitiate the whole
1 Data of Ethics, p. 7. (This work now forms Part I of the Principles of
Morality, Vol. I, but the pagination is unaltered
360 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
evolutionary history which is based upon it. A theory of Ethics
which rests upon an evolutionary theory which presupposes it
really rests upon nothing but itself.
Prima facie these considerations might be held to dispense us
from touching upon the question of Evolution and Ethics, except
so far as to point out its irrelevance to our present enquiry.
The history of moral ideas is no doubt a most important and
interesting, as well as a very difficult, subject. It belongs (from
different points of view) to Anthropology, to Psychology, to
Sociology, to general history, to the history of Philosophy, but
not to Philosophy itself. For the present purpose the subject
might very well be ignored altogether, and it is impossible to
treat it otherwise than most inadequately. But for two reasons
it seems better to make a few remarks on the subject than to
pass it over altogether. In the first place it is alleged by some
evolutionary writers that the doctrine of Evolution supplies, us
not merely with a history of moral ideas, but wijh an actual
theory of conduct actual information as to what ought now to
be done or left undone which could not otherwise have been
arrived at: and these theories have attracted much attention
both with Philosophers and with the general public. The reader
may naturally expect that a writer who ignores such theories
should at least give some reasons for his disregard of them.
Secondly, while from the point of view here adopted it is incon-
ceivable that a theory of Ethics resting upon a sound basis of
introspection, with a sound Metaphysic behind it, should be
fundamentally revolutionized by the facts of moral Evolution,
it does not follow that these facts may not contain some instruc-
tion for the Moral Philosopher. All Philosophy must rest upon
a comprehensive survey of the whole facts about the Universe as
ascertained by Science and by History. Moral Philosophy must
rest upon a survey of all the facts which concern the moral life :
and among those facts the actual course of development in the
moral ideas of mankind (and even of sub-human animals in
so far as anything analogous to Morality can be detected
in them) occupies an important place. There might well be
supposed to be an a priori probability that a mental revolution
so great as that involved in the general acceptance of the main
Chap, iv, ii] DARWIN 361
principles of Darwinism should have some effect upon Ethics, as
upon other departments of human thought. If we approach the
speculations of the so-called evolutionary writers with less hope
of instruction than we might otherwise do, it is not because the
fact that moral ideas have developed, and the particular way in
which they have developed, are not matters of profound signifi-
cance for the Moral Philosopher, but rather because in the main
the actual course of ethical development was fairly well known
before. The doctrine of Evolution did not come into existence with
Darwinism. Darwinism is itself only one particular application
of this characteristic idea of all nineteenth-century speculation.
The idea of development had been fully appreciated by Hegel,
and had been abused by John Henry Newman, long before the
appearance of The Origin of Species. These remarks are not
made for the purpose of depreciating the influence which has
been exercised upon thought by the distinctly Darwinian idea of
development through natural selection, but merely to moderate
our expectations as to the amount of instruction which the
Moral Philosopher may expect to find in it.
II
Any discussion of the relation between Ethics and Evolution
might be expected to begin with some account of the interesting
chapter devoted to that subject by Charles Darwin himself in
the Development of Man. But his remarks are of so simple and
untechnical a character so little directed to the solution of any
definite question discussed by Moral Philosophers that they
hardly call for much remark from the point of view which we
have adopted. Darwin's main object was to suggest that there
was a complete continuity, in this as in other respects, between
animal and human life, and so to prevent the moral capacity of
human beings being employed as an argument against the
hypothesis of their evolution by slow and gradual stages from
a non-human ancestor. This continuity is in one sense of the ,
term a fact which no Moralist, theoretical or practical, has the
slightest interest in denying. The differences between man as
he is in his developed state 'and animals as we know them
become neither greater nor less because it is possible to trace
362 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
a^continuous development from the one to the other. It is only
the absurd Psychology which supposes that a mental state which
has grown out of another mental state or activity still is the
state or activity which preceded it that mental states can be
resolved into antecedent states as chemical compounds can
be resolved into their component elements which can raise any
prejudice against the admission that intellectually and morally
as well as physically man has grown out of a mere animal. No
difficulty is created for Ethics by the admission that the non-
moral animal has become the moral man by passing through
a number of intermediate stages, which has not always existed in
the fact that the non-moral infant-in-arms grows into the imper-
fectly moral child, and the imperfectly moral child into the
full-grown and moral adult. In the one case as in the other the
difference between the two is in no way lessened by the fact
that it is impossible to point to the exact moment at which
the transition takes place. Nor is it only our defective know-
ledge which debars us from drawing the line at any definite
point of development. For the difference between the moral
and the non-moral is not a single, definite, and assignable
difference. We may by abstraction talk of a ' moral faculty/ but
the presence of that faculty makes everything else in conscious-
ness different, or (from another point of view) it presupposes
such differences in everything else impulse, feeling, habit,
intelligence, will. We might take particular aspects or features
of the difference between the moral and the non-moral being and
ask in detc^il when each begins ; but even for perfect knowledge
the germ of each would be so unlike the developed product that
it is only in the light of what it may become that any common
character could be discerned between them. It is enough
therefore to say that this continuity between the man and the
animal may be fully accepted without affecting anything that
has been contended for or will be contended for in this book l .
That there are germs of Morality germs which, though not
1 It is true also that all development is only intelligible as a continual
series of absolutely new beginnings, and that at "particular moments these
ngwj?jegi jnngs may be of fundamental significance and importance. But
I do not profess to expound any theory as to the nature of mental Evolution.
Chap. iv,ii] HUMAN EVOLUTION 363
Morality, supply the soil, as it were, in which Morality grows
in the higher animals is probable : it is certain that the lowest
men are moral in a very imperfect and rudimentary sense.
Their superiority to animals consists, indeed, largely in the fact
that they possess a vastly greater capacity for moral education
than any existing race of animals. It is only in the light of
some practical purpose that there is any meaning in requiring us
to say definitely and categorically where Morality begins. With
children we shall always have to face the difficulty as best we
can. We punish infants only as we punish animals, and at
different ages we recognize different stages of ' responsibility ' or
moral capacity. Fortunately the disappearance of the * missing
links ' between mere animal and full man renders the practical
questions that arise in this connexion comparatively easy of
solution. Even among existent races it is right to recognize
their variable moral capacity. We do not give votes to
Australian Aborigines, and for many purposes they are rightly
treated as children. We may in the fullest degree assert the
rights of all existing savages to the elementary rights of
humanity to life, to some measure of liberty and of property
without denying that, had various intermediate species survived,
great difficulties might have been felt in deciding who were entitled
to be regarded as i men.' And it might well be that the answer
would have been different for different purposes. We might
quite reasonably have refused to recognize rights of property in
those to whom we still accorded the right to life : we might
have defended the enslavement of beings whom we should
rightly have protected from arbitrary massacre, and whom we
should have scrupled to eat.
Besides this plea for continuity there is little in Darwin's
famous chapter which calls for remark here. It is true that he
tends to look at Morality from a purely naturalistic point of
view, but the treatment is so slight and so popular that the
non-naturalistic aspects of Morality are rather ignored than
denied. The greatest men of Science are, as a rule, those who
know their own limitations best. The pretensions of Evolution
to give us a substitute for the old ideas of * Conscience/ authority,
moral obligation, and the like, may therefore be more conve-
364 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
niently examined in the works of the writer who has usually
been regarded as the prophet of Darwinism in the region of
Philosophy. The task is not an easy one ; for, though
Herbert Spencer claimed, as his greater predecessor did not
claim, to write Philosophy, he uses terms in so vague and
popular a sense, he is so unacquainted with the previous history
and real meaning of the ethical and metaphysical controversies
on which he touches, he shows such a profound misconception of
the theories which he criticizes, that the humblest student who
has the advantage of an elementary training in Philosophy is
apt to treat him as one would treat a writer on Geometry
who had never read Euclid (or whatever may be his modern
equivalent), or a book on Mechanics whose author showed an
ignorance of the first law of motion.
Such an estimate of Herbert Spencer would, however, be
a mistake. It is true that the Theology against which he girds
is a Theology which, even in that writer's early life in a
provincial town, could hardly have been preached even in the
pulpit or the Sunday school without qualifications and reserva-
tions which he did not take the trouble to observe. The
exaggerated ' Altruism ' which he attacks is something which no
Philosopher, Christian or other, has ever seriously taught 1 . The
exhortations about the moral duty of preserving one's health,
not going out on cold days without a great-coat, and the like
were well-recognized ethical precepts even among such very
unphilosophical characters as fill the pages of Miss Austen's
novels, though the best of them might have given a somewhat
lower place in their ethical ideal to mere Valetudinarianism.
The ' Intuitionism ' which he attacks is something which has
never been maintained, though it is undoubtedly true that
many intuitional writers have not always fairly faced even
the elementary difficulties upon which Spencer harps. It will
be unnecessary to examine elaborately this side of Spencer's
teaching. But running through these ' glimpses of the. obvious '
there are two or three ideas which deserve serious attention
1 Such Altruism was condemned even by mediaeval Councils. The pro-
position that one ought to love one's neighbour better than oneself has been
treated as a definite heresy.
Chap, iv, iii] HERBERT SPENCER 365
if only because, in more or less altered forms, they have com-
mended themselves to writers of a higher intellectual stature
than the author of the Synthetic Philosophy.
Ill
The ethical doctrine of Herbert Spencer may be said to contain
three main elements : (a) the attempt to reduce the idea of moral
authority or Tightness in general to the inherited fear of social,
regal, and divine or ancestral displeasure ; (b) the attempt to
explain by evolutionary forces, and particularly by the doctrine
of natural selection, why this idea of moral authority or right-
ness came to attach itself to particular kinds of conduct to such
an extent that the individual regards the moral rules in question
as * self-evident ' or ' a priori ' ; (c) the attempt to substitute a
* scientific ' moral criterion for the * hedonistic calculus ' of
empirical Utilitarianism. A few words must be said on each of
these.
The first point in Spencer's Ethics which it seems desirable
to notice is, then, his explanation of the idea of moral authority
in general or of the idea of duty. In so far as he refers the
idea of obligation to the inherited effect of ' sanctions ' social,
political, and religious his doctrine is of course simply the
doctrine of all sceptical Moralists from the time of Thrasymachus
to that of Mandeville, with the addition that the idea is supposed
to be impressed on the consciousness of the individual by heredity
as well as by tradition. All that has been said in previous
pages in defence of the idea that our judgements of value are
rational judgements might be repeated here as an argument
against the theory which makes the idea of duty or good into
a merely subjective, emotional susceptibility. The theory, if it
were true, is one which undermines the belief which it professes
to explain. In so far as a man comes to believe that the feeling
of awe with which he contemplates the idea of failure in duty is
due solely to the inherited terror of now powerless chiefs or of
ghosts which no longer walk the earth, that terror must tend to
vanish. We know as a matter of fact that it persists in persona
who are quite free from superstitious terrors about the dangers
of ancestral displeasure. I know that my idea of Right is not
366 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
such a merely subjective terror by immediate reflection, just as
I know that my idea of Causality or Number is not a mere
subjective tendency to expect the recurrence of sensations
resembling those which have previously associated in my
experience, or to escape the penalties which failure to repeat
the multiplication table correctly may at one time have incurred.
But the imaginary police theory is only one half of Spencer's
doctrine. It is, after all only the ' compulsiveness ' attaching to
the ordinary idea of duty which is traced to what Mandeville
would have called the ' political progeny of prejudice begat on
pride/ The idea of authority is, it would appear, something
distinct from the idea of ' compulsiveness/ and for this idea
Spencer has no strictly evolutionary justification. The idea
of duty in general is obtained by abstraction from particular
feelings which carry with them the idea of authority. What
these feelings are, may be best described in Herbert Spencer's
own words :
1 We have seen that during the progress of animate existence,
the later-evolved, more compound and more representative feel-
ings, serving to adjust the conduct to more distant and general
needs, have all along had an authority as guides superior to that
of the earlier and simpler feelings -excluding cases in which
these last are intense. This superior authority, unrecognizable
by lower types of creatures which cannot generalize, and little
recognizable by primitive men, who have but feeble powers of
generalization, has become distinctly recognized as civilization and
accompanying mental development have gone on. Accumulated
experiences have produced the consciousness that guidance by
feelings which refer to remote and general results, is usually
more conducive to welfare than guidance by feelings to be
immediately gratified. For what is the common character of the
feelings that prompt honesty, truthfulness, diligence, providence,
&<5. which men habitually find to be better prompters than the
appetites and simple impulses ? They are all complex, re-repre-
sentative feelings, occupied with the future rather than the
present. The idea of authoritativeness has therefore come to be
connected with feelings having these traits : the implication
being that the lower and simpler feelings are without authority.
And this idea of authoritativeness is one element in the abstract
consciousness of duty V
1 Data of Ethics, pp, 125-6.
Chap, iv, iii] SPENCER ON MORAL AUTHORITY 367
The main difficulty which one feels in criticizing this account
is the extreme uncertainty in which Spencer leaves us as to
what he supposes ' authority ' to mean. If he means by it any-
thing like what ordinary people mean, one has only to say that
he admits his opponent's case. The process by which we have
come to attach the idea of authority to certain acts rather than
to certain other acts is in a sense not very lucidly or con-
vincingly, it must be said on Herbert Spencer's premisses
explained. But the explanation is one which postulates the
idea of authority already in the minds of those who feel it.
For what after all is it that the course of Evolution has taught
the human race ? * That guidance by feelings which refer to
remote and general results, is usually more conducive to welfare
than guidance by feelings to be immediately gratified.' ' Con-
ducive to welfare ' but whose welfare ? If one's own, it is
clear, as is frequently admitted by Spencer, that, though an en-
lightened Ethic will recognize a moral obligation in the precepts
of Prudence, it is specially to rules of conduct which conduce to
other people's welfare that this idea of authority inherently
attaches. And what is meant by saying that ' authority '
attaches to such rules ; that we think that they ought to be
obeyed ? It is true that the authority which is ascribed to these
rules is not, according to Spencer, ultimate : it belongs to them
as means to general welfare. General welfare, then, is recognized
as something which ought to be promoted, as the rational end of
action, as possessing ultimate value. But why should we be
guided by feelings conducive to other people's welfare ? From
other parts of Spencer's writings, it would seem that the
answer would be * from sympathy.' This explanation may
possibly explain the fact that some people do actually, in a
greater or less degree, promote other people's welfare : it cannot
explain why they should feel bound to do so, whether they feel
naturally inclined to do so or not. It cannot explain why
sympathy should be regarded as a ' better guide ' than selfish-
ness which is the fact of consciousness which presumably
Spencer set out to explain. If all that Spencer means
is that this rational idea or category of Rightness has onlj
gradually developed, and that social pressure of various kinds
368 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
has been one of the conditions of its development (just as
Arithmetic was developed under pressure of commercial neces-
sities), there is nothing in his contention which any modern
Idealist would wish to deny. With regard to all Spencer's
explanations of the idea of duty in general, it is difficult to make
out whether he himself thinks that he is explaining it or
explaining it away whether the explanation is put forth as
a vindication or as a refutation of its validity.
There are, indeed, parts of Spencer's writings especially the
section of his Principles of Ethics styled Just-icein which he
would seem almost prepared to admit the simple, a priori un-
analysable character of the idea of Right. The treatment which
he there bestows on that virtue would seem to suggest that he
recognizes the rule of Justice on account of its supreme
conduciveness to pleasure, which is with him the ultimate end
as an a priori dictate of Reason. It is not easy to believe
that the following passage can really have been written by the
author of The Data of Ethics :
' But what is the ultimate meaning of expediency ? When it
is proposed to guide ourselves empirically, towards what are we
to guide ourselves ? If our course must always be determined
by the merits of the case, by what are the merits to be judged?
" By conduciveness to the welfare of society, or the good of the
community," will be the answer. It will not be replied that the
merit to be estimated means increase of misery ; it will not be
replied that it means increase of a state of indifference, sen-
sational and emotional ; and it must therefore be replied that it
means increase, of happiness 1 . By implication, if not avowedly,
greatest happiness is the thing to be achieved by public action,
or private action, or both. But now whence comes this
postulate ? Is it an inductive truth ? Then where and by
whom has the induction been drawn ? Is it a truth of
experience derived from careful observations ? Then what are
the observations, and when was there generalized that vast
mass of them on which all politics and morals should be built ?
Not only are there no such experiences, no such observations, no
such induction, but it is impossible that any should be assigned.
Even were the intuition universal, which it is not (for it has
been denied by ascetics in all ages and places, and is demurred
1 On the Logic of this argument I have commented below, p. 378.
Chap, iv, iii] SPENCERIAN JUSTICE 369
to by an existing school of moralists), it would still have no
better warrant than that of being an immediate dictum, of
consciousness V
And Spencer goes on to show that the greatest happiness
principle becomes meaningless without the addendum ' one
person's happiness ... is counted for exactly as much as
another's. 1 ' Hence the Benthamite theory of morals and
politics,' he admits, ' posits this as a fundamental self-evident
truthV
The passage is doubly inconsistent with the Spencer of the
Data, for, in the first place, in Justice the ultimate end of
conduct becomes, not as in the Data, that mere ' welfare ' in
general (no matter whose welfare it is) which the ' re-repre-
sentative feelings ' promote, but the promotion of Justice, which
is something quite other and possibly inconsistent with the pro-
motion of general welfare the rule that ' Every man is to do
what he wills, provided he infringes not the freedom of any
other man.' And secondly, it is not now mere ' feelings ' to
which ultimate moral authority attaches, but a dictate of Reason
which, we may suppose, recognizes that these feelings have
a preferential claim to respect. And this dictate of Reason
implies a distinct and analysable idea of * rightness ' or ' goodness/
for ' consciousness ' cannot tell us that it is right to be just
unless we know what ' right ' means. Such an idea of authority
cannot be distilled by any process of abstraction from ' re-
representative feelings/ unless those feelings are already invested
with this idea of authority by something which is not feel-
ing. Here the great Evolutionist appears in the light of a
rationalistic Moralist, and one feels for the moment tempted
to see in the passage the influence of some deceased and deified
ancestor whose ghost, still haunting his descendant, has com-
pelled him to do sacrifice to the idols which the Synthetic
Philosophy was, once for all, to have demolished.
But such an interpretation as I have suggested would probably
be unjust. After all, it would seem that these a priori beliefs
are , not . really a priori. They are a priori to the individual
1 Justice (Principles of Morality, Vol. II. pt. iv), pp. 57, 58.
8 Ib.
IU8HDAL& II B U
370 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
but a posteriori to the race. They are due to accumulated
experiences. But experiences of what ? The rightness or
authority of any course of action cannot be ' experienced/ At
most it would only be a belief in the conduciveness of this rule
of Justice to tribal welfare which could be experienced, and so
transmitted by inheritance and natural selection. We think
we ought to speak the truth, we know not why : but the
evolutionary philosopher is in a position to tell us that originally
our ancestors discovered that truth-speaking was conducive to
the preservation and welfare of the individual and the race, and
natural selection has killed off those individuals and those races
which were most incurably given to lying a very bold hypothesis
in view of the habits of some surviving races. This at least
is the explanation which Spencer gives of the apparently
a priori character of other axiomatic truths. The question
whether two and two make four or five was to our remote
ancestors an open question to be decided by experience ; but
from constant familiarity with cases in which two and two were
found to make four they eventually bequeathed to their posterity
a physiological incapacity for supposing they made five, so that
to us the idea that they make four has become a logical necessity
of thought. Whether Spencer himself would have attempted
to extend this doctrine as to the source of our belief in axioms
to the fundamental moral truth that it is right to promote
general welfare, and how he would have done it, it is impos-
sible to say; but on the assumption that this attempt would
have been made, a few remarks on the Spencerian theory of
axioms may not be out of place.
A full examination of the theory would evolve an elaborate
metaphysical discussion. It may be enough to point out that \f
^ajbheory which, though it holds out an attractive prospect of
reconciling the empirical with the a priori School of Metaphysics,
really undermines all our confidence in the validity of know-
ledge. Every inference that we make implies certain laws of
thought or principles of reasoning. If these laws are really no
necessities of thought but mere inherited results of accidental
experiences, it is possible that they are untrustworthy. To
t>elieve in the law of contradiction may at one time, under
Chap, iv, iii] SPENCERIAN THEORY OF AXIOMS 371
aj^articular set of circumstances, have aided our ancestors in the
struggle for existence ; as on Spencer's view, and on any possible
view, has undoubtedly been the case with many beliefs not
objectively true. The more clear-sighted thinkers who discerned
its falsity were, it is conceivable, killed off by natural selection :
while, as to ourselves, we have now become physiologically
incapable of discovering the ancestral mistake. That being so,
we are compelled to accept Spencer's theory about ethical and
other axioms (which professes to rest upon clear thinking) ; but
if belief in the law of contradiction may really be false, all the
arguments upon which Spencer's theory rests may likewise be
untrustworthy and the theory may be false after all, no matter
how little we can help believing in it. True, it is assumed that
the beliefs were engendered by accumulated experiences of
actual fact, but then these experiences were partial and local.
Our race may have originated in parts of the world in which
the law of contradiction happened to prevail, and which con-
tained no circles with segments greater than their arcs. But
the deep-sea regions revealed to modern explorers might teem
with such circles, and yet the explorers would be ex hypothebi
incapable of perceiving the fact l . Spencer's theory involves
us in hopeless scepticism, as does every theory which attempts
to account by experience for the principles of thought, which are
implied in every step of the process by which experience itself
is turned into knowledge.
A theory which leads to such results when applied to the
ultimate bases of knowledge is equally incompetent to account
for the ultimate basis of our moral beliefs. In this case no
doubt the same easy reductio ad absurdum is not possible. It
is not so easy to reduce to self-contradiction the theorist who
professes to explain away the idea of duty as the theorist who
explains away, while professing to explain, the law of contradic-
tion. For we can argue without assuming the truth of moral
principles, though we cannot argue without assuming the axioms
of thought. But we can point out that the two kinds of
axiomatic truth really rest upon the same basis. And it is, as
1 I borrow this line of argument from Professor Cook Wilson's brilliant
inaugural lecture on * Mr. Spencer's Theory of Axioms.'
B b 2
372 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
a rule, fairly easy to show that the critic who tries to explain
away moral obligation has the idea, and more or less completely
acts upon it, as much as the people whom he criticizes. Herbert
Spencer himself is constantly using the terms 'higher' and
* lower/ ' ethically higher and lower ' in a way which would be
meaningless if he really meant them in the evolutionary sense
that is to say, more ' integrated/ more differentiated, more
complex and when he argues in support of his view that
pleasure is the ultimate good or end, he shows how impossible it
is to think without implying the idea of Value, His judgement
that pleasure is the sole good is, in short, like all ultimate moral
principles, an a priori judgement of value, true or false. At
bottom it is probable that nothing was further from Herbert
Spencer's intentions than to explain away the ultimate authority
of the Moral Law. He did not see that what he offered as an
explanation and vindication of that authority must really have
the effect of undermining it.
IV
Considered as an attempt to explain the idea of validity or
self-evidencing authority attaching to our intuitions in general
and to every one of them, Spencer's theory must be treated as
part and parcel of a metaphysical system which there are good
metaphysical grounds for rejecting. But if the theory is put
forward simply as an explanation of particular 'intuitions' in
the popular sense of the word, of rules of conduct which have
actually presented themselves to particular races and individuals
as self-evidently binding, it may at once be admitted that there
may be considerable truth in it. No accumulation of experiences,
personal or ancestral, could ever generate the idea of 'good' or
' value ' in a consciousness which did not possess it : but, given
the existence of such a concept (which, of course, does not
express itself in an abstract form prior to particular judgements
of value but is implied in the simplest of them), the varying
experience, environment, and intellectual development of races
and individuals unquestionably does and must explain why the
idea of value has come to attach itself to particular kinds of
Chap, iv, iv] ETHICS AND NATURAL SELECTION 373
conduct rather than to others. It is undoubtedly true, as
Spencer has so exhaustively shown in his Principles of
Sociology a much more interesting and important work than
the Principles of Ethics that it is the necessity for military
efficiency which accounts for the high estimate placed by some
races upon such qualities as courage, endurance, and submissive-
ness to chiefs, and for their contempt for the more amiable and
the more industrial virtues, while peaceful tribes have attached
a high value to truth and a very low one to discipline or
obedience. The qualities were originally valued because they
were felt to be conducive to tribal Well-being, and afterwards
came to be valued for their own sake without any such conscious
regard to tribal Well-being. All this is undeniable, and there is
little in it that can be claimed as the monopoly of ' evolutionary
Ethics/ Essentially it is the commonplace of all pre-evolutionary
Utilitarianism, and will not now be denied by non-hedonistic
Moralists who have recognized the slow development of Morality;
though these last might insist that even very barbaric ideals of
tribal Well-being contain an element which goes beyond the
conception of a ' greatest quantum of pleasure ' for the tribe.
Only two elements in this explanation of apparently intuitive
beliefs are new. Firstly, the theory of natural selection is held
to explain how the tendency to practise and approve conduct
conducive to personal or tribal Well-being was strengthened by
the dying-out of individuals or of tribes which did not accom-
modate themselves to the socially beneficial ideal. And secondly,
there is the idea that moral beliefs have been transmitted, not
merely by education and the influence of a continuous social
environment, but also by direct inheritance.
That there is some truth in both these new ideas is not impos-
sible. It is probable that some Evolutionists are disposed
greatly to over-emphasize the influence of natural selection in
accounting for the actual history of moral ideas, especially in
the later stages of that history. If Biology now finds that it
cannot get on without the idea of ' quasi-purposive ' behaviour
in accounting for the growth of the individual organisms, still
more must quasi-purposive action be admitted, even where we
cannot think of directly and consciously purposive action, as an
374 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
important factor in social Evolution l . Still it is, no doubt, true
that Nature, in primitive stages of Evolution, has eliminated the
exceptionally cowardly and, at a later period, the phenomenally
idle and imprudent : and that in all ages Society has deliberately
eliminated some few of those whose ideals were most con-
spicuously ill-adapted for social life. Still more important has
been the influence of the struggle between tribes in promoting
the survival of those whose ideals were most fitted in early times
for conquest, and in later times for a combination of industrial
with military efficiency: though nobody has pointed out more
forcibly than Spencer himself in his eloquent diatribes
against Militarism how little the code of conduct that promotes
survival can be regarded as identical with a code of morals
possessing permanent and absolute validity.
The other distinctively ' evolutionary ' doctrine the propaga-
tion of moral ideas by inheritance involves much more difficult
and debatable questions. The scientific world has not generally
accepted Spencer's doctrine that acquired moral beliefs can
be inherited. The question is really in large measure a physio-
logical one, upon which it would ill become the layman in such
matters to dogmatize. I may perhaps be allowed to remark
that superficial observation of the facts would seem to suggest
that, while certain moral capacities or incapacities can scarcely
be separated from those physical and intellectual characteristics
which are undoubtedly inherited, it is questionable whether the
fully-developed moral belief or ' intuition ' could be transmitted
to offspring apart from the influence of education and environ-
1 * When we say that life consists of purposive action and development,
we do not mean that there is a conscious and purposive application, al
extra, of mechanical force by some independent agency. Such a conclusior
would only signify the reintroduction, under another form, of the olc
mechanical theory. We mean rather to record that we have observec
phenomena which present no analogy to the mechanical or chemical actior
on each other of independent atoms, and which do present a certain bul
very limited resemblance to the action of a number of intelligent individual!
working together to fulfil a common end.' Haldane, The Pathway to Reality
I. pp. 243, 244. The earlier chapters of Von Hartmann's Philosophy Oj
the Unconscious may be referred to for a brilliant demonstration of th(
impossibility of accounting for the instincts of animals and the quasi
instructive ideas and habits of men by natural selection alone.
Chap, iv, iv] DARWINISM AND ETHICS 375
merit. Here, as in the matter of physical habits of various kinds
in the lower animals (even those most nearly approximating to
mere ( reflexes '), what is inherited is probably a capacity for
acquiring or being taught rather than any actual moral belief.
So far the Spencerian theory has contributed an element to the
explanation of moral evolution, though it is an element which
really adds very little beyond a change of phraseology to the
accounts of ethical development which might have been given,
and were given, before the publication of the Darwinian theory \
There is a constant disposition to forget that the * straggle for
existence ' as a fact was a well-known element in human history
from the very earliest times. The originality of Darwin's theory
consisted in seeing its bearing upon the ' origin of species/ The
struggle for existence certainly does not explain the ' origin of
Morality ' in the sense in which it helps to explain the ' origin
of species/ At most it represents one of the complex forces
which go to explain the fact of moral progress. It contributes
an element to ethical history ; but does it add anything to
ethical theory ? To a very limited extent I think that it does.
It adds some shade of additional presumption to the other grounds
which may be given for assuming that a rule of conduct which
is de facto established in any society must have its origin in
some consideration of social convenience, and that its observance
must be in some way beneficial to that society. And, therefore,
when we find ourselves feeling a strong repugnance to certain
kinds of conduct, even though the repugnance be one which we
find it difficult to justify on any rational principle, it is reasonable
to assume that it probably possesses some utilitarian justification,
which should make us unwilling to act against such an instinctive
repugnance, unless we are very sure of our ground. Neither on
Spencer's principles nor on any other can it be contended that
this consideration compels us to acquiesce without question in
each and every apparently intuitive disposition to approve or to
1 The question turns to some extent upon the view that is taken of
Weissinann's theory of the non-inheritance of acquired characteristics,
upon the truth of which I express no opinion. But of course the
inheritance of acquired physical modifications does not prove the in-
heritance of acquired beliefs.
376 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
condemn any kind of conduct. For, though the instinct may
have had its justification in some supposed social utility, that
utility may have been entirely imaginary. Many of the strongest
ethical beliefs of savages are based upon the supposed connexion
between various acts and divine favour or vengeance. Some-
times, no doubt, there may be a real utility in the custom or
practice approved, although the utility may not be what the
savage himself supposes; as for instance it is possible that
the custom of Exogamy, resting upon a complex of toteinistic
ideas, has prevented the marriage of near kin and increased the
vigour of the tribe 3 . But it would be a monstrous assumption,
though it is one which some evolutionary writers go very near
to countenancing, to lay it down that this must always be the
case. Not all qualities or tendencies or inherited ' variations ' of
a species or group promote survival. A species may survive
because some of its qualities promote survival in spite of qualities
which, taken by themselves, would tend to its extinction. In
the same way it is obvious that there are many of our inherited
tendencies and traditional beliefs which have not promoted sur-
vival, or which have even tended to extinction without actually
producing it. There can never have been the slightest social
advantage in the practice of killing children who cut their lower
teeth first rather than any other children. No belief could
possibly have militated more against survival than the belief
prevalent among Australian natives that every death, not due
to obvious violence or accident, must be the result of witchcraft
and must be avenged by the death of the bewitcher 2 . The
presumption in favour of the established or transmitted belief
may, therefore, be rebutted by sufficient evidence of its inutility.
And it is fully admitted by Herbert Spencer himself that a
1 It is true that it was at first only kin on the mother's side who were for-
bidden to intermarry, but it seems probable that, as the primitive clan-system
broke down, the prohibition was extended to all kinsmen.
2 Spencer and Gillan, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 46-8.
The writers remark, i It need hardly be pointed out what a potent element
this custom has been in keeping down the numbers of the tribe.' I suppose
there might be conditions under which a limitation of numbers might help
the survival of a species in competition with other species. But this would be
no argument for the general adoption of a custom tending to such limitation.
Chap, iv, v] SPENCER'S NEW CRITERION 377
belief which once had a relative justification in real social utility
may outlive its justification. A large part of his voluminous
writings are, in fact, devoted to the demonstration, with impres-
sive if wearisome iteration, of the social inutility of the beliefs
and ideas which modern industrial societies have inherited from
societies accustomed to habitual militancy. It cannot therefore be
rational to regard these inherited ' intuitions ' as final guides to
conduct. If Evolution has supplied us with a new moral criterion,
it is not to be found in this doctrine of inherited intuitions. The
doctrine, in so far as it has a sound physiological basis, can at
most only slightly reinforce that presumption in favour of
established Morality from which the sane Moralist of any school
sets out. So far I have argued on Spencer's own hedonistic
principles. From the point of view taken up in previous
chapters, we should further have to admit that a practice or
inherited belief may promote survival, and so, ultimately, increase
of pleasure, and still not be approved by the developed moral
consciousness. To us the quality of life and of pleasure is
important and not merely its quantity. If Morality did in
a sense come into existence to promote life, it exists (as Aristotle
would say) for good life, and good life does not mean merely
pleasant life.
V
But Herbert Spencer is not content with giving a psychological
explanation either of our moral ideas in general or of particular
moral rules in detail. His writings, at least his earlier ethical
writings, represent that Evolution has actual guidance to bestow
as to what Morality ought to be now. The third and the
most characteristic feature of Spencer's ethical system is the
attempt to substitute a ' scientific ' for an ' empirical ' Utili-
tarianism to substitute an appeal to rules which the course of
Evolution has impressed upon us, and thereby proved to be
conditions of Well-being, for the direct empirical calculation of
pleasure and pain adopted by the older Utilitarians.
Sgsacer agrees with the Utilitarians in regarding pleasure
aa the ultimate end of human life. A word must be said as to
378 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
the method by which he thinks he has proved this fundamental
tenet. He habitually assumes that the only alternative to
accepting pleasure as the ultimate test of conduct is to treat
pain as the ultimate end, or else a neutral state which is neither
pleasurable nor painful. Ridiculing Carlyle's substitution of
' blessedness ' for ' pleasure/ he says :
' Obviously, the implication is that blessedness is not a kind
of happiness ; and this implication at once suggests the question
What mode of feeling is it ? If it is a state of consciousness
at all, it is necessarily one of three states painful, indifferent,
or pleasurable. Does it leave the possessor at the zero point of
sentiency ? Then it leaves him just as he would be if he had
not got it. Does it not leave him at the zero point ? Then it
must leave him below zero or above zero ! l '
It is really difficult to exhaust the logical fallacies of this
reasoning. In the first place there is the assumption that ' a
kind of happiness ' is the same thing as * happiness * ; and that,
if Carlyle had admitted that ' a kind of happiness ' is good, he
would have had to admit that all kinds of happiness (by
which of course Spencer means pleasure) are good. Secondly,
there is the assumption that there is nothing in consciousness
but feeling, and that therefore it must be some characteristic of
feeling to the total exclusion of will and thought, which must
possess intrinsic value. Thirdly, there is the assumption that
feelings have no content that they are simply pleasurable,
painful, or neutral, and nothing else so that, if ' blessedness '
were admitted to be neither pleasurable nor painful, it would
leave the possessor ' just as he would be if he had not got it.'
The same naive assumption that pleasures have no content
prevents Spencer from recognizing the possible alternative
that the Jntrinaically desirable state of consciousness might be
differentiated from others by some criterion quite other than its
pleasurableness or painfulness; so that either all the desirable
states might be pleasurable and yet not preferred simply on
account of their pleasurableness, or all might even (as a logical
possibility) be painful or neutral, and yet not preferred because
painful or neutral ; or again the line between the desirable
1 The Data of Ethics, p. 41.
Chap, iv, v] SCIENTIFIC UTILITARIANISM 379
and undesirable might wholly cut across the lines which divide
the pleasant from the neutral and the neutral from the painful,
and include some pleasurable, some painful, and some neutral
states, or states in which there entered elements of pain as well
as of pleasure. Elsewhere l he assumes that because he has
shown the difficulty or unreasonableness of denying that 'pleasure
somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inex-
pugnable element of the conception ' of a desirable state of feeling,
he has shown that pleasure is the good and the whole good, and
that there is no other good but pleasure.
Except that his method of arguing in favour of it is rather
worse than that of less * scientific ' Hedonists, Spencer's position
is so far the same as theirs. But while the ordinary Utilitarian
is contented to trust to experience his own experience, the
experience of others, the recorded experience of the race for
discovering how a maximum of pleasure is to be obtained,
Spencer believes himself to have discovered in the laws of
Evolution a scientific criterion of Morality, which will prove
not only that such and such kinds of conduct will actually cause
pleasure, but that they and no others must cause pleasure.
What this criterion is had better be stated in Spencer's own
words, lest the reader unacquainted with the Synthetic Philoso-
phy should remain unconvinced of the accuracy of my repre-
sentation :
' If we substitute for the word Pleasure the equivalent phrase
a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain
there, and if we substitute for the word Pain the equivalent
phrase a feeling which we seek to get out of consciousness and
to keep out ; we see at once that, if the states of consciousness
which a creature endeavours to maintain are the correlatives of
injurious actions, and if the states of consciousness which it
endeavours to expel are the correlatives of beneficial actions, it
must quickly disappear through persistence in the injurious and
avoidance of the beneficial. In other words, those races of
beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agree-
able or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to
the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitually-
avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly
1 Tht Data of Ethics, p. 46.
380 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
destructive of life ; and there must ever have been, other things
equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals among
races in which these adjustments of feelings to actions were the
best, tending ever to bring about perfect adjustment V
Instead, therefore, of consulting experience to find out what
rules have actually promoted happiness, we must study the laws
of human life, individual and social physiological, psychological,
sociological, and ascertain what are the conditions which have
actually promoted survival, it being assumed that whatever
produces survival will also produce a balance of pleasure. Xhese
laws being ascertained, we can feel sure that it is only by
obedience to them that further progress can be secured. The
course which calculations of Utility, Reason, common sense
might prescribe as most likely to secure happiness must, it
would appear, be resolutely set aside in favour of the principles
resulting from the study of animal and human evolution. An
exhaustive criticism of the theory would require a volume.
The following may be briefly suggested as some of its chief
difficulties:
(i) In the first place a few preliminary remarks may be made
with regard to Herbert Spencer's fundamental assumptions :
(a) The definition above given of pleasure would seem to
commit the author to the hedonistic Psychology, which is
elsewhere very decidedly repudiated. The possibility of real
Altruism, when it conflicts with Egoism, is absolutely denied if
we necessarily aim at expelling from consciousness every feeling
but those which are pleasant, and seek to retain those only which
are pleasant and in so far as they are pleasant. If sympathy
with another's pain be painful, it would follow that we must
necessarily seek to expel it from consciousness, as soon as it
appears ; and there are generally quicker ways of effecting that
expulsion than the relief of the suffering which occasions it. The
only way of escape is to say that sympathy with pain is always
pleasant, but Spencer shows no disposition to adopt such a
mode of bridging over the gulf between Altruism and Egoism.
(6) The principle here put forward is quite definitely a different
principle from that of reliance upon inherited intuitions, which
Principles of Psychology, 124, repeated in The Data of Ethics, p. 79.
Chap, iv, v] PLEASURE AND SURVIVAL 381
has already been explained and criticized. It cannot surely be
contended that the 'intuitions' of every ordinary society even
the most advanced are completely in harmony with the results
of the studies recommended by our author. Indeed, much of
Spencer's book is devoted to declamations against the ethical
code, commonly accepted on the basis of Intuition, which he
assumes to be that of his own society. When the excessive
Benevolence to which large numbers of persons feel intuitively
prompted (whether they act upon such promptings is not to the
point) comes into collision with the stern, and in the main
sensible, Charity Organization principles recommended by Spencer,
or the promptings of Loyalty with the theory of extremely limited
State-action which he supposes to result from the study of
Evolution, what principle is to arbitrate between them ? Have
we not, on Spencerian principles, as much right to say that our
intuitions represent, and must represent, the true lines of social
health, imprinted on us by natural selection, as he has to appeal
tcTThe results of his studies? As a matter of fact, Spencer
himself usually appeals to experience, private and historical, to
show that the societies which have obeyed the laws which he
recommends have been happy, and those which have disobeyed
them have been miserable. Here the appeal is after all made to
the much-decried hedonistic calculus.
(c) The alleged concomitance between tendency to survival
and pleasure is, in the extreme and absolute form given to it by
Spencer, a highly questionable doctrine. It is proved only by
his favourite logical expedient treating contrary propositions
as contradictories, and assuming that a middle is excluded when
it is not excluded. Pleasure, it is argued, must be the invariable
concomitant of beneficial actions because, if pain were their
invariable concomitant, the race would perish. It may be
observed further that even so the proposition is only made out
by the assumption that men and animals always aim at pleasure,
which in the case of men is inconsistent with Spencer's own
admission of Altruism, and in the case of animals is inconsistent
with the existence of instinct. No doubt the performance of
instinctive actions gives the animal some pleasure, but it is not
proved that they are always pleasant on the whole. Some
MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
instincts of animals, as Spencer himself has shown, lead them to
self-sacrifice : and from a purely biological point of view it may
be urged that the 'sociality* of animals their tendency to
perform instinctive actions which do not give pleasure to the
individual is quite as important a factor in determining the
survival of race or group as the instincts which give pleasure to
the individual *.
If Spencer contends that the pleasure which is necessarily the
concomitant of beneficial actions need only be the pleasure of
the race, the fact of such invariable concomitance is not proved
by the Spencerian Psychology. If an action beneficial to the
race may be performed though painful to the individual, we
cannot assume that, even if the action produced more pain than
pleasure to the race, it would cease to be performed by the
individual. It might conceivably be productive of pain to the
race, though conducive to survival 2 . Finally, to return to my
main point, the fact that a concomitance between beneficial
actions and painful ones would lead to extermination does not
prove the invariable concomitance between pleasure and bene-
ficial action. For, be it remembered, Spencer has to establish
not merely that actions which produce survival produce some
pleasure (on the whole, no doubt, with some reservations, a
probable statement), but that they produce the greatest pleasure
that is possible. Only if that is proved, can we accept the fact
that a race has survived by the observance of certain rules as
a proof that it has got in that way a maximum of possible
pleasure, and should therefore be imitated by us. It is possible
that with less survival (e. g. a smaller population or absorption
in a conquering people) there might have been more pleasure.
Or again there is the possibility that two sets of rules might
have been equally conducive to survival, but the one which was
not adopted might have produced the larger amount of pleasure.
(d) If we return once more to the individual and assume
1 Cf. Giddings, Principles of Sociology, p. 79 sq.
2 Yon Hartmann has contended that this is actually the case with the
human race as a whole, and he has certainly accumulated much evidence
which should make us hesitate to assume that survival always implies
predominance of pleasure over pain.
Chap, iv, v] SCIENTIFIC UTILITARIANISM 383
Spencer to mean that life-preserving actions are always
pleasant to the individual, we are met with the obvious cases in
which what is immediately pleasant is clearly not conducive to
survival poisons for instance. If it is said (as is pointed out
sometimes by Spencer) that the pleasure is sooner or later
followed by pain, the immediate pleasantness cannot be taken
as any proof that the action is beneficial : for, however long we
wait, the ill consequences may still lie in the future. Thus we
are thrown back upon the empirical weighing of pains against
pleasures before the Spencerian rule can yield any guidance
the very calculation which ' Scientific Utilitarianism ' was to
supersede. We cannot tell whether the taking of poison be
good for welfare or not without an appeal to experience with
all its uncertainties.
(2) If the dogma about the concomitance between pleasure
and life-preserving action is not true wholly and without
exception, or if it is true only in a sense which is nugatory, it
can hardly be fitted to supply the basis of a strictly c scientific '
criterion which is to end the painful uncertainties of the
hedonistic calculus. But let us provisionally assume its truth
and ask whether it will work.
Spencer seeks to establish an equation between the two
categories, * pleasant actions' and ' actions conducive to the
welfare of the organism.' But it is never quite apparent in
which way he means us to apply his formula. Are we first to
observe for ourselves what things are immediately pleasant, and
then to infer that these must be in accordance with the laws of
the organism? Or are we first to discover the laws of the
organism, and then assume that their observance will secure the
greatest attainable pleasure ? If the first alternative be adopted,
we have already indicated the difficulty. The doctrine, if true
at all, can only be true on the understanding that ' pleasant ' be
understood to include remote as well as immediate consequences.
And then we are reduced once more to that tedious process of
accumulating experiences of pleasant and painful effects, and
balancing the one against the other, from which the scientific
clue to Utility promised deliverance. Are we then to shut our
eyes to direct experience, to get at the general laws of the
384 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
organism, and assume that whatever is in accordance with them
will be conducive to a balance of pleasure on the whole ? The
theory can hardly be tested without recognizing a distinction
between the laws of the individual and the social organism
which in this connexion Spencer himself rarely makes. Let us
deal with the individual organism first. We are then to assume
that whatever is in accordance with the laws of the individual
organism is conducive on the whole to the pleasure of that
organism. It may, indeed, be asked how we are to ascertain
what are the laws of the organism except by interrogating
experience. It may be asked whether these * laws of the
organism ' are not very largely the result of those calculations
of pleasant and painful consequences which Spencer depre-
cates ? But let us waive that point, and assume that we have
arrived somehow at * laws of the individual organism ' which are
independent of any empirical calculation of the greater pleasant-
ness or painfulness on the whole of different courses of action.
Where are we to look for such laws? As far as I know,
Spencer has only given us one single example of an ethical
truth which results from the study of the laws of the individual
organism, but which might otherwise have escaped the rude
methods of empirical Utilitarianism. It is a law of the
organism, we are told, that any unnatural or abnormal stimula-
tion of an organ must be followed by a reaction. The stimulation
is pleasant, but the subsequent reaction must bring with it in the
long run, not merely pain, but pain (or loss of pleasure) which
outweighs the pleasure. Here then at last we have reached
a valuable practical conclusion. The mere empirical Utilitarian
might have fallen into the mistake of supposing that, because
the moderate use of wine, beer, spirits, tea, coffee, tobacco, and
snuff seems to bring with it present pleasure and apparent
gain in efficiency without any appreciable loss, or a loss
apparently compensated by its beneficial effects, such moderate
use may be permitted. But here the evolutionary Moralist,
duly trained in biological and sociological studies, steps in and
warns him of his fatal mistake. The bad effects may escape the
observation not merely of the superficial observer, but of the
scientific Physician ; yet they must be there all the same, and
Chap, iv, v] ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE ETHICS 385
must outweigh the good effects. Amid all our difficulties in
discovering the actual precepts of the new ' scientific ' Hedonism,
here there is one solid, tangible result evolutionary Ethics are
teetotal, and they condemn tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff.
But just at the moment at which we seem to have reached
a result of practical value, we are suddenly confronted with
another peculiar feature of the Spencerian system the distinc-
tion between ' absolute ' and ' relative ' Ethics. Absolute Ethics
prescribe the conduct which is conducive to life in circumstances
of perfect adaptation perfect adaptation of the individual to his
environment. Hslative Ethica deal with the conduct which is
suitable to such and such an individual in a society at a given
stage of imperfect adaptation. Nothing is absolutely right but
what promotes pleasure pure and simple without any admixture
whatever of pain. Relative Ethics often prescribe what is
really only the less of two evils. It is only a perfect society
that can observe the counsels of perfection enjoined by absolute
Ethics. A single cup of the weakest tea administered to an in-
dividual in a state of perfect health in a perfectly adapted society
dwelling in a perfectly adapted physical environment would
necessarily disturb the delicately adjusted harmony, and involve a
diminution of pleasure on the whole. But in our present state of
imperfect adaptation, when we have to breathe contaminated air,
to lead sedentary lives, to make unwholesomely exacting efforts
physical and mental, and so on, the gain may often be greater
than the loss. The Ethics adapted to our present imperfect state
positively prescribe the moderate use of all the stimulants inter-
dicted by ' scientific ' Hedonism. What then, it may be asked, ia
the use of absolute Ethics, if after all we have to depend foi
practical guidance upon relative Ethics which are just as empirical
as the much-decried 'empirical Utilitarianism ' ? Herbert Spencer'a
system of Moral Philosophy will be of use when we reach a social
millennium not till then. Nor do absolute Ethics throw a single
ray of light upon the path by which that millennium is to be
reached. I will not here examine the grounds of Spencer's
optimistic assumption that we are tending to a state of things
in which* :with complete adaptation and adjustment, absolute
Ethics will become available. Whether an adjustment so com-
EA8UPALL II C C
386 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
plete that an animal might go from birth to death without
suffering a single pang is physiologically possible, even barring
those unpreventable accidents which, it is admitted, will still
occur in Spencer's evolutionary Paradise whether birth, child-
bearing, or death, for instance, will be rendered painless by
increased ' adaptation 'may well be doubted. At all events,
such a state of things is so remote from the world that we know
that a code of Ethics appropriate to it must be completely
unavailable \
We have seen that neither of the two possible interpretations
of the Spencerian equation (pleasurable = healthful) can be got
to yield us real guidance. The truth is that Spencer himself
adopts whichever criterion happens to supply the best support
for the particular article of his own practical code on which he
is insisting for the moment a code which he has really arrived
at by methods quite unconnected with the evolutionary principles
which he recommends. When he is protesting against the
excesses of ' Altruism ' or of traditional Asceticism, we are told
that it is a mistake to look with suspicion upon the immediately
pleasant to reserve, for instance, the pleasantest mouthful to the
last because pleasure is the concomitant of healthy discharge of
function. On the other hand, when he wants to find weapons
against the short-sighted Utilitarianism which bases its ethical
or political teaching upon the human experience of a few
hundred or thousand years, we are told that this empirical
guidance by direct observation of immediate or even proximate
pleasures is worthless. However undeniable the imminediate
benefits resulting from factory inspection, free libraries, com-
pulsory education, and the like, we are merely laying up for
ourselves a harvest of social misery in the remote future, when
Evolution will be justified of her children ; and our descendants
will be punished for our disregard of laws of the social organism
only disclosed to those whose study of Sociology begins with an
investigation of the structure of the Amoeba and the strifes of
1 That social Evolution leads to increased social differentiation, and so
multiplies occasions of conflict between the tendencies of individuals and
between classes and societies, has been maintained by Simmel, and he has
much to say in defence of his thesis.
Chap, iv, vi] SPENCERIAN INDIVIDUALISM 387
the ant. It is true that, if the equation were really well
established, it would make no difference which side of it we
adopted as our working guide. But as any superiority which
the theory can possess over commonplace Utilitarianism must
lie in the fact that our judgements as to what is really pleasant
in the long run and as to what is really healthful are liable to
error, it may make a great difference in practice which side we
take as the index to the other. As to when we are to infer the
really beneficial from the apparently pleasant, and when we are
to infer the eventually pleasant from the laws of the organism,
the theory itself will supply us with no guidance.
VI
We have so far dealt mainly with the case of the individual
organism, and the physiological laws of health undoubtedly
supply the nearest approach to the kind of principles of which
the scientific Utilitarian is in search : since, though they do not
dispense us from the necessity of comparing pleasures and pains,
they do undoubtedly supply us at times with the means of
anticipating, and thereby of avoiding, pains which might not
have foretold their advent to mere empirical observation. But
what of the laws of the social organism ? There are two main
lines of thought running through Spencer's treatment of social
and political Ethics. They must be examined separately.
The^fip&ti^-tlie tendency to find a justification for Individualism
in ihe fact that among animals and men alike development has
taken place through a struggle for existence, and the resulting
survival of the fittest in accordance with the laws of natural
select/km and inheritance. Man having so far progressed through
the operation of the struggle, it is inferred that the conditions
of future survival, health, and development will be the same as
they have been in the past ; hence any conduct, individual, social,
or political, which interferes with this tendency must be bad.
And thereupon follow impressive warnings against excessive
i Altruism, misdirected charity, government interference, Socialism,
&c. A full examination of this individualistic tendency of
evolutionary Ethics in its bearing upon the question of State
interference would be only appropriate in a treatise on Politics.
oca
3 88 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
The best way of dealing with it, so far as it is necessary for
our present purpose, will be to admit Spencer's assumptions
(large and unsupported as they often are), and insist upon his
admissions. It may quite reasonably be contended that, even in
dealing with purely animal evolution, Spencer has overlooked
the importance of habits of co-operation or sociality in promoting
the survival and progress of race or group. Still, he does at
times admit that there ar traces of co-operation in animal life,
and- that these have promoted survival. And when he comes to
human history, it is conceded that the struggle has never been
an unrestricted struggle. Militancy itself which, in spite of
the evolutionary importance of 'struggle/ is Spencer's bugbear
has brought with it increased ' integration/ co-operation,
solidarity within the group ; and though the growth of Altruism
has been checked by the brutalities and cruelties inseparable
from militancy, he has shown that, with increasing industrialism,
cooperation more and more takes the place of aggression, and
conduct becomes more and more altruistic. And, though, in the
interests of Altruism itself, conduct can never cease to be largely
egoistic, the element of Altruism is increasingly predominant
and becomes increasingly compatible with and conducive to the
Well-being of Society. Moreover, not only has Altruism gained
upon Egoism, but there .has been an increasing conciliation
between Altruism and Egoism. With the progress of adaptation
men have more and more come to take pleasure in things socially
beneficial, and with improved social arrangements the welfare of
Society has required less and less voluntary self-sacrifice upon
the part of the individual, and less and less involuntary elimina-
tion of the unfit. Ultimately, there will be a complete coincidence
between the precepts of ' Altruism ' and those of ' Egoism.' At
present nothing is possible but a rough working compromise.
Such is Spencer's position. But, at what point, in the present
intermediate stage of development, is the compromise to be
fixed?
At times he would seem to argue that, because it was essential
to wolves and hyenas to struggle for food (though as a matter
of fact instinct sets decided limits to aggression on their own
species, and the ' struggle ' is not for the most part the direct,
Chap, iv, vi] THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 389
violent, and sanguinary struggle between individuals that the
word is apt to suggest), therefore there must be no interference
with such a struggle in the human species. But it is admitted that
the socially beneficial proportion between Altruism and Egoism
the proper balance between co-operation and competition is not
the same at different stages of Evolution. How then can the
study of pre-human Evolution tell us what is the proper pro-
portion between the conflicting tendencies in human society, or
the study of savage societies supply us with a clue to the solution
of modern political and social problems'? Interferences with
the struggle which were once bad may now be good. How can
we tell at what moment interference becomes bad ? Is there any
guide but empirical observation and calculation, aided by that
historical study of countries and races not too unlike our own,
which Spencer, by precept and practice, seems to regard as so
much less important than the study of the Amazulus and the
* peaceful Araf uras ' ? As we have had occasion to observe in
dealing with other ethical systems, when once an exception is
admitted to any ethical criterion, the principle upon which the
exception rests really becomes our working criterion. The
principle upon which Spencer determines when to obey his
absolute Ethics, and when to take the more obvious Utilitarian
road to his ultimate end, is really the Utilitarian principle itself.
There is no difference in principle (though, of course, there may
be wide differences in their empirical justifications) between the
protection of life and property, together with the restricted
voluntary * beneficence ' for which Spencer contends, and the
interferences advocated on utilitarian grounds by the most
advanced champions of Socialism. The real grounds of Spencer's
objection to interference by individuals or States are derived
from the experience which he believes himself to have accumu-
lated in favour of his thesis that as a rule such interference does
more harm than good. If he attaches peculiar importance to
his studies of savage history, while Utilitarians who have suffered
from the defects of an antiquated education believe themselves
to have gained more instruction from the experience of ancient
or modern civilizations, that is not a difference of principle.
No Utilitarian, no Moralist of any school (except those whose
390 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
ethical system consists in acting on the inspiration of the
moment), denies that it is desirable in choosing the means to our
ultimate ends to avail ourselves of wider inductions to check the
conclusions to which we might be led by a more limited ex-
perience. At all events it is to such calculations that Spencer
himself invariably appeals when faced with the question of the
limits to which absolute Ethics are to be pushed. Take, for
instance, the precept of Justice which assigns to each man the
exact equivalent of the work he has done. He allows that the
harsh operation of this law upon the sick, the feeble, and the
old may be tempered by a considerable amount of voluntary
beneficence. There is, so far as it is possible to gather, no
warrant for such beneficence in the code of absolute Ethics.
And yet Spencer himself allows it. Why ? Because he thinks
that, when duly restricted to cases of unavoidable misfortune,
the immediate pleasure resulting from beneficence outweighs
the indirect good which would result from following the
teaching of absolute Ethics, and allowing the unrestricted
struggle for existence to exterminate those whose extinction bj
natural law would prove them (under the conditions) unfit tc
live. It is obvious that exactly the same reasoning will justify
any amount of interference with the evolutionary struggle, and
with the laws which absolute Ethics derive from it, in all cases
where the gain to Society, on the whole, may seem to outweigh any
which may be expected to result from the unrestricted struggle.
Between Spencer's system of limited * interferences ' with the
struggle for existence and the Socialist's more extended inter-
ference there is, I repeat, no difference in principle. For the
difference between interference with a code of absolute Ethics
by the individual or a philanthropic society and interference by
the compulsory action of the State is not a difference of principle
but of detail. If the individual may rebel against absolute
Ethics when the immediate advantage of doing so seems to
outweigh the ultimate gain of obeying them, so may the State.
It is idle to say that absolute Ethics forbid compulsory philan-
thropy ; for (if we have the right to rebel against absolute Ethics
at all) we have just as much right to rebel against the pro-
hibition of compulsion as we have to rebel against the interdiction
Chap, iv, vii] SPENCER'S IDEA OF JUSTICE 391
of the beneficence itself, when once experience leads us to believe
that the result will be beneficial. To discuss this question of
State interference further would lead us too far away from the
sphere of moral into that of political Philosophy. I content
myself with remarking that the idea that * compulsion ' is
avoided by the absence of State interference is a delusion
arising from superficial insight into the meaning of words.
The workman who is compelled to accept subsistence wages
under penalty of starvation is just as much * compelled ' or
* interfered with' as if he were threatened with imprisonment
by the State. To suppose that unrestricted freedom of contract
can secure real ' equivalence ' between work done and reward
received is a belief too na'ive to require serious refutation. If
a Spencerian declares that it would do so in a completely
1 adjusted ' society, we can only once again remark on the use-
lessness of absolute Ethics for guidance in that world with
which human Morality has to deal.
VII
I have already dwelt upon the number of unreconciled first
principles which jostle one another in the Spencerian system.
In the part of his Principles of Morality styled Justice we are
introduced to a new one. Here we are presented with an a priori
principle-of-' Justice' which does. not. claim to.be the special
product of evolutionary teaching ; here it is not even suggested
that its self-evident or axiomatic character must ultimately
have been produced by accumulated experiences of its beneficial
results, though consistency might require that its origin should
be thus accounted for. To my own mind the principle that
1 every- man is free to do that which he wills, provided he
infringes not the equal freedom of any other man * ' is as self-
evidently absurd as to Herbert Spencer's it was self -evidently true.
But a proposition may no doubt be really true and really self-
evident though some people do not see it. As a criticism of
Spencer it will be more to the purpose to point out that it is
absolutely inconsistent with the line of thought last dwelt upon ;
1 Justice, p. 46. The rule (as Spencer recognized) is identical with that
formulated by Kant.
392 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
to insist that the fact of the observance of the above principle
having been the condition by which social progress has reached its
present point can hardly be alleged as establishing a binding
rule for our guidance in the future by a writer who is never
weary of complaining that it has never actually been observed,
or anything approximating to it, except among a few of the
most primitive tribes, still (it may be supposed) in the gruesome
condition of ' unstable undifferentiated homogeneity/ such as
the Pueblos and 'the amiable Ainos/ It might be open to
Spencer to contend that in proportion as nations have ap-
proximated to this ideal, they have approximated to happi-
ness, and that there has been in the course of Evolution
a progressive tendency towards such a state of non-interference.
It is doubtful whether, even during the period which lends itself
best to such a generalization, the very recent period in which
there really was some increasing approximation towards the
system of absolute non-interference by one individual with
another *, such an account of the matter would represent any-
thing but a very partial and one-sided view of social development.
It is only by arbitrarily restricting the idea of freedom to absence
of governmental interference that, even from the study of those
palmy days of individualistic Liberalism and Manchesterian
Economics in which Spencer did his thinking and formed the
opinions now stereotyped in some 6,000 pages, something like
a case can be made out for such an interpretation of social
progress.
And yet a comparative absence of State interference does not
really involve even an approximation to the idea of individual
freedom being limited solely by the like freedom in others.
It is only Spencer's failure to see that the most laissez-faire
Industrialism necessarily involves quite as much mutual inter-
ference as Militarism, though interference of a different kind,
1 Such a period as this in England may perhaps be very roughly said to
have begun in 1688 and ended with the first Factory and Education Acts,
though in the economic region the period hardly began till Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations produced a revolution in legislative methods. It is
doubtful whether any such tendency can be traced outside the United
Kingdom : elsewhere antiquated ' interferences ' have generally been
abolished only to make way for fresh interferences of another type.
Chapi iv, viii] PERFECT ADAPTATION 393
which allows him to suppose that a freedom consistent with the
like freedom for every one else can be obtained by leaving
the struggle for existence to take its course. The very exis-
tence- olXIapital, as could be demonstrated out of Spencer's own
works, involves a radical inequalitya perpetual interference
with the rule of equal freedom l : for every private appropria-
tion of the instruments of production is so much interference with
the right to Spencer the sacred a priori right of the individual
to use his labour to his own advantage. A labourer without
Capital is about as free to appropriate the value of his labour as a
lame man without crutches is free to walk. In sa far as there had
been any approximation to such equality of freedom, it has been
won by a progressive interference with that law of Nature
which, according to Spencer, requires that every individual
should be allowed to take the full advantage of his superiority.
Spencer's ideal of Justice is one which could only be carried out
^ the principle not merely of interference, but of State
interference, to the point of absolute Socialism. There is a pro-
found truth in the statement that the extremest kind of Socialism
is only Individualism run mad : it might with equal truth be
added that extreme Individualism is Socialism run mad.
VIII
One can hardly take leave of Spencer's evolutionary Ethics
without saying a word as to his optimistic assumption that
human society,. is on the way towards that state of perfect
1 adaptation ' in which absolute Ethics will become practicable,
and that that state is destined to be actually reached. The
assumption appears to rest upon the great cardinal doctrine of
the whole Synthetic Philosophy the doctrine that throughout
the history of the Universe there has been and must always be
a progress 'from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to
a definite, differentiated, coherent Jieterpgeiieity V That such
1 This was so clear to Spencer himself when he wrote Social Statics that
he at that time condemned private property in land. He did not recognize
that all capital rests upon the same principle, and that most of it has
originally grown out of that earliest form of Capitalism.
* First Principles^ p. 396.
394 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
a principle really applies not merely to the evolution of in-
organic Nature, but to the sphere of Biology and Sociology,
could only be proved by an induction based upon the whole of
our experience in each province of Science. The attempt to
prove such a conclusion in the case of human society is not
seriously attempted. How far the assertion that the physical
Universe is on the way to a state of absolutely definite, abso-
lutely differentiated, absolutely coherent heterogeneity can be
made with any truth or even with any meaning, I leave it to
Physicists to say. But, however true or valuable the assertion
may be in the physical sphere, that certainly does not prove that
it must be true in the case of either the human or the social
organism. Nor, if we were to admit the application of this
extremely abstract formula to the course of organic and social
Evolution, dQes.it seem clear that a ' definite, coherent hetero-
geneity' would necessarily imply that state of .complete adaptation
in which pain shall be absent, and in which it will even become
possible to perform those absolutely moral actions which involve
no pain to any one, but only pleasure.
No animal has yet been evolved which exhibits such a state
of perfect adaptation, and, apart from the formula itself, there
is no evidence that it ever will do so, or that what is scarcely
physiologically conceivable in the case of the human organism
will ever be true of a society. If we grant that Evolution
shows a tendency in the direction indicated, there is no reason
to believe that the tendency will necessarily reach its ideal
limit ; or that the reverse process, the ' involution ' or retro-
gressive dissolution, which is, according to Spencer, the ultimate
destiny of the Universe, may not begin long before that limit is
approached. It is impossible to say that the retrogressive ten-
dency may not have already begun. And in the absence of this
assurance that Evolution is actually tending to this ideal goal,
all reason disappears for assuming that, if we could discern the
' laws ' which social changes now exhibit, they would also be
the laws under which the human race will attain the best life
thafc.J8 possible -to it; such an assumption is unwarranted
even on Spencer's hedonistic view of the end. It is still more
unwarranted on any higher view.
Chap, iv, viii] INTERFERENCE WITH NATURE 395
Another fallacy which runs through Spencer's ethical and
political writing is the idea that the course of human history,
when it is ' left alone/ will supply us with a guide to human
action. He admits that the course of social evolution represents
a continuous predominance of purposeful action over unpur-
poseful. If the * natural ' course of things is to exclude that
part of human action which is guided by Reason, we have no
data for ascertaining what is the 'natural' course of things
in human society, since the evolution of human society has
habitually and increasingly been controlled by human Reason,
' interfering ' at every turn, in pursuit of its purposes, with
the operation of those forces by which Nature is governed in
the absence of such interference. If the ' natural ' course of
things is to include the deliberate action of self-conscious beings
in pursuit of the ends, then ' interference ' with the course of
Nature is a sheer impossibility. We are as much falling in with
the ' laws of Evolution ' when we interfere as when we abstain
from interfering. In neither case can the idea of 'following
Nature,' in the modern evolutionary form of that formula, supply
us with any guidance in conduct. It must be admitted that
Spencer has scarcely, in so many words, committed himself to
such a way of expressing his ethical criterion, but the idea
indicated by the precept ' thou shalt not interfere with Nature '
seems to underlie much of his writing. And his disciples have
not always been so circumspect.
The above criticisms are not intended as an adequate apprecia-
tion of Herbert Spencer's ethical, social, and political writings.
His treatment of social and political problems, however little
one may agree with it, is entitled to respectful consideration.
Of all his encyclopaedic writings, next to those metaphysical
portions in which there is really no Metaphysic, the least valu-
able element seems to me to be his attempted contribution to
ethical theory. His practical teaching, however little it really
flows from his evolutionary principles however much, very
often, it is opposed to what might seem logically to flow from
such principles is (if we make allowance for his too individual-
istic and rather ' bourgeois ' point of view) unexceptionable
enough ; and if it contains much less that is really new and
396 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
startling than he himself evidently supposed, he might plead
that the best ethical teaching must be largely a reassertion in
new forms of what no reflecting person denies. As to the form
of it, tastes will differ ; but there are no doubt minds to which
the accumulation of biological metaphor and physical analogy
will prove more impressive than the traditional language of
Theology, Philosophy, or common sense. And, if one is irritated
by the preaching of platitudes as if they were paradoxes, it
should be remembered that Spencer's works, though many of
them written and published quite recently, represent ideas which,
in the author's youth, though they could never have been as
shocking as it pleased him to think, were doubtless less common-
place than they have become now partly, though only a little,
through the influence of his own earlier writings. Unfortunately,
while the rest of the world was moving on, Spencer's thought
stood still, when it did not go back. With all its faults, the
Synthetic Philosophy has a considerable place in the history of
human thought, if but a small place in the history of Philosophy
strictly so called. What is denied in these pages is that it has
provided any new basis for Ethics, or that it has advanced
beyond the point of view of the old empirical Utilitarianism
which Spencer disparaged. What is best in Spencer's excellent
sermonettes on the minor Ethics consists in various illustrations
and applications of the familiar Utilitarian maxim that we should
consider the consequences of one's actions. We are not surprised
to find Spencer in the preface to the last instalment of his
Principles of Ethics confessing : ' The Doctrine of Evolution
has not furnished guidance to the extent I had hoped. Most of
the conclusions, drawn empirically, are such as right feelings,
enlightened by cultivated intelligence, have already sufficed to
establish. Beyond certain general sanctions indirectly referred
to in verification, there are only here and there, and more
especially in the closing chapters, conclusions evolutionary in
origin that are additional to, or different from, those which are
current V The value of these additions, and the logicality of
the process by which they are extracted out of the evolutionary
facts, remain then the only points of difference between Herbert
J The Principles of Ethics, Vol. II. Pref. to pts. v. and vi (1893).
Chap. iv,ix] REAL INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM 397
Spencer and his critics. Considered as a new and original
system of Ethics, the Synthetic Philosophy is a bubble which
has been pricked by the hand of its creator.
The publication of Spencer's Autobiography has thrown much
light upon the genesis of the Synthetic Philosophy. It has
shown that the ethical, social, and political ideas commonly
associated with the name of Herbert Spencer were not reached
in his own mind by any induction or deduction from biological
or sociological principles. They were fully formed in their
author's mind long before he had become a disciple of Darwin,
and were simply the result of the teaching of his uncle, the
Rev. Thomas Spencer, a distinguished Poor Law Reformer and
representative of the old Manchesterian Economics. In so far
as they were founded on experience, they were based upon his
experience of a Somersetshire village in 1834-6, and not upon
any study of the habits either of the Amoeba or the ' peaceful
Arafuras.' All the biological and sociological apparatus of the
system was simply an afterthought, an attempt to invoke the
supposed ' teaching of Science ' in support of foregone conclusions.
IX
We started with the admission that an intellectual revolution
so great as that which is associated with the name of Charles
Darwin might reasonably be expected to have some bearing
upon ethical thought. I go on then to ask what this bearing is.
Just because it is a far-reaching and penetrating difference of
intellectual tone and temper which it has introduced rather
than definite theory or dogma, the change is one which may
be pointed out in a few words.
(i) The fact that Morality has slowly evolved is no discovery
of Darwinism or of any other theory of biological * Evolution/
The Old and New Testaments, taken by themselves and read
even without the light of modern criticism, were enough to show
that men's moral ideas had not always been the same, and that
there had been a growth in them. Still less excuse was there for
any ignoring of this fact by educated men who could compare
the ethical ideas of the Bible with those of Homer and Aristotle
or with the tales of travellers about the life of savage tribes. Nor
MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
were these differences unobserved. They form the usual stock-
in-trade of the Utilitarian critics of a priori Morality in all its
forms. The Morality of static, invariable, infallible ' innate ideas '
is satirized by John Locke with much more insight and humour
than is to be found in the corresponding polemics of Spencer.
Nor did the constructive Moralists altogether ignore either the
differences or the developments of actual Morality. But it must
be admitted that they did so very inadequately. Moralists like
Butler and Kant might no doubt have pleaded that they were
only concerned with Morality in its fullest development ; but
they made scarcely any attempt to bring their doctrines into
connexion with the moral history of the world, or to grapple
with the prima facie difficulties suggested by the infinite variety
of actual moral beliefs. There can be no doubt that the
thoroughgoing application of the evolutionary idea to every
department of human history has enormously emphasized facts
which were known to, but too little regarded by, the Moralists
of an earlier generation. And this characteristic idea of our age
reached its climax in the bridging over by Darwin and Wallace
:>f the gulf which once seemed to divide the lowest of mankind
From the highest of the animals. The disappearance of special
creation theories, though from a high philosophical point of view
it may have left matters very much where they were before, has
stamped the idea of development upon the popular imagination,
Etnd (by its indirect effects) has transformed the older, or at
least the cruder, forms of Intuitionism.
(3) Darwinism has not merely reinforced the evolutionary
view of the world's history which was already making progress
both in philosophical and in general thought long before Darwin ;
it has introduced new ideas as to the way in which that
ievelopment, intellectual, moral, and physical, has taken place,
fj^e notion that the character of peoples and of individuals was
bo some extent affected by physical conditions was not indeed
aew. That idea found, indeed, its crudest and most startling
expression in the pre-Darwinian Buckle l . But it is impossible
1 This crudity waa partly due to the attempt to account by immediate
environment - especially fo^J and climate for variations of character and
ideas really due to much more slowly acting forces.
Chap, iv, ix] MORAL IDEAS HAVE EVOLVED 399
to deny that the application of the ' survival of the fittest '
dofitcine to the growth of moral ideas has emphasized in a very
startling way this dependence of character, and therefore of
moral ideas, upon historical and partly physical circumstances.
Considered simply as a history of the way in which detailed
moral beliefs have been moulded by social conditions, Spencer's
sociological work undoubtedly has its value, though much of his
Anthropology is already obsolete. But this question of origin is
not, as has been intimated, the task of Moral Philosophy proper.
All that I can attempt is to suggest the importance that the
results of such an enquiry have or may have for the Moral
Philosopher.
Although, from the metaphysical point of view presupposed
in this book, it is impossible to regard moral ideas as the mere
products of physical forces, it is undoubtedly true that the moral
development attained at any particular time and place is at
every turn^conditioned by physical facts. Education does not
1 produce ' our geometrical ideas : they are only producible in
a mind already potentially endowed with a capacity for appre-
hending them. And so with moral ideas. It would be as absurd
to talk about the ' struggle for existence ' and ' natural selection '
a8v constituting by themselves the ' origin ' of our moral ideas as
it .would be to treat the cane of the schoolmaster as being the
' origin ' of our geometrical ideas, though there may be persons
in whom these ideas would never have been developed without
that agency. Moral ideas could have developed only in beings
endowed with a capacity for Moral Reason : and the truths of
which our Moral Reason assures us are not less true because we
recognize that certain physical and biological facts and processes
have been the condition of their discovery by this or that indi-
vidual in this or that generation. Certain physical processes
are no doubt the conditions under which all mental development
takes place in the individual; but for the Idealist all such
processes are themselves ultimately spiritual, and the slow
development of the psychical concomitants in the individual
implies the previous existence of a Mind to which they arc
already present. Moral ideas are no more 'produced* 01
' generated ' by physical events than any other of the categories
400 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
of human thought. When this is recognized, there should be no
hesitation in admitting that all the biological and psychological
and sociological facts insisted upon by the evolutionary Moralists
have really been conditions of moral development. They really
do help to explain why such a virtue was developed at such
a time and place and another virtue in different circumstances,
why this aspect of Morality was emphasized in one kind of
community, and another in another, and so on. The social or
political pressure to which Spencer refers at least the element
of ^obligatoriness ' attending our moral ideas, has certainly been
a condition favouring the development of the moral ideas them-
selves, just as we recognize that the individual's sense of truth
owes much to the discipline of home or school, without being
forced to admit that the intellectual approbation and the corre-
sponding emotions which attend the speaking of truth might
with equal ease have been transferred by a contrary education
to the idea that lying was a virtue, or that, even if that were
possible 1 , it would prove that Truth is not intrinsically better
than lying. The question remains for us 'what significance
these questions of origin have for deciding the question of truth
or validity ? '
On the one hand we have seen that the doctrine of natural
selection supplies no absolute guarantee that the moral belief is
conducive to the good of the Society, even on the hedonistic
view of ' good/ still less on an ideal view. It does not supply
an absolute guarantee that the resulting rule of conduct was
socially beneficial even at the time. At the most Evolution
supplies us, as has already been said, with a slight additional
reason (in addition to our general confidence that human Reason
never adopts beliefs without some ground) for assuming that
a moral rule actually accepted by a race once possessed more or
less social justification. When it is inferred that an existing
belief still has that justification, the inference is far more pre-
carious. Yet until we can trace the history of the belief, and
1 To some extent this may have been actually done by particular systems
of education, but only at the cost of keeping back the whole moral and
intellectual development which would necessarily have resulted in a
recognition of the value of truth.
Chap, iv, ix] DARWINISM SUGGESTS CAUTION 401
explain to our satisfaction the causes to which the rule owes its
real or supposed utility, the evolutionary history of Morality
does supply us with an additional caution against tampering
with deeply-seated moral convictions. I should myself be dis-
posed to apply this caution to any attempts to tamper with the
received morality about Suicide, even when a plausible case may
be made out for supposing that some departure from it would
be for the true (and not merely the hedonistic) good of Society.
Still, so long as some accepted moral belief is unexplained, the
presumption in favour of the rule cannot be a very strong one.
It supplies a caution against rash amendment of moral rules : it
cannot forbid the amendment of a rule when we have sufficient
experience to convince us that the rule introduced by the
change will really conduce to our end, and when the end is one
about the value of which our moral Reason is clear. But the chief
advantage to be derived from the study of moral history, and of
the Darwinian contribution to moral history, is to be found, as it
seems to me, not so much in the presumption of a beneficial
tendency in unexplained and analysed ' intuitions ' as in the
assistance which it gives us in explaining the growth of some
particular moral belief, and so in determining how far the circum-
stances to which it owes its beneficial tendency are like or unlike
our own. Morality essentially consists in the promotion of a good
or ideal of life, the nature of which is discerned by our rational
judgements of value. Ifjay Reason. tells me that such and such
an end of action is good, I have a right to say that my judge-
ments of value pannot be discredited by any account of the
process by which I came to have such judgements. But, as we
have constantly had occasion to remark, the supreme authority
of Reason, and the claim that each of us possesses some share in
that Reason, do not involve the claim to personal infallibility.
All -our knowledge rests ultimately in part upon self-evident
truths, in part upon experience. And yet, both in the percep-
tions upon whish experience rests and in the intellectual' activities
by which sensation becomes perception and perception know-
ledge, th^re is at every turn room for the distortion of our
judgements by habit, tradition, prejudice, desire, passion- Even
in doing a sum of multiplication we may make mistakes, and
KABHDALI, II D d
MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
these mistakes may be psychologically explained ^y a desire to
get a particular answer (as when a boy bona fide believes that
he has done a sum correctly because he has brought out what he
already knows to be the right answer) ; or by some idiosyncracy of
fetlse association by which we may be in the habit of confusing (as
is related of an eminent Divine) eighteenpence with one and eight-
pence ; or by the lapses of that memory to which we really trust
when once the multiplicands become too big fora distinct immediate
envisagement of the process by which the result is reached. It
is only where an a priori truth is very simple and abstract
that the general trustworthiness of Reason practically prevents
the possibility of thinking that which is false, or (if we choose
to say that false thinking is no thinking) from supposing that
we are thinking when we are not. No habituation or prejudice
or desire could make a member of any nationality or party
accept the abstract proposition that a man is guilty of treason
because he is a Jew; but it is quite possible that a jury or a
court martial may actually come to believe him guilty because
they know that he is a Jew, Now we have seen that it is only
where moral truths are reducible to a purely formal shape,
dealing with an abstract distribution of good, and involving no
judgement as to the content of good, that they possess the kind of
self-evidence which belongs to the axioms of Mathematics the
self-evidence which makes it impossible for any sane man to
deny them except under the influence of a speculative opinion
which makes him distrust them just because they do seem self-
evident. The judgement ' two men's good is greater than that
of one ' possesses this degree of self-evidence * ; but directly we
attempt to assign a content to the idea of ' good/ then we enter
upon a region in which our a priori judgements, as they may
still in a sense be called, are in a peculiar degree liable to be
influenced by prejudice, desire, emotion, character. In fact, so
1 I presume that those who say that goods are not commensurable
would say that the judgement is 'insignificant, 1 since goods are incom-
mensurable. The judgement may be said to involve the larger judgement
* Whatever is good has quantity, and the axioms of quantity can be applied
to it.' The judgement * Good has quantity/ which no doubt involves
a judgement not purely formal, is a judgement about the content of ' Good,'
and a judgement which some philosophers actually deny. I should myseli
Chap, iv, ix] HISTORY CORRECTS MISTAKES 403
much is this the case that a large class at least of them actually
cannot be made at all without the presence of certain emotions.
A judgement of value is a self-evident judgement ; and, so long
as we really judge it, it is reasonable to trust to it and act upon
it, for we have nothing else to trust to. But such a judgement
may nevertheless be influenced by all the sources of error which
we have mentioned, and it is possible sometimes to detect the
source of the error. Either we may say that we are liable to
mistake our mere inherited or acquired instinct or prejudice or
desire for a real judgement of value ; or we may say that our
apparent ' intuitions ' are real judgements of value, but that they
are wrong judgements, influenced by the causes of error above
mentioned. When reflection convinces us that our judgement
was influenced by passion or prejudice, then we alter it, and
make another judgement. There is no infallible way of cor-
recting these mistakes. The errors of thinking, in this as in
other departments, can only be corrected by harder thinking.
There can be no appeal from the immediate moral judgement
to any other standard, but the reconsideration of a moral judge-
ment in the light of fresh facts may always result in its revision.
And further knowledge of the circumstances under which we or
others made our original judgements, and of the influences which
swayed us in making them, is one of the most important of the
' new facts ' which may lead to such a reversal. Now a know-
ledge of the history of moral beliefs may be a most important
influence in revising the prima facie judgements of our own
consciousness and of the society from which we have, with or
without moral reflection of our own, absorbed them. And to this
history of our moral judgements the facts and laws which have
either been taught us, or have had their significance greatly
enhanced, by Darwinism have undoubtedly contributed an
element, though an element which has (as we have seen) dis-
appointed even the protagonist of evolutionary Morality. Every
child performs this process of ethical revision on a small scale
when he learns gradually to distinguish the rules of his father's
household or the idiosyncracies of his parent's ideal from the code
be disposed to trace their mistake to prejudices of psychological origin,
usually some ' idol of the theatre. 1
D d 2
404 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
accepted by the world outside. The discovery of the difference
throws him back on his own moral judgement, and compels him
either to side with his father against the world or with the
world against his father. He may have been led to put smoking
on a level with drinking, and moderate drinking with excessive
drinking. When he discovers that the world in general thinks
otherwise, he may be compelled to find a reasonable ground for
continued belief in the parental tenets ; or, if he do not do so,
he will be driven to abandon them. In the same way, on a more
extended scale, I have no doubt that to many Scotsmen a gene-
ration ago the sinfulness of whistling on the Sabbath presented
itself as a strictly self-evident judgement self-evident at least
upon the assumption of certain facts for which it was believed
that there was a sufficient evidence in history. A further
knowledge of the process by which the Scotch Sunday was
evolved, of the way in which Sunday has been regarded at other
times and in other places, may gradually enable him to disen-
tangle the belief in the continued obligation of the Jewish
Sabbath from some idea as to the duty of worship or the value
of rest which may still commend itself to him as a self-evident
judgement of value. There is no appeal from a moral intuition,
but in the light of facts like these what seemed an intuition is
seen not to be so ; or (what is really the same thing) the intuition
which the individual's moral consciousness once possessed has
disappeared altogether.
In the foregoing instances the facts of moral history which
lead to the reversal of apparently intuitive judgements are facts
upon which the Darwinian doctrines have no bearing. But
there are some on which they may have a bearing. It is not
very easy to find good illustrations, for the most obvious cases in
which ideasmay have owedmore or less of theirapparent authority
tonaturalselection,but have partially outlived their social justifica-
tion, are ideas which were discarded long before the appearance of
the Darwinian theories. Anthropology has certainly led us to see
that the high estimate in which courage is held by modern men
is a direct inheritance from a time in which courage was the one
paramount condition of tribal survival and of social usefulness
in individuals. Courage of the military sort is certainly less
Chap, iv, ix] EVOLUTION AND COURAGE 405
useful to modern societies. In a distant future it might even
cease to be socially useful at all. In that case, upon hedonistic
grounds, one would be compelled to say that it is a quality which
might be dispensed with. From a non-hedonistic point of view,
no account of the process by which the human race became
possessed of its admiration for courage could prevent us from
saying that we still regard the capacity for facing pain or danger
as an essential quality of ideal manhood. But the discovery of
its evolutionary history may reasonably lead us to treat this
virtue as (in its ordinary forms) a very elementary one, to
recognize that the grounds on which we admire courage should
compel us to condemn various other kinds of moral turpitude as
men now condemn cowardice, and to insist that our conception of
the courage which may still claim to be in a sense the fundamental
virtue must be expanded and elevated till it includes at least
that willingness to face adverse opinion in the cause of Right
which has received the name of moral courage, even if it does
not include all kinds of defiance and endurance of pain or evil in
the cause of Right.
The evolutionary explanation of Courage may prompt us to
modify but not actually to reverse an accepted belief. Are
there any cases in which the evolutionary origin of our moral
judgements may compel an actual reversal ? It is possible that
cases in which the evolutionary explanation may at least inspire
doubt and suggest reconsideration may be found in that class
of moral intuitions which some Evolutionists explain by their
influence upon the growth of population. The smaller impor-
tance attached by modern communities to such increase has
already led to the abandonment of the rule which in many
communities actually condemned celibacy. And among our
actual moral intuitions there is probably none in which the
influence of natural selection may be more plausibly traced than
in the instinctive repugnance to the marriage of near blood-
relations. It is a peculiarly good instance because it can hardly
be supposed that the moral disapproval was originally or
exclusively due to a reflective observation of its physiological
consequences. And, though the condemnation may be owing
primarily to a horror of contact with the tabooed blood of the
406 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
maternal clan a horror closely connected with totemistic ideas l
it is possible that the influence of natural selection may have
strengthened the tendency by the elimination of families or
tribes which did not share the beliefs which prohibited the
marriage of near kin 2 . This is a case where the evolutionary
explanation, if valid, does not destroy but rather reinforces the
code of Ethics which direct experience would establish ; for the
same considerations of physiological utility which explain the
rule justify its maintenance. But, though this evolutionary
explanation cannot compel any abandonment of the rule against
intermarriage of close kin, the discovery of its true ground
may compel its rationalization. Among primitive peoples,
if it was natural selection which established the barrier
against the marriage of near kin, natural selection certainly
overshot the mark and extended the prohibition much further
than was necessary to maintain the vigour of the race. It
can hardly be pretended that the elaborate and arbitrary table
of prohibited degrees established in many tribes can ever have
had any social justification at all, except as being indirectly
connected with customs which had a social justification a useful
reminder of the truth, so often forgotten by Evolutionists, that the
survival of a modification does not prove its social utility even in the
purely biological sphere. And if the prohibition of the marriage
of kin was only secured in ancient times by codes which carried
with it the prohibition of many harmless unions and sanctioned
some harmful ones, it is conceivable that the feeling against the
marriage of the deceased wife's sister, to which the physiological
objection does not apply, may really be an instance of a moral
prejudice not based on any real social convenience or genuinely
moral consideration. A case in which it is still more conceiv-
able that the recognition of origin may tend to modify our
1 M. Durkheim (Le Prohibition de VInceste in V Annie Sociologique, 1898)
has attempted to show that the horror of incest was originally connected
with the custom of exogamy, which in turn arose from the horror of contact
with blood, especially menstrual blood, and particularly the blood of the
maternal clan, i. e. the blood of the totem-god incarnate in each member
of it.
3 The physiological ill effects of such marriages have x however, been much,
disputed.
Chap, iv, ix] ORIGIN AND VALIDITY 407
judgement as to validity is supplied by a great ethical question
on which I have already touched. It is probable that the once
strong disposition to condemn the restriction of families may be
traced either to a more or less consciously accepted theory that
everything which checked population made against tribal
efficiency, or perhaps simply to a natural disposition to accept
the usual or ' natural ' as the moral \ The probability of such
an origin may naturally weaken the authority of such a feeling
for those who think that an unlimited increase of population is
not to be desired. But the most that such theories of origin can
do, even when they are well founded, is to clear away prejudice,
and leave the question to be decided on its own merits that is to
say, mainly upon the answer we give to the question how far
a continuous increase of population is desirable and conducive to
the greatest quantity of the best and highest life. It is quite
conceivable that this may still be the case, though for different
reasons from those which made it conducive to survival in
a primitive tribe 2 .
The instances just adduced may, however, suggest an important
caution, which sets a very rigid limit to the expectation of any
very extensive practical guidance in Ethics from the study of
moral evolution. It is of paramount importance to remark that
the cause which has originally dictated a moral rule may be
very different from the causes which explain, and which justify,
its continued enforcement. Obliviousness of this fact enormously
impairs the value of Herbert Spencer's speculations on the early
history of Religion, and it is sometimes forgotten in his ethical
speculation also. It is possible (I express n* opinion) that the
1 This very powerful factor in the production of actual ethical codes has
been much emphasized by Simmel. A curious instance of its operation in
the sphere of elementary economic Justice is the fact that in primitive
societies it was not always recognized that everything could be exchanged for
everything. If you want slaves, you must buy them with guns ; if you want
ivory, you must buy it with guns and powder ; no quantity of tobacco will
buy the smallest piece of ivory, though it will buy many other things. See
an article in the Economic Review (Vol. XII, A])., 1902) on ' The Relation
of Economics to Ethnology,' by Mr. W. W. Carlile.
2 See the important articles of Mr. Sidney Webb in The Times of Oct. 9
and Oct. 16, 1906.
408 MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
worship of the Sun may, at least in this or that particular
instance, have originated in the childish mistake which took an
ancestor called ' Sun ' for the heavenly body itself. But it is
obvious, to minds not preoccupied with the desire to trace
religious ideas to some one single principle, that this belief
could hardly have imposed itself even upon the savage mind,
still less have survived among civilized races, unless it has
satisfied deeper intellectual or emotional needs than were satisfied
by ancestor worship. If a mistaken etymology may in this or
that tribe have led to the development of a deified ancestor into
a Sun-god, it was because the tribe had reached a stage of
intellectual and religious development in which a Sun-god
seemed a more proper object of worship than an ancestor. In
the same way, proof that some moral belief originated in a
mistake, an accident, in what we should regard as an immoral
tendency, or in natural selection depending on considerations of
social utility no longer applicable, is in no way inconsistent with
the belief that it has perpetuated itself, and commends itself to
us, on account of its true or objective validity. Thus it is held
by Professor Westermarck that clothes originated neither in an
innate sense of decency nor in the desire for warmth, but in the
love of ornament and particularly of immodest ornament ! . It
was the habit of wearing clothes which produced the sense of
decency, not the sense of decency which led to the use of clothes.
Modesty is thereby proved to have originated in indecency.
But the fact, if accepted, would by no means prove that, had
men never worn clothes, they would have attained to as high
a standard of thought and feeling about sexual matters
as they have actually done still less that the tone of feeling
about such matters would now be improved by the abandonment
or relaxation of the existing practice. Nor does the fact that
the primitive horror of bloodshed was partly due to ideas
connected with Totem ism and Taboo a show that an enlightened
people should abandon its prejudices against murder and man-
slaughter. The feeling against impurity before marriage may
conceivably have originated mainly in the social utility of an
1 History of Human Marriage, Ed. iii, p. 191 sq.
2 I*. R. Farnell, The Evolution of Religion, p. 125 s<j.
Chap, iv, ix] IMPORTANCE OF SELECTION 409
increased population and the due maintenance of offspring ; or
(according to another school) it may have been connected in its
origin (like the feeling against Incest) with ideas about Totemism
and Taboo, Exogamy and the maternal clan, which have long since
been abandoned ; or again, it may have resulted simply from
a transference, by association or mistaken analogy, to all extra-
matrimonial intercourse of feelings originally directed against
such intercourse within the limits of family or clan. But such
facts of moral history (if facts they be) cannot compel us to
conclude that the prohibition of such impurity should be relaxed,
on the ground that universal marriage is not now socially
necessary, or that general immorality is possible without the
appearance of illegitimate children, or that the reasons which
originally dictated the prohibition are now known to be baseless
superstitions. Our approval of a moral judgement may be
altered by the discovery of its history ; but, where it persists,
we are no more bound to distrust it than we are called upon to
give up some mathematical principle which may have originally
been discovered and valued for astrological purposes. It cannot
be too emphatically stated that the present value of modes of
conduct or modes of feeling, of emotions or likings or dislikings,
cloejs not depend upon their origin.
The evolutionary history of Ethics may then supply us with
some help chiefly negative help towards (as it were) purging
our value-judgements of irrelevant matter due to mere in-
heritance or tradition or prejudice and the like. Unfortunately
it can supply us with no absolute specific for distinguishing our
own real judgements of value from those apparent judgements
which are really explainable by merely psychological causes
still less for ensuring the absolute or objective validity of the
judgements.
There is a third way in which the Darwinian doctrine of
Evolution touches the province of Ethics through the simple
physiological doctrine that^race-maintenance requires the elimina-
tion .of the unfit and still more the prevention of that ' inverted
selection ' which promotes the survival of the unfit. Of course,
when we bring this doctrine into connexion with human and
civilized society, we must extend the idea of * fitness ' and
4 io MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
'unfitness' beyond that mere adaptation to conditions which
produces physical survival in animals. It must be so extended
as to include fitness for the kind of life which we judge to be
ethically desirable. We have seen reasons for rejecting the
crude and coarse application of the doctrine advocated by
those who would revive among us the infanticide which the
higher moral sentiment even of the Greeks condemned. Such
artificial imitation of natural selection could at most secure
physical fitness, and as even physical fitness in human beings
depends quite as much upon education as upon birth, even this
could not be effectual unless the ethics of our neo-Paganism
(unlike the older Paganism) allowed a periodic elimination to
extend much beyond the period of infancy. It is not necessary
for the present purpose to determine the difficult question how
far moral and intellectual qualities are inherited, and how far
the undoubted transmission to their offspring of the qualities
which have made parents social failures is due mainly to their
incapacity for educating their children. The success of such
work as that of Dr. Barnardo certainly seems to suggest that
comparatively little is due to inheritance and very much to
environment. But, however this may be, th^re eon -te no
doubt that legislatures and social reformers ought to endeavour
to secure that the physically, intellectually, or morally incapable
(up to a certain point of course the three kinds of incapacity are
apt to coincide) shall have less chance of leaving offspring than
the more capable, or that at all events they shall not have more
chance of doing so. This last possibility is well within the
reach of injudicious charity, private or public. We have ap-
proached to such a state of things in some places quite nearly
enough to illustrate the enormity of the social peril. How to
deal with it is one of the great practical problems of our age,
but the discussion belongs rather to social and political than to
purely ethical Philosophy. And there is the less need to insist
upon it inasmuch as the subject has been admirably dealt with
by Professor Bosanquet l . This danger may no doubt be used as
1 See his Essay on Socialism and Natural Selection in Aspects of the Social
Problem. It will be seen from the text that I donotregardthe considerations very
properly dwelt upon by Professor Bosanquet as a final refutation of Socialism.
Chap, iv, ix] COMPETITION AND SELECTION 411
a warning against the wilder forms of Socialism, and still more
against some of the wilder socialistic experiments in a non-
socialistic society. But it must be remembered that the com-
petitive regime in the form which it assumes in a modern
industrial society secures such selection to a very inadequate
extent. Failure in the economic struggle has to be so very
complete before it prevents marriage and the production of
children. It is those who have the lowest standard of comfort
who marry earliest. Any social reorganization which tends to
raise the standard of comfort tends, as far as it goes, to decrease
rather than to promote the production of unfit children. In
this way Darwinism has certainly emphasized a social law of
vast importance, which it was quite within the reach of the
most empirical observation to discover. But this is merely an
instance of the application of a new scientific discovery to a
particular ethical question. Such a contribution to ethical
doctrine is merely the kind of contribution which every scientific
discovery may incidentally make. Every new discovery, even
of some quite isolated scientific fact every improvement in
drainage, every new drug, every new economic law must obviously
modify the details of individual or social duty, and involve the
abandonment of practices or rules of action in which our fore-
fathers believed. There is no question here of any new ethical
principle or of any general improvement of ethical methods
unknown to pre-Darwinian thinkers.
We have seen then that the doctrine of Evolution in its
Darwinian form has strengthened and emphasized the already
sufficient evidence of moral evolution, and warned us against
the cruder forms of Intuitionism ; that it has supplied us with
an additional ground for a prima facie confidence in apparently
intuitive moral beliefs, while at the same time it has enforced
the necessity of asking whether such beliefs have or have not
outlived their justification. In so far as it has thrown light
upon the causes which have determined the growth of particular
moral beliefs at particular times and places, it has helped to
facilitate the process of discriminating between mere inherited
instincts and deliberate deliverances of our present moral con-
sciousness. Finally, the doctrine of survival through natural
4i a MORALITY AND EVOLUTION [Book III
selection has an important social application. Most of this
teaching springs rather from facts of moral history and laws of
social development which were quite well known before Darwin.
Here as elsewhere the distinctly Darwinian element in the
general doctrine of Evolution has played directly but a small
part in producing that general tendency of modern thought
which finds the explanation of things in a history of origins.
Yet the impetus which the epoch-making discovery of the
' origin of species ' has given to that tendency cannot be con-
sidered a small thing. That the doctrines of the evolutionary
Moralists also illustrate the erroneous modern tendency to think
that the mere study of the historical development of anything
of an institution, of a Religion, of the human mind is by itself
a sufficient explanation of it and a sufficient basis for the under-
standing of it, I have also attempted to show in the course of
this chapter l .
1 The popularity of Spencer's writings has made it desirable to examine
the claims of Evolutionary Ethics in the form which he has given to them.
Otherwise a study of Sir Leslie Stephen's Science of Ethics ( 1882) or Professor
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress (1889) might have been better worth
making. There is much in Sir Leslie Stephen's ethical writing the value
of which is quite independent of Evolution ; but in so far as there is any-
thing * evolutionary ' in his views, he differs from Spencer chiefly (i) by
omitting much that is open to criticism in Spencer, and substantially
reducing the evolutionary element to the doctrine that traditional or
inherited rules or tendencies of conduct may be presumed to have originated
(through natural selection or otherwise) in considerations of social Well-
being ; (2) substituting the very vague idea of * social health ' for pleasure
as the ethical end. Professor Alexander, whose book also contains much
excellent writing which has no particular connexion with evolutionary
theories, has attempted to apply the idea of struggle for existence, not to
societies or individuals, but to the strife between conflicting ideals. He
assumes that the ideal which has de facto survived is shown ipso facto to be
fittest for this or that particular society at this or that particular time.
Substantially, Professor Alexander's thesis is simply a revival of Hume's
doctrine that Morality is nothing but dominant public opinion in combination
with the assumption (on evolutionary grounds) that public opinion is
always right an assumption which has been incidentally criticized in the
course of this chapter. Later writers who exhibit the same tendencies seem
to have abandoned the attempt to find a new basis for Ethics in the fact or
theory of Evolution, and may be simply described as * naturalistic ' rather
than in any distinctive sense ' evolutionary ' Moralists. Had the first volume
Chap, iv, ixj EVOLUTIONARY MORALISTS 413
of Professor Westennarck's Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas come
into my hands earlier, I might more frequently have referred to it. But after
all, though it is impossible to exaggerate its interest and importance as
an historical or anthropological work, it contains nothing particularly new
in the department of ethical theory. His view of Ethics ia substantially
the Moral Sense view of Ethics, and there is nothing in the introductory
chapter devoted to ethical theory which demands any addition to, or modifica-
tion of, the treatment which I have given to the subject in my chapter on
Reason and Feeling in Book I. In spite of his great learning in all that
relates to Moral Philosophy (it may be doubted whether he has the same
acquaintance with Metaphysic), Professor Westermarck does not seem to
appreciate the existence of any form of rationalistic Ethics except the crude
Intuitionism which supposes that a consciousness without feeling or emotion,
without experience of life or experience of consequences, could lay down
a priori detailed rules of conduct which would be actually coincident with
the generally acknowledged Morality. In spite of having reduced Morality
to subjective feeling, Professor Westermarck from one end of the book to
the other constantly assumes that some one mode of moral feeling is
intrinsically truer and higher than another. His position is, in short,
that of Hume without Hume's clear consciousness of the speculative and
practical consequences of such a theory.
CHAPTER V
CASUISTRY, ITS POSSIBILITY AND LIMITATIONS
THIS work began without any formal enquiry into the scope
or character of the Science with which it deals. And by this
time the author's view of it has, it is hoped, become sufficiently
plain to make a formal discussion of the matter unnecessary.
There remain, however, some controverted questions about the
sphere and scope of Moral Philosophy which it seems desirable
to clear up. The most important of these is the question, ' What,
if any, is the practical use of Moral Philosophy ? '
Primarily, no doubt, Moral Philosophy must be looked upon
as a branch of speculative Philosophy, and therefore as not
intended to have any practical use. The justification for its
study is so far just the same as the justification for the study of
Metaphysics or the higher Mathematics. If either actual know-
ledge or the exercise of the intellectual faculties in the effort to
know is of any intrinsic value, no knowledge can have a higher
value than that knowledge of things in general of the Universe
as a whole which is the aim of Philosophy in contradistinction
to that of the special or departmental Sciences. And Moral
Philosophy, though concerned with a particular aspect of Reality,
deals with an aspect of it so fundamental and comprehensive,
that many of its problems cannot be sharply distinguished from
the problem of Reality in general ; and it therefore takes its
place by the side of Logic, Aesthetic, and Metaphysic as one of
the branches of Philosophy rather than among the special
Sciences l . But though there would be ample justification for
1 Logic, Aesthetic, and Ethic are sometimes spoken of as normative
Sciences, i. e. Sciences which set up standards, or which deal not simply
with what is, but with what ought to be. They determine the principles
upon which we distinguish between true and false, right and wrong judge-
ments about the true, the beautiful, and the good. As I have no particular
Chap, v, i] ETHICS A SPECULATIVE SCIENCE 415
the study of Moral Philosophy even though it were in the
ordinary sense of the word useless, it does not follow that it
does, as a matter of fact, serve no purpose beyond that of
satisfying the desire to know, and supplying scope for the
mental activities involved in the effort to satisfy that desire.
We do not study Astronomy merely as an aid to Navigation,
but it is a fact that Astronomy does aid Navigation. A Science
is not degraded when it is shown to be useful; and in con-
sidering the particular persons who are to study a particular
Science, and to what point they are to study it, the question of
its utility is of fundamental importance. No Science con-
tributes more to a scientific conception of Nature as a whole than
Astronomy : but (in so far as it can be distinguished from
general Physics) it has comparatively few students, because its
practical applications are smaller than those of Chemistry or
Physiology; and the only considerable class of persons who
actually study more than its elements are those who learn it not
for the general improvement of their minds, but as the theoretical
basis of the art of Navigation. It is possible then that besides
its importance in the construction of an ultimate theory of the
Universe, Moral Philosophy may have, like some special Sciences,
a practical value of its own which may constitute a reason for
its study. Nor, even when looked on from the purely speculative
point of view as a branch of Philosophy, is it necessarily useless.
It must not be assumed that the importance of speculation
itself is purely speculative. Although Metaphysic is in a sense
of all Sciences the most useless, it is in another sense the most
useful on account of its intimate connexion with questions of
vital importance to the spiritual interests of Humanity.
It may be doubted whether the tendency to emphasize the
supposed uselessness of Metaphysic, which is now somewhat in
fashion, is really conducive to the interests of the Science simply
as a Science \ While no doubt the desire for immediate edifica-
affection for the term, I do not care to discuss the objections which have
been urged against its use.
1 There are no doubt now traces of an extreme reaction against this
tendency. The present writer has no sympathy with the * Pragmatism '
which not merely denies the value of Truth but seeks to break down the
distinction between the true and the useful or the good.
416 CASUISTRY [Book III
tion the desire to get a sanction for rules of life regarded as of
practical importance or to bolster up some political or eccle-
siastical system has often interfered with the thoroughness and
honesty of philosophical enquiry (even in systems ostensibly of
the most purely speculative character), it still remains true that
the greatest steps of philosophical progress have been taken
by the men in whom the desire to find guidance for life has
been at least as prominent as the desire to satisfy a purely
intellectual curiosity. No one is really without practical in-
terests ; no one is really beyond reach of the temptation to allow
his theoretical judgement to be swayed by his social aspirations,
his inherited religious convictions, his personal likings and dis-
likings. And the interests of Truth are best served by a candid
admission of the fact. The men who have pursued Philosophy
in most ostensible detachment from all practical aims have
possibly not been the least swayed by the passions which
militate against the attainment of Truth. To be without ethical
feeling is to be anti-ethical ; to be without social feeling is really
to be anti-social ; to be without the desire to justify, or at least
to discover, a religious creed is almost invariably to adopt an
attitude of hostility to all religious creeds. The desire to find
a sure basis for aspiration and conduct is not in the least
incompatible with the desire that that basis should be a sound
one. To be indifferent to the results of enquiry is not really
a love of Truth. A strong sense of the practical importance
of Truth for purposes of life is possibly less injurious to
calmness and clearness of judgement than the love of paradox,
the childish desire to shock, or the mere parade of intellectual
force. There need be no collision between the love of Truth and
the love of Good : if good be really good, to be without the love
of it cannot be a necessary condition of intellectual sanity. Nor
is a predisposition to find some measure of Truth in the beliefs
of the past a disqualification for their impartial examination.
No man is really without desires : the idea of making the mind
a talyula rasa, in the sense of getting rid of all practical
interest in the consequences of our thinking, is an ignis fatuus
as foolish as the mystic's attempt to rid himself of desire an
aspiration which is itself a desire. Desire cannot be extin-
Chap, v, i] USES OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 417
guished : one desire can only be balanced, controlled, or in time
supplanted, by other desires. The true security for intellectual
open-mindedness is not the extinction of other desires, but the
presence in due proportion of the love of Truth, based upon the
conviction both of its essential value for its own sake, and of
a faith (for which no complete speculative justification can be
given) that in the long run it must be best even for the most
severely practical of human interests to know the truth, and
that so at the last Wisdom will be justified of her children.
This is a faith which might no doubt conceivably have to be
given up if growing knowledge failed to justify it : it is enough
to say here that in the present writer's view it represents
a presumption which the whole of our experience up to this
point in the world's history tends to confirm.
If then there is nothing unbefitting the dignity, or injurious
to the interests, of even the most speculative Philosophy in the
admission that we pursue it partly on account of its value for
life, still less is there anything injurious in such an admission
in the case of Moral Philosophy. It would be natural to suppose
that, besides its value as a branch of the speculative Science of
Reality, Moral Philosophy should have a peculiar value of its
own, inasmuch as the element which it contributes to the total
theory of Reality is that which has the most direct bearing
upon the conduct of life, whatever be the nature of that bear-
ing. Even when regarded on its more speculative side, Moral
Philosophy may reasonably claim a special practical importance
on account of the element which it contributes to Theology and
so to Religion, or to that ultimate theory of and attitude
towards the Universe at large which takes the place of Theology
and Religion from the point of view of those who do not accept
the beliefs usually covered by those terms. In this sense its prac-
tical value will hardly be questioned even by those who most
delight in exhibiting its unpractical character 1 . But Moral
1 If it should turn out, as the result of enquiry, that a theory of things in
general is not an assistance in the conduct of life, this would itself be
a conclusion of direct practical value. To get rid of illusions (for those who
on whatever ground believe that it is best to know the truth) must by itself
throw some light upon the path of life.
RASHDALL tl E 6
4i 8 CASUISTRY [Book III
Philosophy is not merely the Science of conduct in general but
of conduct in particular. If the view taken of it in these pages
be well founded, its special problem (to which all others are,
from the point of view of pure Ethics, subordinate) is to deter-
mine what it is right to do 1 . And such an enquiry might
reasonably be expected to throw some light upon the practical
questions of life.
It would be almost a contradiction in terms to assert that
a scientific enquiry into the question what it is right to do has
no bearing whatever upon the question what it is right to do.
Upon a purely sceptical theory which would deny the possi-
bility of a scientific answer to the problems which the Science
cannot but ask, such a result might no doubt be barely think-
able, though (as in the case of still more ultimate problems) even
sceptical or negative conclusions may have a very important
bearing upon life. Moral Philosophy would have some bearing
upon life even if its only verdict should be * So far as Science is
concerned, you may do just whatever you like/ or 'The best
way to do right is not to think at all about what it is right to
do/ Such a view as to the actual content of our Science is not
the one which has been taken in these pages; and from the
point of view of a constructive Moral Philosophy Ethical Science
might be clearly expected to have a more positive bearing upon
detailed problems of duty. The nature and amount of such
practical utility we have, however, yet to examine. It may
well turn out that the amount of guidance to be practically
obtained from the scientific study of Morality may be much
smaller than our view of its theoretical scope might naturally
lead us to expect. If the view of Ethics which we take is
a true one, Casuistry is undoubtedly the goal of Ethics, but it
must not be assumed that the goal is one which has yet been, or
even which is ever destined to be, fully attained 2 .
1 On the view we have taken that enquiry merges in the enquiry ' what ie
the good ? f but it is desirable to state the aim of a Science in terms of its
problem rather than of a conclusion which would not be universally admitted.
2 * So far as Ethics allows itself to give lists of virtues or even to name
constituents of the Ideal, it is indistinguishable from Casuistry. . . . Casuistry
is the goal of ethical investigation. It cannot be safely attempted at the
Chap.v,i] CASUISTRY THE GOAL OF ETHICS 419
If it is the goal of Ethics scientifically to discover what ought
to be done, it is not so much the practical utility of the Science
as its limitations which will require to be insisted upon. Priina
facie, we might expect Moral Philosophy to possess a practical
importance which, by almost universal admission, it does not
actually possess. A jwiori it might be supposed that the Science
of Life ought to be as important to right living as the Science
of Hygienics is to the production of physical health, and that
the whole lives of those who do not possess the Science them-
selves ought to be at least as completely regulated by those
who do, as it would be ideally desirable that the physical side of
life should be controlled by expert medical advice. By almost
universal admission this is far from being the case. And that
being so, my task will practically consist as much in explaining
why the Science of Morals does not possess this immense utility
as in asking what usefulness remains to it when chimerical
aspirations have been laid aside.
In so far as it succeeds in its aims, the bearing of Moral
Philosophy upon life is obvious; the usefulness of a Science
which should really enable us to pronounce with accuracy and
certainty what each one of us ought to do at every particular
moment of his life needs no demonstration. It is more neces-
sary, and more difficult, to explain why it is not likely perhaps
ever, certainly not for an indefinite period in the future to
achieve even an approximate realization of those aims. And the
first limitation to the probabilities of its practical usefulness is
constituted by the fact that its ultimate data are simply those
deliverances of the moral consciousness which the Moral Philo-
sopher shares with the rest of mankind. Its business is to
analyse the way in which we actually judge about conduct, just
as the business of Logic is to analyse the way in which we
actually think. As the Logician does not necessarily think
more logically than other men, so the Moral Philosopher does
not necessarily judge about conduct better than other men.
A trained Logician may be a very poor reasoner, and a very good
reasoner may know nothing of logical Science. So a competent
beginning of our studies, but only at the end. 1 Moore, Prindpia Ethica,
PP- 4 5-
E e 2
420 CASUISTRY [Book III
Moral Philosopher may be a bad adviser in matters of conduct,
while the best and practically wisest of men may be quite innocent
of an ethical system. This comparison of Moral Philosophy to
Logic has been made by Mr. Bradley, one of whose most violent
explosions is directed against the whole idea of Casuistry,
whether of the old priestly and authoritative or of the modern
Utilitarian sort. It is worth while therefore to ask firstly,
whether, in so far as the scope of Moral Philosophy can be
compared to that of Logic, the acceptance of the parallel neces-
sarily forbids us to look for any practical Utility in the Science,
and secondly whether the parallel is a complete one.
As this chapter is largely an examination of the view taken
by Mr. Bradley, I give the whole passage :
' There is another false science more unlovely in life and more
unpleasant in decay, from which I myself should be loath to
divide it. Just as Logic has been perverted into the art of
reasoning, so Ethics has been perverted into the art of morality.
They are twin delusions we shall consign, if we are wise, to
a common grave.
1 But I would not grudge Casuistry a Christian burial. I should
be glad to see it dead and done with on any terms ; and then, if
all the truth must be spoken, in its later years it has suffered
much wrong. That it became odious beyond parallel and in
parts most filthy, is not to be denied ; but it ill becomes the
parents of a monster, who have begotten it and nourished it, to
cry out when it follows the laws of its nature. And, if I am to
say what I think, I must express my conviction that it is not
only the Catholic priest, but it also is our utilitarian moralist,
who embraces the delusion which has borne such a progeny. If
you believe, as our Utilitarian believes, that the philosopher
should know the reason why each action is to be judged moral
or immoral ; if you believe that he at least should guide his
action reflectively by an ethical code, which provides an uni-
versal rule and canon for every possible case, and should en-
lighten his more uninitiated fellows, then it seems to me you
have wedded the mistake from which this offensive offspring has
issued. It may be true that the office of professional confessor
has made necessary a completer codification of offences, and has
joined doctrinal vagaries to ethical blunders. We may allow
that it was the lust for spiritual tyranny which choked the last
whisper of the unsanctified conscience. It may be true that, in
his effort theoretically to exhaust the possibilities of human
Chap, v, i] MR. BRADLEY ON CASUISTRY 421
depravity, the celibate priest dwelt with curious refinement on
the morbid subject of sexual transgression. But unless his
principle is wholly unsound I confess that I can hardly find
fault with his practice ; for if there is to be an art and a code of
morality, I do not see how we can narrow its scope beforehand.
The field is not limited by our dislikes, and whoever works at
the disgusting parts, is surely deserving not of blame but of
gratitude. Hence if the Utilitarian has declined to follow the
priest, he has also declined to follow his own principles ; he has
stopped short not from logical reasons but from psychological
causes V
But in the first place I should submit that Logic is not wholly
useless. Mr. Bradley has no doubt done good service by insisting
upon the impossibility of reducing all valid reasoning to the
syllogistic form. He is perhaps right even in holding that it
is for ever impossible to construct any completely adequate
Grammar (as it were) of correct reasoning any complete
enumeration of the types of inference to one or other of which
all valid arguments can be reduced. It is quite true that
primarily Logic is a speculative Science, that there is no art
of correct reasoning, and that the idea that the business of
Logic is to teach people how to argue a good or even a bad case
has led to grave misunderstandings as to the nature and content
of the Science. But all the same it may quite reasonably be
urged that Logic does in some measure help people to think
correctly. Logic is thinking about Thought : and, though people
may in practice think very well about other things without
having thought abstractly about thinking itself, and may think
very badly about other things when they have spent their lives
in thinking about Thought, it is nevertheless true to say that
ceteris paribus a man is the more likely to think well about
other things when he has bestowed some study upon the con-
ditions of valid inference, the ultimate grounds of our ordinary
and our scientific beliefs, and so on. Teachers of Physical
Science are often desirous that their pupils should go through
the discipline of elementary Logic, and find that even a very
elementary course of Logic 2 is of some practical value to
1 Principles of Logic, pp. 247- 8.
2 Mr. Bradley would probably insist that much of what is ordinarily
CASUISTRY [Book III
students of Physical Science. To have their attention called
to the ultimate grounds of all belief, to the most usual types of
conception, judgement, and inference, to the most ordinary forms
of incorrect reasoning and the most common sources of error,
has a tendency to help the student in following actual concrete
reasoning, to guard him against error in such reasoning, and
still more perhaps to aid him in distinguishing between the
various degrees of certainty, probability, and possibility with
which scientific propositions may be affirmed. No doubt it
remains true that the detailed methods of enquiry and reasoning
employed in each Science are part of the business of that
Science. Logic must follow, and cannot anticipate, the methods
of Science. Each man judges best about the matters with
which he is familiar, and the fact that to minds properly trained
in a particular Science arguments may often appeal which
strike persons unfamiliar with them as precarious enough
is not necessarily a final condemnation of such arguments.
Criticism of the methods of a Science from the outside has no
doubt a very restricted value, at least so long as the man of
Science really confines himself to the proper scope of his par-
ticular Science. But this the scientific man is not always
willing to do. He may not always estimate correctly the
degree of probability attained even by his own Science within
its proper limits. Still more often he may inadequately appre-
ciate the abstract character of its results, and the limitations
within which alone they are really applicable. When there is
a question of collision between the apparent conclusions of
different Sciences, or of the co-ordination of their results, then
logical training, and indeed philosophical training in general,
may not be without a very direct bearing even upon matters
which are usually considered to belong exclusively to the
Physical Sciences pure and simple. That some consideration of
taught under the title of elementary Logic is really very bad Logic or not
Logic at all. Such an admission would only strengthen my case. If
the Logic commonly expected in elementary Examinations were in closer
touch with the actual procedure of the scientific intellect, the results might
be better, though after all it is probably familiarity with the difficulties
and problems of Logic, rather than with any particular solution of them,
that makes Logic a good propaedeutic for Science.
Chap, v, i] CASUISTRY AND LOGIC 423
the nature of proof in general might be a useful propaedeutic
for the votaries of many other branches of knowledge besides
Physical Science is a conclusion suggested by the perusal of
critical and historical arguments both of the ultra-conservative
and of the ultra-speculative schools. I should not hesitate to
say that ceteris paribus a man who had studied Logic would be
likely to make a better theological or historical critic than one
who had not. Value of this restricted and pedagogic kind
might well be claimed for Moral Philosophy, even if we accepted
the parallel of Logic as expressing the whole truth about the
matter. But, when all is said, it must be admitted that the
value of Logic as an aid to correct reasoning is comparatively
slight and indirect: the main problem is how far the parallel
between Logic and Moral Philosophy is an exact one.
The reason why the utility of Logic for the Sciences is of this
very restricted character is that Logic can do nothing but make
abstract generalizations about the actual methods employed
in thinking about something else. It has, therefore, no object-
matter except what is common to it and all the Sciences.
It studies from a particular point of view the very thinking
by which the other Sciences are made. Moral Philosophy, on
the other hand, has a special object-matter which is not the
object-matter of the other Sciences. Its business is not with
Thought abstracted from its contents, but with a particular object
of Thought that is to say, human conduct. It is true that the
Science of Ethics has no instrument but the moral Reason and
the ordinary intellectual faculties which are common to the
scientific Moralist and the ordinary individual. But that fact is,
as far as it goes, a reason for retaining, and not for surrendering,
the expectation that the Science might prove practically useful.
It is equally true with regard to the other Sciences that their
professors only employ the same methods of thinking which
other men employ, and employ them upon matter which falls
also to some extent within the experience of ordinary men.
Each Science is the attempt to study some particular department
or aspect of human experience, but to study it more thoroughly
and systematically than ordinary men study it. Every Science
starts with the experience of common life and with the methods
424 CASUISTRY [Book III
of common life, though it ultimately reaches conclusions which
go beyond common knowledge. And that is exactly the position
of Moral Science. It aims at thinking about those matters
of conduct about which all men think to some extent, but at
thinking more thoroughly, consistently, and systematically than
most ordinary men habitually do think. It might be expected
that the result of such scientific thought would supply a better,
truer, more valid guide to conduct than the ordinary, confused,
and often self-contradictory thinking of ordinary persons in
ordinary life. It is true that Moral Philosophy deals with these
problems in general, and in a highly abstract way ; but, after all,
that is the case with all Sciences, and yet that does not prevent
their having various practical applications. It may be that the
exceptionally general and abstract character of Moral Science
as compared with the exceptional concreteness, particularity,
and complexity of practical problems will set some limits to this
usefulness. But though the Science is abstract, it is not so
abstract as Logic. Logic, as we have seen, is a thinking about
Thought in abstraction (in so far as such an abstraction can be
made) from any special object of thought. Moral Philosophy
is a thinking about an object-matter which, though a wide and
general one, is something distinguishable from the object of
Thought in general.
To this line of argument Mr. Bradley has a reply. Ethical
thinking is not ' discursive/ It is a delusion to suppose that we
can ' know the reason why each action is to be judged moral or
immoral/ or that to ' guide his action reflectively by an ethical
code ' is even an ideal to be aimed at. Such declarations may
mean a good many different things. But, if we are to follow
out the line of thought suggested by the furious diatribe against
Casuistry quoted above and by the whole tenor of his Ethical
Studies, we must suppose Mr. Bradley to mean that there is
actually no such thing as arguing or reasoning about conduct.
Consistency is not a demand of the ethical consciousness, or
of the ordinary Reason and Understanding when applied to this
particular subject-matter. Ethical judgements are simply iso-
lated, incoherent, particular, ad hoc pronouncements of an inward
oracle. No attempt to systematize or rationalize them, in the
Chap, v, i] CASUISTRY POSSIBLE 425
way in which we attempt to systematize and rationalize other
elements of crude, immediate experience, is likely to make the
resulting judgements more valid. We can never argue that,
if a certain action is right in one particular case, another course
of conduct cannot also be right in another case which resembles
the former in all relevant particulars. I cannot argue that,
if it is wrong to murder white men, it must be wrong to murder
black men, unless I can point to some difference between white
men and black men which the moral consciousness can recognize
as a ground for this differential treatment. We cannot call upon
a man who sends people to prison for stealing and yet steals
himself to admit that one part or other of his conduct must lack
ethical justification. On the contrary, to think about conduct,
it would seem to be suggested, is already the first step to moral
downfall 1 . The moral judgements of the educated and reflective
person are not more, but, if anything, less likely to be true than
those of the uneducated 2 . If this is seriously Mr. Bradley 's mean-
ing, I need not repeat the arguments against it which the first
two books of this work were largely occupied in setting forth.
I need only say that it is a view of which, in the whole course of
ethical speculation, Mr. Bradley and Bishop Butler in some of his
more irrational moments are, so far as I am aware, almost the
only supporters. I cannot, of course, seriously suppose that
Mr. Bradley intends consequences so absurd, but such would
seem to be the natural meaning of his often repeated assertions.
I will only suggest two other lines of reflection.
In the first place, Mr. Bradley is hardly likely to deny that
our particular, immediate, instinctive moral judgements are
in their actual content largely the result of custom, tradition,
extraneous influence of one kind or another. If these instinctive
judgements are not to be critically sifted and made consistent
1 Ethical Studies, p. 180.
2 I should of course admit that there are cases where ' instinct ' is more
likely to go right than reflection, but then there are as many or more cases
where * instinct ' without reflection is a cause of immoral conduct, e. g.
indiscriminate almsgiving. The reasons which explain the value of
4 instinct ' have been dwelt on partly in the chapter on the relation between
Feeling and Reason in Book I, and partly in the chapter on Authority in
Book II.
426 CASUISTRY [Book III
with themselves, and brought into connexion with a wider range
of experience than that with which each individual begins life,
not only is there an end to all prospect of moral progress, but
there is an end to all possibility of moral * autonomy/ for the
'instinctive' judgements of the average man clearly owe
much to his education. That there is a limit to the extent to
which it is desirable that each individual should attempt to
think himself clear of the traditional beliefs of his society,
I have fully admitted. But, if this criticism of moral beliefs is
never to be attempted, I fail to see how the progress which
has undoubtedly taken place in the ethical beliefs of the past
is to be accounted for ; unless Mr. Bradley should fall back
upon the somewhat startling paradox that all moral progress
has come from the actions of wicked persons who had the
presumption to question the crude and unanalysed intuitions of
themselves and their society, and by trying to be more moral
than their neighbours became ipvo facto actually less so. I can
hardly believe that a Morality entirely heteronomous could be
deliberately accepted by Mr. Bradley as his ideal, though there
are certainly passages in Mr. Bradley 's writings which seem to
point in that direction. The second criticism which I would
make upon Mr. Bradley 's attack upon Casuistry is that he entirely
fails to carry out his own principles. In a paper upon Punish-
ment l he observes that, though the Darwinian doctrine of
Evolution throws no light upon the end of moral conduct, it
may have much to say about the means : and he proceeds to
defend a system of wholesale infanticide upon similar grounds
to those which commended themselves to Plato (though appa-
rently upon a much vaster scale), reinforced by the physiological
doctrine of the necessity for selection, natural or artificial, to
keep up the efficiency of the race. The advocacy of such an
ethical revolution upon such grounds seems to imply that the
proper method of Ethics is to form a conception of the social end
which we wish to attain, and then to consider (in the light of
all available experience) by what action on our part that end is
to be reached. Such a method seems totally inconsistent with
1 ' Some Remarks on Punishment * in the International Journal of Ethics
(April, 1894),
Chap, v, ii] LIMITATIONS OF CASUISTRY 427
the doctrine of immediate and unimpeachable oracles, in each
man's breast or in the general consciousness of a given time
and place, about the details of conduct. It is true that our
ethical judgements are not discursive, if by that is meant that
our ultimate moral judgements are immediate. But because
immediate, they are not necessarily final, nor is the demand
for consistency in these judgements necessarily excluded. Where
(as is often the case with all facts of apparently immediate
experience) two particular judgements seem to contradict one
another, we feel compelled to give up or modify one or both ;
and the progressive effort to remove these contradictions leads to
the formation of a general moral ideal, however imperfectly this
ideal may reflect itself in the ' general rules ' which we necessarily
formulate a 
