Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics Part 29

He believes, as we have seen, in Disinterested impulses, but traces them to a purely self-regarding origin.

III.--He does not give any formal dissertation on Human Happiness, but indicates many of its important conditions, as in the remarks cited above, p. 702. In the chapter of the work on 'Liberty,' ent.i.tled Individuality, he ill.u.s.trates the great importance of special tastes, and urges the full right of each person to the indulgence of these in every case where they do not directly injure others. He reclaims against the social tyranny prevailing on such points as dress, personal habits, and eccentricities.

IV.--As regards the Moral Code, he would repeal the legal and moral rule that makes marriage irrevocable. He would also abolish all restraints on freedom of thought, and on Individuality of conduct, qualified as above stated.

He would impose two new moral restraints. He considers that every parent should be bound to provide a suitable education for his own children. Farther, for any one to bring into the world human beings without the means of supporting them, or, in an over-peopled country, to produce children in such number as to depress the reward of labour by compet.i.tion, he regards as serious offences.

SAMUEL BAILEY.

Mr. Samuel Bailey devotes the last four in his Third Series of 'Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind,' to the subject of the Moral Sentiments, or the feelings inspired in us by human conduct. He first sets down five facts in the human const.i.tution, in which moral phenomena originate--

1. Man is susceptible of pleasure and pain of various kinds and degrees.

2. He likes and dislikes respectively the causes of them.

3. He desires to reciprocate pleasure and pain received, when intentionally given by other sentient beings.

4. He himself expects such reciprocation from his fellows, coveting it in the one case, and shunning it in the other.

5. He feels, under certain circ.u.mstances, more or less sympathy with the pleasures and pains given to others, accompanied by a proportionate desire that those affections should be reciprocated to the givers.

These rudimentary affections, states and operations of consciousness [he is careful to note that, besides feelings, intellectual conditions and processes are involved in them] are found more or less developed in all, or nearly all the human race. In support of the limitation now made, he adduces what are given as authentic accounts of savages devoid of all grat.i.tude and fellow-feeling; and then goes on to trace the nature and development of moral sentiment from the rudimentary powers and susceptibilities mentioned, in those that do possess them. In doing so, he follows the convenient mode of speech that takes actions for the objects that excite the susceptibilities, although, in reality, the objects are no other than human beings acting in particular ways.

The feelings he supposes to be modified in manner or degree, according as actions are (1) done by ourselves to others, or (2) done to others by others, or (3) done to others by ourselves; _i.e._, according as we ourselves are the subjects, the spectators, or doers of them.

First, then, he considers our feelings in regard to actions done to us by others, and the more carefully, because these lie at the foundation of the rest. When a fellow-creature intentionally contributes to our pleasure, we feel the pleasure; we feel a liking to the person intentionally conferring it, and we feel an inclination to give him pleasure in return. The two last feelings--liking and inclination to reciprocate, const.i.tute the simplest form of moral approbation; in the contrary case, dislike and resentment give the rudimentary form of moral disapprobation. It is enough to excite the feelings, that the actions are merely _thought_ to be done by the person. They are moral sentiments, even although it could be supposed that there were no other kinds of actions in the world except actions done to ourselves; but they are moral sentiments in the purely selfish form. That, for moral sentiment, mere liking and disliking must be combined with the desire to reciprocate good and evil, appears on a comparison of our different feelings towards animate and inanimate causes of pleasure and pain; there being towards inanimate objects no desire of reciprocation. To a first objection, that the violent sentiments, arising upon actions done to ourselves, should not get the temperate designation of moral approbation and disapprobation, he replies, that such extremes as the pa.s.sions of grat.i.tude and resentment must yet be identified in their origin with our cooler feelings, when we are mere spectators or actors.

A second objection, that the epithet _moral_ is inapplicable to sentiments involving purely personal feeling, and dest.i.tute of sympathy, he answers, by remarking that the word _moral_, in philosophy, should not eulogistically be opposed to _immoral_, but should be held as neutral, and to mean 'relating to conduct, whatever that conduct may be.' He closes the first head with the observation, that in savage life the violent desire of reciprocation is best seen; generally, however, as he gives instances to show, in the form of revenge and reciprocation of evil.

In the second place, he considers our feelings when we are spectators of actions done to others by others. These form the largest cla.s.s of actions, but to us they have a meaning, for the most part at least, only as they have an a.n.a.logy to actions done to ourselves. The variety of the resulting feelings, generally less intense than when we are the subjects of the actions, is ill.u.s.trated first by supposing the persons affected to be those we love; in this case, the feelings are a.n.a.logous to those already mentioned, and they may be even more intense than when we ourselves are personally affected. If those affected are indifferent to us, our feelings are less intense, but we are still led to feel as before, from a natural sympathy with other men's pains and pleasures--always supposing the sympathy is not (as often happens) otherwise counteracted or superseded; and also from the influence of a.s.sociation, if that, too, happen not to be countervailed. Of sympathy for human beings in general, he remarks that a certain measure of civilization seems required to bring it properly out, and he cites instances to prove how much it is wanting in savages. In a third case, where the persons affected are supposed to be those we hate, we are displeased when they are made to rejoice, and pleased when they suffer, unless we are overcome by our habitual a.s.sociations with good and evil actions. Such a.s.sociations weigh least with rude and savage peoples, but even the most civilized nations disregard them in times of war.

He takes up, in the third place, actions done by ourselves to others.

Here, when the action is beneficent, the peculiarity is that an expectation of receiving good in return from our neighbours takes the place of a desire to reciprocate; we consider ourselves the proper object of grateful thoughts, &c., on the part both of receiver and of spectators. We are affected with the gratification of a benevolent desire, with self-complacency, and with undefined hopes. When we have inflicted injury, there is the expectation of evil, and a combination of feelings summed up in the word Remorse. But Remorse, like other sentiments, may fail in the absence of cultivation of mind or under special circ.u.mstances.

Having considered the three different kinds of actions separately, he next remarks that the sentiment prevailing in each case must be liable to a reflex influence from the other cases, whereby it will be strengthened or intensified; thus we come to a.s.sociate certain intensities of moral sentiment with certain kinds of action, by whomsoever or to whomsoever performed. He also notes, that in the first and third cases, as well as in the second, there is a variation of the sentiment, according as the parties affected are friends, neutrals, or enemies. Finally, a peculiar and important modification of the sentiments results from the outward manifestations of them called forth from the persons directly or indirectly affected by actions. Such are looks, gestures, tones, words, or actions, being all efforts to gratify the natural desire of reciprocating pleasure or pain. Of these the most notable are the verbal manifestations, as they are mostly irrepressible, and can alone always be resorted to. While relieving the feelings, they can also become a most powerful, as they are often the only, instrument of reward and punishment. Their power of giving to moral sentiments greater precision, and of acting upon conduct like authoritative precepts, is seen in greatest force when they proceed from, bodies of men, whether they are regarded as signs of material consequences or not. He ends this part of the subject by defending, with Butler, the place of resentment in the moral const.i.tution.

He proceeds to inquire how it is that not only the perfection of moral sentiment that would apportion more approbation and disapprobation according to the real tendencies of actions, is not attained, but men's moral feelings are not seldom in extreme contrariety with the real effects of human conduct. First, he finds that men, from partial views, or momentarily, or from caprice, may bestow their sentiments altogether at variance with the real consequences of actions. Next there is the difficulty, or even impossibility, of calculating all the consequences far and near; whence human conduct is liable to be appreciated on whimsical grounds or on no discernible grounds at all, and errors in moral sentiment arise, which it takes increased knowledge to get rid of. In the third place, it is a fact that our moral sentiments are to a very great extent derived from tradition, while the approbation and disapprobation may have originally been wrongly applied. The force of tradition he ill.u.s.trates by supposing the case of a patriarchal family, and he cannot too strongly represent its strength in overcoming or at least struggling against natural feeling. The authoritative precept of a superior may also make actions be approved or disapproved, not because they are directly perceived or even traditionally held to be beneficial or injurious, but solely because they are commanded or prohibited. Lastly, he dwells upon the influence of superst.i.tion in perverting moral sentiment, finding, however, that it operates most strongly in the way of creating false virtues and false vices and crimes.

These circ.u.mstances, explaining the want of conformity in our moral sentiments to the real tendencies of actions, he next employs to account for discrepancies in moral sentiment between different communities. Having given examples of such discrepancies, he supposes the case of two families, endowed with the rudimentary qualities mentioned at the beginning, but placed in different circ.u.mstances.

Under the influence of dissimilar physical conditions, and owing to the dissimilar personal idiosyncracies of the families, and especially of their chiefs, there will be left few points of complete a.n.a.logy between them in the first generation, and in course of time they will become two races exceedingly unlike in moral sentiment, as in other respects.

He warns strongly against making moral generalizations except under a.n.a.logous circ.u.mstances of knowledge and civilization. Most men have the rudimentary feelings, but there is no end to the variety of their intensity and direction. As a highest instance of discrepant moral sentiment, he cites the fact that, in our own country, a moral stigma is still attached to intellectual error by many people, and even by men of cultivation.

He now comes to the important question of the test or criterion that is to determine which of these diverse sentiments are right and which wrong, since they cannot all be right from the mere fact of their existence, or because they are felt by the subjects of them to be right, or believed to be in consonance with the injunctions of superiors, or to be held also by other people. The foregoing review of the _genesis_ of moral sentiments suggests a direct and simple answer.

As they arise from likings and dislikings of actions that cause, or tend to cause, pleasure and pain, the first thing is to see that the likings and dislikings are well founded. Where this does not at once appear, examination of the real effects of actions must be resorted to; and, in dubious cases, men in general, when unprejudiced, allow this to be the natural test for applying moral approbation and disapprobation.

If, indeed, the end of moral sentiment is to promote or to prevent the actions, there can be no better way of attaining that end. And, as a fact, almost all moralists virtually adopt it on occasion, though often unconsciously; the greatest happiness--principle is denounced by its opponents as a _mischievous_ doctrine.

The objection that the criterion of consequences is difficult of application, and thus devoid of practical utility, he rebuts by a.s.serting that the difficulty is not greater than in other cases. We have simply to follow effects as far as we can; and it is by its ascertainable, not by its unascertainable, consequences, that we p.r.o.nounce an action, as we p.r.o.nounce an article of food or a statute, to be good or bad. The main effects of most actions are already very well ascertained, and the consequences to human happiness, when unascertainable, are of no value. If the test were honestly applied, ethical discrepancies would tend gradually to disappear.

He starts another objection:--The happiness-test is good as far as it goes, but we also approve and disapprove of actions as they are just or generous, or the contrary, and with no reference to happiness or unhappiness. In answering this argument, he confines himself to the case of Justice. To be morally approved, a just action must in itself be peculiarly pleasant or agreeable, irrespective of its other effects, which are left out: for on no theory can pleasantness or agreeableness be dissociated from moral approbation. Now, as Happiness is but a general appellation for all the agreeable affections of our nature, and unable to exist except in the shape of some agreeable emotion or combinations of agreeable emotions; the just action that is morally commendable, as giving naturally and directly a peculiar kind of pleasure independent of any other consequences, only produces one species of those pleasant states of mind that are ranged under the genus happiness. The test of justice therefore coincides with the happiness-test. But he does not mean that we are actually affected thus, in doing just actions, nor refuse to accept justice as a criterion of actions; only in the one case he maintains that, whatever a.s.sociation may have effected, the just act must originally have been approved for the sake of its consequences, and, in the other, that justice is a criterion, because proved over and over again to be a most beneficial principle.

After remarking that the Moral Sentiments of praise and blame may enter into accidental connection with, other feelings of a distinct character, like pity, wonder, &c., he criticises the use of the word _Utility_ in Morals. He avoids the term as objectionable, because the _useful_ in common language does not mean what is directly productive of happiness, but only what is instrumental in its production, and in most cases customarily or recurrently instrumental. A blanket is of continual utility to a poor wretch through a severe winter, but the benevolent act of the donor is not termed useful, because it confers the benefit and ceases. Utility is too narrow to comprehend all the actions that deserve approbation. We want an uncompounded substantive expressing the two attributes of _conferring_ and _conducing to_ happiness; as a descriptive phrase, _producing_ happiness is as succinct as any. The term useful is, besides, a.s.sociated with the notion of what is serviceable in the affairs and objects of common life, whence the philosophical doctrine that erects utility as its banner is apt to be deemed, by the unthinking, low, mean, and derogatory to human nature and aspirations, although its real import is wholly free from such a reproach. Notwithstanding, therefore, the convenience of the term, and because the a.s.sociations connected with it are not easily eradicated, whilst most of the trite objections to the true doctrine of morals turn upon its narrow meanings, he thinks it should be as much as possible disused.

Mr. Bailey ends by remarking of the common question, whether our moral sentiments have their origin in Reason, or in a separate power called the Moral Sense, that in his view of man's sensitive and intellectual nature it is easily settled. He recognizes the feelings that have been enumerated, and, in connexion with them, intellectual processes of discerning and inferring; for which, if the Moral Sense and Reason are meant as anything more than unnecessary general expressions, they are merely fict.i.tious ent.i.ties. So, too, Conscience, whether as identified with the moral sense, or put for sensibility in regard to the moral qualities of one's own mind, is a mere personification of certain mental states. The summary of Bailey's doctrine falls within the two first heads.

I.--The Standard is the production of Happiness. [It should be remarked, however, that happiness is a wider aim than morality; although all virtue tends to produce happiness, very much that produces happiness is not virtue.]

II.--The Moral Faculty, while involving processes of discernment and inference, is mainly composed of certain sentiments, the chief being Reciprocity and Sympathy. [These are undoubtedly the largest ingredients in a mature, self-acting conscience; and the way that they contribute to the production of moral sentiment deserved to be, as it has been, well handled. The great omission in Mr. Bailey's account is the absence of the element of _authority_, which is the main instrument in imparting to us the sense of obligation.]

HERBERT SPENCER.

Mr. Spencer's ethical doctrines are, as yet, nowhere fully expressed.

They form part of the more general doctrine of Evolution which he is engaged in working out; and they are at present to be gathered only from scattered pa.s.sages. It is true that, in his first work, _Social Statics_ he presented what he then regarded as a tolerably complete view of one division of Morals. But without abandoning this view, he now regards it as inadequate--more especially in respect of its basis.

Mr. Spencer's conception of Morality as a science, is conveyed in the following pa.s.sages in a letter written by him to Mr. Mill; repudiating the t.i.tle anti-utilitarian, which Mr. Mill had applied to him:--

'The note in question greatly startled me by implicitly cla.s.sing me with Anti-utilitarians. I have never regarded myself as an Anti-utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly understood, concerns not the object to be reached by men, but the method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end.

The Expediency-Philosophy having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, a.s.sumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations.

But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly so called--the science of right conduct--has for its object to determine _how_ and _why_ certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the const.i.tution of things; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.

'Perhaps an a.n.a.logy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early stages, planetary Astronomy consisted of nothing more than acc.u.mulated observations respecting the positions and motions of the sun and planets; from which acc.u.mulated observations it came by and by to be empirically predicted, with an approach to truth, that certain of the heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the modern science of planetary Astronomy consists of deductions from the law of gravitation--deductions showing why the celestial bodies _necessarily_ occupy certain places at certain times. Now, the kind of relation which thus exists between ancient and modern Astronomy, is a.n.a.logous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the Expediency-Morality, and Moral Science properly so-called. And the objection which I have to the current Utilitarianism, is, that it recognizes no more developed form of morality--does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of Moral Science.

'To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the results of acc.u.mulated experiences of Utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of s.p.a.ce, possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly-developed nervous organizations--just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organised and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and acc.u.mulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition--certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that just as the s.p.a.ce-intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of Geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them; so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science, and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them.'

The relations between the Expediency-Morality, and Moral Science, conceived by Mr. Spencer to be, the one transitional, and the other ultimate, are further explained in the following pa.s.sage from his essay on 'Prison-Ethics':--

'Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual re-adjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social arrangements: to which end both elements of the compromise must be kept in view. If it is true that pure rect.i.tude prescribes a system of things far too good for men as they are; it is not less true that mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into utopian absurdities; expediency is indebted to absolute morality for all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is _relatively right_; it still follows that we must first consider what is _absolutely right_; since the one conception presupposes the other. That is to say, though we must ever aim to do what is best for the present times, yet we must ever bear in mind what is abstractedly best; so that the changes we make may be _towards_ it, and not _away_ from it.'

By the word _absolute_ as thus applied, Mr. Spencer does not mean to imply a right and wrong existing apart from Humanity and its relations.

Agreeing with Utilitarians in the belief that happiness is the end, and that the conduct called moral is simply the best means of attaining it, he of course does not a.s.sert that there is a morality which is absolute in the sense of being true out of relation to human existence. By absolute morality as distinguished from relative, he here means the mode of conduct which, under the conditions arising from social union, must be pursued to achieve the greatest welfare of each and all. He holds, that the laws of Life, physiologically considered, being fixed, it necessarily follows that when a number of individuals have to live in social union, which necessarily involves fixity of conditions in the shape of mutual interferences and limitations, there result certain fixed principles by which conduct must be restricted, before the greatest sum of happiness can be achieved. These principles const.i.tute what Mr. Spencer distinguishes as absolute Morality; and the absolutely moral man is the man who conforms to these principles, not by external coercion nor self-coercion, but who acts them out spontaneously.

To be fully understood, this conception must be taken along with the general theory of Evolution. Mr. Spencer argues that all things whatever are inevitably tending towards equilibrium; and that consequently the progress of mankind cannot cease until there is equilibrium between the human const.i.tution and the conditions of human existence. Or, as he argues in _First Principles_ (Second Edition, p.

512), 'The adaptation of man's nature to the conditions of his existence cannot cease until the internal forces which we know as feelings are in equilibrium with the external forces they encounter.

And the establishment of this equilibrium, is the arrival at a state of human nature and social organization, such that the individual has no desires but those which may be satisfied without exceeding his proper sphere of action, while society maintains no restraints but those which the individual voluntarily respects. The progressive extension of the liberty of citizens, and the reciprocal removal of political restrictions, are the steps by which we advance towards this state. And the ultimate abolition of all limits to the freedom of each, save those imposed by the like freedom of all, must, result from the complete equilibration between man's desires and the conduct necessitated by surrounding conditions.'

The conduct proper to such a state, which Mr. Spencer thus conceives to be the subject-matter of Moral Science, truly so-called, he proposes, in the Prospectus to his _System of Philosophy_, to treat under the following heads.

PERSONAL MORALS.--The principles of private conduct--physical, intellectual, moral, and religious--that follow from the conditions to complete individual life; or, what is the same thing, those modes of private action which must result from the eventual equilibration of internal desires and external needs.

JUSTICE.--The mutual limitation of men's actions necessitated by their co-existence as units of a society--limitations, the perfect observance of which const.i.tutes that state of equilibrium forming the goal of political progress.

NEGATIVE BENEFICENCE.--Those secondary limitations, similarly necessitated, which, though less important and not cognizable by law, are yet requisite to prevent mutual destruction of happiness in various indirect ways: in other words--those minor self-restraints dictated by what may be called pa.s.sive sympathy.

POSITIVE BENEFICENCE.--Comprehending all modes of conduct, dictated by active sympathy, which imply pleasure in giving pleasure--modes of conduct that social adaptation has induced and must render ever more general; and which, in becoming universal, must fill to the full the possible measure of human happiness.

This completes the long succession of British moralists during the three last centuries. It has been possible, and even necessary, to present them thus in an unbroken line, because the insular movement in ethical philosophy has been hardly, if at all, affected by anything done abroad. In the earlier part of the modern period, little of any kind was done in ethics by the great continental thinkers. Descartes has only a few allusions to the subject; the 'Ethica' of Spinoza is chiefly a work of speculative philosophy; Leibnitz has no systematic treatment of moral questions. The case is very different; in the new German philosophy since the time of Kant; besides Kant himself, Fichte, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and many later and contemporary thinkers having devoted a large amount of attention to practical philosophy. But unless it be Kant--and he not to any great extent--none of these has influenced the later attempts at ethical speculation amongst ourselves: nor, again with the exception of Kant, are we as yet in a position properly to deal with them. One reason, for proceeding to expound the ethical system of the founder of the later German philosophy, without regard to his successors, lies in the fact that he stood, on the practical side, in as definite a relation to the English moralists of last century, as, in his speculative philosophy, to Locke and Hume.