Morals and the Evolution of Man Part 10

Thus we find insufficient Morality in individuals, or the complete lack of it, to be at the root of all evils with which the community is afflicted, and we are justified in conceiving war, party quarrels, collisions between groups representing different interests, revolutions, in fact, all tragedies of life in societies with the suffering and destruction they entail, as the penal sanction of sins against Morality.

Morality, which was created to facilitate life for the individual or to make it at all possible for him, is no longer able to fulfil its aim, and the society finds itself by its own fault back in the condition of misery and fear, owing to which its instinct of self-preservation originally forced it to make the effort of setting up the Moral law.

Even the most merciless zealot cannot wish for a more efficacious and painful punishment of Immorality.

But Morality does not possess the sanction of punishment alone, it has also the more amiable one of reward. We have seen that by strengthening the faculty of inhibition it raises the individual to a higher level of organic development, that by the inculcation of consideration and neighbourly kindness it affords the community the possibility of working together peacefully and profitably. But it does more than that. It gives life an incomparably higher value than when it is dull and uniform, by enriching and beautifying it with heroism and with ideals.

Ideals and heroism are direct creations of Morality and inconceivable without it. The ideal is a conception of perfection; the thought of attaining it is accompanied by the most pleasurable emotions, and the individual regards it as his life's task to strive for it. The struggle for the ideal implies effort at all times, renunciation of the ease of a thoughtless and care-free existence, an endless series of difficult victories over appet.i.tes clamouring for immediate satisfaction, that is, constant work in the service of Morality. He who has an ideal is never troubled by the problem of the meaning of life. His life has an aim and significance. He knows whither he goes, why he lives, for what he works.

He knows nothing of the doubts of the aimless wanderer, of the discouraging consciousness of one's own uselessness, and his a.s.surance, his conviction that his efforts are useful and worthy come very near to happiness. Heroism is the n.o.blest victory of a thinking and volitional personality over selfishness; it is altruism which rises to self-sacrifice, the proud subjugation by Reason of the most primitive and powerful of all instincts, that of self-preservation. It is the highest achievement of which Morality is capable. It is never developed for the profit of an individual, but always for that of a community, for a thought, for an ideal. His heroic conduct raises the hero out of the rut of his existence, liberates him from the trammels of his individuality and enlarges this to represent a community, its longings, its resolutions, its determination. At the moment of his heroic action the hero lives innumerable lives, the lives of all for whom he risks his own, and if death reaches him, it can destroy only his single person, but cannot put an end to the dynamic activity of the community which is included in the hero, while he is magnificently elevated far above himself. The faculty of forming an ideal of existence and activity, and of rising to the heights of heroism, is the royal reward of Morality which the perfect subjection of animal instincts to the rule of human Reason has achieved. Its punishment for those retrograde individuals who never learn to control their instinctive reflex actions is that they are denied the sight of the glory of the ideal, that heroism is unknown and incomprehensible to them, that they lead their lives fettered and imprisoned, unconscious of any task, without prospect or exaltation, as if they dwelt in a cellar or in a dark dungeon. These are the sanctions of Morality. It has no others, nor does it need them.

In one pa.s.sage of the book cited above Guyau makes the doubting remark: "Who can tell us whether Morality is not ... at one and the same time a beautiful and useful art? Perhaps it bewitches us and deceives us." Let us a.s.sume that it is an illusion. That would not detract from its value for mankind. Is not all our knowledge of the world, is not our whole view of Nature an illusion? We are made conscious of the universe by its qualities, and these qualities are conferred on it by our senses. But all knowledge that we derive from our senses is an illusion. For the senses do not convey reality to us, but the modifications which the influence of reality produces in our sense organs. The universe has neither sound nor colour nor scent. But we perceive it as sounding, coloured and scented. These qualities we attribute to reality are illusions of our senses, but these illusions make up all the beauty of the world which without them would be dumb, blind and without charm for us.

Life for us is an unspeakably oppressive riddle. Has it an aim, and, if so, what? We do not know. All thought only leads to the conclusion: life is its own aim and end, we live for life's sake. And this conclusion is no solution of the problem. Then Morality appears, and not only makes life easier and possible, but even shows us an aim, if not for universal, at least for individual life. That aim is the humanization of the animal, the spiritualization of man, the exaltation and enrichment of the individual by means of sympathy, neighbourly kindness, a sense of joint responsibility, and the subjection of Instinct to Reason which, as far as we know, is the n.o.blest product of Nature. It is possible that Morality, which hides the eerie unintelligibility of life from us, is an illusion. Blessed be the illusion which makes life worth living.