Morals and the Evolution of Man Part 8

I have fully investigated in another book ("_Der Sinn der Geschichte_") the problem of progress in all its details. I therefore refer the reader to that for all particulars, and will here give only a summary of the main points.

Progress implies motion from one point to another. This simple concept is supplemented by others, some clear and some dim, which group themselves round it: the conception that the point towards which motion is directed signifies something better and more desirable than the one from which the motion takes place, and the a.s.sumption that the motion is due to an impulse, either inherent in the moving object or complex of objects and an essential part of it, or else impressed upon it by outside forces; further, that the impulse connotes a conscious image of the goal arrived at, recognition of its higher worth and the desire for greater perfection.

All these ideas, which are concomitants of the concept of progress, are childish anthropomorphism when applied to the universe. To define progress as motion from a worse point to a better one implies the existence of a scale whereby value may be measured. Now values are clearly determined and graded as far as human beings or any similar creatures are concerned. Worse or better means to man less or more pleasant, useful, pleasing; progress, therefore, is a development to a condition which man considers more suitable and useful for him and feels to be more harmonious and pleasanter. The universe, from this standpoint, would make progress to prepare itself for the appearance of man, to become more intelligible, habitable and comfortable for man, to please and delight him. Whether it obeys its own natural disposition or a higher intelligence, a G.o.d, in carrying out this work, in either case it would realize progress to serve mankind. But if this ceases to exist, there is no point in characterizing a development as progress in the sense of amelioration, beautification and perfection. One would then have no right to describe, for instance, the solar system with its planets as indicating progress from the original condition of nebula, because the latter in itself, apart from man and the conditions of his existence, is not better or worse, not more beautiful or uglier, not more perfect or more defective than the former; the original nebula and the solar system are equally the result of the play of the same cosmic forces, and the dynamic formula of the one is the same as that of the other. But Reason rejects as nonsensical any view which declares man to be the aim of the universe, which puts all the work of the universe at his service, and conceives it as a huge machine functioning for his advantage.

For reasons of formal logic, too, the idea of progress in the universe is unthinkable. The understanding cannot conceive of the universe as other than eternal. Now in eternity all progress, that is, all motion from a point of departure, must have reached its goal eternities ago, however slow the motion, however distant the goal. Eternity and progress are two concepts which logically exclude one another.

In the universe there can be no progress in the sense of ascent, of motion from a worse to a better thing; the only thing in the universe, in Nature, which is comprehensible to the understanding and which experience, derived from sense perceptions, can establish, is evolution, an eternal, equable motion always on the same level; and human standards of value are not applicable to its regular, successive stages. One state is merged without a break in another, the simple becomes more manifold until a maximum of complexity is reached; thereupon what is intricate gradually falls to pieces, and the complicated is dissolved and returns to the simple; then, when this point is attained, the same course begins again, and so on for all eternity. Thus evolution in the universe is an endless succession of cyclic movements from the simple to the intricate and back to the simple; with a constant alternation from one point of each single circle to the other; with the most extreme, crushing uniformity in the totality of all cycles; with absolutely equal dignity of all the phases of the endless course as they develop one from the other; with a synchronism, inconceivable to man, of all forms of evolution in numberless circles revolving side by side within the infinite whole of the universe.

But the concept of progress, which cannot be derived from the processes in the universe and has no sense when applied to them, becomes a reasonable one as soon as its validity is limited to the evolution of humanity. Here we no longer deal with conceptions of eternity and infinity. It is a question of temporal and s.p.a.cial phenomena. The existence of man had a beginning. No doubt it will have an end. It appeared on earth latest at the commencement of the Quaternary geological period, but more probably towards the end of the Tertiary period. It must necessarily disappear when the earth, owing to cold and evaporation, becomes incapable of supporting life, a state of affairs which, according to our present knowledge of natural laws, must inevitably come to pa.s.s. A few million years are allotted to it in which to fulfil its destiny, certainly a short span of time compared with the eternity of the universe, but compared with the duration of individual and national life, with personal destinies and historical occurrences, an immeasurably vast prospect. Within the limits of its genesis, its being and its disappearance, it is in a constant state of evolution. It is impossible to deny this. Comparisons between the skulls found among remains of the paleolithic age and those of our times, between the state of the undeveloped tribes of central Africa and Australia and that of the peoples of Europe and America, between the beginnings of human speech and the present-day languages, between the thought, knowledge and abilities of former generations and ours--all these prove this incontrovertibly.

The purpose of this evolution is unmistakable. It is directed towards an ever closer, ever subtler adaptation to the unalterable conditions which are imposed on men by Nature, and which they must make the best of if they are not to perish. And it is synonymous with progress; that is to say, not only with change, simple motion from one point to another, but with amelioration and improvement.

Here we may apply standards of value. The aim and object of evolution, which we know and desire, supply us with them. Here we may judge and appraise anthropomorphically. Not only may we do so, but we must, for it is a question of matters which concern mankind alone. All evolution of mankind, corporal and intellectual, the enlargement of the brain case so as to accommodate a larger brain; the development of the muscles of the larynx, palate and hand, and the accurate co-ordination of their movements, which things make clearer and more emphatic speech possible and render the hands defter; the acquisition, interpretation and storing up of experiences leading to discoveries and inventions, all are directed to the same end: to provide men with more reliable weapons in the struggle for existence; to defend them from the dangers surrounding them, the destructive forces of Nature; to render their life more secure, longer and richer; to save them from fatigue and suffering; to give them pleasurable emotions and possibilities of happiness. And as we have a clear idea of the object of our evolution, as we desire this object and continually seek to find new means whereby to reach it, we are absolutely justified in calling every movement that brings us nearer to the aim we have in view, and aspire to reach, a progressive step, and in calling every stage of evolution which realizes a biggish part of the object desired an amelioration, an improvement, an ascent.

The total amount of progress which has secured to mankind its development we sum up in the concept of civilization. The latter, however, is still far removed from ideal perfection. What we know is infinitesimally small compared with the tremendous bulk of the unknown, perhaps the unknowable, which greets our view on all sides. Our technical achievements often leave us in the lurch and indicate no way out of many difficulties. In the human being who knows and can do something, too much still remains of the stupid, helpless, untamed, primitive beast.

Nevertheless, what has been achieved is of value, and it is childish to depreciate it. Paradoxical minds, like J. J. Rousseau and his parrot-like imitators, may deny the use of all civilization and declare that the so-called state of nature, the ignorance and helplessness of undeveloped man amid all too mighty Nature, is preferable. That is an intellectual joke which is not very amusing. We have not vanquished death, but we have prolonged life, as the mortality statistics prove. We cannot cure all diseases; crowded dwellings in great cities, the nature and intensity of our occupations--civilization, in short--bring diseases from which we should probably not suffer if we were savages; but the cave-dwellers, too, were subject to illnesses, and our antisepsis and hygiene effectually prevent many and grave bodily ills. Division of labour makes the individual dependent on the whole economic organism; it makes it easier for the favoured few to exploit the many and to be parasites at their expense, but nevertheless the individual can more easily satisfy his needs than if, being completely free and independent, he alone had to provide all the objects he requires. The speed and facility with which the exchange of goods is effected, thanks to ever new and ever more excellent means of communication, often give rise to artificial wants; cheap travel occasions useless restlessness, but the emanc.i.p.ation of the individual from the place of his birth, the conversion of the whole globe into one single economic domain, of which every part with its own particular superabundance of men and products supplies the lack of the same in other parts, has at least this invaluable advantage, that it makes man more independent of local hazards and makes the earth more habitable for him. Many things provided by civilization are obtainable only by the rich, and the spectacle of the luxury of these favoured mortals makes the lot of the poor harder to bear, but the possibility of working one's way up into the ranks of the fortunate is a mighty spur to strong characters, and gives rise to efforts which are profitable to many. All the great technical achievements of civilization can certainly not bring happiness either to the individual or to the community, because happiness is a spiritual state which does not depend on bodily satisfactions and, though it may be troubled by material conditions, can never be created by them; but the moments of happiness which the individual experiences derive an extraordinary intensity from the instruments of civilization which surround and serve us.

Certainly civilization has its bad points, and it requires no great cleverness to discover them, to point them out and to exaggerate them.

Certainly many of its most boasted, supposed benefits are not really a blessing, but either merely imaginary or else unimportant--little, superfluous things which may be pleasant, but lacking which we can live without great deprivation, and for which we undoubtedly pay far too dearly. But, on the whole, it is a mighty achievement of man's struggling intellect, an invaluable improvement of the lot of man, and if anyone denies this he forfeits any claim to serious refutation.

Rousseau's state of nature may be a very pleasant change for a summer holiday, but every man of sound common sense would decline it as a permanent abode.

We may therefore freely concede the fact of progress in civilization in so far as the latter implies greater safety, facility, order and equability of life, deeper and more widely diffused knowledge and more perfect adaptation of man to the natural conditions in which he finds himself. For it is no reservation to note in the course of evolution both individual deviations from the path which leads to the goal of civilization, the amelioration of the const.i.tution of mankind, and occasional relapses into bygone barbarisms. To make use of Gumplowicz's expression, it is not an acrochronic and acrotopic illusion (that is, a form of self-deception which consists in thinking the time when one lives and the place where one lives the best of all times and the most wonderful of all places) if we place the present far above all past ages and declare our civilization to be incomparably richer and more perfect than anything that has preceded it. The _laudator acti_, the cross-grained Nestor who praises the past at the expense of the present, the enthusiast for "the good old times," is a figure that has always been familiar. But it proves nothing. This tender love of the past is not the outcome of objective comparison and consideration, but an impulse of subjective psychology. It is simply the emotion and longing which fill an old man's heart when he looks back on his youth. He remembers the pleasurable emotions which once accompanied all his impressions and which are now unknown to his worn-out organism, and he thinks the world was better because he found more joy in it. The aged man is convinced that in his youth the sky was bluer, the rose more odorous, the women more beautiful than now, but an impartial observer would pityingly shake his head at this.

But can the progress, which cannot reasonably be denied in civilization, also be traced in Morality? Philosophers who are by no means negligible have roundly replied in the negative. Buckle declares uncompromisingly that the only progress possible to man is intellectual, and by this he means that mankind grows in knowledge, foresight and clarity of thought, but not at the same time in Morality, which, according to him, differs from the intellect and understanding and is not included in them.

Buckle's unfavourable judgment has been turned into a formula which has often been repeated. Scientifically, technically, we progress; morally we stand still or slip back; the two orders of development move neither in the same direction nor with the same speed. That is a view that is widely held. Fr. Bouillier comes to the same conclusion as Buckle, though from different considerations. He a.s.serts that "a savage who obeys his conscience, however ignorant this may be, can be as virtuous as a Socrates or an Aristides; one can even go so far as to defend the view that social progress instead of strengthening individual morality weakens it, for society, in proportion as it is better ordered, saves the individual the trouble of a great many virtuous actions."

However, there are other moralists who take the opposite view.

Shaftesbury cannot imagine a moral system in which there is no place for the idea of constant progress, of continuous improvement. The great Frenchmen of the eighteenth century are convinced of the moral rise of humanity. "The ma.s.s of mankind," says Turgot, "advances constantly towards an ever-growing perfection," and elsewhere: "Men taught by experience grow in ever greater measure and in a better sense humane."

Condorcet defends no less emphatically the view that the faculty of growing more perfect is inherent in man. This is a case of pessimism and optimism which have their roots less in reasonable thought than in temperament. A worn-out, weary individual, or generation, looks back and spends the time in futile yearning and melancholy visions of the past; but a st.u.r.dy generation, full of life, and conscious of it, looks forward, and planning, inventing, and determined to realize its creative ideas, it conjures up the image of the future. Pessimism regrets and groans; optimism hopes and promises. The former, like Ovid, thinks the Golden Age is in the past, the latter, like the fathers of the great Revolution, looks for it in the future. In neither case do they reach conclusions as a result of observation and logical thought, rather they invent reasons afterwards for their conclusions, as they do interpretations of their observations. But he who regards life neither with bitterness nor with pride, and tries to understand it objectively, will come to the opinion that Morality too has its fair share in the progress of civilization.

Theological thought interprets moral perfection differently from scientific thought. According to the former it is independent of intellectual development and purely a matter of faith. G.o.d is the ideal of Morality, belief in Him the necessary condition for a moral life.

Through its fall mankind withdrew from G.o.d and was left a prey to Immorality; original sin perpetually burdened it; by redemption and grace it has been purified from this inborn stain, led back to G.o.d and once more rendered capable of Morality. For mankind only one kind of progress in Morality was possible, and this took place, not gradually and step by step, but with one sudden swift advance, by which it immediately attained the highest degree of moral perfection possible, and that was when the true faith was revealed to it. Before the revelation mankind did not know real Morality, only its dim shadow, only a vague yearning for it; by the revelation at one blow it was in full possession of Morality, and now it is the business of every individual, whether he will draw near to the divine example by pious efforts or ruthlessly withdraw from it. Since the glad tidings of faith were announced to humanity there can be no question of moral progress for mankind as a whole; it has become a personal matter which everyone has to deal with himself. Criticism of this dogmatism is superfluous. It is quite enough to place it before the reader.

It is quite comprehensible, too, that those whose views permit them to talk with Bouillier of a savage who obeys his conscience should deny moral progress. They a.s.sume that a savage has a conscience, that conscience is an element of human nature, that it is a quality or a capacity like sensation or memory, that it is born with man like his limbs and organs. In that case it might well be a.s.serted that subjective Morality has made no progress in historic and perhaps even in prehistoric times, and that actually a "savage who obeys his conscience can be just as virtuous as a Socrates or an Aristides."

It would hardly be possible to give a concrete proof of the contrary; if for no other reason because for a long time there have been no savages in the strict sense of the word anywhere on earth. By savages we mean human beings in their primitive, zoological condition who have developed solely according to the biological forms of the species and under the influence of surrounding Nature and have taken over nothing of an intellectual character from the group to which they belong. All savages of whom we know form societies which for the most part are not even loosely, but firmly, knit together, with laws that may seem nonsensical and barbaric to us, but are none the less binding with clearly defined duties which they impose on every member, with sanctions whose cruelty supersedes that of any punishment permitted by civilization. A man who is a member of a society, no matter how primitive it may be, may certainly have a conscience, but the point is that he is not a savage, but the contrary of a savage, namely: a social being who has received an education from his society, who is bound to conform to its habits, customs and views, and who in all his actions must consider its opinion.

But these conditions, as I have shown, produce a conscience, the representative of society in the consciousness of the individual.

Conscience is no innate feature of man uninfluenced by society, it is not a product of Nature, it is the result of education; he who possesses a conscience is no savage, but a person formed by discipline and subservient to it; conscience is the fruit of civilization, of a certain civilization; in itself it represents progress compared with the primitive state of man. Consequently it is an objectionable contradiction to talk of conscience and at the same time deny moral progress.

It is peculiarly arbitrary, too, to think that a savage, if he had a conscience, could obey it to the same extent, that is, be just as virtuous, as a Socrates or an Aristides. This would contradict all the observations and experience from which I have derived the doctrine that conscience works by means of inhibition, and that Morality and Virtue from the biological point of view are inhibition. For inhibition is developed by practice and use. Except in cases of morbid disturbance it develops simultaneously with the understanding which manipulates it and demands efficiency from it. There can be no two opinions about the fact that the understanding and the faculty of inhibition in living beings have developed progressively. There is no need to adduce any proof that the frog is intellectually superior to the zoospore, and man to the frog, and that as we ascend the scale of organisms we find their reactions to stimuli are increasingly subject to individual modification, and that there is a gradual transition from the original, purely mechanical tropism to differentiated reflex action, which, however, is still beyond the control of the will, and finally to resistances which suppress every externally visible reply on the part of the organism to the impression it has received.

In the course of this development the faculty of inhibition grows stronger and more efficient and obeys the behests of the understanding more and more swiftly, surely and reliably; it can reach a pitch of invincibility against which all the revolts of instinct, all the storms of pa.s.sion, are powerless.

In the savage, or rather in man at a low stage of civilization, the power of inhibition is far from having reached such perfect development.

It is not very robust, works defectively and often fails. Little civilized man, if he has a conscience, cannot even with the best intentions always obey it punctually. His instinct is stronger than his insight. He is not master of his impulses; rather it is they that master him. All who have described tribes of low civilization have observed that their reactions resemble reflex movements and that they lack self-control. Moral conduct, that is, control of their selfishness and consideration for their fellow men, is difficult for them if it demands effort, sacrifice and painful renunciation. However, we need not trouble to go to the negroes of the Congo or the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands to observe the inefficiency of the power of inhibition. We need only look around us. We shall find enough instances among ourselves. The uneducated, the badly educated and abnormal people on whom teaching and example make no impression cannot follow the precepts of Morality, although they know them. To express it as the Roman poet does, they know the better and approve it, but they have a longing for the worse. So it is wrong to say that a savage can be just as virtuous as a Socrates or an Aristides. He could not, even if he would. He would lack the organic means: a sufficiently trained intelligence to point out his moral duty, a sufficiently developed faculty of inhibition to follow the admonition of his intelligence. Bouillier's objection to moral progress will not hold water. The Romantics who have invented the fairy tale of the n.o.ble savage and who declare in Seume's words: "See, we savages are better men after all," are out of touch with reality. Like civilization, and simultaneously with civilization, Morality progresses towards improvement, towards perfection.

The Kantian moralist, like the theologian, is forbidden by the logic of his system to admit the possibility of moral progress. If the moral law is categorical, that is, unlimited by any special purpose, if it exists within us, eternal and immutable as the stars above us, we should be hard put to it to say how this unalterable block, placed in our souls we know not how or by whom, could receive an impetus to progressive development, or in what way this development could be carried out. That which is categorical is absolute, and the concept of progress in the absolute, as in the infinite and the eternal, has no sense. But whoever regards Morality from the biological and sociological point of view is forced to a.s.sert its progress, just as the dogmatic mystic, who believes in the categorical imperative, is forced to deny it.

Let us recapitulate the fundamental concepts. Regarded biologically Morality is Inhibition, the development of which is of the greatest importance to the individual, as it enables him not to waste the living force of his cell plasm and of his organs in sterile reflex movements, but to store it up and hold it ready for useful purposes. The stronger his power of inhibition the better he is armed for the struggle for existence, and the better he is armed the more efficient he is. Denial of the progressive development of Inhibition implies a denial that modern man can maintain himself with more ease and security against Nature and hostile or injurious natural phenomena, and that he is more successful in compet.i.tion with other men than his predecessors on earth.

But this latter denial is obviously nonsense. The only individuals who do not take part in progressive development are the degenerates. They are organically inferior, their faculty of inhibition is defective or altogether lacking, they are slaves of impulses which their will and intelligence have no means of controlling, they are the outcome of morbidly arrested or retrograde development, they are the victims and refuse of a civilization too intensive, too exhausting and wearing for some men, and they are destined to fall out of the ranks of a race moving majestically forward and to lie helplessly by the roadside.

From the sociological point of view Morality is the bond which unites the individuals in a community, the foundation upon which alone society can be built up and maintained. For it implies a victory over self, consideration for one's neighbour, recognition of his rights, concession of his claims, even when valued possessions must unwillingly be given up and painful renunciation of attainable satisfaction is required. This is neighbourly kindness and the charity of the Bible, Hutcheson's and Hume's benevolence, Adam Smith's sympathy and Herbert Spencer's altruism; it is the necessary condition on which alone individuals can live peaceably together and helpfully a.s.sist each other to make life easier. If most or all individuals lack it, we have Hobbes's war of all against all; then man is as a wolf to other men, and each one is condemned to the state of a beast roaming in loneliness. If a few, a minority, lack it, then the majority will not tolerate them in its midst, but will expel them from the community as a dangerous nuisance and deprive them of the privilege of mutual aid and of the advantage of joint responsibility.

The species of man, like every other species of organism and like every individual, wants to live. It can only achieve this by adapting itself to existing natural conditions. The more suitable and perfect the adaptation the more easily and securely it lives. Under the present conditions of the universe and the earth a solitary human individual could not manage to exist, let alone develop into an intelligent being.

The form his adaptation to circ.u.mstances has taken is that of union in an organized community. For the existence of society and the adjustment of the individual in it is the indispensable condition for the life of the species as well as of the individual. Society can only continue to exist if individuals learn to consider one another and practise benevolence towards each other. Society therefore created Morality and inculcated it in all its members, because it was its first need, the essential condition which rendered its existence possible, just as the species created society, because it could only continue to live as an organized society.

Thus Morality with the strictest logical necessity has its place in the totality of efforts which human beings had to make, and still have to make, in order to preserve life, to make it sufficiently profound and to enrich it with satisfactions, that is, with pleasurable emotions of every kind, so that they may continue to have the will and the eager desire to maintain their existence by effort and struggle; in short, in order to make life seem worth living, even at the cost of constant toil and moil. Without society it is impossible for the individual to exist; without Morality it is impossible for society to exist; the instinct of self-preservation furnishes society with habits and rules governing the mutual relations of its members and with inst.i.tutions for economizing force; all these together we call civilization. The development and improvement of civilization is obvious; it is proved by the fact that it draws nearer and nearer to its goal, namely, the establishment of satisfactory relations between individuals and groups, and the attainment of a maximum of satisfaction with a minimum of individual effort. But it would be incomprehensible if Morality, the essential condition for the existence of society which creates civilization, should have no part in the indisputable, because easily demonstrable, progress of the latter.

Morality occupies such a large place in civilization that the mistaken view has arisen among many moral philosophers that it is the aim of civilization and has no aim other than itself. Closer investigation shows this to be an error, a reversal of the true relation. Morality is no aim, certainly no aim to itself, it is a means to an end, the most important, most indispensable means to the one end, to bring about civilization, to maintain and refine it, and adapt it more and more to its task. But the task of civilization, as I have shown, is to preserve, facilitate and enrich the life of the individual and the species.

Morality therefore is the most important form in which the instinct of self-preservation in the species is manifested, and to deny progress to it implies the a.s.sumption that the species does not possess the impulse to preserve and beautify its existence, that its instinct of self-preservation flags, that it does not recognize its aim and is ignorant of the path leading to its goal. This a.s.sumption, however, is contradicted by all, and supported by none, of the phenomena observable in the life of the species--the absolute increase of the population of the earth, the prolongation of individual life and of the age of efficiency, the combating of every kind of harmful thing.

The steadfast self-control of civilized man compared with the unreliability of the savage, who appears capricious and unaccountable because he freely obeys every impulse, proves the progressive development of the faculty of inhibition in the individual organism. The order and definite organization of modern society, the rule of law, men's equality before the law, the guarantee of freedom and respect for the person, all these compared with the state of nations in earlier times (actually anarchy under a mantle of tyranny and the unlimited power of a few mighty ones over the helpless ma.s.ses) prove the progressive development of civilization in the social organism. But logically the progressive development of Morality itself must correspond to the progressive development of its instrument, inhibition, and of its product, civilization.

The conclusion to which we are forced by theoretical considerations is fully endorsed by observation of actual life. It is sufficient to indicate broad facts to one who denies moral progress. Slavery, which Aristotle thought a law of Nature, which Christianity tolerated, which modern states, such as England, France, the United States and Brazil, defended and protected by law, was everywhere abolished some years ago.

The objection is raised that modern hired labour is merely slavery of the proletariat under another name, that the exploitation of workmen by employers is a hypocritical continuation of serfdom. But that is sophistry. The hired labourer is not bound to his contract. He can break it. "Yes, at the price of starvation." That used to be the case, but nowadays organized working men are no longer at the mercy of powerful capital, and therein lies progress. They are in a position to make conditions and not seldom to force their acceptance. They have the right to strike, to move from place to place, to form unions. The community has recognized the duty of mitigating, at least to some extent, the evils to which faulty economic organization exposes the workman. It has inst.i.tuted accident and health insurance, old age pensions, and, in some places, a.s.sistance for those who are out of work through no fault of their own. All this is still very defective, but these are hopeful beginnings, all the same, and, above all, it shows the awakening of a social conscience that earlier ages did not know.

Justice is administered more and more humanely, that is, morally. It is a century since legal torture was abolished. Society is ashamed to get at the truth easily by torturing a suspect who after all may be innocent. The condemned man is no longer branded or mutilated; he suffers no corporal ill-treatment of which the results can never be obliterated. Capital punishment is still a blot on the honour of civilization. But for more than a century now, since the time of Beccaria, it has been violently opposed and has already been abolished in some states; the others will no doubt have to follow suit within a short time. Consider that in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century a thief was hanged if he had stolen a thing of no more value than the rope that was to hang him, and even children of fourteen years were condemned to this fate. To-day the judge p.r.o.nounces sentence of death, even where it is still legal, with grave misgivings and searchings of conscience, and the execution, formerly a public spectacle, is carried out more or less secretly, because the conviction is gradually ripening in society that by the cold-blooded killing of a man it is perpetrating a crime which it must keep as secret as possible.

The sentence is now almost everywhere deferred, and thus the conviction becomes a very emphatic warning which points out the path of repentance, of conversion and improvement to the guilty man, and leaves him the possibility of becoming a decent human being again. Special courts for children mitigate the stern penal code and modify it according to the needs of unripe, youthful characters. Imprisonment for debt is a half-forgotten thing of the past and regarded more or less as a joke.

What these changes have in common is that they one and all indicate a deepening of the community's feeling of duty and responsibility towards the individual, greater respect for persons on the part of the law, an increase of the will to resist the first impulse of anger, revenge and mercilessness. These tendencies, however, are the very essence of Morality.

I forbear to adduce as a proof of progress that the Inquisition no longer rules and nowhere burns its victims. For actually there is no greater toleration of those who hold other opinions than there was formerly. Religious toleration is explained by the fact that the people's consciousness no longer attaches such enormous importance to religion as in past centuries. But political, aesthetic and philosophical antagonisms arouse as much bloodthirsty rage to-day as did formerly heresy in religion, and opponents would unhesitatingly apply torture and the stake to one another if the great ma.s.s of the people would develop sufficiently enthusiastic zeal for their views to allow their raging fanaticism to have recourse to violence, as it once permitted domineering religious orthodoxy to do.

Other aspects of civilization, not so essential, are hardly less encouraging than the developments on which I have hitherto dwelt.

Drunkenness, formerly an almost universal vice, is on the decrease.

Among the educated cla.s.ses it is only met with exceptionally, and is recognized as a morbid aberration; among the lower cla.s.ses it continually grows less. The statistics of the savings banks show an ever-growing determination to save. The ma.s.ses who used to rejoice in dirt now manifest an increasingly vigorous desire for a cleanliness that demands soap and baths. This indicates control of impulse, of the inclination for alcoholic drinks and the tendency to squander, and an increase of self-respect which recognizes dirt to be humiliating. These are activities of the moral feelings, their material activities.

If, in spite of these material proofs of the progress of Morality in all social functions and in many individual habits, serious-minded men still maintain that it stands still or even that it shows retrogression compared with former times, this view, which is undoubtedly a mistaken one, is due to wrong interpretation of facts.

Bouillier's remark that "social progress instead of increasing individual Morality weakens it, because society, in proportion as it is better organized, saves the individual the trouble of a number of virtuous actions" has a perfectly correct point of departure. Many tasks of neighbourly kindness and humane joint responsibility which used to be left to the inclination, the free choice and the n.o.ble zeal of individuals, and could be carried out or neglected by them, are now methodically fulfilled by the community. Saint Martin no longer needs to divide his cloak to give half to a poor shivering man. The public charity commission gives him winter clothes if he cannot afford to buy any. No knights are needed to protect innocence, weakness and humility from oppressors. The oppressed appeal successfully to the police, the court of justice, or, by writing to the papers, to public opinion. There is no need for Knights Templar or Knights of St. John to care for strangers and tend the sick. Inns and public hospitals are at their disposal. To-day there would be neither occasion nor reason for the miracle of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who against the orders of her hard husband took to the starving bread which was turned into roses. The poor are regularly fed in munic.i.p.al and communal kitchens. Individual deeds of mercy are less necessary now than formerly, when, if they occurred, they were the outcome of exceptionally n.o.ble and devout sympathy and heroic self-sacrifice.

One is therefore inclined to believe that men are less capable of such deeds than they were in the past. But that is doing them a grave injustice. Dr. Barnardo, who opened a home for the little waifs and strays of the East End of London, is not inferior to St. Vincent de Paul who adopted and brought up forsaken children. John Brown who suffered a martyr's death by hanging because he attempted with arms to liberate the negro slaves of the Southern States, Henry Dumont who devoted the efforts of a lifetime to founding the Red Cross to help those wounded in war, Emile Zola who sacrificed his fortune, his reputation as an author, his personal safety, and suffered persecution, calumny, exile, a shameful condemnation in court, and violent threats to his life in order to get justice for Captain Dreyfus who had been wrongfully accused--all these can well compare with the saints in the Golden Legend. Virtue exists potentially in as many cases as formerly, probably in more; and it is actively practised whenever and wherever it is appealed to.

Another result of the long evolution of civilization and Morality is the development of an ethical instinct in all except abnormal, degenerate individuals, which causes men to act morally in nearly all situations without conscious reflection, choice or effort. The individual who is ethically well grounded, in whom moral conduct has become an organized reflex action, does what is right without any conscious effort, and therefore does not in so doing evoke any idea of merit either in himself or in witnesses. But to do right habitually, carelessly and almost without thought, as one breathes and eats, easily makes one unjust in one's judgments. The battle between Reason and blind instinct, between the Will and refractory Impulse, the victory of the lofty principle, of spirituality over what is irrational and materialistic, which give us the illusion that free humanity is superior to the fatality of cosmic forces, have something so elevated and beautiful about them that we are disappointed if they are absent, and practical Morality without this dramatic setting does not appear to be real Morality.

Nevertheless we must not give way to this aesthetic point of view. We must always remember that Morality has a biological and sociological aim and must soberly admit that it is all the better if this aim is realized without in every single case depending on uncertain individual decisions. It would be an ideal state of affairs if in a society there were such clear knowledge of all its vital necessities, and this had been so inculcated in all its members, that their harmonious life together and their co-operation for the common weal would never more be troubled by the revolt of ruthless individual selfishness against the love of one's neighbour and willingness to sacrifice oneself for the community. The ideal of Morality would be attained, but the concept of Merit would be transferred from the individual to the community.

Superficial observation might object to finding in individuals no victorious struggle against resistance, hence no virtue, and might bemoan the stagnation, nay, the retrogression, of Morality. But whoever views matters as a whole would have to admit that it would imply the greatest progress in virtue if the latter from being an individual merit had become an attribute of the community. I am far from maintaining that we have reached this ideal state; but evolution tends unmistakably in this direction; and this is one of the reasons why Morality may appear to make no progress.

The very rise of the community to a higher stage of Morality may be a fresh cause of error concerning the progress of Morality. The work of the strongest and most clear-headed thinkers for many thousand years, who have bequeathed as a legacy to the community their lifelong labours for the amelioration of the lot of mankind, has developed in us an ideal of active and pa.s.sive Morality which is always present, even to the mind of the weak or bad man who cannot or will not live up to it. By this ideal, which is that of the community and which we bear within us, we involuntarily judge real life as we observe it, without applying the necessary corrections. We necessarily note a discrepancy between theory and practice, which appears to us to be not mere inadequacy but a contradiction of principles, not a quant.i.tative, but a qualitative difference, and thus he who is not forewarned easily becomes doubtful, pessimistic, and bitterly contemptuous of mankind.

This is the theme with which light literature unweariedly deals. Novels and the drama constantly show us types: "Pillars of society" and other worthy men, who pretend to be honourable, who are full of good principles, preach unctuously and condemn others with pious indignation, but who themselves in all situations behave with the most horrible selfishness and are sinks of iniquity. The creators of these rogues professing virtue, of these secret sinners, think they are mightily superior; they think they know mankind, that they are deceived by no one and can see deep down into men's souls; they call their method realism, and they look down with the greatest contempt upon poets who depict good, unselfish, n.o.ble, in short, moral characters, and call them optimists, flirts, distillers of rosewater, who are either too silly or too dishonest to see the truth or to confess it. If realism happens to be the fashion, the public believes these men who depict what is ugly and disgusting, admires them, is impressed by them, and scorns the idealists who have a better opinion of mankind.

However, realism is onesided and exaggerated, and therefore just as far from the truth as enthusiastic idealism. It picks out certain characteristics of human nature, generalizes from them and neglects the others, thereby libelling mankind. The same people who in their flat, insipid daily life unhesitatingly indulge their poor little vanities, their nave selfishness, their childish jealousy, their secret sensuality and their moral cowardice because it is of no consequence, because it alters nothing in the general const.i.tution of society, because the community takes good care that moral principles shall be maintained, these same people can, on great occasions, which, however, seldom occur, reveal virtues which they themselves never suspected and which we gaze at in blank astonishment with reverent awe. The hypocritical Philistines of realistic literature, rotten at the core, when the _t.i.tanic_ sank, during the plague in Manchuria, at the earthquake of Messina, in the mine disaster at Courrieres, and on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, proved to be heroes who came very near to the theatrical ideal of Morality, if they did not quite reach it. If one takes the valet's point of view and observes man in his dressing-gown and slippers when he does not feel called upon to pull himself together, one may very well form a poor opinion of him. But if one considers the actions of the community and dwells on the loftiest deeds of individuals, one will no longer believe that the Morality of the present time is inferior to that of any other age.

There is one phenomenon, though, which seems to prove that those who deny moral progress are in the right, and that is war. This is indeed the triumph of the beast in mankind, a b.e.s.t.i.a.l trampling under foot of civilization, its principles, methods and aims, and it might be adduced as a crushing proof of the stagnation or retrogression of Morality that to this very day its horrors can devastate the earth, as they did hundreds and thousands of years ago, only to an incomparably greater extent, more cruelly and more thoroughly. But this, too, would be a false conclusion. It is certain that the men who take it upon themselves freely, purposely and intentionally to make war are monsters; their action is a crime that cannot be expiated. Unhesitatingly they have recourse to ma.s.sacre, robbery, fire and all other horrors in order to satisfy their devilish self-seeking which desires the fulfilment of their ambition, that is, of their self-love and vanity, which covets riches, increase of power, a ruling position and its privileges. These they pursue either for themselves or for a family or caste, and they pretend that they wish to defend their country from its enemies, to acquire new boundaries for it affording better protection than the old, to promote the development of the nation by getting fresh territory, to spread its civilization and secure a glorious future for it.

Nations, however, which allow their rulers to plunge them into a war of aggression may be foolish and clumsy, but they need not be immoral. They are made drunk with phrases which appeal to their n.o.blest feelings, which their government and its intellectual bailiffs pour out to them in overflowing measure; they believe the shameless lies which are told them boastfully; and this is undoubtedly a lamentable, mental weakness which drew from Dante the bitter cry: "Often one hears the people in their intoxication cry: 'Long live our death! Down with our life!'" But having simply accepted these preliminary ideas the people act with such Morality as one cannot forbear to admire. In a grand flight they rise superior to all thought of self, raise their feeling of joint responsibility to the pitch of heroism and martyrdom, and gladly sacrifice to their duty to their neighbour and to the community their possessions, their comfort, their health and their lives. That is very great virtue whose subjective merit is no whit diminished by the fact that it is manifested in a cause that is objectively unjust. And this virtue on the part of nations which have been misled was never so widespread or so real as now. The att.i.tude of mercenaries who served the highest bidder, the lack of ideals among the soldiers who followed foreign conquerors at whose command they tyrannized over nations who did not concern them at all, the cynicism of the leaders who unhesitatingly went over to the enemy and fought against their own country and people, these are things that are not to be found nowadays and are almost unthinkable. No Napoleon of to-day could lead the men of Wurtemberg and Bavaria to Spain and Russia, nor could an Elector of Hesse sell recruits to England for the conquest of North America; no Louis XIV could induce a Bernard of Saxe-Weimar to fight his battles against German adversaries, no Constable of Bourbon ally himself with Spain against his native France. Leonidas, once admired and praised as an exception, is to-day the rule. "The guards who die but do not yield" are to be found on every battlefield nowadays.