Morals and the Evolution of Man Part 9

In modern warfare a higher, more perfect Morality of the ma.s.ses obtains than was the case in the past. That war itself is the most immoral thing does not detract from the moral worth of those who are led and misled.

The ma.s.ses lack insight and judgment, their understanding is not sufficiently developed to realize the b.e.s.t.i.a.lity of the rulers who put them to such evil use; but the way they suppress their own feelings, the way their will controls their impulses, their social discipline, in short, their Morality, is admirable. Moreover, the conscience of mankind revolts more and more against the wickedness of war, and the best men of the time are striving to bring the mutual relations of nations, like those of individuals, within the jurisdiction of Law and Morality.

Morality will doubtless at no distant date do away with war, as it has abolished human sacrifice, slavery, blood feuds, head hunting and cannibalism.

No phenomenon of individual worthlessness observed within a narrow sphere can detract from the fact that the community constantly improves.

A pessimistic view of the development of Morality has no justification.

Progress of civilization implies progress of Morality, its most important instrument in the work of adapting the race to the immutable conditions of its existence.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SANCTIONS OF MORALITY

The concept of Morality includes an idea of compulsion, of coercion. A voice says to man: "You must!" or "You may not!" It commands him to do, or to refrain from doing, something. If he obeys, all is well; but if he takes no notice of it, pays no heed to it, the question arises: "What now? Will the voice rest content with crying in the wilderness? Will it not mind speaking to deaf ears? Will the refractory individual not suffer for disregarding it, or has it means to enforce obedience, and what are these means?"

The answer to this question depends on what view one holds as to the nature of this monitory, warning, commanding voice. Whoever believes in Kant's categorical imperative must admit that this word of command is denuded of all power of coercion and must absolutely rely on the good will of the individual in whose soul it makes itself heard. According to Kant the moral law aims at no extraneous result, no utility. It is its own aim and object. But its own aim is fulfilled as soon as the categorical imperative has spoken, whether the individual acts in accordance with it or not. It has therefore in principle no sanction.

True, Kant contradicts himself, for after having sternly excluded from his doctrine all utility as the end of Morality, all trace of feeling from moral action, he smuggles blissful happiness in by a back door; the result of submission to the moral law and its dutiful fulfilment, he declares, will be bliss. Bliss, however you interpret it, is a pleasurable emotion. Whether you act morally with the declared intention of attaining the pleasurable emotion of bliss, or whether this pleasurable emotion comes of its own accord as an undesired reward when you have acted morally merely from a feeling of duty, without a thought for such a result, without a wish to attain it, it makes no difference to the fact that moral action actually meets with a reward. Kant does not openly promise this, but with a wink he whispers in your ear that there is a prospect of it.

Nor does it alter the further fact that Kant, having contemptuously expelled Eudaemonism from his system, reinstates it with full honours.

Once it has been conceded that moral conduct makes man blissful, in other words gives him a reward, the categorical imperative also has a sanction, albeit a very insufficient one. He who fulfils the moral law attains bliss; that is a spur whether you admit it or not. But he who does not fulfil it loses this advantage, otherwise, however, nothing happens to him. The sanction, therefore, is onesided. A reward is offered for the fulfilment of the moral law, but there is no punishment for its non-fulfilment. For it is no penalty if bliss is withheld from him who has no conception of it and no desire for it. No matter, then, if the moral law be eternal and immutable as the stars above us, if it be categorical, if it be fulfilled, not owing to a conception of its effect, not from liking for this effect, but from an inner necessity, it ceases to be a living force for mankind or to have any practical significance; for the single thread which unites it with human feelings--the whispered, vague promise of bliss--is too thin. Feeling which has no knowledge of this misty bliss, and therefore no yearning for it, is uninfluenced by the categorical moral law. Reason is not necessarily convinced that it is right and valid. The moral law abides like the stars with which it is arbitrarily compared, itself a star in airless s.p.a.ce, pursuing its course regardless of humanity, having no relation to it or connexion with it; regard for or disregard of the moral law makes no perceptible difference, and it ceases to have any but a kind of astronomical interest for mankind, a purely theoretical interest for purposes of scientific observation and calculation, and is in no way applicable to the feelings, thoughts and actions of men.

Theological Morality adopts a widely different point of view. Its logic compels it to provide the most effective sanctions. G.o.d is the lawgiver of Morality. He prescribes with dictatorial omniscience what is good, what is bad, what should be practised and what avoided. Obedience earns a glorious reward, revolt entails the most terrible punishment. Reward and punishment are eternal, or may in certain circ.u.mstances be so, and this, by the way, is cruelty which ill accords with the universal goodness ascribed to G.o.d. For human understanding will never be persuaded, will never be able to grasp, that a sinner, however grave and numerous his sins committed during the brief period of the fleeting life of man, can ever deserve an eternity of the most fearful punishment. The lack of proportion between the deed and the penalty is so monstrous that it is felt to be the gravest injustice, against which both Reason and feeling revolt. Imagination can conceive h.e.l.l fire that lasts a certain time and has an aim, like life with its praiseworthy and wicked deeds, but it boggles at the idea of a h.e.l.l from which there is no escape and the agonies of which are endless.

The Old Testament conceives the sanctions of the moral law enunciated by G.o.d in a thoroughly realistic manner. Fulfil the commandment "that thy days may be long in the land." If you disobey, the curse of the Lord will be on you and you will be pursued by His anger unto the fourth generation. Christianity considered it dubious to make this life the scene of reward and punishment. It is imprudent to let divine justice rule here below, so to say, in public, before an audience and representatives of the Press who attentively follow the proceedings, watch all its details, and can judge whether the verdict is put into execution. Prudence demands that the trial should take place in the next world, where it is protected from annoying curiosity. Mocking onlookers cannot then observe that it is only in the dramas of n.o.ble-minded poets that in the last act vice is inevitably punished and virtue rewarded, while in real life only too often merit starves, suffers humiliation and poverty and altogether leads a miserable existence, while sin flourishes in an objectionable manner and to the very end revels in all the good things of this earth. However, the religious moralists painted such a vivid and arresting picture of what awaits the sinners in the next world, that if men had not been obdurate in their disbelief they must have shudderingly realized it, as if it actually happened in this world.

Words from the pulpit admonishing men to obey G.o.d's law under penalty of most terrible punishment were greatly emphasized by the paintings and sculpture over the altars and the church doors, where all the tortures of h.e.l.l were depicted by great artists who put all their imagination and all their genius into the work.

As innumerable people have testified, these representations were taken so literally, not only by the simple-minded ma.s.ses but also by the more highly educated, that they were haunted by them, waking and sleeping, and imagined that in their own flesh they felt the torture of flames, of boiling pitch, of the p.r.i.c.k of the pitchfork as the devil turned them on the grid, of the teeth with which the spirits of h.e.l.l tore their flesh from their bones. The fear of h.e.l.l poisoned many a life up till quite recently, especially in Scotland, and kept people in a constant state of agitation and anguish which occasionally rose to mad despair. It is remarkable that only punishment was so impressively held up to man's view, but not reward. Pictures of paradise are much less rich and varied than those of h.e.l.l, and its joys are peculiarly modest. The inventive powers of painters, sculptors, and poets did not rise above a beautifully illuminated hall where the blessed are ranged around G.o.d's throne and with folded hands sing hymns of praise to Him, while angels play an accompaniment on trumpets and fiddles. A prayer meeting, a choir and a concert of music, that is all that Christian eschatology holds out as an eternal reward to virtue. It redounds to its credit that it a.s.sumes a sufficiently modest taste among the good to make them long for these joys and find infinite happiness in them.

Islam does not count on such moderation. The joys of paradise that it promises are so crudely sensual that they may well arouse l.u.s.t in coa.r.s.e natures, and can counterbalance the fear of h.e.l.l fire. The ideas of the reward of merit in the hereafter held by the northern nations, Germans and Scandinavians, are just as low and coa.r.s.e. For the Mohamedans paradise is a harem; for the worshippers of Odin it is a pot-house where there are free drinks and a jolly brawl to end up with. Heroes who fall in battle--they knew no virtues but a warlike spirit and contempt of death--enter Valhalla, where they partake of the everlasting orgies of the G.o.ds, drink unlimited quant.i.ties of mead and beer, and fight for them to their heart's content without taking any harm. The North American Indians hope, after leading a model life, to be gathered to the Great Spirit, and in the happy hunting grounds of heaven evermore to kill abundant game. Only Buddhism comforts the virtuous man with finer and more spiritual hopes. From out his world of weariness and pessimism it opens up the prospect of Nirvana to him, that is, of the end of all feeling, which after all can only be painful, and of all thought, which after all is only melancholy and despair, and of the volatilization of the personality, the only real release; while it condemns the sinner to the worst punishment, continued existence in ever new incarnations.

These are indeed extraordinarily vigorous sanctions, which, though they fail to have any effect on the unbeliever, make a very deep impression on the believer, and are well fitted to determine his actions. But they imply a debas.e.m.e.nt of the motives for leading a moral life, which are no longer the outcome of insight and a convinced desire for good, but the result of fear and avidity, a speculation for profit, a prudent flight from danger. The practice of morality becomes a safe investment for the father of a family who hopes to find his savings augmented by interest in the hereafter, and the avoidance of vice becomes a schoolboy's fear of punishment. Nevertheless, the view is widely held by superficial, practical men that these imaginary and deceptive sanctions of Morality cannot be dispensed with, that only the fear of h.e.l.l can keep the ma.s.ses from giving themselves up to every form of vice and crime, that only the promise of paradise is capable of inducing them to act unselfishly and make sacrifices, and that all bonds of discipline would be loosened if they ceased to believe in a last judgment and an hereafter with its rewards and punishments.

This whole system of sanctions in a future life is a transcendental projection (according with primitive, childlike thought) of immanent practices and forms in the positive administration of justice which are transferred to a cla.s.s of actions that successfully evade it.

Traditional and customary Law, as well as written Law, puts its whole emphasis on sanctions; it partakes itself of the nature of a sanction.

Without sanctions it has no meaning. It is not kindly counsel, nor fatherly admonition, nor wise advice, it is a stern command, it is coercion, and this arouses only scorn if it is not armed with the means to make itself a reality to which the unwilling must also submit, because they cannot help themselves. There is no law, there can be no law, which is not supplemented by arrangements that make it binding for everyone.

In the British House of Commons it has been customary for many hundred years to designate members as the representatives of their particular const.i.tuency. Only if a member commits a grave offence against the rules of the House does he run the risk of the Speaker's calling him by name, but this case has not arisen within the memory of man. A disrespectful Irish member of Parliament, urged by perverse curiosity, asked the Speaker one day: "What would happen if you called me by my name?" The Speaker thought for a short time and then answered with impressive gravity: "I have no idea, but it must be something terrible." Such a mysterious threat of an unknown catastrophe may suffice for a picked a.s.sembly whose members would no doubt maintain order and observe all the rules of parliamentary decency, even if they were not held in check by the fear of some dark danger. It would not be sufficient by a long way to guarantee the rule of Law in a society which includes individuals of the most varied disposition, mind development, education and strength of impulse.

Positive Law, as I have shown, presents a very simplified excerpt of Morality for the use of coa.r.s.er natures. It is a summary of the minimum of self-denial, consideration for one's fellow men, and the feeling of joint responsibility, the observance of which the community must pitilessly demand from all its members if it is to continue to exist and not fall back within a very short time into the state of Hobbes's war of all against all. The necessity of self-preservation makes it a duty for the community to provide for the case that one of its members refuses to accept the minimum of discipline and to recognize the claims of another personality. The community prevents this revolt, which would frustrate its aim and endanger its existence, by employing physical force to break all resistance to the Law which it must, for the common weal, impose on all its members. That is an extraneous compulsion that certainly has something brutal and unworthy of man about it and may well arouse discomfort in more highly developed minds. It would undoubtedly be more dignified and better if there were no need for the handcuffs of the police, for prison cells and executioners, if man's own insight and the admonition of his conscience were enough to constrain everyone to respect the Law, that is, to practise a minimum of Morality.

But the community cannot wait until this stage of moral development has been generally attained. It refuses to entrust its existence to the spiritual purity of all its members. On principle it disregards processes in the consciousness of the individual--I have cited in an earlier chapter the few exceptions to this rule: investigation as to premeditation, accountability, freedom from undue influence--and keeps to actions which alone it judges. It declares itself incompetent to p.r.o.nounce sentence upon a "storm inside a skull," to quote Victor Hugo.

Its sphere is that of obvious facts. Not until subjective impulses and decisions are manifested in outward form does it intervene with methods of the same order, with outward coercion. The sanctions of its law are material, are punishments and fines. It hits the wrongdoer over the head and on his hands and forcibly empties his pockets. To look into his soul and set matters to rights there is a task undertaken much later by law-givers. It was only after they had remembered that the source of law is Morality and that its ultimate aim is not the bare attainment of a state of mutual respect for one another's rights, but the education of the community to a universal condition of self-discipline, consideration and neighbourly love, that the law-givers made a point not only of requiting the bad man's misdeeds, but also of trying to elevate him morally.

At different times, at different stages of civilization, and according to the current views of the universe, society has interpreted in different ways the punishment it inflicts and which it carries out by forcible means, so as to ensure respect for its laws. Its original character is that of revenge for an offence. The wrongdoer has offended the community, it attacks him furiously and breaks every bone in his body just as an angry individual would do in his first access of indignation. That is Draco's penal code. That is the law of literal requital. The special characteristic of this sanction is its violence and lack of moderation. It does not trouble to find the right proportion between punishment and crime. It does not carefully and fairly weigh the force of its blows. The club falls with a frightful crash, but its dynamical effect is not calculated beforehand in kilogrammetres. "The stab of a knife is not measured," as an Italian proverb says. Thus conceived, punishment has something primitive about it, something intolerably barbarous. The community does the very things it was created, by Morality and Law, to prevent; it exercises the right of the stronger against the challenger; it promotes war, not that of all against all, but of all against one, and its punishment is an act of war.

In a strongly religious society which lives in the idea of immediate community with the deity, every transgression of the law is felt to be a sin against the G.o.ds, and the punishment becomes an expiation offered to them so as to avert their dangerous anger from the commonwealth. In the administration of justice dim religious ideas are mingled, punishment is tinged with a veneer of civilization, the culprit is, so to speak, offered as a sacrifice to the G.o.ds. This supernatural view was prolonged by the Inquisition, at least for a certain cla.s.s of offences, until almost modern times.

When society awakens to the consciousness that its bond of union is Morality, and that its most important task is to educate its members in Morality, it introduces the concept of betterment into its penal system.

It wants not only to punish the wrongdoer sharply but also to transform him inwardly and purify him. He is to feel that the punishment is not only a requital but a mental benefit. In the Austrian army, until corporal punishment was abolished, it was a rule that the soldier, after being flogged, should approach the officer on duty and say, as he saluted, "I thank you for the kind punishment." That is the att.i.tude that society, when it gives a moralizing tendency to its penal laws, wishes the person who has been punished to attain. In this there is much pleasing self-deception not unmixed with a good deal of hypocrisy. Penal law offers the wrongdoer but little scope for improvement.

All misdemeanours and crimes flow from three sources: ignorance, pa.s.sion and innate, anti-social self-seeking. Ignorance is the main, almost the exclusive cause of wrongdoing among young criminals who have been badly brought up or neglected, who have never had anything but bad examples before them, and who cannot distinguish between good and evil. Society may hope to improve these by right treatment; it must not punish, it must educate them. Men who commit crimes from pa.s.sion are those who possess a consciousness of Morality and a conscience, who know quite well what is right and what wrong, but have not sufficient strength of character, that is, not an adequately developed power of inhibition, to resist an opportunity, a temptation, a turmoil of their instincts. To want to improve them is senseless, for they are not bad; they are weak, or at any rate not strong enough. What they need is a strengthening of their character, of their faculty of inhibition, and to achieve this is beyond the power of society. All it can do is to humiliate the guilty party by publicly exposing his lapse and by condemning him, and then grant a delay of the execution of the sentence. In so doing it says to him: "You have acted basely and ought to be ashamed of yourself, now go and do not do it again." If the warning is unavailing and he relapses, then the earlier sentence, as well as the new one, is executed. Fear of this is added to his motives for acting honestly, and may possibly strengthen his resistance to the onslaught of his evil instincts. But his good conduct will always be at stake in the struggle between his power of inhibition and his instincts, and the stronger of the two will always carry the day. And finally, upon the man whose organic disposition makes him anti-social, upon Lombroso's born criminal, society can have no educative effect whatever. It is a hopeless case.

Society can render him harmless, it cannot alter him. Consideration for his neighbour will never find a place in his consciousness. He will never learn to resist his impulses and desires. His spiritual insensibility makes him indifferent to the sufferings of others.

Incapable of continuous and equable effort, he will always want to prey on society by begging, deceiving, stealing and robbing. He has no conscience and does not hear the voice of society in his mind. He knows nothing of good and evil, which are both empty phrases for him, words without any meaning, and he is convinced that he acts rightly every time he seeks to satisfy his appet.i.tes. In his case it is love's labour lost to try and give a moral meaning to the sanctions of the law. Punishment is not directed against the soul of the born criminal, only against his body. It overwhelms him, fetters him and makes him either for the time being, or permanently, harmless; but his organic tendency continues to sway him, and whenever he recovers his liberty he is the same as before he was punished.

The Mystics give to punishment the character of fatherly and chastening discipline by which the sinner expiates his crime and is purged of the sin; thus it purifies him and leads him back to the state of innocence; a kind of antic.i.p.atory h.e.l.l fire which enables him to enter paradise. In "Gorgias" Plato says explicitly: "He who is punished is liberated from the evil of his soul." And the Apostle Paul teaches us: "Punishment is ordained for the betterment of man." Criminal anthropology recognizes that it is useless to expect this moralizing and redeeming effect from punishment. Lombroso altogether rejects punishment as a means of discipline and expiation, and before him Bentham and J. S. Mill, and simultaneously with him and after him Fouillee, Guyau and Maudsley adopted the same view. According to them the sanction of criminal law, which extends and completes it and ensures its efficacy, can have no other aim than the law itself, and this aim is to defend society against its active enemies, if possible by converting them, if necessary by forcible subjugation.

In a book which is full of interest, but whose value is considerably diminished by a strong admixture of mysticism, "Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction," M. Guyau goes much farther than the criminal anthropologists and sociological opponents of punishment, and expresses the somewhat paradoxical view that "the real sanction seems to imply complete freedom from punishment for the crime committed, as punishment for any action that has been accomplished is useless." It is quite correct that no punishment under the sun can undo what has been done. But it is not feasible for that reason to dispense with all punishment for misdeeds and to call this systematic freedom from punishment a sanction. Guyau overlooks the fact that the punishment is directed not to the crime but the perpetrator. It certainly alters nothing in a past transgression of the law, and that is not its object, but it may possibly have the effect of preventing fresh misdeeds on the part of the same wrongdoer or of others, and that would justify it.

If society must renounce the idea of improving the misdemeanant, especially the man whose organic tendencies make him a criminal and who is the most dangerous and commits the most numerous and worst crimes, it nevertheless a.s.sumes that it makes an impression on morally doubtful characters by punishing misdemeanours and crimes, that it warns them and prevents them from erring. That is the theory of intimidation, which also has many opponents. It will hardly be denied that psychologically it is well founded. The conception of the evil consequences for himself that his action may entail strengthens the impulsive man's power of inhibition when he is about to do wrong, and perhaps enables him to overcome his immoral instinct. Only it is difficult to measure the force which the thought of punishment adds to the effort of inhibition. This force does not come into question at all with the man who sins occasionally from pa.s.sion. The flood of his impulses sweeps away all barriers which reason may oppose, and their power of resistance is not materially increased by the fear of consequences, because the mental horizon is completely darkened at the time of the storm and no prevision is possible. The criminal from organic causes exercises no inhibition.

He knows that society condemns his actions, but he is convinced of his personal right to carry them out, and fears no punishment, because he hopes to escape it, and tries his utmost by means of planning, prudence and self-control to outwit society. The theory of intimidation is not applicable to these two cla.s.ses of criminals, and they const.i.tute a large proportion of the army of wrongdoers against which society has to defend itself by force.

But there remains the great number of mediocre natures whose sympathy with their fellow men, the emotional foundation of the subjective impulse to Morality, is only slightly developed, who have a superficial veneer of Morality, who act honourably out of prudence, but who would feel no repugnance towards perpetrating profitable misdeeds, if they were certain that they would incur no risk. These insipid characters whose emotional temperature oscillates round about freezing point and who are incapable of great excitement, of pa.s.sion, would see no reason to resist any temptation, to disregard any favourable opportunity, if the penal code, the judge and the policeman did not warn them to be careful. For this kind of man the penal sanction is really a useful and perhaps an indispensable means of prevention, and it has been thought out and developed by the community with a view to such people.

Not content with theoretical considerations, people have also appealed to practical experience to test the theory of intimidation. In some countries capital punishment was either legally abolished or tacitly suppressed, the judges either refraining from p.r.o.nouncing the sentence on the prisoner or the head of the state, when appealed to, commuting it by an act of pardon to loss of liberty. Statistics seemed to show that serious crimes meriting the death penalty increased, and capital punishment was reintroduced or the practice of systematic pardons was abandoned, with the alleged result that the worst crimes grew less numerous. I express myself doubtfully, because I do not think that the statistics were sufficiently conclusive. They embraced too small a number of cases and too short a period of time. It cannot be conclusively proved that the abolition of the death penalty resulted in an increase of capital crimes; but it is certain that crimes were never more frequent or more horrible than in the times when criminal justice was most cruel and made use of the most terrible sanctions. Up to the dawn of modern times legal torture was administered, at every street corner there were gallows, the poor wretch under sentence of death was pinched with red-hot pincers, the executioner tore the flesh from his bones, poured boiling pitch over him, cut out his tongue, hacked off his hands, broke him on the wheel or burnt him alive; executions were a sort of public entertainment or popular holiday, and efforts were made to attract as many spectators as possible; every inhabitant of one of the larger towns was familiar from childhood with the horrid spectacle of mutilated human bodies writhing in torture, and there rang in his ears the echo of the screams of pain and of the shrill death rattle of the victims. But these impressions were so far from intimidating the gaping crowd that many hurried from the place of execution to commit the most execrable crimes, the punishment of which they had just witnessed; consequently punishments have gradually been made less cruel, and the public is excluded from executions, which clearly indicates a decisive rejection of the theory of intimidation.

The truth is that the severity of the punishment has no effect upon the frequency or the savagery of crimes. The criminality of a community depends on the value and emphasis of the moral education which it bestows upon the rising generation. It can prevent its members, at any rate the average, normal type, from developing into criminals. But the fear of punishment has no deterrent effect upon those whose criminal impulses have not been subjugated by social discipline. The severity of the punishment does not contribute anything to the defence of society.

It only proves that the lawgiver and the criminal judges are on the lowest level of civilization which corresponds to a widespread and barbarous criminality, and that their modes of thought and feeling are horribly like those of the criminals whom they sentence to torture, the gallows, and the wheel.

Positive law aims at defending society, and tries to attain its end by punishing transgressions. It provides no reward for conscientious obedience. The law has no honours to bestow on blamelessness and virtue.

Society felt the want of this and made attempts to encourage honourable conduct by conferring distinctions, just as it tries to intimidate vice by punishing crime. These attempts were not particularly happy. The bestowal of t.i.tles and orders is no recognition of virtue, but a means adopted by governments to ensure devotion to power. An arrangement was made in some places to honour model citizens in public and crown them with laurels, but it soon came to grief owing to indifference and mockery. A private individual wanted to fill this gap in social inst.i.tutions. The Count of Montyon, a son of the eighteenth century, whose philosophy he had imbibed, inst.i.tuted the prizes for virtue which are distributed annually by the French Academy. They are bestowed on modest integrity in humble circ.u.mstances which has manifested a sense of duty, neighbourly love and self-sacrifice. This friend of man has had few imitators, and that is understandable. Sound common sense realizes that rewards like the Montyon prizes for virtue do not with the infallibility of a natural law fall to the lot of merit, but are nearly always adjudicated to the prizewinner by chance, by recommendation, and by all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with virtue; and it seems unjust that among equal claims some should be satisfied while others, the great majority, are not. It would be vain to contend that one virtue which goes empty-handed is not unfairly treated when another gets a benefit on which it has not counted, and that in a moral character, such as alone would be eligible for a prize for virtue, there is no room for envy. That would be the moral of the Gospel concerning the labourers who came at the eleventh hour, which has met with opposition from others besides the contemporaries of Jesus.

On the whole, the community has never felt called upon to solve the moral problem of the reward of virtue. It has always contented itself with the punishment of vice and has given its law threatening, but not encouraging, sanctions. This att.i.tude shows that it has always had a clear conception of its moral task. In its positive law it never included anything but that minimum of Morality that was absolutely necessary to its existence, and without which it would dissolve into its original elements, its order would be replaced by chaos, by the war of all against all. It must insist on the observance of this minimum; it must use forcible means to achieve this. But it does not feel justified in demanding more than this minimum, because more is not claimed by its instinct of self-preservation. A surplus of virtue over and above the amount necessary for the life of society is desirable; but it does not lie within the scope of the natural functions of the community, determined by its organic necessities, to achieve this by compulsion and the provision of legal rewards as an encouragement. It is the business of the individual to work at his own moral improvement, and the community cannot interfere directly in the matter. It is enough that it encourage this work indirectly by bestowing care on the culture and education of the individual, by making it the duty of its public schools to inculcate good principles, and by creating a public opinion which surrounds all the activities of higher morality with admiration, respect and grat.i.tude. The moral education of the individual is not an object with which laws are concerned; it is the result of the constant, vital influence of the community, and can have no sanction other than the increase of well-being of every single person within the social union, which is a natural consequence of raising the moral level of the community.

The penal sanctions of positive law have a gross materialism about them corresponding to the definite concreteness of the actions with which positive law deals. The broad field of Morality, however, which is outside the narrow sphere of the laws, has no room for sanctions of a material nature. The penalties prescribed by law are directed to actions which, if they became general, would in a very short s.p.a.ce of time result in the dissolution of society. The community essays by forcible measures to prevent this kind of action, and these measures more or less fulfil their aim, whether you interpret their use on the theory of discipline, of expiation and purification by repentance, of improvement and moral re-birth, or of intimidation. All these theories were invented later on, after the community had been convinced by experience that punishment, if it does not entirely prevent crime, at least limits it sufficiently to make the continued existence of society possible, and more or less to guarantee to its members the safety of their life, their property and their personal dignity.

Against transgressions of the moral law, the results of which are not immediately obvious, such as ruthless selfishness, blunted sympathy and lack of active neighbourly kindness, the community does not proceed with forcible measures; firstly, because it cannot establish their existence convincingly and hence cannot try them in a court of justice, and secondly, because it does not recognize them as const.i.tuting an immediate danger to its existence. Now, as the sanctions set up by society are not applicable to these transgressions, an individual whose mind does not penetrate very far into matters is disquieted, for accustomed as he is to the spectacle of the steady justice of the state, he seeks the counterpart in the forms of this justice in the world of Morality, and does not discover it at the first glance. He asks anxiously where are the police, the public prosecutor, the examining magistrate, the criminal court, the prison for sins against Morality, and invents them, since he cannot find them. He transfers to the hereafter the sanctions of Morality, which are not visible on earth. He cannot make up his mind to renounce them, because the fact that sins against the moral law go unpunished would seem to him to indicate intolerable anarchy, comparable with the state of a community where everyone could murder, rob and mutilate to his heart's content without incurring the risk of the least personal unpleasantness.

In the sphere of the moral law punishment certainly does not follow hot foot upon crime, but it nevertheless does not fail to appear, and becomes visible when the eye is capable of embracing long periods of time and of tracing intricate connexions. The sanctions of the moral law differ from those of criminal law, but they are not wanting. They are of a subjective and of an objective character. The subjective punishment for a sin against the laws of Morality is remorse. It is inflicted by the inner judge who rules in the consciousness of the individual, by conscience, and penetrates to the very deepest depths of a person's mind which no outward punishment imposed by the community ever reaches. It is not only religious and political martyrs who endure torture and death with proud serenity, conscious that they are morally immeasurably superior to their executioners; even common criminals remain perfectly unmoved by their punishment and regret only that they are weaker than their captors. Prisons are full of convicts who look upon their condition as that of prisoners of war. They have been worsted in their battle with law. That seems to them a misfortune but not a disgrace.

They are neither humble nor contrite, but revengeful. They are determined and ready to take up the duel with society as soon as an opportunity offers and they may hope to do so with some prospect of success.

But remorse is an unresisting submission to the verdict of conscience and the consciousness of one's own unworthiness. It is the recognition of the justice of the sentence which brands one, and the constant, anguished realization that one's personality has been deservedly humiliated, dishonoured and deprived of its rights. As a spiritual process, remorse causes the sinner continually to relive the misdeed he committed, while at the same time he is fully conscious of its atrocity.

The ego becomes dual, one part active, the other watching and judging.

The one again and again perpetrates its misdeed, the other looks on horrified and suffers agonies. It is one long torture and disgrace of self. Remorse condemns the sinner perpetually to repeat in his mind the deed which fills him with horror of himself. This state of mind is the nearest approach to eternal d.a.m.nation in h.e.l.l. There is only one means of temporary escape: to extinguish memory by narcotics. That is why remorse not seldom leads to drunkenness. Shakespeare, with a poet's infallible insight into the soul, has grasped and depicted the nature of remorse, the uninterrupted, torturing presence of the misdeed in man's consciousness. Lady Macbeth sees her hands ever stained with the blood of the innocent royal victim whom she herself did not even murder, and she complains that "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Leontes, in the "Winter's Tale," on hearing of Hermione's alleged death, of which he believes himself guilty, mourns:

"Once a day I'll visit The chapel where they lie; and tears shed there Shall be my recreation: so long as nature Will bear up with this exercise, so long I daily vow to use it."

Remorse is the most effective of the subjective sanctions of Morality; it is almost too effective, for owing to its duration and severity the punishment easily grows disproportionate to the crime. But it has one great disadvantage, it affects only better natures who have an active conscience and spiritual delicacy, while it spares the wicked who have no conscience, who perpetrate their misdeeds contentedly, without a qualm, and regret them only when they are discovered and lead to unpleasantness.

Nevertheless, the actions of these hardened sinners do not go quite unpunished. Moral law always takes vengeance for transgressions, but not directly on the evildoer. In addition to the subjective, it also has an objective sanction; when it is violated retribution falls on the community. The ma.s.ses have a dim idea that every evil deed meets with requital and express it in the proverb that "Though the mills of G.o.d grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." They have noticed that the curse of an evil deed never fails to come, and is consummated with crushing force, only that it does not happen at once. It seems objectionably unjust that the culprit should not feel the effect of his crime, whilst others do who were not born when it was perpetrated. But the concept of retributory justice is as little applicable to the far-reaching relations in the life of humanity as to the actions of the laws of Nature, for instance gravity or electricity. Morality is, as I have shown, an adaptation of the species to the natural conditions in which it is forced to live. Morality, therefore, has an aim, which is to make social life in common possible for the individual, this life alone enabling him to maintain his existence amid the conditions obtaining on this earth. The discipline which Morality imposes on the individual leaves him a certain amount of free play. If he escapes from this discipline to a certain small extent which does not threaten the existence of society, this revolt has no ill effect upon the life of the species, the latter has no grounds for punishing him, and the only, yet sufficient, sanction of the loose Morality of an undisciplined individual lies in the fact that he is more or less inferior to the most perfect type of the species, and visibly bears the stamp of his worthlessness in his character, his bearing and his mode of thought. But if in his disregard of Morality the individual goes so far as to frustrate its aim and endanger the existence of society, then the latter must either find ways and means of rendering the culprit harmless or else it overlooks his misdeed and thereby becomes an accessory and justly suffers the evils consequent upon a deterioration of Morals which is universally tolerated.

The means by which a society must defend the Morality necessary to its existence can only be spiritual, for it is not a question of breaches of the positive law which result in the intervention of justice and of material penalties, but of a disregard of the commands of Morality, which are not drawn up in paragraphs. Public opinion suffices to rouse the individual who despises the Moral law to an uncomfortable sense of his unworthiness; if he finds himself treated with contempt and sees disapproval and dislike in everyone's face, either he will be spurred to an effort to overcome his immoral instincts or his self-respect will suffer from the universal contempt with which he meets; and this suffering is his punishment, therefore it is the sanction of a breach of the Moral law.

If public opinion does not keep careful and severe watch, such as may be termed the function of a higher moral police, then inevitably the moral tone of the whole society will sink to a lower level, and this will result in making life harder and more difficult, and in certain circ.u.mstances may lead to dissolution. This is not a theoretical a.s.sumption, but an observed fact, a lesson taught by history. It tells us of epochs in which the licentiousness of individuals, favoured by a society too dull, weak and indifferent to stand up against bad examples, succeeded in corrupting all cla.s.ses. Such a period is exemplified by the fall of Rome. Common natures indulged and wallowed in every vice, the better ones felt such disgust for a life without n.o.bility and virtue that they discarded it, and the community lost all excuse of joint responsibility and became so loosely knit together that it was incapable of common effort or sacrifice, and collapsed miserably at the first onslaught of a foreign aggressor tempted by its depravity.

The disintegration of a society, the sanction of its sins against Morality, is a slow process. It does not often take place catastrophically, with theatrical effect, so that even a dull observer can grasp the connexion between cause and effect. But whoever investigates closely will realize that all evils from which society suffers, which make life more bitter and harder for its members, are ultimately due to defective Morality. What are cla.s.s struggles with their consequent hostilities between groups of the same nation, their coercion and damage, but manifestations of self-seeking, lack of consideration and injustice, that is, of Immorality? Would they be possible if members of all cla.s.ses, capitalists and workers, agriculturists and townsmen, rulers and subjects were inspired by neighbourly kindness, understanding and appreciation of the needs, pretensions and feelings of their opponents, and by a spirit of self-sacrifice? Would the decay of character, the arbitrariness and arrogance of the mighty, the cowardly slavishness of the ma.s.ses, with the resultant rottenness of public affairs, be conceivable if individuals were conscious of their dignity and their duty to themselves and the community, and if they had the strength and the determination to overcome their fear of men? Could wars of aggression bring ruin upon mankind if leading personalities did not give way to the desire for outward honours, to the hunger for power, to avarice, to the itch of vanity, that is to the lowest forms of selfishness, and if the ma.s.ses out of stupidity or fear of a mental effort, and out of dread for their personal responsibility did not allow themselves to be misused for base purposes?