Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics Part 6

Obviously, the same natural forces which have produced morality have, pari pa.s.su, produced these emotions; they are one of the great means by which men have been pushed into being moral. We praise people, ultimately, because it is socially useful to praise them; the approbation of one's fellows is one of the greatest possible incentives to right conduct. We blame people that they and others may be thereby deterred from wrongdoing. For ages these emotions have been arising in men's hearts, veering their fellows toward moral action. Neither blamer nor blamed has realized the purpose nature may be said to have had in view; the emotional reaction has been instinctive, like sneezing.

But if it had not been for its eminent usefulness it would never have developed and become so deep-rooted in us. If blame did no good, if it did not tend to correct evildoing, it would be an unhappy and undesirable state of mind, to be weeded out, like malice or discouragement. Praise might be kept for its intrinsic worth, its agreeableness, like sweet odors and pleasant colors. But actually we need to conserve these reactions for their extrinsic value, as spurs and correctives.

The man who acts upon a calculated expectation of consequences is, indeed, to be praised, if the ends he has sought are good and his calculation correct. Prudence, foresight, thoughtfulness are among the most important virtues. On the other hand, the man who does right instinctively is to be most admired; for to reach that goal is the aim of much of our inner struggle. The approbation we heap upon him, if not needed to keep him up to his best, at least is beneficial to others, who thereby may be stimulated to imitate his goodness. Any sort of conduct that is in line with human welfare is to be praised and loved and sung, and kept before the minds of the young and plastic.

More deeply rooted, perhaps, than the disparagement of praise, is the compa.s.sionate revulsion from blame. "He meant well"; "His conscience is clear"; "How could he help sinning with such a bringing-up!" such pleas pull us up in the midst of our condemnation.

And they must have their weight. Conscientiousness must be praised, while in the same breath we blame the folly or fanaticism it led to. And the visibly degrading effects of environment should make us tender toward the erring, even while, for their own sakes and the sake of others, we continue to blame the sin. Society cannot afford to overlook sin because it sees provocation for it. There is always provocation, there are always causes outside the sinner's heart. But there is also always a cause within the heart, an openness to temptation, and acquiescence in the evil impulse, which we must try to reach and influence by our blame and condemnation. No doubt in like circ.u.mstances we should do as badly, or worse. But to blame does not mean that we set ourselves up as of finer clay; it means only that we continue to use a weapon of great value for the advancement of human welfare. A man always "could have helped it" he could have if his inward aversion to the sin had been strong enough; and it is precisely because blame tends to make that aversion stronger in the sinner and in all who are aware of it, that we must employ it. Reward and punishment are the materialization of praise and blame and have the same uses.

We reward and punish men not because in some una.n.a.lyzable sense they "deserve" it, but ultimately in order to foster n.o.ble and heroic acts and deter men from crime. The giving of rewards for good conduct has never been systematized (except for Carnegie medals, school prizes, and a few other cases), and the practical difficulties in the way are probably insuperable. Indeed, the natural outward rewards of fame, position, increased salary, etc, would be spur enough, if they could be made less capricious and more certain.

But to restrain its members from injury to one another is so necessary to society, and so difficult, that elaborate systems of punishment have been used since prehistoric times. To a consideration of the contemporary problems concerning punishment we shall return at a later stage in our study.

What is responsibility?

There is one plea which exempts a person from blame- when we say he was not responsible. Responsibility means accountability, liability to blame and punishment. We do not hold accountable those cla.s.ses whom it would do no good to blame or punish. Babies, the feeble minded, the insane, are not deterred by blame; hence we do not hold them responsible. Beyond these obvious exemptions there are all sorts of degrees of responsibility, carefully worked out in that branch of the law known as "torts." The principle upon which man has instinctively gone, and which the law now recognizes, in holding men accountable or, in other words, imputing responsibility-is the degree in which they might have been expected to foresee the consequences of their acts.

The following set of cases will ill.u.s.trate the principle:

(1) We do not hold a man responsible at all for unforeseeable results of his action. If because of turning his cows into pasture a pa.s.sing dog gets excited and tramples a neighbor's flower-bed, the owner of the cows is not responsible for the damage; it would do no good to exact punishment for what was so indirectly and unexpectedly due to his action.

(2) But if his cows got over the wall and trampled the beds, he would be held responsible, in different degrees, according to the circ.u.mstances. If he had inspected the wall with eyes of experience and honestly thought it would keep the cows in, we deem him only slightly responsible. He could have done nothing more; yet he must learn more accurately to distinguish safe walls from unsafe. It is fairer for him to pay for the damage than for the owner of the flower- bed to suffer the loss; such risks must be a.s.sumed as a part of the business of keeping cows.

(3) If he was ignorant of the necessary height or strength of wall, we blame him more. He has no business-keeping cows until he knows all aspects of the business.

(4) If there was a gap in the wall which he would have noticed if he had taken ordinary care, we hold him still further to blame, and his punishment must be severer.

(5) If he remembered the gap in the wall and did not take the trouble to repair it, thereby consenting to the damage his cows might do, his case is still worse.

(6) Finally, if he deliberately turned the cows into his field with the hope that they would go through the gap and damage his neighbor's flower-beds, he is the most dangerous type of criminal, of "malice aforethought," and his punishment must be severest of all.

In such ways do we distinguish between traits of character more and more dangerous to society, and adjust our blame and punishment to their different degrees of danger, and the differing degrees of efficacy that the blame and punishment may have. But throughout these are purely utilitarian, an unhappy necessity for the preservation of human welfare.

On goodness of character: Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. XII. F.

Paulsen, System of Ethics, book II, chap, I, secs. 3, 5. Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. VII.

The Kantian theory: Kant's Metaphysic of Morality. A good edition in English is Abbott's Kant's Theory of Ethics. There are many discussions of his theory. An interesting recent one is Felix Adler's, in Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James; see also the chapter of Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, above mentioned; Paulsen, System of Ethics, book II, chap. V, secs. 3, 4; American Journal of Psychology, vol. 8, p. 528. On responsibility: Mezes, op. cit, pp. 29-35.

Sutherland, op. cit, vol. II, chap. XVIII. Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, book III, chap, III, sec.

CHAPTER X

THE SOLUTION OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS

PERSONAL morality is the way to live the most desirable, the most intrinsically valuable, life-in the long run, and in view of the inescapable needs and conditions of human welfare; the way to avoid the snares and pitfalls of impulse and attain those sweetest goods that come only through effort and sacrifice of lesser goods.

That is what morality is, with reference to the single individual alone, and that is ample justification for it. A recent writer phrases it as follows: "I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in twenty years-twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, twenty seconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe Perhaps when we stop teasing people and take goodness seriously. and calmly, and see that goodness is essentially imagination that it is brains, that it is thinking down through to what one really wants goodness will begin to be more coveted. Except among people with almost no brains or imagination at all, it will be popular." [Footnote: Gerald Stanley Lee. Cf. also G.

Lowes d.i.c.kinson, The Meaning of Good, p. 141. Of morality he says: "Its specific quality consists in the refusal to seize some immediate and inferior good with a view to the attainment of one that is remoter but higher".] The difference between the moral and the immoral man is not that the latter allows himself to enjoy pleasant and exciting phases of experience which the former denies himself for the sake of some good lying outside of experience, but that the latter indulges himself in any agreeable sensation that he chances to desire, while the former conflict with greater, being content not with any goods that may come to hand, but only with the attainable best. [Footnote: Cf. G. Santayana, Reason in Science, pp. 252-53: "Happiness is hidden from a free and casual will; it belongs rather to one chastened by a long education and unfolded in an atmosphere of sacred and perfected inst.i.tutions. It is discipline that renders men rational and capable of happiness, by suppressing without hatred what needs to be suppressed to attain a beautiful naturalness."]

What are the inadequacies of instinct and impulse that necessitate morality? It would seem as if the best way to live should be obvious and irresistible in its appeal. But in truth we are commonly very blind and foolish about this business of living; we lack wisdom, and we lack motive-power at the right place. Instinct is altogether too clumsy and impulse too uncertain. We need a more delicate adjustment; for this, intelligence and conscience have been developed. Morality is the way of life that intelligence and conscience oppose to instinct and impulse. Not to be guided by their wisdom is to forfeit our birthright, like Esau, for a mere mess of pottage. Some of the main types of difficulty that necessitate their overruling guidance we may now note.

(1) Our impulses are often deceptive. What promises keen pleasure turns flat in the tasting; what threatens pain may prove our greatest joy. Most men are led astray at one time or other by some delusory good, some ignis fatuus-whoring, money-making, fame are among the commonest which has fascinated them, from the thought of which they cannot tear themselves away, but which brings no proportionate pleasure in realization, or an evanescent pleasure followed by lasting regret. "Pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed".

All sorts of insidious consequences follow secretly in the train of innocent-seeming acts; the value of following a given impulse is complicated in many ways of which the impulse itself does not inform us. We are the frequent victims of a sort of inward mirage, and have to learn to discount our hopes and fears. Morality is the corrector of these false valuatiens; it discriminates for us between real and counterfeit goods, teaches us to discount the pictures of our imagination and see the gnawed bones on the beach where the sirens sing.

(2) Our impulses often clash. And since, as we have just said, the relative worth to us of the acts is not always accurately represented by the impulses, we need to stand off and compare them impartially.

No single pa.s.sion must be allowed to run amuck; the opposing voices, however feeble, must be heard. When desires are at loggerheads, when a deadlock of interests arises-an almost daily occurrence when life'

is kept at a white heat-there must be some moderator, some governing power. Morality is the principle of coordination, the harmonizer, the arbitrator of conflicting claims.

(3) We often lack impulses which would add much to the worth of our lives; we are blind to all sorts of opportunities for rich and joyous living. We need to develop our latent needs, to expand our natures to their full potentiality, to learn to love many things we have not cared for. In general we ignore the joys that we have not ourselves experienced or imagined, and those which belong to a different realm from that of our temporary enthusiasms. A lovesick swain, an opium fiend, are utterly unable to respond to the lure of outdoor sport or the joy of the well-doing of work; these joys, though perhaps acknowledged as real possibilities for them, fail to attract their wills, touch no chord in them, have no influence on their choices.

Morality is the great eye-opener and insistent reminder of ignored goods.

(4) We often have perverted impulses. We inherit disharmonies from other conditions of life, like the vermiform appendix and the many other vestigial organs which have come down to us only for harm. In general we inherit bodies and brains fairly well organized for our welfare; but there are still atavisms to be ruthlessly stamped out.

The craving for stimulants or drugs, s.e.xual perversions, kleptomania, pyromania, and the other manias, bad temper, jealousy- there is a good deal of the old Adam in us which is just wholly bad and to be utterly done away with; rebellious impulses that are hopelessly at war with our own good and must go the way of cannibalism and polygamy. Morality is the stern exterminator of all such enemies of human welfare.

What factors are to be considered in estimating the worth of personal moral ideals?

This summary consideration of the obstacles that block the path to happiness through the heedless following of impulse, shows the necessity of moral ideals; that is to say, of directive codes which shall steer the will through the tumultuous seas of haphazard desire into the harbor of its true welfare. How, then, can we decide between conflicting ideals and estimate their relative value? It can only be by judging through experience the degree of happiness which they severally effect in the situations to which they are to be applied.

But there are many factors which contribute to or detract from that happiness in its totality; and a proper estimation of ideals must note the degree in which they provide for each possible element of satisfaction.

(1) In the first place, the mere fact of yielding to an impulse, of whatever sort, brings a relief from craving, and a momentary satisfaction. Just to do what we wish to do is, negatively at least, a good; and in so far every act desired is really desirable.

An ideal which crosses inclination must have this initial price debited against it. At times the restlessness of pent-up longing is so great that it pays to gratify it even at some cost of pain or loss. But in general, desire can be modified to fit need; and rational ideals rather than silly wishes must guide us. It is dangerous to lay much stress on the urgency of desire, and almost always possible with a little firmness to hush the blind yearning and replace it with more ultimately satisfying desires.

(2) Normally, however, our desires represent real goods, which must bulk much larger in our calculation than the mere relief of yielding to the impulse. Not only is it ipso facto good to have what we want, but what we want is usually something that can directly or indirectly give us pleasure. The pleasure, then, to be attained through following this or that impulse is to be estimated, both in its intensity and its duration. The certainty or uncertainty of its attainment may also legitimately be considered. And this pleasure, though it is but one phase of the total situation, must be taken seriously into account in our appraisal of ideals which permit or forbid it.

(3) A further question is as to the purity of this pleasure, i.e, its freedom from mixture with pain. Most selfish and sensual pleasures, however keen, are so interwoven with restlessness, shame, or dissatisfaction, or so inevitably accompanied by a revulsion of feeling, disgust or loathing, that they must be sharply discounted in our calculus. Whereas intellectual, aesthetic, religious pleasures are generally free from such intermixture of pain, and so, though milder, on the whole preferable even in their immediacy and apart from ultimate consequences.

(4) But the most imperious need of life lies in the tracing-out and paying heed to these extrinsic values, these after effects of conduct.

The drinking of alcoholic liquors, for example, not only stills a craving that arises in a man's mind, not only brings pleasure of taste and comfort of oblivion, not only brings the quick revulsion of emotional staleness and headache, but has its gradual and inevitable effects in undermining the const.i.tution, lessening the power of resistance to disease, and decreasing the vitality of offspring. Quite commonly these ultimate consequences are the most important, and so the determining, factors in deciding our ideals. Among them may be included the influence of single acts in increasing or decreasing the power to resist future temptations, and the gradual paralysis of the will through unchecked self-indulgence.

(5) Another important aspect of any moral situation lies in the rejection which every choice involves. Not only must we ask what a given impulse has to offer us, in immediate and remote satisfaction; we must consider what alternative goods its adoption precludes. What might we have been doing with our time and strength or money? Is this act not only a good one, is it the best one for that moment of our lives? An important function of ideals is to point us to realms of happiness into which our preexisting impulses might never have led us, and whose existence we might scarcely have suspected.

(6) Finally, we may ask of every proposed line of conduct, what will be its worth to us in memory? Not only in our leisure hours, but in a current of subconscious reflection that accompanies our active life, we constantly live in the presence of our past. And the nature of memory is such that it cannot well retain the traces of certain of our keenest pleasures, but can continually feed us upon other joys of our past.

It is imperative, then, for a happy life, so to live that the years are pleasant to look back upon. Vicious self-indulgence and selfishness are rarely satisfying in retrospection, whereas all courage and heroism and tenderness are a source of unending comfort. For better or worse, we are, and cannot shirk being, judges of our own conduct. We may be prejudiced, and may properly try to correct our prejudices; we may discount our own disapprovals, and seek to escape from our own self- condemnation. But after all, we must live with ourselves; and it pays to aim to please not only the evanescent impulses whose disapproval will soon be forgotten, but that more deeply rooted and insistent judgment that cannot wholly be stilled. Regret and remorse are among the greatest poisoners of happiness, and prospective ideals must bear that truth in mind. "No matter what other elements in any moment of consciousness may tend to give it agreeable tone, if there is not the element of approval, there is not yet any deep, wide, and lasting pleasantness for consciousness. A flash of light here, a casual word there, and it is gone. "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset- touch; A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus ending from Euripides, And that's enough" to bring the shock of disapproval, and with it disagreeable feeling- tone continues till disapproval is removed or approval is won. If there be won this approval, other elements of disagreeableness, however great, can be endured. The ma.s.sive movement of the complex unified consciousness of a Socrates drinking hemlock, of a Jesus dying on the cross, whatever strong eddies of pain there be in it, is still toned agreeably, as it makes head conqueringly toward that end which each has ideally constructed as fit." [Footnote: H. G. Lord, in Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James, p. 388-89.] No reference has been made, in this summary of the factors which determine our estimate of the worth of personal ideals, to the bearing of these ideals upon other people's lives. Actually, of course, the social values of even primarily personal ideals are impossible to overlook, and often bulk larger than the merely personal values. This whole side of the matter will be left for convenience, however, to the following chapter.

Epicureanism vs. Puritanism.

Personal ideals have swung historically between two magnets, richness and purity, self-expression and self-repression, indulgence and asceticism. The crux of the individual's problem is the question how much repression is necessary; and man's answer has wavered somewhere between these extremes, which we may designate by the names of their best-known exemplars, Epicureanism and Puritanism. Many differences in degree or detail there have been, of course, in the various historic embodiments of these ideals; but for the sake of making clear the fundamental contrast we may neglect these individual divergences and group together those on the one hand who have called men to a fuller, completer life and those who have summoned them to an austerer and purer life, free from taint of sin and regret. We shall then put in the first group such well-known seers and poets as Epicurus, Lucretius, Horace, Goethe, Sh.e.l.ley, Byron, Walter Pater, Walt Whitman; we shall think of the Greek G.o.ds, of the Renaissance artists, the English cavaliers. We shall think of the motto, "Carpe diem," and "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"; and perhaps of Stevenson's

"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." [Footnote: An excellent brief plea for this ideal of the life that shall be rich in experience can be found in Walter Pater's Renaissance, the "Conclusion."] In contrast to these followers are afraid of impulse, those who warn and rebuke and seek to save life from its pitfalls. We shall think of Buddha, the Stoics, the Hebrew prophets, the mediaeval saints, Dante and Savonarola, the English and American Puritans, or, in modern times, of Tolstoy. The ideal of such men is expressed not by the wholesomely happy and carefree Greek G.o.ds, but by haloed saint, by the calm-eyed Buddha of Eastern lands, by the figure of Christ on the cross. The answer to the Epicurean's heedlessness is expressed in such lines as "What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright."

It is condensed in the familiar "Respice finem"; the peace of its self- denial shines out in Christ's "Not my will but thine," and in Dante's "In His will is our peace." Meager and cold and repellent as this ideal in its extreme expressions often seems, it appeals to us as the softer and irresponsible ideal of the Epicureans cannot. But obviously our way lies between the extremes. And after all that has now been said, our summary of the dangers inherent in each ideal may be very brief.

What are the evils in undue self-indulgence?

Apart from the selfishness of self-indulgence, which is obvious upon the surface, but with which we are not now concerned,

(1) Self-indulgence, if unbridled, leads almost inevitably to pain, disease, and premature death. For in the majority of men there are certain instincts so strong and so dangerous -as, the s.e.x-instinct, the craving for stimulants and excitement-that where no repressive principle exists they tend to override the grumblings of prudence and drag their possessor to disaster. It is impossible for most men, if they give themselves over to the pursuit of personal pleasure, to keep to the quiet, refined, healthful pleasures which Epicurus advocated.

Their feet go down to death.

(2) But even if the worst penalties are escaped, indulgence brings at least satiety, the "heart high cloyed," a blunted capacity for enjoyment, ennui, restlessness, and depression of spirit. Keen as its zest may be at the outset, it is short-lived at best; and with the ensuing emotional fatigue, pleasures pall, life seems empty, robbed of its meaning and glory.