Recent Tendencies in Ethics Part 2

The healthy growth which results is due to the removal of obstacles by an external power; and it is in this way--by the removal of obstacles--that natural selection works.

Intelligent or artificial selection is not restricted to this negative method of working; and its operation, positive as well as negative, was certainly well known long before Darwin's day. Starting with the familiar facts of artificial or purposive selection, Darwin showed how results similar to those aimed at and reached in this way might be brought about by the operation of certain natural laws, working without purpose or design. Purposive selection pursues its ends more directly and in general attains them far more quickly than does natural selection. A still more striking characteristic is the fact that it does not entail the waste and pain which mark the course of natural selection. Witness the records of natural selection in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, where thousands are called into fruitless being that one alone may survive and prosper. Wastefulness is the most striking feature of its method, and its path is strewn with wreckage. In all these respects the conflict of ideas belongs to the level of purposive and not of natural selection. It involves consciousness of the end, which natural selection never does; it is comparatively rapid in reaching its goal and comparatively direct in the route it takes; and the victory of an idea does not take effect through any general extermination of the individuals who cherish ideas 'unfit' for survival.

I do not deny that there may be a certain natural selection in the case of human beings; but that process is always clumsy and slow and wasteful, and the purposive intelligent selection which takes its place is one of the greatest possible gains to living beings: its presence distinguishes men from animals; its predominance distinguishes civilised men from savages; the higher the stage of civilisation, the more marked is the development of selective intelligence. And in the conflict of ideas, whether moral or intellectual, the issue is determined by a selection which is predominantly purposive, and only in the slightest degree natural.

If we return to the conflict of groups we shall see that even there purposive selection enters. How (we may ask) do those qualities of obedience, willingness to help another, and the like, arise in a community and thus enable it to win the victory over a less organised or more savage enemy? Surely it is not a sufficient answer to say that these qualities have been somehow developed, and then have contributed to the victory of the community possessing them. All through civilised life, and probably throughout a great part of savage life, there is the keenest enquiry into and perception of the qualities which will make for success. These qualities are carefully selected and positively fostered. You drill your armies--that is, you cultivate the habit of discipline and all that discipline implies--so that the victory may be gained; in other words, the quality is not produced by natural selection at all. The issue may resemble the result of natural selection, for it leads to conflict and defeat of the unfit; but the conqueror is he who has foreseen the conditions of the struggle: has deliberately equipped his forces for the fight, and been the intelligent organiser of victory.

Even in the case of compet.i.tion between individuals, at least among civilised men, it is clear that natural selection is very far from being the only factor. A man trains himself for a profession. It does not just somehow come about that a number of people accidentally develop certain varieties of occupation, and that natural selection makes play with this result, cutting off the unfit and leaving only those who are fairly well adapted to their positions. Something of this sort no doubt takes place to a limited extent; but, so far as it does take place, our methods are denounced as defective and, perhaps, as old-fashioned. 'Haphazard' is a wasteful principle, and should be superseded by intelligent initiative and deliberate preparation. And this indeed is the usual process. One adapts oneself carefully and of set purpose to the conditions of one's life, instead of simply waiting for natural selection to cut one off should one happen to be unfit.

Even among animals there are certain processes which cannot be brought under natural selection. There are the first efforts, slight as they may be, towards learning by experience. There are also all those facts which Darwin cla.s.ses under s.e.xual selection, where there is a positive choosing, due no doubt not to intelligent purpose but nevertheless to a subjective impulse. This marks the beginning of the end of the reign of natural selection, because in it for the purely objective or external factor there is subst.i.tuted an internal, subjective factor; instead of the process of cutting off unsuitable individuals among chance varieties there appears the process of selecting that variety which pleases or attracts.

The result of this whole investigation is that natural selection cannot be properly applied so as to explain the conflict of moral ideas. It is not able to account for all the phenomena of the compet.i.tion between groups. Even in sub-human life there are indications of the processes which supersede natural selection. From this result the ethical consequence may be drawn, that there is no good ground for taking the lower, the less developed, method of selection as our guide in preference to the higher and more developed.

Surely we are not to take natural selection as the sole factor of ethical import because we see it at the crude beginnings of life on this earth, while the process of life itself in its higher ranges pa.s.ses beyond natural selection. The physiological interpretation of life and conduct put forward by Nietzsche, and by a good many biological philosophers, would take natural selection, and its bearing upon the animal nature of man, as the sole test of efficiency and ethical value. But this interpretation of man's life disregards the achievements of evolution itself for the sake of pinning its faith to the humble beginnings of the organic process.

After this long enquiry into the nature and scope of natural selection, we should be better prepared to understand the degree and kind of ethical significance which can be rightly a.s.signed to the theory of evolution. In the first place let us consider the now familiar claim that man must be taken as part of the cosmos, and that man's conduct must be regarded and studied in its place in the cosmic process. At the time when it was first made this claim may have seemed a startling one; but I think that we must admit that, keeping to their own ground and using the instruments that are theirs by right, the evolutionist writers have succeeded in showing man's connexion with the animal kingdom and with organic life generally, and thus his place in the whole cosmic process. The claim must therefore be admitted.

But if man is part of the universe, then the universe is not intelligible apart from man, and the cosmic process is not fully understood unless we also have an understanding of human activity.

This, therefore, is the counter-claim that I would suggest. The course and method of evolution, or of the 'cosmic process'--to use Huxley's term--is imperfectly described if the methods and principles of human action are left out of account.

No doubt the reply may be made, as the reply has been made, that after all man occupies but a minute s.p.a.ce in the cosmos, that he is but an insignificant speck on an unimportant planet. But, if this is at all meant to imply that we may safely leave the peculiarities of human activity out of account, then I say that the suggestion hardly deserves consideration. Surely the a.s.sumption is too gross and unwarrantable that material magnitude is the standard of importance, or that the significance of man's life can be measured by the size of his material organism. We must therefore never delude ourselves with the idea that we have a full account of the cosmos or the cosmic process unless we have taken account of the peculiarities of man's nature and man's activity.

In the second place, the discussion of the principle of natural selection suggests a further reflexion. The process of natural selection is a process which always tends to some end, because by it some organisms are selected, and they are the organisms which are fittest to live. By 'fittest' is of course meant that which is best adapted to the environment, or, as it is simply a question of survival, that which so fits the conditions of the environment that it is able to survive. The canon of the principle of natural selection is on the face of it relative. No one would say that the principle can be interpreted as an absolute law for conduct, after the fashion of the absolute laws laid down by the rationalist moralists; what is involved is simply a gelation to one's surroundings. One must keep in touch with them, one must adapt oneself to them, in order to live.

But I wish to point out that the principle is not only relative, but that its relation is limited to certain features of the environment which surrounds mankind, namely, to those features and those features only which prevent organisms unsuited to the conditions of life from surviving at all. The only way in which natural selection works is by killing off rapidly or gradually the organisms which are not fitted to obtain from the environment the means of life--that is to say, it has to do with life only, with the continuance of life as a possible material phenomenon. Given that the organisms are fit enough to survive, given that their animal vitality is not diminished, a question remains: what is the standard of worthy survival? and to that question the process and principle of natural selection can give no answer. To use the old distinction: even if it is able to account for being, it can give no standard for wellbeing.

Now the environment of civilised man is a great deal larger in range than those material phenomena which contribute to his nourishment and thus to his existence as an animal organism. No doubt his first effort is to maintain himself as an animal--that is the condition of all his subsequent activity--but he seeks also to suit himself to an environment which is wider and subtler than merely animal conditions of life; to adapt himself to society, perhaps only as a member of it, perhaps also as a leader or reformer; to adapt himself to the dominant ideas of his time, absorbing them, perhaps also modifying them; to adapt himself to a whole region of interests which may in our life be built upon an animal basis, but of which the animal basis gives no explanation--interests social, artistic, intellectual, spiritual.

It is correct, therefore, to say of man that his environment is much larger than the material universe; it is whatever he conceives the universe as being, and whatever it can be for him: whether he seeks from it merely intellectual understanding, whether he regards it as a vehicle for artistic production, or whether he may see in it an opportunity for realising his own being by fulfilling the will of G.o.d--perhaps by submerging his own individuality in deity. The objects of philosophy, art, and religion,--all these are parts of the environment of civilised man, and yet his self-adaptation to them has no direct effect whatever upon his continuance on the earth as an animal organism. In other words, the process of natural selection can give us no canon at all for putting a value upon these various activities, or upon the way in which man adapts himself to these parts of his environment.

It is said by Mr Herbert Spencer that "we must interpret the more developed by the less developed";[1] and the inference would seem to be that, as animal existence is the basis of all higher activities, we must interpret these by it. But if this claim can be admitted at all, it can only be if our aim goes no further than to trace a historical process. If we desire to understand capacity or function--still more if we speak of worth or goodness--then it is much more correct to say that we must interpret the less developed by the more developed.

If you wish to trace the growth of the oak-tree from its earliest beginnings to maturity, then study the acorn and the soil; but if you wish to know what the capacity and the function of the acorn are, then you must interpret the less developed by the more developed, you must see what an oak is like when it spreads its branches under the heavens.

[Footnote 1: Principles of Ethics, i. 7.]

In the third place, the way in which the action of natural selection differs according to circ.u.mstances affects its ethical significance.

It operates as between individuals, and it operates as between groups,--although in the latter operation especially it is always mixed with other forces than natural selection. The compet.i.tion between individuals favours egoistic qualities, the compet.i.tion between groups favours qualities which may be called altruistic.

Now no principle whatever can be got out of the theory of natural selection, or out of the evolution theory in general, which will decide between these divergent operations. The question may be put, Are we to cultivate the qualities which will give us success in the battle of individual with individual, or are we to cultivate in ourselves qualities which will contribute to the success of the community? All the answer that the evolution theory can give to this question is, that when individual fights with individual, the man with stronger egoistic qualities will succeed, and that when group fights group, those groups that possess stronger altruistic qualities will tend to success. But which set of qualities we are to cultivate, or whether we are to manifest a sort of balance of the two, is a question upon which we can get no light from the theory of evolution considered by itself. And consequently we find a very prevalent, though perhaps hardly ever definitely expressed, code of conduct according to which the individual takes as the guide for his own action the egoistic qualities which give success in the struggle between different individuals, but recommends to all his fellows in the same community that they should cultivate those altruistic qualities which will lead to the advantage of society.

The theory of evolution makes no contribution at all to these questions of worth or validity or moral value which we have been discussing. All one can get out of it is certain canons for living, but none for good living. It may draw one's attention to this fact, if anybody's attention needs to be drawn to it, that existence is prior to wellbeing; but what the nature of wellbeing is--upon that it throws no light.

We have been met by the suggestion that we should interpret by means of the lower or less developed, and again that we should set up a purely physiological standard. But the suggestion overlooks two things: first of all, the difficulties in the application of natural selection itself with its divergent tendencies; and, secondly, the fact that this process of evolution has itself resulted in the development of certain higher activities and higher tendencies, and that there is no good ground for holding that their worth is to be tested by means of the lower qualities out of which they have grown.

Now a good many evolutionist moralists seem to see this, and accordingly restrict themselves almost entirely to what we may call the historical point of view. They show how moral customs and moral ideas adapted to them have arisen, and how these ideas and customs have corresponded with the inst.i.tutions of the time to which they belonged. Their tendency, accordingly, is to restrict ethics to the question of origin and history and description, to deprive it altogether of what is sometimes called its normative character--that is to say, its character as a science which lays down rules or sets up ideals for conduct. They would take away from it altogether the power of determining and establishing a criterion between right and wrong.

In other words, the fundamental ethical question would be entirely excluded from the scope of the science of ethics.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Green, 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' p. 7: "A philosopher who would reconstruct our ethical systems in conformity with the doctrines of evolution and descent, if he would be consistent, must deal less scrupulously with them than perhaps any one has yet been found to do. If he has the courage of his principles, having reduced the speculative part of them to a natural science, he must abolish the practical or preceptive part altogether."]

That, so far as I can see, is the tendency of a good deal of quite recent writing from the point of view of the evolution school: in the face of controversy and in the face of difficulties to give up the attempt which they started on so confidently thirty years ago,--the attempt to show that evolution affords a means of deciding between right and wrong and of establishing an ideal for human conduct.

Failing in this attempt, they seem to turn round and say that ethics should content itself with describing facts instead of laying down a law or setting up an ideal.

Now, whatever truth there may be in the a.s.sertion of the difficulty of determining an ideal for conduct, there is one thing certain: that whether or not the ideal can be philosophically or scientifically defined and established, some ideal is always being set up. Human action implies choice, implies the selection of one course rather than another; and the course that is chosen is always chosen for some reason, because it seems better than the course which is pa.s.sed by.

Choice always follows some kind of principle. We may use different principles at different times, we may use badly established principles, we may use uncriticised principles, but principles we do use, and we cannot act voluntarily without using them, even when we are not definitely conscious of them.

It is not possible, therefore, to entertain the suggestion that these principles should be excluded from ethics. Ethics must consider them, even if it should fail in reaching a correct account of them. We are bound to ask, for instance, what principles can decide between those divergent tendencies brought to light by natural selection, between the conditions of success for the group and the conditions of success for the individual? The conflict between individual development and group development is continually pressing to the front The individual cannot reach a high stage of development except in and through a highly developed society. But the efficiency which a highly developed society requires of its members is not the same as individual development; it more commonly implies a specialisation which tends to warp or cramp individual capacity. This is a long familiar opposition.

And the theory of evolution can do nothing to reconcile it All it can say is that in certain cases natural selection points one way, and that in certain cases it points the other way. If ethical significance be claimed for it, it must be said that natural selection is divided against itself, and that it is without any principle for reconciling its own divergences.

It is because biological evolution is essentially an historical doctrine that its votaries should not be too eager to apply it directly to ethics. It has accomplished much if able to tell us how things have happened in the past, without also dictating how they ought to take place now. It is specially absurd to say that earlier methods must govern later developments. That is what is done when we are asked to take as our guide in voluntary choice a principle which ignores volition. The whole progress from animal to man and from savage to civilised man shows a gradual supersession of the principle of natural selection by a principle of subjective selection which steadily grows in purposiveness and in intelligence. To say that intelligence should take nature as its guide is to ask civilised man to put off both his civilisation and his manhood.

The course of evolution may describe the working of different principles; but it cannot of itself supply a test of their value. How then is such a test to be got? Can Metaphysics help us? I have pointed out that the evolutionist ethics is relative--implying always a relation between organism and environment--but this relativity is qualified by its objective character. It does do something for morals: it brings man's conduct into relation with the world as a whole.

No doubt the environment which more immediately surrounds man is a succession of changing phenomena, so that although the basis we get is objective, nevertheless it is unable to give us a permanent standard of reference. At the same time we may trace in this theory some advance on the older types of ethical thinking spoken of in last lecture. Subjectivity adhered even to the Utilitarian type of thought: for what can be more subjective than the pleasant feeling upon which morality is made by it to depend? There was also a certain subjectivity attaching to the Intuitional type of thought, because the Intuitionists simply referred their judgments to conscience, the law in man, and did not connect conscience with a wider or more objective view of the universe.

The suggestion remains that we may get a basis for morality which is both objective and permanent from that more complete view of the universe which is given or which is sought by metaphysics. Metaphysics aims at completeness. That is, indeed, its predominant characteristic as a body of knowledge. It may begin with the part, if you like, with the 'flower in the crannied wall'; but when that is seen in all its relations to the rest of the world, then you will 'know what G.o.d and man is,' If the universe is a whole, then, beginning at any point, with any detail, if you only push the enquiry far enough, you are bound to become metaphysical: for you are attempting to understand reality as a whole.

In this Metaphysics resembles Religion. Both seek the ultimate, the final, the whole. But Metaphysics is distinguished from Religion in seeking the whole only by way of knowledge. So far it is like any other science. It is a process or the result of a process of knowledge. It seeks to know reality as a whole, and in knowing a part to know it in its relations to the whole. Religion also considers everything in its relation to the whole. But in religion knowledge is not the fundamental thing: its object is to relate man to G.o.d, in his consciousness, and in his life as a whole.

The theory of evolution itself very often tends to become a metaphysical theory. It does so when it holds the course of development which it traces to be either itself the ultimate reality or the most adequate appearance of that reality. This theory is now commonly known by the name of Naturalism; according to it the facts dealt with by the natural sciences are the only reality which is knowable; man's nature is part of these and has to be adapted to them, and there is nothing further with which it can be brought into relation. This theory is not the same as the scientific theory of evolution, nor is it a necessary consequence of it; but in the minds of many the two go together. The conclusion of the preceding argument--that the ethical significance of evolution is not deep enough to give any answer to the fundamental question of morals--is not a criticism of the theory of evolution so far as restricted to the domain of science, but it is a criticism of the Naturalism which professes to be a final philosophy.

III.

ETHICS AND IDEALISM.

There has been no movement of metaphysical thought in our time which can be compared for its widespread influence or for its general acceptance with the theory of evolution in biological science.

Intimate as is its connexion with the progress of science, metaphysics does not keep step with it,--any more than it simply marks time as the former advances. It reflects the influence of each new generalisation of science; but if and so far as it reflects this influence only, it cannot be an adequate metaphysics. Metaphysics must re-think each new fact brought to light, each new generalisation established by science.

It must think them in their relation to the whole, and attempt to understand them by setting them in their place in the complete system of knowledge and reality. This complete system is indeed an ideal, never adequately comprehended by the human mind; but it is nevertheless the ideal which determines all efforts of constructive philosophy--including those efforts which take the generalisation of some special science as their all-comprehending principle. An attempt of this kind to make a philosophy out of a scientific generalisation has in our own time been the obvious result of the theory of evolution, and has given new vogue to the philosophical system called Naturalism. That system draws its strength from the scientific doctrine of evolution; but as a philosophy it gives an extended application to the generalisation established by a group of sciences, and valid for the facts within their range. It interprets the law of development which rules the sequences of nature as the highest attainable principle for explaining the system of things. Some of the questions which it leaves unanswered, and some of the facts which it overlooks, have been pointed out in last lecture. Of this theory perhaps enough has already been said.

In spite of the increased vogue which naturalism has obtained from its alliance with triumphant evolutionism, it cannot be said to represent the prevailing type of thought amongst the English metaphysicians of the last generation. That generation was remarkable for the reappearance in this country of a reasoned Idealism; and all forms of Idealism have at least this in common, that they refuse to look upon the material process as the ultimate character of reality--so far as reality is known or knowable.

It may also be said--and this is a characteristic which is not merely negative--that all forms of Idealism agree in ascribing special significance to the moral and religious aspects of life. This holds true of the great idealists, different as their types of thought may be--of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Leibniz, of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. It holds true also of the leading representatives of recent English idealism. But the ethical tone of a treatise and the ethical interest of its author are not always a guarantee that ethical conceptions have a secure position in his system of thought. This is the case, I think, with Spinoza; and it seems to me to hold also of some writers of the present day. Mr Bradley, for instance, is perhaps the most influential, as he is without doubt not the least brilliant, of contemporary metaphysicians; he carries on the tradition of a school of thought predominantly ethical; his first book was a defence of the ethical positions of that school; but, if we turn to the elaborate metaphysical treatise which has resulted from his mature reflexion, its most impressive feature will be found to be the almost complete bankruptcy of the system in the region of ethics.

Not only had this idealist movement in its beginnings a predominantly ethical tone. It was really started in the interest of moral ideals as well as of intellectual thoroughness; and its contribution of greatest value to English thought was a work on ethics. The 'Prolegomena to Ethics' of T.H. Green was a fitting result of his unwearied controversies in defence of the spiritual nature of man and the universe. No one is more worthy than he to be called by the Platonic name a 'friend of ideas,' And he was a friend of ideas because he saw their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities of human life. Green's 'Prolegomena' was published in 1883, the year after his death. And, had I been speaking twenty years ago, I should have had to emphasise the ethical character of the metaphysics of the day. His metaphysical thinking, through all its subtleties, never strayed far from the moral ideal. Owing to his teaching that ideal, and the general character of the philosophy with which it was a.s.sociated, have permeated a great part of the better thought of the present day, and have influenced its practical activities in various directions,--social, political, and religious. But the magnetism of his personality has been removed; and those whose business it is to test intellectual notions have been impressed by the difficulties involved in Green's metaphysical positions and in his connexion of them with morality.

The single word 'self-realisation' has been taken to express the view of the moral ideal enforced by Green. And it is as suitable as any single word could be. But it is clear that, in every action whatever of a conscious being, self-realisation may be said to be the end: some capacity is being developed, satisfaction is being sought for some desire. A man may develop his capacities, seek and to some extent attain satisfaction--in a manner, realise himself--not only in devotion to a scientific or artistic ideal or in labours for the common good, but also in selfish pursuit of power or even in sensual enjoyment. So far as the word 'self-realisation' can be made to cover such different activities, it is void of moral content and cannot express the nature of the moral ideal. Green is perfectly alive to the need of a distinction--and to the difficulty of drawing it. According to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions.

And for each method of definition something may be said. But if we adopt both methods together and say in one breath that good is what the good man does and that the good man is he who does good, is our logic any better than that of the ordination-candidate who defined the functions of an archdeacon as archdiaconal functions? And yet Green comes very near to describing this logical circle. "The moral good,"

he says, is "that which satisfies the desire of amoral agent"; but "the question, ... What do we mean by calling ourselves moral agents?

is one to which a final answer cannot be given without an answer to the question, What is moral good?"[3]

[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, -- 154, p. 160.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., -- 156, p. 163.]

[Footnote 3: Prolegomena to Ethics, ---- 171, 172, p. 179.]

When Green really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the distinction--these different ways being, however, not independent but complementary to one another in his thought. The first suggestion is that good is distinguished from evil, or the true good from a good which is merely apparent, by its permanence. It gives a lasting satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction: "the true good ... is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in the former case: this has a permanence--or rather an independence of time--which distinguishes it from the satisfaction of some temporary desire. But I do not think that this is what Green means. He wished to avoid falling back upon mere disconnected judgments of conscience after the manner of the intuitional moralists. The 'true good' for him seems to mean the attainment, the complete realisation, of the moral ideal. Were this reached we should indeed 'find rest,' for moral activity as we know it would be at an end. But the moral ideal is never thus attained; its realisation, as Green holds, is only progressive and never completed. Consequently 'rest' is never 'found.'

It is of the nature of the moral life to press onward constantly towards a goal which it cannot attain; each achievement leads to a further effort and a higher reach.