Project Gutenberg's Morals and the Evolution of Man, by Max Simon Nordau This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Morals and the Evolution of Man Author: Max Simon Nordau Translator: Marie A. Lewenz Release Date: November 12, 2011 [EBook #37998] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORALS AND THE EVOLUTION OF MAN *** Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) MORALS AND THE EVOLUTION OF MAN MORALS AND THE EVOLUTION OF MAN BY Max Nordau A Translation of "BIOLOGIE DER ETHIK" By MARIE A. LEWENZ, M.A. Fellow of University College, London CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1922 TO MY DEAR WIFE ANNA (née Dons), the sunshine of my life in happy days, my brave comrade in the storms of the world-catastrophe, with love and gratitude I dedicate this book which helped both her and me to endure the dark years when we were homeless wanderers. Madrid, September 26th, 1916 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 1. The Phenomenon of Morality 1 2. The Immanence of the Concept of Morality 46 3. The Biological Aspect of Morality 84 4. Morality and Law 115 5. Individual Morality and Collective Immorality 144 6. Freedom and Responsibility 185 7. Morality and Progress 215 8. The Sanctions of Morality 247 MORALS AND THE EVOLUTION OF MAN CHAPTER I THE PHENOMENON OF MORALITY A very well-known experiment in animal psychology was once made by Möbius. An aquarium was divided into two compartments by means of a pane of glass; in one of these a pike was put and in the other a tench. Hardly had the former caught sight of his prey, when he rushed to the attack without noticing the transparent partition. He crashed with extreme violence again the obstacle and was hurled back stunned, with a badly battered nose. No sooner had he recovered from the blow than he again made an onslaught upon his neighbour—with the same result. He repeated his efforts a few times more, but succeeded only in badly hurting his head and mouth. At last a dim idea dawned upon his dull mind that some unknown and invisible power was protecting the tench, and that any attempt to devour it would be in vain; consequently from that moment he ceased from all further endeavours to molest his prey. Thereupon the pane of glass was removed from the tank, and pike and tench swam around together; the former took no notice whatever of his defenceless neighbour, who had become sacred to him. In the first instance the pike had not perceived the glass partition against which he had dashed his head; now he did not see that it had been taken away. All he knew was this: he must not attack this tench, otherwise he would fare badly. The pane of glass, though no longer actually there, surrounded the tench as with a coat of mail which effectually warded off the murderous attacks of the pike. The fact so often observed, that man in many cases does that which he passionately desires to leave undone, and refrains from doing that which all his instincts urge him to do—this phenomenon of Morality is a generalization upon a huge scale of the above experiment on animals with the pane of glass in a tank. Jean Jacques Rousseau thought out a theoretical human being who was by nature good. Such a human being does not exist and has never existed. From sheer annoyance at the provoking obliquity of vision which led the enthusiast of Geneva to develop such a theory, one is sorely tempted to go to the opposite extreme and declare that man is by nature fundamentally bad; but such an assertion is just as naïve as Rousseau's contention. Good and bad are values which we can only learn to appreciate when we have felt the effect of the phenomenon of Morality. The concepts of good and evil are of much later origin than mankind, and can therefore no more constitute a fundamental characteristic of man's original nature than, for instance, the cut and colour of his clothes; though it is open to wiseacres to maintain that man's nature to some extent actually finds expression in the cut and colour of his clothes—that is, in his choice of them. Anyone contemplating primitive man, man as he emerges from the hands of Nature, stripped of all the additions which he has acquired in the course of his historical development, is bound to admit that man is neither good nor bad; he is a [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] living being acting according to the instincts implanted in his nature; just like the pike. But in most contingencies he does not obey these instincts, and if he reflects upon himself and his actions, he is astounded at realizing this, and asks: "Why do I refrain from revelling in the gratification of my desires?" Innumerable times every day of his life he would like to break many or all of the Ten Commandments; but he abstains from so doing, and, what is more, mostly without effort, without having painfully to suppress his desire. What prevents him from yielding to his impulses? An invisible power which lays its commands upon him: "Thou shalt not!" "Thou shalt!" Often his aims and inclinations come into violent collision with this order, or this prohibition, and are hurled back by the painful impact. Man hears the threatening, imperious voice, but cannot see whence it comes. Accustomed to reason by analogy, he concludes that it is, like thunder, a voice of Nature. When the pike has sufficiently injured his nose against the pane of glass, he assumes as an actual fact that an insuperable barrier separates him from the tench, and, moreover, that it is both useless and painful to come into contact with this. He does not try to discover the nature of the obstacle, and gives up any further attempt upon his mysteriously protected prey. Man, with a more highly developed intelligence than the pike, does not accept the phenomenon of Morality with dull resignation. Since he has become conscious of a mysterious barrier erected between his volitions and his actions, he has not ceased to reflect upon this barrier, to investigate it with a timid yet irresistible desire for knowledge, and to try and discover its nature. It redounds to man's credit that he has devoted so much time and energy to investigating the character and essence of Morality. But the result of these investigations does not redound to his credit. With the exception of theology, there is no subject upon which so much has been written as upon ethics. Yet whosoever plunges into this boundless sea of literature will emerge with feelings bordering upon horror and despair. Here a free rein is given to all man's errors, to his habit of drawing false conclusions, to his faulty modes of thought. Incapacity to interpret facts, association of ideas, elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp and uncurbed by any criticism, intemperate mysticism, arrogant dogmatism, shallow self- sufficiency—all these vie with one another in the presentment of theories which either are patently foolish, arbitrary or ill-founded, or else prove to be so when impartially examined. It is hard for the few reasonable thinkers who have taken part in this great investigation to make their voices heard amid the uproar raised by the solemn, unctuous, dictatorial or pedantic tomfools. And even the former are not entirely satisfactory, because they do not distinguish clearly enough between the form and the substance, the externals and the essence of Morality, and because they do not discriminate with sufficient care between questions as to its nature, origin and aim, and its powers or sanctions—questions which must on no account be confounded. What is Morality? Obviously it is necessary to attempt a clear answer to this question before any useful purpose can be served by inquiring into the group of problems to which it gives rise: its aim, its laws, its origin, its method, its assumptions. The Stoics answer this question as follows: "Morality is living according to Nature." Furthermore, it is quite in accordance with the doctrine of the Stoics that Cicero says: "Virtue, however, is nothing but Nature developed to the highest possible degree of perfection" ("ad summum perducta"). Moral therefore means natural; Morality and Nature are equivalent; they are one. Really a simpler or more childlike explanation is hardly possible. The most superficial glance at human life and at our own soul teaches us that Morality is contrary to Nature, that it must struggle against Nature to assert itself, that it means a victory over Nature, in so far as we understand by Nature in this special sense the most primitive reaction of man to simple and more complicated stimuli, the first tendency of impulse, the immediate, instinctive urge to act. Further, the definition of the Stoics ignores the aggregation of concepts which the synthetic conception, Morality, involves; as if this were self-evident and required no definition. The Stoics tacitly assume that Morality and Good are synonymous. Cicero makes this assumption clearer by using the word Virtue (virtus) instead of Morality. But in all languages this word implies approbation and praise. It is an appreciation of worth (Werturteil), to use the expression so appropriately coined by Lotze. But the very fact that we recognize Morality as being valuable is by no means a matter of course and it demands an explanation. Certain actions could only be judged to be good if they were distinguished from others which did not suggest the same judgment, which were felt to be not good, to be bad or indifferent. We come to the question, What is Good, what is Bad? The Stoics reply, "That which is good is natural." It is easy to call facts which please us natural, and such as displease us unnatural. In reality both series of facts are equally natural; because everything that happens is natural; because by definition Nature is the synthesis of all phenomena; because nothing exists outside of Nature, and within Nature everything is a part of her and therefore is natural and can be nothing but natural. If we nevertheless wish to distinguish between natural and unnatural phenomena, if we call Good, Morality, and Virtue natural, and compare them favourably with the unnatural, this only proves that we use the words natural and unnatural as synonyms for good and bad, and that we have a ready-made standard by which we measure the naturalness or unnaturalness (that is, the goodness or badness) of actions, and that there exists within ourselves the law by which we judge them to be good or bad. But how do we come by this law? How, of what material, and why do we fashion this standard? Why do we approve of one thing as good and condemn another as bad? What qualities do the former and the latter possess, or what qualities do we ascribe to them? That is what we want to know when we inquire as to the significance of Morality, and the definition of the Stoics throws no light whatever upon the matter. According to Aristotle Morality is "the activity of Practical Reason, which is accompanied by pleasurable emotion." It is not worth while to dwell upon this definition. It is absolutely valueless. Practical Reason is not a definite concept; Aristotle does not say anywhere what he understands by "practical" when he applies this attribute to Reason; and to call [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] [Pg 7] every activity of Practical Reason accompanied by pleasurable emotion Morality is mere eccentricity. To take only one example: if I have a house built, and accept the architect's plans because they please me greatly, my practical reason is most certainly active; the gratification induced by my reasonable choice of the plans is doubtless a pleasurable emotion; but assuredly no one will characterize as moral this activity of my practical reason which is accompanied by pleasurable emotion. It may be that Aristotle was contemplating not a single action, but conduct in life as a whole. In that case he has expressed in an unfortunate, and much too loose a manner the thought that Morality is Reason plus pleasurable emotion. We shall frequently meet with and have to examine this idea, which omits to explain why pleasurable emotions attend certain activities of "Practical Reason," whatever that may be, and fail to be aroused by others. Judaism, as embodied in its law-givers and prophets, teaches that Morality consists in living and acting in accordance with the divine Will. Maimonides, who, however, was regarded by many of his contemporaries as a heretic, does not consider Judaism a creed at all, but a code of Morality. He maintains that anyone who repudiates the tenets of the Jewish faith, even the most essential one, namely, the belief in a single god, must not be excluded from the Jewish community as long as he conforms to its moral laws. This thinker, usually so accurate and nice in his reasoning, overlooks the fact that in this case he is contradicting himself in a manner wellnigh comic. According to him, too, Morality consists in the endeavour to live and act in accordance with the divine Will. How is such an endeavour possible for a man who does not believe in God and for whom consequently no divine Will exists? Therefore either Morality must be something different from an approximation to the standard set up by the divine Will, or else he who denies God cannot be moral. But I will leave the author of the "Guide of those who have gone astray" to his self- contradiction, and only retain the Jewish definition of Morality as based upon the Will of God. Without any restriction Christianity has taken over this definition from the mother-religion. In his zeal to claim that God alone is the source of all Morality, St. Augustine allows himself to be carried away to such an extent that he libels mankind most hatefully. Just as for Rousseau man is by nature good, for the Bishop of Hippo he is by nature fundamentally bad. Left to his own devices he would always wallow in the mire of sin and vice, and would never even feel the wish to abandon his wickedness. It is God's mercy alone which rescues him from his depravity and sets his feet upon the path of righteousness, leading him to virtue, salvation and eternal bliss. Thomas Aquinas is no less definite on this point. The scriptures of Judaism and Christianity contain the eternal law which God has ordained for mankind. He points out the paths that man should follow. All Morality springs from Him alone. To this very day true believers adhere to this doctrine. Morality did not originate on earth; the knowledge of it is a gift of grace from heaven to mankind. It is derived from God; it is that which God has willed; or else it does not need any special act of volition on the part of God, but is the essence of God himself. That is the teaching of Paley, the classical moral philosopher. Virtue consists in doing good to mankind in obedience to the Will of God, and in order to attain eternal salvation. Here stress is laid upon the fact that Morality is active love for one's neighbour, and this is a concession on the part of the conciliatory Englishman to the utilitarian ethics of his countrymen; but for him the necessary and sufficient reason for this love of one's neighbour is the Will of God and the desire for eternal salvation. The German devotee, Baader, blustering like a capuchin, preaches this twaddle: "Any Morality which is not rooted in divine law is the intellectual impiety of our time raised to its highest power; it is the perfection of atheism; for the idea of the absolute autonomy of man atheistically denies the Father as law-giver; the theistic denial of the necessity for divine aid in fulfilling the law does away with the Son or Mediator, and finally the materialistic-pantheistic apotheosis of Matter does away with the Holy Ghost with its sanctifying power." The Frenchman Jouffroy, though more careful and reticent in his manner, unmistakably expresses his conviction that "ethics, as well as the philosophy of law, inevitably and necessarily lead to theology." But this necessity only exists for minds whose desire for knowledge and truth is easily satisfied by words without a meaning that can be visualized, by fabulous statements accepted without proof, by fictions of the imagination, and by shallow juggling with the association of ideas. Even those who do not approve all Auguste Comte's arguments will agree with him when he classifies the successive steps in the mental development of mankind as the theological, transcendental, and scientific modes of thought. When man's understanding is in its infancy he is content with a supernatural explanation of all phenomena which strike him as mysterious, disquiet him or rouse his curiosity. Only I have never been able to understand why Comte discriminates between the theological and the transcendental modes of thought, and assigns to the latter a higher place than the former. Both are on a footing of absolute equality; both raise arbitrary fictions of the imagination to the position of sources of knowledge; both substitute anthropomorphic trivialities for the observation of phenomena and research into the conditions under which they occur and their relationship to one another. The only difference between them lies in the fact that transcendentalism expresses itself in choicer language than does theology, that it presents formulæ that are more complicated and pretentious, less transparent and honest— formulæ which the unpractised mind does not immediately recognize as mythological dogmas in a pseudo-scientific disguise. The relationship of theological to transcendental thought is much the same as that of superstition to religion. Both of them are one and the same. Religion is shamefaced superstition, whereas superstition has not yet learned to feel shame. Religion is superstition in a dress-coat, and therefore fit for polite circles; superstition is religion in a cotton smock and therefore cannot be admitted to society. Superstition is the religion of the poor and unassuming, religion is the superstition of fine folk who plume themselves on their formal and verbal scholarship. [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] Ever since man has risen above the level of the beasts, ever since the first faint glimmerings of thought began in the thick-walled, narrow and dark skull of a hunter of the Neanderthal or Cro Magnon, he has ascribed everything unintelligible in life and in the world around him to divine actions and divine sources. How did the world come into existence? A god or gods created it. How does Nature work? In accordance with the will of a god or gods, in obedience to divine commands, as a result of divine activities. What is life? A divine gift of grace. What is consciousness? An irradiation of the divinity. What is infinity, what eternity? Attributes of the god. God is the name that from the beginning of time to the present day men have given to their ignorance. They find it easier to bear disguised by this pseudonym; they are even proud of it. With cunning self-deception they have endowed the word with the dignity pertaining to a title of the most awe-inspiring majesty, and they no longer feel ashamed of a poverty of mind which can boast of such a magnificent name. Morality also is one of those phenomena which are not intelligible as a matter of course. The questions how, whence, why, and to what end Morality exists, and what it is, cannot be solved at a glance; its life-history is not apparent to every observer, as is that of the domestic cat. But why cudgel one's brains? Cheap explanations are ready to hand. This way mythology, you maid-of-all-work! Morality has been ordained by God. A moral life is one in accordance with God's commandments. He who will not content himself with this answer is an infidel and does not deserve to have any notice taken of him. Let us leave the paltry statements of theologians and note how men who investigate questions more thoroughly have dealt with Morality. Descartes defines Morality as the sustained endeavour to do that which one has recognized to be right. It is difficult to discern in this definition the father of scientific scepticism. What are the distinguishing marks of Right? Is the decision as to what is right and what is wrong to be left to the subjective judgment of the individual? In that case Descartes must concede that the action of a burglar is moral, if he has recognized that it is right for him to perpetrate his crime between two and three o'clock in the morning, that being the most favourable time for it, and then strives to the best of his ability to effect an entrance into the building he has selected, at the moment which he has recognized as the right one. Or shall all mankind, or at least the majority, and not the individual, decide what is right? In that case the definition would certainly approximate to the one which I hold to be true; but for one thing it would suffer from vagueness; and, moreover, its originator would lay himself open to the reproach of not having shown why the individual is worthy of praise when he acts in accordance with the convictions of the majority, though these be opposed to his own, and in so doing allows his action to be determined by a judgment due to a psychic mechanism other than his. Spinoza's "Ethics" leaves the reader in great discomfort, the result of vacillating and contradictory explanations. Obviously Descartes' great disciple had no clear conception of the essence of Morality and held either consecutively, or may be even simultaneously, divers views on the subject, amongst which those of all schools of thought are either quite clearly expressed or at least implied. "By Good," he says, "I mean that which we know for certain to be useful to us."[1] I quote the wording of Berthold Auerbach's translation: "B. de Spinoza's collected works. Translated from the Latin by Berthold Auerbach." Stuttgart, J. G. Cotta, 1871. Second edition, Vol. II. And again: "To act absolutely virtuously is merely to act, live, preserve one's being (these three mean the same thing) in accordance with the dictates of Reason, because one seeks one's own interest." According to that Morality is synonymous with egoism, and its aim is man's individual profit or interest. Even the most pronounced Utilitarians among ethical theorists have not ventured to go to such lengths. True, they have contended that the aim of moral action is happiness, but at least they define it as the happiness of the whole community and not that of the individual, except in so far as he is a member of the community and has his fair share of its well-being. Spinoza foresees the objection that the pursuit of one's own happiness cannot possibly deserve the universal esteem in which virtue is held, and he tries to adduce reasons whereby the egoism which he characterizes as moral may be justified and palliated: "Everyone exists according to the supreme law of Nature, and consequently everyone does, according to the supreme law of Nature, that which results from the necessities of his own nature; and therefore every man forms his judgment as to what is good and bad according to the supreme law of Nature, pursues his own interest according to his lights, seeks revenge, strives to preserve what he loves and to destroy what he hates." That is possibly the most audacious and at the same time the most ill-founded statement that has ever been written on the subject of Morality. Morality means behaviour calculated to further one's own interest. Morality is therefore utility. But man cannot act otherwise than morally, since he always acts as he is compelled to do by his own nature. There is no sense in discriminating between good and bad, moral and immoral, since one always acts in accordance with the behests of Nature. Man automatically executes the dictates of Nature which is alone responsible for his deeds. For the Stoics, too, Morality is action in accordance with the law of Nature, but Spinoza goes further than the Stoics, in that he does away with any universally applicable standard of moral conduct, and sets up instead of Nature pure and simple, which is the same for all, each man's individual nature as the authority which shall lay down rules of behaviour for him. So Morality is something individual and subjective. Man acts according to the requirements of his interest; his own nature shows him what his interest requires; no other person has any right or any qualification to form a judgment upon the worth of his conduct, to call it good or bad, for he cannot know what course of action the man's personal nature, peculiar to himself and to no other, may prescribe to him. This is the doctrine of anarchy and amorality put in a nutshell, a more wordy paraphrase of the Fais ce que vouldras (please yourself), the terse inscription that Rabelais put over the entrance to his Abbey of Thélème, as the only law governing that abode of alluring wantonness. Spinoza certainly does half-heartedly concede to Reason the rôle which Aristotle positively assigns to it ("To act in an absolutely [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [1] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] virtuous manner is merely to act according to the guidance of Reason," etc.), but it is impossible to see how Reason can exercise guidance and control if "everyone does according to the supreme law of Nature that which results from the necessities of his nature." This can surely only mean that everyone may yield to the unbridled desires of his natural instincts, which is the very reverse of self-control by Reason. If Nature is to rule despotically, there is obviously no place for a constitutional limitation of her sole power by the effective counsel and protests of Reason. But Spinoza renounces in a much more definite way his views recognizing the right of every individual "to form his judgment as to what is good and bad according to the supreme law of Nature," for he calmly adds: "Society can be founded, if it reserves to itself the right possessed by the individual to take revenge, and to pronounce a verdict on what is good and what is bad; thereby it acquires the power to prescribe rules of conduct for the community, to make laws, and to enforce them, not by means of Reason, which cannot restrict passions, but by threats.... Hence in a state of Nature, sin cannot even be imagined." This concession to Society most emphatically contradicts his first definition of Morality. It does away with the right claimed for the individual "to do according to the supreme law of Nature that which results from the necessities of his own nature," and by the same "supreme law of Nature" to "judge what is good and what is bad." It subjects conduct to the restraint, not of Nature, but of Society. It bears witness to the admission that "Reason cannot restrict passions," although Spinoza has just required the virtuous man to "act according to the guidance of Reason." Spinoza admits that Morality is not the consequence of a law inherent in the individual, but of an extraneous law forced upon him by society; that it is not an individual but a social phenomenon. In this he agrees with the conclusions of modern sociological thought, but his merit is much diminished by the fact that he skims lightly over the one great difficulty which sociological ethics is struggling to overcome. He says, society "reserves to itself the right ... to pronounce a verdict on what is good and what is bad, and thereby acquires the power to prescribe rules of conduct to the community," etc. It has the power right enough; police, judge, prison and gallows bear witness to that; but has it the right? That is not clear without further investigation. It requires to be proved. The amoralist can emphatically deny this, basing his conclusion on Spinoza's own definition. He can legitimately declare that he need submit to no dictates of society, that he owes obedience only to his own nature and his own inner needs, and the moral philosopher can only prove to him that he is wrong by scornfully indicating the penal code and its stalwart minions. Spinoza, we see, has already given a whole series of mutually destructive and contradictory definitions of Morality: it is the law of life and conduct which society lays down for the individual, though we do not learn from him on what principles it is based; it is the pursuit of one's own interest as indicated by Reason; it is obedience to necessity—that is to say, to the demands of one's own nature. All this does not suffice him. He discovers a new aspect of Morality. "Recognition of Good and Evil is nothing but a pleasurable or a disagreeable emotion in so far as we are conscious of it." And again, "Pleasure is not actually bad (as the ascetics probably contend), but good; pain, on the contrary, is actually bad." In this case the ideas pleasure and pain are treated as equivalents of good and bad, as were useful and harmful in the former case. According to the axiom that things that are equal to the same thing must be equal to one another, pleasurable is synonymous not only with good, but also with beneficial, and in like manner painful with bad and harmful. Brandy undoubtedly produces a sensation of pleasure in the drinker; is brandy, then, good in a moral sense? Above all, is it beneficial? Many such questions could be put to Spinoza, but this one is enough. Thus we discover Spinoza to be at one and the same time a Utilitarian and a Hedonist, the champion of Impulse and again of Reason, an anarchistic individualist and a herald of the right of society to rule the individual. Angry and disappointed, we turn from him, for instead of finding in him the definite standard we sought we have met with the shifting hues of the chameleon and the uncanny changes of form of Proteus. The views of the English thinkers are clearer and more convincing although they, too, do not carry their investigations far enough. Hobbes uses Justice and Injustice as synonyms for Morality and Immorality, and he definitely recognizes what Spinoza only dimly guessed, namely, that these ideas could only arise in man when living as a member of society and not in a being dwelling alone. According to him, therefore, Morality is a social and not an individual phenomenon; just as the moral philosophers of the theological school look upon it as the Will of God, so he considers it to be the Will of Society. But he was under the obligation (non-existent for the theologian) to trace to its source this social Will, to show how it is manifested, to explain why the individual not only submits to it, but values this submission far more highly than mere utility. Man learns the Will of God by revelation, and it is forbidden to inquire into its basis. To the Will of Society Hobbes cannot possibly ascribe the same incontestable sanctity. It should not have escaped his notice that this Will is neither uniform nor of assured stability, and that it often wavers and is sometimes self-contradictory. Therefore, if he wants to call the Will of Society Justice, as the theologians call the Will of God Morality, and if he wants to look upon Justice and Morality as equivalents, then it is his duty to explain how Society can make claims which conflict with the principles on which the universal rules it has drawn up are based, and which, consequently, not being just or moral, are unjust and immoral, but which, nevertheless, must be acknowledged by the individual as being both just and moral, simply because they are social claims. In Kant's moral philosophy we find the extremest form of mystic dogmatism; its success would be inexplicable did one not know how prone mankind is to be intimidated by brusque statements. Kant's dictatorial pronouncements have become common-places. "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] universal law." That is very impressive. But what is "the maxim" on which you act? This maxim is the moral law. Now we yearn to know what this moral law is, whence it comes, and on what it is based. But our yearnings remains unsatisfied. The moral law is a secret. It is an incomprehensible power which rules our consciousness. Ask no questions. Be silent, submit and obey. Even the theologian discussing moral philosophy will listen to reason. He gives us the information, sibylline though it be, that the moral law emanates from the Will of God, and is shown to us in the revelations of religion. Kant does not even give such meagre information. The moral law exists. That must suffice. "The starry heavens above thee, the moral law within thee." You retort that that is a metaphor which you may call poetical, if you like, but it is no explanation. You will get the following reply: this metaphor, rightly understood, indicates that the moral law is eternal, that it is part and parcel of uncreated Nature like the stars, that it is a phenomenon of the same order as all the elements that go to make up the universe. "The moral law does not flow from antecedent ideas of Good and Evil; on the contrary, the moral law decides what is good and what is evil." It is not derived from human experience. The less so since "it cannot be proved by experience that it has at any place or any time become real." In other words, no one can testify that the "Categorical Imperative" has ever been realized, that the moral law has "at any place or any time" ceased to be a Kantian theory productive of sacred thrills, that it has ever emerged from the unapproachable cell wherein it dwells in the temple of human consciousness, to take a place and play an active part among mortals. The lessee of all Kant's wisdom, Hermann Cohen, with the clumsiness of an over-zealous assistant, has expressed his master's thought in a perfectly ludicrous form: "The moral law is to be conceived as a reality of such kind that it must exist, that its being must be" (note the elegance and euphony of the phrase "being must be"!) "even if no creature existed for whom it would be valid." True, the moral law is a maxim on which you should "act," a standard of human conduct, but it would still exist if there were no human beings and no action. It would come to exactly the same thing if Hermann Cohen said: the railway is to be conceived as a reality of such kind that it must exist if there were no human beings and consequently no travellers; even if there were no earth on the surface of which rails and sleepers could be laid. This is such palpable nonsense that it would be a work of supererogation to prove its absurdity. By this grotesque exaggeration Hermann Cohen has clearly brought to light the hollowness and weakness of Kant's Moral philosophy which culminates in the "Categorical Imperative." In spite of its arbitrary dogmatism, the formula of the "Categorical Imperative" has taken a hold on the imagination of the superficially educated, and has never ceased to be repeated with the fervour evinced by a devout man at prayer, by several generations of those who have made it their business to cultivate mental and moral science. In one of his early novels, "The Island of Dr. Moreau," H. G. Wells has described how an audacious scientist, by performing an operation on the brains of the most savage beasts of prey, such as panthers, wolves, etc., transformed them into creatures with the powers of thought and speech. He succeeds in suppressing, or at least in lulling for the time being, their bloodthirsty instincts, but he is always afraid that these may be roused again, and forbids the animals on which he experiments to touch blood or fresh meat. He takes good care to give no reason for this prohibition. He merely issues it sternly and threateningly. It is "the Law," an unknown, inexplicable, but terrible power to which one must submit, because opposition would expose one to unimaginable, but terrible evils. If temptation assails the beasts they flee it, whispering fearfully and warningly to one another: "The Law! the Law!" Wells is a trained philosopher, and often has his tongue in his cheek. I shrewdly suspect that when he writes of the mysterious "Law" which fills Dr. Moreau's semi-humanized beasts of prey with superstitious terror, he is poking fun at Kant's "Categorical Imperative." The great logical mistake in Kant's moral philosophy is that he conceives Morality as a social or collective phenomenon, and yet defines it as an individual one. According to Kant, the Categorical Imperative exists within us. It is as immutable as the starry heavens above us. It gives us the criterion by which to discriminate between good and evil. Its realm is our consciousness wherein it lives and rules; it is not introduced from outside, it springs from no power or conditions outside our person. All the same, the only law which this ultra subjective Categorical Imperative imposes on us is the most centrifugal that can possibly be imagined: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Hence our action is designed to produce an effect on the world around us. It is "to become a universal law" can, of course, only mean, it is to become a universal law of human society, for Kant cannot possibly have aspired to make the Categorical Imperative impose laws upon the stars in their courses. Our moral law, in so far as it applies to our actions, deals with society. When we formulate it in our minds, we associate it from its first inception with the notion of the society to which it is to be applied. It would have been logical to say: "Your standard of conduct is to be what society recognizes as its universal law." But Kant puts the cart before the horse and says on the contrary: "The maxims on which thy action is based are by thy will to become the universal law of society." Other philosophers have avoided this mistake. Hegel declares: "It is not until man becomes a member of a moral community that the ideas of Duty and Virtue attain a definite meaning and become direct representatives of a universal spirit in subjectivity, which knows that it is actuated in its aim by the universal and realizes that its dignity and its particular aims are founded upon it." If we translate this horribly hazy language of Hegel's into plain speech we find it means: "The ideas of Duty and Virtue only acquire a meaning when they are applied to the acts of commission and omission of the individual member of a community." (When Hegel speaks of "moral community" his use of the word "moral" is inadmissible, for he takes it for granted that the meaning of the word "moral" has been determined and is clearly understood, whereas he ought first to have defined its meaning.) The concepts of Duty and Virtue denote that the individual in taking action thinks of the community, that regard for its interests determines him, that his actions do not attain dignity and worth until his aim becomes the interests of the community, that these interests must coincide with [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] those of the individual if his actions in his own interests are to merit the appellations of dutiful and virtuous. In short: to act morally is to act so as to ensure the well-being of the community. The real Categorical Imperative is a social conscience. Feuerbach expresses this thought clearly and distinctly when he says: "There can be no question of Morality in the strict sense of the word except where the subject of discussion is the relationship of man to man, of one person to another, of me to thee." Recent contemporary French writers are in no way doubtful of the meaning implied by the concept of Morality. "Morality," says Littré, "is the whole collection of rules which determine our conduct towards others. Moral Good is the ideal, which at any period of a civilization forms opinions and customs with respect to this conduct; moral evil is that which offends this ideal." This definition is very incomplete and weak, as will be seen in the course of our remarks, but on one point it is quite clear: it treats Morality as a social phenomenon, it paraphrases it as the adjustment of individual action to the standard set up by the community. The question of the origin and the aim of this standard is left open. L. Lévy-Brühl formulates Littré's idea more clearly. "We call by the name of Morality the collection of such conceptions, opinions, feelings and customs respecting the mutual rights and duties of men in their life as members of a community, as are recognized and generally observed at a given time in a given civilization." Thus, according to some, Morality is subjection to an absolute law of divine, or at any rate of unexplained and inexplicable origin, which religion or a mysterious inner voice reveals to man; according to others, it is the recognition that the claims of the community, or at any rate of the majority of one's fellow men, are of binding force upon the actions of the individual. These different answers to an inquiry as to the origin of Morality both contain the tacit admission that it is a law which peremptorily dictates to man what he shall do and what he shall not do. But by means of what psychic mechanism does this law enforce obedience in the consciousness of man? It is remarkable that all moral philosophers, no matter to what age, nation or school they belong, dimly feel or clearly recognize that in civilized man at any rate, natural instincts and judgment are always at war; that the latter opposes the former; that in the victory of judgment over impulse lies the very essence of Morality; that consequently the essence of Morality implies the control and repression of instinct by Reason—in a word, that it is inhibition. We have seen that Aristotle, in definite though unconscious opposition to the Stoics, who consider Morality synonymous with Nature, defines it as the activity of Reason. Henry More was the first to express this quite clearly: "Virtue is an intellectual force of the soul which enables it to control ... animal instincts and sensual passions." And Dr. Jodl sums up the character of Christian morality in the statement: "Moral philosophy under the influence of Christian ideas makes Morality always appear in the guise of a prohibition; at any rate it is apt to conceive Morality as acting in an essentially restrictive and prohibitive manner upon the natural impulses and instincts of man." This is not quite correct. This Christian code of morals does not always manifest itself as a prohibition. Its main precept is: "Love thy neighbour as thyself." That is not a prohibition but a positive command. Nevertheless, the point of departure of this command is an inhibition. For the first instinctive movement of man is selfishness and, as its consequence, indifference to one's neighbour; the first imperious impulse is to sacrifice the latter's interests to one's own. But if regard for one's neighbour, nay, love for him permeates our feelings, thoughts and actions, that denotes a victory of Christian ideas over the impulse of instinct, a suppression of that impulse—that is, an inhibition which, not content with mere prevention, prolongs its efficacy in the same direction until it changes the impulse of selfishness and inconsiderateness into its very antithesis, that of unselfishness and charity. It constitutes an important advance in knowledge to recognize that Morality, and not, as Jodl makes out, only Christian Morality, is manifested as an inhibition, as the victory achieved by Reason over Instinct which is contemptuously described as animal, simply because its worth is judged by a standard already supplied by current views on Morals. It is inadmissible to judge by this standard when one attempts an impartial investigation into the ultimate foundations and the essence of Morality. We have no plainly obvious right—no right which does not require a proof—simply to scorn instinct as animal; to run it down from the start and with a respectful bow to give Reason precedence over it; to applaud with satisfaction the suppression of rascally Instinct by highly respectable Reason. Instinct is no more animal than any other manifestation of life in man; and he indulges in pleasant self-deception if he imagines that he is other than an animal, that is, a living organism in which all processes take place according to the same laws as in all other living beings, from the simplest one-celled creature to the most highly developed and complicated. In itself Instinct has the same claim to dignity as Reason; according to some people an even greater one, because the former is more primitive, unpremeditated, self-assured and firmly established than the latter, and if Reason claims to be the superior, it must substantiate that claim. As a matter of fact, that claim has never been universally acknowledged. Periods during which Reason rules at least in name and is treated with the obsequious reverence which the model citizen has, or feigns to have, for his sovereign, are followed by others in which Instinct revolts; rebels dethrone Reason and set up Instinct in its place, or, as they call it, passion and nature. The parties which in turn wield power in these periodic revolutions may be briefly termed classical and romantic. The classicists are the legitimist supporters of Reason; the [Pg 25] [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] romanticists are revolutionaries, and their leaders are men like Cleon or Jack Cade, Cromwell, Washington or Robespierre; that is to say, rude demagogues or subtle dialecticians in favour of Instinct. Among the legitimists in Reason as in politics, are to be found those who maintain the divine right, who base the right of Reason to rule over Instinct upon the Will of God, and others again, the constitutionalists, who base their support on the Will of the people, on universal suffrage, who force upon Instinct the law promulgated by society. I need not carry the metaphor to extremes. Every reader can work it out in all its details. I only wanted to show quite clearly that almost all moral philosophers conceived Morality as a struggle between Reason and Instinct, as the defeat of lawlessness by law. But their views diverge widely when they try to explain the source of this law and its claim to obedience. The theologians find no difficulty in this explanation. Just as the essence of Morality according to their ideas is the nearest possible approximation to divine perfection, so the moral law is one enacted by God Himself, and it is a sin punishable with hell fire to fail to observe it or to rebel against it. Others look upon Man as his own law-giver, and trace his moral conduct, his willingness to combat his own instincts, to an inner voice which teaches him what is right. They call this inner voice by different names. They call it Nature, Reason or Conscience, and look upon it as something innate, as a normal constituent of man's psychic nature. That is the meaning of Fichte's apodictic statement: "That which does not meet with the approval of one's own conscience is necessarily sin. Therefore he who acts on anyone else's authority acts in a conscienceless manner." With this emphatic utterance Fichte dismisses both the devout believers, for whom Morality is the revealed Will of God, and the Rationalists who look upon it as the dictate of society. He considers that if man claims to act morally, he can do so only on his own authority, i.e. on that of his conscience. He is not aware that in so doing he frivolously abandons all rights to pronounce an objective moral judgment on any human action. He thereby relinquishes the power to ask any further question except: "Did he act in accordance with his own conscience? If so, then he has acted in a subjectively conscientious way, even if it appears to me to be immoral or even criminal and monstrous. If he has acted contrary to the promptings of his own conscience, then he is assuredly a sinner, even if his action be in my eyes splendid and exemplary." Thus Fichte, with his subjective basis of Morality, is led to a conclusion which is a ludicrous reversal of generally accepted ideas. According to him, a man would be acting conscientiously if, despising what all others hold good, right and sacred, he wallows in the satisfaction of his selfish instincts, as long as his conscience approves or even bids him do so; on the other hand, he is a sinner if, in opposition to his inner voice, but according to moral law, that is in obedience to extraneous authority, he practices all the virtues. All these subjective moral philosophers tacitly assume with Rousseau that man is by nature good. They take no account of the empirically established fact that there are men whose Fichtean conscience, or whose Kantian categorical imperative, urges them to a course of action which according to the general opinion is bad, wicked and revolting. This criticism applies to Beneke, according to whom Morality is "a development of human nature which exists as such within us, and which we need only continue or promote"; it applies equally to Reid and Dugald Stewart, who describe it as an inclination, which has become a habit or a principle, to act according to the dictates of conscience. But conscience must be explained. It is by no means self-evident that each individual conscience will have the same standard of good and evil. The moral philosopher must not shirk the duty of showing how the conscience acquires its concepts of moral values, with what weapons it provides Reason to combat Instinct, which demands satisfact...