Charles Reade - "It Is Never Too Late to Mend"

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Yei Theodora Ozaki - "Japanese Fairy Tales"

Anatole France - "Monsieur Bergeret a Paris"

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Books: Problems of Conduct

D >> Durant Drake >> Problems of Conduct




What is the exact meaning of selfishness and unselfishness?

Selfishness is the pursuance of one's own good at the expense of
others. A mistaken idea, which it is necessary to guard against, is
that selfishness must be conscious, deliberate. It is not uncommon
for a person accused of selfishness to say, or think, "This is an unjust
accusation; I have not had a selfish thought!" But unconscious
selfishness is by far the commoner sort; millions of essentially good-
hearted people are guilty of selfish acts through thoughtlessness and
stagnant sympathy. Conscious cruelty is rare compared with moral
insensibility. It cannot be too often repeated that selfishness is
not a way of feeling about people, it is a way of acting toward them.
To be wholly free from selfish conduct necessitates insight into the
needs and feelings of others as well as a vague good will toward them.
The girl who allows her mother to drudge that she may have immaculate
clothes, the mother who keeps her son at home when he ought to be given
the opportunity of a wider life, is conscious only of love; but she
is really putting her own happiness before that of the loved one. The
owner of the vilest tenement houses is sometimes a generous and
benevolent-minded man, the luxuriously rich are often honest and glad
to confer favors, the political boss is full of the milk of human
kindness; but the superficial or adventitious altruism of such men
should not blind us to their fundamental, though often entirely
unrealized, selfishness. A complementary fallacy is that which denies
the epithet "unselfish" to a man who enjoys helping others. Who has
not heard the cynical remark, "There's nothing unselfish about
So-and-So's benevolence that is his enjoyment in life!" Such a comment
ignores the fact that the goal of moral progress lies precisely at
the point where we shall all enjoy doing what it is our duty to do.
Altruistic impulses are our own impulses, as well as egoistic ones;
the distinction between them lies not in the pleasure they may give
to their possessor, or the sacrifice they may demand, but in the
objective results they tend to attain. Happy is the man whose DELIGHT
is in the law of the Lord! Unselfish action is, in the broader sense,
all action that is not selfish; in the narrower and positive sense,
it is all action that tends to the welfare of others at the expense
of the narrower interests of the individual.

Are altruistic impulses always right?

It would be an easy solution for our problems if we could say, "In
every case follow the altruistic impulse." But this simplification
is impossible; the ideal of service is not such an Open Sesame to our
duty. And this for several reasons:

(1) There are frequently clashes between altruistic impulses. In fact,
almost all moral errors have some unselfish impulse on their side which
helps to justify them in the eyes of the sinner and his friends. The
politician who gets the best jobs for his supporters, the legislator
who puts through a special statute to favor his constituents, the jingo
who helps push his country into war for its "honor" or "glory"-these
and a host of other wrongdoers are conscious of a genuine altruistic
glow. They ignore the fact that they are doing, on the whole, more
harm than good to others, because the smaller group that is apparently
benefited looms larger to the eye than the more widely distributed
and less directly affected sufferers.

All of our most vexing moral problems are those in which benefit to
some must be weighed against benefit to others. Shall a man who is
needed by his family risk his life to save a ne'er-do-well? Shall we
insist that people unhappily married shall endure their wretchedness
and forego the possibility of a happier union in order that
heedlessness and license may not be encouraged in the lives of others?
Life is full of such two- sided problems; it is not enough that an
act may bring good to some, it must be the act that brings most good
to most.

(2) An apparently altruistic act, dictated by sympathy, and productive
of happiness, may not be for the ultimate good of the very person made
happy. To give everything they want to children is inevitably to
"spoil" them, as we rightly say; to spoil their own happiness in the
long run as well as their usefulness to others. To condone another's
sin and save him the unpleasantness of rebuke or the inflicting of
a penalty is often the worst thing that could be done to him. To give
alms to a beggar may mean to assist his moral degeneration and in the
long run increase his misery.

(3) Even when an act superficially egoistic conflicts with one that
seems altruistic, the greatest good of the community often dictates
the former. There is, as Trumbull used to put it, a "duty of refusing
to do good." A man who can best serve the common good by concentrating
his strength on that work where his particular ability or training
makes him most effective, may be justified in refusing other calls
upon his energies, however intrinsically worthy. An Edison would be
doing wrong to spend his afternoons in social service, a Burbank has
no right to diminish his resources by giving a public library. Emerson
deserves our commendation for refusing to be inveigled into the various
causes that would have drafted his time and strength. Even to the
anti-slavery agitation he refused his services, saying, "I have quite
other slaves to free than those Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts
far back in the brain of man, which have no watchman or lover or defender
but me." This brings us to the question how far a man may legitimately
live a self- contained life. Certainly there is a measure of truth
in Goethe's saying, "No man can he isolates himself"; in Ibsen's "The
most powerful man is he who is most alone"; and in Matthew Arnold's

"Alone the sun rises, and alone Spring the great streams."

A multiplicity of interests distracts the soul and often confuses our
ideals. By keeping free from social burdens some men, like Kant, have
accomplished tasks of unusual magnitude.

On the other hand, we can match Goethe's assertion with another of
his own: "A talent forms itself in solitude, a character in the stream
of the world." Isolation tends almost inevitably to narrowness, to
an abnormal and cramped outlook, to willfulness or Pharisaism, and
usually to loneliness and depression. The only pervasively happy life
for man is the life of cooperation and loyalty. We may well "withdraw
into the silence," take our daily communion with God in our closets,
or our forty days in the wilderness, to win clearer vision and steadier
purpose. But solitude should, in normal cases, be only an interlude
of rest, or a quiet maturing for service. The ideal is perhaps expressed
in Wordsworth's sonnet on Milton:

"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart. .... And yet thy heart The
lowliest duties on herself did lay."

The organization of life implies a criticism of and control over
altruistic as well as egoistic impulses. There is nothing inherent
in the fact of a good being OTHERS' good to make it necessarily the
greatest good in a given situation. The ultimate criterion must always
be the greatest good of the greatest number; but an altruistic as well
as an egoistic impulse may stand in the way of that end. Our altruistic
inclinations are often perverted, non-representative, a matter of
instinctive and irrational sympathy or shortsighted impulse. And so,
while one of the great tasks of moral education is to make men
unselfish, that alone is not enough; unselfishness must be directed
by reason and tact, rendered far-sighted and intelligent.

What mental and moral obstacles hinder altruistic action?

Although an altruistic impulse is not necessarily a right impulse to
follow, there are a great many altruistic duties which are clear and
summoning; and it is a never ending disappointment to the man of social
conscience to behold the apathy wherewith obvious social duties are
regarded. It will be worthwhile to pause and note the chief mental
and moral obstacles that prevent a more general devotion to social
betterment.

(1) The most formidable obstacle, perhaps, is the selfishness of those
who are themselves .well enough off. Our cities, and even, to some
extent, our small towns, grow up in "quarters"; the rich living in
one district and the poor in another. This permits the suffering of
the latter to go unknown or only half-realized by the former. The
well-to- do have many interests and many pleasant uses for their money;
the call of the unfortunate-"Come over and help us!"- rings faint and
far away in their ears. Or they may excuse their callousness by the
assertion that the poor are used to their evil living conditions, do
not mind them, and are as contented, on the whole, as the rich;
complacently ignoring the fact that being used to conditions is not
the same as enjoying or profiting by them, and that contentment by
no means implies a useful or desirable life. It is true that the needy
are often but dimly conscious of their needs; in that very fact lies
a reason why the favored classes should rouse them out of their dullness,
save them from the physical and moral degeneration into which they
so unconsciously and helplessly drift. The indifference of the fortunate
comes not so often from a deliberate hardening of the heart as from
a lack of contact with the needy or imagination to picture their
destitution. But blame must rest upon all comfortable citizens who
do not bestir themselves to help in social betterment because it is
too much trouble or requires a sacrifice they are not willing to make.

(2) Another serious obstacle lies in the distrust with which many
people regard any duty which they have not been accustomed to regard
as a duty. This may take the form of an overdeveloped loyalty, that
bows before the sacredness of existing institutions and labels any
reform as "unconstitutional," a departure from the ways that were good
enough for our fathers. It may wear the guise of a lazy piety that
would leave everything with God, accepting social ills as manifestations
of his will, and interference as a sort of arrogant presumption! It
may be a mere mental apathy, an inertia of habit, that sees no call
for a better water supply or bothersome laws about the purity of milk.
Or it may defend itself by pointing out the uncertainties that attend
untried ways and warning against the danger of experimentation. To
these warnings we may reply that our altruistic zeal must, indeed,
be coupled with accurate thinking; unless we have based our proposals
on wide observation and cautious inference we may find unexpected and
baneful results in the place of our sanguine expectations. But we may
point out that it is "nothing venture nothing have"; we cannot work
out our social salvation without experimenting; and, after all, ways
that do not work well can readily be discontinued. What is vital is
to keep alive an intolerance of apathy and contentment, to realize
that we are hardly more than on the threshold of a rational civilization,
to recognize evils, cherish ideals, and maintain our determination
in some way to actualize them.

(3) A further steady damper upon our altruistic zeal is the dread of
raising the taxes. Humanitarian movements are well enough, but they
cost so much! What is needful is to point out that poverty,
unemployment, disease, and the other social ills are also costly;
indeed, they cost the public in the long run far more than the
expenditure necessary for their abolition or alleviation. It pays in
dollars and cents, within a generation or two at least, to make and
keep the social organism sound. A wise altruism is not merely a matter
of philanthropy; it is also a matter of economy; a means of saving
individuals from suffering, but at the same time a means of
safeguarding the public treasury. If the community does not pay for
the curing of these evils it will have to pay for their results. "It
seems to me essentially fallacious to look upon such expenditures as
indulgences to be allowed rather sparingly to such communities as are
rich enough to afford them. They are literally a husbanding of
resources, a safeguard against later unprofitable but compulsory
expenditure, a repair in the social organism which, like the repair
of a leaky roof, may avert disaster." [Footnote: E. T. Devine, Misery
and its Causes, p. 272.] The public must be educated to see the wisdom
of investing heavily in long-neglected social repairs and reconstruction,
which in the end will far more than pay for itself in the lowering
of expenses for police, courts, prisons, hospitals, asylums, and
almshouses, in the lowered death-rate, immunity from costly disease,
and increased working capacity of the people.

(4) Finally, a hopelessness of accomplishing anything often paralyzes
our zeal. This sometimes takes the form of a more or less honest
conviction that poverty, unemployment, and other maladjustments are
simply the result of moral degeneration-of the laziness, extravagance,
drinking, or other wrongdoing of the poor; their suffering is their
own fault, and they must be left to endure it. Of course such factors
often-though by no means always-enter in. One may well say, "Who are
we of the upper classes to throw the first stone?" Under like conditions
most of us would have become as discouraged or demoralized, yielded
to the consolation of some vice, or balked at the monotonous grind
of factory labor. But however that may be, in so far as social evils
are due to these faults, the faults must be attacked, not accepted
as inevitable and incurable. The pressure that pushes men into them
must be eased, the ignorance and foolishness that foster them must
be dissipated by education and moral training. And for all the social
maladjustments that are NOT due to vice and sin, other remedies must
be found. The road to social salvation is long and beset with many
difficulties, but the goal is not hopeless of attainment; and every
step toward the goal is so much gain. Because we cannot now see how
to remedy all evils must not be a pretext for refusing to lend a hand
to movements that are of proved value.

How can we reconcile egoism and altruism?

Although altruism is usually wise from the individual's own standpoint,
it does not always seem so. The commonest moral clash is between the
individual's apparent good and that of others; the cases in which one
man's position, wealth, success precludes another's are everyday
occurrences. Must this conflict be eternal? Is there any way of
reconciling these opposing interests except by an unhappy and
regrettable sacrifice? Must life be a perpetual compromise, a "social
contract," a treaty to make reciprocal concessions, with every one's
real interests at war with every one else's? Certainly the altruistic
summons cannot be ignored; we cannot all follow our egoistic impulses;
in the common disaster we should be individually involved. And, indeed,
the altruistic impulses have become so deeply rooted in our natures
that, turn away from them as we might, they would yet persist in the
form of an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and remorse. The only
possible solution of the deadlock lies in the killing-off of the
selfish impulses.

This is not a fantastic dream. We see in the ideal mother, father,
husband, wife, in the ardent patriot and religious devotee, this
sloughing-off of the egoistic nature already accomplished. Love, and
joy in service, are not alien to us; they are as instinctive as self-
seeking; the hope of ultimate peace lies in the strengthening of these
impulses till they so dominate us that we no longer care for the
selfish and narrow aims. We must cultivate the masculine aspect of
unselfishness, the loyalty of the Greeks, the impulse to stand by and
fight for others; and we must cultivate its more feminine side, the
caritas of I Corinthians XIII, the love that suffereth long and is
kind, the sympathy and tenderness infused into a rough and rugged world
by Christianity. In this highest developed life there will then be
no dualism of motive; at the top of the ladder of moral progress
individual and social goods coincide. It is joy to the righteous to
do righteousness; it is the keenest delight in life for the lover of
men to serve.

The unselfish impulse has thus a double value; it blesseth him that
gives and him that takes. It is more blessed to give than to receive,
when the giver has reached the moral level where giving is his greatest
joy. The development of sympathy and the spirit of service in modern
times gives great hope that the time will come when men will
universally find a rich and satisfying life in ways which bring no
harm but only good to others.

H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chaps, XI-XIV. R. B. Perry, Moral Economy,
chap, II, secs, IV, V.; chap, III, secs, V, VI. F. Paulsen, System
of Ethics, book II, chap. I, sec. 6; chap, VI; book III, chap, X, sec.
1. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap, XVIII, sec. e. W. K. Clifford, Right
and Wrong, On the Scientific Basis of Morals, in Lectures and Essays,
vol. II. R. M. McConnell, Duty of Altruism. B. Russell, Philosophical
Essays, chap. I, sec. V. J. Royce, Problem of Christianity, vol. I,
chap. III.




CHAPTER XII


OBJECTIONS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS

HAVING now outlined the eudfemonistic account of morality, we may
note certain objections that are commonly raised to it, and certain is
understandings that constantly recur.

Do men always act for pleasure or to avoid pain?

Many of the earlier theorists, not content with showing that the good
consists ultimately in a quality of conscious states, asserted that
all of men's actions are actually DIRECTED TOWARD the attainment of
agreeable states of experience or avoidance of disagreeable states.
There is no act but is aimed for pleasure of some sort or away from
pain; men differ, then, only in their wisdom in selecting the more
important pleasures and their skill in attaining what they aim for.
This assertion, easily refuted, has seemed to some opponents of the
eudemonistic account of morality so bound up with it as to involve
its downfall.

The classic statement of this erroneous psychology, which has been
the source of much satisfaction to anti-eudemonistic philosophers,
is to be found in the fourth chapter of Mill's Utilitarianism. "There
is in reality nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired
otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately
to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not
desired for itself until it has become so. Human nature is so constituted
as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means
to happiness" A careful reading of Mill shows that he did not mean
these statements without qualification. But since they, and similar
sweeping assertions, [Footnote: Cf. Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics,
p. 44: "The love of happiness must express the sole possible motive
of Judas Iscariot and of his Master; it must explain the conduct of
Stylites on his pillar or Tiberius at Caprae or A Kempis in his cell
or of Nelson in the cockpit of the Victory."] have been a stumbling-block
to many, we must pause to note their inaccuracy, while insisting that
they are no part of a sound utilitarian, or eudemonistic, theory. Far
from the desire for happiness being the universal motive, it is one
of the less common springs of conduct. Habit, inertia, instinct, ideals
drive us this way and that; we do a thousand things daily without any
thought of happiness, because our minds are so made that they naturally
run off into such action. We desire concrete THINGS, without reference
to their bearing on our happiness. We even go directly and consciously
counter to our happiness at times, deliberately sacrifice it, perhaps
for some foolish fancy. The idealist in politics expects to get no
pleasure out of what his associates deem his pigheadedness; but he
has seen a vision and he keeps true to it. Regulus did not go back
to Carthage to be tortured to death for the pleasure of it, or to avoid
the greater pain of an uneasy conscience; he went in spite of foreseen
pain and the allurement of possible pleasure. When a man endures
privations for the sake of posthumous fame, it is not that he expects
to enjoy that fame when it comes, or expects others to enjoy it; he
is simply so made that he cannot resist the sway of that ambition which
will bring him no good. The pursuit of pleasure is a sophisticated
impulse which appears in marked degree only in a few self-conscious
and idle individuals. William James gave the deathblow to this
pleasure-seeking psychology. "Important as is the influence of pleasures
and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli.
With the manifestations of instinct and emotional expression, for
example, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles for the pleasure
of smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the frown? Who blushes to
escape the discomfort of not blushing? Or who in anger, grief, or fear
is actuated to the movements which he makes by the pleasures which
they yield? In all these cases the movements are discharged fatally
by the vis a tergo which the stimulus exerts upon a nervous system
framed to respond in just that way. The IMPULSIVE QUALITY of mental
states is an attribute behind which we cannot go." [Footnote: W. James,
Psychology, vol. II, p. 550.] It is not true, then, that love of pleasure
and fear of pain are the universal motives. It is not true that we
inevitably act along the line of least hedonic resistance, that pain
necessarily veers us off and pleasure irresistibly attracts. By force
of will, by "suggestion" or training, we can go directly counter to
the pull of pleasure. It is true that we should not have the instincts
and habits and impulses that we do were they not in general useful
for our existence or happiness. But the evolutionary process has been
clumsy; we are not properly adjusted; we become the victims of ideas
fixes; ideas and activities obsess us quite without relation to their
hedonic value. So pleasure and pain are not usually the impelling force
or conscious motive behind conduct. What they are is-the touchstone,
the criterion, the justification.

We do not act in ways that bring the greatest happiness, but we ought
to. We do not consciously seek happiness, and we ought not to. We ought
to continue to care for THINGS and for IDEALS; but the things and
ideals we care and work for ought to be such that through them man's
welfare is advanced.

Are pleasures and pains incommensurable?

An objection commonly raised is that pleasures and pains of various
sorts are incommensurable; that therefore no calculation of relative
advantage is possible; and that the eudaemonistie criterion for action
is thereby made impracticable and useless.

(1) To this we may reply that the estimation of the relative worth
of different kinds of experience is, indeed, often very difficult.
But on any theory the decision as to the right is equally complicated
and puzzling. The fact that the criterion is difficult to use is no
evidence that it is not the right criterion. Which set of consequences
will be of most intrinsic worth, it is sometimes impossible to know.
But one set is, nevertheless, of more intrinsic worth, and the act
that secures them is the best act, even though we do not recognize
it as such. There will continue to be, many differences of judgment
as to which of alternative possible experiences is the more desirable.
But that uncertainty does not alter the fundamental fact that some
experiences ARE intrinsically more desirable than others and more
deserving of pursuit.

"A debtor who cannot pay me offers to compound for his debt by making
over one of sundry things he possesses- a diamond ornament, a silver
vase, a picture, a carriage. Other questions being set aside, I assert
it to be my pecuniary interest to choose the most valuable of these,
but I cannot say which is the most valuable. Does the proposition that
it is my pecuniary interest to choose the most valuable, therefore,
become doubtful? Must I not choose as well as I can, and if I choose
wrongly, must I give up my ground of choice? Must I infer that in
matters of business I may not act on the principle that, other things
equal, the more profitable transaction is to be preferred, because,
in many cases, I cannot say which is the more profitable and have often
chosen the less profitable? Because I believe that of many dangerous
courses I ought to take the least dangerous, do I make 'the fundamental
assumption' that courses can be arranged according to a scale of
dangerousness, and must I abandon my belief if I cannot so arrange
them?" [Footnote: H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chap. IX.]

(2) If it is practically impossible to calculate the relative worth
of consequences in many cases, it is yet easy enough to do so in the
great majority of moral situations. In most cases the preponderance
of value is clear. That selfishness and self-indulgence are not worth
while; that abstinence from pleasure-giving drugs and intoxicating
liquors is worth the sacrifice; that truth and honesty, the law-abiding
spirit, the spirit of service, friendliness and courtesy, sanitary
measures, incorruptible courts, and a thousand other things are worth
the effort and cost of acquiring them, is indisputable. It is only
in some peculiarly balanced situations that we find practical difficulty
in deciding. If morality were limited to the cases where we can be
sure on which side the greater good or lesser evil lies, we should
not be shorn of much of our present code.