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George Herbert Palmer >> The Nature of Goodness
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THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
BY
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
Alford Professor of Philosophy
In Harvard University
[Illustration: Tout bien ou rien]
1903
A. F. P.
BONITATE SINGULARI MULTIS DILECTAE
VENUSTATE LITTERIS CONSILIIS PRAESTANTI
NUPER E DOMO ET GAUDIO MEO EREPTAE
PREFACE
The substance of these chapters was delivered as a course of lectures
at Harvard University, Dartmouth and Wellesley Colleges, Western
Reserve University, the University of California, and the Twentieth
Century Club of Boston. A part of the sixth chapter was used as an
address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and another
part before the Philosophical Union of Berkeley, California. Several
of these audiences have materially aided my work by their searching
criticisms, and all have helped to clear my thought and simplify its
expression. Since discussions necessarily so severe have been felt as
vital by companies so diverse, I venture to offer them here to a wider
audience.
Previously, in "The Field of Ethics," I marked out the place which
ethics occupies among the sciences. In this book the first problem of
ethics is examined. The two volumes will form, I hope, an easy yet
serious introduction to this gravest and most perpetual of studies.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS
I. Difficulties of the investigation
II. Gains to be expected
III. Extrinsic goodness
IV. Imperfections of extrinsic goodness
V. Intrinsic goodness
VI. Relations of the two kinds
VII. Diagram
CHAPTER II
MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
I. Enlargement of the diagram
II. Greater and lesser good
III. Higher and lower good
IV. Order and wealth
V. Satisfaction of desire
VI. Adaptation to environment
VII. Definitions
CHAPTER III
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
I. The four factors of personal goodness
II. Unconsciousness
III. Reflex action
IV. Conscious experience
V. Self-consciousness
VI. Its degrees
VII. Its acquisition
VIII. Its instability
CHAPTER IV
SELF-DIRECTION
I. Consciousness a factor
II. (A) The intention
III. (1) The end, aim, or ideal
IV. (2) Desire
V. (3) Decision
VI. (B) The volition
VII. (1) Deliberation
VIII. (2) Effort
IX. (3) Satisfaction
CHAPTER V
SELF-DEVELOPMENT
I. Reflex influence of self-direction
II. Varieties of change
III. Accidental change
IV. Destructive change
V. Transforming change
VI. Development
VII. Self-development
VIII. Method of self-development
IX. Test of self-development
X. Actual extent of personality
XI. Possible extent of personality
XII. Practical consequences
CHAPTER VI
SELF-SACRIFICE
I. Difficulties of the conception
II. It is impossible
III. It is a sign of degradation
IV. It is needless
V. It is irrational
VI. Its frequency
VII. Definition
VIII. Its rationality
IX. Distinguished from culture
X. Its self-assertion
XI. Its incalculability
XII. Its positive character
XIII. Conclusion
CHAPTER VII
NATURE AND SPIRIT
I. Summary of the preceding argument
II. Spirit superior to nature
III. Naturalistic tendency of the fine arts
IV. Naturalistic tendency of science and philosophy
V. Naturalism in social estimates
VI. Self-consciousness burdensome
VII. Impossibility of full conscious guidance
VIII. Advantages of unconscious action
CHAPTER VIII
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS
I. Advantage of conscious guidance
II. Example of piano-playing
III. The mechanization of conduct
IV. Contrast of the first and third stages
V. The cure for self-consciousness
VI. The revision of habits
VII. The doctrine of praise
VIII. The propriety of praise
I
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS
In undertaking the following discussion I foresee two grave
difficulties. My reader may well feel that goodness is already the
most familiar of all the thoughts we employ, and yet he may at the
same time suspect that there is something about it perplexingly
abstruse and remote. Familiar it certainly is. It attends all our
wishes, acts, and projects as nothing else does, so that no estimate
of its influence can be excessive. When we take a walk, read a book,
make a dress, hire a servant, visit a friend, attend a concert, choose
a wife, cast a vote, enter into business, we always do it in the hope
of attaining something good. The clue of goodness is accordingly a
veritable guide of life. On it depend actions far more minute than
those just mentioned. We never raise a hand, for example, unless with
a view to improve in some respect our condition. Motionless we should
remain forever, did we not believe that by placing the hand elsewhere
we might obtain something which we do not now possess. Consequently we
employ the word or some synonym of it during pretty much every waking
hour of our lives. Wishing some test of this frequency I turned to
Shakespeare, and found that he uses the word "good" fifteen hundred
times, and it's derivatives "goodness," "better," and "best," about as
many more. He could not make men and women talk right without
incessant reference to this directive conception.
But while thus familiar and influential when mixed with action, and
just because of that very fact, the notion of goodness is
bewilderingly abstruse and remote. People in general do not observe
this curious circumstance. Since they are so frequently encountering
goodness, both laymen and scholars are apt to assume that it is
altogether clear and requires no explanation. But the very reverse is
the truth. Familiarity obscures. It breeds instincts and not
understanding. So inwoven has goodness become with the very web of
life that it is hard to disentangle. We cannot easily detach it from
encompassing circumstance, look at it nakedly, and say what in itself
it really is. Never appearing in practical affairs except as an
element, and always intimately associated with something else, we are
puzzled how to break up that intimacy and give to goodness independent
meaning. It is as if oxygen were never found alone, but only in
connection with hydrogen, carbon, or some other of the eighty elements
which compose our globe. We might feel its wide influence, but we
should have difficulty in describing what the thing itself was. Just
so if any chance dozen persons should be called on to say what they
mean by goodness, probably not one could offer a definition which he
would be willing to hold to for fifteen minutes.
It is true, this strange state of things is not peculiar to goodness.
Other familiar conceptions show a similar tendency, and just about in
proportion, too, to their importance. Those which count for most in
our lives are least easy to understand. What, for example, do we mean
by love? Everybody has experienced it since the world began. For a
century or more, novelists have been fixing our attention on it as our
chief concern. Yet nobody has yet succeeded in making the matter quite
plain. What is the state? Socialists are trying to tell us, and we are
trying to tell them; but each, it must be owned, has about as much
difficulty in understanding himself as in understanding his opponent,
though the two sets of vague ideas still contain reality enough for
vigorous strife. Or take the very simplest of conceptions, the
conception of force--that which is presupposed in every species of
physical science; ages are likely to pass before it is satisfactorily
defined. Now the conception of goodness is something of this sort,
something so wrought into the total framework of existence that it is
hidden from view and not separately observable. We know so much about
it that we do not understand it.
For ordinary purposes probably it is well not to seek to understand
it. Acquaintance with the structure of the eye does not help seeing.
To determine beforehand just how polite we should be would not
facilitate human intercourse. And possibly a completed scheme of
goodness would rather confuse than ease our daily actions. Science
does not readily connect with life. For most of us all the time, and
for all of us most of the time, instinct is the better prompter. But
if we mean to be ethical students and to examine conduct
scientifically, we must evidently at the outset come face to face with
the meaning of goodness. I am consequently often surprised on looking
into a treatise on ethics to find no definition of goodness proposed.
The author assumes that everybody knows what goodness is, and that his
own business is merely to point out under what conditions it may be
had. But few readers do know what goodness is. One suspects that
frequently the authors of these treatises themselves do not, and that
a hazy condition of mind on this central subject is the cause of much
loose talk afterwards. At any rate, I feel sure that nothing can more
justly be demanded of a writer on ethics at the beginning of his
undertaking than that he should attempt to unravel the subtleties of
this all-important conception. Having already in a previous volume
marked out the Field of Ethics, I believe I cannot wisely go on
discussing the science that I love, until I have made clear what
meaning I everywhere attach to the obscure and familiar word _good_.
This word being the ethical writer's chief tool, both he and his
readers must learn its construction before they proceed to use
it. To the study of that curious nature I dedicate this volume.
II
To those who join in the investigation I cannot promise hours of ease.
The task is an arduous one, calling for critical discernment and a
kind of disinterested delight in studying the high intricacies of our
personal structure. My readers must follow me with care, and indeed do
much of the work themselves, I being but a guide. For my purpose is
not so much to impart as to reveal. Wishing merely to make people
aware of what has always been in their minds, I think at the end of my
book I shall be able to say, "These readers of mine know now no more
than they did at, the beginning." Yet if I say that, I hope to be able
to add, "but they see vastly more significance in it than they once
did, and henceforth will find the world interesting in a degree they
never knew before." In attaining this new interest they will have
experienced too that highest of human pleasures,--the joy of clear,
continuous, and energetic thinking. Few human beings are so inert that
they are not ready to look into the dark places of their minds if, by
doing so, they can throw light on obscurities there.
I ought, however, to say that I cannot promise one gain which some of
my readers may be seeking. In no large degree can I induce in them
that goodness of which we talk. Some may come to me in conscious
weakness, desiring to be made better. But this I do not undertake. My
aim is a scientific one. I am an ethical teacher. I want to lead men
to understand what goodness is, and I must leave the more important
work of attracting them to pursue it to preacher and moralist. Still,
indirectly there is moral gain to be had here. One cannot contemplate
long such exalted themes without receiving an impulse, and being
lifted into a region where doing wrong becomes a little strange. When,
too, we reflect how many human ills spring from misunderstanding and
intellectual obscurity, we see that whatever tends to illuminate
mental problems is of large consequence in the practical issues of
life.
In considering what we mean by goodness, we are apt to imagine that
the term applies especially, possibly entirely, to persons. It seems
as if persons alone are entitled to be called good. But a little
reflection shows that this is by no means the case. There are about as
many good things in the world as good persons, and we are obliged to
speak of them about as often. The goodness which we see in things is,
however, far simpler and more easily analyzed than that which appears
in persons. It may accordingly be well in these first two chapters to
say nothing whatever about such goodness as is peculiar to persons,
but to confine our attention to those phases of it which are shared
alike by persons and things.
III
How then do we employ the word "good"? I do not ask how we ought to
employ it, but how we do. For the present we shall be engaged in a
psychological inquiry, not an ethical one. We need to get at the plain
facts of usage. I will therefore ask each reader to look into his own
mind, see on what occasions he uses the word, and decide what meaning
he attaches to it. Taking up a few of the simplest possible examples,
we will through them inquire when and why we call things good.
Here is a knife. When is it a good knife? Why, a knife is made for
something, for cutting. Whenever the knife slides evenly through a
piece of wood, unimpeded by anything in its own structure, and with a
minimum of effort on the part of him who steers it, when there is no
disposition of its edge to bend or break, but only to do its appointed
work effectively, then we know that a good knife is at work. Or,
looking at the matter from another point of view, whenever the handle
of the knife neatly fits the hand, following its lines and presenting
no obstruction, so that it is a pleasure to use it, we may say that in
these respects also the knife is a good knife. That is, the knife
becomes good through adaptation to its work, an adaptation realized in
its cleavage of the wood and in its conformity to the hand. Its
goodness always has reference to something outside itself, and is
measured by its performance of an external task. A similar goodness is
also found in persons. When we call the President of the United States
good, we mean that he adapts himself easily and efficiently to the
needs of his people. He detects those needs before others fully feel
them, is sagacious in devices for meeting them, and powerful in
carrying out his patriotic purposes through whatever selfish
opposition. The President's goodness, like the knife's, refers to
qualities within him only so far as these are adjusted to that which
lies beyond.
Or take something not so palpable. What glorious weather! When we woke
this morning, drew aside our curtains and looked out, we said "It is a
good day!" And of what qualities of the day were we thinking? We
meant, I suppose, that the day was well fitted to its various
purposes. Intending to go to our office, we saw there was nothing to
hinder our doing so. We knew that the streets would be clear, people
in amiable mood, business and social duties would move forward easily.
Health itself is promoted by such sunshine. In fact, whatever our
plans, in calling the day a good day we meant to speak of it as
excellently adapted to something outside itself.
This signification of goodness is lucidly put in the remark of
Shakespeare's Portia, "Nothing I see is good without respect." We must
have some respect or end in mind in reference to which the goodness is
reckoned. Good always means good _for_. That little preposition cannot
be absent from our minds, though it need not audibly be uttered. The
knife is good for cutting, the day for business, the President for the
blind needs of his country. Omit the _for_, and goodness ceases. To be
bad or good implies external reference. To be good means to further
something, to be an efficient means; and the end to be furthered must
be already in mind before the word good is spoken.
The respects or ends in reference to which goodness is calculated are
often, it is true, obscure and difficult to seize if one is unfamiliar
with the currents of men's thoughts. I sometimes hear the question
asked about a merchant, "Is he good?"--a question natural enough in
churches and Sunday-schools, but one which sounds rather queer on
"'change." But those who ask it have a special respect in mind. I
believe they mean, "Will the man meet his notes?" In their mode of
thinking a merchant is of consequence only in financial life. When
they have learned whether he is capable of performing his functions
there, they go no farther. He may be the most vicious of men or a
veritable saint. It will make no difference in inducing commercial
associates to call him good. For them the word indicates solely
responsibility for business paper.
A usage more curious still occurs in the nursery. There when the
question is asked, "Has the baby been good?" one discovers by degrees
that the anxious mother wishes to know if it has been crying or quiet.
This elementary life has as yet not acquired positive standards of
measurement. It must be reckoned in negative terms, failure to
disturb. Heaven knows it does not always attain to this. But it is its
utmost virtue, quietude.
In short, whenever we inspect the usage of the word good, we always
find behind it an implication of some end to be reached. Good is a
relative term, signifying promotive of, conducive to. The good is the
useful, and it must be useful for something. Silent or spoken, it is
the mental reference to something else which puts all meaning into it.
So Hamlet says, "There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so." If I have in mind A as an end sought, then X is good.
But if B is the end, X is bad. X has no goodness or badness of its
own. No new quality is added to an object or act when it becomes good.
IV
But this result is disappointing, not to say paradoxical. To call a
thing good only with reference to what lies outside itself would be
almost equivalent to saying that nothing is good. For if the moment
anything becomes good it refers all its goodness to something beyond
its own walls, should we ever be able to discover an object endowed
with goodness at all? The knife is good in reference to the stick of
wood; the wood, in reference to the table; the table, in reference to
the writing; the writing, in reference to a reader's eyes; his eyes,
in reference to supporting his family--where shall we ever stop? We
can never catch up with goodness. It is always promising to disclose
itself a little way beyond, and then evading us, slipping from under
our fingers just when we are about to touch it. This meaning of
goodness is self-contradictory.
And it is also too large. It includes more to goodness than properly
belongs there. If we call everything good which is good _for_,
everything which shows adaptation to an end, then we shall be obliged
to count a multitude of matters good which we are accustomed to think
of as evil. Filth will be good, for it promotes fevers as nothing else
does. Earthquakes are good, for shaking down houses. It is inapposite
to urge that we do not want fevers or shaken houses. Wishes are
provided no place in our meaning of good. Goodness merely assists,
promotes, is conducive to any result whatever. It marks the functional
character, without regard to the desirability of that which the
function effects. But this is unsatisfactory and may well set us on a
search for supplementary meanings.
V
When we ask if the Venus of Milo is a good statue, we have to confess
that it is good beyond almost any object on which our eyes have ever
rested. And yet it is not good _for_ anything; it is no means for
an outside end. Rather, it is good in itself. This possibility that
things may be good in themselves was once brought forcibly to my
attention by a trivial incident. Wandering over my fields with my
farmer in autumn, we were surveying the wrecks of summer. There on the
ploughed ground lay a great golden object. He pointed to it, saying,
"That is a good big pumpkin." I said, "Yes, but I don't care about
pumpkins." "No," he said, "nor do I." I said, "You care for them,
though, as they grow large. You called this a good big one." "No! On
the contrary, a pumpkin that is large is worth less. Growing makes it
coarser. But that is a good big pumpkin." I saw there was some meaning
in his mind, but I could not make out what it was. Soon after I heard
a schoolboy telling about having had a "good big thrashing." I knew
that he did not like such things. His phrase could not indicate
approval, and what did it signify? He coupled the two words _good_ and
_big_; and I asked myself if there was between them any natural
connection? On reflection I thought there was. If you wish to find the
full pumpkin nature, here you have it. All that a pumpkin can be is
set forth here as nowhere else. And for that matter, anybody who might
foolishly wish to explore a thrashing would find all he sought in this
one. In short, what seemed to be intended was that all the functions
constituting the things talked about were present in these instances
and hard at work, mutually assisting one another, and joining to make
up such a rounded whole that from it nothing was omitted which
possibly might render its organic wholeness complete. Here then is a
notion of goodness widely unlike the one previously developed.
Goodness now appears shut up within verifiable bounds where it is not
continually referred to something which lies beyond. An object is here
reckoned not as good _for_, but as good in itself. The Venus of Milo
is a good statue not through what it does, but through what it is. And
perhaps it may conduce to clearness if we now give technical names to
our two contrasted conceptions and call the former extrinsic goodness
and the latter intrinsic. Extrinsic goodness will then signify the
adjustment of an object to something which lies outside itself;
intrinsic will say that the many powers of an object are so adjusted
to one another that they cooperate to render the object a firm
totality. Both will indicate relationship; but in the one case the
relations considered are _extra se_, in the other _inter se_.
Goodness, however, will everywhere point to organic adjustment.
If this double aspect of goodness is as clear and important as I
believe it to be, it must have left its record in language. And in
fact we find that popular speech distinguishes worth and value in much
the same way as I have distinguished intrinsic and extrinsic goodness.
To say that an object has value is to declare it of consequence in
reference to something other than itself. To speak of its worth is to
call attention to what its own nature involves. In a somewhat similar
fashion Mr. Bradley distinguishes the extension and harmony of
goodness, and Mr. Alexander the right and the perfect.
VI
When, however, we have got the two sorts of goodness distinctly
parted, our next business is to get them together again. Are they in
fact altogether separate? Is the extrinsic goodness of an object
entirely detachable from its intrinsic? I think not. They are
invariably found together. Indeed, extrinsic goodness would be
impossible in an object which did not possess a fair degree of
intrinsic. How could a table, for example, be useful for holding a
glass of water if the table were not well made, if powers appropriate
to tables were not present and mutually cooperating? Unless equipped
with intrinsic goodness, the table can exhibit no extrinsic goodness
whatever. And, on the other hand, intrinsic goodness, coherence of
inner constitution, is always found attended by some degree of
extrinsic goodness, or influence over other things. Nothing exists
entirely by itself. Each object has its relationships, and through
these is knitted into the frame of the universe.
Still, though the two forms of goodness are thus regularly united, we
may fix our attention on the one or the other. According as we do so,
we speak of an object as intrinsically or extrinsically good. For that
matter, one of the two may sometimes seem to be present in a
preponderating degree, and to determine by its presence the character
of the object. In judging ordinary physical things, I believe we
usually test them by their serviceability to us--by their extrinsic
goodness, that is--rather than bother our heads with asking what is
their inner structure, and how full of organization they may be.
Whereas, when we come to estimate human beings, we ordinarily regard
it as a kind of indignity to assess primarily their extrinsic
goodness, _i. e_., to ask chiefly how serviceable they may be and
to ignore their inner worth. To sum up a man in terms of his labor
value is the moral error of the slaveholder.
If, however, we seek the highest point to which either kind of
excellence may be carried, it will be found where each most fully
assists the other. But this is not easy to imagine. When I set a glass
of water on the table, the table is undoubtedly slightly shaken by the
strain. If I put a large book upon it, the strain of the table becomes
apparent. Putting a hundred pound weight upon it is an experiment that
is perilous. For the extrinsic goodness of the table is at war with
the intrinsic; that is, the employment of the table wears it out. In
doing its work and fitting into the large relationships for which
tables exist, its inner organization becomes disjointed. In time it
will go to pieces. We can, however, imagine a magic table, which might
be consolidated by all it does. At first it was a little weak, but by
upholding the glass of water it grew stronger. As I laid the book on
it, its joints acquired a tenacity which they lacked before; and only
after receiving the hundred pound weight did it acquire the full
strength of which it was capable. That would indeed be a marvelous
table, where use and inner construction continually helped each other.
Something like it we may hereafter find possible in certain regions of
personal goodness, but no such perpetual motion is possible to things.
For them employment is costly.
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