Books: A Handbook of Ethical Theory

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It cannot be denied that individual philosophers have evolved religious
philosophies; it cannot be denied that solitary individuals, as such,
have felt religious emotions. How much of this is due to the fact that
there have been religions and churches, I do not believe that they
themselves have realized.

But, if religion is to be a vital force of any sort in a state, holding
up ideals and stimulating the emotion that helps to realize them, it must
be incorporated in an institution or in institutions. You cannot remove
the rose and keep the perfume. Even the memory of it tends to vanish. A
religious man without a church is like a citizen without a state. A
citizen without a state is a man who makes the effort to keep step, and
to walk in single file, all alone.

(5) Having said so much for Religion and for the Church, it is right that
I should refer to some things that may be said on the other side.

It may be claimed that men of science have a tendency to turn away from
religion and to grow indifferent to or to deny religious duties. In this
there is some truth, although notable exceptions to the rule may be
cited.

But I have known many men of learning in two hemispheres, in some cases
rather intimately. With the utmost respect for their learning and for
their mental ability, I am still bound to say that I have found them
quite human. Some of them--among the greatest of them--have been so
absorbed in their special fields of investigation, that they have not
merely given scant attention to religion and to religious duties, but
have done scant justice even to their own family life or to the state.
And all have not been equally broad men, capable of seeing clearly the
part which religion has played in the life of humanity.

To this I must add that the impartial objectivity with which the scholar
is supposed by the layman to view things is something of a chimera. In
saying this I criticize no one more severely than I criticize myself.
This may be taken as my apology for the utterance. Have we not seen, not
many years since, that, in the feeling aroused by an international
conflict, some scores of great scholars on the one side found it possible
to write and to sign a series of statements diametrically opposed to a
series drawn up and signed by some scores of equally famous scholars on
the other? Was either group walled in hopelessly by sheer ignorance? It
is easy to take lightly matters about which one does not particularly
care.

There is another objection brought against religion and the church which
seems to be more significant. Is there not a danger that an interest in
these may hamper freedom of thought and encourage an undue conservatism?

It should be borne in mind that religion and the church are not the only
forces that make for conservatism. Family affection is conservative; the
law is conservatism itself, and men feel that it should not be lightly
tampered with. How impartial and how ready to introduce innovations
should men be in any field? Changes of certain kinds, though they may
have no little bearing upon our comfort, do not threaten the existence of
either state or church. Could someone devise a scheme by which the
periodical visits of the plumber could be avoided, we should all welcome
it, and have no fear of the consequences.

Other innovations may bring in their train consequences more momentous.
What men deeply care about, they cling to, and the question which
confronts us is a very broad one. Does humanity, on the whole, gain or
lose by a given degree of conservatism? An increase of knowledge is by no
means the only thing that makes for civilization. Men may be highly
enlightened, and yet rotten to the very core. How much of the ballast of
conservatism and of loyalty to tradition is it well to throw overboard in
the interest of accelerated motion? Those who, in our judgment, throw
overboard much too much we have taken to deporting.

(6) Here it will very likely be objected: In all this you are advocating
sheer Pragmatism! Are we to accept God and look for a life to come,
extending the spread of the community after the fashion suggested in
Chapter XIX, and broadening the outlook for a future and more perfect
rationality, for no better reason than that it is our whim? Shall we
_believe_ and join ourselves with other _believers_, for no
better reason than that something happens to tempt our will?

I beg the reader, if he will be just to my thought, to follow me here
with close attention.

168. ETHICS AND BELIEF.--Under this heading I must call attention to
several points.

(1) I deny that I advocate Pragmatism at all. The views which I advocate
are so many thousand years older than Pragmatism, that it seems unjust to
them, at this late date, to compel them to take on a new name, and to be
carried about in swaddling clothes in the arms of the philosophers, after
they have been functioning as adults in human communities from time
immemorial.

(a) That abounding genius and most lovable man, William James, realizing,
as many lesser men did not realize, that the truth contained in such
views was in danger of being lost sight of by many, wrote, with
characteristic vivacity and unerring dramatic instinct, the little volume
called "Pragmatism." It is with no lack of appreciation of the services
he has rendered, that I venture to call attention to the fact that he
has, in certain respects, failed to do justice to those views.

(b) Pragmatism has received attention partly on account of the
exaggerations of which it has been guilty. These have repelled some men
of sober mind. It appears to be maintained that we can play fast and
loose with the world, and make it what we will. I have criticized this
elsewhere,9 and shall not do so now. I shall only say here that I do not
believe that so able a man of science as William James meant all that he
said to be taken quite literally. He was gifted with a sense of humor.
This, some lack.

(c) Men of genius are apt to be strongly individualistic and impatient of
restraints. We have seen that there is such a thing as a public
conscience and a private conscience. The latter is only too often a
whimsical thing. Pragmatism appears to teach that any individual, as
such, has a moral right to adopt any hypothesis live enough to appeal to
his individual will. One has only to call to mind the extraordinary
assortment of guests collected by Signer Papini in his novel pragmatic
"hotel." [Footnote: _Ibid_.] Can such, by any human ingenuity, be
moulded into anything resembling an orderly community?

(d) In a later work, Professor James, realizing that religion and
theology are not identical, and strongly desirous of promoting religion,
deals severely with theology and the theologians. [Footnote: _Varieties
of Religious Experience_, Lecture xviii.]

One truth has been seen, but has not another been treated with some
injustice? Is it not inevitable that reflective men, who cherish beliefs,
should endeavor to give a more or less clear and reasoned account of
them? What degree of success is to be looked for, and what emphasis
should be laid upon such attempts, are questions which will probably
divide men for a long time to come.

(2) Hence, I do not advocate Pragmatism at all, but I agree with it in so
far, at least, as to recognize that belief is a phenomenon which concerns
the will. That it is so is a commonplace of psychology; and it was
recognized dimly long before the psychologist, as such, came into being.

That it is so is rather readily overlooked where the evidence for certain
beliefs is undeniable and overpowering. I seem forced to believe that I
am now writing. I do not seem forced in a similar manner to accept a
particular metaphysical doctrine or a given system of theological dogma.
Intelligent men appear to be able to discuss such matters with each other
and to agree to disagree. If they are tolerant, they can do this good-
temperedly. It is worth while to keep several points clearly in mind:

(a) Beliefs are not a matter of indifference. Some evidently lead to
palpable and speedy disaster. If I elect to believe that I can fly, and
leave my window-sill as lightly as does the sparrow I now see there, it
is time for my friends to provide me with an attendant.

Other beliefs are not of this character. And that they will lead to
ultimate disaster of any sort to myself or to others seems highly
disputable.

(b) What may be called scientific evidence may be adduced for different
beliefs with varying degrees of cogency. Hegel tries to distinguish
between the authority of the state and that of the church by attributing
to the former something like infallibility. He maintains that religion
"believes," but that the state "knows." [Footnote: The Philosophy of
Right, Sec 270.]

We have had abundant reason to see that the state does not _know_,
but _believes_, and that it is very often mistaken in its beliefs.
Nevertheless, it does its best to keep order, to be as rational as it
can, and to look a little way ahead. I think it ought to be admitted that
it concerns itself with matters more _terre-a-terre_ than does the
church; and that it ought not to be taken as a general truth that the
state should take its orders from the church. It has to do with matters
which, like our daily bread, must be assured, if certain other matters
are to be considered at all. In so far Hegel was right. There are those
who forget this, and talk as if metaphysical systems and religious
beliefs should be forced upon men in spite of themselves, either by sheer
force of windpower or with the aid of the police.

To this it may be added that beliefs range from an unshakable and
unthinking conviction to that degree of acquiescence which can scarcely
be distinguished from mere loyalty. It remains to be proved that the
latter may not come under the head of belief, and is something to be
condemned. [Footnote: More than thirty years ago, while I was the guest
of Henry Sidgwick at Cambridge, England, I asked him how it was that he,
the President of the British Society for Psychical Research, had never,
in his presidential addresses, expressed a belief in the phenomena
investigated. He answered that if the word "belief" were taken broadly
enough to express a willingness to look into things, he might be said to
believe. No more candid soul ever breathed.]

(c) Beliefs, being phenomena which concern the will, are at the mercy of
many influences. Is there any scientific evidence open to the parallelist
in psychology which is not also open to the interactionist? Is the
conviction that one's country is in the right a mere matter of scientific
evidence? Are the enlightened adherents of a given sect wholly ignorant
of the tenets and of the arguments of another?

I maintain that tradition and loyalty have their claims. They are not the
only claims that can be made, but they are worthy of serious
consideration. Man is man, whether he is dealing with things secular or
with things religious.

To see that such claims are recognized everywhere we have only to open
our eyes. It is absurd to believe that all the adherents of a political
party are influenced only by the logical arguments published in the
newspapers. A newspaper that lived on logic alone would starve to death.
It is ridiculous to believe that all the members of a church are induced
to become such only by the arguments of the theologians, many of which
arguments the mass of the members are not in a position to comprehend at
all.

And learned men are men, too. The philosopher who really kept himself
free from all prepossessions would, if he did much serious reading,
probably epitomize in his own person a large part of the history of
philosophy, falling out of one system and into another, like an acrobat.
But he is usually caught young and influenced by some teacher, or he is
carried away by some book or by the spirit of the times. As he is not an
abnormal creature, he acts like other men, becoming an adherent of a
school, or, if he is ambitious, starting one.

(d) We have seen that the individual has duties toward the state. We have
also seen that the state has duties toward the individual. The state
should not make it practically impossible for him to be a loyal citizen.
A somewhat similar duty appears to be incumbent upon the church.

A church that forces upon all of its members, as a condition of
membership, intricate and abstract systems of metaphysics; a church that
does not teach good-will toward men, but makes walls of separation out of
slight differences of opinion; a church that lags behind the moral sense
of the community in which it finds itself; a church that starves the
religious life; these, and such as these, must expect to lose adherents.
It is not that men reject them; it is that they reject men.

Those who read history have no reason to think that men, except here and
there and under exceptional circumstances, will cease to regard religious
duties as duties. I have not ventured to offer any detailed solution of
the problem of loyalty to the church. But neither have I ventured to
offer any detailed solution of the problem of loyalty to the state. In
the one case, as in the other, I suggest as guides tradition, intuition
and reflective reasoning. I can only counsel good sense and some degree
of patience. It may be said: You do not solve the difficulty for the
individual. I admit it. Such difficulties every thinking man must meet
and solve for himself.

169. THE LAST WORD.--Those persons, whether students, or teachers, who
dislike this final chapter, may omit it, without detriment to the rest of
the book. The doctrine of the Rational Social Will is not founded upon
this chapter. The latter is a mere appendix.

I regret that, in a work in which I have wished to avoid disputation, I
have felt compelled to touch upon religious duties at all. But they have
played, and still play, so significant a role in the history of mankind,
that the omission could scarcely have been made. You are free to take
them or leave them; but you are not free to take or leave the Rational
Social Will as the Moral Arbiter of the Destinies of Man.

NOTES

1. CHAPTERS I TO III.--The notes in a book of any sort are rarely read,
except by a few specialists, and by them not seldom with a view to
refuting the author. I shall make the following as brief as I may. But I
do wish to give some of my readers--all will not be equally learned--an
opportunity to get acquainted with a few books better than this one. This
first note is not addressed to the learned, and some will find it
superfluous.

I intend to mention here a handful of books which any cultivated man may
read with profit, and re-read with profit, if he has already read them.
They can be collected gradually at a relatively slight expense, and it is
a pleasure to have them in one's library. The list may easily be
bettered, and may be indefinitely lengthened. I mention only books for
those who are accustomed to do their reading in English.

It is hardly necessary to say that I do not advise all this reading in
connection with the first three chapters of this book. But, as those
chapters are concerned with the accepted content of morals as recognized
by individuals and communities, I have a good excuse for bringing the
list in here. Many other good books, not in the list, are referred to
later in the volume, in other chapters.

It is very convenient to have within one's reach some such book as
Sidgwick's _History of Ethics_. The only fault to find with Sidgwick
is that he has made his book too short, and has not given enough
references. But he is admirably fair and sympathetic, as well as clear
and interesting.

He, who would dip more deeply into the Greek moralists, can read the
accounts of the ancient egoists, Aristippus and Epicurus, in the _Lives
of the Philosophers_ by that entertaining old gossip, Diogenes
Laertius. The translation in Bohn's edition will serve the purpose.

As for the greatest of the Greeks--a keen pleasure, intellectual and
aesthetic, awaits the man who turns to Plato's _Republic_ and his
_Laws_. Jowett's great translation is in every public library. And
we must read Aristotle's _Nichomachean Ethics_ and his _Politics_.
Here little attention is given to artistic form; but the preternatural
acuteness of the man is overpowering. If we would understand some
of the reasons which induced Plato and Aristotle to write of the state
as they did, we can turn to chapter xiv of Grote's _Aristotle_.

With certain later classical moralists most of us are more or less
familiar. Seneca, in his work _On Benefits_, gives a good picture of
the moral emotions and judgments of an enlightened man of his time. He
was a great favorite with Christian writers later. Cicero's work, _De
Officiis--On Duties_--it is best known under the Latin title, is very
clear and very clever. It is, in its last half, full of "cases of
conscience." I venture to suggest to the teacher of undergraduates who
find ethics a dry subject, that he give them a handful of Cicero's
"cases" to quarrel over. Doing just this has brought about something
resembling civil war in certain classes of my undergraduates. It has done
them good, and it has vastly entertained me. But each teacher must follow
his own methods. We can none of us dictate.

How many of us have drawn inspiration from the noble reflections
contained in the _Thoughts_ of Marcus Aurelius and in the
_Discourses_ of Epictetus, those great Stoics! The unadorned
translations of George Long will serve to introduce us to these.

To get a good idea of how the moral world revealed itself to a Father of
the Church in the fifth century, we have only to turn to that most
fascinating of autobiographies, the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine.
His _City of God_ is too long, though interesting. Augustine's
thought influenced the world for centuries. Then we may take a long jump
and come down to St. Thomas, the great Scholastic of the thirteenth
century. To get acquainted with him, we may turn to the English versions
by Rickaby, _Aquinas Ethicus_. Those of us who are smugly satisfied
at belonging to the twentieth century must remind ourselves that there
were great men in the thirteenth, and that many among our contemporaries
are still listening to them. We Protestant teachers of philosophy are
sometimes in danger of forgetting this. A strictly fresh century and a
strictly fresh egg cannot claim to be precisely on a par.

I do not think that I shall add the modern moralists to this list. There
are a great many of them, and many of them are very good. But they are
discussed at length in Part VII, which deals with the schools of the
moralists. Citations and references are there given. I think, however,
that I ought to add here that I should regard an ethical collection
incomplete that did not include at least one of the comprehensive works
on morals lately offered us by certain sociologists. Westermarck's
wonderful book--a mine of information--on _The Origin and Development
of the Moral Ideas_, or the admirable book by Hobhouse, _Morals in
Evolution_, will serve to fill the gap.

Information regarding editions of all the books I have mentioned can be
had in most public libraries, or from any good publisher and book-seller.

As for the reading to accompany these Chapters, I-III, I suggest looking
over the chapters by Westermarck and Hobhouse, indicated in foot-notes.
He who would realize how men have differed in their moral outlook on life
might read the lives of Aristippus, Epicurus and Zeno, in Diogenes
Laertius; or follow the account, in Sidgwick's _History of Ethics_,
of Aristotle's teaching, as compared with the ethics of the Church.

2. Chapters IV to VII.--These chapters on ethics as science and on
ethical method do not appear to me to call for extensive notes. Several
foot-notes are given which might be followed up. I think it would be a
very good thing for the student to read chapters i and vi in Sidgwick's
admirable work, The _Methods of Ethics_.

3. Chapters VIII to X.--To undertake to give any adequate list of
references on the chapters which treat of man's nature and of his
material and social environment would take us quite too far afield. I
merely suggest looking up the articles on "Anthropology" and "Sociology"
in the _Encyclopedia Britannica._ References are given there. And
one should not overlook Darwin's great book on _The Descent of Man_.
It will never be rendered superfluous, although the men of our day
criticize it in detail. A recent work of value is "Heredity and
Environment in the Development of Men," by Professor Edwin Grant Conklin,
1918.

4. Chapters XI to XVI.--Here my notes must be somewhat more detailed, for
we are on quite debatable ground. At any rate, there is much dispute,
between men of unquestionable ability, on the one side and on the other.
I may be pardoned for thinking that the general argument of these
chapters is reasonable and sound.

In commenting upon Chapter XI, I suggest that the reader look up what
Hobhouse has to say on impulse, desire and will, in his volume, _Morals
in Evolution_; also that he consult the same topics in James'
_Psychology_. McDougall's _Social Psychology_ might be read
with much profit.

Some admirable writers have a repugnance to using the word "volition" in
speaking of the brutes. I cannot help thinking that this is a dispute
touching the proper use of a word, rather than that any important
distinction in _kind_ is marked. Some human volitions stand out very
clearly as such. There are free ideas present, there is the tension of
desires, there is deliberation, and there is clearly conscious choice, or
the final release of tension. But how many of the decisions--I see no
objection to the word,--which we make during the course of a day, are of
this character! It would be difficult to set a lower limit to volition.

Muirhead, who writes, in his _Elements of Ethics_, clearly and well
of desires, emphasizing the presence of "tensions," follows the Neo-
Hegelian tradition in speaking of will. He describes it as the act by
which the attention is concentrated upon one object of desire, and he
calls the act of choice the _identifying of oneself_ with one object
or line of action.

Naturally, it is not easy to think of the bee or the ant or the spider,
perhaps not even of the cat or dog, as "identifying itself" with some
object of desire. I suggest that the reader, after a perusal of Muirhead,
reflect upon what Hobhouse has to say of the lower animals; or that he
look up Miss Washburn's book on _The Animal Mind_, (second edition,
1918), where a really serious study of the brute is undertaken.

On Chapter XII, I find no comment necessary. As to Chapter XIII, I
recommend to the reader a reading or re-reading of the fascinating pages
in which James treats of instinct in his _Psychology_. And let him
look up the same subject in McDougall's _Social Psychology_. At the
same time, I enter a note of warning against reading even such good
writers uncritically. There is no little dispute in this field. Dr. H. R.
Marshall's volume _Mind and Conduct_ gives an unusually thoughtful
account of instinct (N. Y., 1919).

Comment on Chapter XIV is not imperatively necessary. But I must speak
with detail of Chapter XV, for the best of men quarrel when they come
upon this ground:

Sec 49. The psychologist takes into his mouth no word more ambiguous than
"feeling." It may be used to indicate any mental content whatever--John
Stuart Mill could speak of consciousness as composed of a string of
feelings. Herbert Spencer divided conscious processes into "feelings" and
"relations between feelings." James obliterates the distinction, and
finds it possible to speak of "a feeling of _and_, a feeling of
_if_, a feeling of _but_," etc. (_Psychology_ I, p. 154,
ff.).

Some writers do not distinguish between emotions and feelings. Thus,
Darwin, in his _Descent of Man_, calls pleasure and pain "emotions."
Marshall (_op. cit._, chapter ii) makes emotions, and even
intuitions, "instinct-feelings." Dewey, in his _Ethics_ (p. 251),
appears to treat emotions as synonymous with feelings. Gardiner, in his
interesting and careful study, _Affective Psychology in Ancient Writers
after Aristotle_ (_Psychological Review_. May, 1919), treats of
"what are popularly called the feelings, including emotions."

On the other hand, in ethical writings the word, "feelings," very often
means no more than pleasure and pain. Thus, _Seth_ (_A Study of
Ethical Principles_, p. 63), makes feelings synonymous with pleasure
and pain. Muirhead (_Elements of Ethics_, p. 46), says, "by feeling
is meant simply pleasure and pain"; and to have "interest" in, he defines
as to have pleasure in (p. 46).

This narrowing of the meaning of the word on the part of ethical writers
is, perhaps, natural. The hedonistic moralists made pleasure and pain the
only ultimate reasonable stimulants to action. Many moralists opposed
them (see, later, Chapters XXIV and XXV). So pleasure and pain became
"the feelings," _par excellence_. Both Dewey and Alexander sometimes
speak as if, by the word "feeling," we meant no more than pleasure and
pain. So does Kant.

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