Books: A Handbook of Ethical Theory
G >>
George Stuart Fullerton >> A Handbook of Ethical Theory
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23
56. THE HARMONIZATION OF DESIRES.--And it may actively repress other
desires or cause them to dwindle and disappear. A man possessed by a
devouring ambition may resolutely scorn delights to which he would
otherwise be keenly susceptible, or he may simply ignore them without
effort. The attention, fixed upon some chosen end, and busied with the
means to its attainment, may leave them unheeded. Finding no place in the
volitional pattern that occupies the mind, they are cast aside and soon
forgotten.
In so far, hence, as the desires of a man tend to fall thus into groups
converging upon a single end, we find not merely unity but harmony. The
volitional pattern is of a given kind, and the colors which enter into it
are selected.
When, however, we speak of the desires of a rational mind as harmonized,
we do not mean that incompatible desires are reconciled. One cannot laugh
and drink at the same time, nor can the desire for luxurious ease be made
to fall upon the neck of the desire for attainment through strenuous
effort. The final harmony attained resembles in some respects the peace
enforced by the violent character depicted by Mark Twain, who would have
peace at any price, and was willing to sacrifice to it the life and limb
of the opposing party. The cessation of strife does not imply the
satisfaction of all parties to a contest; nor does the fact that a life
is controlled by a ruling motive, which reinforces or calls into being
certain desires and robs others of their insistence, imply that by any
device all the desires which man has, still less all that he, as a human
being, might have, can find their satisfaction. Harmony is obtained at
the price of the suppression of many desires; but, where a mind is
strongly dominated by a comprehensive volitional unit, the price may be
paid without much regret.
57. VARIETIES OF DOMINANT ENDS.--Obviously, the comprehensive and
harmonious volitional complexes which may come to characterize different
minds may be of very different complexion. Peace of mind, the bubble
reputation, the amassing of a fortune, a happy domestic life,
humanitarian effort, the perfecting of one's character--each may become
the controlling end which furthers or inhibits individual desires and
emotions. Or the ends may be such as to appear to most men far more
insignificant. To the collection of first editions or the heaping
together of bric-a-brac a man may sacrifice his financial security and
the welfare of his family. Naturally, the moralist cannot put all such
ends upon the same level; but, from the point of view of the
psychologist, the processes which take place in the minds thus unified
and harmonized are essentially the same.
58. AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.--To the position that it is reason or
intelligence that brings about this unity and harmony an objection may be
brought. It may be claimed that breadth of information and clarity of
vision are quite compatible with highly inconsistent action revealing the
temporary dominance of a succession of incongruous desires.
_Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor_, confessed the Latin
poet. Have we not seen men of the highest intelligence, gifted with
foresight, quite capable of grasping the relation of means to ends,
nevertheless subject to the baleful influence of momentary desires which
drive them hither and thither like a rudderless bark at the mercy of the
wind and tide? How does it happen that their intelligence does not help
them?
To this we may answer that it is not the same thing to possess
intelligence and to use it. One may be supplied with information and
quite capable of taking long views and embracing inclusive ends--and the
attention may be so preoccupied with the desire of the moment, that the
voices of others are stifled. In so far as this is the case, the man can
not, at the time, be said to be reasonable or intelligent. He has
information, and acts as if he were ignorant; his choices do not issue as
a resultant of his desires as a whole; there is no resultant; the single
desires make their influence felt separately.
To be sure, an insistent and oft-recurring desire may introduce a good
deal of unity and harmony into life, even where long views are not taken
and there is little intelligence. The stupid egoist may become rather a
consistent egoist, and increasingly so as he grows older. His desires and
volitions may converge upon an end of which he is very imperfectly
conscious; incompatible desires may come to be repressed. But this does
not refute the position that, when reason or intelligence is supreme, the
attention is directed upon a wide range of desires, they are weighed in
the light of each other, and the ultimate decision is no longer blind,
but fairly expresses the permanent push of the man's nature. Even where a
desire or group of desires, unilluminated by intelligence, seems so
insistent as to take on something of this character, complete unity and
harmony of action may be lacking, due to the short-sightedness of the
methods employed to attain to the chosen goal. Blind desires may easily
defeat their own ends; wealth does not necessarily accumulate in
proportion to a man's miserliness; the ardent but unenlightened
philanthropist may do his fellow-man more harm than good. Long views are
of no little service in weeding out inconsistent actions and introducing
order and unity into life.
59. THIS VIEW OF REASON MISCONCEIVED.--In the above view of the function
of reason or intelligence it has not been represented as issuing commands
to perform certain actions rather than others, nor as furnishing motives
not in some way related to the impulses and desires of man. It has been
treated, literally, as the presiding officer of a public assembly, who
insists that every voice shall be heard; that all proposals shall be
weighed and compared with one another; that the consequences of all shall
be clearly foreseen. Its function is enlightenment; the driving force
which impels to action of any sort has been found in the impulses and the
desires.
It is possible to set this view forth in terms which make it highly
unpalatable.
Thus Hume, who has a weakness for shocking the susceptibilities of the
conservative and the sober-minded, startles us with the remark that
"Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions." [Footnote:
A Treatise of Human Nature, iv, Sec 3.] This doctrine, taken as the average
reader is almost inevitably impelled to take it, seems worthy of instant
reprobation. It appears to degrade the rational in man and to exalt the
blind and irrational.
But it is not fair to the doctrine to set it forth in such terms. There
is no small difference between random and fugitive desires and those more
fundamental desires that express truly the nature of a man. Desires
organized and harmonized gain great strength, and are enabled to overcome
and expel from the mind erratic impulses, the obedience to which may
easily be followed by regret. Action taken without a clear foresight of
consequences, with an imperfect conception of the relation of means to
ends, is blind and irrational action. Reason, as bringing enlightenment,
as making possible deliberation, as turning the incoherent clamors of a
mob of inconsistent desires into the authoritative voice of an orderly
deliberative assembly, is not a faculty to be lightly regarded.
Nor should it be forgotten that, neither to the plain man, nor to the
moralist, do desires all stand upon the same level. He who bends his
intellectual energies to the satisfaction of his greed, his avarice, his
longing for revenge, may fairly be said to be prostituting his mind to
the service of passion. But is it a proper use of language to describe as
the slave of his passions the man whose thought is set upon the
enlightenment of mankind, the alleviation of suffering, the service of a
state, the attainment of a noble character? Were Socrates, St. Francis,
Abraham Lincoln, Wilberforce, Thomas Hill Green, the slaves of their
passions? Yet these men were moved by certain dominant desires, and their
unswerving pursuit of their goal was made possible only by the reason
that harmonized their lives and substituted deliberate purpose for random
impulse.
The doctrine, then, that the reason is to be likened rather to the
presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, concerned only to give
every voice a fair hearing, than to a legislator issuing commands
independently, may be so stated as not to shock the sober-minded.
And the doctrine recommends itself in showing that reason and inclination
or desire are not enemies. The possession of reason must lead to the
suppression of some desires--those incompatible with a comprehensive
purpose deliberately embraced; but the desires and the reason or
intelligence work together to a common end. On this view, it is not the
rational man who is divided against himself; it is the short-sighted, the
impulsive, the inconsistent, the irrational man. He is the prey of
warring desires whose strife leads to no permanent peace under the
guidance of reason.
60. ANOTHER VIEW OF REASON.--To certain minds this view of reason as the
arbiter and reconciler of man's impulses and desires does not appeal.
Thus, Kant, whose doctrine will be more fully considered later,
[Footnote: Chapter xxix.] holds that man's reason promulgates a law which
takes no account of the impulses and desires of man. Thus, also, Henry
Sidgwick, who differs from Kant in making the attainment of happiness the
goal of human endeavor, and who, consequently, is not tempted to
disregard the desires of man, yet refers to the reason independently
certain maxims, which he regards as self-evident, touching our own good
and the good of our neighbor. [Footnote: _The Methods of Ethics_,
chapter iii.]
There are certain considerations which appear to favor the view that the
reason is a faculty which may be regarded as an independent law-giver. A
man may be possessed of great intelligence; he may be well-informed,
acute in his reasonings, and consistent in his strivings to attain some
comprehensive end, which, on the whole, appears congruous to his nature,
such as it is. Yet we may regard him as highly unreasonable. Judged by
some higher standard which we look upon as approved by reason, he is
found to fall short. Is reason, then, synonymous with intelligence? Or is
it something more--the source of an ultimate standard of action,
intuitively known, and by which all man's actions must be judged? Upon
this question light will be thrown in the pages following.
PART V
THE SOCIAL WILL
CHAPTER XVII
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOCIAL WILL
61. WHAT IS THE SOCIAL WILL?--The social will is not a mysterious entity,
separate and distinct from all individual wills. It is their resultant.
The resultant of two or more physical forces is a force; it has a
character and may be described. The resultant of individual wills in
interaction is a will with a given character which it is of no small
importance for the moralist to comprehend. This will presents aspects
closely analogous to those presented by the will of the individual.
Thus, to begin with, a community of men may be said to will a vast number
of things which have never been made by the members of the community the
object of conscious reflection. It may unthinkingly move along the groove
made for it by tradition. It may be intellectually upon so low a plane
that even the possibility of acting in other ways does not occur to it.
Nevertheless, ways of action thus unthinkingly pursued cannot properly be
said to be beyond the voluntary control of the community. A new situation
may draw attention to the fact that they are unsatisfactory, lead to
critical examination, to inhibition, to deliberate change. Between the
passive acceptance of actions prescribed by tradition and deliberate
conscious choice in the presence of recognized alternatives there is no
clear line of demarcation.
Under the pressure of circumstances or with the gradual increase of
information and intelligence the traditional may undergo slight
modifications which scarcely rank as conscious departures from what has
been passively accepted. The algebraic sum of such departures may, with
the lapse of time, come to be by no means insignificant, yet no
individual may have exercised in any considerable degree conscious
reflection or shown in any large measure freedom of choice.
On the other hand, the social will may, at times, reveal itself in
deliberate decisions, preceded by much conscious deliberation, and
initiating wide departures from established usage. The presence of new
enemies or a diminution of the food-supply may awake a primitive
community from its lethargy, leading it to modify its habits and adjust
itself to new conditions. A barbarous horde may set out upon a career of
conquest, and may introduce revolutionary changes into its manner of
life. A civilized nation may come to the conclusion that, in the course
of human events, it has become necessary for it to dissolve the bands
which have held it to another nation; it may frame for itself an
independent constitution, embodying new ideals and prescribing a new form
of corporate life.
But, as in the case of the individual, so in that of the community, the
tendency to fall again into a rut is always apparent. Laws, once enacted,
lend a passive resistance to change, even when they no longer serve well
the ends they were intended to serve. The independence of thought and
action revealed in the adoption of new constitutions are not conspicuous
in their maintenance. Man collective, as well as man individual, falls
into habits, and he commits to his unthinking self what was wrought out
by himself as thinking and consciously choosing. Passive acceptance of
the traditional again wins the day and becomes a ruling factor in action.
[Footnote: "It is indisputable that much the greatest part of mankind has
never shown a particle of desire that its civil institutions should be
improved since the moment when external completeness was first given to
them by their embodiment in some permanent record." MAINE, _Ancient
Law_, chapter ii.]
This tendency to mechanization should not surprise us, for we meet with
the phenomenon everywhere. The man who says, "Good-by" today does not
mean "God be with thee," and the "Gruss Dich Gott" of the Bavarian
peasant is very properly translated by the American child as "Hallo." The
traditional tends to lose or to alter its meaning, but it continues to
serve a purpose. A community without traditions, without settled ways of
acting, followed, for the most part, without much reflection, would be in
the position of a man without habits either good or bad. Human life as we
know it could not go on upon such a basis. The rule has, at times, its
inconveniences; but it leads somewhere, at least; whereas he who plunges
into the unexplored forest may find every step a problem, and may come
even to doubt whether any step is a step in advance.
62. SOCIAL WILL AND SOCIAL HABITS.--Within the province of the social
will fall what may not inaptly be called the habits of a community--ways
of acting acquired largely without premeditation and followed to a great
extent through mere inertia. The province of the social will is a broad
one. Deliberate choices; those half-conscious choices analogous to the
unheeded expressions of preference which fill the days of the individual;
impulses and tendencies which scarcely emerge into the light--all are
expressions of the social will.
In the next chapter I shall distinguish between customs proper and social
habits in a broader sense. But, in discussing the general problem of the
relation of habit to will, it is not necessary to mark the distinction.
Some habits rest upon us lightly; some are inveterate. Of some we are
well aware; others have to be pointed out to us before we recognize that
we have them. Some we approve, some we disapprove, to some we are
indulgent or indifferent. All these peculiarities are found in the
relation of the social will to social habits. It may recognize them,
approve of them, encourage them. It may pay them little attention. It may
disapprove them and strive to repress them. Will has brought them into
being; it is will that maintains them; it is will that must modify or
suppress them.
As a matter of fact, all communities do tend to change their habits, some
more slowly, some more rapidly. And for its habits we hold a community
responsible. Common sense refers them to its will, and exercises approval
or disapproval. This it would not do were the practices upon which
judgment is passed recognized as beyond the control of will altogether.
63. SOCIAL WILL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.--Under the general heading of
the habits of a society it is not out of place to discuss its social and
political organization.
The fact that there never was an original social contract, made with each
other by men solitary and unrelated, with the deliberate intent of
putting an end to the war of all against all, does not signify that the
social state in which men find themselves is a something with which the
human will has had, and has, nothing to do.
Social and political organization are the result of a secular process,
but behind that process, as moving and directing forces, stand the will
and the intelligence of man. The social and political organization of a
community is not the creation of any single generation of men. Each
generation is born into a given social setting, as the individual is born
into the setting furnished by the community. This social setting, the
heritage of the community from the past, may be compared to a great
estate brought together by the efforts of a man's ancestors, and
transmitted to him to hold intact, to add to, to squander, as he may be
inclined. It is a product attained by man's nature in its struggle with
environment, and that product may be modified by the same forces that
made it what it is.
Into this heritage the generation of men who compose a community at any
given time may enter with little thought of its significance, with no
information, or with false information, touching the manner of its coming
into being, and with small inclination to do anything save to leave
unchanged the institutions of which it finds itself possessed.
Nevertheless, the forms under which societies are organized are subject
to the social will, and, if disapproved, are modified or abolished. Some
change is taking place even where there is apparent immobility, as
becomes evident when the history of institutions is followed through long
periods of time. The utmost that can be said is that, where intelligence
is little developed and energy at a low ebb, the social will may bear the
stamp of passive acceptance of the inherited, rather than exhibit a
tendency to innovation. _Will_ it remains, but we may hesitate to
describe it as a _free will_.
It is at times forced upon our attention with unmistakable emphasis that
the forms of social and political organization are under voluntary
control. Momentous changes may be made deliberately, and with full
consciousness of their significance. Among the more progressive nations
in our day the duty of introducing innovations appears to be generally
recognized: constitutions are amended; the status of social classes is
made the object of legislation; even the domain of the family is invaded,
as in legislation touching marriage and divorce. Men appear to feel
themselves free to will deliberately the end that shall be served by the
mechanism of the state, and to adapt that mechanism to the attainment of
the end chosen.
64. THE SOCIAL WILL AND IDEAL ENDS.--The social will, like the wall of
the individual, may manifest itself in decisions which it is obviously
impossible to carry out to a completely successful issue. A community has
a power of control over its members, but that control has its limits.
Even a man's actions cannot be completely controlled by the community of
which he is a part. There are always individuals who violate rules, and
to whom, as it would seem, no motive can be presented which is adequate
to keep them in the rut prescribed by society.
Still less can the social will exercise full control over men's thoughts
and feelings. Influenced to some degree they may be. A man may be kept in
ignorance, or furnished with information calculated to determine his
thought in a given direction. His emotions may be played upon; he may be
exhorted, rewarded, punished. But thoughts and feelings are not open to
direct inspection; they may be concealed or simulated. Much more readily
than actions can they withdraw themselves from control.
Nevertheless, the social will may, and does, ignore all such limitations
to its powers. Laws are not passed to regulate the changes of the
weather, which palpably fall outside the province of the law; but they
are passed to regulate the actions of men, which normally fall within it;
that is, which can, to a very significant degree, be influenced by the
attitude of the social will. For the same reason laws may even take
cognizance of men's thoughts. Of the accidental limitations of its power
of control within the general sphere in which it has a meaning to speak
of control, the social will is not compelled to take cognizance. It may
set itself to encourage or repress certain types of character and
conduct, and take measures to attain the end it has selected. That the
measures taken should sometimes prove inadequate does not alter the fact
of the choice of an end, nor does it obscure the revelation of the trend
of the social will.
Thus, a community may be said to will that its members shall not be
guilty of violence; it may will to live at peace with other communities;
it may will to conquer and subjugate. Whether, in each case, the will
shall be completely realized or not, may not be determined by the mere
fact of its willing. Nevertheless, the permanent volitional attitude may
be unmistakably present, and may reveal itself in strivings toward the
chosen goal. To describe this attitude as no more than wishing is
manifestly to do it an injustice.
65. THE PERMANENT SOCIAL WILL.--The social will may be regarded as
something permanent. Its existence is not confined to those moments in
which collective decisions are being made. The will to be one which
constitutes a group of human beings a nation is not at all times actively
exercised, but the settled disposition to action looking toward that end
may be always present and ready to be called into action. An autocracy
remains such when its irresponsible head is making no decisions; and a
democracy is not such only while elections are being held or the
legislature is sitting. The organization of a society, the whole body of
the usages which it accepts and approves, are revelations of the social
will. That will does, it is true, give expression to itself in a series
of actual decisions more or less conscious and deliberate, but it is far
more than any such series of decisions. It is a disposition, rooted in
the past and reaching into the future. It is a guarantee of decisions to
come, of whose nature we may make some forecast.
The permanent social will constitutes the _character_ of a
community. Our study of the will of the individual prepares us for the
recognition of the fact that communities may be but dimly aware of their
own character, and may be quite unable to give an unbiased account of the
ideals which animate them.
CHAPTER XVIII
EXPRESSIONS OF THE SOCIAL WILL
66. CUSTOM.--We have seen above that even the forms of political and
social organization may justly be regarded as an expression of the social
will. Such forms are the result of past choices, and their acceptance in
the present is evidence of present choice.
Between the organization of a society and its customs proper we may
distinguish by comparing the former to structure and the latter to
function in the case of any organism. But we must bear in mind that,
here, structure has been built up by, and is in process of modification
by, the same forces that exhibit themselves in function. It would not be
wholly out of place to describe a people as having the custom of being
ruled by hereditary chiefs, of choosing their monarchs, or of governing
themselves through elected representatives. Forms of organization are
handed down to successive generations by the same social tradition that
transmits customs of every description.
Customs are public habits which are, on the whole, approved by a
community. They are ways of acting which are regarded as normal and
proper. Where the authority of custom is evoked, pressure is brought to
bear upon the individual to adjust himself to the will of the community.
A community, like an individual, may have habits which it does not
approve. Such may be tolerated, although disapproved; or active efforts
may be made to set them aside. Some habits may be regarded with
comparative indifference, although professedly held in condemnation. The
individual, in following such habits, may claim that they are not
unequivocally condemned by the community, and he is not conscious of the
weight of displeasure which visits the violation of the will of the
community when unequivocally expressed.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23