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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The psycho-physiology of the moral imperative: A chapter in the psycho-physiology of ethics
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 528-559 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. "Reprinted from the American Journal of Psychology, Vol, viii, No. 4" - see title page.
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Leuba, James Henry
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Ethics
Psychology
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
OUTLINE
AN
EVOLUTIONARY
ETHICS
BY
C.
COHEN.
Vice-President National Secular Society.
PUBLISHED
BY
R. FORDER,
28,
STONECUTTER STREET.
LONDON, E.C.
1896.
�PREFACE.
The object of the present essay is disclosed in the title;
it is that of presenting, in as few words as possible, an
outline of a System of Ethics based upon the doctrine of
Evolution.
Accordingly, I have avoided entering into a
discussion of the value of any of the special virtues—to do
so would require a volume, not a pamphlet—being content
with putting forward what I conceive to be the essential
principles of a Science of Ethics, leaving it for those who
are interested, to pursue the subject further. There is,
therefore, no attempt at completeness in this essay ; it is
meant as an outline, and an introduction, nothing more.
Nor is there in any sense, a claim of originality on behalf
of the ideas suggested ; that, again, has not been my object.
I doubt whether there is a single original idea throughout
the whole. I have simply aimed at putting in a small
compass, and in plain language, conclusions that are at pre
sent locked up in bulky and expensive volumes, which
the average individual has neither time nor opportunity
to consult or study 'systematically.
Students of Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s Works, Mr. Leslie Stephen’s “ Science
of Ethics,” and Mr. Henry Sidgwick’s “ Methods of Ethics,”
will recognise readily how much I am indebted to these
writers.
‘
Where direct quotations occur, I have named the
sources from which they are drawn ; to have particularized
my indebtedness further would have meant more notes
than text. My one object has been to place the subject
in a brief, clear, and convincing light; if I have succeeded
in doing that, I am quite content.
�B2J347
I.—Introductory.
In endeavouring to carry out the oracular utterance :
*' Man know thyself,” there is no branch of study at once
so interesting and so important, as that which relates to
■conduct. At bottom, all our social, religious, and political
■questions find their supreme justification or condemna
tion in their influence upon human behaviour. A question
that had no reference to conduct, one that could not
possibly influence it for better or worse, might interest
the mere spinner of words, but to the earnest thinker
■or sober reformer, it would be valueless. It is true that
the seeker after knowledge has not always an ethical end
as the conscious object of his studies ; he—to use a com
mon phrase—“ seeks knowledge for its own sake ; ” but
it is clear, on reflection, that the only reason why increased
knowledge should be regarded as of value, is, that it will
enable us to better adjust our actions to the varying
circumstances of life. The fears often expressed, lest
some new theory of knowledge should weaken the force
■of accepted moral precepts, is, again, a tacit admission of
“ the sovereignty of ethics; ” and, when genuine, may
be regarded with a certain amount of favour. Even un
willingness to depart from old forms and customs, when
not pushed too far is good ; a querulous dissatisfaction,
with existing conditions being quite as foolish as a slavish
adherence to obsolete customs.
But customs and ideas, be they ever so firmly rooted,
reach, eventually, a stage when they are either summarily
dismissed, or are called upon to show decisive proof of
their title to our respect and obedience. This fate, which
sooner or later overtakes all institutions has in our own
day beset ethics; and at the great bar of human reason,
our ethical codes and teachers are called upon to show
reason why we should still follow their lead. In the
region of morals, as elsewhere, old lights are fading and
new ones are beginning to dawn ; and, perhaps, the
fading of the old lights would be matter for unalloyed
gratification, were it not that while many have lost faith in
the old teaching, they have not yet advanced sufficiently to
have a sincere trust in the new.
Much of this want of confidence in such guides as
�4
modern science has furnished us with, is doubtless due to
the inability of many to accustom their minds to funda
mentally different conceptions from those in which they
were nurtured; but much also is due to the unnecessary
obscurity of writers upon ethical subjects. May I venture
to say—and I say it with all becoming humility—that a
number of needless difficulties have been allowed to encum
ber the subject of morals. Writers have approached the
subject with such an amount of religious and transcen
dental prejudice; have dwelt so strongly upon the
sacredness, the sublimity and the difficulty of the subject,
that their method has served to create difficulties that
have no right to exist. Plainly, if we are going to make
any real headway, we must sweep away all this rhetorical
and metaphysical fog, and deal with human conduct in.
the same careful and unimpassioned manner that we deal
with the subject matter of any of the sciences.
That this subject has its special difficulties, none will
deny—the complexity of the factors renders this inevit
able—but these difficulties need not be increased by the
discussion of a number of casuistical questions that have
scarce an existence in real life ; nor need they blind us to
the fact that a science of human conduct is both necessary
and possible. Human actions are among the facts of
existence ; their causes and results—when they can be
ascertained—are constant, and they must, therefore, be
collected, arranged, and studied, in precisely the same
way that the geologist or chemist deals with the facts
that come within the scope of his respective department
of knowledge.
But before ethics could assume anything like a thoroughly
scientific form, it was essential that many other branches
of knowledge—particularly physiology and psychology—
should be fairly well developed ; and the shortcomings of
earlier systems may be partly attributed to the incom
pleteness of the necessary data. A scientific system of
ethics can only be constructed upon data furnished by a,
number of other sciences ; and this necessary knowledge
has only been forthcoming within very recent times.
But where facts were wanting, fancy filled the gap, and
theories of morals were propounded which satisfied
without enlightening, and darkened that which they pre
tended to explain.
�5
The great weakness of all theological and meta
physical systems of morals, is, that they take man as
he is, without reference to his past history or evol
ution, and proceed to frame rules for his future
guidance. The result is just 5frhat might be expected.
It is precisely what would happen to a man who set him
self to write a description of the British constitution,
without any reference to the history of its gradual
•development : certain features would be misunderstood,
others under or over rated, while many would be left out
of sight altogether. The only way to understand what is,
is to find out how it became so; and this rule is as true
of moral ideas as it is of social institutions and national
customs.
It is in this direction, in emphasising the
importance of the element of time in our speculations
concerning the universe, that Evolution has left its clearest
impress upon modern thought.
Until very recently,
writers—with rare exceptions—were agreed in taking the
order of the universe as fixed from the beginning. Crea
tion being thus taken for granted, there remained merely
a constitution to discover ; and all enquiries as to how
this constitution reached its present condition were looked
upon as beside the mark, or were met by the dogma. “ and
God said, let there be —” Gradually, however, first in one
department, then in another, there grew up the idea of
development, and instead of the present condition of things
being regarded as having come into existence fully formed
the conception of its gradual formation, through vast
periods of time began to gain ground. As philosophers
regarded the physical universe, so they regarded man’s
moral nature. No matter how widely moralists differed,
they were in substantial agreement thus far—they all
viewed the moral nature of man as being constant, as
having been always as it is ; and from this hypotheti
cally constant human nature, proceeded to elaborate their
ethical theories—with much satisfaction to themselves, if
not with benefit to others. As a matter of fact, however,
human nature is as variable as the conditions amid which
it exists—or even more so—while our moral instincts,
appetites, and aversions, which were taken as primary
endowments of the race, in the light of more correct
knowledge, are seen to be the results of slowly acquired
experiences stretching over thousands of generations. As
�6
I have said, it is in this direction that the influence of
Evolutionary thought is mo9t apparent. What others
took for granted, we now find it necessary to explain —
the problem from being—“ given certain instincts what isour reason for calling them moral ? ” has expanded intoHow have the moral feelings come into existence, what
is their nature, and how far should their authority
extend ? ”
It is these questions that I purpose attempting to>
answer in the following pages.
II.—The Meaning of Morality.
The business of the following essay, be it repeated, is a
study of conduct from a purely scientific standpoint;
that is, to establish a rational foundation for moral actions,
and a reasonable motive for their performance, apart from
all religious or supernatural considerations. To the
student of ethics there are two sources from which may
be drawn those facts upon which moral rules or laws are
based. The first is the study of all those mental states to
which praise or blame may be attached. The subjective
view of ethics has hitherto claimed by far the larger share
of attention, at times utterly excluding any other aspect of
the subject; and whatever good might have resulted from
a close examination of mental states, has been frustrated
owing to its neglect of an equally important division of
ethics, namely, the study of conduct from the objective and.
historic side. It is this aspect of the scientific treatment
of ethics that is brought into prominence by the doctrineof evolution. Its main features are comparative and histor
ical ; it embraces a study of customs as affected by race and
age, and even the actions of all animals whose conduct
exhibits any marked degree of conscious forethought. The
importance of this branch of study can hardly be exagger
ated : introspection unchecked by objective verification is.
responsible for most of the errors that abound in philoso
phical writings; while the historical and objective
method has thrown as much light upon mental and moral
problems in fifty years, as had been shed by the intro
spective method in as many generations. Following Mr.
Herbert Spencer, we may define the subject matter of
ethics as “the conscious adjustment of acts to ends;”’
and the object of ethics the statement of such rules as
�7
will lead to the realisation of the welfare of those for
whose benefit such rules are devised.
The main questions that ethical systems are called upon
to answer are :—What is morality ? Why are some
actions classed as moral and others as immoral ? How
did our moral instincts and feelings come into existence ?
and, What are the conditions of their preservation and
improvement ?
In the discussion of all questions such as these,
much time is saved, and much confusion avoided, by
setting out with a clear idea of the meanings of the
cardinal terms in use. All things that we seek to avoid
or possess, whether they be actual objects or states of con
sciousness, fall under one of two heads : they are either
good or bad. Health, riches, friendship, are classed as
good ; disease, poverty, enmity, are classed as bad. We
speak of a good horse, a good knife, a good house, or the
reverse. Upon what ground is this division drawn ? In
virtue of what common quality possessed by these differ
ent objects is the above classification made ? Clearly it
is not because of any intrinsic quality possessed by them.
Considered by themselves they would be neither good
nor bad A knife viewed without regard to the purpose
of cutting, or as an object exhibiting skilled workmanship,
would be subject to neither praise nor censure. An
action that neither helped nor hindered self or fellows,
would awaken no feelings of approbation or disappro
bation. It is only in relation to some end that we have
in view that an object becomes either good or bad, or an
action moral or immoral. Further, an object that may be
classed as good in relation to one end, would be classed
as bad in relation to another. A horse that would be
valuable for deciding a wager as to speed, would be of
little use for the purpose of ploughing a field.
As
Professor Clifford pointed out, the fundamental trait that
determines goodness is efficiency—the capability of an
object or an action for reaching a desired end. A thing
must be good for something or for someone ; a knife for
cutting, a horse for carrying or drawing, a house for
shelter; fresh air, pure water, good food, because they
promote a healthy physique ; and each will be classed as
possessing a greater degree of goodness as it reaches the
desired end in a more effectual manner. A good action,
�8
may, therefore, be defined as one which attains the end
desired with the least expenditure of time and energy.
A further distinction needs to be pointed out between the
terms good and moral ; for in the light of the above
definition, the two terms are by no means always synony
mous, although they may be so in special cases. A man
who so adjusted his actions as to commit a burglary in
the most expeditious manner, might be rightly spoken of
as a good burglar, but no one, I opine, would speak of
him as a moral one. Nevertheless, an action becomes
moral for the same reason that an action becomes good,
that is, in view of a certain result to be attained, although
in this case certain ulterior considerations are involved.
Now, in examining all those actions classed as moral,
I find them to be either socially or individually bene
ficial, while those actions classed as immoral are injurious
either to the individual or to society ; while actions which
neither injure nor help are classed as indifferent.
Even
in the case of those actions that are performed instinc
tively, the justification for their existence or practice is
always to be found in reasons arising from their social or
individual utility. Analyse carefully the highest and
most complex moral action, and it will be found in its
ultimate origin to be an act of self or social preservation.
Press home the enquiry why the feeling of moral obliga
tion should be encouraged, and the answer will be the
same. This fundamental significance of the terms used,
is frequently veiled under such phrases as Duty, Perfec
tion, Virtue, etc. Thus Immanuel Kant declares that
“ No act is good unless done from a sense of duty.” But
why should we act from a sense of duty ? What reason
is there for following its dictates ?
Clearly a sense of
duty is only to be encouraged or its dictates obeyed
because it leads to some desired result; there must be
some reason why a sense of duty is to be acted upon,
rather than ignored, and in the very nature of the case
that reason can only be found in the direction indicated.
Nor can we on reflection and in the light of modern
science, think of moral actions as having any other origin
or justification than their tendency to promote the well
being of society. Given a race of animals with a
particular set of surroundings, and the problem before it
will be “ How to maintain a constant harmony between
�9
the species and its medium ; how the former shall adjust
its movements in such a manner as to ward off all
aggressive forces, both conscious and unconscious, to
rear its young and preserve that modifiability of actions
requisite to meet the needs of a changing environment ;
without which death rapidly ensues.” This is the problem
of life stated in its plainest terms; a problem which
presses upon savage and civilised alike, and one with
which we are all constantly engaged. It may be said that
we are all engaged in playing the same game—the game
of life —and ethics may be spoken of as the rules of the
game that we are always learning but never thoroughly
master. The one condition of existence for all life, from
lowest to highest, is that certain definite lines of conduct
—determined by the surrounding conditions—shall be
pursued ; and just as any invention, be it steam engine,
printing press, or machine gun, is the result of a long
series of adjustments and readjustments reaching over
many generations, so our present ability to maintain our
lives in the face of a host of disturbing forces, is the
result of a long series of adjustments and re-adjustments,
conscious and unconscious, dating back to the dawn of
life upon the globe. Self-preservation is the fundamental
cause of the beginnings of morality, and only as the
sphere of self becomes extended so as to embrace others
does conduct assume a more altruistic character. At
beginning these adjustments by means of which life is
preserved are brought about unconsciously, natural selec
tion weeding out all whose conduct is of an undesirable
or life-diminishing character; but with the growth of
intelligence and the conscious recognition of the nature of
those forces by which life is moulded, these unconscious
adaptations are superseded—or rather have superadded to
them—conscious ones. It is this conscious recognition of
the nature of these forces by which life is maintained,
and of the reason for pursuing certain courses of conduct,
that is the distinguishing feature of human society.
Human morality seeks to effect consciously what has
hitherto been brought about slowly and unconsciously.
It aims at this, but at more than this; for a system of
ethics not only seeks to preserve life, but to intensify it,
to increase its length and add to its beauties. It declares
not only what is, or what may be, but what ought to be.
�10
Moral principles or laws, therefore, consist in the main in
furnishing a reason for those courses of conduct which
experience has demonstrated to be beneficial, and the
acquisition of which have been accentuated by the struggle
for existence.
In this case, however, progress is effected much more
rapidly than where the evolution is unconscious, while
the ability to discern more clearly the remote effects of
our actions renders that progress more certain and perma
nent. We maintain ourselves, we rear our young, and lay
up the means of future happiness in virtue of the
presence of a particular set of instincts or the formulation
of a number of rules which experience has demonstrated
to be beneficial.
It is a detailed account of these actions
and the reason for their existence that constitutes our
moral code. Long before moral principles are formulated
society conforms to them. Custom exists before law;
indeed, a large part of law is only custom recognised and
stereotyped; the law, so to speak, does but give the
reason for the custom, and by the very exigences of exis
tence such customs as are elevated into laws must be
those that have helped to preserve the race, otherwise
there would be a speedy end to both law and law-makers.
As, therefore, in the course of evolution only the societies
can continue to exist whose actions serve, on the whole, to
bring them into harmony with their environment, and as
it will be these actions the value of which will afterwards
come to be recognised and their performances enforced
by law, there is brought about an identification of moral
rules with life preserving actions from the outset, and
this identification tends to become still closer as society
advances. The impulses that urge men to action cannot
be, in the main, anti-social or society would cease to exist.
In the last resort, as will be made clear later, a man will do
that which yields him the most satisfaction, and unless
there is some sort of identity between what is pleasant
and what is beneficial, animate existence would soon
cease to be. Morality can, then, from the scientific stand
point, have no other meaning except that of a general
term for all those preservative instincts and actions by
means of which an individual establishes definite and har
monious relations between himself and fellows, and wards
off all those aggressive forces that threaten his existence.
�11
We have now, I think, reached a clear conception of
what is meant by a “ Moral Action.” A moral action is.
one that adds to the “ fitness” of society; makes life fuller
and longer; adds to the fulness of life by nobility of
action, and to its duration by length of years. An.
immoral action is one that detracts from the “ fitness ” of
society, and renders it less capable of responding to the
demands of its environment. The only rational meaning:
that can be attached to the phrase “a good man,” is that
of one whose actions comply with the above conditions ;
and his conduct will become more or less immoral as it
approaches to or falls away from this ideal.
III.—The Moral Standard.
Although I have but little doubt that the majority of
people would on reflection yield a general assent to the
considerations set forth above, yet, it may be complained,
that they are too vague. To say that moral actions are such
as promote life, it may further be said, is hardly to tell us
what such actions are, or to provide us with a rational
rule of action, since our verdict as to whether an action is
moral or immoral must clearly depend upon our view as
to what the end of life is. The man who holds that all
pleasure is sinful, and that mortification of the flesh is the
only way to gain eternal happiness, will necessarily pass
a very different judgment upon actions from the one
who holds that all happiness that is not purchased at the
expense of another’s misery is legitimate and desirable.
The justice of the above complaint must be admitted ; it
remains, therefore, to push our enquiries a step further.
Ethical Methods, in common with other systems, pass
through three main stages—Authoritative, critical, and
constructive. The first is a period when moral precepts
are accepted on the bare authority of Priest or Chieftain.
In this stage all commands have an equal value, little or
no discrimination is exercised, and all acts of disobedience
meet with the most severe punishment.
*
The second
period represents a season of upheaval occasioned either
by the growing intelligence of men perceiving the faults or
shortcomings of the current teaching, or a healthy revolt
against the exercise of unfettered authority. And then,
*As in the Bible where picking up sticks upon the Sabbath merits
the same punishment as murder.
�12
finally, there ensues a constructive stage, when an attempt
is made to place conduct upon a rational foundation.
It is not very easy to point out the line of demarcation
between the different stages, nor is it unusual to find
them existing side by side, but they are stages that can be
■observed by a careful student with a tolerable amount of
■ease. And in this latter stage the difficulty is, not so
much the formulation of moral precepts, as furnishing
the reason for them. The great question here is, not so
much “ How shall I be moral,’’ as—“ Why should I be
moral,” it is this question we have now to answer.
All Ethical systems are compelled to take some
standard as ultimately determining the rightness or
wrongness of conduct, and we may roughly divide all
these systems into three groups—two of which regard the
moral sense as innate, and the third as derivative. These
three groups are, (1) Theological systems which take the
will of deity as supplying the necessary standard, (2)
Intuitional which holds the doctrine of an innate moral
sense that is in its origin independent of experience, and
professes to judge actions independent of results, (3)
*
Utilitarian, which estimates conduct by observing the
results of actions upon self and fellows, and holds that
■our present stock of moral sentiments have been acquired
by experience both individual and racial.
Concerning the first of these schools—the theological—
its weakness must be apparent to all who have given any
serious attention to the subject. For, setting on one side
the difficulty of ascertaining what the will of deity is, and
the further difficulty that from the religious world there
■comes in answer to moral problems replies as numerous
as the believers themselves, it is plain that the expressed
will of deity cannot alter the morality of an action to the
slightest extent. It does not follow that spoiling the
Egyptians is a moral transaction because God com
manded it, nor are we justified in burning witches or
stoning heretics because their death sentence is contained
in the bible. It would be but a poor excuse after commit
* We have used the term “Intuitional” to denote the method which
recognises rightness as a quality belonging to actions independently of their
conduciveness to any ulterior end. The term implies that the presence of
the quality is ascertained by simply looking at the actions themselves
-without considering their consequences.—Sidgwick, “ Methods of Ethics”
bk. I. c. viii, sec. i.
�13
ting a crime to plead that God commanded it. The
reply to all such excuses would be, “ crime is crime no
matter who commanded it ; wrong actions must be
reprobated, the wrong doer corrected, or society would
fall to pieces,” and such a decision would have the sup
port of all rational men and women. A belief that my
actions are ordered by God can only guarantee my honesty
as a believer in deity in carrying them out, but can in no
way warrant their morality.
Further, those who claim that the will of God as ex
pressed in a revelation or discovered by a study of nature,
furnishes a ground of distinction between right and
wrong, overlook the fact that all such positions are self
contradictory, inasmuch as they assume a tacit recognition
at the outset of the very thing they set out to discover—
they all imply the existence of a standard of right and
wrong to which God’s acts conform. To speak of biblical
precepts as good implies that they harmonize with our
ideas of what goodness is ; to say that God is good and
that his actions are righteous, implies, in the same manner,
a conformity between his actions and some recognised
standard. Either that, or it is a meaningless use of terms
to speak of God’s actions as good, and at the same time
claim that it is his actions alone which determine what
goodness is. In short, all such terms as good and bad,
moral and immoral, take for granted the existence of some
standard of goodness discoverable by human reason, and
from which such terms derive their authority. This much
appears to me clear:—either actions classed respectively as
moral and immoral have certain definite effects upon our
lives or they have not. If they have, then their effects remain
the same with or without religious considerations; and
granting the possession of an ordinary amount of common
sense, it will always be possible to build up a code of
morals from the observed consequences of actions. If
actions have no definite effects upon our lives, then those
who believe that our only reason for calling an action
moral or immoral lies in the will of God, given in revela
tion or expressed in the human consciousness, are com
mitted to the startling proposition that theft, murder and
adultery would never have been recognised as immoral
had these commands not have been in existence. This
last alternative is rather too ridiculous to merit serious
�14
disproof. In brief, neither the theologian nor, as we shall
see later, the intuitionist can avoid assuming at the outset
■of their investigations all that he seeks to reach as a con
clusion. The very phrases both are compelled to use have
no validity unless there exist principles of morality derived
from experience—and this thay are constantly seeking to
disprove.
Nor do the advocates of a dim religious sense mani
fest in the human mind, fare any better than those who
hold the cruder form of the same doctrine. The strength
•of their position is apparent only ; due to the vagueness
of language rather than the logical force of their ideas.
Dr. Martineau—who may be taken as one of the best
representatives of the religious world upon this subject—
declares that if there be no supernatural authority for
morals, “ nothing remains but to declare the sense of
responsibility a mere delusion, the fiduciary aspect of
life must disappear; there is no trust committed to us,
no eye to watch, no account to render ; we have but to
settle terms with our neighbours and all will be well.
Purity within, faithfulness when alone, harmony and
depth in the secret affections, are guarded by no caution
ary presence, and aided by no sacred sympathy ; it may
be happy for us if we keep them, but if we mar them it
is our own affair, and there is none to reproach us and
put us to shame.”* To all of which one may say that
that conduct can hardly be called moral which needs the
constant supervision of an eternal “cautionary presence”
to ensure its rectitude
To refrain from wrong-doing
because of the presence of an “ all-seeing eye,” whether
its possessor be a supernatural power or a mundane
policeman can hardly entitle one to be called
virtuous ; and society would be in a poor way indeed did
right conduct rest upon no firmer foundation than this.
A man so restrained may not be such a direct danger to
society as he would otherwise be, but he is far from being
a desirable type of character. Surely purity, faithfulness
to wife, children and friends, honesty in our dealings,
truthfulness in our speech, and confidence in our fellows,
are not such poor, forlorn things as to be without some
inherent personal recommendation ?
Indeed, Dr.
* “ A Study of Religions,” II. p. 40.
�15
Martineau himself is a splendid disproof of his own
position, for if there is one thing certain about a man of
his type, it is that the absence of religious beliefs would
influence his conduct but little for the worse, while it might
even give more breadth to his sympathies and character.
True morality finds its incentives in the effects of actions
upon self and fellows, and not in fears inspired by either
god or devil. As Mr. Spencer has said, “ The truly moral
deterrent from murder is not constituted by a represen
tation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation
of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation
of the horror or hatred excited in fellow men, but by a
representation of the necessary natural results — the
infliction of death agony upon the victim, the destruc
tion of all his possibilities of happiness, the entailed
suffering to his belongings.
Neither the thought of
imprisonment, nor of divine anger, nor of social disgrace,
is that which constitutes the check on theft, but the
thought of injury to the person robbed, joined with a
vague consciousness of the general evils caused by a
disregard of proprietory rights .... Throughout, then,
the moral motive differs from the motives it is associated
with in this ; that instead of being constituted by repre
sentations of incidental, collateral, non-necessary conse
quences of acts, it is constituted by representations of
consequences which the acts naturally produce.”* Of all
moral sanctions the religious sanction is the most delusive
and unsatisfactory. Changing as human nature changes,
reflecting here benevolence and there cruelty, sanctioning
all crimes at the same time that it countenances much
that is virtuous, it is an authority that people have
appealed to in all ages to justify every action that human
nature is capable of committing. Surely a sanction which
justifies at the same time the religion of the Thug and
the benevolence of the humanitarian must be an eminently
fallacious one ? And yet we are warned that the removal
of the religious sanction will weaken, if it does not destroy,
morality! I do not believe it.
Conduct can gain no
permanent help from a false belief, and no permanent
strength from a lie ; and had the energies of our religious
teachers been devoted to impressing upon the people
“ Data of Ethics,” sec. 45.
�16
under their control the natural sanction of morality they
might have been kept moral without a sham of a priest
hood, or the perpetuation of superstitious beliefs that are
a stain upon our civilisation. But we have been taught
for so long that religion alone could furnish a reason for
right living, that now that time has set its heavy hand upon
religious creeds and death is claiming them for its own,
many honestly fear that there will be a corresponding
moral deterioration. Yet of this much we may be certain,
so long as men continue to live together morality
can never die ; so long as suffering exists or injustice
is done, there will not be wanting ;those who will
burn to release the one and redress the other.
Nay, rather will the value of life and of conduct
during life be enhanced by stripping it of all false fears
and groundless fancies. Whatever else is proven false
this life remains certain ; if it is shown that we share the
mortality of the brute we need not share its life, and we
may at least make as much of the earth we are now in
possession of as the heaven we may never enter. As
George Eliot says, “ If everything else is doubtful, this
suffering that I can help is certain ; if the glory of the
cross is an illusion, the sorrow is only the truer.
While
the strength is in my arm I will stretch it out to the
fainting ; while the light visits my eyes they shall seek
the forsaken.”*
The intuitional theory of morals while displaying
fewer errors than the scheme of the theological
school, yet presents a fundamental and insurmountable
difficulty. With the general question as to the nature
and authority of conscience, we shall deal more fully
when we come to treat of the “ Moral Sense.” The
question at issue between the intuitionist and the upholder
of the doctrine of evolution is, not the present existence
in man of a sense of right or wrong, but whether that
sense is an original endowment of the species or has been
derived from experience. According to this school ight
*
and wrong are known as such in virtue of a divinely
implanted sense or faculty = soul or conscience; we
recognise the virtue of an action as we recognise the
presence of a colour, because we possess a special sense
* “ Eomola.”
�17
fitted for the task ; and it is impossible to furnish any
other reason why it should be so. Right and wrong are
immediately perceived by the mind as such, and there is
an end of the matter. .A plain and obvious comment
upon this position is that the intuitions of men are
neither uniform nor infallible in their judgments.
Instead of finding, as the intuitional theory of morals
would lead us to expect, that moral judgments are every
where the same, we find them differing with race, age,
and even individuals. The only thing common to the
moral sense is that of passing judgment, or making a
selection of certain actions, and this much is altogether
inadequate for the purpose of the intuitionist. The
moral sense of one man leads him to murder his enemy ;
that of another to feed him ; in one age the moral sense
decrees that polygamy, death for heresy, witch burning,
and trial by combat are legitimate proceedings, and in
another age brands them as immoral. Obviously, if our
intuitions are to be regarded as trustworthy guides, there
is no reason why we should adopt one set of intuitions
more than another. All must be equally valuable or the
theory breaks down at the outset. If, however, we pro
nounce in favour of the intuitions of the cultured European
and against that of the savage, it must be because of a com
parison of the consequences of the different intuitions
upon human welfare ; and in this case the authority of
the moral sense as an arbitrary law-giver disappears.
If
the moral sense be ultimate, then our duty is to follow
its dictates. Any questioning of what the moral sense
decides to be right involves an appeal to some larger fact,
or to some objective guide. To arbitrarily select one
intuition out of many and label that and that only as good
is simply to set up another god in place of the one
dethroned. All moral growth implies the fallibility of
our intuitions, since such growth can only proceed by
correcting and educating our primary ethical impulses.
There is one point, however, which seems to have escaped
the notice of intuitionists, and that is, that the existence of
their own writings is a direct disproof of the truth of
their position. For if all men possessed such a faculty as it
is claimed they possess, its existence should be sufficiently
obvious as to command the assent of all; there could
exist no such questioning of the fact as to necessitate the
�18
existence of the proof offered. No man ever yet needed
to write a volume to prove that the sun gave light, or
that men experience feelings of pleasure and pain, and an
intuition that is co.extensive with humanity, which is not
reducible to experience, and which is the very ground
work of our moral judgments should be so obvious as to
be independent of all proof. The mere fact of it being
called into question is sufficient disproof of its existence.
But, as already said, the diversities of moral judgments
are fatal to the hypothesis. Press the intuitionist with the
question why he should prefer the intuition of one man
to that of another, and he is compelled to forsake his
original position and justify his selection upon the grounds
of the beneficial effects of one and the injurious effects
of the other; thus constituting experience as the final
court of appeal. The conclusion is, then, that neither the
theologian nor the intuitionist can avoid taking into con
sideration the effects of action in the formation of moral
judgments ; both of them when pressed are compelled to
fall back upon something outside their system to support
it; neither can justify himself without making an appeal
to that experience, which according to his hypothesis
is unnecessary and untrustworthy.
Turning now to the last of the three schools named—the
utilitarian—let us see if we can derive from it a satisfactory
standard of right and wrong. Practically the question has
already been answered in our examination of “the meaning
of morality,” where it was determined that moral actions
were such as led to an increase of life in length of days
and nobility of action ; but as this may be thought too
vague it becomes necessary to frame some more detailed
expression.
The essence of Utilitarianism may be stated in a sen
tence it asserts that “ actions are right in proportion as
they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to
produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is in
tended pleasure and the absence of pain ; by unhappiness
pain and the privation of pleasure. ” Act so as to ensure
*
the happiness of all around you, may be said to be the
one great precept of Utilitarianism. According to this
doctrine all things become of value only in so far as they
minister to the production of happiness, while the end of
*J. S. Mil), “ Utilitarianism ” p. 9.
�19
action is always the production of an agreeable or pleas
urable state of consciousness. The correctness of this
position admits of ample demonstration. Indeed, the
fact that happiness is the end contemplated by all is so
plain as to scarcely need proof, were it not that the means
to this end have by long association come to stand in con
sciousness as ends in themselves.
Yet a very little
analysis will show that each of the prudential or benevo
lent virtues must find their ultimate justification in their
tendency to increase happiness. As Mill says: “The
clearest proof that the table is here is that I see it ; and
the clearest proof that happiness is the end of action is
that all men desire it.” Upon every hand we are brought
face to face with the truth of this statement. It matters
little whether we take the honest man or the thief ; the
drunkard in his cups or the reformer in his study,
the one object that they have in common will be
found to be the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of
pain. The difference between men does not consist in
the fact that the motives urging them to action are gener
ically different, they are not; the difference consists
rather in the kind of happiness sought after or the means
adopted to obtain it. As will presently be made clear,
feeling induces action at all timesand under all conditions.
The immediate cause of conduct is the desire to bring
into existence a pleasant state of consciousness or to subdue
a painful one—although there is plainly much diversity
in the pleasures sought after. The biological reason for
this pursuit of pleasure will be seen later ; but that the
tendency of actions to produce happiness is our sole reason
for classing them as good will be seen by imagining the
contrary to be the case. Suppose, to quote Mr. Spencer,
“ that gashes and bruises caused agreeable sensations, and
brought in their train increased power of doing work and
receiving enjoyment; should we regard assault in the
same manner as at present; or, suppose that self-mutila
tion, say by cutting off a hand, was both intrinsically
pleasant and furthered performance of the processes by
which personal welfare and the welfare of dependents is
achieved ; should we hold as now that deliberate injury
done to one’s own body is to be reprobated ; or again,
suppose that picking a man’s pocket excited in him joyful
emotions by brightening his prospects; would that theft
�20
be counted among crimes, as in existing law books and
moral codes ? In these extreme cases, no one can deny
that what we call the badness of actions is ascribed to
them solely for the reason that they entail pain, immediate
or remote, and would not be so ascribed did they entail
pleasure.”*
The difference between a selfish and an unselfish action
is not that in the latter case the feeling itself is absent—
this is never the case—the difference is that in a selfish
action a man’s happiness is in things confined to himself,
while in an unselfish action his happiness embraces the
happiness of others likewise. Does a man give away his
last shilling to one poorer than himself ; it is because he
escapes the greater pain of witnessing distress and not
relieving it. Does the martyr go to the stake in vindica
tion of his belief ?
It is because to hide those beliefs, to
profess a belief which he did not enjtertain, to play the
hypocrite and escape persecution by an act of smug con
formity, would be far more unbearable than any torment
that intolerence could inflict.
Whatever man does he acts so as to avoid a pain and
gain a pleasure ; and the function of the ethical teacher is
to train men to perform only those actions which eventu
ally produce the greatest and most healthful pleasures.
And let it not be imagined for a moment that in thus
reducing the distinction, between good and bad, to the
simpler elements of pleasure and pain, that we have
thereby destroyed all distinction between them. Far
from it. The perfume of the rose and the evil smell of
asafcetida remain as distinct as ever, even though we
reduce both to the vibrations of particles; and we shall
not cease to care for one and dislike the other on that
account. And so long as a distinction is felt between a
pleasurable and a painful sensation, so long will the
difference between good and bad remain clear and distinct;
it is a distinction that cannot disappear so long as life
exists.
A complete moral code is but a complete statement of
actions that are of benefit to self and society in terms of
pleasure and pain ; and, therefore, until we can cease to
distinguish between the two sets of feelings we can never
* “Data or Ethics,” sec. 2.
�21
cease to know the grounds of morality and to find a
sound basis for its sanctions.
Every individual then acts so as to avoid a pain or
cultivate a pleasure. A state of happiness to be realised
at some time and at some place, is an inexpugnable ele
ment in all estimates of conduct; is the end to which all
men are striving, no matter how they may differ in their
methods of achieving it. Unfortunately, such considera
tions, as have been pointed out. are disguised under such
phrases as “ Perfection,” “ Blessedness,” &c. And yet, to
quote Mr. Spencer once again, “ If it (Blessedness) is a
state of consciousness at all, it is necessarily one of three
states—painful, indifferent, or pleasurable,” and as no
one, I presume, will say that it is either of the first two,
we are driven to the conclusion, that after all, “ Blessed
ness ” is but another name for happiness.
Or take as an illustration of the same principle, a plea that
is sometimes put forward on behalf of self-denial, which,
it is urged, contravenes the principle of utility. It is
claimed that that conduct is highest which involves self
sacrifice. But, clearly, self-sacrifice, as self-sacrifice, has
little or nothing to commend it. The man who denied
himself all comfort, who continually “mortified the
flesh,” without benefiting any one by so doing, would be
regarded by all sane thinking people as little better than
a lunatic. The only possible justification f or self-sacrifice
is that the happiness of self in some future condition of
existence, or the happiness of society in the present, will
be rendered greater thereby. Even the fanatical religionist
indulging in acts of self-torture, is doing so in the full
belief that his conduct will bring him greater happiness
hereafter. So that once more we are brought back to the
same position, viz., that no individual can avoid taking
happiness in some form as the motive for and sanction of
his conduct.
Here, then, upon the widest possible review of human
conduct, we are warranted in asserting that the ultimate
criterion of the morality of an action is its tendency to
produce pleasurable states of consciousness. To speak of
an action as good or bad apart from the effect it produces
upon human life, is as absurd as to speak of colour apart
from the sense of sight. An action becomes good because
of its relation to a human consciousness, and apart from
�22
this relation its goodness disappears. As Spinoza says—
“We do not desire a thing because it is good, we call it
good because we desire it.”
This, then, is our test of the morality of an action—
will it result in a balance of painful feelings ? Then it
is bad. Will it produce a surplus of pleasurable ones ?
Then it is good,
But although, in ultimate analysis, to desire a thingand call it good, or the performance of an action
and call it moral, is merely another way of saying the
same thing, it by no means follows that all desires are to
be gratified merely because they exist. Nothing is plainer
than that the gratification of many desires would lead to
anything but beneficial results. Our desires need at all
times to be watched, controlled and educated. It is in
this direction that reason plays its part in the determin
ation of conduct.
Its function is, by the perception and
calculation of the consequences of actions, to so train the
feelings as to lead us eventually to gratify only such,
desires as will ultimately lead to individual and social
happiness.
And not only is it clear on analysis that the avoidance
of a painful state of consciousness or the pursuit of an
agreeable one, is the underlying motive for all our actions,
but it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. An
ethical relation between ourselves and an object can never
be established by simple perception ; nor is perception
ever the immediate cause of action.
The immediate
cause of action is, as I have already said, feeling ; that is,
we associate pleasurable or painful feelings with an
object perceived, and shape our conduct in accordance
with past experience.
*
No abstract conception of life
and its duties could ever give rise to action, were
not such conduct closely associated with pleasant or
* May we not justly affirm, as we clearly perceive, that the intellectual
life does not supply the motive or impulse to action ; that the understand
ing or reason is not the cause of our outward actions, but that the desiresare? Our most effective energies spring from our most urgent needs. . .
The desire is the fundamental expression of the individual’s character. . ►.
In fact the power of the understanding is reflective and inhibitory,
being exhibited rather in the hindrance of passion-prompted action, and in
the guidance of our impulses, than in the instigation of conduct; its office
in the individual, as in the race is, as Comte systematically and emphati
cally pointed out, not to impart the habitual impulsion but deliberative.
—Maudesley, “ Physiology of Mind,” p. 357.
�23
painful feelings—as escaping censure, personal approba
tion or disapprobation, direct personal reward or punish
ment, or the admiration of our neighbours. We may
put the case briefly as follows : Every action consciously
performed aims at calling into existence a particular state
of consciousness. States of consciousness, so far as they
are the subjects of ethical judgments, are of two kinds—
agreeable and disagreeable, or pleasant and painful. The
former we desire to maintain, the latter to destroy. By
experience pleasurable feelings have become associated
with a particular object or the performance of a particular
action, and the possession of the object or the performance
of the action is the means by which such agreeable sensa
tions are revived It is upon this principle only that the
past can serve as a guide in the present; although the
past can never induce action, the future alone can do
this. Our conduct is necessarily based upon the belief
that the future will resemble the past, and that actions
which resulted in happiness in the past will have the
same effect in the future. If, then, the motive resulting
in action is the wish to revive and return some state of
consciousness, and if all states of consciousness are either
painful or pleasurable, and if it is further admitted that
pleasurable states are sought after and painful ones
avoided, then it becomes clear that the ideal state is one
in which pleasurable states only are experienced ; or, as
it is briefly described, a state of happiness.
And now having reached the conclusion that the pro
duction of a pleasurable feeling is the end of all our
actions, the question remaining to be answered is, “ why
should happiness be the end of action, what is it that
constitutes happiness, and what justification for the
pursuit of happiness is there to be found in a study of
the laws of life ? ”
Here we may be met with the remark that happiness is
an extremely variable factor, that it varies at different
times and with different individuals ; the happiness of the
drunkard or the debauchee is quite as real as the happi. ness of the philosopher, and therefore upon what grounds
do we class one as bad and the other as good ? The
drunkard may say, “ my conduct yields me pleasure,
while to imitate yours would prove extremely irksome
and painful, and therefore I prefer to keep on my present
�24
course in spite of all that may be said concerning other
sources of happiness, the beauty of which I am unable to
appreciate.” In what way, then, the evolutionist may be
asked, can we prove the drunkard to be in the wrong ?
This objection, although a fairly common one, yet repre
sents an entire misunderstanding of the utilitarian position.
Certainly pleasures of a special kind accompany such
actions as those named, for, as I have shown, conduct
must always be produced by feeling, and feeling always
aims at the one end ; but it is not by taking into con
sideration the immediate effects of actions only and
ignoring the remote ones that any sound conclusions
can be reached, this can only be done by combining both,
and when it is shown, and it will not be disputed, that
the immediate pleasures of the drunkard carry with them
as final results a long train of miseries in the shape of
ruined homes, shattered constitutions, and general social
evils, we have shown that these actions are not such as
produce ultimate happiness, and therefore have no valid
claim to the title of good.
But waiving the discussion of such objections as these,
the problem facing us is, “granting that the end of action
is as stated, in what way can we identify what is with
what ought to be ; or how can it be shown that actions
which rightly viewed yield happiness and actions that
preserve life are. either identical or tend to become so ? ”
This question, it is clear, can only be thoroughly answered
by determining the physiological and psychological con
ditions of happiness.
The incentives to action, it has been shown, is the desire
to call into existence, or to drive out of being a particular
state of consciousness. All changes in consciousness are
brought about either by sensations directly experienced,
or by the remembrance of sensations previously ex
perienced. We receive sensations by means of what are
called faculties—including under that term both organ
and function. Of a certain number of possible sensations
some are pleasant, others are unpleasant; the former we
seek, the latter we shun; and the desire to revise the
agreeable states of feeling is the immediate motive for all
our actions. A pleasurable feeling, then, results from the
*
* To say that we seek the revival of a disagreeable feeling would be a
contradiction in terms.
�25
exercise of our energies in a particular direction ; the ques
tion is, in what direction ? It is in answering this question
that Mr. Spencer has made one of his most important con
tributions to ethical science, and thereby placed the utilitar
ian theory of morals upon a thoroughly scientific footing.
Clearly, the indiscriminate exercise of our faculties, or
the promiscuous gratification of our desires, will not lead
to ultimate happiness. Apart from the existence in our
selves of desires which being either of a morbid character,
or survivals from times when the conditions of life were
different, and the gratification of which would therefore be
looked upon as anything but desirable ; even the exercise
of what may be termed legitimate desires needs to be care
fully watched and regulated. Indeed a large part of
wrong doing results, not from the existence of a faculty,
but from its misdirection; an intemperate gratification
of desires that, rightly directed, would yield but good.
No one, for example, would condemn the desire of people
to “ make a name,” a perfectly legitimate and even laud
able aspiration ; yet, owing to the method adopted, there
are few desires that lead to greater wrong doing.
Again, over indulgence in any pursuit, as in over eating,
over studying, or over indulgence in physical exercise, is
likely to lead to extremely injurious results. And equally
significant are the pains—cravings—that result from too
little exercise in any of these directions. If, therefore,
conduct that approaches either extreme leads to painful
results, the implication is that a pleasurable state of
consciousness is the accompaniment of actions that lie
midway between the two. But actions that leave behind
naught but a diffused feeling of pleasure, imply that the
body has received just that amount of exercise necessary
to maintain it in a state of well being, and are, therefore,
healthful actions; or in other words, pleasure—using that
term in the sense given to it above—will result from the
exercise of each organ of the body up to that point
necessary to maintain the entire organism in a healthy
condition. Concerning the quantity of exercise required
no hard and fast rule can be laid down, it will differ with
each individual, and even with the same individual at
different times, the amount of exercise necessary to keep
one man in a state of health would kill another, and vice
versa.
�26
Thus, from a biological standpoint we may define
happiness as a state of consciousness resulting from the
exercise of every organ of the body and faculty of the mind,
up to that point requisite to secure the well being of the
entire organism; and from the psychological side, the
gratification of all such desires as lead to this result. Now
if this be admitted as true, it follows that pleasure
producing actions and pain-producing actions are, in the
long run the equivalents of life preserving and life
destroying actions respectively ; that as Spencer says,
“ Every pleasure raises the tide of life ; and every pain
lowers the tide of life,’’ or as Professor Bain has it—“ States
of pleasure are connected with an increase, and states of
pain with an abatement of some, or all, of the vital
functions ; ” * and therefore to say .that the tendency of an
action to produce happiness is the ultimate test of its
morality, is simply saying in effect that that conduct is
moral which leads to a lengthening and broadening of
life.
And not only is this the conclusion reached by an
examination of animal life as it now is, but it is a con
clusion logically deducible from the hypothesis of
evolution and the laws of life in general. The connection
between pain and death, and happiness and life, is too
deeply grounded in general language and thought not to
have some foundation in fact. The general accuracy of
this connection is witnessed by all physiologists and
medical men, the latter of whom readily recognise how
importantian element is cheerfulness in a patient’s recovery,
while the former demonstrates that pain lowers and
pleasure raises the general level of life.
And upon no other condition could life have developed
upon the earth. As has been pointed out, actioii springs
directly from feeling and seeks to obtain pleasure either
immediately or remotely ; therefore, unless the pleasures
pursued are such as will preserve life the result is
extinction.
Imagine for example that life-destroying
actions produced pleasurable sensations—that is a state of
consciousness that animals sought to bring into existence
and retain—that bodily wounds, impure foods, and
exhausting pursuits generally, yielded nothing but
pleasure, and would, therefore, be performed eagerly,
* “ Senses and the Intellect,” p. 283.
�27
it is obvious that such a state of things would cause a
rapid disappearance of life altogether. Illustrations of
this may be readily found in individual instances, for
example, opium eaters or excessive drinkers, but it is
clear that such habits could not maintain themselves for
long upon a general scale. Something of the same thing
may even be seen in the case of lower races, that, coming
in contact with European culture and finding pleasure in
the performance of actions suitable to their past life but
unsuitable to their present one, have become extinct.
Thus, as Mr. Spencer puts it. “ At the very outset, life is
maintained by persistence in acts which conduce to it,
and desistence from acts which impede it; and whenever
sentiency makes its appearance as an accompaniment, its
forms must be such that in the one case the produced,
feeling is of a kind that will be sought—pleasure, and in
the other case is of a kind that will be shunned—pain.” *
And again, “ Those races of beings only can have survived
in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings
went along with activities conducive to the maintenance
of life, while disagreeable and habitually-avoided feelings
went along with activities directly or indirectly destruc
tive of life; and there must have been, other things being
equal, the most numerous and long-continued survivals
among races in which these adjustments of feelings to
actions were the best, tending ever to bring about perfect
adjustment.” f The answer, therefore, to the question,
“Why should we pursue happiness ? ” is, that we cannot
do otherwise and live. Pursuit of happiness, properly
understood, means conformity to those conditions that
render a continued and healthful life possible. The final
and ultimate reason for performing any action is that a
special desire exists urging me to do so, and the reason
for the existence of that desire must be sought for in
deeper ground than consciousness—which is relatively a
late product in biologic evolution. It is to be found in
those laws of life to which all living beings must conform,
and to which natural selection, by weeding out all of a
contrary disposition, secures an intrinsic or organic com
pliance. Morality is evidenced in action before it is
explained in thought ; its justification, the causes of its
* “ Data of Ethics.”, sec. 33.
+ “ Principles of Psychology,” Vol. i. sec. 128.
�28
growth, and the nature of its authority, are to be found
in the natural conditions of existence, and depends no
more upon the presence of a mysterious self-realising ego
than upon a conception of God furnished by current or
future theologies. It is a false and ruinous antithesis
that places virtue and happiness as two things distinct
from each other.
Virtue has no meaning other than
can be expressed in terms of pleasure ; as Spinoza said,
“ Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
The utilitarian formula that actions are right which
promote pleasure, and wrong which promote pain receives,
therefore, the fullest possible justification from an ex
amination of the laws of life. Highet authority than that
can no system have.
The various steps of the above argument may now be
recapitulated.
(1) Conduct is always immediately dependent upon
feeling.
(2) The immediate object will be to invite agreeable,
and obviate or modify disagreeable states of consciousness.
(3) Therefore, unless there is a general agreement
between conduct that preserves life and conduct that
produces agreeable feelings, the race must die out; while
life will increase in length and breadth as that general
agreement becomes explicit and complete.
(4) But in the course of evolution the inevitable result
is the weeding out of all such organisms as pursue life
destroying acts with pleasure, and there is thus produced
a gradual identification between the performance of life
preserving actions and the production of agreeable states
■of consciousness
It is in supplying us with these generalisations that the
•doctrine of evolution has placed morality upon a perfectly
secure and impregnable foundation, and ethics upon the
same level as other departments of scientific knowledge.
It makes morality incumbent upon the individual and
society alike by showing its identity with those processes
that make life worth living. That at present many find
pleasure in the performance of actions that lower the tide
of life, does not militate against the truth of the doctrine
.stated above. We are in a transitional state, partly
military and partly industrial, we have clinging to us
many traces of the savagery, from which we are just
�29
emerging, and there is necessarily a conflict between
many of our inherited instincts and present ideals. But
there can be little doubt that this conflict between what is
and what should be will decrease as the course of
evolution proceeds ; until becoming weaker by disuse,
the lower and undesirable instincts shall have finally
disappeared. Meanwhile a scientific ethic should do
precisely what a law of astronomy or of biology does—
describe what takes place and explain how it takes place.
Astronomical and biological laws give nothing new, they
merely formulate in comprehensible terms what takes
place in their separate departments. The function of a
science of ethics is, similarly, to describe accurately the
actions of men and why and how such actions take place ;
to trace the causes of morality, to formulate the con
ditions and nature of perfect conduct, and leave such
rules to be put into operation as rapidly as wisdom may
devise or circumstances permit.
IV.—The Nature and Authority of Conscience.
It may be asked, “ If the foregoing account of the
nature of morality is admitted to be correct, what becomes
of the authority of conscience ? Is it merely a name, or is
it, as the ordinary man believes, a divinely implanted
faculty enabling one to distinguish finally and decisively
between a right and a wrong action ? ‘ Ordinary experi
ence,’ it may further be said, ‘ shows that men do not
determine the rightness or wrongness of actions by any
mathematical calculation as to the pains or pleasures
resulting from them, but rather by a direct appeal to
conscience, and when conscience declares in favor of or
against a particular course of conduct there is no more to
be said upon the matter.
“ Upon this hypothesis man does right for pretty much
the same reason that a dog ‘ delights to bark and bite,’
because ‘ ’tis his nature to.’
Now, there is in the presentation of the case a certain
amount of truth, but it is entangled with a much larger
amount of error. For example, no one denies the exis
tence in man of a moral sense now ; all our language pre
supposes its existence. Neither is it denied that men are
swayed by the dictates of what is called ‘ Conscience.’
As Mill says:—‘The ultimate sanction of all morality is a
�30
subjective feeling in our minds.” A man will act as his
conscience directs, and provided that he has fulfilled
certain preliminary conditions, we hold that he is right in
doing so. The phrase—‘A conscientious man ’ has quite
as definite a meaning to the Utilitarian as to the Intuit
ionist. It is in the carrying out of these preliminary
conditions—i.e. instructing, checking, and improving our
conscience, comparing its deliverance with the deliverance
of that of others—upon which the dispute mainly turns.
The question really at issue is not the existence of a
moral sense, but whether this moral sense is always trust
worthy in its decisions ; whether it does not need to be
constantly checked and corrected ; and whether instead
of beiug a single indecomposable faculty it may not be
resolved into simpler parts, as a chemical compound is
shown to be made up of a number of simpler elements ?
This is substantially the whole of the matter in dispute
between the evolutionist and the intuitionist. The latter
regards the moral sense as innate and virtually indepen
dent of experience ; the former asserts that it has been
built up from much simpler feelings acquired during the
development of the race, and that examination proves
that, just as a single nerve centre is composed of clusters
of ganglia, which are again composed of fibres and cells,
so the apparently simple moral sense is really a highly
complex process, due to the gradual accumulation of the
experiences of simpler sensations acquired during ages of
past evolution. It would, indeed, be quite possible to
take successively all the vices and virtues upon which our
present moral sense passes a rapid and decisive verdict,
and show how gradually each feeling of approval and
disapproval has been built up. There is, for example,
no action upon which the moral sense of the cultured
European passes such a ready condemnation as the taking
of life. And yet it is quite certain that this special feeling
of aversion is a- comparitively late product in human
evolution. With many of the lower races the wrongness
of taking human life is confined almost entirely to the
family—and not always there; but within the tribe
personal vengeance is permitted, and even when that is
disallowed by public opinion the murder of the member
of another tribe only serves to exalt the murderer in the
eyes of his fellows. In the dark ages a man’s life was
�31
valued in an inverse ratio to his social importance, and
the church drew up a scale of punishments in accordance
with that estimate, murder of an ecclesiastic being
punished by torture and death, that of a serf by a fine of
a few pence. Even in modern civilised Europe, hundreds
or thousands of lives may be shed to satisfy political
passion or national vanity ; and only in the higher types
of the race is there a lively and constant repugnance to
the taking of life, whether if friend or foe. Indeed, the
fact that moral sense is acquired and not innate appears
on reflection, to be so plain as to cause some little surprise
that the opposite opinion should ever have been seriously
entertained for any length of time.
But apart from the historical aspect of the subject,
what we are more directly concerned with here is the
nature of those conditions which have resulted in the
growth of conscience. It would take too long to discuss
fully the nature of consciousness—even if it were not a
matter of psychology rather than of ethics—but we may
put the matter briefly in the following manner :—
Reflex action is of two kinds ; the first, irritability, is
due to the simple excitation of a piece of living matter,
and is shared by all living tissue wherever it may be
found. In virtue of this quality the organism responds
to certain stimuli and shrinks from others; and it is
plain that unless the stimuli to which the organism
responds are such as are beneficial the result will be death.
The second class of reflex actions is that in which actions
have become instinctive by frequent repetition. It is a
matter of common observation that any action frequently
performed tends to become organic, or instinctive : that
is, a purposive action is preceded by certain molecular
rearrangements in the fibres and cells, and centres of the
brain ; a repetition of the action means a repetition of the
disturbance; and by the frequent recurrence of such
rearrangements there is set up a line of least resistance
along which the nervous energy flows, with the final
result of a modification of nerve tissue, and the existence
of a structure which in response to a certain stimulus acts
automatically in a particular manner. “ The order of
events/’ says Maudesley, is presumably in this wise :
by virtue of its fundamental adaptive property as
organic matter, nerve-element responds to environing
�32
relations by definite action ; this action, when repeated
determines structure ; and thus by degrees new structure,
or—what it really is—a new organ is formed, which
embodies in its substance and displays in its function
the countless generalisations, so to speak, or ingredients
of experience, which it has gained from past and contri
butes to present stimulation,” * Now the mental side of
this physical acquirement expresses itself in the principle
known as the association of ideas. When in the course
of experience a certain set of ideas is constantly occurring
in the same order, the revival of any one of the term
will bring about a revival of the remainder of the series.
As illustrative of this we may note how when any par
ticular object is presented to the mind, as for example an
orange, the mind calls up the associated sensations of
taste and smell, neither of which is immediately presented
to it; and there may even be present the idea of certain
injurious or beneficial effects following the easing of the
fruit. Here it is evident the secondary sensations are
revived because they have always accompanied the primary
one, and it is clear that the mind has gone over a chain of
causes and effects, although we may not be conscious—
indeed we seldom are—of all the steps intervening
between the first and last term of the series. But to any
one who pays attention to the working of the mind it is
obvious that this power of rapid summing-up has been
acquired very gradually, and that what the mind now
does rapidly and decisively, it once did slowly and
hesitatingly; just as the firm steps of the man are pre
ceded by the faltering steps of the child, or the rapid
adding up of columns of figures by the trained accountant
becomes a long and wearisome process in the hands of
the amateur.
Now the verdict passed upon action by the moral sense
is merely another illustration of the same general principle.
Just as we have learned to associate a certain number of
qualities with an object the moment it is perceived, so we
have acquired by experience, individual or social,
the habit of associating a balance of pleasures or pains
with a particular action or course of conduct, even when
an entirely opposite conclusion is immediately presented
to the mind. Apart from certain actions which give rise
♦“Physiology
of
Mikd,” p. 397.
�33
to painful or pleasurable feelings as long as their effects
endure, experience has shown that certain actions while
directly painful are ultimately pleasurable, while others
immediately pleasurable are ultimately painful. This
experience has been repeated so frequently that the desire
attaching to the end has become transferred to the means :
as in the case of a man who begins by loving money because
of its purchasing power, and ends by loving it for itself,
the means to an end becomes thus all in all. Thus, the
means and the end become jammed together, so to speak,
in thought, and the mind having in view the after results
of an action, passes an instantaneous judgment upon it.
A trained biologist will draw from a very few facts a
conclusion which is by no means apparent to the untrained
mind ; long experience has familiarised him with the
process, and the conclusion suggests itself immediately to
the mind ; and one might as well postulate an innate
biological sense to account for the one process as postulate
an innate moral sense to account for the other.
The existence of a moral sense in man is simply an
illustration of the physiological law that functions slowly
acquired and painfully performed become registered in a
modified nerve structure, and are handed on from
generation to generation to be performed automatically or
to take their place as moral instincts.
Two things have prevented people seeing this clearly,
first, the problem has been treated as being purely psycho
logical, and, secondly, moral qualities have been viewed
as innate instead of acquired, and the question of develop
ment consequently ignored. Both of these causes have
helped to confuse rather than to clear. Underlying all
mental phenomena there is and must be a corresponding
physical structure; and it is only by carrying our
enquiries further and studying this physical structure
that we may hope to understand those mental qualities,
feelings, or emotions to which it gives rise, and, secondly,
it is not by contemplating the moral instincts of man as
they are to-day that we can hope to understand them.
This can be done only by reducing them to their simpler
elements and carefully studying the causes and conditions
of their origin and development. And when we analyse
the contents of our moral judgments, we find precisely
what the hypothesis of evolution would lead us to expect,
�34
namely, the majority of such actions as it sanctions are
found in the light of sober reason to be conducive to
individual and social welfare, while such as it condemns
are of a directly opposite character.
The decisions of the moral judgment are thus neither
more nor less than verdicts upon conduct expressed by
the summed-up experience of the race; and although such
judgments carry with them undoubted authority in virtue
of their origin, they, nevertheless need to be constantly
watched over and corrected when necessary. For, granting
that a certain presumption exists in favour of a verdict
passed by “ conscience,”—since it argues the possession of
a mental habit acquired by experience, and which would
never have been acquired had not such conduct as led to
its formation been once useful,—such verdicts cannot be
admitted to be final; for nothing is of commoner occur
rence than to find that habits and customs that are useful
at one stage of human development are dangerous at
others.
All that the existence of a moral instinct can prove
beyond doubt is that it was once useful, whether it is
useful now or not is a matter to be decided by ordinary
experience and common sense. A function owes its
value to its relation to a particular environment, and
therefore can only retain its worth so long as the condi
tions of life remain unchanged ; any alteration in the
condition of existence must involve a corresponding
change in the value of a function or in that cluster of
moral tendencies classed under the general name of
“ conscience.” While, therefore, conscience may urge us
to take action in a particular direction, it cannot give us
any guarantee that we are acting rightly. All that we can
be certain of is the existence of a feeling prompting a
particular action, and with that our certainty ends. To
discover whether the dictates of conscience are morally
justifiable we need to appeal to a higher court. The voice
of conscience is, as experience daily shows, neither uni
form nor infallible in its decrees ; its decisions vary not
only with time, place, and individual, but even with the
same individual at different times and under different con
ditions. In brief “acting up to one’s conscience,” to
use a common phrase, is indicative of honesty only,
not of correctness, it can mean merely that we
�35
are acting in accordance with certain feelings of
approbation or disapprobation that have been called
into existence during the evolution of the race and by
the early moral training of the individual. Nothing
is plainer than that the conscience needs correction
and admits of improvement; the fact of moral growth
implies as much, and this alone should be sufficient to
prove that conscience is an acquired and not an original
activity.
That conscience represents the stored up and consoli
dated experiences of preceding generations, subject of
course to the early training of the individual, there can
be little doubt. Given living tissue capable of responding
to certain stimuli and shrinking from others, and we
have the raw material of morality; for the only tissue
that can continue to exist will be such as responds to
stimuli favourable to its existence and shrinks from such
as are unfavourable. The reverse of this it is impossible
to conceive. Once the conditions under which life
persists becomes fairly understood, and the above con
clusion becomes almost a necessity of thought. There is
thus secured from the outset a general harmony between
actions instinctively performed and life-preserving ones;
and natural selection by preserving the lives of those
animals whose actions serve to establish the closest
harmony between themselves and their environment
serves to accentuate the formation of such habits as
render the performance of life-preserving actions certain
and instinctive. This feeling of moral approbation is, as
I have already said, not the only example of the principle
here emphasised, viz. : that separate and successive
acquisitions become so blended together as to form an
apparently single faculty. It is exemplified alike in the
skilled mathematician and the trained mechanic, and is,
indeed, co-extensive with the world of sentient life.
From monad to man progress has meant the acquisition
of such habits—physical, mental, and moral, Our moral
equally with our intellectual faculties have been built up
gradually during the course of human development. We
each start life with a certain mental and moral capital
that comes to us as a heritage from the past. Functions
that took generations to acquire are found as parts of our
structure, and their exercise has become an organic
�36
necessity.
Frequent repetition has converted certain
actions into habits ; physiologically these habits imply the
existence of a modified nerve structure demanding their
performance ; while mentally and morally such structures
and functions express themselves in the much debated
and misunderstood, moral sense.
V.—Society and the Individual.
In the foregoing pages morality has been dealt with
almost exclusively from the standpoint of the individual;
I have purposely omitted certain factors that aid moral
development in order that fundamental ethical principles
might not be obscured. I have shown the groundwork
of morality to lie in the very constitution of organic
matter; and that rules of ethics are merely generalized
statements of those courses of conduct which serve to
establish a harmony between organism and environment,
or, in other words, to maintain life.
Yet it must be evident to the student that one very im
portant factor—the social factor—must be considered if
our system is to btf complete. The influence of society in
developing morality must, it is plain, be considerable ;
for although the reason for right conduct, and the motives
that lead to it, must ultimately be found in the nature of
the individual, yet, if we seek for a full explanation of
the individual’s character, we must be referred back again
to the structure of that society of which he is a part. For
at bottom, the only reason why each individual should
possess a certain number of moral qualities of a particular
character, is that he belongs to a society that has developed
along special lines. The individual, as he is to-day, is a
product of the race, and would no more be what he is
apart from social organization, than society could be what
it is apart from the individuals that compose it. Each
quality or action is good or bad in virtue of its adaptation
or non-adaptation to an environment ; and to speak of
goodness or badness apart from such relations is to use
words that are void of all meaning. From whence do
such words as “honest,” “justice,” “duty,” Ac., derive
their significance if not from the relations existing between
the individual and his fellows ? Place a man upon a
desert island, and what becomes of ariy of these qualities ?
All moral conduct requires a medium ; in this case society
�37
is the medium in which morality lives and breathes ; and
it could no more continue without it than a bird could fly
without the atmosphere. The proof of this is seen in the
fact that any disturbance in the social structure involves a
corresponding change in the relationships of men and
women. All periods of change, religious or social, have
influenced for better or worse existing ethical institutions
and ideas, and few will doubt that should any great econ
omic change occur to-day there would ensue a speedy
re-arrangement of moral ideals.
*
It is therefore in the structure and development of the
social organism that we must seek for an explanation of
existing moral principles ; by this method only can we
understand how it is possible to obtain from a race of
beings, each of which is primarily moral by the instinct
of self-preservation, a social morality.
The general
manner in which this result has been attained has been
already indicated, but it remains to trace out the process
in greater detail.
In his profoundly suggestive book, “ Physics and
Politics,’’ Bagshot has pointed out that the great problem
early society had to face was, “ how to bend men to the
social yoke,” to domesticate him in short. Man untrained
and savage needed to have his energies checked, his im
pulses educated, and the whole of his nature practically
transformed before he could become either social or ethical.
A number of forces, natural, religious, social and political,
have contributed to bring about the desired result; and
although they overlap one another, still it is easy to deter
mine their position and approximate value.
Not to reckon with the possession of certain fundamental
life-preserving instincts, which are an inevitable product
■of the struggle for existence, and which must be the
common property of all sentient being, the struggle
against natural forces must early have driven men into
the adoption of additional life-preserving courses of con
duct. The conduct that furthered a fuller life may not
have been consciously adopted, but from the fact that all
who did not adopt it would disappear, its performance
would be rendered tolerably certain. Further, even were
not social organisation a heritage from man’s animal
* The fact of a movement of change proceeding from an ethical impulse
in no way affects this statement.
�38
ancestors, the struggle against nature would soon havedriven man into co-operation with his fellows. The
advantages of combination are too great not to give those
who are more amenable to the restraints of social life a
tremendous advantage over such as are not. The cohesion
and discipline of a tribe would be of far-greater importance
in the primitive than in the modern state. Natural selec
tion would, therefore, work along the lines of favouring
the preservation of the more social type of character. In
a tribe where some of its members showed but little in
clination to work with their fellows or submit to the
discipline laid down, such individuals would be weeded
out by a dual process. They would fall easy victims to
the tribal enemies, and the type would be discouraged by
public opinion. They would thus leave few or no des
cendants to perpetuate their qualities ; and by this dual
process of elimination the type would tend to die out,
and there would be gradually formed in its place one that
to some extent regarded individual and general welfare
as being inextricably blended. But this living together
necessarily implies the existence and cultivation of certain
sentiments and virtues that are not purely self-regarding.
If people are to live together and work together, there
must of necessity be some sense of duty, justice, confi
dence and kindness, let it be in ever so rudimentary a.
form; but these virtues must be present, or society disin
tegrates. Without confidence there could be no combina
tion, and without justice combination would be useless.
But the great thing in the first stage is to get the indi
vidual to obey the voice of the tribe and submit to its
judgments; and so long as a quality brings this end about
it is of service. It is in this direction that the fear of
natural forces, represented by early religions, and fear of
the chief as the representative of the gods on earth, have
played their part in domesticating man. The chief and
the priest both dictated and enforced certain lines of
conduct; where the conduct enjoined gave the tribe an
advantage over its competitors, it flourished ; where the
conduct enforced was of an opposite character, it was
either altered or the race went under in the struggle. So
that here again there would be brought about an identifi
cation of habitual and life-preserving conduct. The
discipline thus enforced was stern, the after results were
�39
disastrous, but it was useful then ; and, as Bagehot says,
“ Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early
food had not been the late poison.”
Mr. Francis Galton has shown that a want of self*
reliance has been of great benefit to many species of
animals, inasmuch as it led to their presenting a united front
to an enemy that could not have been successfully resisted
by any other means; and undoubtedly, as he proceeds to
argue, a too great tendency to break away from custom
and initiate movements on one’s own responsibility, would
at the outset destroy whatever social life existed. Of
course these coercive forces by means of which man is
first domesticated, are not altogether consciously directed
or invented ; it cannot be said that any man invented a
custom, although it may be said humanity invented them.
Custom among savage races will grow out of the most
trifling circumstances or coincidences. Many customs
rise up and die out, and eventually out of a multitude
that are tried only a few survive; pretty much as out of
a number of seeds that may be scattered only those strike
root that find themselves amid favourable conditions.
The first step, then, in the growth of the state and
morality, is for each individual to recognise that living
with others implies that all his impulses shall not be
gratified promiscuously ; that it is wrong to go against the
expressed opinion of the tribe, or, better still, that his
interests are in some mysterious manner vitally connected
with the interests of the whole. This is secured, primarily, by the operation of natural selection, later by
conscious innovation ; the sphere of self unconsciously
extends until it takes in the whole of which the individual
is but a part. But apart even from those influences which
serve to foster moral feelings, the existence of family life
gives us a very definite point from which to commence
our investigations. It has been made pretty clear by
numerous investigators that the genesis of the state is to be
found in the family. From that it passes by natural
growth through the patriarchal and tribal stages to the
nation ; and therefore one must seek in the structure of the
family for the beginnings of much that is afterwards
expressed in the tribe.
*" Human Faculty,” pp. 70-79.
�40
The young human being has a longer period of infancy
and helplessness than any other animal. For several years
its existence, and consequently the existence of the species,
is dependent upon the unselfish feelings of others.
*
The family is, therefore, a much more powerful influence
in the moulding of the human character, than it is with
other animals, and it is consequently in the family that we
must look for the first clear outline of the social virtues.
Most of the virtues that are not purely self-regarding will,
I imagine, be found to have had their origin in this source.
Here must first have found clear expression the virtues of
forbearance, kindness, and a certain rough sense of justice.
The sense of justice is however very slight, being little
more than the arbitrary dictates of the head of the family,
a condition of things that lingers even when the family
has blossomed into the tribe. Still the main point to be
noted is that it is in the family that the individual is first
brought into constant relationship with creatures similar
to himself ; these others constitute a part, a very important
part of his environment, and he is necessarily compelled to
adjust his actions accordingly. It has been shown above
that “ Goodness ” consists essentially in a relation—the
maintenance of a balance between an organism and its
environment. Whether that environment be organic or
inorganic the principle remains the same, although in the
former case the influence of the environment is clearer and
more direct. As, however, in the family the surroundings
of each unit is partly made up of similar units, and,
further, as the medium of each is tolerably uniform,
adjustment will involve here (1) development along pretty
similar lines, and (2) adjustment in such a manner, that
the welfare of all the units becomes in some measure bound
up with and identical with that of each. Each one is
affected in somewhat similar manner by the same
influence, and the presence of pain in any member of the
family gives rise to similar representative feelings in self.
In this circumstance we find the beginning of sympathy
which plays such a large part in evolved conduct, and
which consists essentially in the process sketched above.
The next expansion of self occurs when the family
* I adopt the conventional terms here, but the precise meaning to be
attached to the words “Selfish” and “ Unselfish,” will be considered
later.
�41
developes into the tribe or state. Here the relations of
man become more varied, the interests wider; and the
constant clashing of interests renders necessary the
framing of laws for the general guidance. What had
already taken place in the family now takes place in the
state, a re-adjustment must be effected in order to establish
a more satisfactory relation between the individual and
the new environment. In particular, the ideas of justice
and duty must undergo a great expansion and elevation.
But even here the demands of right conduct are strictly
limited to the tribe; duties and obligations have no
reference to outsiders. Very plainly is this shown in the
Bible, “ Thou shalt not steal ” did not mean the Israelites
were not to “ spoil the Egyptians,” nor “ Thou shalt not
bear false witness ” mean that they were to be truthful to
their enemies; nor did the command “ Thou shalt not
commit murder” prevent the Jews putting to death the
people whose lands they had invaded. Virtue here was
purely local. It was not until a much later stage of human
development, when the tribe had grown into the state,
and the expansion of the state had given rise to a com
munity of nations with a oneness of interest running
through all, that the idea of virtue as binding alike upon
all was finally reached ; although we have still lingering
much of the tribal element in that narrow patriotism
which finds expression in the maxim, “ My country, right
or wrong.”
In the history of Rome we can trace these various stages
with tolerable clearness. One can watch Rome developing
from the patriarchal stage to the tribal, thence to the
nation, and finally to the world-wide Empire with its far
reaching consequences. At each of these stages we can
discern a corresponding development in moral ideals.
Confined at first to the tribe, morality grew until it
absorbed the nation ; and finally its universal dominion
involved as a necessity rules of ethics that should press
with equal force upon all, and which expressed itself
generally in the doctrine of human brotherhood. As
Lecky says, “ The doctrine of the universal brotherhood
of mankind was the manifest expression of those social
and political changes which reduced the whole civilised
globe to one great empire, threw open to the most distant
tribes the right of Roman citizenship, and subverted all
�42
those class distinctions around which moral theories had
been formed.” *
It is by such natural and gradual steps as those outlined
above that morality has developed. Its rise is upon
precisely the same level as that of the arts and sciences.
Given living tissue and the struggle for existence, and a
moral code of some sort is the inevitable result. Just as
inventions grew out of individual needs, so morality grew
out of social necessities. One feature in the process of
development is clear, and that is that the expansion of
moral theories, and their purification, has at each step
been dependent upon an expansion of the organic
environment. As this grew wider and more intricate
there was necessitated a re-adjustment of moral ideas.
Feelings that at first applied only to the family were
afterwards extended to the tribe, then to the nation, and
lastly, as a recognition of a oneness of interest indepen
dent of nationality began to dawn upon the human
reason, to the whole of humanity.
I have endeavoured to make this process of develop
ment as plain as possible by keeping clear of many con
siderations which, while bearing upon the subject, were not
altogether essential to its proper consideration. Yet, it is
obvious, that if the above outline be admitted as sub
stantially correct, the relation of the individual and society
is put in a new light; it is no longer the attributes of a
number of independent objects that we have to deal with,
but the qualities of an organism; and hence will result
very important modifications in the use of terms and in
the structure of our moral ideals.
In the first place the arbitrary division hitherto drawn
between self-regarding and social acts can no longer be
maintained, or at least not without serious modification.
The distinction usually drawn between self-regarding and
social conduct, although valuable enough for working
purposes, cannot be an ultimate distinction. It can mean
no more at bottom than the division of mind into emotion,
volition, and thought. Man’s moral, mental, and physical
nature forms a unity, and all divisions that may be made
are divisions erected to suit our conveniences and not such
as exist in nature. As the individual is an integral portion
Hist. European Morals. Ed. 1892. I. 340.
�43
of society, is indeed a product of social activity, his actions
have necessarily a double aspect, his fitness as an individual
determines his value in the social structure, and con
versely the perfection of the structure has a vital bearing
upon his own value ; and therefore although we may fix
our minds upon one portion of his conduct to the exclusion
of the other, such a state of things no more exists in
reality than the Euclidean line without breadth, or a point
without magnitude.
But it does not follow that because the distinction
usually drawn between the two classes of actions is
inaccurate that there is, therefore, no such thing as
gratifying individual preference at the cost of injury to
others. That is by no means the case. The important
thing is having a correct understanding of the sense- in
which the terms are used.
It has, I think, been made clear that however it may be
disguised the main end of the action is always the pursuit
of pleasure or the avoidance of pain; and therefore,
unless we choose to confuse ourselves with what Bentham
called “ question begging epithets,” it is plain that a man
can only desire the well-being of others in so far as their
happiness becomes in some manner bound up with his
own.
This result is brought about by two methods :
directly, by the growth of the sympathetic feelings which
makes the sight of suffering painful, and indirectly
through the desire of the good opinion and friendship of
those with whom we are living. Sympathy, although not
so important as many have imagined it to be, is yet an
extremely potent factor in moral evolution. Indeed, sym
pathy, which may be defined as the process of presenting
to the mind the pleasures and pains endured by others,
and making them our own, so to speak, is involved in the
very nature of knowledge and in the structure of society.
Social life is impossible, bearing in mind our fundamental
maxim, unless animals find some amount of pleasure in
the mere fact of being together. Were it otherwise there
would be disunion. This simpler form of sympathy
quickly gives rise to other forms of a much more complex
character. Beside the general circumstance that creatures
living amid the same general set of conditions come to
have nearly identical feelings aroused by similar stimuli,
it is obvious that a large part of the value of gregarious
�44
ness will depend upon the ability of certain individuals
to arouse by their actions feelings of a desired kind in
others. A member of a herd of animals scenting a special
danger, excites by its actions sympathetic feelings on the
part of the other members, thus enabling them to prepare
for defence in a similar manner. Otherwise the warning
that is given on the approach of danger would be of little
or no value. Thus, the development of a society involves
a capacity of entering into the pleasures and pains of
others ; and this power is further heightened by those
social sanctions which prescribe and enforce certain lines
of conduct—sanctions which are much more powerful in
primitive societies than in modern ones, owing to the
smaller individuality of its members.
The distinction, therefore, between a selfish and an
unselfish act is not that in the latter case egoistic feelings
have no place; this would be impossible ; it is simply
that in the evolution of society a transfusion of the
egoistic feelings occurs owing to which their distinctive
features are lost, pretty much as the special properties of
a number of elements are lost when merged into a
chemical compound. In the conflict of mutual self
regarding interests a number of re-adjustments and
compromises occur, until the result assumes a different
character from that presented by the individual elements.
The discussion about egoism and altruism has, as a result
of ignoring these considerations, been largely a barren one.
It is impossible to live for others unless one lives for self,
it is equally impossible to live wisely for self and ignore
duties to others. Therefore, as Maudesley says, “It is
not by eradication but by a wise direction of egoistic
passions, not by annihilation but by utilisation of them, that
progress in social culture takes place ; and one can only
wonder at the absurdly unpractical way in which
theologians have declaimed against them, contemning and
condemning them, as though it were a man’s first duty to
root them clean out of his nature, and as though it were
their earnest aim to have a chastity of impotence, a
morality of emasculation.” *
A second and no less important consideration is one that
has been already pointed out generally, namely, that a
* “Body and Will” p. 167.
�45
science of ethics can only reach safe generalisations by
taking into consideration the social structure of which the
individual is a part. To separate man from society and then
hope to understand his moral nature, is like attempting
to determine the function of a leg or an arm without
reference to the body. Such qualities as duty and justice
are, as I have said, purely social, and therefore the reason
for their existence cannot be found in the nature of the
individual considered apart from his fellows, any more
than the movements of the earth could be understood
apart from the influence of the rest of our planetary sys
tem. Indeed, a great many of the objections commonly
urged against a scientfic system of ethics will be found to
be based upon this short-sighted view of the matter ; and
thus as Mr. Stephens has pointed out, must lead to error
and confusion.
That man is a social animal is a statement frequently
made and easily illustrated, although few of those who use
the phrase have apparently considered all that is involved
in the dictum. Yet in that sentence lies the key to the
whole problem. As G. A. Lewes says, “ The distinguishing
feature of human psychology is that to the three great
factors, organism, external medium and heredity, it adds a
fourth, namely, relation to a social medium, with its product
the general mind.”* It is this “ fourth factor ” which gives
rise to a purely human morality and psychology, and so
speak, lifts the individual out of himself and merges him
in a larger whole.f From the first moment of his birth
man is dependent upon the activities of others for ninetenths of those things that render life endurable, and the
feelings engendered in the course of evolution bear an
obvious relation to this dependence. The love of offspring,
regard for the feelings of others, readiness to act in
unison with others, all form part of those conditions that
make the perpetuation of the specieS possible ; and conse
quently without such instincts and sentiments the
individual as he now exists would be an impossibility.
And in such cases where these sentiments were absent—the
+ To live for self is as scientifically and ethically absurd as to live for
others. The true ethic consists in giving to self-regarding and other re
garding claims their due weight, while at the same time demonstrating
their interdependence.
* “ Study
of
Psychology.”
�46
love of offspring for example—these individuals would
leave few behind to perpetuate their qualities, and the type
would thus tend to disappear. On the other hand, the
kindly disposed person, the sympathetic, or such as come
up to the tribal ideal of excellence, would be held up for
imitation and respect; and thus by a dual process of
weeding out anti-social specimens, and by cultivating
social ones, the development of a higher type would
proceed. Indeed, we can scarcely conceive the cause of
evolution to have been otherwise. Natural selection
works by favouring the possessors of such qualities as
establish a more perfect balance between organism and
environment, and in developing customs and instincts
the course of social evolution has been to bring out and
cultivate such as were favourable to the welfare of social
structure and repress those of a contrary character. Each
of the social virtues may have its rise traced in this
manner, by showing how it has contributed to individual
and social development.
*
The tendency of natural
selection in preserving those communities in which the
members are most at one in feeling and action is to bring
about not merely an ideal, but an actual identification of
individual and social welfare, and this in such a manner
that each one finds the fullest expression of his own wel
fare in the combined happiness of all around him.
This truth, that man might properly be regarded as a
cell in the “ social tissue,” was recognised in a vague and
rather fanciful manner long ago ; t but it is owing to the
unparalleled scientific activity of the last half century that
this conception of man has been placed upon a solid
foundation, and a scientific view of human life and conduct
made possible. We now see that the phrase “social
organism ” or “ social tissue” is something more than a
mere figure of speech, that it expresses a fundamental fact
and one that must be constantly borne in mind in the
consideration of social problems. What, indeed, is society
or the social medium but a part of the individual ? One’s
whole being, intellectual and moral, is composed of
* A very interesting inquiry might here be opened concerning the
influence upon the general character of leading or much admired
individuals.
+ Plato, Republic, book v. 462.
�47
innumerable relations between it and others. My nature
has been and is being so continually moulded by this social
medium that my pleasures and pains have become indis
solubly connected with the pleasures and pains of others
to such an extent that I could no more be happy in
a society where misery was general than 1 could travel in
comfort or indulge in the pleasures of art, science, or
literature, apart from the activities of those around me.
The mere fact of being brought up in a society so
identifies all our ideas and customs with that society as to
defy their separation from it. This is well illustrated in
the case of young men and women who are brought up
within the pale of a particular church. They become part
of its organisation, they identify themselves with it, and its
losses and gains become their own. If all this is witnessed
in a single generation, how much more powerful must the
co-operate feeling become when society has been constantly
developing along the same lines for countless generations
with its sanctions enforced by organic necessity ? The
process must obviously result in the direction above
indicated, that of bringing about a union of individual
desires and actions with social well-being; while the
growing intelligence of man, by perceiving the reason and
value of this mutual dependence of the unit and society,
must be constantly taking steps to strengthen the union
and increase its efficiency.
Here, then, w have reached a conclusion, or at least to
e
*
go further would involve a lengthy discussion of matters
into which we have no desire to enter. But if the fore
going reasoning be sound, we have reached a point from
which the reader will be enabled to lay down a clear and
satisfactory theory of morals such as will place the
subject upon the same level as any of the arts and
sciences.
The principles involved in the preceding pages may be
briefly summarised as follows :—
(1) Maintenance of life depends upon the establish
ment and continuance of a definite set of actions between
the organism and its environment.
(2) In the ceaseless struggle for existence this is
secured by the preservation of all those animals whose
�48
habits and capabilities best equips them to meet the
demands of their environment, natural selection thus
the
*
accentuating
value of all variations in this direction.
(3) As all conduct has as its immediate object the pur
suit of pleasurable, and the avoidance of painful feelings,
and as life is only possible on the condition that pleasur
able and beneficial actions shall roughly correspond,
there is set up a general and growing agreement between
pleasure-producing and life-preserving conduct.
(4) As experience widens and intelligence develops,
those actions that make for a higher life become more
certain and easy of attainment; while the pleasures
formerly attached to the end of action become transferred
to the means, these becoming an end in themselves.
(5) The conditions of life bearing upon all with a
certain amount of uniformity, and therefore demanding
a like uniformity of action, leads to a gradual modification
of nerve structure and the creation of corresponding
general sentiments, which, handed on and increased from
generation to generation, express themselves in our exist
ing moral sense.
(6) The moral sense, therefore, while possessing a
certain authority in virtue of its origin, needs to be con, tinually tested and corrected in accordance with the
requirements of the age.
(7) All progress involves the specialisation and integra
tion of the various parts of the organism, individual and
social. By the operation of this principle there is
brought about an identification of individual and general
interests ; inasmuch as each one finds his own happiness
constantly dependent upon the happiness of others, and
that a full expression of his own nature is only to be
realised in social activity.
Frcm all of which we, may conclude that:—
“ The rule of life drawn from the practice and opinions
of mankind corrects and improves itself continually, till
at last it determines entirely for virtue and excludes all
kinds and degrees of vice.
*
For, if it be correct to say
Hartley, “Observations on Man,” II. p. 214.
�49
that the moral formula is the expression of right relations
between man and the world, then it follows that the pres
sure urging man to the performance of right actions—i.e.,
actions serving to broaden and perpetuate life—must on
the whole be more permanent than those impelling him
to the performance of wrong ones. This, it will be
observed, is merely making the broad and indisputable
statement that evolution tends to maintain life.
The course of evolution is therefore upon the side of
morality. By the operation of the struggle for existence
we can see how “ the wicked are cut off from the earth ; ”
and the more righteous live on and perpetuate the species.
Right conduct is one of the conditions of existence, and
is as much the outcome of natural and discoverable laws
as any of the sciences to which we owe so much. What
has prevented it assuming a like positive character has
been the extreme complexity of the factors joined to the
want of a proper method. Here, again, we are deeply
indebted to the doctrine of evolution for having thrown
a flood of light upon the subject, and making tolerably
clear what was before exceedingly obscure. Under its
guidance we see the beginnings of morality low down in
the animal world in the mere instinct of self-preservation,
and its highest expression in the sympathetic and kindred
feelings of men living in society. And between these
two extremes there are no gaps ; it is an unbroken
sequence right through. As I have said, the process has
practically assumed the shape of an expansion of self,
from the individual to the family, from the family to the
state, and from the state to the whole of humanity.
Morality thus rises at length above the caprice of the
individual or the laws of nations, and stands a law
giver in its own right and in virtue of its own inherent
majesty. That which was a matter of blind instinct
at the outset, and later of arbitrary authority, becomes
in the end a matter of conscious perception pressing upon
all alike with the authority of natural law.
The outlook, then, to the rationalist is a perfectly
hopeful one. From the vantage ground afforded him by
modern science he can see that a constant purification of
conduct is part of the natural order of things, and
although in a universe of change one can hardly picture
�50
a time when there will cease to be a conflict between
good and bad motives, yet the whole course of evolution
warrants us in looking forward with confidence to a time
when the development of the permanently moral qualities,
or of such powers as serve to keep men moral, will be
sufficient to hold the immoral and anti-social tendencies
in stern and complete subjection ; for however much the
forms of morality may change with time and place, that
in virtue of which right conduct gains its name, must
ever remain the same.
�
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An outline of evolutionary ethics
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Cohen, Chapman [1868-1954]
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Ethics
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g, 23^
tUilX
Pamphlets for the People
No. 18
Christianity
and Ethics
I
BY
CHAPMAN COHEN
2d.
THE PIONEER PRESS
�Christianity and Social Ethics
The whirligig of time brings many changes. Time was
when Christianity imposed rules upon mankind, and in the
plentitude of its power decided what should or should not
be permitted to exist. Today thinkers are no longer under
the necessity of proving that their teachings are in harmony
with religion; it is Christianity that feels called upon to
show that its teachings are in agreement with established
truth. The support of a scientific name is angled for,
fought for, and when obtained advertised with the
persistence of a quack medicine vendor advertising his
cures. Contemporary Christianity not only craves the
assistance of forms of thought which it denounced as born
of the devil and tried its hardest to suppress, but every
passing mental fashion, every social movement or political
agitation—provided it commands a fair measure of public
support-—finds Christian organisations ready with ex
pressions of friendship and promises of support.
It is, therefore, only to be expected that as there is
to-day less faith and interest in religious questions, and
more concern for social and humanitarian ones, the attitude
of church and chapel should undergo a corresponding
change. Purely religious doctrines are kept discreetly in the
background, those bearing a social aspect are brought to the
front, and the public is informed, sometimes by inuendo,
sometimes by direct statement, that the social betterment
of the people is the prime, if not the only concern of
genuine Christianity. Instead of being openly taught,
purely religious beliefs are implied or suggested. Vague
texts that may be anything, everything, or nothing are cited.
Professions of good will, such as no system, secular or
religious, is without, are produced as authoritative endorse-
�3
ments of the most definite of modern social theories. Above
all, the name of Jesus is kept constantly to the fore. On
the strength of a handful of moral commonplaces—all
perfectly familiar to the people of his day—he is accounted
the greatest of social reformers. That he seized upon a
little child as an illustration of the type of mind necessary
to gain eternal felicity in the next world, is proof positive
of his profound care for children in this. His preaching
to the poor—although there is no evidence that the poor
were specially selected—is proof of his deep concern for
their social welfare. His obvious belief in the approach
ing end of the world—a belief shared by his immediate
followers—is made to mean the redress of social and
political injustice only. His dependence upon super
natural methods of help, supernatural methods of curing
disease, and the fact that once eliminate the supernatural
there is no reason whatever for his existence, all these con
siderations are slurred over or their relevancy flatly denied.
And so by eliminating objectionable aspects and over
emphasising favourable ones, by ignoring all the circum
stances of time, place, and culture, a poor Jewish peasant
is transformed into the ideal leader of modern social
reform. No other person is treated in such a manner, and
if any were, there is hardly one who could not be elevated
to the same pinacle of excellence.
In spite, however, of such apologetic tactics, the con
viction that ourely Christian morality is at best inadequate,
and at worst dangerous, steadily gains strength. And this
conviction is really more inimical to Christianity than
would be an equally widespread conviction of its falsity.
For the average person will more easily tolerate a false
teaching than a palpably dangerous one. Thousands of
people give Christianity their support because they believe
it to be socially useful, not because they have, a conviction
that its teachings embody any vital truth. Meanwhile it is
the developing moral consciousness of the public that is
testing Christianity most severely. That we no longer hear
�4
from the pulpits so much of the cruder and more brutal
Christian teachings is due in part to the sustained criticism
of recent years; but something is also due to the fact that
people are outgrowing such teachings, and that were they
now generally preached, congregations would be filled with
contemptuous pity* or sheer disgust. To evade the intellec
tual attack apologists have talked largely of Christianity’s
ethical value, and of the "moral homage to Christ." And
now that the public at large is beginning to have doubts
upon this point, the end would seem to be approaching
with rapid steps.
What are the objections that may be properly raised
against Christianity from the standpoint of a sane social
morality?
They may be stated as follows:—
Christianity is " a negative or ascetic ideal, and can
not therefore be the true ideal of such a being as man
in such a world as this. It not merely invalidates the
instincts and interests of the healthy-minded man, it
further degrades and enslaves the human spirit itself,
and paralyses, instead of stimulating its highest powers.
Its morality is not merely lacking in virility and
strength; it destroys the virile qualities in human
nature, and substitutes servility and cowardice for the
masterfulness and courage which are inseparable from
strength of purpose and self-respect and its anti-social
tendencies which make it impossible to construct any
social order in accordance with its principles.’’
Asceticism is not a transient phenomenon in Christian
history; it is more or less constant, and such a general
phenomenon must be attributed to more than a mere
accident.
Asceticism is so deeply embedded in Christianity that all
the efforts of the churches have never yet been able to
suppress it. Its ideal figure, Jesus, was a celibate. His
�s
great disciple, Paul, declared that it was better to remain
unmarried than to marry, and only sanctioned marriage for
the lowest of reasons. In heaven there was to be neither
marriage nor giving in marriage (Matt, xxii., 30), a teach
ing emphasized by the writer of Revelations, who saw
144,000 around the Throne, all virgins (Rev. xiv.? 3);
while the saying of Jesus (Matt, xix., 12) bore its fruit in
the practice of self-mutilation among some of the Christians
of the early centuries. Asceticism was deliberately taught
by the early Christian fathers as the most desirable state.
Denunciation of " worldly pleasures,” and the duty of
mortifying the flesh, has been one of the stock features
of the Christian teaching from the earliest ages to the
present, with Catholic and Protestant alike . . . and we do
not yet know how to take life in a frankly, healthy spirit,
with the result that we are always oscillating between
unhealthy outbursts of over indulgence in purely sensual
pleasures, and equally unhealthy displays of a prurient
puritanism.
Now it is certainly far easier to trace the influence of
Jesus and of historic Christianity in this direction than in
that of sweetening and purifying life. That those who
took the ascetic view were mistaken is at best an assump
tion : that they were sincere does not admit of question.
It may also be noted that there is a strange dearth of teach
ing in the New Testament concerning the family. True it
is not condemned, but it is in part deprecated, and in part
ignored. One might go carefully through the New Testa
ment without finding enough counsel therein on which to
bring up a family. Among the Christain writers of the
first few centuries the teaching that family life was more
or less of a drag on spiritual development held a high
place.. A few—and a very few—do pay a little attention
to this topic, but with all there is an absence of any
adequate conception of the influence of family life in
refining and elevating human nature. It will be noted how
seldom children are mentioned in the Christian writings of
�6
the first three centuries, and the less pleasing features of
the succeeding centuries can be attributed to this omission.
The Christian appeal was to the individual as such, and not
always to the individual at his best. The clarifying con
ception of the individual as an expression of family and
social life is quite absent.
And when we add to these grave faults of omission
and commission the inculcation of indiscriminate almsgiv
ing, the contempt of riches, and the blessings of poverty, the
teaching of non-resistance, the behest to trust in God who
will care for man as he cares for the birds of the air and
the lilies of the field, with the exhortation to the disciples
to trust for support to the charity of those amid whom they
preach, the absurdity of parading genuine Christian morality
as an adequate social ethic becomes apparent. We are
not dealing with a gospel of social regeneration, but with
a teaching of asceticism perfectly familiar to students of
Eastern religions.
Far from Christianity presenting us with an adequate
social ethic, it is positively deficient in both a rational com
ception of the nature of morality and of the conditions of
its development. The mere enunciation of superficially
attractive moral precepts does not—to modern minds, at
least—constitute a man a great moral teacher, and it is cer
tain the world is not perishing for want of moral counsel
of this description. Moral maxims and precepts have always
been sufficiently plentiful, generally ignored, and largely
useless. Those who by nature could appreciate them stood
in small need of their guidance: those who did need their
guidance were unable to appreciate them. Moreover,
general precepts of the nature of those attributed to Jesus,
and which Christian teachers have been always pleased to
preach-—and ignore—are necessarily vague in character, and
correspondingly useless in practice. To be of use we require
with such precepts some rule of interpretation that would
allow of their application to the changing circumstances of
a developing society. To love one’s neighbour as one’s self
A
�7
may be a good enough rule, but its value will depend upon
the circumstances determining its application. Christians
who made the dungeon and the stake the reward of heresy
were often enough convinced that they were acting in the
best interests of their neighbours in seeking to enforce
uniformity of belief upon all. So, too, with such a teaching
as " The labourer is worthy of his hire.” One cannot well
conceive anyone disagreeing with this : and the agreement
robs it of all practical value. What is needed is not the
vague counsel that he who labours should receive adequate
payment, but some equitable rule of determining what the
social value of labour really is. The truth is that such
precepts were never intended to apply to such social
problems as confront modern society, and therefore they
break down with any attempt! to apply them.
o
" On the greater number of moral questions on which
men require moral guidance Jesus has left no direction
whatever.”
The teaching of Jesus ignores the problems of industry,
of civilisation, and of culture, and in so doing does
positively nothing to develope the essential and all im
portant element in life. The great fault of all Christian
teaching and of Christian teachers has been the assumption
that morality can develope without appropriate material and
social conditions. Morality has been treated as though it
existed in vacuo. It was in life, but it had no organic
connection therewith, while social and material conditions
have been looked on more as hindrances to a perfect
morality than as the indispensable medium of its existence.
People have been surfeited with moral teaching, while the
conditions that would have made it of any value have been
persistently ignored. Yet morality neither develops out
of teaching nor does it altogether depend upon teaching
for its development. The primary obligation to morality
is not from precept, but from life. Precept only sum
marises a portion of what life has made manifest. The
�8
purest flower of human conduct has its roots in the
material conditions of life, and purely animal instincts
of the human organism. Divorced from such conditions
morality not only loses all meaning, it ceases to exist-—it
is as valueless as a plant from which one has cut the roots.
In their action Christian teachers have doubtless followed
the lead of the New Testament Jesus, and their failure is
the result. Pagan philosophy gives us a much higher
presentment of ethical truths, a much more satisfactory
analysis of moral states. It is from the Pagan writings
that we get a glimpse of the truth that it is a sanely
ordered and developed intelligence that provides the
surest guarantee of a satisfactory moral life. Purely Chris
tian teaching knows it not; and the result is seen not only
in the constant opposition of organised Christianity to
scientific thought, but also in the continuous depreciation
of character under its influence. Ignoring both the material
and social conditions that make for a higher ethical life, it
has prevented the little good that might have accrued from
the doleful repetition of official moral platitudes.
The absurdity of parading the gospel Jesus, as a social
reformer, is still more apparent when we note that the New
Testament is silent on precisely those questions that con
cern the scientific sociologist. To commence with, the con
ception of the State as a definite organic structure is quite
outside its purview. In the New Testament the only
counsel concerning the State is of a kind to which modern
thinking will attach little value. We are to render
obedience to the " powers that be,” for they are " ordained
of God,” and to resist them merits damnation. Historically,
Christianity has carried out this teaching with a consider
able degree of faithfulness. Every form of political and
social tyranny has in turn received the unquestioning
support of organised Christianity. Occasionally when the
secular power has threatened the interests of the; Church—
often in the interests of the people—there have been signs
of insubordination-—but in the main its subservience has
�9
been complete. So far as the early Christians are concerned
political liberty and social reform were the things that
concerned them least. It will be noted that as the Roman
Empire became more Christian, so it became more sub
missive to the oriental form of government. The people '
lost their love of liberty, their taste for political indepen
dence. In the Christian spirit there was no turn for
liberty, no rebellion, no assertion of right. The process
was practically completed by Constantine, who found
Christianity his most useful ally. And for obvious reasons.
" It strengthened in them (i.e., the people) the feeling of
submissive reverence for government as such; it encouraged
the disposition of the time to political passiveness. It was
intensely conservative, and gave to power with one hand as
much as it took away with the other. Constantine extended
his patronage to the church and by so doing, he may be
said to have purchased an indefeasible title by a charter.
He gained a sanction for the Oriental theory of government.
In all disputes between authority and liberty the traditions
of Christianity are on the side of authority . . . The whole
modern struggle for liberty has been conducted without
help from the authoritative documents of Christianity. In
the French Revolution men turned from the New Testament
to Plutarch. . . . Plutarch furnished them with the teaching
they required for their special purpose, but the New Testa
ment met all their new-born political ardour with a silence
broken only here and there bv exhortations to submission.
Jt R. Seel&y.
. Nothing was further from the minds of primitive Chris
tians than social reform; nothing more foreign to the whole
of the New Testament than a political philosophy. That the
State—in the sense of the entire social structure—could be,
and in fact is, the great determinant in the life of man, is
a view of things never once reached by the New Testament
writers. The individual is addressed as an individual, not
as a member of an organic whole. Yet in any really scien
tific view of the case general individual improvement is to
be realised through social life, or not at all. For an ulti
mate analysis will show that man as an individual is an ex
pression of social forces—forces that precede and survive
his personal existence. Language, habit, frames of mind
�10
and forms of belief are all a product of the social medium,
and are only properly explainable by reference to social
conditions. To consider man apart from this social medium
is, to use an old metaphor, like considering the structure
’of a bird while ignoring the existence of an atmosphere.
Divorce the individual from society, and from both the
standpoints of psychology and natural history, he is an
insoluble enigma.
Such a conception is, however^ quite foreign to the New
Testament, as is also that of a sense of obligation to the
public at large. In this respect Christian ethics is much
inferior to Pagan teaching. The question of the con
stitution of the ideal State, studies of existing social struc
tures, with teachings concerning the duties of the individual
to society, were common enough among Pagan writers.
The narrowing influence of Christian teaching at its
best may be seen by a single illustration. In the Republic
(Bk.v., c. 10) Plato had likened the State to the human or
ganism, the parts of which suffer with any injury to the
whole, the whole losing or gaining with injury or benefit to
any of its parts. There is an obvious echo of this in one
portion of St. Paul’s teaching. The same illustration is
used, but with an important difference. The Pagan applies
it to the State as a whole; the Christian teacher carries it no
further than a petty organism within the State. In the
hands of Plato the principle was essentially inclusive and
social. In the hands of Paul it is essentially exclusive and
sectarian. The one is based upon a perception of the fact
that the interdependence of human beings is a natural, an
organic fact, transcending and embracing all smaller
differences. The other is no more than an appreciation of
the necessity of common action and mutual support among
a select community united by the bonds of a common belief.
Under such conditions the conception could only serve as
a social bond in the improbable event of the whole of the
members of a society being in voluntary agreement on
questions that must always be of a speculative character.
�11
And, as a mere matter of historical fact, Christianity has
always served more as a cause of social division than of
social union.
Christian teaching, on this head, is on a much lower
plane than that current among the Pagans. Instead of
teachings concerning the nature and function of the State,
we have either an ignoring of the subject, or the doctrine
that the State is to be accepted as a fact wherever it exists,
and whatever its form, and that its commands are to be
obeyed whenever they do not directly traverse Christian
teachings and practices. The legitimate fruit of the Chris
tian conception of social duty was seen in the advice of
Luther given to the princes, that they might shoot, stab,
poison, or put out of the way like mad dogs, those peasants
who had risen against the hereditary feudalism of their
time.
The case against Christian social morality is still further
enforced when we note the New Testament teaching con
cerning the position of woman and the question of slavery.
In both cases Christian teaching fails to reach the highest
level of Pagan thought. Women are commanded to keep
silence in the churches; they are not to be permitted to
teach; the man is to be looked upon as the head of the
woman, as Christ is the head of the Church; and wives are
ordered to obey their husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham—a form of obedience that would get a husband lynched now
adays, were it insisted on. In the early Christian literature
women are denounced as incurably vile; opprobious epithets
are showered upon her; she is everwhere treated as an in
ferior creature. Certainly no literature the world has yet
seen has taken a lower view of women than that assumed in
the Christian writings of the first few centuries, nor have
centuries of subsequent development quite destroyed, in the
average Christian mind, the poor conception of woman
engendered in the early centuries of this era.
So, again, with slavery. The only form in which Chris
�12
tianity encountered a labour problem in early times was in
the form of the question of slavery. And with what result?
In all the recorded utterances of the Gospel Jesus, there is
not a single condemnation of slavery as an institution. In
the Pagan world the question of the legitimacy of slavery
was already beginning to excite interest; slaves themselves
were exhibiting symptoms of unrest; but the Gospel Jesus
appears oblivious to their existence. Further, we find St.
Paul sending back a runaway slave to his master, and com
manding slaves (wrongly translated " servants ” in the
English New Testament) to be obedient to their masters, in
fear and trembling, whether they be good or bad, and to
count them as being "worthy of all honour,’’ whether the
masters be believers or unbelievers; while to bear unmerited
punishment in silence and patience is to be counted to their
honour hereafter. The influence of this Christian teaching
and spirit was seen in the absolute cessation of the Pagan
legislation for the betterment of the lot of the slave,
followed by a re-introduction, under Christian emperors,
of some of the harsher features that had been removed.
The modern black-slave trade, it must also be noted, was
pre-eminently a Christian traffic—instituted by Christians,
and at a time when the supremacy of Christianity was
practically unquestioned. And it remained, backed up by
Christians, who quoted thq New Testament and " the pure
Christianity of Apostolic times ” as their authorities, until
the writings of Thomas Paine, with the perception that
free labour was economically more advantageous than
forced labour, led to its abolition. And the glaring fact
remains that no Christian country has ever abolished slavery
while its continuance was economically profitable. Thus
an examination of the one point on which both the teaching
and influence of Christianity on the position of the poor
could be decisively tested, results in an emphatic con
demnation.
A defence of Christian morality is often attempted, not
from the standpoint of direct teaching, but from that of its
�13
sympathy with weakness and suffering, and the spirit of
compassion it has evoked. Now no one, so far as I am
aware, has any complaint to make against sympathy with
suffering, or with the desire to help such as fall by the way
in the struggle of life. Still it could, I think, be shown that
even in this direction Christianity, bv placing sympathy on a
sectarian rather than a humanitarian basis, has given its
development anything but a healthy turn. But the point
of any criticism against Christianity is that, by its lack of
desirable social teaching and intellectual discipline, it has
tended to make sympathy with suffering maudlin and in
jurious instead of sane and helpful. Had Christianity merely
taught kindness towards the unfortunate, criticism would
have been impossible. But it has done more. It has
glorified weakness and suffering, and held them up as
necessary elements in an ideal character. It has taught
people to be patient under wrong and oppression, where
a preaching of discontent would have been far more help
ful. It has preached patience—not the patience that results
from the stern resolve to bear the inevitable with courage,
but the patience that recognises in misery the work of an
all-powerful providence whose decrees it is blasphemy to
question. Patience of the former kind may have its uses;
patience of the latter and Christian kind only makes the
continued existence of wrong the more certain.
All that Christian teaching has ever done is, at most, to
make the lot of the sufferer a little more tolerable. But,
so far as our sympathies lead to this, without our know
ledge causing us to essay the task of preventing the per
petuation of evil social conditions and the continued exis
tence of an undesirable type, our sympathies tend to' become
our deadliest enemies instead of our best friends. The
problem before us is a simple one, so far as its statement is
concerned. Nature’s method of securing a desirable type
is by a process of sheer elimination. The growth of
sympathy and knowledge places a check upon this process
in human society. Both unite in keeping alive those who,
�14
under other conditions, would have been killed off. I am
not aware that anyone would wish it to be otherwise, only
while this is the case all would be better pleased did an
undesirable kind not exist. Still more pleased should we
be at the destruction of those social conditions of which an
undesirable type is, in part, an expression. But to per
petuate a poor kind of human nature is desirable from
neither a biological nor a social point of view. The great
question before society today is really this : Having sus
pended the operation of natural selection in a particular
direction in relation to human society, what are we doing to
bring about the birth of a better type, or to secure its
survival, once it is brought into the world? And, from
the standpoint of this enquiry, the question is : What has
Christianity ever done, either in teaching or in practice, to
give'a satisfactory lead on the matter?
A candid enquiry would show that Christianity, by its
foolish glorification of suffering and pain, by the very fact
of the quality of its ideal character, has not only done
nothing positive, but it has blinded people to the real
gravity of the danger. From thousands of pulpits it has
preached that pain develops character, that suffering
sweetens and ennobles life. They do nothing of the kind.
They deaden and degrade. The world is full of broken
and blasted lives that would have been far different from
what they are but for their experience of pain and misery.
This teaching has been a useful one for the few whose
power has been consolidated by its acceptance; it has been
a disastrous teaching for the many. By its influence the
public conscience has been deadened to the existence of the
mass of removable misery in its midst. Christian sympathy
may have made its existence bearable; a healthy intelligence
would have made its continuance an impossibility.
In truth, the intellectual insight and foresight necessary
to frame a satisfactory moral or social code is quite lacking,
both in Christianity and in its titular founder. Taking the
character of Jesus as it stands in the New Testament, its
�15
intellectual calibre is far below that of Zoroaster, Confucius,
or Buddha. In the case of either of these we encounter
flashes of wisdom, deep insight into many of the problems
of life. In the case of the Gospel Jesus we never leave the
region of moral platitude. Instead of the thinker wrestling
with the world’s problems, we have the religious enthusiast
exhorting the people to submit to the will of God. We
find him insisting on the value of blind faith, while
ignoring the need of right enquiry and the conditions of
rational belief, and threatening vengeance against such as
reject his message. Even in the case of the injunction
against oath-taking, it is the lower, not the higher ground
that is taken. The reason given is a religious one, where
it should have been rejected as a slur upon a person’s
honesty, and an appeal to his fear of punishment instead of
to his love of truth.
Surrounded by all forms of superstition, Jesus rejected
none. All were accepted without question. Outside Judea,
Pagan science had propounded correct theories as to the
shape of the earth, the true nature of disease, the causes of
many natural phenomena, while the conception of natural
law was steadily gaining ground. Never for a moment does
Jesus show himself superior to the ignorance of the Jewish
peasantry amidst whom he moved. The belief in legions
of angels and devils and in demoniacal possession is held
with a gravity that would be laughable but for its sorrow
ful after-consequences. For it was his example that gave
a fuller measure of authority to the witch hunts of the 16th
and 17th centuries, and to the practice of exorcism as a
cure for lunacy. The teachings upon this head are plain
and unmistakable. No one doubts their meaning, and no
one believes them. And yet the teacher who laid down
this ignorant doctrine, who looked for legions of angels
to carry out his bidding, and who walked with, talked with,
and cast out devils, whose whole teaching was based upon
a discredited supernaturalism, is held up before us as an
ideal social reformer and perfect moral guide!
�16
What do we really find when we carefully and honestly
test Christian morality? We have a founder who has
nothing to do with civilisation, with culture, with work, or
industry. We have an ideal character, himself a celibate
and encouraging celibacy in others, its greatest apostle
recommending celibacy as the more desirable state, and
celibacy upheld by the greatest of Christian Churches
throughout the whole of its existence. We have the whole
question of the State ignored, with a complete absence of
any recognition of the fact that man is a member of a
social organism, whose salvation is only to be gained
through the salvation of the whole. We find slavery
endorsed, and women deliberately relegated to an inferior
position, with an absence of an adequate code for the
rearing of a family. We have a number of moral maxims,
largely useless because of their vague character, some harm
ful because of the extravagant form in which they are
cast, and all without the intellectual perception of the
conditions that make a sane morality possible. And finally,
we have the whole of these teachings crystalised in organisa
tions that have admittedly acted with disastrous influence
on the world’s welfare. People of all shades of political
and social opinion, it is sometimes said, look to Jesus for
guidance. They may, but their doing so is surely evidence
that no clear rule of guidance is to be found in that quarter.
For real help, man is thrown back upon himself, and
although many—some for interested purposes, sjme for
other reasons—continue to cloak the fruits of human
experience with a religious covering, one day we may
hope the non-essential will be discarded, and honour given
where it is due.
Issued for the Secular Society, Ltd., and Printed and Published by
The Pioneer Press (G. W. Foote & Co., Ltd.), 41 Grays Inn Rd.,
London, W.C.I.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Christianity and ethics
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Cohen, Chapman [1868-1954]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the People
Series number: No. 18
Notes: Date of publication from KVK. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Pioneer Press
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[1910]
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N136
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Christianity
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English
Christianity
Ethics
NSS
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The ethics of social reform: A paper read at a meeting of The Fellowship of the New Life, London
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Adams, Maurice
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 26 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Publisher's advertisements on front and back endpaper.
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W. Reeves
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1887
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G898
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Ethics
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English
Ethics
Social Reform
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PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, 8.E.
Price Fourpence.
�I I
�EUTHANASIA.
“ T HAVE already related to you with what care they
J. look after their sick, so that nothing is left
undone wfflich may contribute either to their health or
ease. And as for those who are afflicted with incurable
disorders, they use all possible means of cherishing
them, and of making their lives as comfortable as pos
sible ; they visit them often, and take great pains to
make their time pass easily. But if any have tortur
ing, lingering pain, without hope of recovery or ease,
the priests and magistrates repair to them and exhort
them, since they are unable to proceed with the busi
ness of life, are become a burden to themselves and all
about them, and have in reality outlived themselves,
they should no longer cherish a rooted disease, but
choose to die since they cannot but live in great misery;
being persuaded, if they thus deliver themselves from
torture, or allow others to do it, they shall be happy
after death. Since they forfeit none of the pleasures,
but only the troubles of life by this, they think they
not only act reasonably, but consistently with religion;
for they follow the advice of their priests, the expound
ers of God’s will. Those who are wrought upon by
these persuasions, either starve themselves or take
laudanum. But no one is compelled to end his life
thus ; and if they cannot be persuaded to it, the former
care and attendance on it is continued. And though
they esteem a voluntary death, when chosen on such
authority, to be very honourable, on the contrary, if
�4
Euthanasia.
any one commit suicide without the concurrence of the
priest and senate, they honour not the body with a
decent funeral, but throw it into a ditch.”*
Tn pleading for the morality of euthanasia, it seems
not unwise to show that so thoroughly religious a man
as Sir Thomas More deemed that practice so consonant
with a sound morality as to make it one of the customs
of his ideal state, and to place it under the sanction of
the priesthood. As a devout Roman Catholic, the
great Chancellor would naturally imagine that any
beneficial innovation would be sure to obtain the sup
port of the priesthood; and although we may differ
from him on this head, since our daily experience
teaches us that the priest may be counted upon as the
steady opponent of all reform, it is yet not uninstructive to note that the deep religious feeling which dis
tinguished this truly good man, did not shrink from
the idea of euthanasia as from a breach of morality, nor
did he apparently dream that any opposition would (or
could) be offered to it on religious grounds. The last
sentence of the extract is specially important; in dis
cussing the morality of euthanasia, we are not discus
sing the moral lawfulness or unlawfulness of suicide in
general; we may.protest against suicide, and yet uphold
euthanasia, and we may even protest against the one
and uphold the other, on exactly the same principle, as
we shall see further on. As the greater includes the
less, those who consider that a man has a right to
choose whether he will live or not, and who therefore
regard all suicide as lawful, will, of course, approve of
euthanasia; but it is by no means necessary to hold
this doctrine because we contend for the other. On the
general question of the morality of suicide, this paper
expresses no opinion whatever. This is not the point,
and we do not deal with it here. This essay is simply
* Memoirs. A translation of the Utopia, &c., of Sir Thomas
More, Lord High Chancellor of England. By A. Cayley the
Younger, pp. 102, 103. (Edition of 1808.)
�Euthanasia.
5
and solely directed to prove that there are circum
stances under which a human being has a moral right
to hasten the inevitable approach of death. The subject
is one which is surrounded by a thick fog of popular
prejudice, and the arguments in its favour are generally
dismissed unheard. I would therefore crave the reader s
generous patience, while laying before him the reasons
which dispose many religious and social reformers to
regard it as of importance that euthanasia should be
legalised.
In the fourth edition of an essay on Euthanasia, by
P. D. Williams, jun.,—an essay which powerfully sums
up what is to be said for and against the practice in
question, and which treats the whole subject exhaust
ively—we find the proposition, for which we contend,
laid down in the following explicit terms :
“ That in all cases of hopeless and painful illness, it
should be the recognised duty of the medical attendant,
whenever so desired by the patient, to administer
chloroform, or such other anaesthetic as may by-and-by
supersede chloroform, so as to destroy consciousness at
once, and to put the sufferer to a quick and painless
death ; all needful precautions being adopted to prevent
any abuse of such duty; and means being taken to
establish, beyond the possibility of doubt or question,
that the remedy was applied at the express wish of the
patient.”
It is very important, at the outset, to lay down
clearly the limitations of the proposed medical reform.
It is sometimes thoughtlessly stated that the supporters
of euthanasia propose to put to death all persons suf
fering from incurable disorders ; no assertion can be
more inaccurate or more calculated to mislead. We
propose only, that where an incurable disorder is accom
panied with extreme pain—pain, which nothing can
alleviate except death—pain, which only grows worse
as the inevitable doom approaches—pain, which drives
almost to madness, and which must end in the intensi
�6
Euthanasia.
fied torture of the death agony—that pain should be at
once soothed by the administration of an anesthetic,
which should not only produce unconsciousness, but
should be sufficiently powerful to end a life, in which
the renewal of consciousness can only be simultaneous
with the renewal of pain. So long as life has some
sweetness left in it, so long the offered mercy is not
needed; euthanasia is a relief from unendurable agony,
not an enforced extinguisher of a still desired existence.
Besides, no one proposes to make it obligatory on any
body ; it is only urged that where the patient asks for
the mercy of a speedy death, instead of a protracted one,
his prayer may be granted without any danger of the pen
alties of murder or manslaughter being inflicted on the
doctors and nurses in attendance.
I will lay before
the reader a case which is within my own knowledge,—
and which can probably be supplemented by the sad
experience of almost every individual,—in v’hich the
legality of euthanasia would have been a boon equally
to the sufferer and to her family. A widow lady was
suffering from cancer in the breast, and as the case was
too far advanced for the ordinary remedy of the knife,
and as the leading London surgeons refused to risk an
operation which might hasten, but could not retard,
death, she resolved, for the sake of her orphan children,
to allow a medical practitioner to perform a terrible
operation, whereby he hoped to prolong her life for
some years. Its details are too painful to enter into
unnecessarily; it will suffice to say that it was per
formed by means of quick-lime, and that the use of
chloroform was impossible. When the operation, which
extended over days, was but half over, the sufferer’s
strength gave way, and the doctor was compelled to
acknowledge that even a prolongation of life was im
possible, and that to complete the operation could only
hasten death. So the patient had to linger on in almost
unimaginable torture, knowing that the pain could only
end in death, seeing her relatives worn out by watching,
�Euthanasia.
7
•and agonised at the sight of her sufferings, and yet
compelled to live on from hour to hour, till at last the
anguish culminated in death. Is it possible for any
one to believe that it would have been wrong to have
hastened the inevitable end, and thus to have shortened
the agony of the sufferer herself, and to have also spared
Sier nurses months of subsequent ill-health. It is in
»uch cases as this that euthanasia would be useful. It
s, however, probable that all will agree that the benefit
conferred by the legalisation of euthanasia would, in
nany instances, be very great; but many feel that the
objections to it, on moral grounds, are so weighty, that
10 physical benefit could countervail the moral wrong.
These objections, so far as I can gather them, are as
bllows:—
Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and
nust only be taken back by the giver of life.
*
Euthanasia is an interference with the course of
•lature, and is therefore an act of rebellion against God.
Pain is a spiritual remedial agent inflicted by God,
.-jid should therefore be patiently endured.
Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and
.nust only be taken back by the Giver of life. This
objection is one of those high-sounding phrases which
mpose on the careless and thoughtless hearer, by catchng up a form of words which is generally accepted as
m unquestionable axiom, and by hanging thereupon
in unfair corollary. The ordinary man or woman, on
tearing this assertion, would probably answer—“ Life
tacred ? Yes, of course ; on the sacredness of life
lepends the safety of society ; anything which tampers
vith this principle must be both wrong and dangerous.”
Ind yet, such is the inconsistency of the thoughtless,
hat, five minutes afterwards, the same person will glow
.vith passionate admiration at some noble deed, in
* We of course here have no concern with theological questions
nuching the existence or non-existence of Deity, and express no
pinion about them.
�8
Euthanasia.
which the sacredness of life has been cast to the winds
at the call of honour or of humanity, or will utter words
of indignant contempt at the baseness which counted
life more sacred than duty or principle. That life is
sacred is an undeniable proposition; every natural gift
is sacred, i.e. is valuable, and is not to be lightly
destroyed ; life, as summing up all natural gifts, and
as containing within itself all possibilities of usefulness
and happiness, is the most sacred physical possession
which we own. But it is not the most sacred thing on
earth. Martyrs slain for the sake of principles which
they could not truthfully deny ; patriots who have
died for their country; heroes who have sacrificed
themselves for others’ good ;—the very flower and glory
of humanity rise up in a vast crowd to protest that
conscience, honour, love, self-devotion, are more precious
to the race than is the life of the individual. Life is
sacred, but it may be laid down in a noble cause ; life
is sacred, but it must bend before the holier sacredness
of principle ; life which, though sacred, can be de
stroyed, is as nothing before the indestructible ideals
which claim from every noble soul the sacrifice of per
sonal happiness, of personal greatness, yea, of personal
*
life
It will be conceded, then, on all hands, that the
proposition that life is sacred must be accepted with
many limitations : the proposition, in fact, amounts
only to this, that life must not be voluntarily laid
down without grave and sufficient cause. What we
have to consider, is, whether there are present, in any
proposed euthanasia, such conditions as overbear con
siderations for the acknowledged sanctity of life. W e
* The word “ life ” is here used in the sense of “ personal exist
ence in this world.” It is, of course, not intended to be asserted
that life is really destructible, but only that personal existence, or
identity, may be destroyed. And further, no opinion is given on
the possibility of life otherwhere than on this globe; nothing is
spoken of except life on earth, under the conditions of human
existence.
�Euthanasia.
9
contend that in the cases in which it is proposed that
death should be hastened, these conditions do exist.
"We will not touch here on the question of the
endurance of pain as a duty, for we will examine that
further on. But is it a matter of no importance, that
a sufferer should condemn his attendants to a prolonged
drain on their health and strength, in order to cling to
a life which is useless to others, and a burden to him
self ? The nurse who tends, perhaps for weeks, a bed
of agony, for which there is no cure but death whose
senses are strained by intense watchfulness whose
nerves are racked by witnessing torture which she is
powerless to alleviate—is, by her self-devotion, sowing
in her own constitution the seeds of ill-health that is
to say, she is deliberately shortening her own life. We
have seen that we have a right to shorten life in obedi
ence to a call of duty, and it will at once be said that
the nurse is obeying such a call. But has the nurse a
right to sacrifice her own life—and an injury to health
is a sacrifice of life—for an obviously unequivalent
advantage? We are apt to forget, because the injury
is partially veiled to us, that we touch the sacredness
of life whenever we touch health : every case of over
work, of over-strain, of over-exertion, is, so to speak, a
modified case of euthanasia. To poison the spring of
life is as real a tampering with the sacredness of life
as it is to check its course. The nurse is really com
mitting a slow euthanasia. Either the patient or the
nurse must commit an heroic suicide for the sake of
the other—which shall it be ? Shall the life be sacri
ficed, which is torture to its possessor, useless to
society, and whose bounds are already clearly marked ?
or shall a strong and healthy life, with all its future
possibilities, be undermined and sacrificed in addition
to that which is already doomed 1 But, granting that
the sublime generosity of the nurse stays not to balance
the gain with the loss, but counts herself as nothing in
the face of a human need, then surely it is time to urge
�IO
Euthanasia.
that to permit this self-sacrifice is an error, and that to
accept it is a crime. If it be granted that the throwing
away of life for a manifestly unequivalent gain is wrong,
then we ought not to blind ourselves to the fact, that
to sacrifice a healthy life in order to lengthen by a few
short weeks a doomed life, is a grave moral error, how
ever much it may be redeemed in the individual by the
glory of a noble self-devotion. Allowing to the full the
honour due to the heroism of the nurse, what are we
to say to the patient who accepts the sacrifice 1 What
are we to think of the morality of a human being, who,
in order to preserve the miserable remnant of life left
to him, allows another to shorten life 1 If we honour
the man who sacrifices himself to defend his family, or
risks his own life to save theirs, we must surely blame
him who, on the contrary, sacrifices those he ought to
value most, in order to prolong his own now useless
existence. The measure of our admiration for the one,
must be the measure of our pity for the weakness and
selfishness of the other. If it be true that the man who
dies for his dear ones on the battlefield is a hero, he
who voluntarily dies for them on his bed of sickness is
a hero no less brave. But it is urged that life is the
gift of God, and must only he taken hack hy the Giver
of life. I suppose that in any sense in which it can be
supposed true that life is the gift of God, it can only be
taken back by the giver—that is to say, that just as
life is produced in accordance with certain laws, so it
can only be destroyed in accordance with certain other
laws. Life is not the direct gift of a superior power :
it is the gift of man to man and animal to animal, pro
duced by the voluntary agent, and not by God, under
physical conditions, on the fulfilment of which alone
the production of life depends. The physical condi
tions must be observed if we desire to produce life, and
so must they be if we desire to destroy life. In both
cases man is the voluntary agent, in both law is the
means of his action. If life-giving is God’s doing, then
�Euthanasia.
11
life-destroying is his doing too. But this is not what
is intended by the proposers of this aphorism. If they
will pardon me for translating their somewhat vague
proposition into more precise language, they say that
they find themselves in possession of a certain thing
called life, which must have come from somewhereand
as in popular language the unknown is always the
divine, it must have come from God : therefore this life
must only be taken from them by a cause that also
proceeds from somewhere—i.e., from an unknown cause
—i.e., from the divine will. Chloroform comes from a
visible agent, from the doctor or nurse, or at least from
a bottle, wich can be taken up or left alone at our own
h
*
choice. If we swallow this, the cause of death is known,
and is evidently not divine ; but if we go into a house
where scarlet fever is raging, although we are in that
case voluntarily running the chance of taking poison
quite as truly as if we swallow a dose of chloroform,
yet if we die from the infection, we can imagine the
illness to be sent from God. Wherever we think the
element of chance comes in, there we are able to imagine
that God rules directly. We quite overlook the fact
that there is no such thing as chance. There is only
our ignorance of law, not a break in natural order. If
our constitution be susceptible of the particular poison
to which we expose it, we take the disease. If we
knew the laws of infection as accurately as we know
the laws affecting chloroform, we should be able to fore
see with like certainty the inevitable consequence ; and
our ignorance does not make the action of either set of
laws less unchangeable or more divine. But in the
“ happy-go-lucky ” style of thought peculiar to ignor
ance, the Christian disregards the fact that infection is
ruled by definite laws, and believes that health and
sickness are the direct expressions of the will of his
God, and not the invariable consequents of obscure but
probably discoverable antecedents ; so he boldly goes
into the back slums of London to nurse a family
�12
Euthanasia.
stricken down with fever, and knowingly and deliber
ately runs “ the chance ” of infection—i.e., knowingly
and deliberately runs the chance of taking poison, or
rather of having poison poured into his frame. This
he does, trusting that the nobility of his motive will
make the act right in God’s sight. Is it more noble
to relieve the sufferings of strangers, than to relieve the
sufferings of his family ? or is it more heroic to die of
voluntarily-contracted fever, than of voluntarily-taken
chloroform 1
, The argument that life must only be taken back by the
life-giver, would, if thoroughly carried out, entirely pre
vent all dangerous operations. In the treatment of
some diseases there are operations that will either kill
or cure: the disease must certainly be fatal if left alone;
while the proposed operation may save life, it may
equally destroy it, and thus may take life some time be
fore the giver of life wanted to take it back. Evidently,
then, such operations should not be performed, since
there is risked so grave an interference with the desires
of the life-giver.
Again, doctors act very wrongly
when they allow certain soothing medicines to be taken
when all hope is gone, which they refuse so long as a
chance of recovery remains : what right have they to
compel the life-giver to follow out his apparent inten
tions ? In some cases of painful disease, it is now
usual to produce partial or total unconsciousness by the
injection of morphia, or by the use of some other
anaesthetic. Thus, I have known a patient subjected
to this kind of treatment, when dying from a tumour
in the sesophagus; he was consequently, for some
weeks before his death, kept in a state of almost com
plete unconsciousness, for if he were allowed to become
conscious, his agony was so unendurable as to drive
him wild. He was thus, although breathing, practi
cally dead for weeks before his death. We cannot but
wonder, in view of such a case as his, what it is that
people mean when they talk of “ life.” Life includes,
�Euthanasia.
13
surely, not only the involuntary animal functions, such
as the movements of heart and lungs; but conscious
ness, thought, feeling, emotion. Of the various con
stituents of human life, surely those are not the most
“ sacred ” which we share with the brute, however
necessary these may be as the basis on which the rest
are built. It is thought, then, that we may rightfully
destroy all that constitutes the beauty and nobility of
human life, we may kill thought, slay consciousness,
deaden emotion, stop feeling, we may do all this, and
leave lying on the bed before us a breathing figure,
from which we have taken all the nobler possibilities
of life; but we may not touch the purely animal exist
ence ; we may rightly check the action of the nerves
and the brain, but we must not dare to outrage the
Deity by checking the action of the heart and the
lungs.
We ask, then, for the legalisation of euthanasia,
because it is in accordance with the highest morality
yet known, that which teaches the duty of self-sacrifice
for the greater good of others, because it is sanctioned
in principle by every service performed at personal
danger and injury, and because it is already partially
practised by modern improvements in medical science.
Euthanasia is an interference with the course of
nature, and is therefore an act of rebellion against
God. In considering this objection, we are placed in
difficulty by not being told what sense our opponents
attach to the word “ nature; ” and we are obliged once
more to ask pardon for forcing these vague and highflown arguments into a humiliating precision of mean
ing. Nature, in the widest sense of the word, includes
all natural laws; and in this sense it is of course
impossible to interfere with nature at all. We live,
and move, and have our being in nature ; and we can
no more get outside it, than we can get outside every
thing. With this nature we cannot interfere : we can
study its laws, and learn how to balance one law
�14
Euthanasia.
against another, so as to modify results; but this can
only be done by and through nature itself. The
“ interference with the course of nature ” which is in
tended in the above objection does not of course mean
this, impossible proceeding ; and it can then only mean
an interference with things which would proceed in
one course without human agency meddling with them,
but which are susceptible of being turned into another
course by human agency. If interference with nature’s
course be a rebellion against God, we are rebelling against
God every day of our lives. Every achievement of civili
sation is an interference with nature. Every artificial
comfort we enjoy is an improvement on nature.
“Everybody professes to approve and admire many
great triumphs of art over nature: the junction by
bridges of shores which nature had made separate, the
draining of nature’s marshes, the excavation of her
wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at
immense depths in the earth, the turning away of her
thunderbolts by lightning-rods, of her inundations by
embankments, of her ocean by breakwaters. But to
commend these and similar feats, is to acknowledge
that the ways of nature are to be conquered, not
obeyed; that her powers are often towards man in
the position of enemies, from whom he must wrest, by
force and ingenuity, what little he can for his own use,
and deserves to be applauded when that little is rather
more than might be expected from his physical weak
ness in comparison to those gigantic powers. All
praise, of civilisation, or art, or contrivance, is so much
dispraise of nature; an admission of imperfection,
which it is man’s business, and merit, to be always
endeavouring to correct or mitigate.”* It is difficult
to understand how anyone, contemplating the course of
nature, can regard it as the expression of a divine will,
which man has no right to improve upon. Natural
law is essentially unreasoning and unmoral: gigantic
* “Essay on Nature,” by John Stuart Mill.
�Euthanasia.
*5
forces clash, around us on every side, unintelligent, and
unvarying in their action. With equal impassiveness
these blind forces produce vast benefits and work vast
catastrophes. The benefits are ours, if we are able to
grasp them; but nature troubles itself not whether we
take them or leave them alone. The catastrophes may
rightly be averted, if we can avert them; but nature
stays not its grinding wheel for our moans. Even
allowing that a Supreme Intelligence gave these forces
their being, it is manifest that he never intended man
to be their plaything, or to do them homage; for man
is dowered with reason to calculate, and with genius to
foresee; and into man’s hands is given the realm of
nature (in this world) to cultivate, td govern, to im
prove. So long as men believed that a god wielded
the thunderbolt, so long would a lightning-conductor
be an outrage on Jove; so long as a god guided each
force of nature, so long would it be impiety to resist,
or to endeavour to regulate, the divine volitions. Only
as experience gradually proved that no evil consequences
followed upon each amendment of nature, were natural
forces withdrawn, one by one, from the sphere of the
unknown and the divine. Now, even pain, that used
to be God’s scourge, is soothed by chloroform, and
death alone is left for nature to inflict, with what
lingering agony it may. But why should death, any
more than other ills, be left entirely to the clumsy,
unassisted processes of nature ?-—why, after struggling
against nature all our lives, should we let it reign
unopposed in death ? There are some natural evils
that we cannot avert. Pain and death are of these;
but we can dull pain by dulling feeling, and we can ease
death by shortening its pangs. Nature kills by slow
and protracted torture; we can defy it by choosing a
rapid and painless end. It is only the remains of the
old superstition that makes men think that to take life
is the special prerogative of the gods. With marvel
lous inconsistency, however, the opponents of euthan
�i6
Euthanasia.
asia do not scruple to “interfere with the course of
nature ” on the one hand, while they forbid us to inter
fere on the other. It is right to prolong pain by art,
although it is wrong to shorten it. When a person is
smitten down with some fearful and incurable disease,
they do not leave him to nature; on the contrary, they
check and thwart nature in every possible way; they
cherish the life that nature has blasted; they nourish
the strength that nature is undermining; they delay
each process of decay which nature sows in the dis
ordered frame; they contest every inch of ground with
nature to preserve life; and then, when life means
torture, and we ask permission to step in and quench
it, they cry out that we are interfering with nature.
If they would leave nature to itself, the disease would
generally kill with tolerable rapidity; but they will not
do this. They will only admit the force of their own
argument when it tells on the side of what they choose
to consider right. “Against nature ” is the cry with
which many a modern improvement has been howled
at; and it will continue to be raised, until it is gener
ally acknowledged that happiness, and not nature, is
the true guide to morality, and until man recognises
that nature is to be harnessed to his car of triumph,
and to bend its mighty forces to fulfil the human will.
Pam is a spiritual remedial agent, inflicted hy God,
and should therefore he patiently endured. Does any
one, except a self-torturing ascetic, endure any pain
which he can get rid of? This might be deemed a
sufficient answer to this objection, for common sense
always bids us avoid all possible pain, and daily expe
rience tells us that people invariably evade pain, when
ever such evasion is possible. The objection ought to
run : “ pain is a spiritual remedial agent, inflicted by
God, which is to be got rid of as soon as possible, but
ought to be patiently endured when unavoidable.”
Pain as pain has no recommendations, spiritual or
otherwise, nor is there the smallest merit in a voluntary
�Euthanasia.
J7
and needless submission to pain. As to its remedial
and educational advantages, it as often as not sours the
temper and hardens the heart; if a person endures
great physical or mental pain with unruffled patience,
and comes out of it with uninjured tenderness and
sweetness, we may rest assured that wre have come
across a rare and beautiful nature of exceptional strength.
As a general rule, pain, especially if it > be mental,
hardens and roughens the character. The use of anaes
thetics is utterly indefensible, if physical pain is to be
regarded as a special tool whereby God cultivates the
human soul. If God is directly acting on the sufferer s
body, and is educating his soul by racking his nerves,
by what right does the doctor step between with his
impious anaesthetic, and by reducing the patient to un
consciousness, deprive God of his pupil, and man of
his lesson ? If pain be a sacred ark, over which hovers
the divine glory, surely it must be a sinful act to touch
the holy thing. We may be inflicting incalculable
spiritual damage by frustrating the divine plan of edu
cation, which was corporeal agony as a spiritual agent.
Therefore, if this argument be good for anything at all,
we must from henceforth eschew all anaesthetics, we
must take no steps to alleviate human agony, we must
not venture to interfere with this beneficent agent, but
must leave nature to torture us as it will. But we
utterly deny that the unnecessary endurance of pain is
even a merit, much less a duty; on the contrary, we
believe that it is our duty to war against pain as much
as possible, to alleviate it wherever we cannot stop it
entirely ; and, where continuous and frightful agony
can only end in death, then to give to the sufferer the
relief he craves for, in the sleep which is mercy. “ It
is a mercy God has taken him,” is an expression often
heard when the racked frame at last lies quiet, and the
writhed features settle slowly into the peaceful smile of
the dead. That mercy we plead that man should be
allowed to give to man, when human skill and human
�18
Euthanasia.
tenderness have done their best, and when they have
left, within their reach, no greater boon than a speedy
and painless death.
We are not aware that any objection, which may not
be classed under one or other of these three heads, has
been levelled against the proposition that euthanasia
should be legalised. It has, indeed, been suggested
that to put into a doctor’s hands this “ power of life
and death,” would be to offer a dangerous temptation
to those who have any special object to gain by putting
a troublesome person quietly out of the way. But this
objection overlooks the fact that the patient himself must
ask for the draught, that stringent precautions can be taken
to render euthanasia impossible except at the patient’s
earnestly, or even repeatedly, expressed wish, that any
doctor or attendant, neglecting to take these precautions,
w’ould then, as now, be liable to all the penalties for
murder or for manslaughter; and that an ordinary
doctor would no more be ready to face these penalties
then, than he is now, although he undoubtedly has
now the power of putting the patient to death with
but little chance of discovery. Euthanasia would not
render murder less dangerous than it is at present, since
no one asks that a nurse may be empowered to give a
patient a dose which would ensure death, or that she
might be allowed to shield herself from punishment on
the plea that the patient desired it. If our opponents
would take the trouble to find out what we do ask,
before they condemn our propositions, it would greatly
simplify public discussion, not alone in this case, but
in many proposed reforms.
It may be well, also, to point out the wide line of
demarcation, which separated euthanasia from what is
ordinarily called suicide. Euthanasia, like suicide, is
a voluntarily chosen death, but there is a radical dif
ference between the motives which prompt the similar
act. Those who commit suicide thereby render them
�Euthanasia.
*9
selves useless to society for the future j they deprive
society of their services, and selfishly evade the duties
which ought to fall to their share ; therefore, the social
feelings rightly condemn suicide as a crime against
society. I do not say, that under no stress of circum
stances is suicide justifiable ; that is not the question ;
but I wish to point out that it is justly regarded as a
social offence. But the very motive which restrains
from suicide, prompts to euthanasia. The sufferer who
knows that he is lost to society, that he can never
again serve his fellow-men ; who knows, also, that he
is depriving society of the services of those who use
lessly exhaust themselves for him, and is further injur
ing it by undermining the health of its healthy mem
bers, feels urged by the very social instincts which
would prevent him from committing suicide while in
health, to yield a last service to society by relieving it
from a useless burden. Hence it is that Sir Ihomas
More, in the quotation with which we began this essay,
makes the social authorities of his ideal state urge
euthanasia as the duty of ,a faithful citizen, while they
yet, consistently reprobate ordinary suicide, as a Ibsemajeste, a crime against the State. The life of the
individual is, in a sense, the property of society. The
infant is nurtured, the child is educated, the man is
protected by others; and, in return for the life thus
given, developed, preserved, society has a right to
demand from its members a loyal, self-forgetting devo
tion to the common weal. To serve humanity, to raise
the race from which we spring, to dedicate every talent,
every power, every energy, to the improvement of, and
to the increase of happiness in, society, this is the duty
of each individual man and woman. And, when we
have given all we can, when strength is sinking, and life
is failing, when pain racks our bodies, and the worse
agony of seeing our dear ones suffer in our anguish,
tortures our enfeebled minds, when the only service
�20
Euthanasia.
we can render man is to relieve him of a useless and
injurious burden, then we ask that we may be per
mitted to die voluntarily and painlessly, and so to
crown a noble life with the laurel-wreath of a selfsacrificing death.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Euthanasia
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Besant, Annie Wood
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Author not named on pamphlet but known to be Annie Besant. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Also published with the added subtitle: 'A pamphlet advocating the legalization of the administration of poison by a medical attendant to persons suffering from incurable and painful diseases'.
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Thomas Scott
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[1875]
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Euthenasia
Ethics
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Annie Besant
Conway Tracts
Death
Ethics
Euthanasia
Health
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St&ies of feature Society.
NATURAL ETHICS
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. J
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Ethics of Nature Society,
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BY
C. W. SALEEBY, M.D., F.R.S.E.
., WATTS & Co.,
17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London.
1912.
>
PRICE 2d.
�the ethics of nature
SOCIETY is an Association for the
Harmonious Development of Life
through the practice of Ethics based
on the Laws of Nature, and for the
Propagation of the truth that the
history of Life in
its
evolution
provides a complete justification for
asserting that there is such a thing
as the Ethics of Nature.
Morality
therefore has natural sanction and
natural criteria.
�B.3II )
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
ETHICS OF NATURE SOCIETY.
Natural Ethics
IN THEORY AND
PRACTICE.
Extracts from Three Lectures given for the
ETHICS OF NATURE SOCIETY
BY
C. W. SALEEBY, M.D., F.R.S.E.
WATTS & Co.)
ty, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London
1912.
��THE
ORIGIN
OF
MORALITY.
[Reprinted from the Ethics of Nature Review.]
Before turning to- his subject for the evening, Dr. Saleeby
spoke of the three delusions which are prevalent as to the
origin of Morality—delusions which arise in part from a mis
understanding of the word Morality.
Of these three, the first and oldest is that Morality finds its
basis either in some kind of authoritative power or definite
law from on High (the Mosaic laws, the Koran, etc.), or in
persons representative of someone to whom that power was
given (the “divine right of Kings,” the clergy, etc.). Accord
ing to this delusion, Morality has no natural criterion, and
cannot be judged by its effects, but by an authorised code of
conduct only.
The second delusion is that Morality has
arisen without any definite cause or purpose, through Cus
tom; and the third and most important, which is
the common assertion of ecclesiasticism, is that there
is no natural, spontaneous, inherent Morality in Man.
Even John Stuart Mill, in his “Utilitarianism,” lays
it down that morals are not born in a man,
but
are acquired characteristics imposed on the individual by his
surroundings, and having no root in his own nature—that
man’s is a purely selfish nature, acting by means of external
pressure. It may be taken as an indication of the progress
of the last five and twenty years, that this delusion is so
rapidly dying out.
In turning to the true conception of the Origin of Morality,
Dr. Saleeby gave a definition of the term which coincides en
tirely (as did indeed his lecture from first to last) with the
views of the Ethics of Nature Society, not only in senti
ment, but in actual expression.
“Morality is that which
makes for more life as against less, and for higher life as
against lower.” The definition grows clearest- when we under
stand what Nature means by “higher” life.
Having definitely defined Morality in terms of life, we must
turn for its history to the History of Life, which is purely
�4
evolutionary.
Past historians, past the history of churches,
past human dogmas, we come down to the beginnings of Life
as it must somehow have arisen on our planet. Already in
the vegetable world, the; marvellous structures devisied by
Nature for the nurture of the young plant, point to- Morality,
according to our definition, since they make for life. Pass
ing to the animal world, as Herbert Spencer once said, in
discussing the subject, even when the first single cell divided
itself into two, there was the rude foreshadowing of Moral
action—here was a being not wholly selfish.
Morality has thus its origin of origins in that great necessity
of Life to reproduce itself—a necessity which arose in the
presence and irrevocability of Death. The arrangements
made in Nature for reproduction are connected from the' first
with Morality, and the sacrifices involved in the process- in
crease steadily as the scale of life ascends.
Through the animal world, past the invertebrates-, past the
lower forms of vertebrates (fish-, amphibia-, birds) to the- mam
malia, from the duckmole and the kangaroo up to- the remark
able monkey tribes, a-nd thence to Human-kind, the scale of
progress may be said to be uninterrupted. In due sequence
with the general trend, the amount of care, labour, and life
devoted by the parents (and especially by the mother) to
the young, grows ever greater.
More and more stress is
laid on Morality, because there is more and more, need for it.
From the historical level, we come to the level of positive
interpretations, being confronted at the first with the query
whether this Mora-lit-y, which is an ever increasing thing in
the history of Evolution, has arisen through a particular in
clination of nature in that- direction; and we conclude that
this is undoubtedly not the case, since the na-t-ural law isi uni
versally the Darwinian law of the survival of the- fittest—of
those best suited to their particular time, environment, and
circumstances.
Yet, though we see that Nature is strictly impartial, a-nd
will indifferently choose teeth and claws with murderous in
tent, or the most delicate o-f reproductive organs imposing
absolute self-abnegation and personal risk, it is always in
so far as one or other makes for Life and Higher Life.
Nature’s bias is vital, and Morality has consequently den
�5
veloped in Nature because of its superior survival value. Not
withstanding that Morality was handicapped from the first,
it has won through by that value alone.
In order to appreciate what Morality has done for man, let
us consider by what means a man survives in the world; not
indeed by means of a defensive armour, nor by any offensive
weapons, nor by reason of his strength or of his fleetness, but
because of his Intellect, that great instrument of adaptabilityAnd this instrument comes to him through Morality, since
an intelligent being can only develop, under maternal care,
and will develop only as Morality continues to increase.
Morality is no invention of men, or of priests, or of amiable
enthusiasts; it is the maker of man, and is as necessary to
all further development as it has been necessary from the
first to natural Evolution.
Having existed from all time,
being far older than mankind, and older in consequence than
all churches and dogmas and creeds-—Morality will doubtless
survive1 them all.
�G
NATURE
AND
ETHICS.
The subject is too large to be dealt with at all completely,
and I propose expressing only my own attitude as a student
of Nature, from the standpoint of the biologist. The subject,
taken more narrowly, lies between Ethics and Biology, the
Science of Life.
The biologist finds more particularly in the history of life, in
its evolution, complete justification for asserting that there is
such a thing asi an Ethics of Nature; that Morality has
natural sanction and natural criteria.
For Moral Education we generally have recourse to the
method of former generations ; we refer thei questioning child,
not to any ultimate sanction, but to1 an all-seeing and all
judging power; and in order to make our own commands
complied with, we offer the old alternative of punishment and
reward.
So long as the right people are ruling, and so long
as there isi sufficient faith in the authoritative source which
they plead, the problem is simple enough.
But at such a
time as this, when doubt is expressed not only as to what
is right and what wrong, but even as to the actual existence
of Right and Wrong at all, the matter of Moral Education
and the moral basis is entirely changed, and become extremely
complicated.
We no longer believe in the Fall of Man; we are beginning
to understand the Ascent of Man. The fact isi, we are clearly
living in a moral interregnum; the original and older sano
tions of morality have broken down; those who still profess
them will be found to be acting in accordance with what we
call “right," simply through their own nature, or custom
and public opinion, and not by a real belief in the sanction
which they assert.
We all know that there is a distinction between Right and
Wrong; there are certain sentiments or instincts which do
tell us, in crucial instances, how we should act, irrespective
of rewards, irrespective of any sanction, irrespective
of any thing outside ourselves.
But this is not sufficient
for all needs; we ask what moral anchorage there can be—•
not only what is right, but why it is right.
�7
It is to meet this demand, to which Herbert Spencer gave
expression in his “Data of Ethics,” that some come forward
to-day with what may be termed. “Ethics of Life”-—with what
Ellen Key calls the Religion of Life.
Her books are well
worth reading; for hers is no mystic confession or creed, she
simply lays down certain ideas, certain plans, for personal
and universal conduct; which she refers to> as the Religion
of Life. She believes, as the Ethics of Nature Society does,
that in Life and its laws are detailed information and direc
tion as to what is right and wrong.
Professor Bergson’s Philosophy of Life strengthens this
theory immeasurably.
He has, from his standpoint asi a
student of Biology, a clear feeling that in the very facts of Life
are to be found certain data on which to build a moral code.
It is extremely difficult to refer to facts of Nature without
seeming to give implication of design, purpose, or intent.
Looking at the facts of the living world (in both low and high
forms of life), there is distinctly a “thrust” or impetus (as
Bergson has it, an “elan vital”} which seeks to achieve more
life. This seems to me a perfectly just statement. Whether
Life is to be considered as an almost conscious Entity, striving
to realise its o-wn partly idealised purposes, as our individual
lives do, we can hardly say.
But it certainly does appear
so. Life is, above all, says Prof. Bergson, “ a tendency to act
cn inert matter”—reminding one of certain biologists who
have argued that life looks as if it were seeking to turn as
much lifeless matter as possible into living matter.
This
argument of Bergson reminds one also- of two passages in
Shelley,s “Adonais”:
“Through wood. and. stream and field and hill and ocean
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has bursit.”
. . . “the one Spirit’s plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear.”
It is as though Life were something behind Matter, striving
to express itself; it isi as if that plan which Tennyson sums
up aS “More Life and fuller” were the purpose of living
Nature.
Above all, this may be seen in contemplating the
history of Life.
First of all we see no life at all, then we
find traces of very simple life; and finally life as we know it
to-day; through all the process there seems an almost irresist
�8
ible desire of Life to multiply, to magnify, to intensify itself.
This is shown not only in the life of the individual, but in
those ulterior purposes for which more and more the individ
ual appears' to be designed, and to which more, and more he is
devoted.
We are- all acquainted with the great paradox of Weismann
ism, that the individual exists only for the race, to be the
host of the immortal germ-plasm, so- that all bodies are simply
designed for the making of more life in the future, for parent
hood, for the enhancement of life, and, above all, for its in
tensive culture—the making of forms- less numerous, but with
greater intensity of what may be called the living flame.
This view, which is more and more justified, is the biological
statement of the functions of the individual a® designed (if
1 may use the word) throughout all the process' of evolution
less for its own life’s sake than for the making of more- life,
widespread.
Of that age-long process we; are the1 product.
What, then, of that aspect of living Nature which has
been regarded as nearly murderous, not only a-s non-moral,
but actually as anti-moral?
John Stuart Mill spoke of living Nature- as a- “slaughter
house”; Tennyson pictured Nature “red in tooth and claw”
We are all a-ware of the destruction of life, full-grown or
immature, in the processes of Nature; many forms of life are
designed to- do murder, are ruthless1 instruments for death.
Can the proposition of Nature’s desire for Life and Morality
be compatible with the enormous- amount of futile death we
see on all hands, and with the construction of creatures de
signed to give death ? Certainly it can !
In the first place, when we point to the destruction and
worse than wast-e- amongst the immature (animals, fish, seeds,
etc.), we forget that- those who are destroyed serve for the
food and life of other—largely of higher—formsThe waste
is only apparent.
We should first- have looked to the causes
of death before we- called it so.
If a fish produces- one- mil
lion eggs yearly, and perhaps only two reach maturity to
replace their parents, it- does not follow that there has- been
meaningless, fut-ile murders of the others; for they have- gone
to serve Nature in another way, by giving food to other
species.
�9
Nature sets out to make more life and fuller; not to de
stroy. Animals that hunt and kill for their food possess teeth
and claws which, though instruments of murder on the one
hand, on closer inspection prove' to be instruments1 for life,
since by them life is sustained. This comment may to some
extent remove the existing doubt whether Nature affords a
sanction for moral conduct.
Moral conduct is that which makes for more life; and since
Life is to be measured in terms of quality as well as in terms
of quantity, we must make the further proviso' that Nature
works for intenser (we may safely say for higher) forms;
that is, for more life confined in a. narrower space. The ten
dency to subsist for that belief, to evolve, from that, and to
move upon that, forms the basis of the. Ethics of Nature
Society.
Moral conduct on these' lines will be either that
which makes for more life as against less, or that which makes
for higher life as against lower1.
Lack of time prevents, me from attempting, this evening,
to meet, or even to name, all the, difficulties which the subject
brings up; they will be dealt, with at, future lectures; but, I
do want to repeat that if any of you think this is; a thing
to look into, you should read Bergson’s “Creative Evolution,”
and Ellen Key’s “Love- and Marriage” (the book has an un
fortunate title, but the moral and social conduct, which she
derives from that theory which it is difficult to avoid calling
the Purpose of Life,, isi extremely valuable). These books' I
recommend to be read in association with M. Deshumbert’s
“The Ethics of Nature,” which is entirely devoted to the
statement of our present thesis.
The, new theory of Morality, and of the nature of Morality,
is based more and more on Biology, relying greatly upon the
facts of our natural instincts, especially the parental instinct,
and their function. Thus Dr- Mercier, of the Charing Cross
Hospital, in his new book, “Conduct and its Disorders,” has
come to look at conduct from, the, point of view of Biology,
and to controvert the old, wildly delusive doctrine that in
man the instincts' have disappeared, and that in place of
instincts he has intelligence.
Intelligence is not a motor,
it is a pilot, and if we really had lost our instincts we should
sit like Job motionlessly contemplating life, instead of which
�10
we move and do1. The springs of our conduct are those, very
instincts which a few years ago, we were said not to possess.
On all this subject, Dr. McDougall is the master and pioneer,
in his “Social Psychology.”
We possess just such instincts as animals in their essential
nature, and they underlie all our emotions. Thus the emotion
of wonder is the subjective side of what we call the instinct
of curiosity. The parental instinct is correlative in us, with
“tender emotion.” The more you examine the parental in
stinct, whether it be exhibited in actual, or foster, or non
parents, tire more you see that it is the source of all the actions
which, consciously or unconsciously, you and I call moral, or
good, or right. You find it in the mother who lives, and if
need be dies, for her child; you find it in the old maid with
her cats; you find it in the doctor with his patient.
Psy
chologists have argued that parental instinct is what I may
call anticipatory gratitude; it is nothing of the kind.
It
is an instinctive feeling for life which is young' or is in need,
and which we can help; and it is by no means confined to
our own species (where reward in some form might be antici
pated), but is shown in other species, not self-conscious, which
cannot anticipate future repayment.
There is good, reason
to suppose that if you fuse this instinct, with, others; in o-ur
nature; you will produce those qualities which we call moral.
The ultimate justification for believing that these acts are
moral, is that somehow or other they serve (or will, or can
serve) the general life; we recognise in them, at least, an ele
ment of life-saving. It may be only serving an idea, it may
be serving only one particular class.
My particular cause
for existence is to serve Eugenics, on the theory that we can
do most for the general life by devoting our energies to the
life that is still unborn.
A final question arises if one, desires to make converts
either for Eugenics or for the Ethics of Nature Society: the
old question of “What has posterity done for me?” or, in the
words of Shylock: “On what compulsion must I; tell me
that.” There is, of course, no obvious profit, and no obvious
reason, but what does the astronomer ask, who, spends his
life in amassing stellar data which, in perhaps five hundred
years or so; but not, till then, will be of immense cosmological
value ?
�11
We cannot promise on this theory any direct reward to< be
gained, but it will, nevertheless, be involved in the truth that
virtue is its own reward. That is to say, if there be in any
one of us a native, ineradicable instinct which is essentially
parental, a vital instinct, a desire to serve life, we will get out
of it just that same satisfaction which follows when we yield
to the prompting of any other instincts, whose satisfaction
satisfies themJust as in the1 case1 of the astronomer, the
labour given and the knowledge one day to be gained—so
here, the life one day to be made or saved—these are the in
volved reward. Beyond such reward as this, the Religion of
Life or the Ethics of Nature has none to, offer. But has any
ci her Religion or Creed the warrant to offer more; and is not
this enou.Q'h ?
�12
NATURAL
ETHICS
AND
EUGENICS.
Reprinted from the Ethics of Nature Review.]
The object of this lecture was to show that the* practical
principles of Eugenics are* not only compatible with, but are
the actual outcome of the moral evolution described in the
first lecture, and to explain the theory and practice of
Eugenics in their relation to human life.
“By Eugenics I understaind the project of making the
highest human beings possible.”
The chief factors in this
process, as especially named by Sir Francis Galton are
“Nature and Nurture.” The Eugenics which concerns itself
with the natural or hereditary causes, is called by Dr. Saleeby
the primary factor- The nurtural or environmental takes the
place of secondary factor.
This is inverting the* customary
order, where environment is generally represented as answer
ing most, if not the whole of the question.
But although
neither of the factors could stand without the other, Eugenists
on biological grounds insist that environment is distinctly
secondary.
Primary Eugenics must again be separately defined and sub
divided.
From the point of view of heredity it is evident
that'—assuming the existence of this fact—parenthood must
be encouraged on the part of the worthy. This is the first aim
of the Eugenist, and goes by the name of Positive Eugenics.
Secondly, it is quite evident that the converse of Positive
Eugenics must be to discourage' parenthood on the part of the
unworthy. This is known as Negative Eugenics. And
thirdly, the Eugenics which stands between healthy stocks*
and those prime causes of degeneration generally understood
to-day under the name of racial poisons, the Eugenics, in
short, which strives to keep the worthy worthy, is termed
Preventive Eugenics.
Now as regards the relation of Eugenics to the theory and
practice of Natural Ethics, Positive Eugenics, in the first
place, is a process evidently approved by Nature, being simply
the process of natural selection by which those beings who
�are capable of reproducing their species survive and multiply.
Only one point arises here, which has to be met: there are
some Eugenists (and Mr. Bernard Shaw is amongst the num
ber) who propose that this business of encouraging parent
hood oni the part of the1 worthy should be- carried out by the
abolition of marriage.
Marriage—and more especially
monogamous marriagei—is strictly in keeping with the prin
ciples of the Ethics of Nature Society, being conducive, not
to most life as concerns a high birth-rate, but certainly to
most life as concerns a low death-rate. Also', marriage makes
the father responsible psychologically and socially for his chil
dren; this aspect of monogamy has to be considered. Posi
tive Eugenics will endeavour to work through marriage, which
is a natural institution far older than any decree^ or church,
and to improve it for the Eugenic purpose. The chief method
of Positive Eugenics to-day, is education for parenthood. The
education of the young should be from the very start a pre
paration for parenthood, and should not cease, as it now
most commonly does, at that time when it is most needed;
namely, at the age of adolescence.
Negative Eugenics certainly has a natural sanction.
Natural selection might with equal truth be called. Natural
rejection. Now the question arises, are we to apply the- prin
ciple of Natural Rejection to mankind, with the object of
preventing the parenthood of the unworthy ? It would cer
tainly appear to be a natural proceeding.
But here- the
Ethics of Nature Society says: We are not to kill, on the
contrary, we are to fight for those who- cannot fight1 for them
selves; whereas Nature says these' are- to be exterminated.
This apparent opposition between the natural and the moral
course of action was dwelt upon at some length by Huxley,
in his Romanes Lecture, on “Evolution and Ethics.
In
this lecture he describes cosmic evolution as being a ruthless
process where life advances by means of a general slaughter,
and where it is merely a case of “each for himself and the devil
take the hindmost,.” Moral evolution, hei said, is the, absolute
antithesis to the natural; Moral evolution is the care of the
hindmost, and necessitates at all times a course- exactly o-ppo
site to the model we have in Nature.
There are different
opinions as to- Huxley’s reasons for expressing himself in this
�14
unjustifiable manner on a subject which he was obviously
viewing at the time in a totally false light. And perhaps the
simplest and clearest of all explanations is that this very Leer
ture was written at a period of unfortunate estrangement
between Herbert Spencer and Huxley, and may have been
meant deliberately to set at defiance the principles and tenets
of Herbert Spencer, who maintained that “ there is a natural
evolutionary basis for Ethics?’
Darwin, in his Origin of Species, confesses that we keep
alive numbers of persons who, by natural selection, would
certainly have been exterminated; but, he adds, in, this case
we cannot follow the natural model. And there Darwin left
it; there was this antinomy between the “natural” course
and man s higher nature, and although it was obviously a
wrong thing to let the degenerate multiply, Darwin felt that
we must be content to let him multiply, because we are under
a. moral obligation to keep him alive.
There are Eugenists when want us to, throw moral evolution
overboard, as being mere sentimentalism, and to go straight
for the destruction of the unfit by means of exposing degen
erate babies, as the Spartans did, by means of lethal chambers,
and by reverting to all the horrors, of our grandfathers’ time,
the gallows, chains, and death by starvation for the feeble
minded- These are: the Eugenistsi who take the sacred name
of Eugenics in vain. Eugenics has nothing to do with kill
ing anybody at any stage of life whatever.
Human life,
such as it may be, is a, sacred thing, and cannot, be1 treated
with contempt at any stage whatever of its development.
What the Eugenist may do; however, is> this; he, may distin
guish between the right to live and the right to become a
parent. And this is the simple solution which both Huxley
and Darwin missedIn this simple solution the antinomy
which both Huxley and Darwin saw between cosmic and
moral evolution disappears.
Negative Eugenics is going to proceed, first of all, along
the lines of killing nobody, and secondly, of taking' care of the
unfit under the best possible conditions.
The distinction
between the process of natural selection and the process advo
cated by Eugenists, might bei put thus: Eugenics replaces
a selective death-rate by a selective birth-rate.
Erom the
�15
point of view of philosophy and the Ethics of Nature Society,
this course of action furnishes thei solution of the apparent
antinomy between cosmic and natural evolution.
Passing to the third division of Eugenics, it seems that
whilst we try to encourage parenthood on the part of the
worthy, and to discourage it on the part of the unworthy,
we must be prepared also to oppose the degradation of healthy
stocks through contact with, or as a result of, racial poisons.
Of these poisonous agencies, there are some which we are
certain of; how many there may be that are yet unknown
remains to be proved.
Alcohol, lead, arsenic, phosphorus,
and one or two diseases are decidedly transmissible to the
future, commonly by direct transference from parent to off
spring.
These are the poisons which Eugenists must fight
against, and they are false to their creed and to' their great
mission, if they fail to do all they can to root them out. The
chief, most urgent, most important task seems to be to inter
fere with maternal alcoholism.
Eugenics has nothing to do with decrying attempts to im
prove environment. But unfortunately many Eugenists have
merely taken it up as an alternative programme to social re
form; also, in. these same hands, it has become a new instru
ment for the resurrection of snobbery, on the totally unwar
ranted view that certain classes, sections, or sets of society
are biologically or innately superior to others. No one has
yet adduced evidence to prove that what we call the “better”
classes are naturally better, though they certainly are better
looking, better fed, better rested. Nor has it yet been ascer
tained what would be the results of giving the food and
sleep of the better, to the lower class children.
Nurtural
advantages are responsible for most of, if not all, the
physical superiority of the upper as against the lower classes.
As to psychological superiority, evidence is absolutely nil.
It is said that a man’s way of spending his leisure gives the
man in his true light; and judging by the way in which the
“upper” classes spend their spare time, there is certainly no
indication of superiority.
Eugenics must not be taken as an alternative' to providing
the needful factors for a child, bom or unborn.
Only that
society is truly moral and well organised which makes
�16
provision for every child.
Adequate provision and
adequate nurture for every child, would be no great
tax on our purses, for it would bring as a natural
consequence the abolition of many prisons, hospitals,
and asylums.
It is curious that, whilst it is not Socialism
to spend money on hospitals for the care of tuberculous,
rickety, or otherwise diseased children, it is Socialism to spend
a fraction of this money on those children at an earlier stage
of their lives; though it is obviously much cleaner, cheaper,
and pleasanter to follow this method, than to continue in
cur present method of vainly attempting to1 cure what might
and should have been prevented.
In closing, Dr. Saleeby added that he considered the
Eugenic programme to consort completely with the canons' of
the Ethics of Nature Society.
Printed at tlie “Croydon Guardian11 Offices 145 and 147, North End Croyddii;
�
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Natural ethics in theory and practice : extracts from three lectures given for the Ethics of Nature Society
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Saleeby, Caleb Williams
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Place of publication: London
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i3'3'
*
NATIONALSECULARSOCIETY
, MO) 3
RIGHT AND WRONG:
THE SCIENTIFIC GROUND OF THEIR DISTINCTION.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 7tJi NOVEMBER,
1876.
BY
Professor W. K. CLIFFORD, F.R.S.
Reprinted from the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ by kind permission of the Editor.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1876. ’
Price Threepence.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE
SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually— from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 23rd April,
1876, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available-for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s.; being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter) to the
Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester
Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door One
(Reserved Seats) One Shilling.
Penny
Sixpence ;—and
�SYLLABUS.
We feel that, it is wrong to steal or tell lies, and right to
take care of our families ; .and that we are responsible for
our actions. The aggregate of such feelings we call.Conscience,
or the Moral Sense.
In this lecture it is proposed to consider what account can
be given of these facts by the scientific. method. This is a
method of getting knowledge by inference ; first of pheno
mena from phenomena, on the assumption of uniformity of
nature, and secondly of mental facts simultaneous with and
underlying these phenomena, on the assumption that other
men have feelings like mine. Each of these assumptions
rests on a moral basis; it is our duty to guide our beliefs in
this way.
A man is morally responsible for an action in so far as he
has a conscience which might direct it. Moral approbation
and reprobation are used as means of strengthening this con
science and bringing it to bear upon the action. The use of
this means involves the assumption that the man is the same
man at different times, i.e., that the effect of events is pre
served in his character ; and that his actions depend upon
his character and the circumstances. The notion of respon
sibility is founded on the observed uniformity of this connec
tion.
The question of right or wrong in a particular case is
primarily determined by the conscience of the individual.
The further question of what is the best conscience (the
question of abstract or absolute right) is only to be deter
mined by knowledge of the function or purpose of the con
�4
Syllabus.
science ; and this must be got at by study of its origin and
evolution. This leads to Mr. Darwin’s doctrine that the pur
pose of conscience is the advantage of the community as such
in the struggle for existence. There are two kinds of pur
pose : one due to natural selection, the survival of the best
adaptation, the other (design) due to a complex nervous
system in which an image or symbol of the end determines
the use of the means. The conscience must always be based
on an instinct serving a purpose of the first kind ; but it may
be directed by a purpose of the second kind.
Allegiance to the community, or piety, is thus the first
principle of morals. This involves the negative duty of
abstaining from obvious injury to others, and the positive
duty of being a good citizen in each department of life. It is
to be distinguished from altruism, and from a sentimental
shrinking from the idea of suffering.
Truth, or straightforwardness, is a consequence of piety,
and depends upon faith in man. The duty of searching after
truth is based upon the great importance to mankind of a
true conception of the universe. Belief is a sacred thing,
which must not be profanely wasted on unproved statements.
It is not necessary even for other people to believe what is
false in order to do what is right.
�RIGHT AND WRONG:
THE SCIENTIFIC GROUND OF THEIR DISTINCTION.
HE questions which are here to be considered are
especially and peculiarly everybody’s questions.
It is not everybody’s business to be an engineer, or a
doctor, or a carpenter, or a soldier ; but it is evervbody’s
business to be a citizen. The doctrines and precepts
which guide the practice of the good engineer are of inter
est to him who uses them and to those whose business it
is to investigate them by mechanical science ; the rest
■of us neither obey nor disobey them. But the doctrines
and precepts of morality, which guide the practice of
the good citizen, are of interest to all; they must be
either obeyed or disobeyed by every human being who
is not hopelessly and for ever separated from the rest of
mankind. No one can say, therefore, that in this inquiry
we are not minding our own business, that we are med
dling with other men’s affairs. We are in fact studying
the principles of our profession, so far as we are able;
a necessary thing for every man who wishes to do good
work in it.
Along with the character of universal interest which
belongs to our subject there goes another. What is
everybody’s practical business is also to a large extent
what everybody knows; and it may be reasonably ex
pected that a discourse about Right and W rong will be
full of platitudes and truisms. The expectation is a
just one. The considerations I have to offer are of the
very oldest and the very simplest commonplace and
common sense ; and no one can be more astonished than
I am that there should be any reason to speak of them
at all. But there is reason to speak of them, because
platitudes are not all of one kind. Some platitudes
have a definite meaning and a practical application, and
are established by the uniform and long-continued ex-
JL
B
�6
Right and Wrong.
perience of all people. Other platitudes, having 11»
definite meaning and no practical application, seem not
to be worth anybody’s while to test; and these are quite
sufficiently established by mere assertion, if it is auda
cious enough to begin with and persistent enough after
wards. It is in order to distinguish these two kinds of
platitude from one another, and to make sure that those
which we retain form a body of doctrine consistent with
itself and with the rest of our beliefs, that we undertake
this examination of obvious and widespread principles.
First of all, then, what are the facts ?
We say that it is wrong to murder, to steal, to tell
lies, and that it is right to take care of our families.
When we say in this sense that one action is right
and another wrong, we have a certain feeling towards
the action which is peculiar and not quite like any other
feeling. It is clearly a feeling towards the action and
not towards the man who does it; because we speak of
hating the sin and loving the sinner. We might reason
ably dislike a man whom we knew or suspected to be a
murderer, because of the natural fear that he might
murder us ; and we might like our own parents for
taking care of us. But everybody knows that these
feelings are something quite different from the feeling
which condemns murder as a wrong thing, and approves
parental care as a right thing. I say nothing here about
the possibility of analyzing this feeling, or proving that
it arises by combination of other feelings ; all I want to
notice is that it is as distinct and recognisable as the
feeling of pleasure in a sweet taste or of displeasure at
a toothache. In speaking of right and wrong, we speak
of qualities of actions which arouse definite feelings that
everybody knows and recognises. It is not necessary,
then, to give a definition at the outset; we are going to
use familiar terms which have a definite meaning in the
same sense in which everybody uses them. We may
ultimately come to something like a definition; but
what we have to do first is to collect the facts and see
what can be made of them, just as if we were going to
talk about limestone, or parents and children, or fuel.
*
* These subjects were treated in the lectures which immediately preceded
and followed the present one.
�Right and PFrong.
7
It is easy to conceive that murder and theft and
neglect of the young might be considered wrong in a
very simple state of society. But we find at present
that the condemnation of these actions does not stand
alone; it goes with the condemnation of a great number
of other actions which seem to be included with the ob
viously criminal action in a sort of general rule. The
wrongness of murder, for example, belongs in a less
degree to any form of bodily injury that one man may
inflict on another ; and it is even extended so as to in
clude injuries to his reputation or his feelings. I make
these more refined precepts follow in the train of the
more obvious and rough ones, because this appears to
have been the traditional order of their establishment.
“ He that makes his neighbour blush in public,” says the
Mishna, “ is as if he had shed his blood.” In the same
way the rough condemnation of stealing carries with it a
condemnation of more refined forms of dishonesty: we
do not hesitate to say that it is wrong for a tradesman
to adulterate his goods, or for a labourer to scamp his
work. We not only say that it is wrong to tell lies, but
that it is wrong to deceive in other more ingenious ways;
wrong to use words so that they shall have one sense to
some people and another sense to other people ; wrong
to suppress the truth when that suppression leads to
false belief in others. And again, the duty of parents
towards their children is seen to be a special case of a
very large and varied class of duties towards that great
family to which we belong—to the fatherland and them
that dwell therein. The word duty which I have here
used, has as definite a sense to the general mind as the
words right and wrong; we say that it is right to do our
duty, and wrong to neglect it. These duties to the
community serve in our minds to explain and define our
duties to individuals. It is wrong to kill any one ; unless
we are an executioner, when it may be our duty to kill a
Criminal; or a soldier, when it may be our duty to kill
the enemy of our country ; and in general it is wrong to
injure any man in any way in our private capacity and
for our own sakes. Thus if a man injures us, it is only
right to retaliate on behalf of other men. Of two men
in a desert island, if one takes away the other’s cloak, it
�8
Right and Wrong.
may or may not be right for the other to let him have
his coat also ; but if a man takes away my cloak while
we both live in society, it is my duty to use such means
as I can to prevent him from taking away other people’s
cloaks. Observe that I am endeavouring to describe
the facts of the moral feelings of Englishmen, such as
they are now.
The last remark leads us to another platitude of ex
ceedingly ancient date. We said that it was wrong to
injure any man in our private capacity and for our own
sakes. A rule like this differs from all the others that
we have considered, because it not only deals with phy
sical acts, words and deeds which can be observed and
known by others, but also with thoughts which are
known only to the man himself. Who can tell whether a
given act of punishment was done from a private or from
a public motive ? Only the agent himself. And yet if
the punishment was just and within the law, we should
condemn the man in the one case and approve him. m the
other. This pursuit of the actions of men to their very
sources, in the feelings which they only can know, is as
ancient as any morality we know of, and extends to the
whole range of it. Injury to another man arises from
anger, malice, hatred, revenge; these feelings are. con
demned as wrong. But feelings are not immediately
under our control, in the same way that, overt actions
are : I can shake anybody by the hand if I like, but 1
cannot always feel friendly to him. Nevertheless we
can pay attention to such aspects of the circumstances,
and we can put ourselves into such conditions, that our
feelings get gradually modified in one way or the.other;
we form a habit of checking our anger by calling up
certain images and considerations, whereby in time the
offending passion is brought into subjection and control.
Accordingly, we say that it is right to acquire and to exer
cise this control; and the control is supposed to exist when
ever we say that one feeling or disposition of mind is right
and another wrong. Thus, in connection with the pre
cept against stealing, we condemn envy, and covetous
ness ; we applaud a sensitive honesty which shudders, at
anything underhand or dishonourable. In connection
with the rough precept against lying, we have built up
�Right and Wrong.
9
and are still building a great fabric of intellectual.mora
lity, whereby a man is forbidden to tell lies to himself,
and is commanded to practise candour and fairness and
open-mindedness in his judgments, and to labour zea
lously in pursuit of the truth. And in connection with
the duty to our families, we say that it is right to culti
vate public spirit, a quick sense of sympathy, and all that
belongs to a social disposition.
Two other words are used in this connection which it
seems necessary to mention. When we regard an action
as right or wrong for ourselves, this feeling about the
action impels us to do it or not to do it, as the case may
be. We may say that the moral sense acts in this case as
a motive ; meaning by moral sense only the feeling in
regard to an action which is considered as right or
wrong, and by motive something which impels us to act.
Of course there may be other motives at work at the
same time, and it does not at all follow that we shall do
the right action or abstain from the wrong one. This
we all know to our cost. But still our feeling about the
rightness or wrongness of an action does operate as a
motive when we think of the action as being done by us ;
and when so operating it is called conscience. I have
nothing to do at present with the questions about con
science, whether it is a result of education, whether it
can be explained by self-love, and so forth ; I am only
concerned in describing well-known facts, and in getting
as clear as I can about the meaning of well-known words.
Conscience, then, is the whole aggregate of our feelings
about actions as being right or wrong, regarded as tend
ing to make us do the right actions and avoid the wrong
ones. We also say sometimes, in answer to the question,
“ How do you know that this is right or wrong ? ” “ My
conscience tells me so.” And this way of speaking is
quite analogous to other expressions of the same form;
thus if I put my hand into water, and you ask me how I
know that it is hot, I might say, “ My feeling of warmth
tells me so.”
When we consider a right or a wrong action as done
by another person, we think of that person as worthy of
moral approbation or reprobation. He may be punished
or not; but in any case this feeling towards him is quite
�IO
Right and Wrong.
different from the feeling of dislike of a person injurious
to us, or of disappointment at a machine which will not
go. Whenever we can morally approve or disapprove a
man for his action, we say that he is morally responsible
for it, and vice versa. To say that a man is not morally
responsible for his actions, is the same thing as to say
that it would be unreasonable to praise or blame him for
them.
The statement that we ourselves are morally respon
sible is somewhat more complicated, but the meaning is
very easily made out; namely, that another person may
reasonably regard our actions as right or wrong, and
may praise or blame us for them.
We can now, I suppose, understand one another pretty
clearly in using the words right and wrong, conscience,
responsibility; and we have made a rapid survey of the
facts of the case in our own country at the present time.
Of course I do not pretend that this survey in any way
approaches to completeness; but it will supply us at
least with enough facts to enable us to deal always with
concrete examples instead of remaining in generalities ;
and it may serve to show pretty fairly what the moral
sense of an Englishman is like. We must next consider
what account we can give of these facts by the scientific
method.
But first let us stop to note that we really have used
the scientific method in making this first step; and also
that to the same extent the method has been used by all
serious moralists. Some would have us define virtue, to
begin with, in terms of some other thing which is not
virtue, and then work out from our definition all the de
tails of what we ought to do. So Plato said that virtue was
knowledge, Aristotle that it was the golden mean, and
Benthan} said that the right action was that which con
duced to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
But so also, in physical speculations ; Thales said that
everything was Water, and Heraclitus said it was All
becoming, and Empedocles said it was made’out of Four
Elements, and Pythagoras said it was Number. But we
only began to know about things when people looked
straight at the facts, and made what they could out of
them; and that is the only way in which we can know
�Right and Wrong.
II
anything about right and wrong. Moreover, it is the
way in which the great moralists have set to work, when
they came to treat of verifiable things and not of
theories all in the air. A great many people think of
a prophet as a man who, all by himself, or from some
secret source, gets the belief that this thing is right and
that thing wrong. And then (they imagine) he gets
up. and goes about persuading other people to feel as
he does about it; and so it becomes a part of their con
science, and a new duty is created. This may be in some
*
cases, but I have never met with any example of it in
history. When Socrates puzzled the Greeks by asking
them what they precisely meant by Goodness and Justice
and Virtue, the mere existence of the words shows that
the people, as a whole, possessed a moral sense, and
felt that certain things were right and others wrong.
What the moralist did was to show the connection be
tween different virtues, the likeness of virtue to certain
other things, the implications which a thoughtful man
could find in the common language. Wherever the
Greek moral sense had come from, it was there in the
people before it could be enforced by a prophet or dis
cussed by a philosopher. Again, we find a wonderful
collection of moral aphorisms in those shrewd sayings of
the Jewish fathers which are preserved in the Mishna
or oral law. Some of this teaching is familiar to us all
from the popular exposition of it which is contained in
the three first Gospels. But the very plainness and
homeliness of the precepts shows that, they are just
acute statements of what was already felt by the popular
■common sense; protesting, in many cases, against the for
malism of the ceremonial law with which,they arecuriously
mixed up. The rabbis even show a jealousy of prophetic
interference, as if they knew well that it takes not one
man, but many men, to feel what is right. When a cer
tain Rabbi Eliezer, being worsted in argument, cried
out,, “ If I am right, let heaven pronounce in my favour 1”
there was heard a Bath-kol or voice from the skies, say
ing, “ Do you venture to dispute with Rabbi Eliezer,
who is an authority on all religious questions ? ” But ,
Rabbi Joshua rose and said, “ Our law is not in heaven,
but in the book which dates from , Sinai, and, which j,
�12
Right and Wrong.
teaches us that in matters of discussion the majority"
makes the law.”*
One of the most important expressions of the moral
sense for all time is that of the Stoic philosophy, espe
cially after its reception among the Romans. It is here
that we find the enthusiasm of humanity—the caritas
generis liumani—which is so large and important a
feature in all modern conceptions of morality, and whose
widespread influence upon Roman citizens may be traced
in the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Stoic emperors, also,
we find probably the earliest example of great moral
principles consciously applied to legislation on a large
scale. But are we to attribute this to the individual in
sight of the Stoic philosophers ? It might seem at first
sight that we must, if we are to listen to that vulgar vitu
peration of the older culture, which has descended to us
from those who had everything to gain by its destruc
tion.f We hear enough of the luxurious feasting of the
Roman capital, how it would almost have taxed the
resources of a modern pastrycook; of the cruelty of
gladiatorial shows, how they were nearly as bad as autida-fe, except that a man had bis fair chance, and was
* Treatise Bab. bathr. 59. b. I derive this story and reference from a
most interesting book, Koi K6re (vox clamantis), La Bible, le Talmud, et
l’Evangile; par le R. Elie Soloweyczyk. Paris : E. Brifere. 1870.
+ Compare these passages from Merivale (‘ Romans under the Empire,’
vi.), to whom “ it seems a duty to protest against the common tendency of
Christian moralists to dwell only on the dark side of Pagan society, in order
to heighten by contrast the blessings of the Gospel.”
“Much candour and discrimination are required in comparing the sins of
one age with those of another................. the cruelty of our inquisitions
and sectarian persecutions, of our laws against sorcery, our serfdom and
our slavery; the petty fraudulence we tolerate in almost every class and
calling of the community; the bold front worn by our open sensuality; the
deeper degradation of that which is concealed; all these leave us little
room for boasting of our modern discipline, and must deter the thoughtful
inquirer from too confidently contrasting the morals of the old world and
the new.”
“ Even at Rome, in the worst of times. ... all the relations of life
were adorned in turn with bright instances of devotion, and mankind
transacted their business with an ordinary confidence in the force of con
science and right reason. The steady development of enlightened legal
principles conclusively proves the general dependence upon law as a guide
and corrector of manners. In the camp, however, more especially as the
chief sphere of this purifying activity, the great qualities of the Roman
character continued to be plainly manifested. The history of the Caesars
presents to us a constant succession of brave, patient, resolute, and faithful
soldiers, men deeply impressed with a sense of duty, superior to vanity,
despisers of boasting, content to toil in obscurity and shed their blood at
the frontiers of the empire, unrepining at the cold mistrust of their masters,
not clamourous for the honours so sparingly awarded to them, but satisfied
in the daily work of their hands, and full of faith in the national destiny
which they were daily accomplishing.”
�Right and Wrong.
13
not tortured for torture’s sake ; of the oppression of
provincials by people like Verres, of whom it may even
be said that if they had been the East India Company
they could not have been worse; of the complaints of
Tacitus against bad and mad emperors (as Sir Henry
Maine says) ; and of the still more serious complaints of
the modern historian against the excessive taxation
*
which was one great cause of the fall of the empire.
Of all this we are told a great deal; but we are not told
of the many thousands of honourable men who carried
civilisation to the ends of the known world, and adminis
tered a mighty empire so that it was loved and worshipped
to the furthest corner of it. It is to these men and their
common action that we must attribute the morality
which found its organised expression in the writings of
the Stoic philosophers. From these three cases we may
gather that Right is a thing which must be done before
it can be talked about, although after that it may only
too easily be talked about without being done. . Indivi
dual effort and energy may insist upon getting that
done which was already felt to be right; and individual
insight and acumen may point out consequences of an
action which bring it under previously known moral
rules. There is another dispute of the rabbis that may
serve to show what is meant by this. It was forbidden
by the law to have any dealings with the Sabasan idola
ters during the week preceding their idolatrous feasts.
But the doctors discussed the case in which one of these
idolaters owes you a bill; are you to let him pay it
during that week or not ? The school of Shammai said
“ No ; for he will want all his money to enjoy himself at
the feast.” But the school of Hillel said “ Yes, let him
pay it; for how can he enjoy his feast while his bills are
unpaid ?” The question here is about the consequences
of an action; but there is no dispute about the moral
principle, which is that consideration and kindness are
to be shown to idolaters, even in the matter of their
idolatrous rites.
It seems, then, that we are no worse off than anybody
else who has studied this subject, in finding our mate
rials ready made for us; sufficiently definite meanings
* Finlay, ‘ Greece under the Romans.’
�Right and Wrong.
given in the common speech to the words right and
wrong, good and bad, with which we have to deal; a
fair body of facts familiarly known, which we have to
organise and account for as best we can. But our
special inquiry is, what account can be given of these
facts by the scientific method ? to which end we cannot
do better than fix our ideas as well as we can upon the
character and scope of that method.
Now the scientific method is a method of getting
knowledge by inference, and that of two different kinds.
One kind of inference is that which is used in the phy
sical and natural sciences, and it enables us to go from
known phenomena to unknown phenomena. Because a
stone is heavy in the morning, I infer that it will be
heavy in the afternoon; and i infer this by assuming a
certain uniformity of nature. The sort of uniformity
that I assume depends upon the extent of my scientific
education; the rules of inference become more and more
definite as we go on. At first I might assume that all
things are always alike; this would not be true, but it
has to be assumed in a vague way, in order that a thing
may have the same name at different times. Afterwards
I get the more definite belief that certain particular
qualities, like weight, have nothing to do with the time
of day; and subsequently I find that weight has nothing
to do with the shape of the stone, but only with the
quantity of it. The uniformity which we assume, then,
isnot that vague one that we started with, but a chastened
and corrected uniformity. I might go on to suppose, for
example, that the weight of the stone had nothing to do
with the place where it was ; and a great deal might be
said for this supposition. It would, however, have to be
corrected when it was found that the weight varies
slightly in different latitudes. On the other hand, I
should find that this variation was just the same for my
stone as for a piece of iron or wood; that it had nothing
to do with the kind of matter. And so I might be led
to the conclusion that all matter is heavy, and that the
weight of it depends only on its quantity and its position
relative to the earth. You see here that I go on arriving
at conclusions always of this form; that some one cir
cumstance or quality has nothing to do with some other
�Right and Wrong.
*5x
circumstance or quality. I begin by assuming that it is
independent of everything; I end by finding . that it is
independent of some definite things. That is, I begin
by assuming a vague uniformity, and I end by assuming
a clear and definite uniformity. I always use this assump
tion to infer from some one fact a .great number of other
facts ; but as my education proceeds, I get to know what
sort of things may be inferred and what may not. An
observer of scientific mind takes note of just those things
from which inferences may be drawn, and passes by the
rest. If an astronomer, observing the sun, were to record
the fact that at the moment when a sun-spot began to
shrink there was a rap at his front door, we should know
that he was not up to his work. But if he records that
sun-spots are thickest every eleven years, and that this
is. also the period of extra cloudiness in Jupiter, the
observation may or may not be confirmed, and it may or
may not lead to inferences of importance; but still it is
the kind of thing from which inferences may be drawn.
There is always a certain instinct among instructed people
which tells them in this way what kinds of inferences
my be drawn; and this is. the unconscious effect of the
definite uniformity which they have been led to assume
in nature. It may subsequently be organised into a law
or general truth, and no doubt becomes a surer guide by.
that process. Then it goes to form the more precise
instinct of the next generation.
What we have said about this first kind of inference,
which goes from phenomena to phenomena, is shortly this.
It proceeds upon an assumption of uniformity in nature ;
and this assumption is not fixed and made once for all,
but is. a changing and growing thing, becoming more
definite as we go on.
If I were told to pick out some one character which
especially colours this guiding conception of uniformity
in our present stage of science, I should certainly reply,
Atomism. The form of this with which we are most
familiar is the molecular theory of bodies; which repre
sents all bodies as made up of small elements of uniform ,
character, each practically having relations only with the,
adjacent ones, and these relations the same all through
—namely, some simple mechanical action upon each
�i6
Right and Throng.
other’s motions. But this is only a particular case. A
palace, a cottage, the tunnel of the underground railway,
and a factory chimney, are all built of bricks ; the bricks
are alike in all these cases, each brick is practically
related only to the adjacent ones, and the relation is
throughout the same, namely, two flat sides are stuck
together with mortar. There is an atomism in the sci
ences of number, of quantity, of’space; the theorems of
geometry are groupings of individual points, each related
only to the adjacent ones by certain definite laws. But
what concerns us chiefly at present is the atomism
of human physiology. Just as every solid is built up of
molecules, so the nervous system is built up of nerve
threads and nerve-corpuscles. We owe to Mr. Lewes our
very best thanks for the stress which he has laid on the
doctrine that nerve-fibre is uniform in structure and func
tion, and for the word neurility, which expresses its com
mon properties. And similar gratitude is due to Dr.
Hughlings Jackson for his long defence of the proposition
that the element of nervous structure and function is a
sensori-motor process. In structure, this is two fibres
or bundles of fibres going to the same grey corpuscle ; in
function it is a message travelling up one fibre or bundle
to the corpuscle, and then down the other fibre or bundle.
*
Out of this, as a brick, the house of our life is built. All
these simple elementary processes are alike, and each is
practically related only to the adjacent ones; the relation
being in all cases of the same kind, viz., the passage from
a simple to a complex message, or vice versa.
The result of atomism in any form, dealing with any
subject, is that the principle of uniformity is hunted
down into the elements of things ; it is resolved into the
uniformity of these elements or atoms, and of the rela
tions of those which are next to each other. By an ele
ment or an atom we do not here mean something
absolutely simple or indivisible, for a molecule, a brick,
and a nerve process are all very complex things. We
only mean that, for the purpose in hand, the properties
of the still more complex thing which is made of them
have nothing to do with the complexities or the differ* Mr. Herbert Spencer bad assigned a slightly different element. Prin
ciples of Psychology, vol. 1, p. 28.
�Right and Wrong.
17
ences of these elements. The solid made of molecules,
the house made of bricks, the nervous system made of
sensori-motor processes, are nothing more than collec
tions of these practically uniform elements, having cer
tain relations of nextness, and behaviour uniform y
depending on that nextness.
,
The inference of phenomena from phenomena, then, is
based upon an assumption of uniformity, which m the
present stage of science may be called an atomic uni-
The^other mode of inference which belongs to the
scientific method is that which is used in what are called
mental and moral sciences ; and it enables us to go from
phenomena to the facts which underlie phenomena, and
which are themselves not phenomena at all. it 1 pmch
your arm, and you draw it away and make a face, I infer
that you have felt pain. I infer this by assuming that
you have a consciousness similar to my own, and related
to your perception of your body as my consciousness is
related to my perception of my body. Now is this
the same assumption as before, a mere assumption o
the uniformity of nature ? It certainly seems like it at
first • but if we think about it we shall find that there is
a very profound difference between them. In physical
inference I go from phenomena to phenomena ; that is,
from the knowledge of certain appearances or represen
tations actually present to my mind I infer certain other
appearances that might be present to my mind. I rom
the weight of a stone in the morning—that is, from my
feeling of its weight, or my perception of the process of
weighing it, I infer that the stone will be heavy mthe
afternoon—that is, I infer the possibility of similar feel
ings and perceptions in me at another time. The whole
process relates to me and my perceptions, to things con
tained in my mind. But when I infer that you are
conscious from what you say or do, I pass from that
which is my feeling or perception, which is in my mind
and part of me, to that which is not my feeling at all
which is outside me altogether, namely your feelings and
perceptions. Now there is no possible physical inference,
no inference of phenomena from phenomena, that will
help me over that gulf. I am obliged to admit that this
�18
Right and Wrong.
second kind of inference depends upon another assump
tion, not included in the assumption of the uniformity of
phenomena.
How does a dream differ from waking life ? In a
fairly coherent dream everything seems quite real, and
it is rare, I think, with most people to know in a dream
that they are dreaming. Now, if a dream is sufficiently
vivid and coherent, all physical inferences are just as
valid in it as they are in waking life. In a hazy or im
perfect dream, it is true, things melt into one another
unexpectedly and unaccountably ; we fly, remove moun
tains, and stop runaway horses with a finger. But there’
is nothing in the mere nature of a dream to hinder it
from being an exact copy of waking experience. If I find
a stone heavy in one part of my dream, and infer that it
is heavy at some subsequent part, the inference will be
verified if the dream is coherent enough; I shall go to
the stone, lift it up, and find it as heavy as before. And
the same thing is true of all inferences of phenomena
from phenomena. For physical purposes a dream is just
as good as real life; the only difference is in vividness
and coherence.
What, then, hinders us from Saying that life is all-a
dream ? If the phenomena we dream of are just as good
and real phenomena as those we see and feel when we
are awake, what right have we to say that the material
universe has any more existence apart from our minds than
the things we see and feel in our dreams ? The answer
which Berkeley gave to that question was, No right at
all. The physical universe which I see and feel and
infer, is just my dream and nothing else; that which you
see is your dream ; only it so happens that all our dreams
agree in many respects. This doctrine of Berkeley’s has
now been so far confirmed by the physiology of the
senses, that it is no longer a metaphysical speculation
*
but a scientifically established fact.
But there is a difference between dreams and waking
life, which is of far too great importance for any of us to
be in danger of neglecting it. When I see a man in my
-dream, there is just as good'a body as if I were awake;
muscles, nerves, circulation, capability of adapting means
to ends. If only the dream is coherent enough, no
�Right and Wrong.
*9
physical test can establish that it is a dream. In both
cases I see and feel the same thing. In both cases I
assume the existence of more than I can see and feel,
namely the consciousness of this other man. Bnt now
here is a great difference, and the only difference: in a
dream this assumption is wrong ; in waking life, it is
right. The man I see in my dream is a mere machine; a
bundle of phenomena with no underlying reality ; there
is no consciousness involved except my consciousness,,
no feeling in the case except my feelings. The man I
see in waking life is more than a bundle of phenomena ;
his body and its actions are phenomena, but these pheno
mena are merely the symbols and representatives in my
mind of a reality which is outside my mind, namely, the
consciousness of the man himself which is represented by
the working of his brain, and the simpler quasi-mental
facts, not woven into his consciousness, which are
represented by the working of the rest of his body.
What makes life not to be a dream is the existence of
those facts which we arrive at by our second process
of inference ; the consciousness of men and the higher
animals, the sub-consciousness of lower organisms, and
the quasi-mental facts which go along with the motions
of inanimate matter. In a book which is very largely
and deservedly known by heart, ‘Through the Looking
glass,’ there is a very instructive discussion upon this
point, Alice has been taken to see the Bed King as he
lies snoring; and Tweedledee asks, “ Do you know what
he is dreaming about?” “Nobody can guess that,”
replies Alice. “ Why, about you,” he says triumphantly.
“ And if he stopped dreaming about you, where do you
suppose you’d be?” “Where I am now, of course,”
said Alice. “Not you,” said Tweedledee, “you’d be
nowhere. You are only a sort of thing in his dream.”
“If that there King was to wake,” added Tweedledum,
“ you’d go out, bang! just like a candle.” Alice was
quite right in regarding these remarks as unphilosophical.
The fact that she could see, think, and feel was proof
positive that she was not a sort of thing in anybody’s
dream. This is the meaning of that saying, Cogito ergo
sum, of Descartes. By him, and by Spinoza after him,
the verb cogito and the substantive cogitatio were used to
�20
Right and Wrong.
denote consciousness in general, any kind of feelinoeven what we now call subconsciousness. The saying
means that feeling exists in and for itself, not as a
quality or modification or state or manifestation of any
thing else.
We are obliged in every hour of our lives to act upon
beliefs which have been arrived at by inferences of these
two kinds ; inferences based on the assumption of uni
formity in nature, and inferences which add to this the
assumption of feelings which are not our own. By orga
nising the “common sense ” which embodies the first
class of inferences, we build up the physical sciences;
that is to say, all those sciences which deal with the phy
sical, material, or phenomenal universe, whether animate
or inanimate. And so by organising the common
sense which embodies the second class of inferences, we
build up various sciences of mind. The description and
classification of feelings, the facts of their association
with each other, and of their simultaneity with pheno
mena of nerve-action, all this belongs to psychology,
which may be historical and comparative. The doctrine
of certain special classes of feeling's is organized into
the special sciences of those feelings; thus the facts
about the feelings which we are now considering, about
the feelings of moral approbation and reprobation, are
organized into the science of ethics, and the facts about
the feeling of beauty or ugliness are organized into the
science of aesthetics, or, as it is sometimes called, the
philosophy of art. For all of these the uniformity of
nature has to be assumed as a basis of inference; but
over and above that it is necessary to assume that other
men are conscious in the same way that I am. Now in
these sciences of mind, just as in the physical sciences,
the uniformity which is assumed in the inferred mental
facts is a growing thing which becomes more definite as
we go on, and each successive generation of observers
knows better what to observe and what sort of inferences
may be drawn from observed things. But, moreover, it
is as true of the mental sciences as of the physical ones,
that the uniformity is in the present stage of science an
atomic uniformity. We have learned to regard our
consciousness as made up of elements practically alike,
�Right and Wrong.
21
having relations of succession in time and of contiguity
at each instant, which relations are in all cases practi
cally the same. The element of consciousness is the
transference of an impression into the beginning of
action. Our mental life is a structure made out of such
elements just as the working of our nervous system is
made out of sensorimotor processes. And accordingly
the interaction of the two branches of science leads us
to regard the mental facts as the realities or things-inthemselves, of which the material phenomena are mere
pictures or symbols. The final result seems to be that
atomism is carried beyond phenomena into the realities
which phenomena represent; and that the observed uni
formities of nature, in so far as they can be expressed
in the language of atomism, are actual uniformities of
things in themselves.
So much for the two things which I have promised to
bring together; the facts of our moral feelings, and
the scientific method. It may appear that the latter
has been expounded at more length than was necessary
for the treatment of this particular subject; but the
justification for this length is to be found in certain
common objections to the claims of science to be the
sole judge of mental and moral questions. Some of the
chief of these objections I will now mention.
It is sometimes said that science can only deal
with what is, but that art and morals deal with what
ought to be. The saying is perfectly true, but it is
quite consistent with what is equally true, that the
facts of art and morals are fit subject-matter of science.
I may describe all that I have in my house, and I may
state everything that I want in my house ; these are two
very different things, but they are equally statements of
facts. One is a statement about phenomena, about the
objects which are actually in my possession ; the other
is a statement about my feelings, about my wants and
desires. There are facts, to be got at by common sense,
about the kind of thing that a man of a certain character
and occupation will like to have in his house, and these
facts may be organized into general statements on the
assumption of uniformity in nature. Now the organized
results of common sense dealing with facts are just
�22
Right and Wrong.
science and nothing else. And. in the same way I may
say what men do at the present day, “ how we live now,”
or I may say what we ought to do, namely, what course
of conduct, if adopted, we should morally approve ; and
no doubt these would be two- very different things.
But each of them would be a- statement of facts. One
would belong to the sociology of our time; in so far
as men’s deeds could not be adequately described to
us without some account of their feelings and inten
tions, it would involve facts belonging to psychology as
well as facts belonging to the physical sciences. But
the other would be an account of a particular class of
our feelings^ namely, those which we feel towards an
action when it is regarded as right or wrong. These
facts may be organized by common sense on the assump
tion of uniformity in nature just as well as any other
facts. And we shall see farther on, that not only in this
sense, but in a deeper and more abstract sense, “ what
ought to be done ” is a question for scientific inquiry.
The same objection is sometimes put into another
form. It is said that laws of chemistry, for example,
are general statements about what happens when bodies
are treated in a certain way, and that such laws are fit
matter for science; but that moral laws are different,
because they tell us to do certain things, and we may or
may not obey therm The mood of the one is indicative,
of the other imperative. Now it is quite true that the
word
in the expression “ law of nature,” and in the
expressions “ law of morals,” “law of the land,” has two
totally different meanings, which no educated person
will confound; and I am not aware that any one has
rested the claim of science to judge moral questions on
what is no better than a stale and unprofitable pun.
But two different things may be equally matters of
scientific investigation, even when their names are alike
in sound, A telegraph post is not the same thing as a
post in the War Office, and yet the same intelligence
may be used to investigate the conditions of the one and
the other. That such and such things are right or
wrong, that such and such laws are laws of morals or
laws; of the land, these are facts, just, as the laws of
chemistry are facts; and all facts belong to science, and
are her portion for ever.
�Again, it is sometimes Said that moral questions have
been authoritatively settled by other methods; that we
ought to accept this decision, and not to question it by
any method of scientific inquiry; and that reason should
give way to revelation On such matters. I hope before
I have done to show just cause why we Should pronounce
*
on such teaching aS this no light sentence of moral con
demnation : first, because it is our duty to form those
beliefs which are to guide our actions by the two
scientific modes of inference, and by these alone; and,
secondly, because the proposed mode of settling ethical
questions by authority is contrary to the very nature of
right and wrong.
Leaving this, then, for the present, I pass on to the
most formidable objection that has been made to a
scientific treatment of ethics. The objection is that the
scientific method is not applicable to human action,
because the rule of uniformity does not hold good.
Whenever a man exercises his will, and makes a volun
tary choice of one out of various possible courses, an
event occurs whose relation to contiguous events cannot
be included in a general statement applicable to all
similar cases. There is something wholly capricious and
disorderly, belonging to that moment only; and we have
no right to conclude that if the circumstances were ex
actly repeated, and the man himself absolutely unaltered,
he would choose the same course.
It is clear that if the doctrine here stated is true, the
ground is really cat from under our feet, and we cannot
deal with human action by the scientific method. I
shall endeavour to show, moreover, that in this case,
although we might still have a feeling of moral appro
bation or reprobation towards actions, yet we could not
reasonably praise or blame men for their deeds, nor
regard them as morally responsible. So that, if my
contention is just, to deprive us of the scientific method
is practically to deprive us of morals altogether. On
both grounds, therefore, it is of the greatest importance
that we should define our position in regard to this con
troversy; if, indeed, that can be called a controversy in
which the practical belief of all mankind and the consent
of nearly all serious writers' are on one side.
�24
Right and Wrong.
Let us in the first place consider a little more closely
the connection between conscience and responsibility.
Words in common use, such as these two, have their
meanings practically fixed before difficult controversies
arise; but after the controversy has arisen, each party
gives that slight tinge to the meaning which best suits
its own view of the question. Thus it appears to each
that the common language obviously supports that view,
that this is the natural and primary view of the matter,
and that the opponents are using words in a new mean
ing and wresting them from their proper sense. Now
this is just my position. I have endeavoured so far to
use all words in their common every-day sense, only
making this as precise as I can; and, with two excep
tions, of which due warning will be given, I shall do my
best to continue this practice in future. I seem to my
self to be talking the most obvious platitudes; but it
must be remembered that those who take the opposite
view will think I am perverting the English language.
There is a common meaning of the word “ responsible,”
which though not the same as that of the phrase “ mo
rally responsible,” may throw some light upon it. If
we say of a book, “A is responsible for the preface and
the first half, and B is responsible for the rest,” we mean
that A wrote the preface and the first half. If two
people go into a shop and choose a blue silk dress to
gether, it might be said that A was responsible for its
being silk and B for its being blue. Before they chose,
the dress was undetermined both in colour and in material.
A’s choice fixed the material, and then it was undeter
mined only in colour. B’s choice fixed the colour ; and
if we suppose that there were no more variable condi
tions (only one blue silk dress in the shop), the dress was
then completely determined. In this sense of the word
we say that a man is responsible for that part of an event
which was undetermined when he was left out of account,
and which became determined when he was taken account
of. Suppose two narrow streets, one lying north and
south, one east and west, and crossing one another. A
man is put down where they cross, and has to walk.
Then he must walk either north, south, east, or west,
and he is not responsible for that; what he is responsi-
�Right and Wrong.
25
hie for is the choice of one of these four directions.
May we not say in the present sense of the word that
the external circumstances are responsible for the restric
tion on his choice? we should mean only that the fact
of his going in one or other of the four directions was
due to external circumstances, and not to him. Again,
suppose I have a number of punches of various shapes,
some square, some oblong, some oval, some round, and
that I am going to punch a hole in a piece of paper.
Where I shall punch the hole may be fixed by any kind
of circumstances ; but the shape of the hole depends on
the punch I take. May we say that the punch is lesponsible for the shape of the hole, but not for the posi
tion of it ?
It may be said that this is not the whole of the mean
ing of the word “ responsible,” even in its loosest sense ;
that it ought never to be used except of a conscious
agent. Still this is part of its meaning; if we regard
an event as determined by a variety of circumstances, a
man’s choice being among them, we say that he is
responsible for just that choice which is left him by the
other circumstances.
When we ask the practical question, “ Who is respon
sible for so-and-so ?” we want to find out who is to be
got at in order that so-and-so may be altered. If I want
to change the shape of the hole I make in my paper, I
must change my punch; but this will be of no use if I
want to change the position of the hole. If I want the
colour of the dress changed from blue to green, it is B,
and not A, that I must persuade.
We mean something more than this when we say that
a man is morally responsible for an action. It seems to
me that moral responsibility and conscience go together,
both in regard to the man and in regard to the action.
In order that a man may be morally responsible for an
action, the man must have a conscience, and the action
must be one in regard to which conscience is capable of
acting as a motive, that is, the action must be capable of
being right or wrong. If a child were left on a desert
island and grew up wholly without a conscience, and
then were brought among men, he would not be morally
responsible for his actions until he had acquired a con
�2.6
Right and Wrong.
science by education. He would of course be responsible
m the sense just explained, for that part of them which
was left undetermined by external circumstances, and if
we wanted to alter his actions in these respects we
should have to do it by altering him. But it would be
useless and unreasonable to attempt to do this by means
of praise or blame, the expression of moral approbation
or disapprobation, until he had acquired a conscience
which could be worked upon by such means.
It seems, then, that in order that a man may be
morally responsible for an action, three things are ne
cessary :—
1. He might have done something else; that is to sayz
the action was not wholly determined by external cir
cumstances, and he is responsible only for the choice
which was left him.
2. He had a conscience.
3. The action was one in regard to the doing or not
doing of which conscience might be a sufficient motive.
These three things are necessary, but it does not fol
low that they are sufficient. It is very commonly said
that the action must be a voluntary one. It will be
found, I think, that this is contained in my third con
dition, and also that the form of statement I have
adopted exhibits more clearly the reason why the con
dition is necessary. We may say that an action is in
voluntary either when it is instinctive, or when one
motive is so strong that there is no voluntary choice
between motives. An involuntary cough produced by
irritation of the glottis is no proper subject for blame or
praise. A man is not responsible for it because it is
done by a part of his body without consulting him.
What is meant by him in thia case will require further
investigation. Again, when a dipsomaniac has so great
and overmastering an inclination to drink that we cannot
conceive of conscience being strong enough to conquer
it, he is not responsible for that act, though he may
be responsible for having got himself into the state..
But if it is conceivable that a very strong conscience
fully brought to bear might succeed in conquering the
inclination, we may take a lenient view of the fall and
say there was a very strong temptation, but we shall
�Right and hRrong.
'^T
still regard it as a fall, and say that the man is respon
sible and a wrong has been done.
But since it is just in this distinction between volun
tary and involuntary action that the whole crux ot the
matter lies, let us examine more closely into it. 1 say
that when I cough or sneeze involuntarily, it is ready
not I that cough or sneeze, but a part of iny body which
acts without consulting me. This action is determined
for me by the circumstances, and. is not part of the choice
that is left to me, so that I am not responsible for it.
The question comes then to determining how much is to
be called circumstances, and how much is to be called
m Now I want to describe what happens when I volun
tarily do anything, and there are two courses open to
me. I may describe the things m themselves, my feel
ings and the general course of my consciousness, trust
ing to the analogy between my consciousness and yours
to make me understood ; or I may describe these things
as nature describes them to your senses, namely, in terms
of the phenomena of my nervous system, appealing to
your memory of phenomena and your knowledge of phy
sical action. I shall do both, because in some respects
our knowledge is more, complete from the one source,
and in some respects from the other. When I look back
and reflect upon a voluntary action, I seem to find that
it differs from an involuntary action in the fact that a
certain portion of my character has been consulted.
There is always a suggestion of some sort, either the end
of a train of thought or a new sensation ; and there is an
action ensuing, either the movement of a muscle or set
of muscles, or the fixing of attention upon something.
But between these two there is a consultation, as it were,
of my past history. The suggestion is viewed in the
light of everything bearing on it that I think of at the
time, and in virtue of this light it moves me to act m
one or more ways. Bet us first suppose that no hesita
tion is involved, that only one way of acting is sugges
ted, and I yield to this impulse and act in the particu
lar way. This is the simplest kind of voluntary action.
It differs from involuntary or instinctive action in the
fact that with the latter there is no such conscious con-
�28
Right and Wrong.
saltation of past history. If we describe these facts in
terms of the phenomena which picture them to other
minds, we shall say that in involuntary action a message
passes straight through from the sensory to the motor
centre, and so on to the muscles, without consulting the
cerebrum; while in voluntary action the message is
passed on from the sensory centre to the cerebrum, there
translated into appropriate motor stimuli, carried down
to the motor centre, and so on to the muscles. There
may be other differences, but at least there is this differ
ence. Now, on the physical side, that which determines
what groups of cerebral fibres shall be set at work by
i.en^Ven rnessaSe’ and what groups of motor stimuli
shall be set at work by these, is the mechanism of my
brain at the time; and on the mental side, that which
determines what memories shall be called up by the
given sensation, and what motives these memories shall
bring into action, is my mental character. We may
say, then, in this simplest case of voluntary action, that
w en the suggestion is given it is the character of me
which determines the character of the ensuing action ;
and consequently that I am responsible for choosing that
particular course out of those which were left open to
me by the external circumstances.
This is when I yield to the impulse. But suppose I
do not; suppose that the original suggestion, viewed in
the light of memory, sets various motives in action, each
motive belonging to a certain class of things which I
remember. Then I choose which of these motives shall
prevail. Those who carefully watch themselves find out
that a particular motive is made to prevail by the fixing
of the attention upon that class of remembered things
which calls up the motive. The physical side of this is
the sending of blood to a certain set of nerves—namely,
those whose action corresponds to the memories which
are to be attended to. The sending of blood is accom
plished by the pinching of arteries ; and there are special
nerves, called vaso-motor nerves, whose business it is to
carry messages to the walls of the arteries and get them
pinched. Now this act of directing the attention may
be voluntary or involuntary, just like any other act.
en tn© transformed and reinforced nerve-message
�Right and Wrong.
29
gets to the vaso-motor centre, some part of it may be so
predominant that a message goes straight off to the arte
ries, and sends a quantity of blood to the nerves supply
ing that part; or the call for blood may be sent back for
revision by the cerebrum, which is thus again consulted.
To say the same thing in terms of my feelings, a particular
class of memories roused by the original suggestion may
seize upon my attention before I have time to choose
what I will attend to; or the appeal may be carried to
a deeper part of my character, dealing with wider and
more abstract conceptions, which views the conflicting
motives in the light of a past experience of motives, and
by that light is drawn to one or the other of them.
We thus get to a sort of motive of the second order or
motive of motives. Is there any reason why we should
not go on to a motive of the third order, and the fourth,
and so on ? None whatever that I know of, except that
no one has ever observed such a thing. There seems
plenty of room for the requisite mechanism on the phy
sical side; and no one can say, on the mental side, how
complex is the working of his consciousness. But we
must carefully distinguish between the intellectual deli
beration about motives, which applies to the future and
the past, and the practical choice of motives in the
moment of will. The former may be a train of any
length and complexity ; we have no reason to believe
that the latter is more than engine and tender.
We are now in a position to classify actions in respect
of the kind of responsibility which belongs to them :
namely, we have—
1. Involuntary or instinctive actions.
2. Voluntary actions in which the choice of motives
is involuntary.
3. Voluntary actions in which the choice of motives is
voluntary.
In each of these cases what is responsible is that part
of my character which determines what the action shall
be. For instinctive actions we do not say that I am
responsible, because the choice is made before I know
anything about it. For voluntary actions I am respon
sible, because I make the choice; that is, the character
of me is what determines the character of the action.
�jo
Right and Wvwig„
In me, then, for this purpose, is included the aggregate
of links of association which determines what memories
shall be called up by a given suggestion, and what mo
tives shall be set at work by these memories. But we
distinguish this mass of passions and pleasures, desire
and knowledge and pain, which makes up most of my
character at the moment, from that inner and deeper
motive-choosing self which is called Reason, and the
Will, and the Ego; which is only responsible when
motives are voluntarily chosen by directing attention to
them. It is responsible only forthe choice of one motive
out of those presented to it, not for the nature of the
motives which arc presented.
But again, I may reasonably be blamed for what I did
yesterday, or a week ago, or last year. This is because
I am permanent; in so far as from my actions of that
date an inference may be drawn about my character
now, it is reasonable that I should be treated as praise
worthy or blameable. And within certain limits I am
for the same reason responsible for what I am now,
because within certain limits I have made myself. Even
instinctive actions are dependent, in many cases, upon
habits which may be altered by proper attention and
care; and still more the nature of the connections
between sensation and action, the associations of memory
and motive, may be voluntarily modified if I choose to
try. The habit of choosing among motives is one which
may be acquired and strengthened by practice, and the
strength of particular motives, by continually directing
attention to them, may be almost indefinitely increased
or diminished. Thus, if by me is meant not the instan
taneous me of this moment, but the aggregate me of my
past life, or even of the last year, the range of my
responsibility is very largely increased. I am responsible
for a very large portion of the circumstances which are
now external to me ; that is to say, I am responsible for
certain of the restrictions on my own freedom. As the
eagle was shot with an arrow that flew on its own
feather, so I find myself bound with fetters of my proper
forging.
Let us now endeavour to conceive an action which is
not determined in any way by the character of the agent.
�Right and Wrong,
3<
If we ask, 11 What makes it to be that action and noother ? ” we are told, “ The man’s Ego.” The wordsare here used, it seems to me, in some non-natural sense,
if in any sense at all. One thing makes another to be
what it is when the characters of the two things are
connected together by some general statement or rule.
But we have to suppose that the character of the action
is not connected with the character of the Ego by any
general statement or rule. With the same Ego and the
same circumstances of all kinds, anything within the
limits imposed by the circumstances may happen at any
moment. I find myself unable to conceive any distinct
sense in which responsibility could apply in this case
nor do I see at all how it would be reasonable to use
praise or blame. If the action does not depend on the
character, what is the use of trying to alter the character ?
Suppose, however, that this indeterminateness is only
partial; that the character does add some restrictions tothose already imposed by circumstances, but leaves the
choice between certain actions undetermined to besettled by chance or the transcendental Ego. Is it not
clear that the man would be responsible for precisely
that part of the character of the action which was deter
mined by his character, and not for what was left un
determined by it? For it is just that part which was
determined by his character which it is reasonable totry to alter by altering him.
We who believe in uniformity are not the only peopleunable to conceive responsibility without it. These are
the words of Sir W. Hamilton, as quoted by Mr. J. S.
Mill*
“Nay, were we even to admit as true, what we cannot think
as possible, still the doctrine of a motiveless volition would beonly casualism; and the free acts of an indifferent are, morally
and rationally, as worthless as the pre-ordered passions of a deter
mined will.”
“That, though inconceivable, a motiveless volition would, if
conceived, be conceived as morally worthless, only shows our
impotence more clearly. ”
“ Is the person an original undetermined cause of the determina
tion of his will? If he be not, then he is not a free agent, and the
scheme of necessity is admitted. If he be, in the first place, it is
impossible to conceive the possibility of this ; and in the second, if
* Examination, p. 556.
�32
Right and IVrong.
the fact, though inconceivable, be allowed, it is impossible to see
how a cause, undetermined by any motive, can be a rational,
moral, and accountable cause. ”
It is true that Hamilton also says that the scheme of
necessity is inconceivable, because it leads to an infinite
non-commencement; and that “the possibility of morality
depends on the possibility of liberty; for if a man be not
a free agent, he is not the author of his actions, and
has, therefore, no responsibility—no moral personality
at all.”
I know nothing about necessity; I only believe that
nature is practically uniform even in human action. I
know nothing about an infinitely distant past; I only
know that I ought to base on uniformity those infer
ences which are to guide my actions. But that man is
a free agent appears to me obvious, and that in the natu
ral sense of the words. We need ask for no better defi
nition than Kant’s :—•
“ Will is that kind of causality attributed to living agents, in
so far as they are possessed of reason; and freedom is such a pro
perty of that causality as enables them to originate events inde
pendently of foreign determining causes ; as, on the other hand
(mechanical), necessity is that property of the causality of irra
tionals, whereby their activity is excited and determined by the
influence of foreign causes.”*
I believe that I am a free agent when my actions are
independent of the control of circumstances outside mej
and it seems a misuse of language to call me a free
agent if my actions are determined by a transcendental
Ego who is independent of the circumstances inside me
—that is to say, of my character. The expression “ free
will” has unfortunately been imported into mental
science from a theological controversy rather different
from the one we are now considering. It is surely too
much to expect that good and serviceable English words
should be sacrificed to a phantom.
In an admirable book, ‘ The Methods of Ethics,’ Mr.
Henry Sidgwick has stated, with supreme fairness and
impartiality, both sides of this question. After setting
forth the “almost overwhelming cumulative proof” of
uniformity in human action, he says that it seems “ more
* ‘ Metaphysic of Ethics, ’ chap. iii.
�Right and Wrong.
33
than balanced by a single argument on the other side:
the immediate affirmation of consciousness m the moment
of deliberate volition.” “ No amount of experience of
the sway of motives ever tends to make me distrust my
intuitive consciousness that in resolving, after delibera
tion, I exercise free choice as to which of the motives
acting upon me shall prevail.”
. , ,
, <t
The only answer to this argument is that it is not on
the other side.” There is no doubt about the deliver
ance of consciousness ; and even if our powers of self
observation had not been acute enough to discover it,
the existence of some choice between motives would be
proved by the existence of vaso-motor. nerves. But
perhaps the most instructive way of meeting arguments
of this kind is to inquire what consciousness ought to
say in order that its deliverances may be of any use
in the controversy. It is affirmed, on the side of uni
formity, that the feelings in my consciousness m the
moment of voluntary choice have been preceded by
facts out of my consciousness which are related to them
in a uniform manner, so that if the previous facts had
been accurately known the voluntary choice might have
been predicted. On the other side this is denied. To
be of any use in the controversy, then, the immediate
deliverance of my consciousness must be competent to
assure me of the non-existence of something which by
hypothesis is not in my consciousness. Given an abso
lutely dark room, can my sense of sight assure me that
there is no one but myself in it ? Can my sense of
hearing assure me that nothing inaudible is going.on?
As little can the immediate deliverance of my conscious
ness assure me that the uniformity of nature does not
apply to human actions.
It is perhaps necessary, in connection with this ques
tion, to refer to that singular Materialism of high
authority and recent date which makes consciousness a
physical agent, “ correlates ” it with Light and Nerve
force, and so reduces it to an objective phenomenon.
This doctrine is founded on a common and very useful
mode of speech, in which we say, for example, that a
good fire is a source of pleasure on a cold day, and that
a man’s feeling of chill may make him run to it. But
�34
Right and Wrong.
so also we say that the sun rises and seta every morn and
night, although the man in the moon sees clearly that
this is due to the rotation of the earth. One cannot be
pedantic all day. But if we choose for once to be
pedantic, the matter is after all very simple. Suppose
that I am made to run by a feeling of chill. When I
begin to move my leg, I may observe if I like a double
series of facts. I have the feeling of effort, the sensa
tion of motion in my leg; I feel the pressure of my foot
-on the ground. Along with this I may see with my
eyes, or feel with my hands, the motion of my leg as a
material object. The first series of facts belongs to me
alone; the second may be equally observed by anybody
-else. The mental series began first; I willed to move
my leg before I saw it move. But when I know more
about the matter, I can trace the material series further
back,, and find nerve messages going to the muscles of
my leg to make it move. But I had a feeling of chill
before I chose to move my leg. Accordingly, I can find
nerve messages, excited by the contraction due to the
Tow temperature, going to my brain from the chilled
skin. Assuming the uniformity of nature, I carry
forward and backward both the mental and the material
series. A uniformity is observed in each, and a paral
lelism is observed between them, whenever observations
can be made. But sometimes one series is known
better, and sometimes the other; so that in telling a
story we quite naturally speak sometimes of mental
facts and sometimes' of material facts. A feeling of chill
made a man run; strictly speaking, the nervous disturb
ance which coexisted with that feeling of chill made him
run, if we want to talk about material facts; or the
feeling of chill produced the form of sub-consciousness •
which coexists with the motion of legs, if we want to
talk about mental facts. But we know nothing about
the special nervous disturbance which coexists with a
feeling of chill, because it has not yet been localised in
the brain ; and we know nothing about the form of sub
consciousness which coexists with the motion of legs;
although there is very good reason for believing in the
existence of both. So we talk about the feeling of chill
and the running, because in one case we know the
�Right and Wrong.
3.5
mental side, and in the other the material side. A man
nanght show me a picture of the battle of Gravelotte, and
say, “ You can’t see the battle, because it is all over,
but there is a picture of it.” And then he might put a
chassepot into my hand, and say, “We could not repre
sent the whole construction of a ehassepot in the picture,
but you. can examine this one, and find it out.” If I
now insisted on mixing up the two modes of communi
cation of knowledge, if I expected that the chassepots in
the picture would go off, and said that the one in my
hand was painted on heavy canvas, I should be acting
exactly in the spirit of the new materialism. For the
material facts are a representation or symbol of the
mental facts, just as a picture is a representation or
symbol of a. battle. And my own mind is a reality from
which I can judge by analogy of the realities represen
ted by other men’s brains, just as the chassepot in my
hand is a reality from which I can judge by analogy of
the chassepots represented in the picture. When,
therefore, we ask, “What is the physical link between
the ingoing message from chilled skin and the outgoing
message which moves the leg? ” and the answer is, “A
man’s Will,” we have as much right to be amused as if
we had asked our friend with the picture what pigment
was used in painting the cannon in the foreground, and
received the answer, “ Wrought iron.” . It will be found
excellent practice in the mental operations required by
this doctrine to imagine a train, the fore part of which is
an engine and three carriages linked with iron couplings,
and the hind part three other carriages linked with iron
couplings ; the bond between the two parts being made
out of the sentiments of amity subsisting between the
stoker and the guard.
To sum up ; the: uniformity of nature in human actions
has been denied on the ground that it takes away re
sponsibility, that it is contradicted by the testimony of
consciousness, and that there is a physical correlation
between mind and matter. We have replied that the
uniformity of nature is necessary to responsibility, that
it is affirmed by the testimony of consciousness when
ever consciousness is competent to testify, and that
matter is the phenomenon or symbol of which mind or
�36
Right and Wrong.
quasi-mind is the symbolized and represented thing. We
are now free to continue our inquiries on the supposition
that nature is uniform.
We began by describing the moral sense of an English
man. No doubt the description would serve very well for
the more civilised nations of Europe; most closely for
Germans and Dutch. But the fact that we can speak in
this way discloses that there is more than one moral sense,
and that what I feel to be right another man may feel
to be wrong. Thus we cannot help asking whether there
is any reason for preferring one moral sense to another;
whether the question, “What is right to do ?” has in any
one set of circumstances a single answer which can be
definitely known.
Now clearly in the first rough sense of the word this is
not true. What is right for me to do now, seeing that
I am here with a certain character, and a certain moral
sense as part of it, is just what I feel to be right. The
individual conscience is, in the moment of volition, the
only possible judge of what is right; there is no con
flicting claim. But if we are deliberating about the
future, we know that we can modify our conscience
gradually by associating with certain people, reading
certain books, and paying attention to certain ideas and
feelings ; and we may ask ourselves, “ How shall we
modify our conscience, if at all? what kind of conscience
shall we try to get ? what is the best conscience ?” We
may ask similar questions about our sense of taste. There
is no doubt at present that the nicest things to me are the
things I like; but I know that I can train myself to like
some things and dislike others, and that things which are
very nasty at one time may come to be great delicacies
at another. I may ask, “ How shall I train myself ?
What is the best taste ?” And this leads very naturally
to putting the question in another form, namely, “ What
is taste good for? What is the purpose or function of
taste?” We should probably find as the answer to that
question that the purpose or function of taste is to dis
criminate wholesome food from unwholesome; that it is a
matter of stomach and digestion. It will follow from
this that the best taste is that which prefers wholesome
food, and that by cultivating a preference for wholesome and
�Right and Wrong.
37
nutritious things I shall be training my palate in the way
it should go. In just the same way our question about
the best conscience will resolve itself into a question about
the purpose or function of the conscience—why we have
got it, and what it is good for.
Now to my mind the simplest and clearest and most
profound philosophy that was ever written upon this sub
ject is to be found in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Mr.
Darwin’s ‘ Descent of Man.’ In these chapters it appears
that just as most physical characteristics of organisms have
been evolved and preserved because they were useful to the
individual in the struggle for existence against other indi
viduals and other species, so this particular feeling has been
evolved and preserved because it is useful to the tribe or
community in the struggle for existence against othei’
tribes, and against the environment as a whole. The func
tion of conscience is the preservation of the tribe as a tribe.
And we shall rightly train our consciences if we learn to
approve those actions which tend to the advantage of the
community in the struggle for existence.
There are here some words, however, which require care
ful definition. And first the word purpose. A thing serves
a purpose when it is adapted to some end ; thus a corkscrew
is adapted to the end of extracting corks from bottles, and
our lungs are adapted to the end of respiration. We may
say that the extraction of corks is the purpose of the cork
screw, and that respiration is the purpose of the lungs. But
here we shall have used the word in two different senses.
A man made the corkscrew with a purpose in his mind,
and he knew and intended that it should be used for pulling
out corks. But nobody made our lungs with a purpose in
his mind, and intended that they should be used for
breathing. The respiratory apparatus was adapted to its
purpose by natural selection—namely, by the gradual pre
servation of better and better adaptations, and the killing
off of the worse and imperfect adaptations. In using the
word purpose for the result of this unconscious process of
adaptation by survival of the fittest, I know that I am
somewhat extending its ordinary sense, which implies con
sciousness. But it seems to me that on the score of conve
nience there is a great deal to be said for this extension of
meaning. We want a word to express the adaptation of
D
�38
Right and JVrong.
means to an end, whether involving consciousness or not;
the word purpose will do very well, and the adjective pur
posive has already been used in this sense. But if the use
is admitted, we must distinguish two kinds of purpose.
There is the unconscious purpose which is attained by
natural selection, in which no consciousness need be con
cerned ; and there is the conscious purpose of an intelligence
which designs a thing that it may serve to do something
which he desires to be done. The distinguishing mark of
this second kind, design or conscious purpose, is that in the
consciousness of the agent there is an image or symbol of
the end which he desires, and this precedes and determines
the use of the means. Thus the man who first invented a
corkscrew must have previously known that corks were in
bottles, and have desired to get them out. We may
describe this if we like in terms of matter, and say that a
purpose of the second kind implies a complex nervous
system, in which there can be formed an image or symbol
of the end, and that this symbol determines the use of the
means. The nervous image or symbol of anything is that
mode of working of part of my brain which goes on simul
taneously and is correlated with my thinking of the thing.
Aristotle defines an organism as that in which the
part exists for the sake of the whole. It is not that
the existence of the part depends on the existence of
the whole, for every whole exists only as an aggregate
of parts related in a certain way; but that the shape
and nature of the part are determined by the wants of
the whole. Thus the shape and nature of my foot are
what they are, not for the sake of my foot itself, but
for the sake of my whole body, and because it wants
to move about. That which the part has to do for the
whole is called its function. Thus the function of my foot
is to support me, and assist in locomotion. Not ail the
nature of the part is necessarily for the sake of the whole;
the comparative callosity of the skin of my sole is for the
protection of my foot itself.
Society is an organism, and man in society is part of an
organism according to this definition, in so far as some
portion of the nature of man is what it is for the sake of
the whole—society. Now conscience is such a portion of
the nature of man, and its function is the preservation of
�Right and Wrong.
39
society in the struggle for existence. We may be able to
define this function more closely when we know more about
the way in which conscience tends to preserve society.
Next let us endeavour to make precise the meaning of
the words community and society. It is clear that at dif
ferent times men may be divided into groups of greater or
less extent—tribes, clans, families, nations, towns. If a
certain number of clans are struggling for existence, that
portion of the conscience will be developed which tends to
the preservation of the clan; so, if towns or families are
struggling, we shall get a moral sense adapted to the ad
vantage of the town or the family. In this way different
portions of the moral sense may be developed at different
stages of progress. Now it is clear that for the purpose of
the conscience, the word community at any time will mean
a group of that size and nature which is being selected or
not selected for survival as a whole. Selection may be
going on at the same time among many different kinds of
groups. And ultimately the moral sense will be composed
of various portions relating to various groups, the function
or purpose of each portion being the advantage of that
group to which it relates in the struggle for existence.
Thus we have a sense of family duty, of municipal duty, of
national duty, and of duties towards all mankind.
It is to be noticed that part of the nature of a smaller
group may be what it is for the sake of a larger group to
which it belongs; and then we may speak of the function
of the smaller group. Thus it appears probable that the
family, in the form in which it now exists among us, is
’determined by the good of the nation ; and we may say
that the function of the family is to promote the advan
tage of the nation or larger society in some certain ways.
But I do not think it would be right to follow Auguste
Comte in speaking of the function of humanity; because
humanity is obviously not a part of any larger organism
for whose sake it is what it is.
Now that we have cleared up the meanings of some of
our words, we are still a great way from the definite solu
tion of our question, “ What is the best conscience ? or
what ought I to think right ? ” For we do not yet know
what is for the advantage of the community in the struggle
for existence. If we choose to learn by the analogy of an
�4°
Right and Wrong.
individual organism, we may see that no permanent or
final answer can be given, because the organism grows in
consequence of the struggle, and develops new wants while
it is satisfying the old ones. But at any given time it has
quite enough to do to keep alive and to avoid dangers and
diseases. So we may expect that the wants and even the
necessities of the social organism will grow with its growth
and that it is impossible to predict what may tend in the
distant future to its advantage in the struggle for existence.
But still, in this vague and general statement of the func
tions of conscience, we shall find that we have already
established a great deal.
In the first place, right is an affair of the community,
and must not be referred to anything else. To go back to
our analogy of taste ; if I tried to persuade you that the
best palate was that which preferred things pretty to look
at, you might condemn me a priori without any experience,
by merely knowing that taste is an affair of stomach and
digestion—that its function is to select wholesome food.
And so, if any one tries to persuade us that the best con
science is that which thinks it right to obey the will of
some individual, as a deity or a monarch, he is condemned
a priori in the very nature of right and wrong. In order
that the worship of a deity may be consistent with natural
ethics, he must be regarded as the friend and helper of
humanity, and his character must be judged from his
actions by a moral standard which is independent of him.
And this, it must be admitted, is the position which has
been taken by most English divines, as long as they were
Englishmen first and divines afterwards. The worship of a
deity who is represented as unfair or unfriendly to any
portion of the community is a wrong thing, howevcr great
may be the threats and promises by which it is commended.
And still worse, the reference of right and wrong to his
arbitrary will as a standard, the diversion of the allegiance
of the moral sense from the community to him, is the most
insidious and fatal of social diseases. It was against this
that the Teutonic conscience protested in the Reformation.
Again, in monarchical countries, in order that allegiance to
the sovereign may be consistent with natural ethics, he
must be regarded as the servant and symbol of the national
unity, capable of rebellion and punishable for it. And this
�Right and Wrong.
41
has been the theory of the English constitution from time
immemorial.
The first principle of natural ethics, then, is the sole and
supreme allegiance of conscience to the community. I
venture to call this piety, in accordance with the older
meaning of the word. Even if it should turn out impossible
to sever it from the unfortunate associations which have
clung to its later meaning, still it seems worth while
to try.
An immediate deduction from our principle is that there
are no self-regarding virtues properly so called ; those quali
ties which tend to the advantage and preservation of the
individual being only morally right in so far as they make
him a more useful citizen. And this conclusion is in some
cases of great practical importance. The virtue of purity,
for example, attains in this way a fairly exact definition :
purity in a man is that course of conduct which makes him
to be a good husband and father, in a woman that which
makes her to be a good wife and mother, or which helps
other people so to prepare and keep themselves. It is easy
to see how many false ideas and pernicious precepts are
swept away by even so simple a definition as that.
Next, we may fairly define our position in regard to that
moral system which has deservedly found favour with the
great mass of our countrymen. In the common statement
of utilitarianism, the end of right action is defined to be
the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It seems
to me that the reason and the ample justification of the
success of this system is that it explicitly sets forth the
community as the object of moral allegiance. But our
determination of the purpose of the conscience will oblige
us to make a change in the statement of it. Happiness is
not the end of right action. My happiness is of no use to
the community except in so far as it makes me a more
efficient citizen ; that is to say, it is rightly desired as a
means and not as an end. The end may be described as
the greatest efficiency of all citizens as such. No doubt
happiness will in the long run accrue to the community as
a consequence of right conduct; but the right is deter
mined independently of the happiness, and, as Plato says,
it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
*
* The word altruism seems to me unfortunate, because the community,
(my neighbour) is to be regarded not as other, but as myself. I have endea
voured to defend this view elsewhere.
�42
Right and Wrong.
In conclusion, I would add some words on the relation
of Veracity to the first principle of Piety. It is clear that
veracity is founded on faith in man; you tell a man the
truth when you can trust him with it and are not afraid.
This perhaps is made more evident by considering the case
of exception allowed by all moralists—namely, that if a
man asks you the way with a view to committing a murder,
it is right to tell a lie and misdirect him. The reason why
he must not have the truth told him is that he would make
a bad use of it, he cannot be trusted with it. About these
cases of exception an important remark must be made in
passing. When we hear that a man has told a lie under
such circumstances, we are indeed ready to admit that for
once it was right, mensonge admirable; but we always have
a sort of feeling that it must not occur again. And the
same thing applies to cases of conflicting obligations, when
for example the family conscience and the national con
science disagree. In such cases no general rule can be laid
down ; we have to choose the less of two evils; but this is
not right altogether in the same sense as it is right to speak
the truth. There is something wrong in the circumstances
that we should have to choose an evil at all. The actual
course to be pursued will vary with the progress of society;
that evil which at first was greater will become less, and in
a perfect society the conflict will be resolved into harmony.
But meanwhile these cases of exception must be carefully
kept distinct from the straightforward cases of right and
wrong, and they always imply an obligation to mend the
circumstances if we can.
Veracity to an individual is not only enjoined by piety
in virtue of the obvious advantage which attends a straight
forward and mutually trusting community as compared
with others, but also because deception is in all cases a per
sonal injury. Still more is this true of veracity to the
community itself. The conception of the universe or aggre
gate of beliefs which forms the link between sensation and
action for each individual is a public and not a private
matter; it is formed by society and for society. Of what
enormous importance it is to the community that this should
be a true conception I need not attempt to describe. Now
to the attainment of this true conception two things are
necessary.
�Right and Wrong.
43
First, if we study the history of those methods by which
true beliefs and false beliefs have been attained,we shall
see that it is our duty to guide our beliefs by inference
from experience on the assumption of uniformity of nature
and consciousness in other men, and by this only. ppty
upon this moral basis can the foundations of the empirical
method be justified.
Secondly, veracity to the community depends upon faith
in man. Surely I ought to be talking platitudes when I
say that it is not English to tell a man a lie, or to suggest
a lie by your silence or your actions, because you are afraid
that he is not prepared for the truth, because you don t
quite know what he will do when he knows it, because
perhaps after all this lie is a better thing for him than the
truth would be; this same man being all the time an
honest fellow-citizen whom you have every reason to trust.
Surely I have heard that this craven crookedness is the
object of our national detestation. And yet it is constantly
whispered that it would be dangerous to divulge certain
truths to the masses. “ I know the whole thing is untrue :
but then it is so useful for the people; you don t know
what harm you might do by shaking their faith in it.
Crooked ways are none the less crooked because they are
meant to deceive great masses of people instead of indivi
duals. If a thing is true, let us all believe it, rich and
poor, men, women, and children. If a thing is untrue, let
us all disbelieve it, rich and poor, men, women, and children.
Truth is a thing to be shouted from the housetops, not to
be whispered over rose-water after dinner when the ladies
are gone away.
Even in those whom I would most reverence, who would
shrink with horror from such actual deception as I have
just mentioned, I find traces of a want of faith in man.
Even that noble thinker, to whom we of this generation
owe more than I can tell, seemed to say in one of his post
humous essays that in regard to questions of great public
importance we might encourage a hope in excess of the
evidence (which would infallibly grow into a belief and
defy evidence) if we found that life was made easier by it.
As if we should not lose infinitely more by nourishing a
tendency to falsehood than we could gain by the delusion
of a pleasing fancy. Life must first of all be made straight
�44
Right and Wrong.
and true ; it may get easier through the help this brings to
the commonwealth. And the great historian of mate*
rialism says that the amount of false belief necessary to
morality in a given society is a matter of taste. I cannot
believe that any falsehood whatever is necessary to mo
rality. It cannot be true of my race and yours that to
keep ourselves from becoming scoundrels we must needs
believe a lie. The sense of right grew up among healthy
men and was fixed by the practice of comradeship. It has
never had help from phantoms and falsehoods, and it never
can want any. By faith in man and piety towards man we
have taught each other the right hitherto ; with faith in
man and piety towards man we shall never more depart
from it.
* Lange, ‘ Geschichte des Materialismus.’
PRINTED BY C. W. liEYNELL, LITTLE rULTENET STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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������NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
ETHICS
AND THE
MATERIALIST CONCEPTfON
OF HISTORY.
�I
�— ethics —
and the
materialist Conception
of Bistorp.
By
KARL KAUTSKY
(Author of " The Social Revolution and on the Morrow
of the Social Revolution,” &-c.).
Translated by J. B. ASKEW.
THE
LONDON:
TWENTIETH CENTURY PRESS, LIMITED
(Trade Union and 48 Hours),
37A and 38, Clerkenwell Green, E.C.
��CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAP
Preface
I.
II.
III.
....
...
...
...
...
...
Ancient and Christian Ethics
The Ethical Systems of
of the Enlightenment
The Ethics
of
Kant
...
the
vii
i
Period
...
...
n
...
...
20
1. —The Criticism of Knowledge.
2. —The Moral Law
3. —Freedom and Necessity.
4. —The Philosophy of Reconciliation.
IV.
The Ethics
of
Darwinism
...
...
41
1. —The Struggle for Existence.
2. —Self-movement and Intelligence.
3. —The Motives of Self-maintenance and Propagation
4. —The Social Instinct.
V.
The Ethics
of
Marxism..........................
63
1.—The Roots of the Materialist Conception of History.
2—The Organisation of Human Society.
3. —The Changes in the Strength of the Social Instinct,
4. —The Influence of the Social Instincts.
5. —The Tenets of Morality.
�I
�PREFACE.
Like so many other of the principal Marxist publica
tions, the present one owes its origin to a special
occasion—it arose out of a controversy. The polemic
in which I was involved last autumn with the editors
of “Vorwaerts,” brought me to touch on the question of
their ethical tendencies. What I said, however, on
this point was so often misunderstood by one side, and
on the other brought me so many requests to give a
more thorough and systematic exposition of my ideas
on Ethics, that I felt constrained to attempt to give
at least a short sketch of the development of Ethics
on the basis of the Materialist Conception of History.
I take as my starting point, consequently, that
materialist philosophy which was founded on one side
by Marx and Engels, on the other, in the same spirit,
by Joseph Dietzgen. For the results at which I have
arrived, I alone am responsible.
My original intention was to write an article for the
“ Neue Zeit ” on the subject. But never had I so
miscalculated the plan of a work as this ; and not
only in respect of its scope. I had begun the work in
�viii
PREFACE.
October, because I thought there were going to be a
few months of quiet for the party, which might be
devoted to theoretical work. The Jena Congress had
run harmoniously, so that I did not expect to see a
conflict in our party so soon. On the other hand, it
looked at the beginning of October as if there had come
in the Russian Revolution a pause for gathering to
gether and organising the revolutionary forces.
As is well known, however, everything turned out
quite differently. An unimportant personal question
was the occasion of a sharp discussion, which, indeed,
did not for a moment disturb the party, but all the
same cost the party officials, and especially those in
Berlin, a considerable amount of time, worry and
energy.
What, however, certainly demanded even
more time and energy was the Russian Revolution,
which unexpectedly, in the course of that very October,
received a powerful impetus, and regained its previous
height. That glorious movement naturally absorbed,
even outside of Russia, all the interest of thinking
people. It was a magnificent time, but it was not a time
to write a book on Ethics. However, the subject had
captivated me, and I could not free myself, and so I
concluded my work, despite the many distractions and
interruptions which the Berlin storm in a tea cup and
the hurricane on the Russian ocean brought with them.
It is to be hoped that this little work does not bear too
obviously on its face the marks of its stormy birth.
When, however, I had brought it to a conclusion,
another question arose. Far beyond the limits of an
article had it grown, and yet was hardly fitted for a
�PREFACE.
ix
book. It contents itself with giving a general idea of
my thought, and gives very few references to facts and
arguments to prove or illustrate what has been brought
forward.
I asked myself whether I ought not to reconstruct
and enlarge my work by the addition of such argu
ments and facts. If, however, that had to be done, it
would mean delaying the publication of the work for
an indefinite period ; because to carry out this work I
should require two years quiet, undisturbed labour.
We are, however, coming to a time when for every
Social-Democrat quiet and undisturbed work will be
impossible—when our work will be continual fighting.
Neither did I desire that the publication should be put
off for too long a time, in view of the influence which
has been gained in our ranks by the Ethics of Kant, and
I, consequently, hold it necessary to show the relations
which exist between the Materialist Conception of
History and Ethics.
Consequently, I have resolved to allow the little book
to appear. In order, however, to show that with this
not all is said which I might have said on Ethics, and
that I hold myself in reserve to deal with the subject
more fully in a period of greater calm, I call the pre
sent work simply an attempt—an essay.
Certainly,
when these quieter times will come is not discernible at
present, as I have already remarked. At this very time
the myrmidons of the Czar are zealously at work to
rival the deeds of the Albas and Tillys during the
religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries—not irt
�X
PREFACE.
military achievements, but in brutal destruction. The
West European champions of culture and order
regard that with enthusiasm as the restoration of legal
conditions. But just as little as the hirelings of the
Hapsburgs succeeded, despite temporary successes in
conquering North Germany and Holland for Catholi
cism, will the Cossacks of the Romanoffs succeed in
restoring the rule of Absolutism. This has only suffi
cient strength remaining to lay its country waste, not
to rule it.
In any case the Russian Revolution is not by any
means at an end—it cannot close so long as the
peasants are not appeased. The longer it lasts so
much the greater will be the disturbance in the ranks of
the West European proletariat, so much the nearer
financial catastrophes, so much the more probable
that, even in W’est Europe, there should set in a period
of class struggle.
This is not a time which calls for the theoretical
labours of revolutionary writers. But this drawback for
our theoretical labours, which will be probably felt in the
next few years, we need not lament. The Materialist
Conception of History is not only important because it
allows us to explain history better than has been done
up to now, but also because it enables us to make
history better than has been hitherto done. And the
latter is more important than the former. From the
progress of the practice our theoretical knowledge
grows, and in the progress of the practice our theoreti
cal knowledge is proved. No world conception has
�PREFACE.
Xi
been in so high a degree a philosophy of deeds as the
dialectical materialism. Not only upon research but
upon deeds do we rely to show the superiority of our
philosophy.
Even the book before us has not to serve for con
templative knowledge, but for the fight—a fight in
which we have to develop the highest ethical strength
as well as the greatest clearness of knowledge if we are
to win.
K. Kautsky.
Berlin, Friednau, January, 1906.
��Ethics and the Materialist
Conception of History.
CHAPTER I.
Ancient And Christian Ethics.
In the history of philosophy the question of Ethics
comes to the fore soon after the Persian War. The
fact of having successfully repelled the great Persian
despotism had had a similar effqpt on the tiny Hellenic
people to that made by the defeat of the Russian
despotism on the Japanese.
At one blow they
became a world power, in command of the sea
which surrounded them, and with that its trade. And
if now in Japan an era of great industry is being
inaugurated on a scale the extent of which they them
selves are hardly yet fully aware, so after the Persian
Wars Greece, and Athens in particular, became the
headquarters of the world commerce of that time,
commercial capitalism embraced the entire people,
and . dissolved all the traditional relations and con
ceptions which had hitherto ruled the individual and
regulated his dealings. The individual found himself
suddenly transplanted into a new society, in which he
missed all the traditional supports on which he had
relied ; and, indeed, the more so the higher he stood
socially ; thus he found himself left wholly to himself.
And yet, despite all this seeming Anarchy, everyone
B
�2
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
felt not only a need for distinct rules of conduct, but
he found more or less clearly that in his own inner
being there worked a force which controlled his action
and allowed him to decide between good and bad, to
aim for the good and avoid the bad.
This force
revealed itself as a highly mysterious power. Granted
that it controlled the actions of many men, that its
decisions between good and bad were given without' the
least delay and asserted themselves with all decision,
if anyone asked what was the actual nature of this
force, and on what foundation it built its judgments,
it was then seen that both this force as well as the
judgments, which appeared so natural and self-evident,
were phenomena which were harder to understand than
any other phenomena in the world.
So we see then that since the Persian Wars, Ethics,
or the investigation of the mysterious regulator of
human action—the moral law—comes to the front in
Greek philosophy. Up to this time Greek philosophy
had been more or less natural philosophy. It made
it its duty to investigate and explain the laws which
hold in the world of nature. Now nature lost interest
with the philosophers even more and more. Man, or
the ethical nature of humanity, became the central point
of their investigations. Natural philosophy ceased to
make further progress, the natural sciences were
divided from philosophy ; all progress of the ancient
philosophy came now from the study of the spiritual
nature of man and his morality.
The Sophists had already begun to despise the know
ledge of nature.
Socrates went still further, being
of opinion that he could learn nothing from the trees,
but much from the human beings in the town.
Plato looked on natural philosophy as play. With
that, however, the method of philosophy changed.
Natural philosophy is necessarily bound to rely on the
observation of nature. On the other hand, how is the
moral nature of man to be observed with more cer
tainty than through the observation of our own per
sonality ? The senses can deceive us ; other men can
deceive us ; but we ourselves do not lie to ourselves
�3
ANCIENT AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
when we wish to be truthful. Thus, finally, that alone
was recognised as certain knowledge which man pro
duced from himself.
But not alone the subject and the method but also
the object of philosophy was different. Natural philo
sophy aimed at the examination of the necessary con
nection of cause and effect. Its point of view was that
of causality. Ethics, on the other hand, dealt with the
will and duty of man, with ends and aims which he
strives for. Thus its point of view is that of a con
scious aim or teleology.
Now these two conceptions do not always reveal
themselves with equal sharpness in all the various
schools of thought.
. There are two methods of explaining the moral law
within us.
We can search for its roots in the obvious forces of
human action, and, as a result, appeared the pursuit of
happiness or pleasure. With commodity production,
when goods are produced by private producers indepen
dently of each other, happiness and pleasure, and the
conditions necessary thereto, become a private matter.
Consequently, men came to look for the foundation of
the moral law in the individual need for happiness or
pleasure. That is good which makes for the individual
pleasure and increases his happiness, and evil is that
which produces the contrary. How is it then possible
that not everybody under all circumstances has a desire
for the good ? That is explained by the fact that there
are various kinds of pleasure and happiness. Evil
arises when we choose a lower kind of pleasure, or
happiness in preference to a higher, or sacrifice a
lasting pleasure to a momentary and fleeting one.
lhus it arises from ignorance or short sightedness.
Accordingly, Epicurus looked on the intellectual plea
sures as higher than the physical because they last
longer and give unalloyed satisfaction. He considers
the pleasure of repose greater than the pleasure of
action. Spiritual peace seems to him the greatest
pleasure. In consequence all excess in any pleasure is
to be rejected; and even selfish action is bad, since
B2
�q
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
respect, love, and the help of my neighbour, as well as
the prosperity of the community to which I belong,
are factors which are necessary to my own prosperity,
which, however, I cannot attain if I only look out for
myself without any scruples.
This view of Ethics had the advantage that it ap
peared quite natural and that it was very easy to
reconcile it with the needs of those who were content
to regard the knowledge which our senses give us of the
knowable world as real, and to whom human existence
itself formed only a part of this world. On the other
hand, this view of Ethics was bound to produce in
its turn that materialist view of the world.
A
theory which founded Ethics on the longing for
pleasure or happiness of the individual, or on egoism,
and the materialist world-concept conditioned and lent
each other mutual support. The connection of both
elements comes most completely to expression in
Epicurus (341-270 b.c.). His materialist philosophy of
nature is founded with a distinctly ethical aim. The
materialist view of nature is in his view alone in the
position to free us from the fears which a foolish
superstition awakens in us, and to give us that peace
of soul without which true happiness is impossible.
On the other hand, all those elements who were
opposed to this philosophy were obliged to reject this
ethics and vice versa : those who were not satisfied
with his ethics were not satisfied with the materialism
either. And the Ethic of Egoism, or the pursuit of
individual happiness, gave ample opportunity for
attack. In the first place it did not explain how the
moral law arose as a binding moral force, as the duty
to do the right, and not simply as advice to prefer the
more rational kind of pleasure to the less rational.
And the speedy, decisive moral judgments on good
and bad are quite different from the balancing up
between different kinds of pleasures or utilities. Finally
also, it is possible to feel a moral sense of duty even
in cases where the most generous interpretation, can
find no pleasure or ability from which the pursuit of
this duty can be deduced. If I refuse to lie, although
�ANCIENT AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
5
I by that means stir up public opinion for ever against
me, if I put my existence at stake or even bring on
myself the penalty of death, there can be no talk of
even the more remote pleasure or happiness which
could transform the discomfort or pain of the moment
into its opposite.
But what could the critics bring forward to explain
this phenomenon ? In reality, nothing—even, if accord
ing to their own view, a great deal. Since they were
unable to explain the moral law by natural means it
became to them the surest and most unanswerable
proof that man lived not only a natural life, but also
outside of nature, that in him supernatural and extra
natural forces work, that his spirit is something super
natural. Thus arose from this view the Ethic of Philo
sophic Idealism and Monotheism, the new belief in
God.
This belief in God was quite different to the old Poly
theism ; it differed from the latter not only in the num
ber of the gods, and it did not arise from the fact that
many were reduced to one.
Polytheism was an at
tempt to explain the processes of nature. Its gods
were personifications of the forces of nature; they
were thus not over nature, and not outside of nature,
but in her, and formed a part of her. Natural philo
sophy superseded them in the degree in which it dis
covered other than personal causation in the processes
of nature, and developed the idea of the necessary con
nection of cause and effect. The gods might here and
there maintain a traditional existence for a time even
in the philosophy, but only as a kind of superman who
no longer played any active part. Even for Epicurus,
despite his materialism, the gods were not dead but
they were changed into passive spectators.
Even the non-materialist ethical school of philosophy,
such as was most completely represented by Plato
(427-347 b.c.), and whose mystical side was far more
clearly developed by the Neo-Platonists, especially by
Plotinus (204-270 a.d.), even this school did not find
the gods necessary to explain nature, and they dealt
with the latter no differently to the materialists. Their
�6
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
idea of God did not spring out of the need to explain
the natural world around us but the ethical and spiri
tual nature of man. For that they required to assume
a spiritual being standing outside of and over nature,
thus outside of time and space, a spiritual being which
formed the quintessence of all morality, and who ruled
the material nature just as the aristocrats ruled the
crowd who worked with their hands. And just as the
former conceived themselves as noble and the latter
appeared to them common and vulgar, so did nature
become mean and bad, the spirit, on the other hand,
elevated and good.
Man was unlucky enough to
belong to both worlds : those of matter and spirit.
Thus he is half animal and half angel, and oscillates
between good and evil. But just as God rules nature,
has the moral in man the force to overcome the natural,
the desires of the flesh, and to triumph over them.
Complete happiness is, nevertheless, impossible for
man so long as he dwells in this vale of tears, where
he is condemned to bear the burden of his flesh. Only
then, when he is free from this and his spirit has
returned to its original source, to God, can he enjoy
unlimited happiness.
Thus it will be seen that God plays a very different
rdle to what He does in the original Polytheism. This
one god is no personification of an appearance of the
outer nature, but the assumption for itself of an inde
pendent existence on the part of the spiritual (or intel
lectual) nature of man. Just as this is a unity, so can
the Godhead be no multiplicity. And its most complete
philosophic form, the one god, has no other function
than of accounting for the moral law. To interfere in
the course of this world in the manner of the ancient
gods is not his business, but, at least, for philosophers
the assumption of binding force in the natural law of
cause and effect suffices.
Certainly the more this view became popular and
grew into the religion of the people, the more did the
highest, the all-embracing and all-ruling spirit take on
again personal characteristics ; the more did he take
part in human affairs, and the more did the old gods
�ANCIENT AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
7
smuggle themselves in. They came in as intermedia
tors between God and man, as saints and angels. But
even in this form the contempt for nature held good,
as well as the view that the spiritual, and especially the
ethical nature of man, was of supernatural origin and
afforded an infallible proof of the existence of a super
natural world.
Between the two extremes, Plato and Epjcurus,
there were many intermediary positions possible.
Among these the most important was the Stoic philo
sophy, founded by Zeno (341-270 B.c). Just like the
Platonic philosophy, it attached those who sought to
derive the moral law from the pleasure or egoism of
the individual; it recognised in him a higher power
standing over the individual which can drive man to
action, and which brings him pain and grief, nay, even
to death. But different to Plato, it saw in the. moral
law nothing supernatural, only a product of nature.
Virtue arises from the knowledge of nature; happiness
is arrived at when man acts in accordance with nature,
that is, in accordance with the universe, or universal
reason. To know nature and act in accordance with
her reasonably, which is the same as virtuously, and
voluntarily to submit to her necessity, disregarding
individual pleasure and pain, that is the way to happi
ness which we will go. The study of nature is, how
ever, only a means to the study of virtue. And nature
itself is explained from a moral point of view. The
practical result of the Stoic Ethics is not the pursuit
of happiness but the contempt for pleasure and the
good things of the world. But this contempt for the
world was finally to serve the same end : that which
appeared to Zeno as well as Epicurus as the highest,
viz., a state of repose for the individual soul. Both
systems of philosophy arose out of the need for rest.
The intermediary position of the Stoic Ethics be
tween the Platonic and the Epicurean corresponded to
the view of the universe which Stoicism drew up. The
explanation of nature is by no means without import
ance to them, but nature appeared to them as a greater
view of monotheistic materialism, which assumes a
�8
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
divine original force from which even the human soul
springs. But this original force, the original fire, is
bodily, it exists within and not without nature, and the
soul is not immortal, even if it survives the human
body. Finally it will be consumed by the original fire.
Stoicism and Platonism finally became elements of
Christianity, and overcame in this form the materialist
Epicureanism. This latter materialism could only prove
satisfactory to a social class which was satisfied with
things as they were, which found in them its pleasure
and happiness, and had no need for another state of
affairs.
It was necessarily rejected by those classes to whom
the world as it was seemed bad and full of pain ; to the
decaying class of old aristocracy as well as the ex
ploited classes for whom present and future in this
world could only be equally hopeless, when the
material world, that is, the world of experience, was
the only one, and no reliance was to be placed on an
almighty spirit who had it in his power to bring this
world to destruction. Finally, materialism was bound
to be rejected by the whole society so soon as this had
so far degenerated that even the ruling classes suffered
under the state of affairs, when even these came to
the opinion that no good could come out of the existing
world, but only evil. To despise the world with the
Stoics, or to look for a Redeemer from another world
with the Christians, became the only alternative.
A new element was brought into Christianity with the
invasions of the barbarians, in that the old and decrepit
Roman society with its antiquated system of produc
tion and decadent views of life had now combined
with a youthful German society, organised on the basis
of the mark—a people of simple thought and content
to enjoy life ; these elements combined to produce a
strange new formation.
The Christian Church became the law which held
the new State together. Here, again, the theory is
apparently confirmed that the spirit is stronger than
matter, and the intelligence of the Christian priest
hood showed itself strong enough to tame the brute
�ANCIENT AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
9
force of the German barbarians. And, moreover,
this brute force springing out of the material world,
appeared to the representatives of Christianity
as the source of all evil, when it was not ruled by
spirit and held in check by the spirit; while, on the
other hand, they saw in the spirit the source of all good.
Thus the new social situation only contributed to
strengthening the philosophic foundation of Christianity
and its system of Ethics. But, on the other hand, there
came through this new situation the joy in life and a
feeling of self-confidence into society which had been
lacking at the time of the rise of Christendom. Even
to the Christian clergy, at least in the mass, the world
no longer appeared as a vale of tears, and they acquired
a capacity for enjoyment, a happy Epicureanism,
though certainly a coarser form and one which had
little in common with ancient philosophy. Never
theless the Christian priesthood was obliged to main
tain the Christian Ethic, no longer as the ex
pression of their own moral feeling, but as a
means of maintaining their rule over the people.
And everything forced them to recognise more
and more the philosophic foundation of this system
of Ethics, namely, the mastery of the spirit over
the real world. Thus the new social situation produced
on the one hand a tendency to a Materialist system of
Ethics ; while, on the other, a series of reasons arose
to strengthen the traditional Christian Ethic. Thus
arose that dual morality which became a characteristic
of Christianity, the formal recognition of a system of
Ethics, which is only partially the expression of our
moral feeling and will, and consequently of that which
controls our action. In other words, moral hypocrisy
became a standing social institution which was never so
widely spread as under Christianity.
Ethics and religion appeared now as inseparably
bound together. Certainly the moral law was the logi
cal creator of the new god ; but in Christianity the new
god appeared as the creator of the moral law. With
out belief in God, without religion, no morality. Every
ethical question became* a theological one, and as the
�IO
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
most original and simple form of social indignation is
the moral—the feeling of moral indignation, the feeling
of the immorality of the existing institutions—so did
every social uprising commence in the form of theo
logical criticism, in which undeniably came, as an addi
tional factor, the circumstance that the Church was
played as the foremost means of class rule, and the
Roman priesthood the worst exploiters in the Middle
Ages, so that all rebellion against any form of exploita
tion always affected the Church in the first place.
Even after the Renaissance, at a time when philo
sophic thought had again revived, questions of Ethics
remained for a very long time questions of theology.
�TUB PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
II
CHAPTER II.
The Ethical Systems of the Period of the
Enlightenment.
After the Renaissance the study of Nature again
began to arouse interest, and with it also philosophy,
which from then until well into the 18th century be
came principally natural philosophy, and, as such,
raised our knowledge of the world to far above the
level reached in the ancient world ; they set out from
the progress which the Arabs had made in Natural
Science during the Middle Ages over the Greeks. The
high-water mark of this development is certainly to be
found in the theory of Spinoza (1632-1677).
With these thinkers Ethics occupied a secondary
place. They were subordinated to Natural Science, of
which they formed a part. But they came again to the
front so soon as the rapid development of capitalism in
Western Europe in the 18th century had created a
similar situation to that which had been created by the
economic awakening which followed on the Persian wars
in Greece. Then began, to speak in modern language, a
re-valuing of all values, and therewith a zealous think
ing out and investigation into the foundation and
essence of all morality. With that commenced an
eager research into the nature of the new method of
production.
Simultaneously with the appearance of
Ethics arose a science of which the ancients had been
Ignorant, the special child of the capitalist system
of production, whose explanation it serves—Political
Economy.
In Ethics, however, we find three schools of thought
side by side, which often run parallel to the three
systems of the Ancients—the Platonic, the Epicurean,
and the Stoic. An anti-materialist one, the traditional
Christian position; the materialist one ; and finally a
�12
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
middle system between the two. The optimism and
joy of life in the rising bourgeoisie—at least in their
progressive elements, especially among their intellec
tuals—felt itself strong enough to come forth openly
and to throw aside all the hypocritical masks which the
ruling Christianity had hitherto enforced. . And miser
able though frequently the present might be, the rising
bourgeoisie felt that the best part of reality, the future,
belonged to them, and they felt themselves capable of
changing this Vale of 'I ears into a Paradise, in which
each could follow his inclinations. In reality, and in the
natural impulses of man, their thinkers saw the source
of all good and not of all evil.
This new school of
thought found a thankful public, not only among the
more progressive elements in the bourgeoisie, but also
in the Court nobility, who at that period had
acquired such a power that even they thought that
they could dispense with all Christian hypocrisy
in their life of pleasure, all the more as they
were divided by a deep chasm from the life of the
people.
They looked on citizens and peasants as
beings of a lower order to whom their philosophy was
incomprehensible, so that they could freely and undis
turbedly develop it without fear of shaking their own
means of rule—the Christian Religion and Ethics.
The conditions of the new life and Ethics developed
most vigorously in France. There they came most
clearly and courageously to expression. Just as in
the case of the ancient Epicureanism so in the new
enlightenment philosophy of Lamettrie (1709-1751),
Holbach (1723-1789), Helvetius (1715-1771), the ethic
of egoism, of utility or pleasure stood in the closest
connection with a Materialist view of the universe.
The world, as experience presents it to us, appeared
the only one which could be taken into account by us.
The causes of this new Epicureanism had great simi
larity with the ancient one, as well as the results at
which both arrived. Nevertheless they differed in one
very essential point. The old Epicureanism had not
arisen as the disturber of the traditional religious views,
it had understood how to accommodate itself to them.
�THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
13
It was not the theory of a revolutionary class ; it did
not preach war but contemplative enjoyment. Platonic
Idealism and Theism represented far more the over
throw of the traditional religious views—a theory of
the discontented classes.
But with the Philosophy of Enlightenment it was
otherwise. Though certainly even this has a conserva
tive root; it regarded contemplative enjoyment as
happiness, that is, so far as it served the needs of the
Court nobility, which drew its living from the existing
absolutist State. But in the main it was the philosophy
of the most intelligent and most developed as well as
the most courageous elements in the bourgeoisie. It
gave them a revolutionary character. Standing from
the very beginning in the most absolute opposition to
the traditional religion and Ethics, these classes ac
quired—in proportion as the bourgeoisie increased in
strength and class consciousness—the conception of a
fight—a conception quite foreign to the old Epicureans
—a fight against priests and tyrants, a fight for the
new ideals.
The nature and method of the moral views and
the height of the moral passions are, according to
human life, and especially by the constitution of the
French Materialists, determined by the conditions of
State, as well as by education. It is always self-interest
that determines man ; this can, however, become a very
social interest, if society is so organised that the indi
vidual interest coincides with the interest of the com
munity, so that the passions of men serve the common
welfare. True virtue consists in the care for the com
monweal ; it can only flourish where the commonwealth
at the same time advances the interests of the indivi
dual, where he cannot damage the commonwealth
without damaging himself .
It is incapacity to perceive the more durable interests
of mankind, ignorance as to the best form of govern
ment, society, and education which renders a state of
affairs possible, which of necessity brings the individual
interest into conflict with that of the community. It
only remains to make an end to this ignorance to find
�14
ethics and the materialist conception of history.
StHte’ rOciety’ a.nd education corresponding
nL? <!en?a"dS °f rSason ln order to establish happi?
ness and virtue on a firm and eternal foundation. Here
we arrive at the revolutionary essence of the French
Materialism, which indicts the existing State as the
source of immorality. With that it raises itself above
the level of Epicureanism ; but, at the same time it
weakens the position of its own Ethics.
’
fnrm°rq.uestion of inventing the best
form of State and society.
These have got to be
fought for , the powers that be must be confronted and
overthrown in order to establish an empire of virtue.
fl”at ,requircs’ however, great moral zeal, and where is
;t° COme
lf !he existing society is so bad
?Pr™erl alt°Sethf:r the growth of morality or
th T6’
n°* morahty be already there in order
rtat L g
*rise? Is if not necessary
that the moral should be alive in us before the moral
order can become a fact? But how is a moral ideal to
be evolved from a vicious world?
To that we obtain no satisfactory answer.
In very different fashion to the French did the
Englishmen of the i8th century endeavour to explain
the. moral law. They showed themselves in general
less bold and more inclined to compromise, in character
with the history of England until the Reformation,
their insular position was especially favourable to
their economic development during this period. Thev
were driven thereby to make sea voyages, which in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, owing to the
Co omal system formed the quickest road to a fortune.
It kept England free from all the burdens and ravages
of wars on land, such as exhausted the Europin
Bowers. Thus in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen
turies England acquired more wealth than all the
Powers of Europe, and placed herself, so far as econo
mic position was concerned, at their head. But when
new classes and new class antagonisms, and with them
new social problems arise in a country at an earlier
date than elsewhere, the new classes attain only a small
degree of class-consciousness, and still remain, to a
�THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
Ig
large degree, imprisoned in the old methods of thought,
so that the class antagonisms appear in a very un
developed form. Thus in such countries it does not at
once come to a final and decisive struggle in the class
war; it comes to no decisive overthrow of the old
classes, who here continue to rule without any limit,
and in all the neighbouring countries remain at the
height of their power. The new classes are still in
capable of taking on the government because they do
not realise their own position in society, and alarmed
by the novelty of their own endeavour, themselves
seek for support and points of contact in the traditional
relations.
It would thus seem to be a general law of social
development that countries which are pioneers in the
economic development are tempted to great compro
mises in the place of radical solutions.
For example, France in the Middle Ages stood by
the side of Italy at the head of the economic develop
ment of Europe. She came more and more into oppo
sition with the Papacy—their Government first rebelled
against Rome. But just because she opened the way in
this direction, she never succeeded in founding a
national Church, and was only able to force the Papacy
to a compromise which, with unimportant interrup
tions, has lasted up to the present. On the other hand,
the most radical champions against the 'Papal power
were the two States which were economically the most
backward—Scotland and Sweden.
Since the Reformation, England, together with Scot
land, has taken the place of France and Italy, the
pioneers of her economic development, and thus com
promise became for both these countries the form of
the solution of their class struggles. Just because in
England in the seventeeth century capital acquired
power more rapidly than elsewhere, because there
earlier than in other countries did it come to a struggle
with the feudal aristocracy, this fight has ended with
a compromise, which accounts for the fact that the
feudal system of landed property is stronger in England
even to-day than in any other country of Europe—
�l6
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
Austro-Hungary alone, perhaps, excepted. For the
same reason—that of her rapid economic development
—the class war between proletariat and bourgeoisie
first blazed up in England, of all countries in the
world. But it was before the proletariat and industrial
capitalists had yet got over the small bourgeois method
of thought, when many, and even clear-sighted ob
servers, confused the two classes together as
the industrial class, and when the type of the
proletariat, class-conscious and confident in the future
of his own class as well as that of the industrial capi
talist, autocrat and unlimited ruler in the State, had
not yet developed.
Thus the struggle of the two
classes landed, after a short and stormy flare-up, in a
compromise, which gave the bourgeoisie for many
years to come more unlimited power than in any other
land with the modern system of production.
Naturally the effects of this law, just as that of any
other, can be disturbed by unfavourable currents and
advanced by favourable ones. But in any case it is so
far efficacious that it is necessary to be on our guard
against the crude popular interpretation of the material
ism of history, as if it meant that that land which leads
in the economic development will always bring the
corresponding forms of the class-war to the most
decisive expression.
Even Materialism and Atheism, as well as Ethics,
were subject to the spirit of compromise, as it has
ruled since the sixteenth century.
The fight of the
democratic and rising class against a governing power
independent of the bourgeoisie, and subject to the
feudal aristocracy, with their court nobility and their
State Church, commenced in England more than a cen
tury before France, at a time when but few had sur
passed the Christian form of thought. Wherein France
the fight against the State Church had become a fight
between Christianity and atheistic Materialism, in Eng
land it had become merely a struggle between special
democratic Christian sects and the State as an organ
ised sect. And while in France in the period of en
lightenment the majority of the intelligence and the
�THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
17
classes that came under its influence thought as Mate
rialists and Atheists ; the English intelligence searched
for a compromise between Materialism and Christianity.
Certainly it was in England that Materialism found its
first public expression in the theory of Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679) ; there certainly were to be found thinkers
on ethical questions, whose courage surpassed that of
the most courageous Frenchmen, who, like Mandeville
(1670-1733), declared morality to be a means of rule,
a discovery to keep the workers in subjection, and who
regarded vice as the root of all social good. But such
ideas had little influence on the thought of the many.
A Christian profession remained the sign of respecta
bility, and the pretence of this, even where not really
felt, became the duty of every man of learning who did
not wish to come into conflict with society.
Thus Englishmen remained very sceptical of the
Materialistic Ethics which wished to found the moral
law on self-love, or on the pleasure and utility of the
individual.
Certainly the intellectual circles of the
rising bourgeoisie sought even in England to explain
the moral law as a natural phenomenon, but they saw
that its compulsion was not to be explained from simple
considerations of utility, and that the combinations
were too artificial which were required to unite the com
mands of morality with the motives of utility—still less
to think of making out of the latter an energetic motive
force of the former. Thus they distinguished very nicely
between the sympathetic and the egoistic instincts in
man, recognised a moral sense which drives man to be
active for the good of his fellows. After the Irishman
Hutcheson (1694-1747), the most distinguished repre
sentative of this theory was Adam Smith (1723-1790).
In his two principal works he investigated the two
main springs of human action. In the “Theory of
Moral Sentiments” (1759) he started out from sym
pathy as the most important law of human society ;
while his “ Wealth of Nations ” assumes the egoism—
the. material interest of the individual—to be the main
spring of human action. That book appeared in 1776,
but the principles which it contained were enunciated
c
�l8
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
by the author in Glasgow as early as 1752 or 1753.
His theory of Egoism and his theory of Sympathy were
not mutually exclusive, but were complementary one of
the other.
This placing in contrast of egoism and moral sense
by Englishmen, was as compared to the Materialists
an approach to Platonism and Christianity. Neverthe
less their views remained very different from these.
While, according to Christianity, man is bad by nature,
and according to the Platonic theory our natural im
pulses are the source of evil in us, so for the English
school of the eighteenth century the moral sense was
opposed certainly to egoism, but was just as much as
the latter a natural impulse. Even egoism appeared
here not as a bad but as a justifiable impulse which was
as necessary for the welfare of society as sympathy with
others. The moral sense was a sense just as any other
human sense, and to a certain extent a sixth sense.
Certainly with this assumption, as in the case of the
French Materialists, the difficulty was only postponed,
not solved. To the question whence comes this pecu
liar sense in man the Englisnman had no answer. It
was given by Nature to man. That might suffice for
those who traded in a creator of the universe, but it did
not make this assumption superfluous.
The task for the farther scientific development of
Ethics appeared clear in this state of the question. The
French, as well as the English school, had achieved
much for the psychological and historical explanation
of the moral feelings and views. But neither the one
nor the other could succeed in making quite clear that
morality was the outcome of causes which lie in the
realm of experience. The English school had to be sur
passed and the causes of the moral sense investigated.
It was necessary to go beyond the French school and
to lay bare the causes of the moral ideal.
But the development moves in no straight but in a
dialectical line. It moves in contradictions. So the next
step of ethical philosophy did not go in this direction,
but in the contrary. Instead of investigating the ethi
cal nature of man in order to bring it more strictly than
�THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
jg
ever under the general laws of nature, it came to quite
other conclusions.
This step was achieved by German philosophy, with
Kant (1724-1804). Certain people like to cry now,
“Back to Kant!” But those meaning by that the
Kantian Ethic might just as well cry, “ Back to
Plato! ”
�20
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
CHAPTER III.
The Ethics of Kant.
i.—The Criticism of Knowledge.
Kant took the same ground as the Materialists. He
recognised that the world outside of us is real, and
that the starting-point of all knowledge is the experience
of the senses. But the knowledge which we acquire
from experience is partly composed of that which we
acquire through the sense impressions and partly from
that which our own intellectual powers supply from
themselves ; in other words, our knowledge of the world
is conditioned not simply by the nature of the external
world but also by that of our organs of knowledge.
For a knowledge of the world therefore the investi
gation of our own intellectual powers is as necessary
as that of the external world. The investigation of the
first is, however, the duty of philosophy ; while the
second is the science of science.
In this there is nothing contained that every Mate
rialist could not subscribe to, or that, perhaps with
the exception of the last sentence, had not also been
previously said by Materialists. But certainly only in
the way in which certain sentences from the Materialist
Conception of History had already been expressed be
fore Marx, as conceptions which had not borne fruit.
It was Kant who first made them the foundation of his
entire theory. Through him did philosophy first become
the science of science, whose duty it is not to teach a
distinct philosophy but how to philosophise, the process
of knowing, methodical thinking, and that by way of
a critique of knowledge.
But Kant went farther than this, and his great philo
sophical achievement, the investigation of the faculties
of knowledge, became itself his philosophical stumbling
block.
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
21
Since our sensual experience does not reveal to us
the world as it is in itself, but only as it is for us—as it
appears to us—thanks to the peculiar constitution of
our faculties of knowledge, so the world as it is in
itself must be different to that which appears to us.
Consequently Kant distinguishes between the world of
phenomena, of appearances, and the world of things
in themselves, the “noumena,” or the intelligible
world. This latter is for us unknowable, it lies out
side of cur experience, so that there is no need to
deal with it; one might simply take it as a method
of designating the fact that our knowledge of the
world is always limited by the nature of our intellectual
faculties, is always relative : that for us there can only
be relative and no absolute truths, not a final and com
plete knowledge, but an endless process of knowing.
But Kant was not content with that. He felt an
unquenchable longing to get a glimpse into that un
known and inexplorable world of things in themselves,
in order to acquire at least a notion of it.
And indeed he got so far as to say quite distinct
things about it. The way to this he saw in the critique
•of our powers of thought. These latter, by separating
from experience that which comes from the senses,
must arrive at the point of describing the forms of
knowledge and perception as they originally and d
priori, previous to all experience, are contained in our
“feelings.” In this manner he discovered the ideality
of time and space. According to him, these are not
conceptions which are won from experience, but simply
the forms of our conception of the world, which are
embedded in our faculties of knowledge. Only under
the form of conceptions in time and space can we recog’
nise the world. But outside of our faculties of know
ledge there is no space and no time. Thus Kant got
so far as to say about the world of things in themselves,
that completely unknowable world, something very dis
tinct, namely, that it is timeless and spaceless.
Without doubt this logical development is one of the
most daring achievements of the human mind. That
�22
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
does not say by any means that it is not open to criti
cism. On the contrary, there is a great deal to be said
against it, and, in fact, they are very, very weighty
objections which have been brought against it. The
assumption of the ideality of space and time in the
Kantian sense led to inextricable contradictions.
There can certainly be no doubt that our conceptions
of time and space are conditioned by the constitution
of our faculties of knowledge, but I should have
thought that that would only necessarily amount to say
ing that only those connections of events in the
universe can be recognised which are of such a
nature as to call forth in our intellectual faculties the
concepts of space and time. The ideality of time and
space would then imply, just as the thing itself, no
more and no less than a limit to our powers of know
ing. Relations of a kind which cannot take the form
of space or time concepts—even if such really exist,
which we do not know—are for us inconceivable, just
as much as the ultra-violet and ultra-red rays are imper
ceptible to our powers of vision.
But this was by no means the sense in which it
was understood by Kant. Because space and time
provide the forms in which alone our faculties of know
ledge can recognise the world, he takes for granted
that time and space are forms which are only to be
found in our faculty of knowledge, and correspond to
no sort of connection in the real world. In his “ Pro
legomena to every future Metaphysic,” Kant com
pares in one place the concept of space with the
concept of colour. This comparison appears to us
very apt; it by no means, however, proves what Kant
wants to prove. If cinnabar appears red to me, that
is certainly conditioned by the peculiarity of my
visual organs. Outside them there is no colour.
What appears to me as colour is called forth by waves
of ether, of a distinct length, which affect my eye.
Should anyone wish to treat these waves in relation to
the colour as the thing in itself, which in reality they
are not, then our power of vision would not be a power
to see the things as they are but power to see them as
�TIIE ETHICS OF KANT.
23
they are not; not a capacity of knowledge, but of
illusion.
But it is quite another matter when we look not at
one colour alone but take several colours together and
distinguish them from one another. Each of them is
called forth by distinct ether waves of different lengths.
To the distinctions in the colours there correspond
differences in the length of the ether waves. These
distinctions do not exist in my organ of vision, but have
their ground in the external world.
My organs of
vision only have the functions of making me conscious
of this difference in a certain form, that of colour. As
a means to a recognition of this distinction it is a power
of real knowledge and not of illusion. These distinc
tions are no mere appearances. The fact that I see
green, red, and white has its ground in my organ of
sight. But that the green should differ from the red,
testifies to something that lies outside of me, to a real
difference between the things.
Moreover, the peculiarity of my organ has the
effect that by its means I can only recognise the motions
of the ether. No other communication from the outer
world can reach me through that medium.
Just as with the power of vision, in particular, so is
it with the organs of knowledge in general. They can
only convey to me space and time conceptions, that is,
they can only show me those relations of the things
which can call forth time and space conceptions in my
head. To impressions of another kind, if there are
any, they cannot react, and my faculty of knowledge
renders it possible for me to obtain any impressions
in a particular way. So far the categories of space and
time are founded in the construction of my faculty of
knowledge.
But the relations and distinctions of the things them
selves, which are shown to me by means of the individul space and time concepts, so that the different
things appear to me as big and small, near and far,
sooner or later, are real relations and distinctions of the
external world, which are not conditioned through the
nature of my faculty of knowledge.
�24
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
Therefore, even if we are not in a position to recog
nise a single thing by itself, if our faculties of know
ledge are in respect to that faculties of ignorance, we
can yet recognise the real differences between things.
These distinctions are no mere appearances, even if
our conception of them is conveyed to us by means of
appearances, they exist outside of us, and can be
recognised by us, though only under certain forms.
. Kant, on the other hand, was of opinion that not
simply are space and time forms of conception for us,
but that even the temporal and spacial differences of
phenomena spring solely from our heads, and notify
nothing real. If that were really so, then would all
phenomena spring simply from our heads, since they
all take the form of temporal and spacial differences,
then we could know absolutely nothing about the world
outside of us, not even that it existed. Given that
a world outside of us exists then, owing to the ideality
of space and time, our faculty of knowledge would be
not an imperfect, one-sided mechanism which com
municated to us only a one-sided knowledge of the
world, but, of its kind, a complete mechanism, namely,
one to which nothing was lacking to cut us off from all
knowledge of the world. Certainly a mechanism which
can hardly be described as a “ faculty of knowledge.”
Thus in spite of Kant’s energetic attack on the
mystical idealism of Berkeley, which he had hoped
to replace by his own critical idealism, his criticism
took a turn which nullified his own assumption that
the world is real and only to be known through experi
ence, and thus mysticism, cast out from the one side,
found on the other a wide, triumphal doorway open,
through which it can enter with a flourish of trumpets.
2.—The Moral Law.
Kant assumed as his starting-point that the world is
really external to us, and does not simply exist in our own
heads, and that knowledge about it is only to be attained
through experience.
His philosophical achievement
was to be the examination of the conditions of experi
ence, of the boundaries of our knowledge. But just
�TtHE ETHICS OF KANT.
25
this very examination became for him an incitement to
surmount this barrier and to discover an unknowable
world, of which he actually knew that it was of quite
another nature than the world of appearances, that it
was completely timeless and spaceless, and therefore
causeless as well.
But why this break-neck leap over the boundaries of
knowledge which cut away all firm ground beneath
his feet? The position could not be a logical one,
since through this leap he landed on contradictions
which nullified his own assumptions. It was an his
torical reason which awakened in him the need for the
assumption of a supersensuous world—a need which
he must satisfy at any price.
If, in the eighteenth century, France was a hundred
years behind England, just so much was Germany
behind France. If the English bourgeoisie no longer
needed Materialism, since without it, and on reli
gious grounds, they had got rid of the feudalistic State
and its Church, the German bourgeoisie did not yet
feel strong enough to take up openly the fight against
the State and its Church. They, therefore, withdrew in
fear from Materialism. This came in the eighteenth
■century to Germany, just as to Russia : not as the philo
sophy of the fight but of pleasure, in a form suitable to
the needs of the “enlightened” despotism. It grew
within the princely courts, side by side with the
narrowest orthodoxy.
In the bourgeoisie there re
mained, however, even in its boldest and most inde
pendent pioneers, as a rule, a relic of Christian belief
hanging to them, from which they could not emanci
pate themselves.
All this made the English philosophy appeal specially
to German philosophers.
In fact, its influence on
Kant was very great. I cannot remember ever to have
found in his writings any mention of a French
Materialist of the eighteenth century.
On the
-other hand, he quoted with preference Englishmen of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—Lock, Hume,
Berkeley, and Priestley.
�26
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
But between the German and English philosophy
there was a great difference. The English philoso
phised at a time of great practical advance, of great
practical struggles.
The practical captured their entire intellectual force ;
even their philosophy was entirely ruled by practical
considerations.
Their philosophers were greater in
their achievements in economics, politics, and natural
science, than in philosophy.
The German thinkers found no practicality which
could prevent them from concentrating their entire
mental power on the deepest and most abstract problems
of science. They were therefore in this respect without
their like outside of Germany. This was not owing
to any race quality of the Germans but to the circum
stances of the time. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the deepest philosophic thinkers were to be
found in Italy, France, Holland, England, and not in
Germany. The quiet that came over German political
life in the century following the Thirty Years’ War
first gave Germany the lead in philosophy, just as
Marx’s “Capital” had its origin in the period of
reaction following on 1848.
Kant, despite his sympathy for the English, could
not find satisfaction in their philosophy. He was just
as critical towards it as towards Materialism.
. The weakest point in both cases was bound to strike
him—-the Ethics. It seemed to him quite impossible
to. bring the moral law into a necessary connection
with nature, that is, with the world of phenomena. Its
explanation required another world, a timeless and
spaceless world of pure spirit, a world of freedom in
contrast to the world of appearances (phenomena),
which is ruled by the necessary chain of cause and
effect. On the other hand, his Christian feelings, the
outcome of a pious education, were bound to awaken
the need for the recognition of a world in which God
and immortality were possible.
*
* As a curiosity it may be mentioned here that it is possible to
confront Bernstein’s witty remark “ Kant against Cant " with the
fact that Kant himself was Cant. “ His ancestors came from
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
27
As Kant had to allow that God and immortality were
completely superfluous in the world of our experience,
he was obliged to look for a world “ beyond experi
ence for them, and thus the spaceless and timeless
world of things in themselves corresponded exactly
to his needs.
.
The best proof for the existence of God and immor
tality in this world of the “ beyond ” Kant obtained
from the moral law. Thus we find with him, as with
Plato, that the repudiation of the naturalist explanation
and the belief in a special world of spirits, or, if it be
preferred, a world of spirits lending each other mutual
support, render it necessary.
How, however, did Kant manage to obtain further
insight into this spirit world? The “ Critique of Pure
Reason ” only allowed him to say of it that it was
timeless and spaceless. Now this spacelessness has to
be filled up with a content. Even for that Kant has an
idea.
The unknowable world of things in themselves be
comes at least partly knowable directly one succeeds in
getting hold of a thing in itself. And this Kant finds
in the personality of man. I am for myself at once
phenomenon and thing in itself. My pure reason is
a thing in itself. As a part of the sensuous world I
am subject to the chain of cause and effect, therefore
to necessity, as a thing in itself I am free, that is, my
actions are not determined by the causes of the .world
of the senses, but by the moral law dwelling within me,
which springs from the pure reason and calls out to
Scotland............ The father a saddler by profession, maintained
in his name the Scottish spelling Cant; the Philosopher first
changed the letters to prevent the false pronounciation as Zant.
(Kuno Fischer, “History of Modern Philosophy” Vol. III., page
5 2, German Ed.). His family were very religious and this influence
Kant never got over. Not less than Kant is Cant related to
puritan piety.
The word signified first the puritan method of singing, then
the puritan, the religious, and finally the customary thoughtless
oft-repeated phrases to which men submit themselves. Bernstein
appealed in his assumption of Socialism for a Kant as an ally
against the materialist “ Party-Cant”
�28
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
me not “Thou must,” but “Thou shalt.” If I were
not free this “ shall ” would be an absurdity if there
did not correspond to it a “can.”
The moral freedom of man is certainly a complicated
question, carrying with it no less contradictions than
the ideality of time and space. Since this freedom
comes to expression in actions which belong to the
chain of cause and effect they are necessary. The same
world of phenomena, as such falling beneath the
actions are at the same time free and necessary.
Moreover,, freedom arises in the timeless, intelligible
world, while cause and effect always fall in a particular
time. The same time-determined action has thus a
time as well as a cause in time.
But what is now the moral law which from the world
of things in themselves, the “World of the Under
standing,” extends its working right into the world of
appearances, the world of the “senses,” and subor
dinates these to itself? Since it springs from the world
of the understanding, its determining ground can only
be in pure reason. It must be of purely formal nature,
because it must remain fully free from all rela
tion to the world of the senses, which would at once
involve a relation of cause and effect, a determinin°r
ground of the will which would at once annihilate its
freedom.
“There is, however,” says Kant, in his “Critique
of Practical Reason, ” .“ besides the matter of the law,
nothing further contained than the law-giving form.
Thus the law-giving form, so far as it is contained in
the maxim, and that alone, can constitute a deter
mining ground of free will.”
From that he draws the following “ Fundamental
Law of Pure Practical Reason ” :—
Act so that the maxim of thy action may be a prin
ciple of universal legislation.”
This principle is by no means startlingly new. It
forms only the philosophic translation of the ancient
precept, to do unto others as we would be done by.
This is. only the declaration that this precept forms a
revelation of an intelligible world ; a revelation which
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
20
with the greatest application of philosophic insight was
to be discovered as a principle which applied not only
for humanity ‘ ‘ but for all finite beings who possess
reason and will, nay, even including the infinite being
as the highest intelligence.”
Unluckily, the proof for this law which was to apply
even to the supreme intelligence has a very serious flaw
to show. It ought to be ‘‘independent of all conditions
pertaining to the world of the senses,” but that is
easier said than fulfilled. Just as little as it is possible
with the air-pump to create a completely airless space ;
just as it must always contain air, though it be in so
refined a degree that it is no more to be recognised
by us, in the same way we cannot possibly grasp a
thought, which is independent of all conditions apper
taining to the world of senses. Even the moral law
does not escape this fate.
The moral law already includes conditions which
belong to the world of the senses. It is not a law of
the ‘‘pure will” in itself, but a law of the control of
my will or thought in contact with my fellow man. It
assumes this ; for me, however, these are appearances
from the world of the senses.
And still more is assumed, however, by the conception
of the moral law : ‘ ‘ Act so that the maxim of thy action
may be a principle of universal legislation.” This as
sumes not only men outside of me, but also the wish
that these fellow men should behave themselves in a
particular manner. They are to behave themselves as
the moral law prescribes me to act.
Here not only society, but also a distinct form of
social conditions are assumed as possible and desirable.
That, in fact, the need for such is concealed in the
ground of his “ Practical Reason,” and determines his
spaceless and timeless moral law, Kant himself
betrays in his 11 Critique of Practical Reason” in a
polemic against the deduction of the moral law out of
happiness :
“ It is, therefore, surprising that intelligent men
should have thought of calling the desire for happiness a
universal practical law on the ground that the desire is
�30
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
universal, and, therefore, also the maxim by which
everyone makes this desire determine his will. For,
whereas in other cases a universal law of nature makes
everything harmonious, here, on the contrary, if we
attribute to the maxim the universality of a law, the
extreme opposite of harmony will follow the greatest
opposition, and the complete destruction of the maxim
itself, and its purpose. For, in that case, the will of
all has not one and the same object, but everyone has
his own (his private welfare), which may accidentally
accord with the purposes of others which are equally
selfish, but which is far from sufficing for a law, because
the occasional exceptions which one is permitted to
make are endless, and cannot be definitely embraced in
one universal rule. In this manner, then, results a
harmony like a married couple bent on going to ruin,
‘ O marvellous harmony, what he wishes she wishes
also,’ or, like what is said of the pledge of Francis I.
to the Emperor Charles V., ‘ What my brother
Charles wishes, that I wish also’ (viz., Milan). Em
pirical principles of determination are not fit for any
universal external legislation, but just as little for in
ternal, for each man makes his own subject the founda
tion of his inclination, and in the same subject some
times one inclination, sometimes another, has the pre
ponderance. To discover a law which would govern
them all under this condition, bringing them all into
harmony, is quite impossible.”*
Thus pleasure is not to be a maxim which can serve
as a principle of universal legislation, and that because
it can call forth social disharmonies. The moral law
has thus to create a harmonious society, and such must
be possible, otherwise it would be absurd to wish to
create it.
The Kantian moral law assumes thus in the first
place a harmonious society as desirable and possible.
But it also assumes that the moral law is the means
*Kant’s “ Critique of Practical Reason,” translated by T. W.
Abbott, fourth editon revised, London, 1839. Section IV.
Theorem III., pp. 115-6.
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
31
to create such a society, that this result can be achieved
through a rule which the individual sets to himself.
We see how thoroughly Kant was deceived when he
thought that his moral law was independent of all
conditions appertaining to the world of sense, and that
it formed thus a principle which would apply to all
timeless and spaceless spirits including God Almighty
himself.
In reality Kant’s moral law is the result of very con
crete social needs. Naturally, since it springs from
the wish for an harmonious society, it fs possible to
deduce from it the ideal of an harmonious society, and
thus it has been possible to stamp Kant as a founder of
Socialism. Cohen repeats this again also in his latest
work, “Ethic of the Pure Will” (Ethik des reinen
Willens), 1905.
In reality, however, Kant is much
farther removed from Socialism than the French
Materialism of the eighteenth century. While, accord
ing to these, the moral lawr was determined by the
condition of the State and society, so that the reform
of morality rendered necessary, in the first place, the
reform of the State and society, so that the fight
against immorality widened itself into a fight against
the ruling powers, according to Kant the society which
exists in time and space is determined bv a moral law
standing outside of time and space, which directs its
commands to the individual, not to society.
Is the
morality of the individual imperfect? One must not
lay the blame for that on the State and society, but in
the fact that man is not entirely an angel, but half
animal and, consequently, always being drawn down
by his animal nature, against which he can only
fight through the raising and the purifying of this own
inner man.. The individual must improve himself if
the society is to be improved.
It is clear Socialism takes peculair forms if we are to
look on Kant as its founder. This peculiarity will be in
no way diminished when we observe the further develop
ment of the moral law by him. From the moral law
springs the consciousness of personality and the dignity
of man, and the phrase: “ Act so that you as well in
�32
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
your own person as in the person of every other at all
times look on man as an end and never simply as a
means. ’ ’
“ In those words,” says Cohen (pp. 303-4), “ is the
deepest and most far-reaching sense of the categoric
imperative brought to expression ; they contain the
moral programme of the new time and the entire
world history. The idea of the final (or end) advantage
of humanity becomes thereby transformed into the idea
of Socialism, by which every man is defined as a final
end, as an end in itself.”
The programme of the ‘‘entire future world his
tory ” is conceived in somewhat narrow fashion. The
“ timeless moral law, that man ought to be an end,
and at no time simply a means,” has itself only an
“ end ” in a society where men are used by other men
as simple means to their ends. In a communist
society, this possibility will disappear, and with it the
necessity of the Kantian programme for the “ entire
future world history.” What then is to become'of this?
We have then in the future either no Socialism or no
world history to expect.
The Kantian moral law was a protest against the
very concrete feudal society with its personal relations
of dependency. The so-called “Socialist” principle
which fixes the personality and works of men is, accord
ingly just as consistent with Liberalism or Anarchism
as with Socialism, and contains, in no greater degree
any new idea than the one already quoted of the uni
versal legislation.
It amounts to the philosophical
fotmula for the idea of “ Freedom, Equality, and
Fraternity ” then already developed by Rousseau, and
which was also to be found in primitive Christianity.
Kant only imparted the form in which this principle is
proved.
The dignity of personality is derived from the fact
that it here forms part of a super-sensuous world,
that as a moral being it stands outside nature and
over nature. Personality is “ freedom and independ
ence from the mechanism of the entire natural world,”
so that “ the person as belonging to the world of sense
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
33
is subordinate to its own personality as far as it belongs
to the world of intelligence.” Thus it is not then to
be wondered if man, as belonging to both worlds, is
obliged to look on his own being, with regard to its
second and highest qualification, not otherwise than
with respect, and to conceive the greatest respect for
the laws of the same.
And with that we could congratulate ourselves on
having got back to the early Christian argument for
the equality of man, which is based on the fact that we
are all children of God.
3.—Freedom and Necessity.
Meanwhile, reject, as we must, the assumption of
the two worlds to which, according to Plato and Kant,
man belongs, it is nevertheless true that man lives at
the same time in two worlds, and that the moral law in
habits one of them, which is not the world of experi
ence. But all the same, even this world is no supersensuous one.
The two worlds in which man lives are the Past and
the Future. The Present forms the boundary of the
two. His whole experience lies in the past, all ex
perience being as such necessarily of the past, and
all the connecting links which past experience shows
him lie with inevitable necessity before, or rather,
behind him. In these there is nothing more left to
alter ; he can do nothing more in regard to them than
recognise their necessity. Thus is the world of expe
rience the world of knowing, and the world of necessity.
It is otherwise with the Future. Of this I cannot
have the smallest experience. Apparently free, it lies
before me as the world which I do not explore as one
knowing it, but in which I have to assert myself as an
active agent. Certainly I can extend the experience of
the past into the future ; certainly I can conclude that
these will be even so necessarily determined as those ;
but even if I can only recognise the world on the
assumption of necessity, yet I shall only be able to act
in it on the assumption of a certain freedom. Even if
a compulsion is exercised over my actions, there still
D
�34
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
remains to me the choice whether I shall yield to it or
not; there remains even as a last resort the possi
bility of withdrawing myself by a voluntary death.
Action implies continual choice between various possi
bilities, and be it only that of doing or not doing, it
means accepting or rejecting, defending or opposing.
Choice, however, assumes, in advance, the possibility
of choice, just as much as the distinction between
the acceptable and inacceptable, the good and the
bad. The moral judgment, which is an absurdity
in the world of the past—the world of experience, in
which there is nothing to choose, where iron necessity
reigns—is unavoidable in the world of the unknown
future—of freedom.
And not only the feeling of freedom is assumed
by action, but also certain aims. Does there rule in
the world of the past the sequence of cause and effect
(causality), so in that of action, of the future, rules the
thought of aim (teleology). For action the feeling of
freedom is an indispensable psychological necessity,
which is not to be got rid of by any degree of know
ledge. Even the sternest Fatalism, the deepest convic
tion that man is a necessary product of his circum
stances, cannot make us cease to love and hate, to
defend and attack.
But all that is no monopoly of man, but holds also
of the animals. Even these have freedom of the will,
in the sense that man has, namely, as a subjective,
inevitable feeling of freedom, which springs from
ignorance of the future, and the necessity of exer
cising a direct influence on it.
And just in the same way they have command of a
certain insight into the connection of cause and effect.
Finally the conception of an end is not quite strange to
them. In respect of insight into the past, and the
necessity of nature on the one hand, and on the other
in respect of the power of foreseeing the future, and
the setting up of aims for their action the lowest
specimens of humanity are distinguished far less from
the animals than from civilised men.
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
35
The setting up of aims is not, however, anything
which exists outside the sphere of necessity, of cause
and effect. Even though I set up aims for myself only
in the future, in the sphere of apparent freedom, yet
the act of setting up aims itself, from the very moment
when I set up the aim, belongs to the past, and can
thus in its necessity be recognised as the result of dis
tinct causes. That is not in any way altered by the
fact that the attainment of the end is still in the future,
in the sphere of uncertainty, thus in this sense in that
of freedom. Let the attainment of the end be assumed
as ever so far distant, the setting up of the aim itself
lies in the past. In the sphere of freedom there lie
only those aims which are not yet set up, of which we
do not even know anything as yet.
The world of conscious aims is thus not the world of
freedom in opposition to that of necessity. For each
of the aims which we set ourselves, just as for each
one of the means which we apply to its attainment, the
causes are already given, and are, under certain circum
stances, recognisable as those which brought about the
setting up of these aims and determined the wav in
which that was to be achieved.
It is impossible, however, to distinguish the realm
of necessity and of freedom simply as past and
future ; their distinction often coincides also with that
o nature and society, or, to be more exact, of society,
and that other nature from which the former displays
only one particular and peculiar portion.
If we look at nature in the narrower sense as apart
from society, and then at both in their relation to the
future, we find at once a serious difference.
The
natural conditions change much slower than the social.
And the latter at the period when men commenced to
philosophise, at the period of the production of wares,
had become extremely complicated, whereas in nature
there are a large number of simple processes, whose
subjection to law can be relatively easily perceived.
The consequence is, that despite our'apparent free
dom of action m the future, this action, nevertheless,
as tar as nature is concerned, comes to be looked on
D2
�36
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
as determined at an early period. Dark as the future
lies before me, I know of a certainty that summer will
follow winter, that to-morrow the sun will rise, that
to-morrow I shall have hunger and thirst, that in
winter the need for warming myself will occur to me,
and that my action will never be directed to escaping
these natural necessities, but exercised with the idea of
satisfying them. Thus I recognise, despite all apparent
freedom, that in face of nature my action is necessarily
conditioned. The constitution of nature external to us,
and of my own body, produce necessities which force
on me a certain willing and acting which, being given
according to experience, can be reckoned with in
advance.
It is quite otherwise with my conduct to my fellow
men, my social actions. In this case the external and
internal causes, which necessarily determine my action,
are not so easy to recognise. Here I meet with no
overpowering forces of nature, to which I am obliged
to submit myself, but with factors on a level with
myself, men like myself, who by nature have no more
strength than I have. Over against these I feel myself
to be free, but they also appear to me to be free in
their relations to their fellow men. Towards them I
feel love and hate, and on them and my relations to
them I make moral judgments.
Although the world of freedom and of the moral law
is thus certainly another than that of recognised neces
sity, it is not a timeless, spaceless and supersensual
world, but a particular portion of the world of sense
seen from a particular point of view. It is the. world
as seen in its approach to us ; the world on which we
have to work, which we have to rearrange above all.
But what is to-day the future will be to-morrow the past;
thus what to-day is felt to be free action will be recog
nised to-morow as necesary action. The moral law. in
us, which regulates this action, ceases,, however, with
that to appear as an uncaused cause; it falls into the
sphere of experience, and can be recognised as the
necessary effect of a cause. And only as such are
we at all able to recognise it, or can it become an
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
37
object of science. Thus in transferring the moral from
the “this side’’—the sensual world—to the “other
side”—the supersensual world—Kant did not advance
the scientific knowledge of it, but has instead closed
all ways to it. This obstacle must be got rid of before
everything else ; we must rise above Kant if we are
to bring the problem of the moral law nearer to its
solution.
4.—The Philosophy of Reconciliation.
It is the ethic which forms the weakest side of the
Kantian Philosophy. And yet it is just through the
ethic that its greatest success was achieved, because it
met very powerful needs of the time.
French Materialism had been a philosophy of the
battle against the traditional methods of thought, and
consequently against the institutions which ruled them.
An irreconcilable hatred against Christianity made it
the watchword not only of the fight against the Church,
but of that against all the social and political forces
which were bound up with it.
Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Reason ” equally drives
Christianity from out of the Temple; but the discovery
of the origin of the moral law, which is brought about
by the “ Critique of the Practical Reason,” opens for it
again the door with all due respect. Thus through
Kant, Philosophy became, instead of a weapon of the
fight against the existing methods of thought and
institutions, a means of reconciling the antagonisms.
But the way of development being that of struggle,
the reconciliation of antagonisms implies the arrest of
development. Thus the Kantian Philosophy became a
conservative factor.
Naturally, Theology was the greatest gainer by this.
It served to emancipate the traditional belief from the
quandary into which it had been forced by the develop
ment of science, in rendering the reconciliation of
science and religion possible.
“ No other science,” says Zeller, “experienced the
influence of the Kantian Philosophy in a higher degree
�38
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
than Theology.
Here Kant found the soil best
prepared for his principles ; with that, however, he
brought to the traditional methods of thought a reform
and an increase in depth, which it was badly in need
of.”
(Geschichte der deutschen Philosophic, 1873,
P- 5I9-)
Just after the outbreak of the French Revolution
arose a specially strong need for a Theology which
was in a position to hold its own against Materialism,
and to drive it out of the field, among the educated
people. Zeller writes then further—
“ Kant’s religious views corresponded exactly to both
the moral and intellectual need of the time ; it recom
mended itself to the enlightened by its reasonableness,
its independence of the positive, its purely practical
tendency ; to the religious by its moral severity and
its lofty conceptions of Christianity and its founder.
German Theology from now on took Kant as their
authority.
His ‘ Moral Theology ’ became after a
few years the foundation on which Protestant Theology
in Germany, almost without exception, and even the
Catholic one to a very large extent, was built up. The
Kantian Philosophy, exercised for that reason—and the
majority of German Theologians for close on fifty
years took their start from it—a highly permanent and
far-reaching influence on the general education.”
Voslander quotes in this “ History of Philosophy
(Leipzig, 1903) the word of a modern German Theo
logian, Ritschl, who declared :—
“ Thus the development of the method of knowledge
by Kant implied at the same time a practical rebirth
of Protestantism” (Vol. II., p. 476).
The great revolution created the soil for the influence
of Kant, which was wrought in the two decades after
the Terror. Then this influence began to wane. The
bourgeoisie acquired after the thirties, even in Ger
many, strength and courage for more decisive struggles
against the existing forms of State and thought, and
to an unconditional recognition of the world of the
senses as the only reality. Thus through the Hegelian
dialectic there arose new forms of Materialism, and
�THE ETHICS OF KANT.
39
in the most vigorous form in Germany, for the very
reason that their bourgeoisie was still behind that
of France and England, because they had not con
quered the existing State machine, because they had
that still to overturn ; thus they required a fighting
philosophy, and not one of reconciliation.
In the last decades, however, their desire to fight
has greatly diminished. Within these, although they
have not attained all that they desired, yet they had
all which was necessary for their development. Fur
ther struggles on a large scale, or fights against the
existing order, must be of much less use to them than
to their great enemy, the proletariat, whose strength
was increasing in a most menacing fashion, and who
now for its part required a fighting philosophy. It was
so much the more susceptible to the influence of Mate
rialism the more the development of the world of the
senses showed the absurdity of the existing order and
the necessity of its victory.
The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, became more
and more susceptible to a philosophy of reconciliation,
and thus Kantism was aroused to a fresh life. This
resurrection was prepared in the reactionary period
after 1848 by the then commencing influence of
Schopenhauer.
But in the last decade the influence of Kant has
forced its way into Economics and Socialism. Since
the laws of bourgeois society, which were discovered
by the classical economists, showed themselves more
clearly as laws which made the class war and the dis
appearance of the capitalist order necessary, the bour
geois economists took refuge in the Kantian Moral
Code, which, being independent of time and space,
must be in a position to reconcile the class antagonisms
and prevent the revolutions which take place in space
and time.
Side by side with the ethical school in economics we
got an ethical Socialism, when endeavours were made
in our ranks to modify the class antagonisms, and to
meet at least a section of the bourgeoisie half way.
This policy of reconciliation also began with the cry :
�ZJ.O
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
‘ ‘ Back to Kant! ’ ’ and with a repudiation of Material
ism, since it denies the freedom of the will. Despite
the categoric imperative which the Kantian Ethic cries
to the individual, its historical and social tendency
from the very beginning on till to-day has been that of
toning down, of reconciling antagonisms, not of over
coming them through struggle.
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
41
CHAPTER IV.
The Ethics
of
Darwinism.
1.—The Struggle for Existence.
Kant, like Plato, had divided mankind into two sides :
into natural and supernatural, animal and angelic.
But the strong desire to bring the entire world, includ
ing our intellectual functions, under a unitary concep
tion and to exclude all factors beside the natural from
it; or, in other words, the Materialist method of
thought was too deeply grounded in the circumstances
for Kant to be able to paralyse it for any length of
time. And the splendid progress made by the material
sciences, which began just at the very time of Kant’s
death to make a spurt forwards, brought a series of
new discoveries, which more and more filled up the gap
between men and the rest of nature, which among
other things revealed the fact that the apparently
angelic in man was also to be seen in the animal world,
and thus was of animal nature.
All the same, the Materialist Ethics of the nineteenth
century, so far as it was dominated by the conceptions
of natural science, as much in the bold and outspoken
form which it took in Germany as in the more
retiring and modest English and, even now, French
version, did not get beyond that which the eighteenth
century had taught. Feuerbach founded morality on
the desire for happiness ; while Auguste Comte, the
founder of Positivism, took, on the other hand, from the
English the distinction between the moral or altruistic
feelings and the egoistical feelings, both of which are
equally rooted in human nature.
The first great and decided advance over this position
was made by Darwin, who proved, in his book on the
“ Descent of Man,” that the altruistic feelings formed
no peculiarity of man, that they are also to be found
in the animal world, and that there, as here, they spring
�42
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
from causes which are in essence identical, and which
have called forth and developed all the faculties of
beings endowed with the power of moving themselves.
With that almost the last barrier between man and
animal was torn down. Darwin did not follow up his
discoveries any further, and yet they belong to the
greatest and most fruitful of the human intellect, and
enable us to develop a new critique of knowledge.
When we study the organic world it reveals to us
one very striking peculiarity as compared with the in
organic ; we find in it adaptation to end. All organised
beings are constructed and endowed more or less with
a view to an end. The end which they serve is, never
theless, not one which lies outside of them. The world
as a whole has no aim. The aim lies in the individuals
themselves : its parts are so arranged and fitted out
that they serve the individual, the whole. Purpose and
division of labour arise together. The essence of the
organism is the division of labour just as much as
adaption to end. One is the condition of the other.
The division of labour distinguishes the organism from
inorganic individuals, for example, crystals.
Even
crystals are distinct individuals, with a distinct form ;
they grow when they find the necessary material for
their formation, under the requisite conditions; but
they are through and through symmetrical. On the
other hand, the lowest organism is a vesicle, much less
visible and less complicated than a crystal; but a vesicle
whose external side is different, and has different
functions from the inner.
That the division of labour should be that one which
is suitable for the purpose, that is, one which is useful
to the individual, that which renders his existence pos
sible, or even ameliorates it, seems wonderful. But it
would be still more wonderful if individuals maintained
themselves and procreated with a division of labour
which was not suitable for the purpose, wrhich rendered
their existence difficult or even impossible.
But what is the work which the organs of the organ
ism have to accomplish? This work is the struggle
for life, that is, not the struggle with other organisms
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
43
of the same kind, as the word is occasionally used, but
the struggle with the whole of nature. Nature is in con
tinual movement, and is always changing her forms,
hence only such individuals are able to maintain their
form for any period of time in this eternal change who
are in a position to develop particular organs against
those external influences which threaten the existence of
the individual, as well as to supply the places of those
parts which it is obliged to give up continually to the
external world. Quickest and best will those individuals
and groups assert themselves whose weapons of defence
and instruments for obtaining food are the best adapted
to their end, that is, best adapted to the external world :
to avoid its dangers and to capture the sources of food.
This uninterrupted process of adaptation and. selec
tion of the fittest by means of the struggle for existence
produces, under such circumstances as usually form
themselves on the earth since it has borne organised
beings, an increasing division of labour. In fact,, the
more developed the division of labour is in a society,
the more advanced does that society appear to us.
The continual process of rendering the organic world
more perfect is thus the result of the struggle for exist
ence in it, and probably for a long time to come will
be its future result, as long as the conditions of our
planet do not essentially alter. Certainly we have no
right to look on this process as a necessary law for all
time. That would amount to imputing to the world
an end which is not to be found in it.
The development need not always proceed at the
same rate. From time to time periods can come when
the various organisms, each in its way, arrive at the
highest possible degree of adaptation to the existing
conditions, that is, are in the most complete harmony
with their surroundings. So long as these conditions
endure they will develop no farther, but the form which
has been arrived at will develop into a fixed type, which
procreates itself unchanged. A further development
will only then occur when the surroundings undergo a
considerable alteration : if when the inorganic nature is
subject to changes which disturb the balance of the
�44
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
organic. Such changes, however, take place from time
to time, either single, sudden, and violent, or numerous
and unnoticed, the sum total and effect of which, how
ever, equally brings on new situations, as, for example,
alterations in the ocean currents, in the surface of the
earth, perhaps even in the position of the planet in the
universe, which bring about climatic changes, trans
form thick forests into deserts of sand, cover tropical
landscapes with icebergs, and vice versa.
These
alterations render new adaptations to the changed con
ditions necessary ; they produce migrations which like
wise bring the organisms into new surroundings, and
produce fresh struggles for life between the old inhabi
tants and the new incomers, exterminate the badlyadapted and the unadaptable individuals and types, and
create new divisions of labour, new functions and new
organs, or transform the old. It is not always the
highest developed organisms which best assert them
selves by this new adaptation. Every division of labour
implies a certain one-sidedness. Highly-developed or
gans, which are specially adapted for a particular
method of life, are for another far less useful than
organs which are less developed, and in that particular
method of life less effective, but more many-sided and
more easily adaptable.
Thus we see often higherdeveloped kinds of animals and plants die out, and
lower kinds take over the further development of fresh
higher organisms. Probably man is not sprung from
the highest type of apes, the man-apes, which are tend
ing to die out, but from a lower species of four-handed
animals.
2.—Self-movement and Intelligence.
At an early period the organisms divided themselves
into two great groups : those which developed the
organs of self-motion, and those which lacked it;
animals and plants. It is clear that the power of self
movement is a mighty weapon in the struggle for life.
It enables it to follow its food, to avoid dangers, to
bring its young into places where they will be best
secured from danger, and which are best provided with
food.
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
45
Self-motion, however, necesarily implies an intelli
gence and vice versa. One of these factors with
out the other is absolutely useless. Only in combina
tion do they become a weapon in the struggle for lite.
The power of self-movement is completely useless
when it is not combined with a power to recognise the
world in which I have to move myself. What use
would the legs be to the stag if he had not the power
to recognise his enemies and his feeding places? On
the other hand, for a plant intelligence of any kind
would be useless. Were the blade of grass able to see,
hear or smell the approaching cow that would not in
the least help it to avoid being eaten.
Self-movement and intelligence thus necessarily go
together, one without the other is useless. Wherever
these faculties may spring from, they invariably come
up together and develop themselves jointly. There is
no self-movement without intelligence, and no intelli
gence without self-movement. And together they serve
the same ends : the securing and alleviation of the indi
vidual existence.
As a means to that they and their organs are devel
oped and perfected by the struggle for life, but only as
a means thereto. Even the most highly-developed in
telligence has no capacities which would not be of use
as weapons in the struggle for existence. . Thus isexplained the onesidedness and the peculiarity of our
intelligence.
To recognise things in themselves may appear to
many philosophers an important task ; for our existence
it is highly indifferent, whatever we have to understand'
by the theory in itself. On the other hand, for every
being endowed with power of movement it is of the
greatest importance to rightly distinguish the things
and to recognise their relations to one another. The
sharper his intelligence in this respect the better service
will it do him. For the existence of the singing bird
it is quite indifferent what those things may be in
themselves which appear to it as berries, hawks, or
a thunder-cloud. But indispensable is it for its exist
ence to distinguish exactly berries, hawks, and clouds-
�46
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
from the other things among his surroundings, since
that alone puts him in a position to find his food, to
escape the enemy, and to reach shelter in time. It is
thus inevitable that the intelligence of the animal should
be a power of distinguishing in space.
But just as indispensable is it to recognise the
sequence of the things in time, and indeed this neces
sary sequence as cause and effect. Since the move
ment as cause can only then bring as a universal result
the maintenance of existence, if it aims at special, more
immediate, or remoter effects which are so much the
more easily to be achieved, the better the individual
has got to learn these effects with their causes. To
repeat the above example of a bird : it is not sufficient
that it should know how to distinguish berries, hawks
and thunder-clouds from the other things in space, it
must also know, that the enjoyment of the berries has
the effect of satisfying its hunger, that the appearance
of the hawk will have the effect that the first small
bird which it can grasp will serve it as food, and that
the rising thunder-clouds produce storm, rain and hail
as results.
Even the lower animal, so soon as it possesses a
trace of ability to distinguish and self-movement, developes a suspicion of causality. If the earth shakes that
is a sign for the worm that danger threatens and an
incentive to flight.
. Thus if the intelligence is to be of use to the animal
in its movements it must be organised so that it is in
a position to show it the distinctions in time and
space as well as the casual connections.
But it must do even more. All the parts of the bodv
serve only one individual, only one end—the mainten
ance of the individual. The division of labour must
never go so far that the individual parts become inde
pendent, because that would lead to the dismember
ment of the individual. They will work so much the
more efficiently the tighter the parts are held together,
and the more uniform the word of command. From
this follows the necessary unity of the consciousness.
If every part of the body had its own intellectual
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
47
organs or did each of the scenes which convey to us
a knowledge of the outer world produce its own con
sciousness, then would all knowledge of the world in
such a case and the co-operation of the various mem
bers of the body be much impeded, the advantages of
the division of labour would be abolished, or changed
into disadvantages, the support which the senses or the
organs of movement mutually give to each other would
cease, and there would come instead mutual hindrance.
Finally, however, the intelligence must possess, in
addition, the power to gather experiences and to com
pare. To return once more to our singing bird : he has
two ways open to him to find out where food is the
best for him, and where it is easiest to be found ; what
enemies are dangerous for him, and how to escape
them. One his own experience, the other the observa
tion of other and older birds, who have already had
experience. No master is, as is well known, born.
Every individual can so much the easier maintain him
self in the struggle for life the greater his experiences
and the better arranged they are ; to that, however,
belongs the gift of memory and the capacity to com
pare former impressions with later ones, and to extract
from them the common and the universal element, to
separate the essential from the inessential—that is, to
think. Does observation, the particular factor through
the senses, communicate to us the differences, so
does thinking tell us the common factor, the universal
element in the things.
“ The universal,” says Dietzgen, “ is the content of
all concepts, of all knowledge, of all science, of all
acts of thought. Therewith the analysis of the organs
of thought show the latter as the power to investigate
the universal in the particular.”
All these qualities of the intellectual powers we find
developed in the animal world, even if not in so high
a degree as with men, and if often for us very difficult
to recognise, since it is not always easy to distinguish
conscious actions springing from intelligence from the
involuntary and unconscious actions—simple reflex
�48
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
actions and instinctive movements which even in men
play a great rdle.
If we find all these qualities of the intellectual
faculties to be a necessary concomitant of the power of
self-movement already in the animal world, so do we,
on the other hand, find in the same qualities also the
same limitations which even the most embracing and
most penetrating understanding of the highly-developed
civilised man cannot surmount.
Forces and capacities which were acquired as
weapons in the battle for existence can naturally be
made available for other purposes as well as
those of rendering existence secure when the organism
has brought its power of self-movement and its in
telligence as well as its instincts, of which we will speak
later, to a high enough degree of development. The
individual can employ the muscles, which were de
veloped in it for the purpose of snatching its booty or
warding off the foe, as well for dancing and playing.
But their particular character is obtained by these
powers and capacities all the same only from the
struggle for life which developed them.
Play and
dance develop no particular muscles.
That holds good also of the intellectual powers and
faculties as a necessary supplement to the power of
self-movement in the struggle for life ; developed in
order to render possible to the organism the most suit
able movement in the surrounding world for its own
preservation, yet it could, all the same, be made to
serve other purposes. To these belong also pure know
ing without any practical thoughts in the background,
without regard for the practical consequences which
it can bring about. But our intellectual powers have
not been developed by the struggle for existence to
become an organ of pure knowledge, but only to be an
organ which regulates our movements in conformity
with their purpose. So completely does it function in
respect of the latter, so incomplete is it in the first.
From the very beginning most intimately connected
with the power of self-movement, it develops itself
completely only in mutual dependence on the power
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
49
of self-movement, and can only be brought to perfec
tion in this connection. Also the power of the human
faculties of cognition and human knowledge is most
intimately bound up with human practice, as we shall
see.
The practice it is, however, which guarantees to us
the certainty of our knowledge. So soon as my know
ledge enables me to bring about distinct effects the
production of which lies in my power, the relation of
cause and effect ceases for me to be simply chance or
simple appearance, or simple forms of knowledge such
as the pure contemplation and thought might well
describe them. The knowledge of this relation becomes
through the practice a knowledge of something real, and
is thus raised to certain knowledge.
The boundaries of practice show certainly the boun
daries of our certain knowledge. That theory and
practice are dependent on one another, and only
through the mutual permeation of the one by the other
can at any time the highest results attainable be arrived
at, is only an outcome of the fact that movement and
intellectual powers from their earliest beginnings were
bound to go together. In the course of the develop
ment of human society the duration of labour has
brought it about that the natural unity of these two
factors should be destroyed, and created classes to
whom principally the movement, and others to whom
principally the knowing, fell.
We have already
pointed out how this was reflected in philosophy
through the creation of two worlds, a higher or intel
lectual and a lower or bodily. But naturally in no
individual were the two functions ever to be wholly
divided, and the proletariat movement of to-day is
directing its energies with good effect to abolishing this
distinction, and with it also the dualist philosophy, the
philosophy of pure knowledge. Even the deepest, most
abstract, knowledge, which apparently is farthest
removed from the practical, influence this, and are in
fluenced by it, and to bring in us this influence to
consciousness becomes the duty of 3. critique of
human knowledge. As before, knowledge remains in
�5°
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
the last resort always a weapon in the struggle for
existence, a means to give to our movements, be they
movements in nature or society, the most suitable forms
and directions.
‘ ‘ Philosophers have only interpreted the world differ
ently,” said Marx. “The great thing, however, is to
change it.”
—The Motives of Self-Maintenance and Propagation.
Both the powers of self-movement and of knowing
belong thus inseparably together as weapons in the
struggle for existence. The one developed itself along
with the other, and in the degree in which these weapons
gain in importance in the organism, others, more primi
tive, lose, being less necessary, as, for example, that of
fruitfulness and of vital force. On the other hand, to
the degree that these diminish must the importance of
’the first-named factors for the struggle for life increase,
and it must call forth their greater development.
But self-movement and knowledge by no means form
by themselves a sufficient weapon in the struggle.
What use are to me in this struggle the strongest
muscles, the most agile joints, the sharpest senses, the
greatest understanding, if I do not feel in me . the
impulse to employ them to my preservation; if the sight
of food or the knowledge of danger leaves me in
different and awakens no emotion in me? Self-move
ment and intellectual capacity first then . become
weapons in the struggle for existence, if with them
there arises a longing for the self-preservation of the
organism ; which brings it about that all knowledge
which is of importance for its existence at once pro
duces the will to carry out the movement necessary for
its existence, and therewith calls forth the same.
Self-movement and intellectual powers have no
importance for the existence of the individual without
this instinct of self-preservation, just as this latter again
is of no importance without both the former factors.
All the three are most intimately bound up with each
other. The instinct of self-preservation is the most
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
51
primitive of the animal instincts, and the most indis
pensable. . Without it no animal species endowed in any
degree with the power of self-movement and a faculty
of intelligence could maintain itself even a short time
It rules the entire life of the animal. The same social
development which ascribes the care of the intellectual
faculties to particular classes and the practical move
ment to others, and produces in the first an elevation
of the ‘‘spirit” over the coarse ‘‘matter,” goes so
tar in the process of isolating the intellectual faculties
that the latter, out of contempt for the “ mechanical ”
action which serves for the maintenance of life, comes
to despise life itself. But this kind of knowledge has
never as yet been able to overcome the instinct of self
preservation, and to paralyse the ‘‘action” which
serves for the maintenance of life. Nay, even a suicide
may be philosophically grounded ; we always in every
practical act of the denial of life finally meet with
disease or ddsperate social circumstances as the cause
but not a philosophical theory. Mere philosophising
cannot overcome the instinct of self-preservation.
But if this is the most primitive and widely-spread of
all instincts, so is it not the only one. It serves only
tor the maintenance of the individual. However lone
this may endure, finally it disappears without leaving
any trace of its individuality behind, if it has not
reproduced itself. Only those species of organisms
will assert themselves in the struggle for existence who
leave a progeny behind them.
Now with the plants and the lower animals the
reproduction is a process which demands no power of
self-movement and no faculty of intelligence.
That
c anges, however, with the animals so soon as the
reproduction becomes sexual, in which two indi
viduals are concerned, who have to unite in order to
e^s ,and sperm on the same spot outside of
We body or to incorporate the sperm in the body of the
individual carrying the eggs.
J
f^Tha^dem^-dt a wiI1’ an imPuIse to find each other,
i W1fhout that the non-sexual propagation
cannot take place ; the stronger it is in the periods
E2
�r2
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
favourable for reproduction, so much the sooner will it
take place, so much the better will be the prospects of
a progeny for the maintenance of the species. On the
other hand, there is little prospect for those individuals
and species in whom the impulse for self-reproduction is
weakly developed. Consequently, from a given degree
of the devlopment, natural selection must develop,
through the struggle for life, an outspoken impulse
to reproduction in the animal world, and evermore
strengthen it. But it does not always suffice to the
attainment of a numerous progeny.
We have seen
that in the degree in which self-movement and intel
lectual powers grow, the number of the germs which
the individual produces, as well as its vitality, have a
tendency to diminish. Also, the greater the. division
of labour, the more complicated the organism, the
longer the period which is requisite for its develop
ment and its attainment to maturity. If a part of
this period is passed in the maternal body, that has
its limits.
Even from consideration of space this
body is not in a position to bear an organism as big
as itself; it must expel the young body previously
to that. In the young animals, however, the capaci
ties for self-movement and intelligence are the latest
achieved, and they are mostly very weakly developed
as they leave the protecting cover of the egg or the
maternal body. The egg expelled by the mother
is completely without motion and intelligence, lhen
the care for the progeny becomes an important func
tion of the mother : the hiding and defence of the eggs
and of the young, the feeding of the latter, etc. As
with the impulse for reproduction, so is it with the love
for the young ; especially in the animal world the
maternal love is developed as an indispensable means,
from a certain stage of the development on, tO' secure
the perpetuation of the species. With the impulse
towards individual self-preservation these impulses
have nothing to do ; they often come into conflict with
it, and they can be so strong that they overcome it.
It is clear that under otherwise equal conditions those
individuals and species have the best prospect of repro-
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
53
ducing themselves and handing on their qualities and
impulses - in whom the impulse of self-maintenance is
not able to diminish the impulse to reproduce and
protect the progeny.
4.—The Social Instinct.
Beside these instincts which are peculiar to the
higher animals, the struggle for life develops in par
ticular kinds of animals still others, which are special
and conditioned by the peculiarity of their method of
life ; for example, the migratory instinct, which we will
not further study. Here we are interested in another
kind of instinct, which is of very great importance for
our subject: the social instinct.
The co-operation of similar organisms in larger
crowds is a phenomenon which we can discover quite
in their earliest stages in the microbes. It is explained
alone . by the simple fact of reproduction.
If the
organisms have no self-movement, the progeny will,
consequently, gather round the producer, if they are
not by any chance borne away by the movements of the
external world matter : currents, winds, and phenomena
of that sort. The apple falls, as is well known, not
far from the stem, and when it is not eaten, and falls
on fruitful soil, there grow from its pips young trees,
which keep the old tree company.
But even in
animals with power of self-movement it is very natural
that the young should remain with the old if no
external circumstances supply a ground for them to
remove themselves. The living together of individuals
•of the same species, the most primitive form of social
life, is also the most primitive form of life itself. The
division of organisms, having common origin is a
later act.
. The separation can be brought about by the most
diverse causes. The most obvious, and certainly the
most effective, is the lack of sustenance.
Each
locality can only yield a certain quantity of food. If
a certain species of animals multiplies over the limits
of their food supply, the superfluous ones must either
�54
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
emigrate or starve. Beyond a certain number the
number of organisms living in one place cannot go.
But there are certain species of animals for whom
the isolation, the division in individuals or pairs who
live only for themselves, is the form of living which
affords an advantage in the struggle for existence.
Thus, for example, the cat species, which lie in wait for
their booty, and take it with an unexpected spring.
This method of acquiring their sustenance would be
made more difficult, if not impossible, did they circulate
in bigger herds. The first spring on the booty would
drive all the game away for all the others.
For
wolves, which do not come unexpectedly on their prey,
but worry it to death, the foregathering in herds affords
an advantage; one hunts the game to the other, which
blocks the way for it. The cat hunts most success
fully alone.
Again, there are animals who choose
isolation because thus they are less conspicuous, and
can most easily hide themselves, and soonest escape the
foe. The traps set by men have, for example, had
the effect that many animals which formerly lived in
societies are now only to be found isolated, such as
the beavers in Europe. That is the only way for them
to remain unnoticed.
On the other hand, however, there are numerous
animals which draw advantage from their social life.
They are seldom beasts of prey. We have mentioned
the wolf above. But even they only hunt in bands
when food is scarce in winter ; in summer, when it is
easier to get, they live in pairs.
The nature of the
beast of prey is always inclined to fighting and violence,
and, consequently, does not agree well with its equals.
The herbivora are more peaceful from the very manner
in which they obtain their food. That very fact in
itself renders it easier for them to herd together, or to
remain together, because they are more defencless ;
they will, however, through their greater numbers,
need weapons in the struggle for life. The union of
many weak forces to common action can produce a
new and greater force.
Then, through union, the
greater strength of certain individuals is for the good
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
55
of all. Unless the stronger ones fight now for them
selves, they fight for the good of the weaker ; when the
more experienced look out for their own safety, find
out for themselves feeding grounds, they do it also for
the inexperienced. It then becomes possible to intro
duce a division of labour among the united individuals,
which, fleeting though it be, yet increases their strength
and their safety. It is impossible to watch the neigh
bourhood with the most complete attention and at the
same time to feed peacefully. Naturally, during sleep,
all observation of any kind comes to an end. But in
unity one watcher suffices to render the others safe
during sleep or while eating.
Through the division of labour the union of indi
viduals becomes a body with different organs to co
operate to a given end, and this end is the maintenance
of the collective body—it becomes an organism. With
that is by no means implied that the new organism or
society is a body in the same way as an animal or a
plant, but it is an organism of its own kind, which is
far more widely distinguished from these two than the
animal from the plant. Both are made up from cells
without power of self-motion and without conscious
ness of their own ; society, on the other hand, from
individuals with their own power of self-movement and
consciousness. If, however, the animal organism has
as a whole a power of self-motion and consciousness,
they are lacking, nevertheless, to society as well as
to the plants. But the individuals which form the
society can entrust individuals among their members
with functions through which the social forces are
Submitted to a uniform will, and uniform movements in
the society are produced.
On the other hand the individual and society are
much more loosely connected than the cell and the whole
organism in both plant and animal. The individual
can separate itself from one society and join another,
as emigration proves. That is impossible for a cell;
for it the separation from the whole is death, if
we leave certain cells of a particular kind out of
account, such as the sperma and eggs, in the pro-
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
creation processes. Again society can forthwith im
pose on new individuals any change of form without
any change of substance, which is impossible for an
animal body. Finally, the individuals who form society
can, under circumstances, change the organs and
organisation of society, while anything of that kind is
quite impossible in an animal or vegetable organism.
If, therefore, society is an organism, it is no animal
organism, and to attempt to explain any phenomena
peculiar to society from the laws of the animal
organism is not less absurd than when the attempt is
made to deduce peculiarities of the animal organism and
self-movement and consciousness from the laws of the
vegetable being. Naturally this does not imply that
there is not also something common to the various
kinds of organisms.
As the animal so also the social organism survives
so much the better in the struggle for existence
the more unitary its movements, the stronger the
binding forces, the greater the harmony of the parts.
But society has no fixed skeleton which supports the
weaker parts, no skin which covers in the whole, no
circulation of the blood which nourishes all the parts,
no. heart which regulates it, no brain which makes a
unity out of its knowing, its willing, and its move
ments.
Its unity and harmony, as well as its
coherence, can only arise from the actions and will of
its members. This unitary will, however, will be so
much the more assured the more it springs from a
strong impulse.
Among species of animals, in whom the social bond
becomes a weapon in the struggle for life, social im
pulses become encouraged which, in many species and
many individuals, grow to an extraordinary strength,
so that they can overcome the impulse of self-preserva
tion and reproduction when they come in conflict with
the same.
The commencement of the social impulse we can well
look for in the interest which the simple fact of living
together in society produces in the individual for his
fellows, to whose society he is used from youth on.
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
57
On the other hand, reproduction and care for the pro
geny already render longer or shorter relations of a
more intimate kind necessary between different indi
viduals of the same species ; and just as these rela
tions have formed the starting point for the formation
of societies, so could the corresponding impulses well
give the point of departure for the development of the
social impulses.
These impulses themselves can vary according to
the varying conditions of the various species, but a
row of impulses form the requisite conditions for the
success of any kind of society. In the first place,
naturally, altruism—self-sacrifice for the whole. Then
bravery in the defence of the common interests ; fidelity
to the community ; submission to the will of society,
thus obedience and discipline ; truthfulness to society,
whose security is endangered, or whose energies are
wasted, when they are misled in any way by false
signals. Finally ambition, the sensibility to the praise
and blame of society. These are all social impulses
which we find expressed already among animal
societies, many of them in a high degree.
These social impulses are, nevertheless, nothing less
than the highest virtues ; they sum up the entire moral
code. At the most they lack the love for justice, that is
the impulse towards equality. For its development
there certainly is no place in the animal societies,
because they only know natural and individual in
equality, and not those called forth by social relations,
the social inequalities. The lofty moral law that the
comrade ought never to be merely a means to an end—
which the Kantians look on as the most wonderful
achievement of Kant’s genius, as the moral programme
of the modern era, and as essential to the entire future
history of the world—is in the animal world a common
place. The development of human society first created
a state of affairs in which the companion became a
simple tool of others.
What appeared to Kant as the creation of a higher
world of spirits is a product of the animal world.
How closely the social impulses have grown up with
�58
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
the fight for existence . and to what an extent they
originally were useful in the preservation of species
can be seen from the fact that their effect often limits
itself to individuals whose maintenance is advantageous
for the species. Quite a number of animals which
risk their lives to save younger or weaker comrades
kill without a scruple sick or aged comrades that are
superfluous for the preservation of the race, and are
become a burden to society. The “moral sense,”
sympathy,” does not extend to these elements. Even
many savages behave in this manner.
The moral law is an animal impulse, and nothing
else. Thence its mysterious nature, this voice in us
which has no connection with any external impulse or
any apparent interest; this demon or god, which, since
Socrates and Plato, has been found in themselves by
those moralists who refused to deduce morality from
self-love or pleasure. Certainly a mysterious impulse,
but not more mysterious than sexual love, maternal
love, the instinct of self-preservation, the being of the
organism itself, and so many other things, which only
belong to the world of phenomena, and which no one
looks on as products of a supersensuous world.
Because the moral law is an animal instinct of equal
force to the instinct of self-preservation and reproduc
tion, thence its force, thence its power which we obey
without thought, thence our rapid decisions, in par
ticular cases, whether an action is good or bad,
virtuous or vicious ; thence the energy and decision of
our moral judgment, and thence the difficulty to prove
it when reason begins to analyse its grounds. Thence,
finally, we find that to comprehend all means to pardon
all, that everything is necessary, that nothing is good
or bad.
Not from our organs of knowing but from our
impulses come the moral law and the moral judgment,
as well as the feeling of duty and the conscience.
In many kinds of animals the social impulses attain
such a strength that they become stronger than all the
rest. When the former come in conflict with the latter,
they then confront the latter with overpowering
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM
59
strength as commands of duty. Nevertheless, that
does not hinder in such a case a special impulse, say
of self-preservation or of reproduction, being tempo
rarily stronger than the social impulse and overcoming
it. But as the danger passes the strength of the
self-preserving impulse or the reproductive instinct
diminishes, just as that of reproduction after the
completion of the act. The social instinct remains,
however, existing in the old force, regains the dominion
over the individual, and works now in him as the
voice of conscience and of repentance.
Nothing is
more mistaken than to see in conscience the voice of
fear of his fellows, their opinion, or even their power
of physical compulsion. It has effect even in respect to
acts which no one has heard of, even acts which
may appear to those nearest as very praiseworthy ; it
can even act as repugnance to acts which have been
undertaken from fear of his fellows and their public
opinion.
Public opinion, praise and blame, are certainly very
influential factors. But their effect assumes in advance
a certain social impulse—namely, ambition—they are
not capable of producing the social impulses.
We have no reason to assume that conscience is
Confined to man. It would be difficult to discover even
in men if everyone did not feel its effect on him
self. Conscience is certainly a force which does not
obviously and openly show itself, but works only in the
innermost being.
But, nevertheless, many investi
gators have gone so far as to point, even in animals,
to a kind of conscience. Darwin says in his book,
“ The Descent of Man ” :—
“ Besides love and sympathy, the animals show
Other qualities connected with the social instincts
which we should call moral in men ; and I agree with
Agassiz that dogs have something very like a con
science. Dogs certainly have a certain power of self
control, and this does not appear to be altogether a
consequence of fear. As Braubach remarks, ‘ A dog
will restrain itself from stealing food in the absence of
its master.’ ”
�6o
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
If conscience and feeling of duty are a consequence
of the lasting predominance of the social impulses in
many species of animals, if these impulses are those
through which the individuals of such species are the
most constantly and most enduringly determined, while
the force of the other impulses is subject to great oscil
lations, yet the force of the social impulse is not free
from all oscillations. One of the most peculiar pheno
mena is this : that social animals when united in
greater numbers also feel stronger social impulses. It
is, for example, a well-known fact that an entirely
different spirit reigns in a well-filled meeting than in a
small one ; that the bigger crowd has in itself alone an
inspiring effect on the speaker. In a crowd the indivi
duals are not only more brave—that could be explained
through the greater support which each believes he will
get from his fellows—they are also more unselfish,
more self-sacrificing, more enthusiastic. Certainly only
too often so much the more calculating, cowardly and
selfish when they find themselves alone.
And that
applies not only to men, but also to the social animals.
Thus Espinas in his book, “The Animal Societies,’’
quotes an observation of Forel. The latter found :—
“The courage of every ant, by the same form, in
creases in exact proportion to the number of its com
panions or friends, and decreases in exact proportion
the more isolated it is from its companions.
Every
inhabitant of a very populous ant heap is much more
courageous than are similar ones from a small popula
tion. The same female worker which would allow her
self to be killed ten times in the midst of her companions,
will show herself extraordinarily timid, avoid the least
danger, fly before even a much weaker ant, so soon
as she finds herself twenty yards from her own home.’’
With the stronger social feeling there need not be
necessarily bound up a higher faculty of intelligence.
It is probable that, in general, every instinct has the
effect of somewhat obscuring the exact observation of the
external world. What we wish, that we readily believe ;
but what we fear, that we easily exaggerate. The in
stincts can very easily produce the effect that many
�THE ETHICS OF DARWINISM.
6l
things appear disproportionately big or near, while
others are overlooked. How blind and deaf the instinct
for reproduction can render many animals at times is
well known. The social instincts which do not show
themselves as a rule so acutely and intensively, gener
ally obscure much less the intellectual faculties ; they
can, however, influence them very considerably on occa
sion. Think, for instance, of the influence of faith
fulness and discipline upon sheep, who follow their
leading sheep blindly wherever it may go.
The moral law in us can lead our intellect astray
just as any other impulse, being itself neither a pro
ducer nor a product of wisdom. What is apparently
the most devoted and divine in us is essentially
the same as that which we look on as the commonest
and most devilish. The moral law is of the same
nature as the instinct for reproduction.
Nothing is
more ridiculous than when the former is put on a
pedestal and the latter is turned away from with loath
ing and contempt. But no less false is it to infer that
man can, and ought, to give way to his impulses with
out check. That is only so far true as it is impossible
to condemn any one of these as such. But that by no
means implies that they cannot come to cross purposes.
It is simply impossible that anyone should follow all
his instincts without restraint, because they restrain
one another. Which, however, at a given moment
wins, and what consequences this victory may bring to
the individual and his society with it, neither the ethic
of pleasure nor those of a moral law standing outside
of space and time afford us any help to divine.
If, however, the moral law were recognised as a
social instinct which, like all the instincts, is called
out in us by the struggle for life, then the supersensuous world has lost a strong support in human
thought. The simple gods of Polytheism were already
dethroned by natural philosophy. If, nevertheless, a
new philosophy could arise which not only revealed the
belief in God and a supersensuous world, but put it
more firmly in a higher form, as was done in ancient
times by Plato and on the eve of the French Revolu-
�62
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
tion by Kant, the cause lay in the fact that the problem
of the moral law, to whose explanation neither its
deduction from pleasure nor from the moral sense
sufficed—while it yet offered the only “ natural ” causal
explanation which seemed possible. Darwinism was
the first to make an end to the division of man, which
this rendered necessary, into a natural and animal
being on the one hand and a supernatural and heavenly
one on the other.
But with that the entire ethical problem was not yet
solved. Were it attempted to explain moral impulse,
duty, and conscience as well as the ground type of the
virtues from the social impulse, yet this breaks down
when it is a question of explaining the moral ideal. Of
that there is not the least sign in the animal world ; only
man can set himself ideals and follow them. Whence
come these? Are they prescribed to the human race
from the beginning of time as an irrevocable demand
of nature, or an eternal reason—as commands which
man does not produce, but which confront man
as a ruling force and show him the aims to which he
has ever more and more to strive after? That was, in
the main, the view of all thinkers of the eighteenth
century, Atheists as well as Theists, Materialists and
Idealists. This view took, even in the mouth of the
boldest Materialism, the tendency to assume a super
natural providence, which indeed had nothing more to
do in nature, but still hovers over human society. The
evolution idea which recognised the descent of man
from the animal world made this trend of idealism
absurd in a Materialist mouth.
All the same, before Darwin founded his epochmaking work, that theory had arisen which revealed the
secret of the moral ideal. This was the theory of Marx
and Engels.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
63
CHAPTER V.
The Ethics
of
Marxism.
1.—The Roots of the Materialist Conception of History.
The rapid progress of the natural sciences since the
French Revolution is intimately connected with the
expansion of capitalism from that time on. The great
capitalist industry depended more and more on the
application of science, and, consequently, had every
reason to supply it with men and means. Modern tech
nique gives to science not only new objects of activity,
but also new tools and new methods. Finally inter
national communication brought a mass of new
material. Thus was acquired strength and means to
carry the idea of evolution successfully through.
But even more than for natural science was the
French Revolution an epoch of importance for the
science of society, the so-called mental sciences. Be
cause in natural science the idea of evolution had
already given a great stimulus to many thinkers. In
mental science, on the other hand, it was only to be
found in the most rudimentary attempts. Only after
the French Revolution could it develop in them.
The mental sciences—Philosophy, Law, History,
Political Economy—had been for the rising bourgeoisie
before the French Revolution, in the first place, a
means of fighting the ruling powers, social and political,
which opposed them, and had their roots in the past.
To discredit the past, and to paint the new and coming,
in contrast to it, as the only good and useful, formed
the principal occupation of these sciences.
That has altered since the Revolution. This gave
the bourgeoisie the essence of what they wanted. It
revealed to them, however, social forces which wanted
to go further than themselves. These new forces began
to be more dangerous than the relics of the deposed
�64
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
old. To come to an agreement with the latter became
merely a requirement of political sagacity on the part of
the bourgeoisie. With that, however, their opinion on
the past was bound also to grow milder.
On the other hand the Revolution had brought a
great disillusionment to the Idealogues themselves.
Great as were its achievements for the bourgeoisie,
they are not yet up to the expectations of an harmonious
empire of
morality,” general well-being, and happi
ness, such as had been looked for from the overthrow
of the old. No one dared to build hopes on the new ;
the more unsatisfactory the present, so much the more
terrifying were the reminiscences of the most recent
past which the present had brought to a head, so much
the more bright did the farther past appear. That
produced, as is well.known, Romanticism in art. But
it produced also similar movements in the mental
sciences. Men began to study the past, not in order
to condemn it, but to understand it; not to show up its
absurdity, but to understand its reasonableness.
But the Revolution had done its work too thoroughly
for men to dream of re-establishing what had been
set aside. Had the past been rational, so it was neces
sary to show that it had become irrational. The socially
necessary and reasonable ceased with that to appear
as an unchangeable conception. Thus arose the view
of a social evolution.
That 'applied first to the knowledge of German his
tory.
In Germany the above-described process was
most markedly to be seen ; there the revolutionary
method of thought had not penetrated so deeply, had
never struck such deep roots as in France; there the
work of the Revolution had not been so complete, the
forces and opinions of the past had been shaken in a
less degree, and finally had appeared on the scene more
as a disturbing than an emancipating element.
But to the study of the German past there asso
ciated itself the investigation of similar periods. In
America the young community of the United States
was already so far advanced that a separate class
of the intellectuals had been able to develop a real
�65
THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
American literature and science. What specially dis
tinguished America from Europe was, however, the
close contact of the capitalist civilisation of the white
man with Indian barbarism. That was the object
which especially attracted literature and science. Soon
after the German Romanticism there arose the Ameri
can-Indian novel, and soon after the rise of the histori
cal school of law, the revival of the old fancy tales and
the world of legends, and the comparative philological
research in Germany, and the scientific theory of the
social and linguistic conditions of the Indians in America.
At an earlier period, however, the settlement of the
English in India had afforded the possibility, nay the
necessity of a study of the languages, the customs, and
the laws of these territories. As far as Germany there
had penetrated, at the commencement of the nineteenth
century, the knowledge of Sanskrit, which laid the
foundation for the comparative study of languages,
which in its turn afforded the most valuable insight into
the life of the Indo-Germanic peoples in primitive times.
All this rendered it possible to treat the accounts
given by civilised observers of primitive peoples, as well
as the discoveries of weapons and tools of vanished
races, differently from formerly, when they had been
simply looked on as curiosities. They now became
material by which to extend the partly-revealed chain of
human development still further into the past, and to
close up many of the gaps.
In this entire historical work there was lacking,
however, the object which had, up to then, ruled the
entire writing of history—the great man theory. In
the written sources, from which formerly the know
ledge of human history was exclusively culled, only the
extraordinary had been related, because it was that
only which seemed noteworthy to the chronicler of the
events of his time. To describe everyday occurrences,
that which everybody knew, was by no means his task.
The extraordinary man, the extraordinary event, such
as wars and revolutions, only seemed worth relating.
Thus it was that for the traditional historians, who
never got beyond writing up from the sources handed
F
�66
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
down to them with more or less criticism, the big man
was the motive power in history—in the Feudal period
the king, the military commander, the religious founder,
and the priest. In the eighteenth century there were
very many men branded by the bourgeois intellectuals
as the authors of all the evil in the world, and the
philosophers, on the other hand, as legislators and
teachers, as the only real instruments of progress. But
all progress appeared to be only external, a simple
change of clothes. That period in which the sources
of historical writing began to flow more abundantly,
the time of the victory of the Greeks over the Persian
invasion, was the culminating period of the social deve
lopment. From that time on society in the lands round
the Mediterranean began to decay ; it went down and
down till the Barbarian Immigration. Only slowly
have the peoples of Europe since then developed them
selves again to a higher level socially, and even in the
eighteenth century they had not risen far above the
level of classical antiquity, so that in many points of
politics, of philosophy, and especially of art, the latter
could rank as a pattern.
History, as a whole, appeared simply as a rise and
fall, a repetition of the same circle, and just as the
simple individual can set himself continually higher
aims than he arrives at, because as a rule he fails, so
did this circle appear as a horrible tragi-comedy in
which all that was most elevated and strongest was
doomed to play wretched parts.
Quite otherwise was it with primitive history. That,
with its individual departments, history of law, com
parative philology, ethnology, found in the material
which these worked up, not the extraordinary and the
individual, but the everyday and common-place de
scribed. But for this very reason primitive history can
trace with certainty a line of continuous development.
And the more the material increases the more it is pos
sible to compare like with like, the more it is discovered
that this development is no chance, but according to
law. The material which is at our disposal is, on the one
side, facts of the technical arrangements of life, on the
�g?
THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
•other, of law, custom and religion. To show the law
controlling this, means nothing else than to bring
technics into a causal connection with the legal, moral,
■and religious conceptions without the help of extra
ordinary individuals or events.
. This connection was, however, discovered almost
■simultaneously from another side, namely statistics.
So long as the parish was the most important econo
mic institution statistics were hardly required.
In
the parish it was easy to get a view of the state of
^affairs. But even if statistics were made then, they
■could scarcely suggest scientific observations, as with
such small figures the law had no chance of showing
itself. That was bound to alter as the capitalist method
of production created the modern states, which were
not, like the earlier ones, simple groups of communes or
parishes and provinces, but unitary bodies with im
portant economic functions.
Besides that, however, the capitalist method of pro
duction developed not simply the inner market but,
in addition, cieated the world market. This produced
highly complicated connections which could not be
controlled without the means of statistics. Founded
lor the practical purpose of tax-gathering and raising
of recruits, for customs, and finally for the insurance
societies, it gradually embraced wider and wider
spheres, and produced a mass of observations on a
large scale, revealing laws which were bound to impress
themselves on observant workers-up of the material. In
England they had already, towards the end of the
seventeenth century, since Petty, arrived at a political
arithmetic^ in which, however, “estimates” played a
very big rdle. At the beginning of the nineteenth cen
tury the method of statistical inquiries was so com
plete and its sphere so varied that it was possible to
discover with the greatest certainty the laws governing
the actions of great masses of men.
The Belgian
Guelelet made an attempt, in the thirties, to describe
in this manner the physiology of human society.
It was seen that the determining element in the
alterations of human action was always a material, as a
F2
�68
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
rule, an economic change. Thus was the decrease and
increase of crime, of suicide, and of marriages shown
to be dependent on the price of corn.
Not as if, for instance, economic motives were the
sole cause that marriages were made at all. Nobody
would declare the sexual passion to be an economic
motive. But the alteration in the annual number of
marriages is called forth by changes in the economic
situation.
Besides all these new sciences, there is finally to be
mentioned a change in the character of the modern
writing of history. The French Revolution came to
the fore so clearly as a class struggle, that not only its
historian must recognise that, but a number of thehistorians were inspired to investigate in other periods
of history the r61e of the class wars, and to see in them
the motive forces of human development. The classes
are, however, again a product of the economic structure
of society, and from this spring the antagonisms, there
fore the struggles of the classes. What holds every
class together, what divides them from other classes,
and determines their opposition to these, are the par
ticular class interests, a new kind of interests, of which
no moralist of the eighteenth century, whatever school
he might belong to, had had any idea.
With all these advances and discoveries, which cer
tainly often enough were only piecemeal and by no
means quite clear by the time of the forties in the nine
teenth century, all the essential elements of the
Materialist Conception of History had been supplied.
They only waited for the master who should bring
them under control and unify them. That was done by
Engels and Marx.
Only to deep thinkers such as they were was an
achievement of that nature possible. In so far that
was their personal work.
But no Engels, no Marx
could have achieved it in the eighteenth century, before
all the new sciences had produced a sufficient mass of
new results. On the other hand, a man of the genius
of a Kant or a Helvetius could also have discovered
the Materialist Conception of History if at their time
�TIIE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
69
the requisite scientific conditions had been to hand.
And on the other hand, even Engels and Marx, despite
their genius, and despite the preparatory work which
the new sciences had achieved, would not have been able,
even in the time of the forties in the nineteenth century,
to discover it, if they had not stood on the standpoint
«of the proletariat, and were thus Socialists. That also
was absolutely necessary to the discovery of this Con
ception of History.
In this sense it is a proletarian
philosophy, and the opposing views are bourgeois
philosophies.
The rise of the idea of evolution took place during a
period of reaction, when no immediate further develop
ment of society was in question. I he conception, con
sequently, only served for the explanation of the pre
vious development, and thereby only in a certain sense
—that of a justification ; nay, at times, more a glorifi
cation of the past. Just as through Romanticism and
the historical school of jurisprudence there goes
through the entire study of early times, even through
Sanskrit study—I may point to the example of
Schopenhauer’s Buddhism—in the first decades of the
last century, a reactionary trait. So was it with that
philosophy which made the evolutionary idea of that
period the centre of its system—the Hegelian. Even
that was only intended to be a panegyric on the pre
vious development, which had now found its close in
the monarchy by the will of God.
As reactionary
philosophy, this philosophy of the development was
bound to be an idealist philosohpy, since the present,
the reality, was in too great a contradiction with its
reactionary tendencies.
As soon as reality—that is, the capitalist society—
had got so far as to be able to make itself felt in face
of these tendencies, the idealist conception of evolution
became impossible. It was superseded by a more or
less open Materialism. But only from the proletariat
point of view was it possible to translate the social
development into a Materialistic one—in other words, to
recognise in the present an evolution of society pro«ceeding according to natural laws. The bourgeoisie
�JQ
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
was obliged to close its eyes to all idea of a further
social evolution, and repudiate every philosophy of
evolution, which did not simply investigate the develop
ment of the past to understand this, and also in order
to understand the tendencies of the new society of the
future, and to hammer out weapons for the struggle of
the present, which is destined to bring about this form
of society of the future.
Although this period of intellectual reaction after
the great Revolution had been overcome, and the bourgeoisie, which had regained self-respect and power,
had made an end to all artistic and philosophic romanti
cism in order to proclaim Materialism, they could not,
all the same, get as far as the historic Materialism.
Deeply founded as this was in the circumstances of the
time, it was no less in the nature of the circumstances
that this (the latest form of materialism) could only be
a. philosophy of the proletariat ; that it should be repu
diated by science so far as this came under the influence
of the bourgeoisie, repudiated to such an extent that
even the Socialist author of “ The History of
Materialism,” Albert Lange, only mentions Karl Marx
in that work as an economist, and not as a philosopher.
The idea . of evolution, generally accepted for the
material sciences, even fruitful for certain special'
branches of mental science, has remained a dead letter
for the scientific point of view7, as interpreted by7 the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie could not even get far
ther than Hegel in their philosophy. Thev fell back
into a Materialism which stands considerably below
that of the eighteenth century, because it is purely
natural philosophy and has no theory of society to
show. And when this narrow7 Materialism no longer
suited them they turned to the old Kantianism, purified'
fi om the defects which had been superseded by science
in the meantime, but not emancipated from its Ethic,
which was now the buhvark which w7as to be brought
against the Materialist theory of Social Evolution.
In the economic sciences the bourgeoisie hovered
between an historic conception, w7hich certainly7 acknow7ledges an evolution of society but denies necessary
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
71
laws of this development, and a view which recognises
necessary laws of society but denies the. social develop
ment, and believes it possible to discover in the
psychology of primitive man all the economic cate
gories of modern society. To these conceptions there
was added naturalism (or scientific naturalism) which
tries to reduce the laws of society to laws of biology—
that is, to the laws of animal and plant organisms—
and really amounts to nothing short of a denial of
social development.
Since the bourgeoisie has grown conservative, only
from the proletarian standpoint is a Materialist view
of social development possible.
It is true that the dialectical materialism is a
materialism of its own kind, which is quite different
from the materialism of natural science (naturalism).
Many friends have wished, accordingly, in order to
avoid misunderstandings, to substitute another word
for the word Materialism.
But if Marx and Engels retained the word Material
ism, it was on the same ground as the refusal to
re-christen their manifesto of the Communists as the
manifesto of the Socialists. The word Socialism
covers to-day such various wares, among them some
really worthless, Christian and national Socialisms of
all kinds ; the word Communism, on the other hand,
describes unmistakably and clearly the aims of a
proletariat fighting a revolutionary fight for its emanci
pation.
So, also, by a designation of the dialectical material
ism as dialectical “monism,” or “criticism,” or
“ realism,” the entire sense of opposition to the bour
geois world is lost. The word “ Materialism,” on the
other hand, has signified since the victory of Christianity
a philosophy of the fight against the ruling powers.
Therefore, has it come into disrepute with the bour
geoisie, but for that very reason we followers of the
proletarian philosophy have the right to hold fast to
this very name, which also can be justified in fact.
And a conception of Ethics which rises from this
philosophy can rank as a Materialistic one.
�72
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
2*—The Organisation of Human Society.
(a) The Technical Development.
. If we regard man, from the standpoint of the Mate
rialist. Conception of History, at the stage at which we
left him in the last chapter—at the boundary which
divided him from the rest of the animal world—what is
it that raises him above it ? Does there exist between
him and them only gradual differences, or is there also
an essential difference? Neither as thinking nor as
moral being is man essentially different from the
animals. Does not the difference perhaps lie in the
fact that he produces—that is, adapts material found
in nature by means of change of form or of place to
his purposes ? This activity is, however, also found
in the animal world. To leave out of account many
insects, such as bees and ants, we find among many
warm-blooded animals, even among many fishes,
species of productive activity, namely, the production
of refuges and dwellings, nests, underground build
ings, and so on. And however much of this produc
tive. activity is also the product and result of inherited
instincts and dispositions, they are often so suitably
adapted to various circumstances that consciousness,
the knowledge of causal connections, must also play
a part thereby.
Or is it the use of tools which raises man above the
animals? Also not that. Among animals we find at
least the beginnings of the application of tools, of
branches of trees for defence, of stones for cracking
nuts, and so on. Their intelligence, as well as the
development of the feet into hands, enables the apes to
do that.
Thus neither the production of means of consump
tion nor the use of tools distinguishes man from the
animals. What, however, alone distinguishes him is
the production of tools, which serve for production
and defence or attack. The animal can at the most
find the tool in nature ; it is not capable of invent
ing such. It may produce things for its immediate
use, prepare dwellings, collect provisions, but it does
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
73
not think so far as to produce things which will not
serve for direct consumption, but for the production of
the means of consumption.
With the production of the means of production, the
animal man begins to become the human man ; with
that he breaks away from the animal world to found
his own empire, an empire with its own kind of
development, which is wholly unknown to the rest of
nature, in which nothing similar is to be found.
So long as the animal only produces with the organs
provided by nature, or only uses tools which nature
gives him, it cannot rise above the means thus pro
vided for him by nature. Its development only pro
ceeds in the manner that its own organism develops
itself ; the organs alter themselves, the brain included—
a slow and unconscious process carried on by means
of the struggle for life, which the animal can in no
way hurry on by its conscious activity.
On the other hand the discovery and production of
the tool—the word employed in the widest sense—
means that man consciously and purposely gives him
self new organs, or strengthens or lengthens his
natural organs, so that he can still better or easier
produce the same that these organs produced ; but
besides that he is in a position to arrive at results which
were formerly quite unattainable by him. But as man
is not simply an animal endowed with higher intelli
gence and hands—the necessary assumption of the
application and production of tools—but also must have
been, from the very beginning, a social animal, the
discovery and production of a tool did not get lost with
the death of the specially-gifted individual who had
found it—a Marx or Kant or Aristotle inhabiting the
trees of the primitive tropical forests. His herd took
up the invention and carried it on, won with it an ad
vantage in the struggle for life, so that their de
scendants could flourish better than the other members
of their kind. But the further perspicacity which this
fostered in the herd served the purpose for the future
of rendering the discovery so complete as to further
the invention of fresh tools.
�74
ethics and the materialist conception of history.
Even if a certain degree of intelligence and the
development of the hand forms the necessary condition
for the discovery and production of tools, yet it was
the social character of man which offered the conditions
for the continual addition of new and the improvement
of old discoveries, thus for a continual development of
the technique. The slow and unconscious process of the
development of the individuals through the struggle
for life, as it ruled the entire remaining organic world,
gives way more and more in the human world in
favour of the conscious transformation, adaptation
and improvement of the organs ; a development which
in its beginning, measured by modern standards, is
even then very long and difficult to observe, but which,
all the same, goes much quicker than the natural selec
tion. The technical progress forms for the future the
foundation of the entire development of man. On that
and not on any special divine spark rests all by which
man is distinguished from the animals.
Every single step forward on this path of technical
development is a conscious and intentional one. Each
arises from the endeavour to increase the powers of
man over the limits set by nature. But each of these
technical advances brings also, of necessity, effects
with it, which were not intended by its authors, and
could not be, because they were not in a position even
to suspect them—effects which, just as much as natural
selection, could be called adaptation to the surround
ings ; surroundings, however, which men had artificially
modified. In these adaptations there plays, however,
consciousness, the knowledge of the new surroundings
and its requirements ; again, a r61e ; this, nevertheless,
is not that of an independent directing force.
(b) Technic and Method of Life.
Let us seek, in order to get a clearer idea of what
has been said, to give ourselves an idea what conse
quences it was bound to have when primitive man
arrived at the first tool; where he joined the stone anti
the stick, which the age had already used, to make a
hammer, an axe or a spear. Naturally, the description
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
75
which here follows can only be a hypothetical one, as
we have no witness of the whole process ; but it is not
to serve as a proof, only as an illustration. We make
it as simple as possible, disregarding, for example, the
influence which ^fishing could have had on primitive
man.
So soon as primitive man possessed the spear he
found himself in a position to hunt still bigger animals.
His food was, up to then, derived principally from fruits
and insects, as well as, probably, little birds and young^
birds ; now he could kill even bigger animals ; meat
became, henceforth, more important for his food.
The majority of the bigger animals, however, live on
the earth, not in the trees ; hunting thus drew him
from his airy regions down to the earth. And further,
the animals most chaseable, the ruminants, were but
seldom to be found in the primitive forest. The more
man became a hunter the more could he emerge from
the forest in which primitive man was bred.
This account, as I have said, is purely hypothetical.
The process of evolution may have been the reverse.
Equally as the discovery of the tool and the weapon
may have driven man out of the primitive forest to
come forth into open grass land where the trees were
farther apart, just as much might forces which drove
primitive man from his original abode have been the
spur to the discovery of weapons and tools. Let us
assume, for instance, that the number of men increased
beyond their means of subsistence ; or that a glacial
period, say the glacier of the central Asiatic mountain
range sunk low down, and forced the inhabitants from
their forests into the grass plains which bordered it; or
that an increasing dryness of the climate even more and
more cleared the forest, and caused more and more
grass land to come up in it. In all these cases primi
tive man would have been obliged to give up his tree
life, and to move about on the earth ; he was obliged
from now on to seek for animal food, and could no
longer in the same degree feed himself from tree fruits.
The new method of life induced him to the frequent
�76
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
•employment of stones and sticks, and brought him
nearer to the discovery of the first tools and weapons.
Whatever development we accept, the first or the
second—and both could have taken place independent
of each other at different points—from both of them’
we see clearly the close connection which exists be
tween new means of production, new methods of
life and new needs. Each of these factors necessarily
produces the other ; each becomes necessarily the cause
of changes, which in their turn hide fresh changes in
their bosom.
Thus every discovery produces inevit
able changes, which give rise to other discoveries,
and therewith bring new needs and methods of life,
which again call forth new discoveries, and so on—a
chain of endless development which becomes so much
more rapid and more complicated the farther it proceeds
and the more the possibility and facility of new dis
coveries advance.
Let us consider the consequences which the rise of
hunting, as a source of food for man, and his emer
gence from the primitive forest was bound to draw
with it.
Besides the meat man took, in place of the tree fruits,
roots and fruits of the grasses, corn and maize into
his bill of fare. In the primitive forest a cultivation
of plants is impossible, and to clear the primitive forest
is beyond the power of primitive man. The latter,
however, could not even have evolved this idea. He
lived from tree fruits ; to plant fruit trees which would
first bear fruit after many years assumes that already
a high degree of culture and settlement has been
attained. On the other hand, the planting of grasses
in meadows and steppes is much easier than in the
primitive forest, and can be brought about with much
simpler tools. The thought of planting grasses, which
often bear fruits after only a few weeks, is, moreover,
easier to conceive than that of planting trees. Cause
and effect are so nearly connected in this case that their
dependence is easier to see, and even the unsettled
primitive man might expect to exist during the period
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
77
between seed time and harvest in the neighbourhood of
the cultivated ground.
Again, man so soon as he left the primitive forest
was far more at the mercy of climatic changes than
in his primitive home.
In the thick forest the
changes of temperature between day and night
were much less than on the open plain, on which
during the day a burning sun rules, and by night a
powerful radiation and loss of heat. Storms are also
less noticeable in the forest than in a woodless terri
tory, and against rain and hail this latter offers much
less protection than the almost impenetrable foliage of
the first. Thus man forced on to the plains was
bound to feel a need for shelter and clothing which the
primitive man in the tropical lorest nevei felt. If t e
male apes had already built themselves formal nests for
the night’s repose he was bound to go farther and
build walls and roofs for protection, or to seek shelter
in caves or holes. On the other hand, it was no great
step to clothe himself in the skins of animals which
remained over after the flesh had been taken out of
them. It was certainly the need for protection against
cold which caused mankind to aspire for the pos
session of fire.
Its tecnmcal utility he could only
gradually learn after he had used it a long time. The
warmth which it gave out was, naturally, at once
evident.
How man came to the use of fire will,
perhaps, never be certainly known ; but it is certain
that man in the primitive forest had no need for it as
a source of heat, and would not have been able amid.the
continual damp to maintain it. Only in a drier region,
where greater quantities of dry fire materials were to
be found at intervals-—moss, leaves, brushwood—could
fires arise, which made man acquainted with fire ; per
haps through lightning, or more likely from the sparks
of a flint, the first tool of primitive man, or from the heat
which arose from boring holes in hard wood.
We see how the entire life of man, his needs, his
dwelling, his means of sustenance were changed ; hoy
one discovery brought numerous others in its train
so soon as it was once made, so soon as the making
�78
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
of a spear or an axe had been achieved. In all
ese transformations consciousness played a p-reat
part, but the consciousness of other generations^than
those which had discovered the spear orthe axe And
the
WhlCh -W€re Presented to the consciousness of
thev arL5eberatlOn
nOt S6t by that of the f°rmer ;
feZry\“dye. and SpOntaneOUS* “ s°°" winnTn^ef thefchan^e of dwelling, of the need of the
theTffgf f fsuJten^nc€» of the entire method of life,
the effects of the discovery are not exhausted.
(c) Animal and Social Organism.
The division of labour among the organs in the
organisation has certain limits, since they are
hide-bound to the animal organism, cannot be changed
at pleasure, and their number is limited.
There is
also a limit set for the variety of the functions which
an animal organism is capable of performing. It is
for instance, impossible that the same limb should
serve equally well for holding things, for running and
nying, not to speak of other specialisations.
The tool, on the other hand, can be changed by man.
c
Kdapt 11 *° a sinSle definite purpose. This
ulfilled, he puts it on one side ; it does not hinder
-im in other work for which he requires quite other
tools. If the number of his limbs are limited, his tools
are innumerable.
But not simply the number of the organs of the
animal organism is limited, but also the force by
which any of them can be moved. It can be in no
case greater than the strength of the individual him
self to whom they belong; it must always be less
since it has to nourish all its organs besides the one in
motion
On the other hand, the force which moves a
tool is by no means confined to one individual. So
soon as it is separated from the human individual many
individuals can unite to move it, nay, they can use
■other than human forces for the purpose—beasts of
burden, and again, water, wind or steam.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
79
Thus in contrast to the animal organism the develop
ment of the artificial organs of man is unlimited,
at least, as measured by human ideas. 'They find their
limit only in the mass of the moving forces which Sun
and Earth place at the disposal of man.
The separation of the artificial organs of man from
his personality has, however, still other effects. If the
whole organs of the animal organism are bound up with
it, that means that every individual has the same
organs at his disposal. The sole exception is formed
by the organs of reproduction. Only in this region is
a division of labour to be found among the higher
organisms.
Every other division of labour in the
animal organism rests on the simple fact that certain
individuals take over certain functions for a certain
period—for example, the sentry duty, as leaders, etc.—
without requiring for the purpose organs which are
different from those of other individuals.
The discovery of the tool, on the other hand, made
it possible that in a society certain individuals should
exclusively use certain tools, or, so much oftener in
proportion as they understand their uses better than any
one else. Thus we come to a form of division of
labour in human society which is of quite another kind
from the modest beginnings of such in the animal
societies. In the latter there remains, with all the
division of labour, a being by itself, which possesses
all the organs which it requires for its support. In
human society this is less the case the further the
division of labour advances in it. The more developed
is this latter, so much the greater the number of the
organs which society has at its disposal for the gaining
of their sustenance and the maintenance of their
method of life, but so much the greater, also, the
number of the organs which are required, and so much
the more dependent the organs over which the indi
vidual has command. So much the greater the power of
society over nature, but so much the more helpless the
individual outside of society, so much the more de
pendent upon it. The animal society which arose as a
natural growth can never raise its members above
�80
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
nature. On the other hand, human society forms for
the human individual a nature which is a quite peculiar
world and apart from the rest; a world which apparently
interferes with its being much more than nature, with
which latter it imagines itself the better able to cope
the more the division of labour increases.
And the latter is practically just as unlimited as the
possible progress of technique itself ; it finds its limits
only in the limits to the expansion of the human race.
If we said above that the animal society is an organ
ism of a peculiar kind, different from the plant and
animal, so we now find that human society forms a
peculiar organism, not only differing again from the
plant and animal individual, but is essentially different
from that composed of animals.
Before all there come two distinguishing features
into account. We have seen that the animal organism
itself possesses all the organs which it requires for its
own existence, while the human individual under the
advanced division of labour cannot live by .itself with
out society. The Robinson Crusoes who without any
means produce everything for themselves are only to
be found in children’s story books and the so-called
scientific works of bourgeois economists, who believe
that the best way to discover the laws of society is to
completely ignore them. Man is in his whole nature
dependent, on society ; it rules him ; only through the
peculiar nature of this is he to be understood.
The peculiar nature of society is, however, in a con
tinual state of change, because human society, in dis
tinction to the animal one, is always subject to develop
ment in consequence of the technical advance. Animal
society develops itself, probably, only in the same
degree as the animal species which forms it.
Far
faster does the process of development proceed' in
human society. But at the same time nothing can be
more erroneous than to conceive it as the same as the
development of the individual, and distinguish the
stages of youth, of maturity, of decay and death in it.
So long as the sources of force hold out over which the
earth has command, therefore so long as the foundation
�81
THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
of technical progress does not disappear, we have no
decay and death of human society to expect. This,
with the development of technique, must ever more and
more advance, and is in this sense immortal.
Every society is modelled by the technical apparatus
at its command and the people who set it going, for
which purpose they enter into the complicated social
relations. So long as this technical apparatus keeps
on improving, and the people who move it neither
diminish in number nor in mental nor physical strength,
there can be no talk of a dying out of society.
That state of things has never occurred as a per
manent condition in any society as yet. Temporarily,
certainly, it occurs, in consequence of peculiarities with
which we will make acquaintance later on, that the
social relations which sprang from social needs, get
petrified and hinder the technical apparatus and the
growth of the members of society in number and in
intellectual and physical force, nay even give rise to a
reactionary movement. That can, however, historic
ally speaking, never last long ; sooner or later these
fetters of society are burst, either by internal move
ments, revolutions, or—and that is oftener the case—
by impulse from without, by wars.
Again, society
changes from time to time a part of its members, its
boundaries or its names, and it looks to the observer
as if the society had shown traces of old age, and
was now dead. In reality, however, if we want to
take a simile from the animal organism, it has only
been suffering from a disease from which it has
emerged with renewed strength. Thus, for instance,
the society of the Roman Imperial times did not
die, but, rejuvenated through German blood, it began,
after the migrations of the peoples, with partially new
people to improve and build up their technical
apparatus.
G
�82
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
3.—The Changes tn the Strength of the Social
Instincts.
(a) Language.
Human society, in contrast to those of animals, is
continually changing, and for that very reason the
people in it must continually be doing the same. The
alteration in the conditions of life must react on the
nature of man; the division of labour necessarily develops
some of his natural organs in a greater degree, and
transforms many. Thus, for instance, the development
of the human ape from a fruit tree eater into a devourer
of animals and plants which are to be found on the
ground, was bound to be connected with a transfor
mation of the hind pair of hands into feet. On the
other hand, since the discovery of the tool, no animal
has been subjected to such manifold and rapid changes
in his surroundings as man, and no animal confronted
with such tremendous and increasing problems of adap
tation to his environment as he, and hence none had to
use its intellect to the same degree as he. Already at
the beginning of that career, which was opened up by
the discovery of the first tool, superior to the rest of the
animals by reason of his adaptability and his intellec
tual powers, he was forced in the course of his history
to. develop both qualities in the highest degree.
If the changes in society are able to transform
the organism of man, his hands, his feet, his brain,
how much the more, and how much greater, to change
his consciousness, his views of that which was useful
and harmful, good and bad, possible and impossible.
If man begins his rise above the animals with the
discovery of the tool, he has no need to first create a
social compact as was believed in the eighteenth cen
tury, and, as many theoretical jurists still believe, in
the twentieth. He enters on his human development
as a social animal with strong social impulses. The
first ethical result of them on society could only be to
influence the force of these impulses. According to the
character of society these impulses will be either
strengthened or weakened. There is nothing more
�83
THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
false than the idea that the social impulses are bound
to be continually strengthened as society develops.
At the beginning of human society that certainly
will be found true. The impulses, which in the animal
world had already developed the social impulses,
human society permits to remain in full strength ; it
■adds further to that—co-operation in work. This co
operation itself must have made a new instrument of
intercourse, of social understanding, necessary—
language. The social animals could correspond with
few means of mutual understanding, cries of per
suasion, joy, fright, alarm, anger and sensational
noises.
Every individual is with them a whole,
which can exist for itself alone.
But sensational
noises do not, however, suffice if there is to be
common labour, or if different tasks are to be allotted,
or different products divided. They do not suffice for
individuals who are helpless without the help of other
individuals. Division of labour is impossible without
-a language which describes not merely sensations, but
also things and processes. It can only develop in the
'degree to which language is perfected, and this, for its
part, brings with it the need for the former.
In language itself the description of activities, and
especially the human, is the most primitive ; that of
things, the later. The verbs are older than the nouns,
the former forming the roots from which these latter are
'derived.
Thus declares Lazarus Geiger :—
“ When we ask ourselves why light and colour were
not nameable objects in the first stage of language,
but the painting of the colours, the answer lies in this :
that man first described only his own actions or those of
his kind ; he noticed only what happened to himself or in
the immediate and, to him, directly interesting neigh
bourhood, at a period when he had for such things as
light and dark, shining objects, and lightning no sense
and no power of conception. If we take as examples
from the great number which we have already passed
under review (in the book) ; they go back in their
beginnings to an extremely limited circle of human
G2
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
movements. For this reason the conception of natural
objects evolve in such a remarkably roundabout manner
from the conception of some human activity, which in
one way or other called attention to them, and often
brings something that is only a distant approximation
to them. So the tree is something stripped of its bark,
the earth something ground, the corn which grows on
it something without the husk. Thus earth and sea,
nay, even the clouds, the heavens themselves, emerge
from the same root concept of something ground (“ Der
Ursprung der Sprache,” pp. 151-3).
This course of the development of language is not
astonishing if we grasp the fact that the first duty
of language was the mutual understanding of men
in common activities and common movements. This
rdle of language as a help in the process of
production makes it clear why language had origi
nally so few descriptions of colour.
Gladstone and
others have concluded from that that the Homeric
Greeks and other primitive peoples could only distin
guish few colours. Nothing would be more fallacious.
Experiments have shown that barbarian peoples have
a very highly developed sense of colour. But their
colour technic is only slightly developed, the number of
colours which they can produce is small, and thence
the number of their descriptions of colour is small.
“ When man gets so far as to apply a colouring
material then the name of this colouring material, easily
takes on an adjectival character for him. In this way
arises the first names of colours.” (Grant Allen, “ The
Colour Sum,” p. 254.)
Grant Allen points to the fact that even to-day the
names of colours increase as the technique of colour
grows. The names of the colours serve first the pur
pose of technic and not that of describing nature.
The development of language is not to be understood
without the development of the method of production.
From this latter it depends whether a language is to
remain the dialect of a tiny tribe or become a world
language, spoken by a hundred million men.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
85
With the development of language a very powerful
means of social cohesion is gained, an enormous
strengthening and a clear consciousness of the social
impetus. But at the same time it certainly produced
quite other effects ; it is the most effectual means of
retaining acquired knowledge, of spreading it, and
handing it on to later generations ; it first makes it pos
sible to form concepts, to think scientifically, and thus
it starts the development of science, and with that
brings about the conquest of nature by science.
Now man acquires a mastery over Nature and also
an apparent independence of her external influences
which arouse in him the idea of freedom. On this 1
must be allowed a short deviation.
Schopenhauer very rightly says: “ The animal
has only visual presentations, and consequently
■only motives which it can visualise: the depen
dence of its acts of will on the motives is thus
clear. In man this is no less the case, and men are
impelled (always taking the individual character into
account) by the motives with the strictest necessity :
only these are not for the most part visual but abstract
presentations, that is, conceptions, thoughts which are
nevertheless the result of previous views, thus of im
pressions from without. That gives to man a certain
freedom in comparison with the animals. Because
he is not, like the animal, determined by the visual
surroundings present before him but by his thoughts
■drawn from previous experiences or transmitted to
him through teaching. Hence the motive which neces
sarily moves him is not at once clear to the observer
when the deed happens ; but it remains concealed
within his mind. That gives not only to his actions
taken as a whole, but to all his movements, an obvi
ously different character from those of the animal: he
is at the same time drawn by finer invisible wires.
Thus all his movements bear the impress of being
guided by principles and intentions, which gives them
the appearance of independence, and obviously distin
guishes them from those of the animal. A.11 these great
distinctions depend, however, entirely on the capacity
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
for abstract presentations—conceptions.” (“ Preisschrift ueber die Grundlage der Moral,” i860, p. 148.)
The capacity for abstract presentations depends
again on language. Probably it was a deficiency in
language which caused the first concept to be formed.
In Nature there are only single things ; language is,
however, too poor to be able to describe every single
thing. Man must consequently describe all things
which are similar to each other with the same word;
but with this he undertakes unconsciously a scientific
work, the collection of the similar, the separation of the
unlike. Language is then not simply an organ of mutual
understanding of different men with each other, but has
become an organ of thought. Even when we do not
speak to others, but think to ourselves only, the
thoughts must be clothed in certain words.
Does language, however, give to man a certain free
dom in contrast to the animals, this, all the same,
only develops on a higher plane what the formation of
the brain had already begun.
In the lower animals the nerves of motion are
directly connected with the nerves of sensation; here
every external impression at once releases a movement.
Gradually, however, there developes a bundle of nerves
to a central point of the entire nervous system, which
receives all the impressions and is not obliged to
transmit all to the motor nerves, but can store them up
and work them off. The higher animal gathers expe
riences which it can utilise, and impulses which even
under certain circumstances it can hand on to its
descendants.
,
Thus through the medium of the brain the connec
tion between the external impression and the movement
is obscured. Through the language, which renders
possible the communication of ideas to others, as well
as abstract conceptions, scientific knowledge, and con
victions, the connection between sensation and move
ment becomes in many cases completely unrecognis
able.
A very similar thing happens in Economics. The most
primitive form of the circulation of wares is that of
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
87
barter of commodities, of products which serve the
personal or productive consumption. Here from both
sides an article of consumption is given and received.
The object of the exchange is clear.
That alters with the rise of an element to facilitate
circulation—money. Now it is easy to sell without at
once buying, just as the brain makes it possible that
impressions should work on the organism without at
once releasing' a movement.
As this renders pos
sible a storing up of experiences and impulses, which
can even be transmitted to descendants, so notori
ously can a treasury be collected from gold. And as the
collection of that treasury of experiences and impulses
under the necessary social conditions finally renders
possible the development of science and the conquest
of nature by science, so does the collection of money
treasure render possible, when certain social conditions
are also there, the transformation of money into
capital, which raises the productivity of human labour
to the highest degree and revolutionises the world
within a few centuries to a greater degree than formerly
occurred in hundreds of thousands of years.
And so just as there are philosophers who believe
that the elements, brain and language, . intellectual
powers and ideas which form the connection between
sensation and movement are not simply means to
arrange this connection more conveniently for the indi
vidual and society, and thus apparently to increase their
strength, but that they are of themselves sprung from
independent sources of power, starting even from the
Creator of the world : so there are economists who
imagine that money brings about the circulation of
goods, and that as capital renders it possible to develop
human production enormously, it is this which is the
author of this circulation, the creator of these forces,
the producer of all values which are produced over and
above the product of the primitive handwork.
The theory of the productivity of capital rests on
a process of thought which is very similar to that of
the freedom of the will and the assumption of a moral
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
law, independent of time and space, which regulates
our action in time and space.
It was just as logical when Marx combated the one
process of thought as the other.
(b) War and Property.
A further means besides community in work and
language to strengthen the social impulses is formed
by the social development through the rise of war.
We have no reason to suppose that primitive man
was a warlike being. Herds of ape-men who gathered
together in the branches of trees with copious sources
of food may have squabbled and driven each other
away.. That this got so far as killing their opponents,
there is no example among the living apes of to-day.
Of male gorillas it is reported that they occasionally
fight each other with such fury that one kills the other,
but that is a fight for a wife not a fight for feeding
grounds.
That changes so soon as man becomes a hunter, who
has command of tools which are directed to killing,
and who has grown accustomed to killing, to the shed
ding of strange blood. Also another factor comes into
account, which Engels has already pointed out, to
explain the cannibalism which often comes up at this
period : the uncertainty of the sources of food. Vege
table food is. in the tropical forests in abundance; on
the grass plains, on the other hand, roots and fruits are
not always to be found, the capture of game is, more
over, for the most part a matter of chance. The
beasts of prey have thus acquired the capacity of being
able to fast for incredibly long periods. The human
stomach has not such powers of endurance. Thus
necessity easily forces a tribe of savages to a fight for
life or death with another neighbouring tribe, which
has got a good hunting territory.; then the passions
aroused by the fight and agonising hunger finally
drive them not simply to kill the foe but also to eat him.
In this way technical progress lets loose struggles
which the ape-man did not know; fights not with
animals of other kinds but with the members of his
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
89
own kind themselves : struggles, often more bloody
than those’ with the leopard and the panther, which at
least the bigger apes understand very well how to
defend themselves against when united in greater
numbers.
Nothing is more fallacious than the idea that the pro
gress of culture and increase of knowledge necessarily
bring also higher humanity with them. We could far
better say, the ape is more human, therefore more human
than man. Murder and slaughter of members of his
species from economic notions are products of culture ■
of technic in arms. And up to now the perfection of
these has ranked as a great part of the intellectual,,
labour of mankind.
Only under special circumstances and in special
classes will there be produced in the farther progress
of culture what we call the refinement of manners. The
progress in division of labour ascribes the task of
killing animals and men to certain ctesses—hunters,
butchers, executioners, soldiers, etc.—who then occupy
themselves with brutality or cruelty either as a sport
or as a business within the boundaries of civilisation.
Other classes are entirely relieved of the necessity, nay,
even the possibility of shedding blood. As, for in
stance, the vegetarian peasants in the river valleys of
India, who are prevented by nature from keeping great
herds of animals, and for whom the ox is too costly
as a beast of burden, or the cow as the giver of milk,
for them to be in a position to kill them. Even the
majority of the town inhabitants of the European
States, since the decay of the town republics and the
rise of paid armies as well as the rise of a special
class of butchers, are relieved of the necessity to take
life. Especially the intellectuals have been for cen
turies unused to the spilling of blood, which they
ascribe to their higher intelligence, which roused milder
feelings in them. But in the last century the increased
military service has become again a general institution
of most European States, and wars have again become
the wars of peoples, and with that the refinement of
manners among our intellectuals has reached its end.
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
They have become since then considerably more brutal;
the death penalty, which even in the last fifty years of
last century was generally condemned, meets with no
opposition any longer, and the cruelties of colonial wars,,
which fifty years ago, at least in Germany, would have
made their authors impossible, are excused to-day—
even glorified.
In any case, war among modern peoples ceases to
play the r61e it did among the nomadic pastoral and
hunting tribes. But if it produces cruelty and blood
thirstiness on the one hand, it shows itself on the other
as a powerful weapon to strengthen the bonds within
the family or society. The greater the dangers which
threaten the individual, so much the more dependent
does he feel himself upon his society, his family, his
class, who alone with their joint forces can protect
him. So much the greater the respect enjoyed by the
virtues of unselfishness or a bravery which will risk
life for the society. The more bloody the wars between
tribe and tribe, the more will the system of selection
have effect among them ; those tribes will assert them
selves best who have not only the strongest but also
the cleverest, the bravest, the most self-sacrificing and
best disciplined members to show. Thus war works in
primitive times in the most various manners to
strengthen the social instincts in men.
War, however, in the course of the social evolution
alters its forms : also its causes change.
Its first cause, the uncertainty of the sources of food,
ceases as soon as agriculture and the breeding of
animals are more developed. But then begins a new
cause of war : the possession of wealth. Not private
property, but the tribal property. Side by side with
tribes in fruitful regions we find others in unfruitful
ones; adjoining nomadic, water-searching and poor
shepherds, settled peasants to whom water had no
longer value, whose farming produced plentiful sur
pluses, etc. War now becomes robbery and defence
against robbery, and
has remained in essence the
same till to-day.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM
91
Even this kind of war has a strengthening effect on
the social instincts so long as the property in the tribe
is in the main communal. On the other hand, war seems
to strengthen the social instincts the more classes are
formed in the community, and becomes more and
more a simple affair of the ruling classes, whose en
deavours are aimed towards an increase in their sphere
of exploitation, or to put themselves in the place of
another ruling class on a neighbouring land. For the
subject classes in such wars it is often enough not
a question of their existence, and, occasionally, not
even a question of a better or worse standard of
life for them, but only who is to be their lord. The
army becomes either an aristocratic army, in which,
the mass of the people have no part, or when they
co-operate it becomes a paid or compulsory army,
which is commanded by the ruling classes, and they
must put their lives at stake not for their own pro
perty, their own wives and children, but to champion
the interests of others, often hostile interests. The
bond which holds such armies together is no longer
that of social interests, but solely fright of a remorse
lessly cruel penal code. They are divided by the hate
of the mass against the leaders, by the indifference,
even the mistrust of the latter against their subor
dinates.
At this stage war ceases to be for the mass of the
people a school of social feelings. In the ruling, war
rior classes it becomes a school of haughty, overbear
ing demeanour towards the governed classes, because
it teaches the ruling classes to treat the former just as
they do the common soldiers in the army, to degrade
them to blind subordination to an absolute commander,
and to dispose of their forces, nay, even their lives,
without any scruples.
This development of war is, as we have already said,
a consequence of the development of property, which
again arises from the technical development.
Every object which is produced in society, or by
means of which production is carried on in it, must be
at the disposal of someone, and either a group or a
�Q2
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
single individual can dispose of it, or the entire society.
The nature of this disposal is determined in the first
place by the nature of the things, the nature of the
method of production, and that of the producer, who
made and used his weapons himself, just as he pre
pared himself a garment or an ornament; while on
the. other hand, it was equally natural that the house
which was built by the common labour of the tribe
should be inhabited in common by them. The various
kinds of enjoyment of the various things for utility were
always allowed, and, being repeated from generation to
generation, became the fixed customs.
Thus arose a law of custom, which was then ex
tended still further in this way, that as often as quarrels
arose over this method of use, or about persons who
had this right to use, the assembled members of the
tribe decided. Law did not arise from any thought-out
legislation or social compact, but from a custom resting
on the technical conditions, and where these did not
suffice, on individual decisions of the society, which
decided each case by itself. Thus arose, little by little,
a complicated right of property in the various means
of production and products of society.
Common property, however, preponderated in the
beginning, especially in the means of production—a soil
worked in . common, water apparatus, houses, also
herds of animals and other things besides. Even this
small degree of communism was bound to very largely
strengthen the social impulses, the interest in the com
mon good, and also increase the subordination to the
same and the dependence on the same.
Very differently did the private property of single
families or individuals work out, so soon as it arrived
at such a pitch that it began to usurp the place of
common property. That began when, in consequence
of the growing division of labour, the various branches
of hand work began to separate themselves from agri
culture, in which they had hitherto found a large
employment; when they became more and more inde
pendent and separated into branches.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
93
This development meant an extension of the sphere
of society through the division of labour—an extension
of the number of those men who thereby form a society
because they work for each other, and thus are materi
ally dependent for their existence on each other. But
this extension of the social labour does not develop
OH the lines of an extension of work in common, but
towards a separation of individuals from the common
work and to making their work the private work of
independent producers, who produce that which they
themselves do not consume, and obtain in return the
products of other branches to consume them.
Thus at this stage the common production and
common property in the means of production of socie
ties, each in the main satisfying its own wants, for
example, the mark or at least the home community,
was bound to give way before the individual production
and property of single individuals, or married couples
With children, who produced commodities, not for their
own use but for the market.
With that there arose side by side with private pro
perty, which had already existed at an earlier period,
even if not to so great an extent, an entirely new
element in society : the competitive struggle of the
different producers of the same kind, who struggle
against each other for their share of the market..
War and competition are often regarded as the only
forms of the struggle for existence in the entire natural
world. In reality, both arise from the technical prog
ress of mankind, and belong to its special peculiarity.
■Both are distinguished from the struggle for existence
of the animal world in that the latter is a struggle
of individuals or entire societies against the surround
ing nature ; a fight against living and inanimate forces
of nature in which those best fitted for the particular
circumstances can best maintain themselves and
reproduce their kind. But it is not a fight for life or
death against other individuals of the same kind, with
the exception of a few beasts of prey, even with
whom the last kind of struggle plays only a second
ary part in the struggle for life, with the exception
�<94
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
•of the struggle for sexual natural selection. With
men alone, thanks to the perfection of their tools, the
struggle against individuals of the same kind to main
tain themselves in the struggle for life is developed.
But even then there is a great distinction between
wars and the struggle for existence.
The first is
■a struggle which breaks out between two- different
societies ; it means an interruption of production, and
thus can never be a permanent institution. But at the
same time it necessitates, at least where no great class
antagonisms exist, the strongest social cohesion, and
thus encourages in the highest degree the social in
stincts. Competition, on the other hand, is a struggle
between individuals, and indeed between individuals
of the same society. This struggle is a regulator—
although certainly a most peculiar one—which keeps the
social co-operation of the various individuals going, and
arranges that in the last resort these private producers
shall always produce what is socially necessary, that is,
what is under the given social conditions necessary.
If war forms an occasional interruption of production,
so does the struggle for life form its constant and neces
sary companion in the production of wares.
Just as war so does competition mean a tremendous
waste of force, but it has been at the same time a means
by which to extort the highest degree of tension of
all the productive forces and their most rapid improve
ment.
It has consequently had a great economic
importance, and has created such gigantic produc
tive forces that the framework of commodity produc
tion becomes too narrow, as at one time the frame
work of the primitive social or co-operative, production
became too narrow for the growing division of labour.
But over-production, no less than the artificial limita
tion of production by employers’ associations, shows
that the time is past when competition as a spur to
production helps on social evolution.
But it has always done even this only because it
drove it on to the greatest possible expansion of
production.
On the other hand, the competitive
struggle between individuals of the same society has
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
95
under all circumstances an absolutely deadly effect on
the social instincts. Since in this struggle each one
asserts himself so much the better the less he allows
himself to be led by social considerations, the more
exclusively he has his own interest in view. For men
under a developed system of production of commodities
it seems only too clear that egoism is the only natural
impulse in man, and that the social impulses are only
a refined egoism, or an invention of priests to get
mastery over man, or to be regarded as a supernatural
mystery. If in the society of to-day the social impulses
have kept any strength, it is only due to the circum
stance that general commodity production is quite a
young phenomenon, hardly ioo years old, and that in
the degree in which the primitive democratic com
munism disappears, and therewith war ceases to be a
source of social impulses, a new source of the same
breaks forth so much the stronger—the class war of
the forward-struggling exploited classes of the people ;
a war not by paid soldiers, not by conscripts, but by
volunteers—not for other people’s interests, but fought
in the interests of their own class.
4-—The Influence of
the
Social Instincts.
(a) Internationalism.
The sphere in which the social instincts develop
changes at a far quicker rate than the degree of
strength of these instincts themselves. The traditional
Ethics looked on the moral law as the force which
regulates the relations of man to man. Since this view
sets out from the individual and not from society, it
entirely overlooks the fact that the moral law does
not regulate the intercourse of men with every other
man, but simply with men of the same society. That
it only holds good for these will be comprehensible
when we recollect the origin of the social instincts.
They are a means to increase the social cohesion, to
add to the strength of society. The animal has social
instincts only for the members of his own herd, the
other herds are more or less indifferent to him. Among
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
social beasts of prey we find direct hostility to the
members of other herds. Thus the pariah dogs of
Constantinople in every street look very carefully out
that no other dog comes into the district. It would be
at once chased away, or even torn to pieces.
At a similar relation do the human herds arrive so
soon as hunting and war rise in their midst. One of
the most important forms of the struggle for exist
ence is now for them the struggle of the herd against
other herds of the same kind. The man who is not a
member of the same society becomes a direct enemy.
The social impulses not only do not hold good for him
but directly oppose him. The stronger they are so much
the better does the tribe hold together against the
common foe, so much the more energetically do they
fight the latter. The social virtues, mutual help, self
sacrifice, love of truth, etc., apply only to fellow-tribes
men, not to the members of another society. It excited
much resentment against me when I stated these facts
in the “ Neue Zeit,” and my statement was interpreted
as if I had attempted to establish a special Social Demo
cratic principle in opposition to the principles of the
eternal moral law, which demands unconditional truth
fulness to all men. In reality I have only stated that
which has existed as the moral law within our breasts
from the time when our forefathers became men,
viz., that over against the enemy the social virtues are
not required. There is no need, however, on that
account that anybody should be especially indignant
with the Social-Democracy, because there is no party
which interprets the idea of society more widely than
they, the party of Internationalism, which draws all
nations, all races into the sphere of their solidarity. If
the moral law applies only to members of our own
society, the extent of the latter is still by no means fixed
once for all. Rather does it increase in proportion to
the degree in which the division of labour progresses ;
the productivity of human labour increases as do
the means of human intercourse improve.
The
number of people increase whom a certain ter
ritory can support, who are bound to work in a
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
gy
certain territory for one another and with one another,
and who thus are socially bound together. But also the
number of the territories increase whose inhabitants
live in connection with each other, in order to work for
each other and form one social union. Finally, the
range of the territories entering into fixed social
dependence on each other and forming a perma<nent
social organisation with a common language, common
customs, common laws, extends also.
After the death of Alexander of Macedon, the peoples
of the Eastern Mediterranean had formed already an
international circle, with an international language__
Greek.
After the rise of the Romans all the lands
round the Mediterranean became a still wider inter
national circle, in which the national distinctions
disappeared, and who held themselves to be the repre
sentatives of humanity.
The new religion of the circle which took the place
of the old national religions was, from the very begina world religion with one God, who embraced the
entire world, and before whom all men were equal.
1 his religion applied itself to all religions, and declared
them all to be children of one God, all workers.
But in fact the moral law held good even here only
for the members of their own circle of culture—for
“Christians,” for “believers.” And the centre of
gravity in Christianity came ever more and more to
wards the North and West during the migration of the
peoples. In the South and East there formed itself a
new circle of culture with its own morality—that of
Islam which forced its way forward in Asia and
Africa, as the Christian one had done in Europe.
Now, however, this last expanded itself, thanks to
capitalism, ever more and more to a universal civilisa
tion which embraced Buddhists, Moslems, Parsees,
Brahmins, as well as Christians, who more and more
ceased to be real Christians.
Thus becomes formed a foundation for the final
lealisation of that moral conception already expressed
by Christianity, although too prematurely to be able
to be realised itself for the majority of Christians, for
H
�g8
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
whom it in consequence became a mere phrase ; this
was the conception of the equality of men, the
view that the social instincts, the moral vir
tues are to be exercised towards all men in
equal fashion. The foundation of a general human
morality is being formed not by a moral improvement
of humanity, whatever we are to understand by that,
but by the development of the productive forms of man,
by the extension of the social division of human labour,
the perfection of the means of intercourse. This new
morality is, however, even to-day, far from being a
morality of all men, even in the economically progressive
countries. It is in essence, even to-day, the morality
of the class-conscious proletariat ; that part of the pro
letariat which in its feeling and thinking has emanci
pated itself from the rest of the people, and has formed
its own morality in opposition to that of the bour
geoisie.
Certainly it is capital which creates the material
foundation for a general human morality, but. it only
creates the foundation by treading this morality con
tinually under its feet. The capitalist nations of the
circle of European Society spread this by widening
their sphere of exploitation, which is only possible by
means of force. They thus create the foundations of a
future world peace by war ; the foundations of the
universal solidarity of the nations by a universal exploi
tation of all nations, and those of the drawing in of all
colonial lands into the circle of European culture by the
oppression of all colonial lands with the worst and
most forcible weapons of a most brutal barbarism.
The proletariat alone, who have no share in the capi
talist exploitation, fight it, and must fight it, and
they will, on the foundation laid down by capital of
world intercourse and world commerce, create a form
of society, in which the equality of man before the
moral law will—instead of a mere pious wish—become
reality.
(b) The Class Division.
But if the economic development thus tends to
widen the circle of society within which the social
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
99
impulses and virtues have effect till it embraces finally
the whole of humanity, it at the same time creates not
only private interests within society which are capable
of considerably diminishing the effect of these social
impulses for the time, but also special classes of society,
which, while within their own narrow circle greatly
intensifying the strength of the social instincts and
virtues, at the same time, however, can materially
injure their value for the other members of the entire
society, or at least for the opposing sections or classes.
The formation of classes is also a product of the
division of labour. Even the animal is no homogene
ous formation. Among them there are already various
groups which have a different importance in and for
the community. Yet the group formation still rests on
the natural distinctions. There are, in the first place,
those of sex and of age. Then there are the groups
of the children, the youths of both sexes, the adults,
and, finally, the aged. The discovery of the tool has at
first the. effect of emphasising still more the separation
o certain of these groups. Thus it came about that
unting and war fell to the men, who were more easily
able to get about than the women, who are continually
burdened with children. That, and not any inferior
power of self-defence, it was, probably, which made
hunting and fighting a monopoly of man. Wherever in
history and fable we come across female huntresses and
warriors, they are always the unmarried. Women do
not lack in strength, endurance, or courage, but
maternity is not easily to be reconciled with the in
secure life of the hunter and warrior. As, however
motherhood drives the women rather to continually
stay in one place, those duties fall to her which require
a settled life, the planting of field fruits, the main
tenance of the family hearth, etc.
According to the importance which hunting and war,
or, on the other side, agriculture and domestic life’
attain for society, and according to the part which
each of the two sexes play in either, the importance
and relative respect paid to the man and woman
in the social life also changes. But even the importH2
�IOO
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
ance of the various ages depends on the method of pro
duction. Does hunting preponderate, which renders the
sources of food very precarious and from time to time
necessitates great migrations, the old people become
easily a burden to the society. They are often killed,
sometimes even eaten. It is different when the people
are settled ; the breeding of animals and agriculture
produce a more plentiful return. Now the old people
can remain at home, and there is no lack of food for
them. There is, however, at the same time a great
sum of experiences and knowledge stored up, whose
guardians, so long as writing was not discovered or
become the common property of the people, are the old
folk. They are the handers down of what might be
called the beginning of science. Thus they are not
now looked on as a painful burden, but honoured as the
bearers of a higher wisdom.
Writing and printing
deprives the old people of the privilege to incorporate
in their persons the sum of all experiences and tradi
tions of the society. The continual revolutionising of
all experience, which is the characteristic feature of
the modern system of production, makes the old tradi
tions even hostile to the new. The latter counts, with
out any further ado, as the better : the old as antiquated,
and hence bad. The old only receives sympathy ; it
enjoys no longer any prestige. There is now no higher
praise for an old man, than that he is still young and
still capable of taking in new ideas.
As with the respect paid to the sexes, so does the
respect paid to the various ages alter in society with the
various methods of production.
The progressive division of labour carries them
further ; distinctions appear within each sex, but chiefly
among the men. The woman is, in the first place,
more and more tied to the household, whose range
diminishes instead of growing, as more and more
branches of production break away from it, becoming
independent and a domain of the men.
Technical
progress, division of labour, the separation into trades
were up till last century almost exclusively restricted to
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
IOI
men; only a few reflections from that affected the
household and, consequently, woman’s work.
The more this separation into different professions
advances, the more complicated does the social organ
ism become, whose organs they form. The nature and
method of their co-operation in the fundamental social
process, in other words, the method of production,
has nothing of chance about it. It is quite independent
of the will of the individuals, and is necessarily deter
mined by the given material conditions. Among these
the technical factor is again the most important, and
whose development causes that of the method of pro
duction. But it is not the only one.
Let us take an example. The materialist conception
of history has been often understood as if certain techni
cal conditions of themselves meant a certain method of
production, nay even certain social and political forms.
As that, however, is not exact, since the same tools
are to be found in various states of society ; there
fore, it is argued, the materialist conception of his
tory must be false, and the social relations are not
determined by the technical conditions. The objection
is right, but it does not hit the materialist conception
of history, but its caricature, by a confusion of techni
cal conditions and method of production.
It has been said, for instance, the plough forms the
foundation of the peasant economy. But manifold are
the social circumstances in which this appears ’
Certainly. But let us look a little more closely.
What brings about the deviations of the various forms
of society which arise on the peasant foundations ?
Let us take, for example a peasantry which lives on
the banks of a great tropical or sub-tropical river,
which periodically floods its banks, bringing either
decay or fruitfulness to the soil. Water dams, etc.,
will be required to keep the water back here, and to
guide it there. The single village is not able to carry
out such works by itself. A number of them must co
operate, and supply labourers ; common officials must
be appointed, with a commission to set the labour going
for making and maintaining the works. The bigger
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
the undertaking the more villages must take a part; the
greater the number of the forced labourers the greater
the special knowledge required to conduct such works,
so- much the greater the power and knowledge of the
leading officials compared with the rest of the popula
tion. Then there grows on the foundation of a peasant
economy a priest or official class, as in the river plains
of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Whang-Ho.
Another species of development we find there : where
a flourishing peasant economy has settled in fruitful,
accessible lands in the neighbourhood of robbers—
nomadic tribes. The necessity of guarding themselves
against these nomads forces the peasants to form a
force of guards, which can be done in various ways.
Either a part of the peasantry applies itself to the trade
of arms and separates itself from the others who yield
them services in return, or the robber neighbours are
induced by payment of a tribute to keep the peace and
to protect their new proteges from other robbers, or,
finally, the robbers conquer the land and remain as
lords over the peasantry, on whom they levy a tribute,
for which, . however, they provide a protective force.
The result is always the same—the rise of a new feudal
nobility which rules and exploits the peasants.
Occasionally the first and second methods of develop
ment unite, then we have, besides a priest and official
class, a warrior caste.
Again, quite differently does the peasantry develop
on a sea with good harbours, which favour sea voyages,
and bring them closer to other coasts with well-to-do
populations. By the side of agriculture, fishing arises ;
fishing which soon passes over into war-piracy and sea
commerce.
At a particularly suitable spot for a
harbour is gathered together plunder and merchants*
goods, and there is formed a town of rich merchants.
Here the peasant finds a market for his goods ; now
arise for him money receipts, and also the expenditure
of money, money obligations, debts. Soon he is the
debtor of the money owners in the town.
Sea piracy and sea commerce, as well as sea war,
bring, however, a plentiful supply of slaves into the
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
103
country. ■ The town money owners, instead of exploit
ing their peasant debtors any further, go to work to
drive them from their possessions, to unite into great
plantations, and to introduce slave work for the
peasant, without any change being required in the tools
and instruments of agriculture.
Finally, we see a fourth type of peasant development
in inaccessible mountain regions. The soil there is
poor and difficult to cultivate. By the side of agricul
ture, the breeding of stock retains the preponderance.
Nevertheless, both are not sufficient to sustain a
great increase of population. At the foot of the
mountains, fruitful, well-tilled lands tempt them. The
mountain peasants will make the attempt to conquer
and exploit them, or, where they meet with resist
ance, to hire out their superfluous population as paid
soldiers. Their experience in war, in combination with
the poverty and inaccessibility of their land, serves to
guard it against foreign invaders, to whom in any
case its poverty offers no great temptation.
There
the old peasant democracy still exists, when all around
the peasantry have long become dependent on feudal
lords, priests, merchants and usurers. Occasionally
a primitive democracy of that kind tyrannises and ex
ploits a neighbouring country which they have con
quered, in marked contradiction to their own highlyvalued liberty. Thus the old cantons of the fatherland
of William Tell exercised through their bailiffs in Tessin
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a rule, whose
crushing weight could compare with that of the tyran
nical Geisler.
It will be seen that very different methods of pro
duction are compatible with the peasant economy.
How are these differences to be explained?
The
opponents of the materialist conception of history trace
them back to force, or again to the difference of the
ideas which form themselves at various periods in the
various peoples.
Now it is certain that in the erection of all these
methods of production force played a great part, and
Marx called it the midwife of every new society. But
�104
ETHICS
and the materialist conception of history.
whence comes this monopoly of force? How does it
come that one section of the people conquers with it
and the other not, and that the force produces this and
not other results? To all these question^the for«
theory has no answer to give. And equally by the
heory of ideas does it remain a mystery where the
clTntrv
f™™wh!ch. Iead to freedom in the mountain
c untry, to priest rule in the river valley land, to money
and slave economy on the shores of the sea, and in hilly
undulating countries to feudal serfdom.
7
We have seen that these differences in the develop
ment of the same peasant system rest on differences in the
natural and social surroundings in which this system is
placed. According to the nature of the land, according
to the description of its neighbours will the peasant
system of economy be the foundation of very different
social forms. These special social forms become, then
side by side with the natural factors, further founda
tions, which give a peculiar form to the development
based on them. Thus the Germans found when they
burst in on the Roman Empire during the migration of
the peoples, the Imperial Government with its bureau
cracy, the municipal system, the Christian Church, as
social conditions, and these, as well as they could, they
incorporated into their system.
All these geographical and historical conditions have
to be studied if the particular method of production in
a land at a particular time is to be understood. The
knowledge of its technical conditions aloqe does not
suffice.
It will be seen that the materialist conception of his
tory is not such a simple formula as its critics usually
conceive it to be. The examples here given show us,
however, also, how class differences and class antag
onisms are produced by the economic development.
Differences not simply between individuals, but also
between individual groups within the society, existed
already in the animal world, as we have remarked
already distinctions in the strength, the reputation,
perhaps even of the material position of individuals and
groups. Such distinctions are natural, and will be
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
hardly likely to disappear even in a Socialist society.
The discovery of tools, the division of labour and its
consequences—in short, the economic development con
tributes still further to increase such difference, or even
to create new.
In any case, they cannot exceed a
certain narrow limit, so long as the social labour does
not yield a surplus over that necessary to the main
tenance of the members of the society. As long as that
is not the case, no idlers can be maintained at the cost
of society, none can get considerably more in social
products than the other. At the same time, however,
there arise at this very stage, owing to the increasing
enmity of the tribes to each other and the bloody
method of settling their differences, as well as through
the common labour and the common property, so many
new factors through which the social instincts are
strengthened that the small jealousies and differences
.arising between the families, the different degrees of
age, or the various callings can just as little bring a
split in the community as that between individuals.
Despite the beginnings of division of labour which are
to be found there, human society was never more
closely bound up together, or more in unison than at
the time of the primitive Gentile co-operative society,
which preceded the beginning of class antagonisms.
Things, however, alter so soon as social labour
begins, in consequence of its necessary productivity,
to produce a surplus. Now it becomes possible for
single individuals and professions to secure for them
selves permanently a greater sh^re in the social product
than the others can secure. Single individuals, only
seldom, temporarily, and as a matter of exception, will
be able to achieve that for themselves alone ; on the
-other hand, it is very obvious that any classes specially
favoured in any particular manner by the circum
stances—for example, such as are conferred by special
knowledge or special powers of self-defence, can
acquire the strength to permanently appropriate the
social surplus for themselves. Property in the products
is narrowly bound up with property in the means of
production ; who possesses the latter can dispose of the
�106
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
former.
The endeavours to monopolise the social
surplus by the privileged class produces in it the desire
to monopolise and take sole possession of the means of
production. The forms of this monopoly can be very
diverse, either common ownership of the ruling class
or caste, or private property of the individual families
or individuals of this class.
In one way or another the mass of the workings
people become disinherited, degraded to slaves, serfs,
wage labourers ; and with the loss of common property
in the means of production and their use in common is
the strongest bond torn asunder which held primitive
society together.
And if the social distinctions which managed to form
themselves within primitive society were kept within
narrow limits, now the class distinctions, which can form
themselves, have practically no limit. They can grow
on the one side through the technical progress which
increases the surplus of the product of the social labour
over the amount necessary to the simple maintenance
of society ; on the other hand, through the expansion
of the community, while the number of the exploiters
remains the same or even decreases, the number of
those working and producing surplus for each ex
ploiter grows. In this way the class distinctions can
enormously increase, and with them grow the social
antagonisms.
In the degree in which thife development advances,
society grows more and more divided, the class war be
comes the principal, most general and continuous form
of the struggle of the individuals for life in human
society ; in the same degree the social instincts lose
strength, but they become so much the stronger within
that class whose welfare is on the whole always more
and more identical with that of the commonweal.
It is, however, specially the exploited, oppressed,
and uprising classes in whom the class war strengthens
thus the social instincts and virtues ; and that because
they are obliged to put their whole personality into this
with much more intensity than the ruling classes, whoare often in a position to leave their defence, be it with
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
IO~
the weapons of war, or with the weapons of the
intellect, to hirelings.
Besides that, however, the
ruling classes are often internally deeply divided
through the struggles between themselves for the social
surplus, and over the means of production. One of the
strongest causes of that kind of division we have
learned in the battle of competition.
All these factors, which work against the social in
stincts, find no, or little, soil in the exploited classes.
The smaller this soil, the less property that the strug
gling classes have, the more they are forced back on
their own strength, the stronger do their members feel
their solidarity against the ruling classes, and the
stronger do their own social feelings towards their own
class grow.
5.—The Tenets of Morality.
(a) Custom and Convention.
We have seen that the economic development intro
duces into the moral factors transmitted from the
animal world an element of pronounced mutability, in
that it gives a varying degree of force to the social
instincts and virtues at different times, and also at the
Same time in different classes; that it, however, in*
addition, widens, and then again narrows down the
scope within which the social impulses have effect ; on
the one side expanding its influence from the tiny tribe
till it embraces the entire humanity, on the other side
limiting it to a certain class within the society.
But the same economic development creates in addi
tion a special moral factor, which did not exist at all in
the animal world, and is the most changeable of all,
since not only its strength, but also its contents are
subject to far-reaching change. These are the tenets
of morality.
In the animal world we find only strong moral feel
ings, but no distinct moral precepts which are ad
dressed to the individual.
That assumes that a
language has been formed, which can describe not only
impressions but also things, or at least actions ; a
language for whose existence in the animal world all!
�108
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
signs fail, for which also a need first arises with the
common work. Then is it possible to address distinct
-demands to the individual. If these demands arise
from individual and exceptional needs, then they will
again disappear with the individual exceptional case.
If on the other hand they have their origin in the social
relations, they will recur again and again, so long as
these relations last; and in the beginnings of society,
where the development is very slow, one can allow
hundreds of thousands of years for the endurance of
particular social conditions. The social demands on
the individual repeat themselves so often and so regularly, that they become a habit, to which the tendency
is finally inherited, as the tendency to peculiar kinds of
hunting by the sporting dogs, so that certain sugges
tions suffice to arouse the habit in the descendants as
well; also, for instance, the feeling of shame, the habit
of covering certain portions of the body whose nude
state appears immoral.
Thus arise demands on the individual from society
which are more numerous the more complicated is
society, and these demands, finally by force of habit,
become, without any further ado, recognised as moral
commands.
From this customary character many materialist
ethical writers have concluded that the entire being of
morals rests alone on custom. With that it is, never
theless, by no means exhausted. In the first place
only such views become, through habit, moral com
mands, which favour the consideration of the individual
for the society, and regulate his conduct to other men.
It may be brought against this, that there are individual
vices which count as immoral, yet their original con
demnation was certainly also in the interest of society.
Thus, for example, masturbation, if general, must pre
judice the chance of securing a numerous progeny—
and such a progeny appeared then, when Malthus had
not yet spoken, as one of the weightiest foundations of
the well-being and progress of society.
In the Bible (Genesis XXXVIII.) Onan was killed by
Jehovah because he allowed his spermatozoa to fall to
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
IOC/
the ground instead of attending to his duty and having
intercourse with the wife of his dead brother, so as to
raise up seed for the latter.
The moral rules could only for this reason become
customs because they met deep-lying, ever-recurring
social needs. Finally, however, a simple custom can
not explain the force of the feeling of duty, which often
shows itself more powerful than all the demands of self
preservation. The customary element in morals only
has the effect that certain rules are forthwith recognised
as moral, but it does not produce the social instincts
which compel the performance of demands recognised
as moral laws.
Thus, for example, it is a matter of habit that counts
it as disreputable when a girl shows herself in her
nightgown to a man, even when this garment goes
down to the feet, and takes in the neck, while it is no
way improper if a girl appears in the evening with a
much uncovered bosom at a ball before all the world,
or if she, in a watering-place, in a wet bathing-dress
exposes herself to the lecherous gaze of men of the
world. But only the force of the social instincts can
bring it about that a sternly moral girl should at no
price submit to that which convention, fashion, custom
—in short, society—has once stamped as shameless
ness, and that she should occasionally even prefer death
itself to that which she regards as shame.
Other moralists have carried the idea of the moral
regulations as simple customs still farther, and de
scribed them as simple conventional fashions, basing
this on the phenomena that every nation, nay each
class has its own particular moral conceptions which,
often stand in absolute contradiction to others, that,
consequently, an absolute moral law has no validity.
It has been concluded from that that morality is only
a changing fashion, which only the thoughtless philis
tine crowd respect, but which the superman can and
must raise himself above as things that appertain to
the ordinary throng.
But not only are the social instincts something abso
lutely not conventional, but something deeply grounded
�HO
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
in human nature—the nature of man as a social animal ;
even the moral tenets are nothing arbitrary, but arise
from social needs.
It is certainly not possible in every case to fix the
condition between certain moral conceptions and the
social relations from which they arose. The individual
takes moral precepts from his social surroundings with
out being aware of their social causes. The moral law
becomes, then, habit to him, and appears to him as an
emanation of his own spiritual being, a priori given to
him, without any practical root. Only scientific in
vestigation can gradually show up in a series of laws
the relations between particular forms of society and
particular moral precepts, and then much remains dark.
The social forms from which moral principles arose, and
which still hold good at a later period, often lie far
back, in very primitive times. Besides that, to under
stand a moral law, not only the social need must be
understood which called it forth, but also the peculiar
thought of the society which created it.
Every
method of production is connected not only with par
ticular tools and particular social relations, but also
with the particular content of knowledge, with par
ticular powers of intelligence, a particular view of cause
and effect, a particular logic—in short, a particular
form of thought.
To understand earlier modes of
thought is, however, uncommonly difficult, much more
difficult than to understand the needs of another or his
own society.
All the same, however, the connection between the
tenets of morals and the social needs has been already
proved by so many practical examples that we can
accept it as a general rule. If, however, this connection
exists, then, an alteration of society must necessitate an
alteration in many moral precepts. Their change is
thus not only nothing strange, it would be much more
strange if with the change of the cause the effect did
not also change.
These changes are necessary for
that very reason, because every form of society requires
certain moral precepts suited for its condition.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
Ill
How diverse and changing are the moral rules is well
known.
Hence one example suffices to illustrate a
morality differing from the present-day European.
Fridtjof Nansen gives us in the tenth chapter of his
” Eskimo Life,” a very fascinating picture of Eskimo
morals, from which I take a few passages.
“ One of the most beautiful and marked features in
the character of the Eskimo is certainly his honourable
ness. .... For the Eskimo it has especial value
that he should be able to rely on his fellows and neigh
bours. In order, however, that this mutual confidence,
without which common action in the battle for life is
impossible, should continue, it is necessary that he
should act honourably to others as well. ... For the
same reasons they do not lie readily to each other, espe
cially the men. A touching proof of that is the following
feature related by Dalajer : ‘ If they have to describe to
each other anything, they are very careful not to paint
it more beautiful than it deserves.
Nay, if anyone
wants to buy anything which he has not seen, the seller
describes the thing, however much he may wish to sell
it, always as something less good than it is.’ ”
The morals of advertising are unknown for the
Eskimos as yet. Certainly that applies to their inter
course with each other. To strangers they are less
strict.
“ Fisticuff fights and that sort of ruffianism is not to
be seen among them.” Murder is also a great rarity,
“ and where it happens is not a consequence of econo
mic quarrels but of love affairs.” They consider it
dreadful to kill a fellow man. War is, hence, quite
incomprehensible to them, and abominable; their
language has not even a word for it; and soldiers and
officers who have been trained to the calling of killing
people are to them simply butchers of men.'
“ One of the commandments against which the
Greenlanders oftenest sin is the seventh. Virtue and
chastity do not stand in great esteem in Greenland.
Many look on it (on the West Coast) as no great shame
if an unmarried girl has children. While we were in
Gothard two girls there were pregnant, but they in
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ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
no way concealed it, and seemed, from the evident
proof that they were not looked down on, to be
almost proud. But even of the South Coast Holm says
that it is there no shame if an unmarried crirl has
children.
&
Egede also says that the women look on it as an
especial bit of luck and a great honour to have intimate
connection with an Angekok—that is, one of their
prophets and wise men and adds : Even many men are
glad, and will pay the Angekok for sleeping with
their wives, especially if they themselves cannot have
children by them.”
“ The freedom of Eskimo women is thus very different
to that appertaining to the Germanic woman.
The
reason certainly lies in the fact that while the main
tenance of the inheritance of the race and family has
always played a great r61e with the Germans, this has
no importance for the Eskimo, because he has nothing
to inherit, and for him the main point is to have
children.
“ We naturally look on this morality as bad. That,
however, is by no means to say that it is so for the
Eskimos. We must absolutely guard against con
demning from our standpoint views which have been
developed through many generations and after long
experience by a people, however much they contradict
our own. The views of good and bad are extraordi
narily different on this earth. As an example, I might
quote that when Mr. Egede had spoken to an Eskimo
girl of love of God and our neighbour, she said, ‘ I
have proved that I love my neighbour, because an old
woman who was ill and could not die, begged me that
I would take her, for a payment, to the steep cliff from
which those always are thrown who can live no more.
And,. because I love my people, I took her there for
nothing, and threw her down from the rocks.’
“ Egede thought that this was a bad act, and said
that she had murdered a human being. She said no, she
had had great sympathy with the old woman, and had
wept as she fell. Are we to call this a good or bad act ?
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
113
“We have seen that the necessity of killing old and
sick members of society very easily arises with a
limited food supply, and this killing becomes, then,
signalised as a moral act.
“ When the same Egede said that God punished the
wicked, an Eskimo said to him he also belonged to
those who punished the wicked since he had killed three
■old women who were witches.
“ The same difference in the conception of good and
bad is to be seen in regard to the Seventh Command
ment. The Eskimo puts the commandment, ‘ Be fruit
ful and multiply ’ higher that chastity. He has every
reason for that as his race is by nature less prolific.”
Finally, a quotation from a letter sent by a converted
Eskimo to Paul Egede, who worked in the middle of
the eighteenth century in Greenland as a missionary,
and found the Eskimo morals almost untouched by
European influence.
This Eskimo had heard of the
Colonial wars between the English and Dutch, and
expresses his horror over this inhumanity.
“ If we have only so much food that we can satisfy
our hunger, and get enough skin to keep out the cold,
we are contented, and thou thyself knowest that we
let the next day look after itself. We would not on
that account carry war on the sea, even if we could.
.... We can say the sea that washes our coasts
belongs to us as well as the walruses, whales, seals
and salmon swimming in it, still we have no objection
when others take what they require from the great
supply, as they require it. We have the great luck
not to be so greedy by nature as them............. It is
really astonishing, my dear Paul! Your people know
that there is a God, the ruler and guider of all things,
that after this life they will be either happy or damned,
according as they have behaved themselves, and yet
they live as though they had been ordered to be wicked,
and as if sin would bring them advantage and honour.
My countrymen know nothing either of God or Devil,
and yet they behave respectably, deal kindly and
friendly with each other, tell each other everything, and
’create their means of existence in common.”
I
�1 14
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
It is the opposition of the morality of a primitive
communism to capitalist morality which appears here.
But still another distinction arises. In the Eskimo,
society the theory and practice of morality agree with
one another ; in capitalist society a division exists be
tween the two. The ground for that we will soon
learn.
(b) The System of Production and Its Superstructure.
The moral rules alter with the society, yet not unin
terruptedly, and not in the same fashion and degree as
the social needs. They become promptly recognised
and felt as rules of conduct because they have become
habitual. Once they have taken root as such, they can
then for a long time lead an independent life, while
technical progress advances, and therewith the develop
ment of the method of production and the transforma
tion of the social needs goes on.
It is with the principles of morality as with the rest
of the complicated sociological superstructure which
raises itself on the method of production, it can break
away from its foundation and lead an independent life
for a time.
The discovery of this fact has relieved all those
elements who could not escape the influence of the
Marxian thought, but to whom nevertheless the con
sequences of the economic development are extremely
awkward, and who in the manner of Kant would like to
smuggle in the spirit as an independent driving power
in the development of the social organism. . To these
the discovery of the fact that the intellectual factors
of society can temporarily work independently in it was
very convenient. With that they hoped to have finally
found the wished-for reciprocal action—the economic
factor working on the spirit and the spirit on the econo
mic factor. Both were to rule the social development ;
either in the manner that at one period the economic
factor, at another, again, the spiritual force drives the
society forward, or in the manner that both together
and side by side produce a common result, that, in
other words, our will and wishes can at least occa-
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
IX5
sionally break through the hard economic necessity of
their own strength, and can change it.
Undoubtedly there is a reciprocal action between the
economic basis and its spiritual superstructure—
morality, religion, art, etc. We do not speak here of
the intellectual influence of inventions, that belongs to
the technical conditions in which the spirit plays a part
ultimately by the side of the tool ; technic is the con
scious discovery and application of tools by thinking
men.
Like the other ideological factors morality can also
advance the economic and social development. Just in
this lies its social importance.
Since certain social
rules arise from certain social needs, they will render
the social co-operation so much the more easy the
better they are adapted to the society which makes
them.
Morality thus reacts on the social life. But that
only holds good so long as it is dependent upon the
latter, as it meets the social needs from which it
sprang.
As soon as morality begins to lead a life independent
of society, as soon as it is no longer controlled by the
latter, the reaction takes on another character. The
further it is now developed the more is that develop
ment purely logical and formal. As soon as it is cut
off from the influence of the outer world it can create
no more new conceptions but only arrange those
already attained, so that the contradictions disappear
from them. Getting rid of the contradictions, winning
a . unitary conception, solving all problems which,
arise from the contradictions, that is the work of the
thinking spirit.
With that it can, however, only
secure the intellectual superstructure already set up,
not rise superior to itself. Only the appearance of new
contradictions, new problems, can affect a new develop
ment. . The human spirit does not, however, create
contradictions from its own inner being ; they are pro
duced in it only by the impress of the surrounding world
on it.
12
�Il6
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
As soon as the moral principles grow independent,
they cease to be, in consequence, an element of social
progress.
They ossify, become a conservative ele
ment, an obstacle to progress. Thus can that happen
in the human society which is impossible in the animal,
morality can become, instead of an indispensable social
bond, the means of an intolerable restraint on social
life. That is also a reciprocal action, but not one in
the sense of our anti-materialist moralists.
The contradictions between distinct moral principles
and distinct social needs can arrive at a certain degree
of intensity in primitive society ; they then become,
however, still greater with the appearance of class
antagonism.
If in the society without classes
the adherence to particular moral principles is
only a matter of habit, it only requires for
them supervision that the force of habit be over
come.
From now on the maintenance of par
ticular moral principles becomes a matter of interest,
often of a very powerful interest. And now appear,
also weapons of force, of physical compulsion to keep
down the exploited classes, and this means of compul
sion is placed also at the service of ‘ ‘ morality, ’ ’ to
secure obedience to moral principles which are in the
interest of the ruling classes.
The classless society needs no such compulsory
weapons. Certainly, even in it the social instincts do
not always suffice to achieve the observance by every
individual of the moral code; the strength of the social
impulses is very different in the different individuals,
and just as different to that of the other instincts : those
of self-maintenance and reproduction. The first do not
always win the upper hand. But as a means of com
pulsion, of punishment for others, public opinion—the
opinion of the society—suffices in such cases for the
classless society. It does not create in us the moral
law, the feeling of duty. Conscience works in us when
no one sees us, and the power of public opinion is
entirely excluded ; it can even, under circumstances,
in a society filled with class antagonisms and contra
dictory moral codes, force us to defy public opinion.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
117
But public opinion works in a classless society as a
sufficient weapon of police, of the public obedience to
moral codes. The individual is so small compared to
society that he has not the strength to defy their
unanimous voice. This has so crushing an effect that
it needs no further means of compulsion or punishment
to secure the undisturbed course of the social life.
Even to-day in the class society we see that the public
opinion of their own class, or, where that has been
abandoned, of the class or party which they join, is
more powerful that the compulsory weapons of the
State. Prison, poverty and death are preferred by
people to shame.
But the public opinion of one class does not work
on the opposite class. Certainly society can, so long
as there are no class antagonisms in it, hold the indi
vidual in check through the power of its opinion, and
force obedience to its laws, when the social instincts in
the breast of the individual do not suffice. But public
opinion fails where it is not the individual against
society, but class against class. Then the ruling class
must apply other weapons of compulsion if they are to
prevail ; means of superior physical or economic might,
of superior organisation, or even of superior intelli
gence.. To the soldiers, police, and judges are joined
the priests as an additional means of rule, and it is
just the ecclesiastical organisation to whom the special
task falls of conserving the traditional morality. This
connection between religion and morality is achieved
so much easier as the new religions which appear at
the time of the decay of the primitive communism and
the Gentile society stand in strong opposition to the
ancient nature religions, whose roots reach back to
the old classless perio*d, and which know no special
priest caste. In the old religions Divinity and Ethics
are not joined together. The new religions, on the
other hand, grow on the soil of that philosophy in
which Ethics and the belief in God are most intimately
bound up together ; the one factor supporting the other. Since then religion and ethics have been intimately
bound up together as a weapon of rule. Certainly the
�Il8
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
moral law is a product of the social nature of man ;
certainly the moral code of a time is the product of
particular social needs ; certainly have neither the one
nor the other anything to do with religion. But that
code of morals, which must be maintained for the
people in the interests of the ruling class, requires
religion badly, and the entire ecclesiastical organism
for its support. Without this it would soon go to
pieces.
(c) Old and New.
The longer, however, the outlived moral standards
remain in force, while the economic development ad
vances and creates new social needs, which demand
new moral needs, so much the greater will be the
contradiction between the ruling morals of society and
the life and action of its members.
But this contradiction shows itself in the different
classes in different manners. The conservative classes,
those whose existence rest on the old social con
ditions, cling firmly to the old morality. But only in
theory.
In actual practice they cannot escape the
influence of the new social conditions.
The wellknown contradiction between moral theory and practice
begins here.
It seems to many a natural law of
morals, whose demands seem as something desirable
but unrealisable. Here again, however, the contradic
tion between theory and practice in morality can
take two forms.
Classes and indivduals, full of a
sense of their own strength, ride roughshod over the
demands of the traditional morality, whose necessity
they certainly recognise for others. Classes and indi
viduals who feel themselves weak transgress secretly
against the moral code which they publicly preach.
Thus this phase leads, according to the historical situa
tion of the decaying classes, either to cynicism or
hypocrisy.
At the same time, however, there dis
appears very easily, as we have seen, in this very class,
the power of the social interests in consequence of the
growth of private interests, as well as the possibility of
allowing their place in the coming battles to be taken
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
Iig
by hirelings, whereby they avoid entering personally
into the fray.
All these produce in conservative or ruling classes
those phenomena which we sum up as immorality.
Materialist moralists, to whom the moral codes are
simple conventional fashions, deny the possibility of an
immorality of that kind as a social phenomenon. As
all morality is relative, is that which is called immorality
simply a deviating kind of morality ?
On the other hand, idealist moralists conclude from
the fact that there are entire immoral classes and
societies that there must be a moral code eternal and
independent of time and space ; a standard independent
of the changing social conditions on which we can
measure the morals of every society and class.
Unfortunately, however, that element of hitman
morality which, if not independent of time and space,
is yet older than the changing social relations, the
social instinct, is just that which the human morality
has in common with the animal. What, however, is
specifically human in morality, the moral codes, is
subject to continual change. That does not prove, all
the same, that a class or a social group cannot be im
moral ; it proves simply that so far at least as the moral
standards are concerned, there is just as little abso
lute morality as absolute immorality.
Even the
immorality is in this respect a relative idea, as abso
lute immorality is to be regarded only as a lack of
those social impulses and virtues which man has in
herited from the social animals.
If we look, on the other hand, on immorality as an
offence against the laws of morality, then it implies
no longer the divergence from a distinct standard
holding good for all times and places, but the contra
diction of the moral practice to its own moral principles;
it implies the transgression against moral laws which
people themselves recognise and put forward as neces
sary. It is thus nonsense to declare particular moral
principles of any people or class, which are recognised
as such, to be immoral simply because they contradict
our moral code. Immorality can never be more than
�120
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
a deviation from our own moral code, never from a
strange one.
The same phenomenon, say, of free
sexual intercourse or of indifference to property can in
one case be the product of moral depravity, in a society
where a strict monogamy and the sacredness of pro
perty are recognised as necessary ; in another case it
can be the highly moral product of a healthy social
organism which requires for its social needs neither the
fixed property in a particular woman, nor that in par
ticular means of conservation and production.
(d) The Moral Ideal.
If, however, the growing contradiction between the
changing social conditions and the weakening hold of
morality in the ruling classes tend to growing im
morality, and shows itself in an increase of
hypocrisy and cynicism, which often goes hand
in hand with a weakening of the social im
pulses, so does it lead to quite other results in the
rising and exploited class. Their interests are in com
plete antagonism to the social foundation which created
the ruling morality.
They have not the smallest
reason to accept it, they have every ground to oppose
it. The more conscious they become of their antagon
isms to the ruling social order the more will their
moral indignation grow as well, the more will they
oppose to the old traditional morality a new morality,
which they are about to make the morality of society as
a whole. Thus arises in the uprising classes a moral
ideal, which grows ever bolder the more they gain in
strength.
At the same time, as we have already
seen, the power of the social instincts in the same
classes will be especially developed by means of the
class war, so that with the daring of the new moral
ideal the enthusiasm for the same also increases. Thus
the same evolution which produces in conservative or
decaying classes increasing immorality, produces in
the rising classes a mass of phenomena which we sum
up under the name of ethical idealism, which is not,
however, to be confused with philosophical idealism.
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
I2T
The very uprising classes are, indeed, often inclined to
philosophical materialism, which the declining classes,
oppose from the moment when they become conscious
that reality has passed the sentence of death upon them,
and feel that they can only look for salvation from
Supernatural powers—divine or ethical.
The content of the new moral ideal is not always,
very clear.
It does not emerge from any scientific
knowledge of the social organism, which is often
enough quite unknown to the authors of the ideal, but
from a deep social need, a burning desire, an energetic
will for something other than the existing, for some
thing which is the opposite of the existing ; and thus,
also, this moral ideal is in reality only something
purely negative, nothing more1 than opposition to the
existing hypocrisy.
So long as class rule has existed, the ruling morality
guards ; wherever a sharp class antagonism has been
formed, slavery, inequality, exploitation.
Thus the
moral ideal of the uprising classes in historical times
has always had the same appearance, always that
which the French Revolution summed up with the
words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. It would seem
MS if this were the ideal implanted in every human
breast, independent of time and space, as if it were
the task of the human race to strive from its beginning
for the same moral ideal, as if the evolution of man
consisted in the gradual approach to this ideal which
continually looms before him.
But if we examine more closely, we find that the
agreement of the moral ideal of the various historical
epochs is only very superficial, and that behind these
lie great differences of social aims, which correspond
to the differences of the social situation at the time.
If we compare Christianity, the French Revolution,
and the Social-Democracy to-day, we find that Liberty
and Equality for all meant something quite different,
according to their attitude towards property and pro
duction. The primeval Christian demanded equality of
property in the manner that they asked for its equal
division for purposes of consumption for all, and
�122
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
under freedom they understood the emancipation from
all work as is the lot of the lilies of the field who
neither toil nor spin and yet enjoy their life.
The French Revolution again understood by equality
the equality of property rights. Private property was
declared to be sacred. And true freedom was for it
the freedom to apply property in economic life, accord
ing to pleasure, in the most profitable manner.
Finally, the Social-Democracy neither swears by
private property nor does it demand its division. It
demands its socialisation, and the equality which it
strives for is the equal right of all to the products of
social labour. Again, the social freedom which it asks
for is neither freedom to dispose arbitrarily of the
means , of production and to produce at will, but the
limitation of the necessary labour through the gather
ing in of those capable of working and through the
most extended application of labour-saving machinery
and methods. In this way the necessary labour which
cannot be free, but must be socially regulated, can be
reduced to a minimum for all, and to all a sufficient
time assured of freedom, for free artistic and scientific
activity, for free enjoyment of life. Social freedom—
we do not speak here of political—through the greatest
possible shortening of the period of necessary labour :
that is freedom as meant by the Social-Democracy.
It will be seen that the same moral ideal of Free
dom and Equality can embrace very different social
ideals. The external agreement of the moral ideals of
different times and countries is, however, not the result
of a moral law independent of time and space which
springs up in man from a supernatural world, but only
the consequence of the fact that despite all social
■differences the main outlines of class rule in human
society have always been the same.
All the same, a new moral ideal cannot simply arise
from the class antagonism. Even within the conserva
tive classes there may be individuals who develop with
their class socially only loose ties and are without class
consciousness. With that, however, they possess
strong social instincts and virtues, which makes them
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
123
hate all hypocrisy and cynicism, and, being highly
intelligent, they see clearly the contradiction between
the traditional moral code and the social needs.
Such individuals are bound also, to come to the point
of setting up the new moral ideal. But whether their
new ideal shall obtain social force depends upon
whether they result in class ideals or not. Only the
motive power of the class war can work fruitfully on
the moral ideal, because only the class war, and
not the single-handed endeavours of self-interested
people, possesses the strength to develop society farther
and to meet the needs of the higher developed method
of production. And, so far as the moral ideal can in
any degree be realised, is only to be attained through
an alteration of society.
A peculiar fatality has ruled hitherto that the moral
ideal should never be reached.
That will be easily
understood when we consider its origin. The moral
ideal is nothing else than the complex of wishes and
endeavours which are called forth by the opposition to
the existing state of affairs. As the motive power of
the class war, as a means to collect the forces of the
uprising classes to the struggle against the existing,
and to spur them on, it is a powerful lever in the over
turning of this.
But the new social conditions,
which come in the place of the old, do not depend on
the form of the moral ideal, but upon the given natural
conditions : the technical conditions, the natural milieu,
the nature of the neighbours and predecessors of the
existing society, etc.
A new society can thus easily diverge a considerable
distance from the moral ideal of those who brought it
about, and so much the more the less the moral indig
nation was allied with knowledge of the material
conditions. Thus the ideal ended continually in dis
illusionment ; proving itself to be an illusion after it had
done its historical duty and had worked as an inspirer
in the destruction of the old.
We have seen above how in the conservative classes
the opposition between moral theory and practice
arises, so that morality appears to them as that which
�124 ETHICS
and the materialist conception of history.
■everybody demands but nobody practises—something1
which is beyond our strength, which is only given to
supernatural powers to carry out. Here we see in the
revolutionary classes a different kind of antagonism
arise between moral theory and practice, the antagon
ism between the moral ideal and the reality created by
the social revolution.
Here, again, morality appears as something which
Everybody strives for but nobody attains—as, in fact,
the unattainable for earthly beings.
No wonder
then the moralists think that morality has a super
natural origin, and that our animal being which clings
to the earth is responsible for the fact that we can
only gaze wistfully at its picture from afar without
being able to arrive at it.
From this heavenly height morality is drawn down
to earth by historical materialism.
We make
acquaintance with its animal origin, and see how its
changes in human society are conditioned by the
changes which this has gone through, driven on by the
development of the technic. And the moral ideal is
revealed in its purely negative character as opposed
to the existing moral order, and its importance is
recognised as the motive power of the class and as a
means to collect and inspire the forces of the revolu
tionary classes. At the same time, however, the moral
ideal will be deprived of its power to direct their policy.
Not from our moral ideal, but from distinct material
conditions does the policy depend which the social de
velopment takes.
These material conditions have
already at earlier periods, to a certain extent, deter
mined the moral will, the social aims of the uprising
classes, but for the most part unconsciously. Or if a
conscious . directing social knowledge was already to
hand, as in the eighteenth century, it worked, all the
same, unsystematically, and not consistently, at the
formation of the social aims.
It was the materialist conception of history which
first completely deposed the moral ideal as the directing
factor of the social evolution, and which taught us to
deduce our social aims solely from the knowledge of the
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
125
material foundations. And at the same time it has
shown how we can ensure that the new reality resulting
from the Revolution shall come up to the ideal, how
illusions and disappointments are to be avoided.
Whether they can be really avoided depends upon the
deg ree of the insight acquired into the laws of develop
ment, and of the movement of the social organism, its
forces and organs.
With that the moral ideal will not be deprived of its
influence on society ; this influence will simply be re
duced to its proper dimensions. Like the social and
the moral instinct the moral ideal is not an aim, but
a force or a weapon in the social struggle for life1.. The
moral ideal is a special weapon for the peculiar circum
stances of the class war.
Even the Social-Democracy, as the organisation of the
proletariat in its class war, cannot do without the moral
ideal, the moral indignation against exploitation and
class rule. But this ideal has nothing to' find in scien
tific Socialism, which is the scientific examination of
the laws of the development and movement of the
social organism, for the purpose of knowing the neces
sary tendencies and aims of the proletarian class war.
Certainly in Socialism the student is always a fighter
as well, and no man can artificially cut himself in two
parts, of which the one has nothing to do with the
Other. Thus even with Marx in his scientific research
there occasionally breaks through the influence of
a moral ideal. But he always endeavours, and rightly,
to banish it where he can. Because the moral ideal
becomes a source of error in science, when it takes
on itself to point out to it its aims. Science has only
to do with the recognition of the necessary. It can
certainly arrive at prescribing a “ shall,” but this dare
only come up as a consequence of the insight into the
necessary.
It must decline to discover a “shall”
which is not to be recognised as a necessity founded in
the world of phenomena. The Ethic must alwrays be
only an object of science ; this has to study the moral
instincts as well as the moral ideals, and explain them ;
it cannot take advice from them as to the results at
�126
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY,
which it is to arrive. Science stands above Ethics, its
results are just as little moral or immoral as necessity
is moral or immoral.
All the same, even in the winning and making known
of scientific knowledge, morality is not got rid of. New
scientific knowledge implies often the upsetting of
traditional and deeply-rooted conceptions w’hich had
grown to a fixed habit.
In societies which include
class antagonisms, new scientific knowledge, especially
that of social conditions, implies, for the most part
however, damage to the interests of particular classes.
To discover and propagate scientific knowledge which
is incompatible with the interests of the ruling classes,
is to declare war on these. It assumes not simply a
high degree of intelligence, but also ability and willing
ness to fight, as well as independence from the ruling
classes, and, before all, a strong moral feeling, strong
social instincts, a ruthless striving for knowledge, and
to spread the truth with a warm desire to help the
oppressed', uprising classes.
But even this last desire is likely to mislead if it
does not play a simple negative part, as repudiation
of the validity of the ideas of the ruling classes, and
as a spur to overcoming the obstacles which the oppos
ing class interests bring against the social development,
but aspires to rise above that, and to take the direction,
laying down certain aims which have to be attained
through social study.
Even though the conscious aim of the class war in
scientific Socialism has been transformed from a moral
into an economic aim, it loses none of its greatness.
Since that which appeared to all social renovators hither
to as a moral ideal, which could not be attained by them ;
for that the economic conditions are at length given,
that ideal we can now recognise for the first time in
the history of the world as a necessary result of the
economic development, viz., the abolition of class,
not the abolition of all professional distinctions, not
the abolition of division of labour, but certainly the
abolition of all social distinctions and antagonisms
which arise from private property in the means of
�THE ETHICS OF MARXISM.
127
production and from the exclusive chaining down of
the mass of the people to the function of material pro
duction. The means of production have become so
enormous, that they burst to-day the frame of private
property. The productivity of labour is grown so huge
that to-day already a considerable diminution of the
labour time is possible for all workers. Thus grow the
foundations for the abolition, not of the division of
labour, not of the professions, but of the antagonism
of rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, ignorant and
wise.
At the same time, however, the division of labour is
so far developed as to embrace that territory which
remained so many thousands of years closed to it—(the
family hearth. The woman is torn from it, and drawn
into the realm of division of labour, so long a monopoly
of the men. With that, naturally, the natural distinc
tions which exist between the sexes do not disappear,
it can also allow many social distinctions, as well as
many a distinction in the moral demands which are
made on them, to continue to exist or even revive such,
but it will certainly cause all those distinctions to dis
appear from State and society which arise out of the
fact that the woman is tied down to the private house
hold duties, and excluded from the callings of the
divided labour. In this sense we shall see not simply
the abolition of the exploitation of one class by another,
but the abolition of the subjection of woman to man.
And at the same time the world commerce attains such
dimensions, the international economic relations are
drawn so close that therewith the foundation is laid for
superseding private property in the means of produc
tion, the overcoming of natural antagonisms, the end
of war and armaments, and for the possibility of per
manent peace between the nations.
Where is a moral idea which opens such splendid
vistas? And yet they are won from sober, economic
considerations, and not from intoxication through the
moral ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity,
justice, humanity !
�128
ETHICS AND THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.
And these outlooks are no mere expectations of con
ditions which only ought to come, which we simply
wish and will, but outlooks on conditions which must
come, which are necessary. Certainly not necessary
in the fatalist sense, that a higher power will present
them to us of itself, but necessary, unavoidable, in the
sense that the inventors improve technic, and the capi
talists, in their desire for profit, revolutionise the whole
economic life, as it is also inevitable that the workers
aim for shorter hours of labour and higher wages, that
they organise themselves, that they fight the capitalist
class and its state, as it is inevitable that they aim for
the conquest of political power and the overthrow of
capitalist ruling. Socialism is inevitable because the
class war and the victory of the proletariat is inevitable.
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Ethics and the materialist conception of history
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Kautsky, Karl [1854-1938]
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[1906]
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Askew, J.B. (tr)
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Ethics
Materialism
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Ethics
History-Philosophy
Materialism
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ETHICS AND .ESTHETICS
OB,
ART AND ITS INFLUENCE ON OUR
SOCIAL PROGRESS.
‘Stctnre
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 5th MARCH, 1876.
BY
Dfi. G. G. ZERFFI, F.R.S.L., F.R. Hist. S.
One of the Lecturers in IUI. Department of Science and Art.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1876.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
1. The component elements of man’s nature.
2. Reason and imagination.
3. Ethics and ^Esthetics.
4. The Cosmical Laws in Nature and Art.
5. Distinction between “ Sublime ” and “ Beau
tiful.”
6. The most important conditions of Art.
7. Art as it shows itself in the three groups of
mankind.
8. Religion has been always one of the prin
cipal agents in exciting our innate dynamic force
to produce works of Art. The relative changes
in Religions reflect corresponding changes in Art.
9. Oriental and Greek Art. Architecture and
Sculpture.
10. Christian Art, and its distinguishing fea
tures from Ancient Art. Carving and Painting.
11. Gothicism, a revival of Indo-Buddhism and
Renaissance, a revival of Grseco-Romanism. Ideal
ism and Realism.
12. Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the English, Ger
mans, Italians, and French on Art. Our social
progress as reflected in Art. Hogarth and Flax
man, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough.
Neglect of ^Esthetics. Symmetrophobia. China
mania. Rinkomania. Conclusion.
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS ;
OB,
ART AND ITS INFLUENCE ON OUR SOCIAL PROGRESS.
HERE can be no doubt that there are con
flicting and often contradictory constituent
elements in man. He is God’s fairest creature, but
often capable of the meanest and most cruel actions,
of which no animal is guilty. This is, and will always
be the case, whenever these conflicting elements
are not properly developed and trained. Man, at
times, is more stupid than an animal; the assertion
that he learnt his first steps in art from plants and
animals, beginning with the lowest animals, is not
a mere hypothetical assertion, but a fact. Man, in
his first periods of development, often acts on mere
unconscious impulses.
He recognises outward
objects, sees them only as detached incoherent units,
and cannot yet observe them as the emanations of
one general idea, according to which they are
formed. At a later period, however, he becomes
conscious of his power to recognise detached objects
in their coherence, and traces in them general
features which unite them into grand harmonious
groups. The more he extends this latter power,
the more he becomes master of the surrounding
phenomena of the outer world, and the more his
artistic powers develope. The force to create is
as inborn in man as the force to think. The former
power is based on imagination affecting his emo
tional element, the latter on reason affecting his
intellectual capacity. Our reason must be guided
and cultivated as carefully as the art of walking.
A child left to itself would scarcely ever learn how
T
�4
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
to walk upright—it must be taught to do so. Our
imagination requires the same training as our
reason. Necessity is the mother of invention, and
all that is unnecessary is looked upon as superfluous
and useless. But necessity is not the only mother
that leads us on to activity. As soon as we have
satisfied our wants, they cease to excite us to
further action, and we step into a second stage of
our intellectual faculty; we strive to embellish, to
beautify the means by which we have succeeded in
satisfying our wants. A knife with an ornamented
or carved handle does not cut better than one with
a plain handle; neither does a heavy club kill a
brother more quickly because its handle is ingeni
ously decorated with geometrical patterns ; a plain
pint jar does not hold more water because it is
glazed or painted with flowers and groups of dancing
nymphs, and still even savages decorate, ornament,
and embellish their every-day utensils, their huts,
and their very bodies. The faculty, the striving to
improve upon nature, is as much part of our entity
as breathing, eating, drinking, and money-making.
The power of enjoying and becoming conscious of
the cause of our enjoyment ought to be as much
cultivated as our endeavours to know. To cultivate
our reasoning faculty one-sidedly, and to pretend that
the world is a mere machine, is one of the most objec
tionable fundamental errors, one which would turn
humanity into a grand fraternity of “ Bounderbys ”
continually echoing the question into your ears,
What is the good of flowers on a carpet, or of
mouldings on a house, if only the sewage be good,
the ventilation perfect, and the wet kept out ? So
long as a nation is in a transition state from bar
barism into civilization, these “ Bounderbys ” reign
supreme ; but the moment that higher ethics take
the place of low conceptions concerning God and
the world, the inborn force of aesthetics begins to
ferment, to work in man, and to drive him to resign
�5
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
his Hebrew-Puritan coarseness, and to begin to orna
ment, to improve the outer aspect of his houses and
towns, his every-day utensils, and to foster with
great energy the culture of the Fine Arts. As little
as birds can rise and sing in the heavens whilst the
storm is raging, but will wait until it is abated, so
it is with artists; their hearts and imagination are
dumb whilst utilitarian indifference oppresses the
social atmosphere, or political passionsrageinanation.
If the Fine Arts could be imported, as tallow is from
Russia, indigo from India, or turnips from Sweden, we
might do a tolerably good trade ; but the Fine Arts
do not grow like mushrooms in musty and moist,
in dark and hidden places, but only in the broad
daylight of general culture. It is not in vain that
we speak in the artistic world so much of our
“ stars.” Stars shine only when there is night;
the darker the night the brighter are the stars,
which often lose their lustre in the light of a tole
rably bright full-moon of criticism. We can see,
however, the bright dawn of a greater love of art
tinting our horizon; but we must learn, above all,
to look upon aesthetics as an important branch of
our education. We are living in the amiable con
ceit that a knowledge of the “ Beautiful” is a mere
matter of opinion. We wrap ourselves in the say
ing “de gustibus non est disputandum.” But we
dispute about the eastern postures, the real presence,
the right of believing in a personal devil, the es
sence of the Divinity, and the efficacy of embroid
ered petticoats for dancing priests, who patronise a
kind of art which has long gone out of fashion, and
will as little come into general use as “ tattooing ”
or pretty silk tailcoats in union with iron armour,
spears, cross-bows, and helmets.
If there be no absolute law in aesthetics, there is
none in ethics. For ethics, in fact, regulate relative
beauty in actions, whilst aesthetics regulate relative
taste in forms. Ethics teach us how to act rightly ;
B
�6
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
eesthetics, how to see and appreciate beauty. The
one discerns between good and evil; the other be
tween beautiful and ugly. The one is philosophy
of action ; the other philosophy of form. The one
may be stated to be the logic of virtue; the other
the logic of taste. But between virtue and taste
there is merely a formal difference : the one affect
ing, as I have said, reason ; the other imagination
both constituent faculties of our mind. Ethics
teach us the idealisation of our nature, elevatingus into true human beings ; and aesthetics teach us.
the idealization of nature, transfiguring her worksinto works of art. The difference between the twolies in the fact that the moral teacher influencesever-changing agents and agencies, whilst the
aesthetical teacher influences the highest god-like
nature of man, through which works, that may de
light humanity for thousands of years, can be cre
ated in stone, on paper, or on canvas. Morality
is an utterly abstract and at the same time re
lative notion, like “ beauty:” but both may be
defined as based on the laws of the “ Cosmosand.
the Greeks used the same word for “ beautiful” asfor the “ universe.” The laws of nature form the
basis of all our right actions, and only so far as our
actions are in accordance with these eternal laws
can we say that we are really moral. It is a factthat the more nations deviated from these laws, the
more they built themselves “codes,” based on a
heated imagination ; the more monstrosities they
created in arts, the more sanguinary cruelties they
perpetrated in history. For morals and arts have
one and the same basis—namely, conformity to the
laws of nature. Morals consist in our becoming
masters of our own nature, and make us fit to live
as human beings in a social condition. This is ex
actly what eesthetics teach us with reference to the
forms of nature. We have to learn how to use the
laws of nature in creating anything so as to make
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
7
it a real work of art. The question whether our
reason or our sentiment was to be most affected by
a work of art led to two different schools, which
still leave it unsettled. Sentiment was to be placed
above sensation, or imagination above emotion ; as
though we could have sensations and emotions with
out our sentiments being aroused by our imagina
tion through outward impressions. The question
cannot rest on effects, but first on causes, producing
certain effects. The cause of all our striving after
emotions is found in the intellectual force with
which we are endowed, and which, driven into
false grooves through an imagination wrongly acted
upon, may seek for emotions which are either false,
ugly, pernicious, or monstrous. Nature everywhere
shows forces forming endless forms in space and
time. Here she differs from art, which has to bring
in space and time the creations of an unlimited
imagination into limited shapes and forms. Tnfinity
is the attribute of nature; finiteness the element of
art. Still, whilst nature in her infinity works
only to transform, or apparently to destroy, art
produces in her finiteness works which, stamped
with the power of intellect, outlast the works
of nature, and can be said to be immortal. How
many beautiful men and women passed away
whilst the marble-wrought gods of Phidias still live
amongst us. Where are TEschylos, Sophokles, Euri
pides, Shakespeare, Schiller, and Goethe ? The crea
tures of their imagination still live amongst us.
We hear the unrestrained curses of “ Prometheus
Bound ” resounding in our hearts ; we mourn with
Antigone ■ we are horrified with Medea; Brutus,
Antony, have vanished, but their memories, their
very speeches, have been recorded for ever by the
immortal Shakespeare ; Mary Stuart has been
clothed in an eternal, never-fading beauty by
Schiller; and Faust and the Devil have become
incarnations of a higher type through Goethe’s
master-mind.
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
Gazing at the heavens on a starry night, we see, in
addition to myriads of sparkling worlds floating in
the air, a great quantity of nebulse. Either decayed
systems of worlds, or worlds in formation. Worlds
which have lost their centre of gravity and fallen
to pieces ; or worlds which are seeking, according to
the general law of gravitation, to form a central
body by the attraction of cosmical ether. The one
phenomenon is that of destruction, the other that of
formation. This double cosmical process is continu
ally repeating itself in the development of art. Art
is like a mirror—whatever looks into it is reflected
by it. If a poor untrained imagination stares into
the mirror, no one must be astonished that poor and
distorted images result. Nature furnishes us with
mortar and stones for the building, but the archi
tect’s intellectual force has to arrange the elements
and to bring them into an artistic shape. Nature
furnishes us with flowers, trees, animals, and men ;
but the artist has to reproduce and to group them so
as to impress the objective forms of nature with his
own intellectual subjectivity. To become thoroughly
conscious of the distinction between the “ sublime ”
and “ beautiful ” is the first step towards a correct
understanding of works of art.
During the long period of the geological formation
of the earth, when mountains were towered upon
mountains, rocks upheaved, islands subsided ; when
air, water, fire, and solid matter seemed engaged in
never-ending conflict—nature was sublime. The
dynamic force appeared to be the only working
element in nature, and the counterbalancing static
force seemed to be without influence. Gradually,
vegetable and animal life in their first crude forms
commenced to show themselves. Zoophytes deve
loped into megatheriums and mastadons. Mam
moths and elks sported on plains which now form
the mountain-tops of our continents.
Scarcely
visible coral insects were still engaged in construct-
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
9
ing mountain chains, and a luxuriant vegetation
covered the small continents which were surrounded
by apparently endless seas. Such changes, trans
formations, and convulsions are gigantic, grand,
awe-inspiring—sublime—but not beautiful. When
ever nature is at work disturbing the air with elec
tric currents or shaking huge mountains so that they
bow their lofty summits, or when the dry soil is rent
asunder, and sends forth streams of glowing lava,
we are in the presence of the sublime—but not of
the beautiful. Whenever man’s nature is overawed,
whenever he is made to feel his impotence by the
phenomena of nature, he faces the sublime. When,
however, the cosmical forces had expended their
exuberant powers, when a diversified climate had
produced those plants and animals that surround
us, when man appeared in his threefold develop
ment, as black, yellow, and white man on this re
volving planet, and by degrees reached his highest
development, then only art acquired, through man’s
consciousness of what is beautiful, a real meaning
and existence on earth. Science eternally tries to
vanquish error. Industry subdues matter, and uses
it for utilitarian purposes : but the vocation of art
is to produce beauty for beauty’s sake, and to idealise
nature.
Nature produces like art. It is characteristic that
some people continually talk of the Divinity as a
“ maker,” which at once shows the low conception
they have of the incomprehensible first cause. We
may talk of a “ watchmaker ” or a “ shoemaker,”
but to speak of a “ world-maker ” degrades the
divinity which endows matter with inherent laws,
and then, according to the immutable law of causation, allows it unconsciously to assume its varie
gated forms. The products of art, on the other
hand, are the results of the conscious intellectual
power of the artist. It is the free yet well-regu
lated consciousness of the artist that elevates his
�IO
ETHICS AND ^ESTHETICS.
productions into works of art. Undoubtedly the
great store-house of the artist is nature ; he learns
from her how to create, but he has to discern, to
combine, to adapt, to select his forms, and to know
the laws of combination, adaptation, and, above all,
selection; for the whole success of an artist, in what
ever branch he works, depends on his power of
selection and rejection. This power of selection
varies in the three groups of mankind.
The negro is triangular-headed (prognathos), with
his facial lines drawn downwards; lie is the fossil,
or the antediluvian man, and as such indulges in an
antediluvian taste ; his mechanical skill is that of
a child; he never goes beyond geometrical figures
and glaringly bright colours. The negro is still the
woolly-headed, animal-faced being represented on
the tombs of the Pharaohs, because his bodily struc
ture and facial lines have not altered during thou
sands of years. In studying his artistic products,
his customs and manners, we are struck with their
resemblance to those which our more direct fore
fathers, the Turanians and Aryans, used when still
in a savage state. They used, and still use, the
same kind of flint instruments ; their pottery is the
same; their clubs, paddles, the cross-beams of their
huts, are adorned with the same rope and serpent
like windings and twistings.
Next we have the Turanian (from “ tura,” swift
ness of a horse); he is square and short-headed,
(brachikephalos), the traditionary yellow man. His
face is flat, his nose deeply sunken between his
prominent cheeks, and his reasoning faculty only
developed to a certain degree. He has small, oblique
eyes, the lines of his face being turned upwards,
expressing cunning and jocularity. He is an excel
lent rider, but a slow, though steady walker. He
looks on nature with a nomadic shepherd’s eye, and
not with that of a settled artist. He possesses
remarkable technical ability, has great powers of
�ETHICS AND ^ESTHETICS.
11
imitation, can produce geometrical ornamentations
of the most complicated and ingenious character,
and excels in a realistic reproduction of flowers,
fishes, butterflies, and birds; he has no sense for
perspective, and no talent for modelling by means
of shade and light. He is incapable of drawing a
dog, a horse, or a human being.
Finally, we have the Aryan, the long or oval
headed man (dolichokephalos), the historical white
man, the crowning product of the cosmical forces
of nature so far as our globe is concerned. His
facial lines are composed of the emblems of the two
conflicting forces working throughout nature, the
static, represented by a horizontal, and the dynamic
by a vertical line, both framed in by an oval. To
him alone we owe art in its progressive develop
ment and its highest sense. He surpasses the two
other groups of humanity not only in technical
skill, but especially in his inventive and reasoning
power, critical discernment, and purity of artistic
taste. The white man was unquestionably the
founder of all the different religious systems. He
tried with his inborn faculty of intellect to answer
the three questions : Where from ? what for ? and
where to ? He measured synthetically the three
dimensions of space and time ; he tried to trace the
three ever-stable and still ever-varying phenomena
of creation, preservation, and transformation. Art
was the most important means to give utterance in
forms to these answers ; and thus the art-forms of
the Orientals, as well as of the Greeks, are but con
tinuous commentaries on their religious conceptions.
It is this fact that necessitates a correct knowledge
of the phases, developments, and changes in the
different religions, as the abstract products of our
endeavours to solve the mysterious questions forced
upon us by nature, and their concrete results in
visible forms by means of works of art. The In
dians, in striving to give shape and form to abstract
�12
ETHICS AND ESTHETICS.
notions, lost themselves through an ill-trained, over
whelming imagination, and produced caricatures.
The Persians, in worshipping the Deity in pure
thoughts, engendering pure words and producing
pure deeds, built magnificent palaces, but scarcely
any temples. We have no representations of their
Divinities ; neither of Ormuzd nor of Ahriman, but
we have Fervers and Devas, the former as winged
human beings, the latter as winged animals or com
positions of animals, chimeras, or as symbols of the
King’s power. The theological, religious, and sym
bolical elements are altogether neglected in the
Perso-Assyrian and Babylonian reliefs. We have
the friends, relations, attendants, and servants, of
the King; tributaries submitting to Kings ; officers
holding fly-flaps of feathers; horses crossing rivers ;
kings hunting and slaying lions ; armies before be
sieged towns; warriors returning from battle; in
fantry and horse with spears, bows and arrows;
boats floating on rivers; galleys going to sea;
damsels and children with musical instruments;
and mathematical tablets with calculations of square
roots. We might study all this and verify what I say
at this moment, if our magnificent British Museum
were not a book, provided with the seven seals of
Sabbatarian bigotry, closed to the nation as a means
of higher education on the Sunday. We should see
in these Assyrian works of art the very opposite of
Egyptian art; the one the outgrowth of man’s capa
city as a human being, and the other the result of agloomy, mighty hierarchy looking on man as created
for another world—neglecting houses, but construct
ing monumental temples in honour of the gods. In
every form Egyptian art reflects the stifling influ
ences of a hierarchy. But the East never succeeded,
whether in Asia or Africa, in freeing itself from the
influence of the marvellous. Now the marvellous
can only form a certain constituent part in man’s
artistic products; so far as it reflects the sublime
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
13
impressions of natural phenomena. These impres
sions, working through our senses on our intellect,
must come under the regulating and checking in
fluences of reason, engendering symmetry, eurythmy,
proportion, action, and expression. The Indians
tried to explain the phenomena of nature in an ab
stract sense, and to bring metaphysics into outward
shapes ; the Persians were bent on the glorification
of power, visible on earth in the person of the despot,
and their sculptures are but monotonous rows of
stiff attendants as far as the men are concerned.
The animals are treated with greater freedom, be
cause the artist was not tied down by court rules or
ceremonials, as in the treatment of the King and
his myrmidons. The Egyptians tried to copy the
material phenomena of nature, brought them into geo
metrical forms, and marked them with realistically
drawn symbols. When a deity as some force of nature
was invested with a form, the form being one with
some religious dogma or mystic emblem of the power
of the gods, such form could not be changed; for it
became in art what technical words are in science.
When once a form with its symbols and emblems
was settled, as that of Brahma, Vishnu, S’iva, Osiris,
or Isis, or the serpent fixed as the symbol of
eternity, the hawk as that of light, the inner spi
ritual life of the artist was tied down to outward
forms with special inward meanings, and the con
straining sway of misunderstood nature on one side,
and the stationary precepts of an omnipotent hier
archy on the other, entangled the artist’s imagina
tion and paralysed every effort of his individual
subjectivity. The different artistic forms of the
Eastern nations became by degrees petrified and
immutable national and religious incrustations.
Even when geometrical figures, flowers or leaves,
and animals were used, the combinations were
marred by a want of harmony between the dynamic
and static elements in their composition. There is
�14
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
always a “too much,” rarely a “too little.” The
East rent nature asunder, looked upon matter as
evil, and yet matter was to be used to bring the
eternal spirit into form. The element of S’iva,
Ahriman, or Typhon was to give expression to the
essence of Brahma, Ormuzd, or Osiris. What
wonder, then, that the artists succeeded so badly,
and that their gods looked in abstracto as. well as
in concreto so much like infernal monstrosities., So
long as the Greeks were in these Asiatic fetters
they produced similar forms, as also did Christian
art in its infancy, as may be seen in the South
Kensington Museum in the splendid cast of the
Buddhistic gate of the Sanchi Tope, which is close
to a cast by Veit Stoss, a Nuremberg sculptor of the
fifteenth century. But as soon as the self-conscious
spirit of youthful humanity was aroused in the
Greeks through their poets and philosophers, art
improved in the same ratio as the hierarchical
power and the superstitious belief in their gods
diminished. Feelings and emotions were as much
fostered with the Greeks as the consciousness of
these phenomena. Prometheus may be said to
have been the best and most intelligible emblem of
classic heathen humanity, as Faust may be con
sidered the representative of romantic Christian
humanity. Prometheus longed to bring matter
into form; Faust to know what kept matter and
spirit together, and what became of the spirit if
once freed from matter. Prometheus made man of
clay, stole fire from heaven, and vivified the image
with his stolen fire. Faust knew that the heavenly
fire was a force over which he had no control, and
he called upon a spirit of the lower burning regions
to teach him — “how all one whole harmonious
weaves, each in the other works and lives. The
formal outer-form is the longing of the Greek
Faust, and the spiritual inner-life the aspiration of
the Teuton Prometheus. Architecture and sculp-
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
I5
ture were the distinguishing characters of Greek
art; carving and painting were the elements of
Christian art, especially in its first slow develop
ment, struggling to free itself in architecture as
well as in sciences from the oppressive influences of
an Indo-Egyptian hierarchy. To the immortal
honoui- of that hierarchy it must be recorded that
they helped humanity in the development of art
with all their power. I will not enter into a pain
ful inquiry as to how far they endeavoured, like
the Egyptian priests or the Buddhistic Bonzes, to
divert mankind from thinking and reasoning through
the erection of mighty churches. These edifices
were constructed in the old Egyptian sense so far
as the subterranean vaults were concerned. The
superstructures were simply revivals of IndoBuddhistic rock-hewn temples, placed as detached,
free -standing monuments in the midst of crooked
small streets, with crooked little houses in which
very crooked-thinking beings must have lived, shut
ting out the glorious daylight by means of painted
glass or numberless leaden hexagons—probably so
many symbols of the fetters which humanity had
to shake off through a revival of Grseco-Romanism
in art and in our modes of thinking, building, and
painting. How intimately our intellectual and sci
entific progress is interwoven with our progress in
morals and political freedom may nowhere be
studied to greater advantage than in the artistic
life of the Greeks under Perikles, and the artistic
movement of Italy during the sixteenth century,
when the invention of the art of printing, the dis
covery of America, the study of the ancient classics
and the Reformation brought new life, new ideas
amongst the masses ; and we must all be convinced
that art requires a certain moral and intellectual
condition under which alone it will live. If the
intellectual or moral atmosphere be changed, the
artists either work in an Egyptian or Indo-Assyrian
�16
ETHICS AND ^ESTHETICS.
style. If a continual abhorrence of the body as theseat of thousands of devils be preached, we shall be
furnished by our artists with those emaciated, elon
gated, spider-armed and legged saints that adorned
the churches with their meagre half-starved frames
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We
shall have pictures representing men and women
roasted, boiled, quartered, pinched with iron tongs,
or broken on the wheel, or starved in dungeons.
The influence of such an art must have been
terrible on the ethical or moral education of man
kind. For what pity could man have for his fel
low-creatures when his eyes rested on the frightful
scenes of the torments which St. Catherine under
went when broken on the wheel; St. Primatius,
who was burnt alive ; St. Peter, who was crucified
with his head downwards; or St. Lambert, who was
beaten with a club, and so on ? Could men be ex
pected to have treated their wretched fellow sinners
with great kindness, when they could point to a
crucified God, and to his best followers tormented to
death ? How much art was the mere reflection of
this diabolical spirit of the darkest ages, and how
much art again contributed to the demoralised hard
ening of the masses, it would be difficult to decide.
It is a further fact that, with the revival of classic
feelings in poetry and sciences, art turned with
horror from these ugly scenes, and painted the
Virgin with the child, bringing men through a more
humane representation of the divinity into nearer
relations with our higher aspirations. But if the
surroundings of the artists be changed again through
the superstitions of an ignorant mob, the despotic
organisation of a government, or the rule of a wild
and bigoted party, the artistic force will also change
or die out altogether. The artist acts only to a cer
tain extent on the public, whilst the public re-acts
with a combined and often entirely crushing “ vis
inertias ” on the artist. I have only here to mention
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
17
the evils which Puritanism, with its Hebrew hatred of
art and refinement, produced in this once“ merry Old
England.” Artists can often only reflect the intel
lectual atmosphere in which they live. How is a
man who sees nothing but emaciated, beggarly, or
sanctimonious faces, thin limbs, hungry looks, dwel
lings bare of all domestic comfort, decayed brick
houses and crumbling walls, to paint convivial
scenes of happiness and joy ? Or let me draw
another picture; how is a man to paint mighty
dramatic scenes on a canvas, when he has to live in
an atmosphere of so-called modern respectability,
seeing always the same bland smiles around him,
the same trimmed whiskers, the same stiff collars,
with the same faultless but not less stiff bows, hear
ing the same stereotyped insignificant phrases about
the weather, the funds, the high prices of coals or
butcher’s meat, receiving an order for a so-called
nice little picture, with plenty of sentiment in a
dead cock-robin, and the important question put
under it, “ Who killed cock-robin ?” in old Gothic
letters ; or another for a yawning Christ, who, tired
of his daily work, does not enjoy his god-head,
brightly looking towards the hour when he is with
his last breath on the Cross to redeem humanity.
Such a poetical conception, painted yawning, is
truly a sign of our times, but not one of the most
encouraging. We are just passing through a crisis.
We were too strongly Platonists in our notion of
art until recently. Plato used to place artists in
the same category with hair-dressers, cooks, and
eheats, who continually try to belie us. This is a
mean view for so divine a philosopher to take,
but nothing is too mean for a divine philoso
pher to assert when it suits his preconceived hypo
theses. Aristotle improved on Plato, and advocated
“ limitation,” “ order,” and “ symmetry.” Aristotle
already treats of “ reality” in art, which has to as
sume the concrete form of beauty, and wishes that
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
our “imitation. ” (jiipr)cris') of nature should be done
under the influence of purification (icaOapais), and he
admits the effect which art must have on the gene
ral improvement of morals as they work ethically,
pathetically, and practically. Plotinus, of the
Alexandrian school, is next to be studied. Self
motion is with him the essence of absolute beauty,
which self-motion is to be expressed in a work of art.
With him a beautiful work of art is not a mere re
production of reality, but he requires to see in it
the reflection of the “ moving (subjective) spirit” of
the artist j as soon as the moving idea is not to be
traced, he condemns the work as “ ugly.” Influ
enced by the spreading “ spiritualism ” of Christia
nity, he assumes “matter” as “evil,” as the nega
tive element of the “ ideal ” of “ good.” The vivi
fying and idealising element giving form to thoughts
is the essential element of beautv. He goes beyond
the principles of antiquity in sculpture and wishes
the art of painting to concentrate all its efforts on
the expression of an inner life through the eye. For
nearly 1500 years art is left without a theoretical
guide. After a life of beauty in the antique, we
have a revived second life. This resurrection took
place through the Renaissance, this true and mighty
offspring of the Reformation. “ Love,” in its most
sublime meaning, became the fundamental basis of
modern art. It was in this glorious island that
aesthetics received, like “ political economy,” a sys
tematic form for the first time. We have continued
to cultivate the study of political economy, with its
regulations of demand and supply; we have even
gone so far as richly to reward fat cocks and pigs,
cows and bulls, big-eared rabbits, goitered pigeons,
and have our horse, baby, and barmaid shows ; but
we have not continued the study of aesthetics, and
have shut out the very word from our modern phi
losophical writings. Hutcheson, however (16941747), revived the study of the beautiful, and Cousin
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
I9
is honest enough to accord to the Englishman the
priority in having placed sentiment above sensa
tion, and written on the laws of the beautiful.
Hutcheson distinguished the faculty which perceives
pure beauty from the two which were generally sup
posed to comprise the entire soul, namely, under
standing and physical sensibility. The idea that
art would decline when metaphysics, as some mate
rialists chose to call aesthetics, flourished, is not borne
out by facts in art-history ; neither is that perni
cious idea correct, “ that the arts of poetry, painting
and sculpture may exclusively flourish under a
despotic government.” Those who have studied art
history may point to the period of Perikles, under
whom art flourished, and attained the very highest
development in sculpture and architecture. Art
began to flourish during the Middle Ages in the freetowns of Germany and Italy, and not under the
despotic sway of the Imperial House of Hapsburg.
French art revived under the Republic and during
the Liberal Government of Louis Philippe; it flour
ished, and continues to flourish, under the sway of
the liberal-minded Hohenzollerns in Prussia; it was
neither under the despotic King John, nor under
Henry VIII., but under the great and immortal
Queen Elizabeth that Shakespeare wrote his master
works, his divine historical paintings in words.
Freedom of thought in poetry and art may exist
often under a despot, whilst even a Commonwealth,
if swayed by purely utilitarian ideas, will stifle and
kill art altogether. Quetelet is incorrect in saying
that “modern art has suffered from a too servile
imitation of the ancients.” Art has suffered
from a neglect of the study of the antique, and
from the false notion that a slavish imitation
of nature could be art. Whilst Germans and French
continued in the path which Hutcheson was the
first to point out, and introduced the study of
aesthetics into all their schools, whilst no great
�20
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
French or German philosopher could dare to separate
ethics and aesthetics, our great thinkers consider the
emotional beneath their dignity. They propound
that only what can be weighed, demonstrated, or
calculated deserves an earnest man’s attention. It
was that matter of fact, philosophical Bounderby,
Feed, who said that the “ Fine arts are nothing else
but the language of nature, which we brought into
the world with us, and have unlearned by disuse,
and so find the greatest difficulty in recovering it.
Abolish the use of articulate sounds and writing
among mankind for a century and every man would
be a painter, an actor, and an orator.” It is per
fectly astounding at times to see what some of our
authorities venture to put on paper. Is there a
single fact in the whole history of humanity to bear
out this bold paradoxical assertion of a not entirely
dementicated writer. But the mischief was done.
In vain did Sir Joshua Reynolds try through theory
and practice to raise art from the contempt into
which it had fallen with us; in vain did many
masters like Gainsborough paint; in vain did Flax
man with his chisel endeavour to revive classic
sculpture, in surpassing many antique products and
emulating the very best works of antiquity; in
vain did Haydon sigh for higher aims in art, for
historical paintings, and sacrifice himself at last,
seeking despairingly death rather than a life under
the baneful influence of indifference. Hogarth, this
immortal Walter Scott in colours, Shaftesbury,
Henry Home, and Edmund Burke also contributed
some extraordinary theories on the study of aesthetics.
It was the pride of Hogarth to have discovered the
t( serpent-line,” or rather the waving line, as the
line of beauty; so that a wriggling worm is the
eternal prototype of beauty. The French early
advocated a coarse realism, whilst the Germans are
often too metaphysical and, to the detriment of
technical execution, lay too much stress on the idea
�ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
21
which the artist intends to carry out. We have in
later years made gigantic strides towards a correct
study and appreciation of taste in general. We
have done much towards an improvement in art.
We possess more means for cultivating art than any
other nation. No second British Museum, no
second South Kensington Museum exists in the
world. We need only employ the same energy
with which we collect old, quaint-looking China,
always with a keen eye to business, to attain great
artistic results. We admire plates dressed as ladies
in brocade and silk with flounces and lace, and
ladies or mandarins walking about like tea-pots or
flower-vases. Our symmetrophobia, which makes
us hate every straight line, and our Chinamania
are excellent signs, not less than our Rinkomania.
and Cookomania. We have at last awakened to
the emotional, if not yet in the right, at least in a
better direction. It is no more the lisping spiritual
adviser that interests us at a game of croquet. We
prefer an old plate with bright flowers to him, and
paper our walls with cups and saucers instead of
whitewashing them; we do not discuss any longer
the last dull sermon ; we slide on little wheels on
asphalte-ice, and prove to the world that with horse
racing, rowing, and rinking we intend to be the
ancient Greeks in modern Ulster coats ! All these
freaks of a misdirected taste will die out; and now
that the emotional is aroused, it will, when directed
into a proper groove, produce marvels. We had
once a Michael Angelo in words, what hinders us
from having a Shakespeare in colours. Nothing
but the indifference and tastelessness of the public.
Let us only treat aesthetics at the central seats ot
our learning, in our colleges, but essentially in our
ladies’ schools, with the same fervour as ethics, and
cur symmetrophobia, Chinamania and Rinkomania
will soon become matters of the past. There ought
not to be a town with a mayor in this wealthy
�22
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
kingdom that has not its public library, its museum,
and, above all, its picture-gallery filled with the
products of our talented, striving, home artists.
Wedgwood made his fortune, and raised English
'china to works of art, through English artists;
Minton did the same; and the Doulton manufactory
of terra-cotta, &c. has recently sent for the Inter
national Exhibition at Philadelphia works of art,
exclusively the work of English artists, that will do
honour to our progress in this long neglected branch.
We must try to support talent wherever we find it,
and not only pay fabulous sums to those who
happen to be fashionable, but to all those who strive
to improve their artistic powers, and could do so
still more if they received half the support an old
China tea-pot or a Japanese monstrosity is capable
of commanding, or is afforded to the establishment
of rinks, which display angular gymnastics to the
detriment of our sound limbs. Courses on aesthetics
proving their identity with sound ethics, arousing
and satisfying our emotional nature in a higher
direction, would be of inestimable advantage to our
political economy, our taste, and our fame as an
artistic nation.
In conclusion, I may draw your attention to the
three different points from which we may study
aesthetics. We may do this from a realistic, an his
torical, or a philosophical point of view.
Realism and idealism may be traced in a con
tinual conflict in the domains of aesthetics as in
the domains of ethics. The realistic school of art
has in later years had an immense influence with
us. In the same ratio, I may say, as the realistic
school in science. But whilst the realistic school in
science continually tries to prove some general pro
position, which is to be converted from a mere
hypothesis into a systematically proven theory, art
critics have gone so far as to demand from artists
the very stratification of rocks, or of the different
�ETHICS AND .ESTHETICS.
23
kinds of soil, to such an extent that the farmer
should be able to recognise the ground in which tosow his oats or wheat. Pictures, according to these
gesthetical wiseacres, should be geological maps or
mineralogical surveys; as far as flowers are con
cerned they ought to be perfect specimens fit for a
herbarium ; and as to the human body they should
present correct diagrams of veins and sinews and
strongly-protruding muscles. When these critics
take up the archaeological branch of art they advo
cate with indomitable tenacity the old forms and
check the imagination wherever they can. Art is
only to be a reflex of old Greek or Gothic forms, of
Chinese or Indian curiosities, or a slavish reproduc
tion of the Renaissance. The self-creative origi
nality of the artist is neither guided nor even taken
into consideration by this school.
The art-historians proceed in the right direction.
They endeavour to bring before our eyes the past,
so as to enable us to understand the present and to
influence the future of our art. But the historians
have driven us into two divergent backward direc
tions. They either advocate the antique, or they
are consistent Goths—sham Goths generally; the
one holding that everything beautiful must be a
fret, a meander, or a Korinthian pattern, or they
delight in symbolic trefoils, finials, pinnacles, but
tresses, thin and lofty spires, pointed arches, and
darkish-painted windows; neither seeing what an
anachronism is advocated. The philosophical school
at last often indulges in tall phrases—the more un
intelligible the better. We hear of the depth and
breadth of the picture, of deep sentiment and nice
feeling, of perspective in the clouds, &c. We are
startled with hypothetical paradoxes, with specu
lations of the wildest sort on grouping, expression,
and the flowing lines of the composition. As on
theological and medical matters, everyone thinks
himself justified to have an opinion of his or her
�■24
ETHICS AND AESTHETICS.
own on art matters ; as though ethics and aesthetics,
like medicine, were not the results of thousands of
years—now progressive, then again retrograde, but
always onward striving movements of humanity.
Music, poetry, and art have, as well as our morals,
laws which must be known and studied. Music
speaks in sounds, poetry in words, art in forms,
morals in actions. But without harmony, music
would became dissonance; without rhythm, poetry
■would be but an inflated prose ; art without aesthe
tics, a vulgar and objectionable caricature ; and our
morals without ethics, an arbitrary confusion of
whimsical actions. Ethics and aesthetics will fur
nish us with that bright and real worship of God
and his nature, reflected in our creative powers,
for which so many of us yearn with eager hearts;
they will bring to us that bright future in which
men, freed from all fetters of prejudice and super
stition, will unite reason, as the father of science,
with emotion, as the mother of art.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
For tickets and the published lectures apply (by letter, enclos
ing postage-stamps, order, or cheque), to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm.
Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
PRINTED BY c. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
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Ethics and aesthetics; or, Art and its influence on our social progress. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 5th March, 1876
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Presented in Memory of Dr. Moncure D. Conway by his children, July Nineteen hundred & eight.
Publisher
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Sunday Lecture Society
Date
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1876
Identifier
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N703
CT10
Subject
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Ethics
Aesthetics
Philosophy
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Ethics and aesthetics; or, Art and its influence on our social progress. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 5th March, 1876), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Aesthetics
Art
Conway Tracts
Ethics
NSS
-
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Text
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Ethical religion
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Salter, William Mackintire
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 128 p. : ill. (front port.) ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Extra Series
Series number: 9
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Includes bibliographical references. Printed in double columns. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
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1905
Identifier
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RA1158
RA1632
RA1821
E342
N603
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Coit, Stanton [1857-1944]
Subject
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Religion
Ethics
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Ethical religion), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Ethics
NSS
Religion and Ethics