Читать книгу A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution - Cora May Williams - Страница 14

The course of civilization could not possibly have been other than it has been.

Progress shows us that perfect individuation joined to the greatest mutual dependence will be reached in the future of the race. There will be an ultimate identity of personal and social interests, and a disappearance of evil. Spencer gives, however, a number of arguments to prove that the interest of society is, at present also, the interest of the individual.

The "Theory of Population" (published in 1852), which is founded on the theory of an antagonism between the intellectual and the reproductive powers, and on the ancient theory of a direct relation between skull-capacity or brain-size and intellectual power, contains this passage: "From the beginning, pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth's surface. It forced men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily pressing us into closer contact and more mutually dependent relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due peopling of the globe, and the bringing of all its habitable parts into the highest state of culture—after having brought all processes for the satisfaction of human wants to the greatest perfection—after having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness for social life—after having done all this, we see the pressure of population, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring itself to an end."

In a letter to Mr. Mill, published in Bain's "Mental and Moral Science" (p. 721, 3d edition), Spencer repudiates the title of Anti-Utilitarian, which Mr. Mill, in view of the criticisms of Utilitarianism contained in "Social Statics," had applied to him. He defines his position in respect to Utilitarianism as follows: "I have never regarded myself as an Anti-Utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly understood, concerns, not the object to be reached by men, but the method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end. The Expediency Philosophy, having concluded that happiness is a thing to be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations.

"But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly so-called—the science of right conduct—has for its object to determine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things, and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.

"Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early stages, planetary astronomy consisted of nothing more than accumulated observations respecting the positions and motions of the sun and planets; from which accumulated observations it came by and by to be empirically predicted, with an approach to truth, that certain of the heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the modern science of planetary astronomy consists of deductions from the law of gravitation—deductions showing why the celestial bodies necessarily occupy certain places at certain times. Now the kind of relation which thus exists between ancient and modern astronomy is analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the Expediency Morality and Moral Science properly so-called. And the objection which I have to the current Utilitarianism is, that it recognizes no more developed form of morality—does not see that it has reached but the initial stage of Moral Science.

"To make my position fully understood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral Science, there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of Utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from the organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals, who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nervous organizations—just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition, certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that, just as the space-intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of geometry, and has its rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them, so will moral intuitions respond to the demonstrations of Moral Science; and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them."

In "Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals"[39] (1871), Spencer, after quoting portions of the above letter as defining his position, continues with a consideration of the continual readjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable, the former of which prescribes a system far too good for men as they are, the latter of which does not of itself tend to establish a system better than the existing one; and he reiterates his law of the perfect man as follows:—

"Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is relatively right, it still follows that we must first consider what is absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other." Spencer further expressly repudiates empirical Utilitarianism, and denies the assertion of Mr. Hutton that he by implication recognizes no parentage for morals beyond that of the accumulation and organization of the facts of experience. On this head he says:—

"In the genesis of an idea, the successive experiences, be they of sounds, colors, touches, tastes, or be they of the special objects that combine many of these into groups, have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an emotion, the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar, but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their special natures, though they have a certain community of general nature. Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of combination among impressions received from without, there is a vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of ideal feelings of pleasure or pain that were associated with them. We have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them being able to say why they have grown up, though analysis, nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected experiences. The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized connections between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often recurred together, though the relation between them has not been consciously generalized"—associations which though little perceived, nevertheless serve as incentives or deterrents. Much deeper down than the history of the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connections. The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological accompaniments of destructive action.

"What we call the natural language of anger is due to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling; this, too, has a physical interpretation."

Of the altruistic sentiments, Spencer says: "The development of these has gone on only as fast as society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy, and sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which conferred direct and indirect benefits; the pains inflicted being mainly incidental and indirect." Sympathy is "the concomitant of gregariousness; the two having all along increased by reciprocal aid."

"If we suppose all thought of rewards or punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is restrained not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine of utility, but by the painful associations established in him. And it is clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts, repetitions of kind deeds and experiences of the sympathetic gratifications that follow tend continually to make stronger the association between deeds and feelings of happiness."

Spencer continues: "Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there may result a deliberate pursuit of the sympathetic gratifications. There may also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter results are respectively detrimental and beneficial—that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster; and then there may become current such summations of experience as 'honesty is the best policy.' But so far from regarding these intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions of utility and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly resulting, in experience, from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that they are socially beneficial and detrimental. When, however, the remote effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are expressed in current maxims, and lead to injunctions having the religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and check unsympathetic ones, are immensely strengthened by their alliances. Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The commands of a creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social conduct, mutually enforce them; and every child, as it grows up, daily has impressed on it, by the words and faces and voices of those around, the authority of these highest principles."

The altruistic sentiments develop, and altruistic action becomes habitual, "until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled unchallenged."

And Spencer sums up his objections to the interpretation of his theory of the development of the moral sentiment as follows: "What I have said will make it clear that two fundamental errors have been made in the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been construed in senses much too narrow.

"Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses and means and proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of means and ends—implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in observed relations, and is not taken to include the connections found in consciousness between states that occur together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest to every one who reads the 'Principles of Psychology.'"

In his essay on Prison Ethics (1860), Spencer says: "The antagonistic schools of morals, like many other antagonistic schools, are both right and both wrong. The a priori school has its truth; the a posteriori school has its truth; and for the proper guidance of conduct there should be due recognition of both. On the one hand, it is asserted that there is an absolute standard of rectitude; and respecting certain classes of actions, it is rightly asserted. From the fundamental laws of life and the conditions of social existence are deducible certain imperative limitations to individual action—limitations which are essential to a perfect life, individual and social; or, in other words, essential to the greatest possible happiness. And these limitations, following inevitably as they do from undeniable first principles, deep as the nature of life itself, constitute what we may distinguish as absolute morality.

"On the other hand, it is contended, and in a sense rightly contended, that with men as they are, and society as it is, the dictates of absolute morality are impracticable. Legal control, which involves the infliction of pain, alike on those who are restrained and on those who pay the cost of restraining them, is proved by this fact to be not absolutely moral, seeing that absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted. Wherefore, if it be admitted that legal control is at present indispensable, it must be admitted that these a priori rules cannot be immediately carried out. And hence it follows that we must adapt our laws and actions to the existing character of mankind—that we must estimate the good or evil resulting from this or that arrangement, and so reach a posteriori a code fitted for the time being. In short, we must fall back on expediency." Spencer then goes on to argue that an advanced penal code is as impossible to an early stage of civilization as is an advanced form of government; a bloody penal code is both a natural product of the time and a needful restraint for the time, and is also the only one which could be carried out by the existing administration.

The aim of morality is life, of absolute morality complete life; society is therefore justified in coercing the criminal who breaks through the conditions of life or constrains us to do so. Coercion is legitimate to the extent of compelling restitution, and preventing a repetition of aggressions; no further. Less bloody systems of punishment, wherever introduced, have borne excellent fruit. It may be deductively shown that the best of all systems must be that best calculated to reform the criminal; too severe punishment, instead of awakening a sense of guilt, prevents the same, begetting a sense of injustice towards the inflicting power, which causes resentment; so that, even if the criminal, on reëntering society, commits no further crime, he is restrained by the lowest of motives—fear. The industrial system applied in prisons must have the best results—counteracting habits of idleness, strengthening self-control, and educating the will.

The principle of freedom, which runs through all Spencer's works, is especially enounced again, in his essay, "The Man versus the State" (1884), in which he combats "the great political superstition" of so-called "paternal government." He says: "Reduced to its lowest terms, every proposal to interfere with citizens' activities further than by enforcing their mutual limitations, is a proposal to improve life by breaking through the fundamental conditions of life."[40]

In "The Data of Ethics" (published 1874), Mr. Spencer assumes a somewhat different standpoint from that of his earlier works bearing on morals. The course of reasoning contained in this book is as follows:—

The doctrine that correlatives imply one another has, for one of its common examples, the relation between the conceptions of whole and part. Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a whole can be framed without a nascent idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part can be framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of the correlative whole. Still less, when part and whole are dynamically related, and least of all when the whole is organic, can the part be understood except by comprehension of the whole to which it belongs. This truth holds not only of material but also of immaterial aggregates.

Conduct is a whole and, in a sense, an organic whole, and Ethics, of which it is a part, cannot be understood except through the understanding of the whole of conduct.

A definition of conduct must exclude purposeless actions—such, for instance, as those of an epileptic in a fit. Hence the definition emerges either: acts adjusted to ends; or, the adjustment of acts to ends; according as we contemplate the formed body of acts, or think of the form alone. And conduct, in its full acceptation, must be taken as comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends, from the simplest to the most complex, whatever their special natures and whether they are considered separately or in their totality.

A large part of conduct is non-ethical, indifferent; this passes, by small degrees and in countless ways, into conduct which is either moral or immoral.

The acts of all living creatures, as acts adjusted to ends, come within the definition of conduct; the conduct of the higher animals as compared with that of man, and of the lower animals as compared with the higher, differs mainly in that the adjustments of acts to ends is relatively simple and relatively incomplete. And as in other cases, so in this case, we must interpret the more developed by the less developed; human conduct as a part of the whole of the conduct of animate beings. And further: as, in order to understand the part of human conduct with which Ethics is concerned, we must study it as a part of human conduct as a whole, and in order to understand human conduct, we must again study it as a part of the whole of conduct exhibited in animate beings, so, in order to comprehend this too, we must regard it as an outcome of former, less developed conduct, out of which it has arisen. Our first step must be to study the evolution of conduct.

Morphology deals with physical structure, physiology with the processes carried on in the body. But we enter on the subject of conduct when we begin to study such combinations among the actions of sensory and motor-organs as are externally manifested.

We saw that conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by the exclusion of purposeless actions; but during evolution this distinction arises by degrees. We trace up conduct to the vertebrates and through the vertebrates to man, and find that here the adjustments of acts to ends are both more numerous and better than among lower mammals; and we find the same thing on comparing the doings of higher races of men with those of lower. These better adjustments favor, not only prolongation, but also increased amount of life.

And among these adjustments of acts to ends, there are not only such as further individual life but also, evolving with these, such as favor the life of the species. Race-maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining conduct, arises gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct. The multitudinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth are engaged in a continuous struggle for existence, in which the adjustments of acts to ends, being imperfectly evolved, miss completeness because they cannot be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented from making them. This imperfectly evolved conduct introduces us, by antithesis, to conduct which is perfectly evolved—such adjustments that each creature may make them without preventing other creatures making them also. The conditions of such conduct cannot exist in predatory savage life; nor can it exist where there remains antagonism between individuals forming a group, or between groups of individuals—two traits of life necessarily associated, since the nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one another also. Hence the limit of evolution can be reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies; can be approached only as war decreases and dies out.

The principle of beneficence is not derived by Spencer from the principle of freedom, in "Social Statics"; and here, as in the latter book, Spencer has difficulty with it. He says: "A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the members of a society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And if either indirectly by industrial coöperation, or directly by volunteered aid, fellow-citizens can make easier for one another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still higher phase of evolution; since whatever facilitates the making of adjustments by each increases the totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of all more complete."

Thus, then, says Spencer, "we have been led to see that Ethics has for its subject-matter that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its evolution."

By comparing the meanings of a word in different connections, and observing what they have in common, we learn its essential significance. Material objects we are accustomed to designate as good or bad according as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends. The good knife is one which will cut; the good gun is one which will carry far and true; and so on. So of inanimate actions, and so, also, of living things and actions. A good jump is a jump which, remoter ends ignored, well achieves the immediate purpose of a jump; and a stroke at billiards is called good when the movements are skilfully adjusted to the requirements. So too our use of the words good and bad with respect to conduct under its ethical aspects has regard to the efficiency or non-efficiency of the adjustments of acts to ends. This last truth is, through the entanglements of social relations, by which men's actions often simultaneously affect the welfares of self, of offspring, and of fellow-citizens, somewhat disguised. Nevertheless, when we disentangle the three orders of ends, and consider each separately, it becomes clear that the conduct which achieves each kind of end is regarded as relatively good; and conduct which fails to achieve it is regarded as relatively bad. The goodness ascribed to a man of business, as such, is measured by the activity and ability with which he buys and sells to advantage, and may coexist with a hard treatment of dependents which is reprobated. The ethical judgments we pass on such self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized; partly because the promptings of the self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less strong, do need moral enforcement. With regard to the second class of adjustments of acts to ends, which subserve the rearing of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the words good and bad to them, according as they are efficient or inefficient. And most emphatic are the application of the words, in this sense, throughout the third division of conduct comprising the deeds by which men affect one another. Always, then, acts are good or bad, according as they are well or ill-adapted to ends. That is, good is the name we apply to the relatively more evolved conduct; and bad is the name we apply to that which is relatively less evolved; for we have seen that "evolution, tending ever towards self-preservation, reaches its limits when individual life is the greatest, both in length and breadth; and we now see that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the conduct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct tending to self-destruction." With increasing power of maintaining individual life goes increasing power of perpetuating the species by fostering progeny; and the establishment of an associated state both makes possible and requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in each and in his offspring, not only without preventing completion of it in others, but with furtherance of it in others; and this is the form of conduct most emphatically termed good. "Moreover, just as we saw that evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-men; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the conduct conceived as best, when it fulfils all three classes of ends at the same time."

Has this evolution been a mistake? The pessimist claims so, the optimist claims not. But there is one postulate in which both pessimists and optimists agree—namely, that it is evident that life is good or bad, according as it does, or does not, have a surplus of agreeable feeling; if a future life is included in the theory of either, the assumption is still the same, that life is a blessing or a curse according as existence, now considered in both worlds, contains more of pleasure or of pain; and the implication is therefore that conduct which conduces to the preservation of self, the family, and society, is good or bad in the same measure. "Thus there is no escape from the admission that conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable or painful." So that if self-mutilation furthered life, and picking a man's pocket brightened his prospects, we should regard these acts as good. Approach to such a constitution as effects complete adjustment of acts to ends of every kind is, however, an approach to perfection, and therefore means approach to that which secures greater happiness. "Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception" of moral aim.

Here follow criticisms of the religious school of morals, which bases its system on the will of God, and of the school of "pure intuitionists," who hold "that men have been divinely endowed with moral faculties." "It must be either admitted or denied that the acts called good and the acts called bad naturally conduce, the one to human well-being and the other to human ill-being. Is it admitted? Then the admission amounts to an assertion that the conduciveness is shown by experience; and this involves abandonment of the doctrine that there is no origin for morals apart from divine injunctions. Is it denied that acts classed as good and bad differ in their effects? Then it is tacitly affirmed that human affairs would go on just as well in ignorance of the distinction; and the alleged need for commandments from God disappears." To affirm that we know some things to be right and other things to be wrong, by virtue of a supernaturally given conscience; and thus tacitly to affirm that we do not otherwise know right from wrong, is tacitly to deny any natural relations between acts and results. For if there exist any such relations, then we may ascertain by induction, or deduction, or both, what these are. And if it be admitted that because of such natural relations happiness is produced by this kind of conduct, which is therefore to be approved; while misery is produced by that kind of conduct, which is therefore to be condemned; then it is admitted that the rightness or wrongness of actions is determinable, and must finally be determined, by the goodness or badness of the effects that flow from them, which is contrary to the hypothesis. Spencer also repeats and enlarges upon his formerly stated objections to utilitarianism as superficial: "The utilitarianism which recognizes only the principles of conduct reached by induction, is but preparatory to the utilitarianism which deduces these principles from the processes of life as carried on under established conditions of existence."

Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently generalizes these empirically, but only when it reaches the stage at which its empirical generalizations are included in a rational generalization, does it become developed science. So with Ethics; a preparation in the simpler sciences is presupposed. It has a biological aspect; since it concerns certain effects, inner and outer, individual and social, of the vital changes going on in the highest type of animals. It has a psychological aspect; for its subject-matter is an aggregate of actions that are prompted by feelings and guided by intelligence. And it has a sociological aspect; for these actions, some of them directly, and all of them indirectly, affect associated beings. Belonging under one aspect of each of these sciences—physical, biological, psychological, sociological—it can find its ultimate interpretations only in those fundamental truths which are common to all of them, as different aspects of evolving life.