Читать книгу A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution - Cora May Williams - Страница 28

Rolph contests Lubbock's theory that the early type of man lived in a condition of sexual promiscuity, and gives as a reason for his opinion the "strict" monogamy of those animals which are most closely related to man. The customs of such animals should have as much weight, as evidence, as those of any of the present tribes of savages, since these tribes are as old as civilized races, and their customs cannot, therefore, be unhesitatingly regarded as primary ones.

The real needs of men, those the gratification of which is indispensable to the maintenance of life, are few. By experience, and by experience alone, can man learn that present gratification may mean future pain, and so be withheld from such gratification; for only disinclination to one form of pleasure can induce inclination to another form. In the simplicity of primitive social conditions and the uniform character of action under such conditions, rules of experience must have been early formed, which, inherited by succeeding generations, became the rules of conduct.[61] With the development of authority—first the paternal authority, then that of the family, and finally that of the elders of the tribe—the possibility of establishing rules of action, and inducing morality, increased. The very nomination of elders, to which primitive authority may almost everywhere be traced, shows how great was the respect for experience.

Spencer remarks, in one place in his "Data of Ethics," that human beings first banded themselves together because they found it more advantageous to coöperate. This is only conditionally true. Before human beings could find association advantageous, they must have accumulated experience of it. That they did this by their own inclination is certainly not true. Wherever we find two solitary beings coming together by chance, enmity is the first feeling excited, and war the result. Everything new, everything unknown, causes aversion, and this aversion must lead to misunderstandings and war the more surely because each of the opponents feels himself disturbed in his supposed right to limitless possession. Human beings must first have warred with one another before they came to the knowledge, not that social life, that is, mutual forbearance, was more advantageous, but that more closely associated individuals gained in power against a common enemy by their association. Man did not choose society, but was, on the contrary, forced into it, for good or evil, through increase of his kind. The discovery of the first tools must have had an immense influence upon increase in the number of individuals, which was before limited by struggle with wild animals, and by the restriction of food to fruit. We must conclude that, under such circumstances, a lasting contract was inevitable, and that, with it, vices suddenly appeared which had before existed only potentially, as predisposition. War or theft must have followed the mutual limitation of rights, but against this disturbance of the peace other members of the society must have banded themselves together. The weaker must soon have been driven from their possessions by the stronger, and must then have united for the purpose of obtaining, by association, what they were unable to acquire otherwise. The growing children settled near their parents, with whom they entered into a family union, in which the father represented the authority. In this arrangement is the germ of civil order—of the ideas of right and wrong. Inner conflicts can at first scarcely have occurred, since the possessions of the family were in common, and a conception of theft between members of the family could not exist. Furthermore, there was scarcely anything worth stealing, for the implements must have been so primitive that each individual could easily manufacture them for himself. Only women could have been, in the beginning, an object of conflict, and for avoidance of this conflict laws and customs arose, which are, to our modern minds, inexplicable. Real polyandry may doubtless be explained by the idea of the common right of possession among brothers; it has, in most cases, this significance. It is extended, indeed, later, to more distant relatives, and gains finally a solemn significance, the presentation of the wife, or of one of a number of wives, being a symbol of fraternity by which the guest is honored.

With the manufacture of better tools and weapons, temptation to theft was increased, and authority began to be directed inwards to the society itself, since inner conflict injured the family in its contests with outer enemies. What is true of the family in this connection, is true of the tribe. A joint egoism of the society as a whole must thus have been developed, as soon as the first step of association was taken. The earliest law is always negative, a prohibition, not a positive command.

War had its good as well as its evil side, since it made different peoples acquainted and gave them knowledge of each other's tools, weapons, and customs. War was, at first, the only means by which peoples learned to know each other. The establishment of peace led to the union of different peoples, or at least to peaceful intercourse by exchange, which united the tribes by common interests, corrected ideas, and tempered customs.

The egoistic impulses, the feeling of unconditional right to possession, are the impulses with which the child is born; morality is not inborn, but must be developed by education, as is shown by the example of such children as are neglected in education.[62] Or, if there is anything innate in the direction of morality, it is merely a certain inherited predisposition acquired in the course of the thousands of years of social intercourse, which makes it easier for us to respond to education. If this is not so, and the impulse to morality is innate, why has it required so many centuries for man to make the simple connection of ideas, that what is just towards one man is just towards another. In this feeling of justice, acquired through an extension of egoism, is the root of all virtue. It is the spring of sympathy or benevolence, which can be developed only where the feeling of the like rights of others is strong.

But an unconsidered over-estimate of this feeling is the source of Spencer's Utopia, as it is of that of present socialism. We have seen that authority is a primary and necessary factor of society. Authority, virtue, and duty are interdependent, and must be of about the same antiquity. From all compulsion imposed by authority, the creature, by its nature, attempts to escape, and the feeling which prompts this attempt has been falsely called the instinct of freedom. Authority exceeds its bounds, where it issues commands not demanded by the general conditions existing in the society. But though these conditions may demand a limitation of personal freedom, their requirements must, nevertheless, in general, be enforced.

Natural and Humane Ethics may thus be at variance in some things; may in others, coincide. There is no necessary conflict and no necessary agreement between them; therefore the theological theory of an absolute contradiction between them is false, as is also the teleological theory of their coincidence. The latter theory, not being able to deny that the moral and the natural do not always coincide under present circumstances, endeavors to avoid the difficulty by calling these conditions abnormal. The theory falls into two errors: in the first place, it ignores the fact that we have our organs, not for use but by use; and that our inherited characteristics may be regarded as an adjustment to the conditions of our ancestors, but not an adjustment to our own; and in the second place, there are no abnormal conditions. There are new or changed conditions, but either there are no abnormal ones, or all are abnormal.

But although increase of life means also increase of desire, although the organism is insatiable, yet there is, as we have seen, an increase of happiness, both in quantity and quality, with higher organization. The absolute amount is increased, but not the relative amount, the amount realizable in proportion to desire.

Want does not lead to improvement, as Darwin maintains, and the individual cannot be just or sympathetic in a condition of want. The freer he is from the direct care of the acquirement of necessities, the more manifold capabilities will he develop, and the greater will be his happiness.

The task which authority must set itself, in order to secure greater justice in society, and so greater happiness, is twofold, a positive and a negative task. The positive task consists in such an education of the young as will enable them by their own effort to advance towards their individual ideal of happiness, and in the inculcation of such an ideal as corresponds to their individual talents and means, and is attainable under the existing circumstances. The negative task, already implied in the positive one, is the imposition of necessary restrictions in the means used for the attainment of happiness. Within the limits set by justice, the individual has a natural right to seek his own pleasure, and for each individual an attainable maximum may be reckoned. This is not saying, however, that the individual has a just claim to this maximum, in case he cannot, or will not, be sufficiently energetic to gain it by his own efforts. It is an error of modern times to suppose that the realization of happiness rests in any other hand than that of the individual himself—that the state can make and decree happiness. Happiness cannot be secured by means of decrees, by a division of goods, or by gifts. Division is always unjust, since it leaves out of consideration that individuality of character which is the only measure of sensibility to pleasure. The negative part of the task is to be accomplished less by inculcation of many special virtues than by the continual direction of the attention to the fundamental virtue of justice. The positive task is to be accomplished by the most thorough education of the intelligence of the individual, through which he shall learn to inquire the reason of moral precepts, to judge for himself, and then to act on the decision he arrives at. We have seen that the ethical education of the present time tends to reduce inner struggle, rendering the results of wrong-doing as repellant as possible. One in whom has been instilled a very terrible conception of the sufferings resulting, in the present and future life, from wrong-doing, will perhaps automatically avoid the evil; and the means for a moral education seem thus attained. However, it is not so; for when the individual accustoms himself to being directed in action, not by his own carefully won experience, but by feelings instilled by others, concerning the ethical character of which his own insight does not, and cannot, afford him any explanation, he opens the way to every chance influence, and becomes the plaything of unknown forces; while he at the same time divests himself of that personal responsibility without which no society can exist. The true ideal of education is such as sharpens the judgment and accustoms the individual to consider his action from all sides, in the consciousness of personal responsibility. Only through such action is man the possessor of freedom. He who acts without reflection, from unreliable emotion, is not free. The freest possible decision is that which is reached as the result of such a careful consideration of all the single components of reflection that no one of them exceeds in its influence its real worth. The ideal of education is not, therefore, the production of spontaneous decision and action, but of reasoning, conscious action. That this principle is the only right one is shown by our former observations, according to which, as society develops, more and more actions are the result of reflection. And in case a state of moral perfection is attainable, it can be arrived at only as each member of the society acts from perfect reflection, not from impulse or instinct. In attempting social improvement, we must take example by the chemist, who does not attempt a chemical combination by force but endeavors to attain the conditions under which the elements will unite, through their own inner laws, to the desired, homogeneous body. This is a wearisome process; but it is the shortest and swiftest, for it leads us to the desired end.

The single virtues cannot be regarded as ideal principles. They contradict each other, and whether the one or the other should have the preference depends on the individual case and can be decided only by reflection. The formulation of these general rules of conduct under the name of virtues has, practically, only the advantage of reducing the numberless possibilities of action to a few; but such principles can never be exhaustive. Wherever the individual forgets this fact and is led to regard virtue as an end, instead of as the means to an innocent happiness, virtue ceases to be virtue and becomes its opposite. Thus thrift becomes avarice, generosity extravagance, courage foolhardiness, openness want of consideration, gentleness weakness, and chastity celibacy. The single virtues are only abstractions from special circumstances generalized to an ideal of action. But in practical life, we have to do with individual cases whose conditions are by no means ideal, and cannot be treated as ideal. We must act, in each case, for the relative best, not for absolute good; and what is best for one sex or in one society may not be best for the other sex or in another society. A compromise between idealism and realism is everywhere necessary; and such a compromise is made, despite all fine words to the contrary, by every one—by one only more openly or consciously than another. It is comforting to remark that mankind shows itself, and always has shown itself, instinctively taking the road to the attainment of the end.

Through an extension of relations, authority, at first represented by a single individual, the head of the family or tribe, reaches the point of development where the one ruler is unable to rule all parts, and decide all questions, alone, so that he is obliged to call in help. He naturally chooses men near to him, with whose character he is acquainted. But there arises, by this division of authority, the danger of its misuse to the disadvantage of the ruler himself. Since despotic government depends on might alone, and the voice of the people has no influence, every person in any way related to the ruler represents a danger. Nevertheless, the establishment of new powers to assist the ruler was the starting-point of constitutional government. For by this division of power the ruler rendered it impossible for himself to govern without help from others, and opened the way to a contract of compromise with the people. The influence of individuals upon the state spread, thus, to the people itself. Self-government, pure parliamentarism, is the ultimate end to be reached by the process.

We have seen that neither pleasure, nor utility, nor virtue, nor, finally, religion, can be regarded as the absolute means, but only as the relative means to the attainment of happiness. Both the hedonist and the utilitarian need to correct and further define their principle, as well in respect to the end to be attained, as in respect to the means proposed. Their principles are not to be rejected, but fanaticism is to be condemned. Principles may have exceptions; but fanaticism recognizes no exceptions.

As to man's final end. Though he has attained to the power of shaping, to some extent, his own environment and means of existence, yet he does not occupy an exceptional position in the animal kingdom, and must cease to exist unless he submits to adapt himself. It has been almost the rule that the highest animals of an epoch have later died out and been replaced by some new aristocracy, developed from somewhat lower forms. It is to be supposed that man, also, will be destroyed, whether by a new ice-age or by a period of heat. By the very fact of his supremacy, he disturbs the primal equilibrium, and originates conditions which, even now, press hard upon single lands and may easily become dangerous to all civilization. Destruction may also threaten mankind morally, for the development of morality hitherto gives no surety of its continuance. Every advancement brings with it some evil, every virtue contains the germs of some vice. Modern humanity has given us an unreasoning soft-heartedness, with an extravagant malady of forgiveness which is nothing less than immorality itself, since it on the one hand undermines the general sense of justice, while on the other it prompts and encourages wrong-doing.