There is first one point which should be obvious, but which seems often forgotten. In asking GOODNESS. 421 whether goodness can, in the end, be self-consistent and be real, we are not concerned merely with the relation between virtue and selfishness. For sup- pose that there is no difference between these two, except merely for our blindness, yet, possessing this first crown of our wishes, we have still not solved the main problem. It will certainly now be worth my while to seek the good of my neighbour, since by no other course can I do any better for myself, and since what is called self-sacrifice, or benevolent action, is in fact the only possible way to secure my advantage. But then, upon the other hand, a mere balance of advantage, however satis- factory the means by which I come to possess it, is most assuredly not the fulfilment of my desire. For the desire of human beings (this is surely a common- place) has no limit. Goodness, in other words, must imply an attempt to reach perfection, and it is .the nature of the finite to seek for that which nothing finite can satisfy. But, if so, with a mere balance of advantage I have not realized my good. And, however much virtue may be nothing in the world but a refined form of self-seeking, yet, with this, virtue is not one whit the less a pursuit of what is inconsistent and therefore impossible. And goodness, or the attainment of such an impossible end, is still self- contradictory.
Further, since it seems necessary for me not to be ashamed of platitude, let me call the attention of the reader to some evident truths. No existing social organism secures to its individuals any more than an imperfect good, and in all of them self- sacrifice marks the fact of a failure in principle. But even in an imaginary society, such as is foretold to us in the New Jerusalem of Mr. Spencer, it is only for thoughtless credulity that evil has vanished. For it is not easy to forget that finite beings are physically subject to accident, or easy to believe that this their natural essence is somehow to be 42 2 REALITY.
removed. And, even so and in any case, the members of an organism must of necessity be sacrificed more or less to the whole. For they must more or less be made special in their function, and that means rendered, to some extent, one-sided and narrow. And, if so, the harmony of their individual being must inevitably in some degree suffer. And it must suffer again, if the individual devotes himself to some aesthetic or intellectual pursuit. On the other side, even within the New Jerusalem, if a person aims merely at his own good, he, none the less, is fore-doomed to imperfection and failure. For on a defective and shifting natural basis he tries to build a harmonious system; and his task, hopeless for this reason, is for another reason more hopeless. He strives within finite limits to construct a concordant whole, when the materials which he is forced to use have no natural endings, but extend themselves indefinitely beyond himself into an end- less world of relations. And, if so, once more we have been brought back to the familiar truth, that there is no such possibility as human perfection. But, if so, then goodness, since it must needs pur- sue the perfect, is in its essence self-discrepant, and in the end is unreal. It is an appearance one-sided and relative, and not an ultimate reality.
But to this idea of relativity, both in the case of goodness and every other order of phenomena, popular philosophy remains blind. Everything, for it, is either a delusion, and so nothing at all, or is on the other hand a fact, and, because it exists, therefore, as such, real. That reality can appear nowhere except in a system of relative unrealities; that, taken apart from this system, the several appearances are in contradiction with one another and each within itself; that, nevertheless, outside of this field of jarring elements there neither is nor can be anything; and that, if appearances were not irremediably self-discrepant, they could not possibly GOODNESS. 423 GOODNESS. 423 be the appearances of the Real — all this to popular thought remains meaningless. Common sense openly revolts against the idea of a fact which is not a reality; or again, as sober criticism, it plumes itself on suggesting cautious questions, doubts which dogmatically assume the truth of its coarsest prejudices. Nowhere are these infirmities illus- trated better than by popular Ethics, in the attitude it takes towards the necessary discrepancies of goodness. That these discrepancies exist because goodness is not absolute, and that their solution is not possible until goodness is degraded to an appearance — such a view is blindly ignored. Nor is it asked if these opposites, self-assertion and self-sacrifice, are not each internally inconsistent and so irrational. But the procedure is, first, tacitly to assume that each opposite is fixed, and will not pass beyond itself. And then, from this basis, one of the extremes is rejected as an illusion; or else, both being absolute and solid, an attempt is made to combine them externally or to show that somehow they coincide. I will add a few words on these developments.
(i.) The good may be identified with self-sacrifice, and self-assertion may, therefore, be totally ex- cluded. But the good, as self-sacrifice, is clearly in collision with itself. For an act of self-denial is, no less, in some sense a self-realization, and it inevit- ably includes an aspect of self-assertion. And hence the good, as the mere attainment of self- sacrifice, is really unmeaning. For it is in finite selves, after all, that the good must be realized. And, further, to say that perfection must be always the perfection of something else, appears quite in- consistent For it will mean either that on the whole the good is nothing whatever, or else that it consists in that which each does or may enjoy, yet not as good, but as a something extraneously added unto him. The good, in other words, in this case 424 REALITY.
424 REALITY.
will be not good; and in the former case it will be nothing positive, and therefore nothing. That each should pursue the general perfection, should act for the advantage of a whole in which his self is in- cluded, or should add to a collection in which he may share — is certainly not pure self-sacrifice. And a maxim that each should aim purely at his neigh- bour's welfare in separation from his own, we have seen is self-inconsistent. It can hardly be ultimate or reasonable, when its meaning seems to end in nonsense.1 (ii.) Or, rejecting all self-transcendence as an idle word, popular Ethics may set up pure self-assertion as all that is good. It may perhaps desire to add that by the self-seeking of each the advantage of all is best secured, but this addition clearly is not contained in self-assertion, and cannot properly be included. For by such an addition, if it were necessary, the end at once would have been essentially modified. It was self-assertion pure, and not qualified, which was adopted as goodness; and it is this alone which we must now consider. And we perceive first (as we saw above) that such a good is unattainable, since perfection cannot be realized in a finite being. Not only is the physical basis too shifting, but the contents too essentially belong to a world outside the self; and hence it is impossible that they should be brought to completion and to harmony within it. One may indeed seek to approach nearer to the unattainable. Aiming at a system within oneself, one may forcibly abstract from the necessary connections of the material used. We may consider this and strive to apply it one- sidedly, and in but a single portion of its essential aspects. But the other aspect inseparably against 1 It may be as well perhaps to add that, neither in this sense nor in any other, can the good be defined negatively. At that point, in any definition, where a negative term is introduced, the reader should specially look for a defect.
GOODNESS. 425 our will is brought in, and it stamps our effort with inconsistency. Thus even to pursue imperfectly one's own advantage by itself is unreasonable, for by itself and purely it has no existence at all. It was a trait characteristic of critical Common Sense when it sought for the individual's moral end by first supposing him isolated. For a dogmatic as- sumption that the individual remains what he is when you have cut off his relations, is very much what the vulgar understand by criticism. But, when such a question is discussed, it must be answered quite otherwise. The contents, asserted in the individual's self-seeking, necessarily extend beyond his private limits. A maxim, therefore, merely to pursue one's own advantage is, taken strictly, inconsistent And a principle which contra- dicts itself is, once more, not reasonable.1 (iii.) In the third place, admitting self-assertion and self-denial as equally good, popular thought attempts to bring them together from outside. Goodness will now consist in the coincidence of these independent goods. The two are not to be absorbed by and resolved into a third. Each, on the other hand, is to retain unaltered the character which it has, and the two, remaining two, are some- how to be conjoined. And this, as we have seen throughout our work, is quite impossible. If two conflicting finite elements are anywhere to be harmonized, the first condition is that each should forego and should transcend its private character. Each, in other words, working out the discrepancy 1 The same conclusion holds if for " advantage " one writes "pleasure." For pleasure is necessarily connected with other content, and is not isolated, or again conjoined hap-hazard and accidentally. One may of course pursue " merely one's own n pleasure, in the sense that one tries to aim at and to consider this partial end by itself. But, if you assert that this end has not another aspect which contradicts " merely one's own," the asser- tion is false. And it is, I presume, a moral platitude that selfish action always must concern more than the actor.
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already within itself, passes beyond itself and unites with its opposite in a product higher than either. But such a transcendence can have n.j meaning to popular Ethics. That has assumed without examin- ation that each finite end, taken by itself, is reason- able; and it therefore demands that each, as such, should together be satisfied. And, blind to theory, it is blind also to the practical refutation of its dogmas by everyday life. There a man can seek the general welfare in his own, and can find his own end accomplished in the general; for goodness there already is the transcendence and solution of one- sided elements. The good is already there, not the external conjunction, but the substantial identity of these opposites. They are not coincident with, but each is in, and makes one aspect of, the other. In short, already within goodness that work is imper- fectly begun, which, when completed, must take us beyond goodness altogether. But for popular Ethics, as we saw, not only goodness itself, but each of its one-sided features is fixed as absolute. And, these having been so fixed in irrational independence, an effort is made to find the good in their external conjunction.
Goodness is apparently now to be the coincidence of two ultimate goods, but it is hard to see how such an end can be ultimate or reasonable. That two elements should necessarily come together, and, at the same time, that neither should be qualified by this relation, or again that a relation in the end should not imply a whole, which subordinates and qualifies the two terms — all this in the end seems unintelligible. But, again, if the relation and the whole are to qualify the terms, one does not under- stand how either by itself could ever have been ultimate.1 In short, the bare conjunction of inde- 1 The same difficulty will appear if an attempt is made to state the general maxim. Both ends are to remain and to be ultimate, and hence neither is to be qualified by the other or the whole.
GOODNESS. 427 pendent reais is an idea which contradicts itself. But of this naturally Common Sense has no know- ledge at all, and it therefore blindly proceeds with its impossible task.
That task is to defend the absolute character of goodness by showing that the discrepancies which it presents disappear in the end, and that these discrepant features, none the less, survive each in its own character. But by popular Ethics this task usually is not understood. It directs itself there- fore to prove the coincidence of self-seeking and benevolence, or to show, in other words, that self- sacrifice, if moral, is impossible. And with this conclusion reached, in its opinion, the main problem would be solved. Now I will not ask how far in such a consummation its ultimate ends would, one or both, have been subordinated; for by its conclu- sion, in any case, the main problem is not touched. We have already seen that our desires, whether for ourselves or for others, do not stop short of perfec- tion. But where each individual can say no more than this, that it has been made worth his while to regard others interests, perfection surely may be absent. And where the good aimed at is absent, to affirm that we have got rid of the puzzle offered by goodness seems really thoughtless. It is, however, a thoughtlessness which, as we have perceived, is characteristic; and let us pass to the external means employed to produce moral harmony.
Little need here be said. We may find, thrust forward or indicated feebly, a well-worn contrivance. This is of course the deus ex machina, an idea which no serious student of first principles is called on to consider. A God which has to make things what otherwise, and by their own nature, they are not, for to be so qualified is to be transcended. I may add that a negative form of statement, here as everywhere, serves no purpose but to obscure the problem. This is, however, a (tSMti why it may be instinctively selected.
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may summarily be dismissed as an exploded ab- surdity. And that perfection should exist in the finite, as such, we have seen to be even directly contrary to the nature of things. A supposition that it may be made worth my while to be benevol- ent— especially when an indefinite prolongation of my life is imagined — cannot, in itself and for our knowledge, be called impossible. But then, upon the other hand, we have remarked that such an imagined improvement is not a solution of the actual main problem. The belief may possibly add much to our comfort by assuring us that virtue is the best, and is the only true, selfishness. But such a truth, if true, would not imply that both or either of our genuine ends is, as such, realized. And, failing this, the wider discrepancy has certainly not been removed from goodness. We may say, in a word, that the deus ex machina refuses to work. Little can be brought in by this venerable artifice except a fresh source of additional collision and perplexity. And, giving up this embarrassing agency, popular Ethics may prefer to make an appeal to " Reason." For, if its two moral ends are each reasonable, then, if somehow they do not coincide, the nature of things must be unreasonable. But we have shown, on the other hand, that neither end by itself is reasonable; and, if the nature of things were to bring together elements discordant within themselves and conflicting with one another, and were to attempt, without transforming their character, to make these coincide, — the nature of things would have revealed itself as an apotheosis of unreason or of popular Ethics. And, baffled by its failure to find its dogmas realized in the universe, this way of thinking at last may threaten us with total scepticism. But here, once more, it is but speaking of that of which it knows really nothing; for an honest scepticism is a thing outside its com- prehension. An honest and truth-seeking sceptic- GOODNESS. 429 ism pushes questions to the end, and knows that the end lies hid in that which is assumed at the beginning. But the scepticism (so-called) of Com- mon Sense from first to last is dogmatic. It takes for granted, first, without examination that certain doctrines are true; it then demands that this collec- tion of dogmas should come to an agreement; and, when its demand is rejected by the universe, it none the less persists in reiterating its old assumptions. And this dogmatism, simply because it is baffled and perplexed, gets the name of scepticism. But a sincere scepticism, attacking without fear each parti- cular prejudice, finds that every finite view, when taken by itself, becomes inconsistent. And borne on this inconsistency, which in each case means a self- transcendence, such a scepticism is lifted to see a whole in which all finites blend and are resolved. But when each fact and end has foregone its claim, as such, to be ultimate or reasonable, then reason and harmony in the highest sense have begun to appear. And scepticism in the end survives as a mere aspect of constructive metaphysics. With this we may leave the irrational dogmas of popular Ethics.
The discussion of these has been wearisome, but perhaps not uninstructive. It should have confirmed us in our general conclusion as to the nature of the good. Goodness is not absolute or ultimate; it is but one side, one partial aspect, of the nature of things. And it manifests its relativity by incon- sistency, by a self-contradiction in principle, and by a tendency shown towards separation in that principle's working, an attempted division, which again is inconsistent and cannot rest in itself. Goodness, as such, is but appearance which is transcended in the Absolute. But, upon the other hand, since in that Absolute no appearance is lost, the good is a main and essential factor in the 430 REALITY.
universe. By accepting its transmutation it both realizes its own destiny and survives in the result.
We might reach the same conclusion briefly, per- haps, by considering the collision of ends. In the Whole every idea must be realized; but, on the other hand, the conflict of ends is such that to combine them mechanically is quite impossible. It will follow then that, in their attainment, their charac- ters must be transmuted. We may say at once that none of them, and yet that each of them, is good. And among these ends must be included what we rightly condemn as Evil (Chapter xvii.). That posi- tive object which is followed in opposition to the good, will unite with, and will conduce to, the ulti- mate goal. And the conduct which seems merely bad, which appears to pursue no positive content and to exhibit no system, will in the same way be- come good. Both by its assertion and its negation it will subserve an over-ruling end. Good and evil reproduce that main result which we found in our examination of truth and error. The opposition in the end is unreal, but it is, for all that, emphatically actual and valid. Error and evil are facts, and most assuredly there are degrees of each; and whether anything is better or worse, does without any doubt make a difference to the Absolute. And certainly the better anything is, the less totally in the end is its being over-ruled. But nothing, how- ever good, can in the end be real precisely as it appears. Evil and good, in short, are not ultimate; they are relative factors which cannot retain their special characters in the Whole. And we may perhaps now venture to consider this position established.
But, bearing in mind the unsatisfactory state of current thought on these topics, I think it well to follow the enquiry into further detail. There is a more refined sense in which we have not yet dealt GOODNESS. 431 with goodness.1 The good, we may be informed, is morality, and morality is inward. It does not con- sist in the attainment of a mere result, either outside the self or even within it. For a result must de- pend on, and be conditioned by, what is naturally given, and for natural defects or advantages a man is not responsible. And therefore, so far as regards true morality, any realized product is chance; for it must be infected and modified, less or more, by non- moral conditions. It is, in short, only that which comes out of the man himself which can justify or condemn him, and his disposition and circumstances do not come from himself. Morality is the identi- fication of the individual's will with his own idea of perfection. The moral man is the man who tries to do the best which he knows. If the best he knows is not the best, that is, speaking morally, 1 This view of morality is of course a late development, but I do not propose to say anything on its origin. With regard to the origin of morality, in general, I will only say this, that one may lay too much stress on its directly social aspect. Certainly to isolate the individual is quite indefensible. But, upon the other hand, it is wrong to make the sole root of morality consist in the direct identification of the individual with the social will. Morality, as we have remarked, is not confined to that in its end; and in the same way, we must add, it is not merely that in its beginning. I am referring here to the facts of self-esteem and self-disapprobation, or the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of a crea- ture with itself. This feeling must begin when that creature is able to form an idea of itself, as doing or enjoying something desired, and can bring that idea into relation with its own actual success or failure. The dissatisfied brooding of an animal that tor example, missed its prey, is, we may be sure, not yet moral. But it will none the less contain in rudiment that judg- ment of one's self which is a most important factor of morality. And this feeling attaches itself indifferently to the idea of every sort of action or performance, success in which is desired. If I feel or consider myself to correspond with such an idea, I am at once pleased with myself; and, even if it is only for luck at cards, I approve of and esteem myself. For approbation, as we saw, is not all moral; nor is it, even in its origin, all directly social. But this subject deserves treatment at a length which here is impossible.
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beside the question. If he fails to accomplish it, and ends in an attempt, that is once more morally irrelevant. And hence (we may add) it will be hard to find a proper sense in which different epochs can be morally compared, or in which the morality of one time or person stands above that of others. For the intensity of a volitional identifica- tion with whatever seems best appears to contain and to exhaust the strict essence of goodness. On this alone are based moral responsibility and desert, and on this, perhaps, we are enabled to build our one hope of immortality.
This is a view towards which morality seems driven irresistibly. That a man is to be judged solely by his inner will seems in the end undeniable. And, if such a doctrine contradicts itself and is in- consistent with the very notion of goodness, that will be another indication that the good is but ap- pearance. We may even say that the present view takes a pride in its own discrepancies. It might, we must allow, contradict itself more openly. For it might make morality consist in the direct denial of that very element of existence, without which it actually is nothing.1 But the same inconsistency, if more veiled, is still inherent in our doctrine. For a will, after all, must do something and must be characterized by what it does; while, on the other hand, this very character of what it does must de- pend on that which is "given " to it. And we shall have to choose between two fatal results; for either it will not matter what one does, or else something beyond and beside the bare " will " must be ad- mitted to be good.
I will begin by saying a few words on what is called " moral desert." If this phrase implies that for either good or bad there is any reward beyond themselves, it is at once inconsistent. For, if be- 1 Ethical Studies, Essay IV.
GOODNESS. 433 tween virtue and happiness there is an essential connection, then virtue must be re-defined so as to take in all its essence. But if, on the other hand, the connection is but external, then in what proper sense are we to call it moral? We must either give up or alter the idea of desert, or else must seriously modify our extreme conception of moral goodness. And with this I will proceed to show how in its working that conception breaks down.
It is, first, in flat contradiction with ordinary morality. I am not referring to the fact that in common life we approve of all human qualities which to us seem desirable. Beauty, riches, strength, health and fortune — everything, and, perhaps, more than everything, which could be called a human ex- cellence— we find admirable and approve of. But such approbations, together with their counterpart disapprovals, we should probably find ourselves unwilling to justify morally. And, passing this point by for the present, let us attend solely to those excellencies which would by all be called moraL These, the common virtues of life by which indi- viduals are estimated, obviously depend to a large extent on disposition and bringing up. And to discard them utterly, because, or in so far as, you cannot attribute them to the individual's will, is a violent paradox. Even if that is correct, it is at least opposed to every-day morality.