referred for judgment. The movement initiated by Socrates was precisely the effort to find out what is the real good, the true end, of all the various institutions, customs, and procedures current among men. The explanation of conflict among men's interests, and of lack of consistency and unity in any given person's behavior, of the division of classes in the state, of the diverse recommendations of different would-be moral teachers, was that they were ignorant of their own ends.
Hence the fundamental precept is "Know thyself," one's own end, one's good and one's proper function. Different followers of Socrates gave very different accounts of knowledge, and hence proposed very different final aims. But they all agreed that the problem of knowing the good was the central problem, and that if this were settled, action in accord with good would follow of itself. Could it be imagined that man could know his own good and yet not seek it? Ignorance of good is evil and the source of evil; insight into the real good will clear up the confusion and partiality which makes men pursue false ends and thus straighten out and put in order conduct. Control would follow as a matter of course from _knowledge_ of the end. Such control would be no matter of coercion or external restriction, but of subordination and organization of minor ends with reference to the final end.
=Problem of Motive Force.=[107]--The problem of attaining this knowledge was seen to be attended, however, by peculiar obstructions and difficulties, the growing recognition of which led to a shifting of the problem itself. The dilemma, in brief, was this: The man who is already good will have no difficulty in knowing the good both in general and in the specific clothing under which it presents itself in particular cases. But the one who does not yet know the good, does not know _how_ to know it. His ignorance, moreover, puts positive obstacles in his way, for it leads him to delight in superficial and transitory ends. This delight increases the hold of these ends upon the agent; and thus it builds up an _habitual_ interest in them which renders it impossible for the individual to get a glimpse of the final end, to say nothing of a clear and persisting view. _Only if the individual is habituated, exercised, practiced in good ends so as to take delight in them, while he is still so immature as to be incapable of really knowing how and why they are good, will he be capable of knowing the good when he is mature._ Pleasure in right ends and pain in wrong must operate as a motive force in order to give experience of the good, before knowledge can be attained and operate as the motor force.
=Division of Problem.=--But the exercise and training requisite to form the habits which make the individual rejoice in right activity before he knows how and why it is right, presuppose adults who already have knowledge of the good. They presuppose a social order capable not merely of giving theoretic instruction, but of habituating the young to right practices. But where shall such adults be found, and where is the social order so good that it is capable of right training of its own immature members? Hence the problem again shifts, breaking up into two parts. On the one hand, attention is fixed upon the irrational appetites, desires, and impulses, which hinder apprehension of the good; on the other, it is directed to the political laws and institutions which are capable of training the members of the State into a right manner of living. For the most part, these two problems went their own way independently of each other, a fact which resulted in the momentous breach between the inner and "spiritual," and the outer and "physical" aspects of behavior.
=Problem of Control of Affections and Desires.=--If it is the lively movements of natural appetites and desires which make the individual apprehend false goods as true ones, and which present obstacles to knowledge of the true good, the serious problem is evidently to check and so far as possible to abolish the power of desire to move the mind.
Since it is anger, fear, hope, despair, sexual desire which make men regard particular things instead of the final end as good, the great thing is wholly to free attention and judgment from the influence of such passions. It may be impossible to prevent the passions; they are natural perturbations. But man can at least prevent his judgment of what is good or bad from being modified by them. The Stoic moral philosophers most emphasized the misleading influence of desire and passion, and set up the ideal of apathy (lack of passion) and "ataraxy" (absence of being stirred up). The other moral schools, the Sceptics and Epicureans, also made independence of mind from influence of passion the immediate and working end; the Sceptics because they emphasized the condition of mental detachment and non-committal, which is the state appropriate to doubt and uncertainty; the Epicureans because the pleasures of the mind are the only ones not at the mercy of external circumstances. Mental pleasures are equable, and hence are the only ones which do not bring reactions of depression, exhaustion, and subsequent pain. The problem of moral theory is now in effect, if not in name, that of _control_, of authority and subordination, of checking and restraining desire and passion.
=Problem of Control of Private Interests by Law.=--Such views could at the best, however, affect only a comparatively small number, the philosophers. For the great masses of men in the Roman Empire, the problem existed on the other line: by what laws and what administration of laws to direct the outward acts of men into right courses, courses at least sufficiently right so as to maintain outward peace and unity through the vast empire. In the Greek city-state, with its small number of free citizens all directly participating in public affairs, it was possible to conceive an ideal of a common good which should bind all together. But in an Empire covering many languages, religions, local customs, varied and isolated occupations, a single system of administration and law exercised from a single central source could alone maintain the requisite harmony. The problems of legislations, codification, and administration were congenial to the Latin mind, and were forced by the actual circumstances. From the external side, then, as well as from the internal, the problem of control became dominant over that of value and the good.
=Problem of Unification.=--It was the province of the moral philosophers, of the theologians, of the church to attempt a fusion of these elements of inner and outer control. It was their aim to connect, to synthesize these factors into one commanding and comprehensive view of life. But the characteristic of their method was to suppose that the combination could be brought about, whether intellectually or practically, only upon a supernatural basis, and by supernatural resources. From the side of the natural constitution of both man and the State, the various elements of behavior are so hopelessly at war with one another that there is no health in them nor help from them. The appetites and desires are directed only upon carnal goods and form the dominant element in the person. Even when reason gets glimpses of the good, the good seen is narrow in scope and temporal in duration; and even then reason is powerless as an adequate motive. "We perceive the better and we follow the worse." Moreover, it is useless to seek aid from the habituation, the education, the discipline and restraint of human institutions. They themselves are corrupt. The product of man's lower nature cannot be capable of enlightening and improving that nature; at most it can only restrain outer action by appealing to fear.
Only a divine revelation can make known man's true end; and only divine assistance, embodied in the ordinances and sacraments of the supernaturally founded and directed church, can bring this knowledge home to erring individuals so as to make it effectual. In theory the conception of the end, the good, was supreme; but man's true good is supernatural and hence can be achieved only by supernatural assistance and in the next world. In practice, therefore, the important thing for man in his present condition is implicit reliance upon and obedience to the requirements of the church. This represents on earth the divine sovereign, ultimate source of all moral law. In effect, the moral law became a net-work of ordinances, prescriptions, commands, rewards, penalties, penances, and remissions. The jural point of view was completely enthroned.[108] There was no problem; there was a final, because a supernatural solution.
=The Problems of Individuality and Citizenship.=--With the Renaissance began the revolt against the jural view of life. A sense of the joys and delights which attend the free and varied exercise of human capacities in this world was reborn. The first results were a demand for natural satisfaction; the next a profound reawakening of the antique civic and political consciousness. The first in its reaction against the Middle Ages was more individualistic than the Greek ideal, to which it was in some respects allied. The Greek had emphasized the notion of value, but had conceived this as generic, as the fulfillment of the essential nature of man as man. But with the moderns, satisfaction, the good, meant something direct, specific, personal; something the individual as an individual could lay hold of and possess. It was an individual right; it was final and inalienable. Nothing had a right to intervene or deprive the individual of it.
This extreme individualistic tendency was contemporaneous with a transfer of interest from the supernatural church-state over to the commercial, social, and political bodies with which the modern man found himself identified. The rise of the free cities, and more especially the development of national states, with the growth of commerce and exchange, opened to the individual a natural social whole. With this his connections were direct, in this he gained new outlets and joys, and yet it imposed upon him definite responsibilities and exacted of him specific burdens. If the individual had gained a new sense of himself as an individual, he also found himself enmeshed in national states of a power constantly increasing in range and intensity. The problem of the moral theorists was to reconcile these two tendencies, the individualistic and that of political centralization. For a time, the individual felt the social organization in which he was set to be, with whatever incidental inconveniences, upon the whole an outlet and reënforcement of prized personal powers. Hence in observing its conditions, he was securing the conditions of his own peace and tranquillity or even of his own freedom and achievement. But the balance was easily upset, and the problem of the relation of the individual and the social, the private and the public, was soon forced into prominence; a problem which in one form or other has been the central problem of modern ethical theory.
=Individualistic Problem.=--Only for a short time, during the first flush of new achievement and of hopeful adventure, did extreme individualism and social interests remain naïvely combined. The individualistic tendency found a convenient intellectual tool in a psychology which resolved the individual into an association or series of particular states of feeling and sensations; and the good into a like collection of pleasures also regarded as particular mental states. This psychological atomism made individuals as separate and disconnected as the sensations which constituted their selves were isolated and mutually exclusive. Social arrangements and institutions were, in theory, justifiable only as they could be shown to augment the sum of pleasurable states of feeling of individuals. And as, quite independent of any such precarious theory, the demand for reform of institutions became more and more imperative, the situation was packed by Rousseau into a formula that man was naturally both free and good, and that institutional life had enslaved and thereby depraved him. At the same time, there grew up an enthusiastic and optimistic faith in "Nature," in her kindly intentions for the happiness of humanity, and in her potency to draw it to perfection when artificial restrictions were once out of the way. Individuals, separate in themselves and in their respective goods, were thereby brought into a complete coincidence and harmony of interests. Nature's laws were such that if the individual obeyed them in seeking his own good he could not fail to further the happiness of others. While there developed in France (with original initiative from England) this view of the internal isolation and external harmony of men, a counterpart movement took place in Germany.
=The Rationalistic Problem.=--German thought inherited through both Roman law and the natural theology and ethics of the church, the conception that man's rational nature makes him sociable. Stoicism, with its materialistic idealism, had taught that all true laws are natural, while all laws of nature are diffusions and potencies of reason. As they bind things together in the world, so they bind men together in societies. Moral theory is "Natural Law" conceived in this sense. From the laws of reason, regarded as the laws of man's generic and hence sociable nature, all the principles of jurisprudence and of individual morals may be deduced. But man has also a sensuous nature, an appetitive nature which is purely private and exclusive. Since reason is higher than sense, the authority of the State is magnified. The juristic point of view was reinstated, but with the important change that the law was that of a social order which is the realization of man's own rational being.[109] If the laws of the State were criticized, the reply was that however unworthy the civic regulations and however desirable their emendation, still the State is the expression of the idea of reason, that is of man in his true generic nature. Hence to attempt to overthrow the government is to attack the fundamental and objective conditions of moral or rational life. Without the State, the particularistic, private side of man's nature would have free sway to express itself. Man's true moral nature is within. We are then left, from both the English-French and the German sides, with the problem of the relation of the individual and the social; of the relation of the inner and outer, of the psychological structure of the person and the social conditions and results of his behavior.
LITERATURE See the references on the scope and methods of ethics at the end of ch.
i. of Part I., and also, Sorley, _Ethics of Naturalism_, ch. i., and his _Recent Tendencies in Ethics_; Fite, _An Introductory Study of Ethics_, ch. ii.; Bowne, _Principles of Ethics_, ch. i.; Seth, _Ethical Principles_, ch. i.; Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. I., Introduction; Hensel, _Problems of Ethics_, in Vol. I. of St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science.
FOOTNOTES: [107] On the _practical_ side, this was always, as we have seen, the prominent problem of Hebrew thought. But we are concerned here with the statement of the problem by Plato and Aristotle from the theoretical side.
[108] The Ten Commandments, divided and subdivided into all their conceivable applications, and brought home through the confessional, were the specific basis.
[109] The idealistic philosophic movement beginning with Kant is in many important respects the outgrowth of the earlier _Naturrecht_ of the moral philosophers from Grotius on.
CHAPTER XII TYPES OF MORAL THEORY § 1. TYPICAL DIVISIONS OF THEORIES =Problems and Theories.=--We were concerned in the last chapter with the typical _problems_ of moral theory. But it was evident that theories themselves developed and altered as now this, now that, problem was uppermost. To regard the question of how to know the good as the central problem of moral inquiry is already to have one type of theory; to consider the fundamental problem to be either the subordination or the satisfaction of desire is to have other types. A classification of types of theory is rendered difficult, a thoroughly satisfactory classification almost impossible, by the fact that the problems arrange themselves about separate principles leading to cross-divisions. All that we may expect to do is somewhat arbitrarily to select that principle which seems most likely to be useful in conducting inquiry.
=(1) Teleological and Jural.=--One of the fundamental divisions arises from taking either Value or Duty, Good or Right, as the fundamental idea. Ethics of the first type is concerned above all with _ends_; hence it is frequently called _teleological_ theory (Greek [Greek: telos], end). To the other type of theory, obligations, imperatives, commands, law, and authority, are the controlling ideas. By this emphasis, arise the _jural_ theories (Latin, _jus_, law). At some point, of course, each theory has to deal with the factor emphasized by its rival. If we start with Law as central, the good resides in these acts which conform to its obligations. The good is obedience to law, submission to its moral authority. If we start from the Good, laws, rules, are concerned with the means of defining or achieving it.
=(2) Individual and Institutional.=--This fundamental division is at once cut across by another, arising from emphasizing the problem of the individual and the social. This problem may become so urgent as to force into the background the conflict between teleological and jural theories, while in any case it complicates and subdivides them. We have individualistic and institutional types of theory. Consider, for example, the following representative quotations: "No school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable _state of feeling_ called by whatever name--gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, _to some being or beings_, is an element of the conception";[110] and again,[110] "the good is universally the pleasurable." And while the emphasis is here upon the good, the desirable, the same type of statement, _as respects emphasis upon the individual_, may be made from the side of duty. For example, "it is the very essence of moral duty to be imposed by a man on himself."[111] Contrast both of these statements with the following: "What a man ought to do, or what duties he should fulfill in order to be virtuous, is in an ethical community not hard to say. He has to do nothing except what is presented, expressed, and recognized in his established relations."[112] "The individual has his truth, real existence, and ethical status only in being a member of the State. His particular satisfactions, activities, and way of life have in this authenticated, substantive principle, their origin and result."[113] And in another connection: "The striving for a morality of one's own is futile and by its very nature impossible of attainment. In respect to morality the saying of one of the wisest men of antiquity is the true one. To be moral is to live in accord with the moral tradition of one's country."[114] Here both the good and the law of the individual are placed on a strictly institutional basis.
=(3) Empirical and Intuitional.=--Another cross-division arises from consideration of the method of ascertaining and determining the nature of moral distinctions: the method of knowledge. From this standpoint, the distinction of ethical theories into the _empirical_ ([Greek: empeirikos]) and the _intuitional_ (Latin, _intueor_, to look at or upon) represents their most fundamental cleavage. One view makes knowledge of the good and the right dependent upon recollection of prior experiences and their conditions and effects. The other view makes it an immediate apprehension of the quality of an act or motive, a trait so intrinsic and characteristic it cannot escape being seen. While in general the empirical school has laid stress upon the consequences, the consequences to be searched for were considered as either individual or social. Some, like Hobbes, have held that it was directed upon law; to knowledge of the commands of the state. And similarly the direct perception or intuition of moral quality was by some thought to apply to recognition of differences of value, and by others to acknowledgment of law and authority, which again might be divine, social, or personal.
This division cleaves straight across our other bases of classification.
To describe a theory definitely, it would then be necessary to state just where it stood with reference to each possible combination or permutation of elements of all three divisions. Moreover, there are theories which attempt to find a deeper principle which will bridge the gulf between the two opposites.
=Complexity of Subject-matter and Voluntary Activity.=--This brief survey should at least warn us of the complexity of the attempt to discriminate types of theory, and put us on our guard against undue simplification. It may also serve to remind us that various types of theory are not arbitrary personal devices and constructions, but arise because, in the complexity of the subject-matter, one element or another is especially emphasized, and the other elements arranged in different perspectives. As a rule, all the elements are recognized in some form or other by all theories; but they are differently placed and accounted for. In any case, it is voluntary activity with which we are concerned.
The problem of analyzing voluntary activity into its proper elements, and rightly arranging them, must coincide finally with the problem of the relation of good and law of control to each other, with the problem of the nature of moral knowledge, and with that of the relation of the individual and social aspects of conduct.
§ 2. DIVISION OF VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY INTO INNER AND OUTER =The What and How of Activity.=--Starting from the side of the voluntary act, we find in it one distinction which when forced into an extreme separation throws light upon all three divisions in theory which have been noted. This is the relation between desire and deliberation as mental or private, and the deed, the doing, as overt and public. Is there any intrinsic moral connection between the _mental_ and the _overt_ in activity? We may analyze an act which has been accomplished into two factors, one of which is said to exist within the agent's own consciousness; while the other, the external execution, carries the mental into operation, affects the world, and is appreciable by others.
Now on the face of the matter, these two things, while capable of intellectual discrimination, are incapable of real separation. The "mental" side, the desire and the deliberation, is for the sake of determining what shall be _done_; the overt side is for the sake of making real certain precedent mental processes, which are partial and inadequate till carried into effect, and which occur for the sake of that effect. The "inner" and "outer" are really only the "how" and the "what" of activity, neither being real or significant apart from the =Separation into Attitude and Consequences.=--But under the strain of various theories, this organic unity has been denied; the inner and the outer side of activity have been severed from one another. When thus divided, the "inner" side is connected exclusively with the will, the disposition, the character of the person; the "outer" side is connected wholly with the consequences which flow from it, the changes it brings about. Theories will then vary radically according as the so-called inner or the so-called outer is selected as the bearer and carrier of moral distinctions. One theory will locate the moral quality of an act in that _from_ which it issues; the other in that _into_ which it issues.
The following quotations put the contrast in a nutshell, though unfortunately the exact meaning of the second is not very apparent apart from its context.
"A motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure or pain operating in a certain manner. Now pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good...It follows, therefore, immediately and incontestably that there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one. If motives are good or bad, it is only on account of their effects" (Bentham, _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. x., § 2).
Over against this, place the following from Kant: "Pure reason is practical of itself alone, and gives to man a universal law which we call the Moral Law...If this law determines the will directly [without any reference to objects and to pleasure or pain] the action conformed to it is good in itself; a will whose principle always conforms to this law is good absolutely in every respect and is the supreme condition of all good."
If now we recur to the distinction between the "what" and the "how" of action in the light of these quotations, we get a striking result.
"What" one does is to pay money, or speak words, or strike blows, and so on. The "how" of this action is the spirit, the temper in which it is done. One pays money with a hope of getting it back, or to avoid arrest for fraud, or because one wishes to discharge an obligation; one strikes in anger, or in self-defense, or in love of country, and so on. Now the view of Bentham says in effect that the "what" is significant, and that the "what" consists ultimately only of the pleasures it produces; the "how" is unimportant save as it incidentally affects resulting feelings.
The view of Kant is that the moral core of every act is in its "how," that is in its spirit, its actuating motive; and that the law of reason is the only right motive. _What_ is aimed at is a secondary and (except as determined by the inner spirit, the "how" of the action) an irrelevant matter. In short the separation of the mental and the overt aspects of an act has led to an equally complete separation of its initial spirit and motive from its final content and consequence. And in this separation, one type of theory, illustrated by Kant, takes its stand on the actuating source of the act; the other, that of Bentham, on its outcome. For convenience, we shall frequently refer to these types of theories as respectively the "attitude" and the "content"; the formal and the material; the disposition and the consequences theory. The fundamental thing is that _both_ theories separate character and conduct, disposition and behavior; which of the two is most emphasized being a secondary matter.
=Different Ways of Emphasizing Results.=--There are, however, different forms of the consequences or "content" theory--as we shall, for convenience, term it. Some writers, like Spencer as quoted, say the only consequences that are good are simply pleasures, and that pleasures differ only in _intensity_, being alike in everything but degree. Others say, pleasure is the good, but pleasures differ in quality as well as intensity and that a certain _kind_ of pleasure is the morally good.
Others say that natural satisfaction is not found in any one pleasure, or in any number of them, but in a more permanent mood of experience, which is termed _happiness_. Happiness is different from a pleasure or from a collection of pleasures, in being an abiding consequence or result, which is not destroyed even by the presence of pains (while a pain ejects a pleasure). The pleasure view is called Hedonism; the happiness view, Eudaimonism.[115] =Different Forms of the "Attitude" Theory.=--The opposite school of theory holds that the peculiar character of "moral" good is precisely that it is _not_ found in consequences of action. In this negative feature of the definition many different writers agree; there is less harmony in the positive statement of just what the moral good is. It is an attribute or disposition of character, or the self, not a trait of results experienced, and in general such an attribute is called _Virtue_. But there are as many differences of opinion as to what constitutes virtue as there are on the other side as to what pleasure and happiness are. In one view, it merges, in its outcome at least, very closely with one form of eudaimonism. If happiness be defined as the fulfillment of satisfaction of the characteristic functions of a human being, while a certain function, that of reason, is regarded as _the_ characteristic human trait whose exercise is _the_ virtue or supreme excellence, it becomes impossible to maintain any sharp line of distinction. Kant, however, attempted to cut under this union of happiness and virtue, which under the form of _perfectionism_ has been attempted by many writers, by raising the question of _motivation_. Why does the person aim at perfection? Is it for the sake of the resulting happiness? Then we have only Hedonism. Is it because the moral law, the law of reason, requires it? Then we have law morally deeper than the end aimed at.
We may now consider the bearing of this discussion upon theories of moral knowledge and (2) of moral authority.[116] =I. Characteristic Theories of Moral Knowledge.=--(1) Those who set chief store by the goods naturally experienced, find that past experiences supply all the data required for moral knowledge. Pleasures and pains, satisfactions and miseries, are recurrent familiar experiences. All we have to do is to note them and their occasions (or, put the other way, to observe the tendency of some of our impulses and acts to bring pleasure as a consequence, of others to effect misery), and to make up our ends and aims accordingly. As a theory of moral knowledge, Hedonism is thus almost always allied with _empiricism_, understanding by empiricism the theory that particular past experiences furnish the method of all ideas and beliefs.
(2) The theory that the good is some type of virtuous character requires a special organ to give moral knowledge. Virtue is none the less the Good, even when it is not attained, when it is not experienced, that is, as we experience a pleasure. In any case, it is not good because it is experienced, but because it _is_ virtue. Thus the "attitude" theory tends to connect itself with some form of Intuitionalism, Rationalism, or Transcendentalism, all of these terms meaning that there is something in knowledge going beyond the particular experiences. Intuitionalism holds there is a certain special faculty which reveals truths beyond the scope of experience; Rationalism, that beside the particular elements of experience there are universal and necessary conceptions which regulate it; Transcendentalism, that within experience there is a factor derived from a source transcending experience.[117] =II. Characteristic Theories of Moral Control.=--The result school tends to view authority, control, law, obligation from the standpoint of _means to an end_; the moralistic, or virtue, school to regard the idea of _law_ as more fundamental than that of the good. From the first standpoint, the authority of a given rule lies in its power to regulate desires so that after all pleasures--or a maximum of them, and a minimum of pains--may be had. At bottom, it is a principle of expediency, of practical wisdom, of adjustment of means to end. Thus Hume said: "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions"--that is, the principles and rules made known by reason are, at last, only instruments for securing the fullest satisfaction of desires. But according to the point of view of the other school, no satisfaction is _really_ (i.e., morally) good unless it is acquired in accordance with a law existing independently of pleasurable satisfaction. Thus the good depends upon the law, not the law upon the desirable end.
§ 3. GENERAL INTERPRETATION OF THESE THEORIES =The Opposition in Ordinary Life.=--To some extent, similar oppositions are latent in our ordinary moral convictions, without regard to theory.
Indeed, we tend, at different times, to pass from one point of view to the other, without being aware of it. Thus, as against the identification of goodness with a _mere_ attitude of will; we say, "It is not enough for a man to be good; he must be good for something." It is not enough to mean well; one must mean to do well; to excuse a man by saying "he _means_ well," conveys a shade of depreciation. "Hell is paved with good intentions." Good "resolutions," in general, are ridiculed as not modifying overt action. A tree is to be judged by its fruits. "Faith without works is dead." A man is said "to be too good for this world" when his motives are not effective. Sometimes we say, "So and so is a _good_ man," meaning to say that that is about all that can be said for him--he does not count, or amount to anything, practically.
The objection to identifying goodness with inefficiency also tends to render suspected a theory which seems to lead logically to such identification. More positively we dwell upon goodness as involving _service_; "love is the fulfilling of the law," and while love is a trait of character, it is one which takes immediate action in order to bring about certain definite consequences. We call a man Pharisaical who cherishes his own good character as an end distinct from the common good for which it may be serviceable.
On the other hand, indicating the supremacy of the voluntary attitude over consequences, we have, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own life?" "Let us do evil that good may come, whose damnation is just." The deep-seated objection to the maxim that the end justifies the means is hard to account for, except upon the basis that it is possible to attain ends otherwise worthy and desirable at the expense of conduct which is immoral. Again, compare Shakspere's "There's nothing right or wrong, but thinking makes it so" with the Biblical "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." And finally we have such sayings as, "Take the will for the deed"; "His heart is in the right place"; _Pereat mundus, fiat justitia_.
Passing from this popular aspect of the matter, we find the following grounds for the "content" theory: =1. It Makes Morality Really Important.=--Would there be any use or sense in moral acts if they did not tend to promote welfare, individual and social? If theft uniformly resulted in great happiness and security of life, if truth-telling introduced confusion and inefficiency into men's relations, would we not consider the first a virtue, and the latter a vice?[118] So far as the identification of goodness with mere motive (apart from results effected by acts) reduces morality to nullity, there seems to be furnished a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the theory that results are not the decisive thing.
=(2) It Makes Morality a Definite, Concrete Thing.=--Morality is found