the way of psychological science. Yet through the development of physical science, and especially of chemistry, biology, physiology, medicine and anthropology we now have the basis for the development of such a science of man. Signs of its coming into existence are present in the movements in clinical, behavioristic and social (in its narrower sense) psychology.
At present we not only have no assured means of forming character except crude devices of blame, praise, exhortation and punishment, but the very meaning of the general notions of moral inquiry is matter of doubt and dispute. The reason is that these notions are discussed in isolation from the concrete facts of the interactions of human beings with one another--an abstraction as fatal as was the old discussion of phlogiston, gravity and vital force apart from concrete correlations of changing events with one another. Take for example such a basic conception as that of Right involving the nature of authority in conduct. There is no need here to rehearse the multitude of contending views which give evidence that discussion of this matter is still in the realm of opinion. We content ourselves with pointing out that this notion is the last resort of the anti-empirical school in morals and that it proves the effect of neglect of social conditions.
In effect its adherents argue as follows: "Let us concede that concrete ideas about right and wrong and particular notions of what is obligatory have grown up within experience. But we cannot admit this about the idea of Right, of Obligation itself. Why does moral authority exist at all?
Why is the claim of the Right recognized in conscience even by those who violate it in deed? Our opponents say that such and such a course is wise, expedient, better. But _why_ act for the wise, or good, or better?
Why not follow our own immediate devices if we are so inclined? There is only one answer: We have a moral nature, a conscience, call it what you will. And this nature responds directly in acknowledgment of the supreme authority of the Right over all claims of inclination and habit. We may not act in accordance with this acknowledgment, but we still know that the authority of the moral law, although not its power, is unquestionable. Men may differ indefinitely according to what their experience has been as to just _what_ is Right, what its contents are.
But they all spontaneously agree in recognizing the supremacy of the claims of whatever is thought of as Right. Otherwise there would be no such thing as morality, but merely calculations of how to satisfy desire."
Grant the foregoing argument, and all the apparatus of abstract moralism follows in its wake. A remote goal of perfection, ideals that are contrary in a wholesale way to what is actual, a free will of arbitrary choice; all of these conceptions band themselves together with that of a non-empirical authority of Right and a non-empirical conscience which acknowledges it. They constitute its ceremonial or formal train.
Why, indeed, acknowledge the authority of Right? That many persons do not acknowledge it in fact, in action, and that all persons ignore it at times, is assumed by the argument. Just what is the significance of an alleged recognition of a supremacy which is continually denied in fact?
How much would be lost if it were dropped out, and we were left face to face with actual facts? If a man lived alone in the world there might be some sense in the question "Why be moral?" were it not for one thing: No such question would then arise. As it is, we live in a world where other persons live too. Our acts affect them. They perceive these effects, and react upon us in consequence. Because they are living beings they make demands upon us for certain things from us. They approve and condemn--not in abstract theory but in what they do to us. The answer to the question "Why not put your hand in the fire?" is the answer of fact.
If you do your hand will be burnt. The answer to the question why acknowledge the right is of the same sort. For Right is only an abstract name for the multitude of concrete demands in action which others impress upon us, and of which we are obliged, if we would live, to take some account. Its authority is the exigency of their demands, the efficacy of their insistencies. There may be good ground for the contention that in theory the idea of the right is subordinate to that of the good, being a statement of the course proper to attain good. But in fact it signifies the totality of social pressures exercised upon us to induce us to think and desire in certain ways. Hence the right can in fact become the road to the good only as the elements that compose this unremitting pressure are enlightened, only as social relationships become themselves reasonable.
It will be retorted that all pressure is a non-moral affair partaking of force, not of right; that right must be ideal. Thus we are invited to enter again the circle in which the ideal has no force and social actualities no ideal quality. We refuse the invitation because social pressure is involved in our own lives, as much so as the air we breathe and the ground we walk upon. If we had desires, judgments, plans, in short a mind, apart from social connections, then the latter would be external and their action might be regarded as that of a non-moral force. But we live mentally as physically only _in_ and _because_ of our environment. Social pressure is but a name for the interactions which are always going on and in which we participate, living so far as we partake and dying so far as we do not. The pressure is not ideal but empirical, yet empirical here means only actual. It calls attention to the fact that considerations of right are claims originating not outside of life, but within it. They are "ideal" in precisely the degree in which we intelligently recognize and act upon them, just as colors and canvas become ideal when used in ways that give an added meaning to life.
Accordingly failure to recognize the authority of right means defect in effective apprehension of the realities of human association, not an arbitrary exercise of free will. This deficiency and perversion in apprehension indicates a defect in education--that is to say, in the operation of actual conditions, in the consequences upon desire and thought of existing interactions and interdependencies. It is false that every person has a consciousness of the supreme authority of right and then misconceives it or ignores it in action. One has such a sense of the claims of social relationships as those relationships enforce in one's desires and observations. The belief in a separate, ideal or transcendental, practically ineffectual Right is a reflex of the inadequacy with which existing institutions perform their educative office--their office in generating observation of social continuities.
It is an endeavor to "rationalize" this defect. Like all rationalizations, it operates to divert attention from the real state of affairs. Thus it helps maintain the conditions which created it, standing in the way of effort to make our institutions more humane and equitable. A theoretical acknowledgment of the supreme authority of Right, of moral law, gets twisted into an effectual substitute for acts which would better the customs which now produce vague, dull, halting and evasive observation of actual social ties. We are not caught in a circle; we traverse a spiral in which social customs generate some consciousness of interdependencies, and this consciousness is embodied in acts which in improving the environment generate new perceptions of social ties, and so on forever. The relationships, the interactions are forever there as fact, but they acquire meaning only in the desires, judgments and purposes they awaken.
We recur to our fundamental propositions. Morals is connected with actualities of existence, not with ideals, ends and obligations independent of concrete actualities. The facts upon which it depends are those which arise out of active connections of human beings with one another, the consequences of their mutually intertwined activities in the life of desire, belief, judgment, satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
In this sense conduct and hence morals are social: they are not just things which _ought_ to be social and which fail to come up to the scratch. But there are enormous differences of better and worse in the quality of what is social. Ideal morals begin with the perception of these differences. Human interaction and ties are there, are operative in any case. But they can be regulated, employed in an orderly way for good only as we know how to observe them. And they cannot be observed aright, they cannot be understood and utilized, when the mind is left to itself to work without the aid of science. For the natural unaided mind means precisely the habits of belief, thought and desire which have been accidentally generated and confirmed by social institutions or customs.
But with all their admixture of accident and reasonableness we have at last reached a point where social conditions create a mind capable of scientific outlook and inquiry. To foster and develop this spirit is the social obligation of the present because it is its urgent need.
Yet the last word is not with obligation nor with the future. Infinite relationships of man with his fellows and with nature already exist. The ideal means, as we have seen, a sense of these encompassing continuities with their infinite reach. This meaning even now attaches to present activities because they are set in a whole to which they belong and which belongs to them. Even in the midst of conflict, struggle and defeat a consciousness is possible of the enduring and comprehending whole.
To be grasped and held this consciousness needs, like every form of consciousness, objects, symbols. In the past men have sought many symbols which no longer serve, especially since men have been idolators worshiping symbols as things. Yet within these symbols which have so often claimed to be realities and which have imposed themselves as dogmas and intolerances, there has rarely been absent some trace of a vital and enduring reality, that of a community of life in which continuities of existence are consummated. Consciousness of the whole has been connected with reverences, affections, and loyalties which are communal. But special ways of expressing the communal sense have been established. They have been limited to a select social group; they have hardened into obligatory rites and been imposed as conditions of salvation. Religion has lost itself in cults, dogmas and myths.
Consequently the office of religion as sense of community and one's place in it has been lost. In effect religion has been distorted into a possession--or burden--of a limited part of human nature, of a limited portion of humanity which finds no way to universalize religion except by imposing its own dogmas and ceremonies upon others; of a limited class within a partial group; priests, saints, a church. Thus other gods have been set up before the one God. Religion as a sense of the whole is the most individualized of all things, the most spontaneous, undefinable and varied. For individuality signifies unique connections in the whole.
Yet it has been perverted into something uniform and immutable. It has been formulated into fixed and defined beliefs expressed in required acts and ceremonies. Instead of marking the freedom and peace of the individual as a member of an infinite whole, it has been petrified into a slavery of thought and sentiment, an intolerant superiority on the part of the few and an intolerable burden on the part of the many.
Yet every act may carry within itself a consoling and supporting consciousness of the whole to which it belongs and which in some sense belongs to it. With responsibility for the intelligent determination of particular acts may go a joyful emancipation from the burden for responsibility for the whole which sustains them, giving them their final outcome and quality. There is a conceit fostered by perversion of religion which assimilates the universe to our personal desires; but there is also a conceit of carrying the load of the universe from which religion liberates us. Within the flickering inconsequential acts of separate selves dwells a sense of the whole which claims and dignifies them. In its presence we put off mortality and live in the universal.
The life of the community in which we live and have our being is the fit symbol of this relationship. The acts in which we express our perception of the ties which bind us to others are its only rites and ceremonies.
INDEX Absentmindedness, 173 Accidents, in history, 101; Aims, _see_ Consequences, Ends Altruism, 133, 293 Analysis, 183 Anger, 90, 152 Appetite, 7, 275; _see_ Impulse Atomism moral, 243 Attitude, 41; _see_ Habit Benevolence, 133 Blame, 18, 121, 320 Causation, 18, 44 _see_ Deliberation Casuistry, 240 Certainty, love of, 236 Character, defined, 38; and consequences, 47 Classes, 2, 82, 270 Codes, 103 Conduct, _see_ Character, Habit, Impulse, Intelligence Confidence, 139 Consequences, and motives, 45-47; and aims, 225-229, 245-247 _see_ Accident Crowd psychology, 60 Creative and acquisitive, 143-148 Customs and habits, 58-69; and standards, 75-83; rigidity, 103-105 Deliberation, 189-209; as discovery, 216 and intelligence, 248-264; object of, 249-252 Disposition, 41; _see_ Habit Docility, 64, 97 Economic man, 220 Egotism, 7 Emerson, 100, 144 End, 28, 34-37; knowledge as, 187, 215; nature of, 223-237; of desire, 250, 261; and means, 269-272; _see_ Consequences, Means Execution, of desires, 33-35 _see_ Deliberation Experience, 31, 245 Experimentation, moral, 56, 307 Fallacy, philosophic, 175 Fanaticism, 228 Fiat of will, 29 _see_ Deliberation, Ends Freedom, 8, 165; three phases of, 303-313; _see_ Will Functions, 18 Gain, 117 _see_ Evolution, Perfection Good-will, 44 Habits, place in conduct, 14-88; and desire, 24; as functions, 14; definition, 41; and impulses, 90-98, 107-111; and principles, 238 Hedonistic calculus, 204 Hegel, 312 Helvetius, 106, 300 Herd-instinct, 4 History, 101, 110 Hobbes, 133 Human nature, 1; and morals, 1-13, 295; alterability, 106-124 Humility, 289 Hypocrisy, 6 Hypothesis, moral, 239, 243 Ideas, _see_ Ends, Thought Impulse, place in conduct, 89-171; secondary, 89; intermediary, 169-170; as means of reorganization, 93, 102, 104, 179; plastic, 95; same as human instincts, 105n; and habit, 107-111; false simplification, 131-149; and reason, 196, 254 Industry, 11 Infantilisms, 98 Instinct, not fixed, 149-168; and knowledge, 178; _see_ Impulse place of, in conduct, 172-277; relation to habits, 172-180, 228; and desire, 248-264, 276 Interpenetration of habits, 37-39 Intuitions, 33, 188 Knowledge, moral, 181-188; _see_ Conscience, Intelligence Labor, 121, 144 Le Bon, 61 Liberalism, 305 Locke, 106 Marx, 154, 273, 300 Magic, 20, 26 Means, 20; relation to ends, 25-36, 218-220, 251; _see_ Habit Mediation, 197 Mind, 61, 95; and habit, 175-180 Mind and body, 30, 67, 71 Moore, G. E., 241n Morals, introduction, 40; conclusion, as objective, 52; of art, 167; scope, 278-281 Natural law and morals, 296-300 Necessity, 312 Nirvana, 175, 286 Occult, 11 Oligarchy, 2-3 Optimism, 286-288 Organization, 306 Passion, 9, 193-196 Pathology, 4, 50 Pessimism, 286 Play, 159-164 Posture, 32 Potentiality, 37 Power, will to, 140-142 Pragmatic knowing, 181-188 Principles, 2; and tendencies, 49; nature of, 238-247 Process and product, 142-143, 280 in science, 149; nature of, 281-288 Property, 116-118; _see_ Economics Psychology and moral theory, 12, 46, 91; and scientific method, 150, 322-324 Punishment, 18 Puritanism, 5, 157 Purpose, _see_ Ends Radicalism, 168 Reactions, 157 Reason, pure, 31; Rebellion, 166 Reconstruction, 164 Responsibility, 315 Revolution, 10, 108 Right, 324-328 Sentimentalism, 17 Social, _see_ Environments Social mind, 60-63 Socrates, 56 Spencer, 175, 297 Stimulation, 157 Stimulus and response, 199-207 Stuart, H. W., 218 _see_ Dualism Sumner, 77 Synthesis, 183-184 Tendency, 49 vices of, 197 Tolstoi, 285, 312 Tools, 25, 32; intellectual, 244 Universality, 245-247 Virtues, 4, 16, 22; _see_ Goodness War, 110-115 Westermarck, 76 will to power, 140-143; freedom of, 9 Williams, M., 273n CORRECTIONS: page original correction 3 go back of the go back to the 8 by pleasureable excursions by pleasurable excursions 17 infliction of retibutive infliction of retributive 41 some-counteracting some counteracting 74 an ungoing splurge an ongoing splurge 90 wind on a mudpuddle wind on a mud puddle 92 the southsea islander the Southsea islander 123 to find fulfillment, to find fulfilment, l45 it it quite possible it is quite possible 163 artificial exitents artificial exigents 211 its every presentation its every presentation.
212 with only one factor, with only one factor, 234 only a phantasy only a fantasy, 262 is as unreasonble as is as unreasonable as 276 reporting and analysis reporting and analysis 325 how to satisfy desire. how to satisfy desire."