given to him, and why? Because he will always remain active. Satisfaction would mean repose, re¬ pose would mean death. Life is activity. The meaning of the pact is of course that, for good or i Cf. the lengthy discussion of this point in Friedrich VLscher, Goethe’s Faust, Neue Beitrdge zur Kritik des Gedichts, especially p. 291 and p. 304. “ Er (Faust; weiss also fur jetzt nur von der Lust.
124 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY for evil, all the existence of a man is work, and that no one is ever wholly lost so long as the power of accomplishment remains his. But if work is the es¬ sence of life, then satisfaction must be found not in feelings but in deeds. The world is good if we can make it so, not otherwise. The problem of Faust is therefore the discovery of the perfect kind of activity.
With this insight the romantic spirit has risen be¬ yond itself. The essence of romanticism is the de¬ sire for fullness of personal experience. The essence of this new spirit is the eagerness to accomplish something. The difference is vast. Faust, following this new tendency, might be led to an obscure toiling life of endless self-sacrifice. His pessimism (for in the early scenes he is a pessimist) might give way before unquestioning heroic devotion to some great end. Does this take place? W e know too well the answer. The whole poem is indeed a conflict be¬ tween the two tendencies in Faust, but the first, the desire for manifold passive experiences, is until the last scenes of the second part predominant. Faust is active, but his activity is mainly a continual pur¬ suit of new experiences. Even at the end he is not active as other men are active; his work is done by magic; and the accomplishment for whose sake he is at last willing to say, This is the highest moment, is an anticipation, not a reality. In the real world the satisfactory work is never found. And thus the solution of the problem is not fully given, though the poet, while suggesting it, has done more than any other modern poet. The revolution had fur¬ nished as life-ideals grand emotion and heroic ac- ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM 125 tion. The two cannot wholly be harmonized. The highest forms of activity imply self-sacrifice, drudg¬ ery, routine, cool-headed calculation. The highest forms of emotion, pursued by themselves, intoxicate and enervate. It is the purpose of Goethe to lead his hero through the various stages of emotional life, for the sake of making him prefer in the end a mode of action to all forms of simple emotion. The result is to be a man above the deadness of ordinary work- a-day realism, yet as devoted to toil as the stupidest realist. There is to be a free surrender of a full self to the service of some high end. Nothing is lacking to the conquest over pessimism, except the clear statement of that for which the converted Faust is to work. The goal of activity once found, the problem will be solved, and the devil’s wager lost. But the dim allegorical suggestions of the sec¬ ond part will not suffice to give us the account of what is wanted. Faust is to work for human pro¬ gress, and progress means the existence of a whole nation of hard-laboring, fearless men who fight for¬ ever for their freedom. To have been the father of such a people is the highest blessedness. Good, in¬ deed, we say; but to have wrought by the devil s aid, through magic and oppression, is this the high¬ est? Is this the type of the best activity? And is the great problem after all really solved? For what is the ultimate good of the eternal warfare with nature in which mankind are thus left? Faust leaves be¬ hind him a nation of toilers, whose business it will be to build dikes to keep the sea out. A worthy end of romantic hopes, truly! That Goethe him- 126 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY self is not wholly content therewith is proven by the epilogue in heaven, which means, if it means any¬ thing, that the highest end of human activity i? something very fine, but altogether inexpressible, in¬ visible, inconceivable, indefinite, a thing of ether and dreams. One longs in this last scene for the presence of Mepliistopheles, who surely has as much right there as in the prologue, and who would be sure to say, in his terse and sinewy fashion, just the right and the last word about the whole business.
The incompleteness of “ Faust ” is the incomplete¬ ness of modern thought. The poet is silent about the final problem, because modern thought is still toiling away on the definition of the highest human activity.
Thus we have found that our moral problem is shared by others than the moral philosophers. Al¬ most at random we have taken a few suggestive illustrations of this same moral problem as it ap¬ pears to the poets. Had we made use of the poets of the present day, we could have illustrated still other aspects of the question. The restless dramatic genius of Browning, for instance, always giving us glimpses of new ideals that men of strange fashions have or may have, unweariedly warns us not to pre¬ tend to narrow the possible objects of life down to one, however sacred we may think that one to be. Life, thus viewed, seems a grand everlasting war¬ fare of ideals, among which peace is impossible. And with this insight into the actual and seemingly irreconcilable warfare of human aims, ethical doc¬ trine must begin. The outlook is gloomy, but the problem must be faced.
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM 127 III.
Such are some of the motives that give genuine meaning to modern pessimism. This instability of all ideals is the greatest danger to which idealism can be subject. And the problem is not one of mere theory, nor yet even of poetic emotion alone. The problem is one of daily life. W e choose some fash¬ ion of life in the morning, and we reject it before night. Our devotional moments demand that all life shall be devotional; our merry moments that all life shall be merry; our heroic moments that all life shall be lived in defiance of some chosen enemy. But we are false to all these our ideals, even while we pretend to have them. And the most dishear¬ tening aspect of the whole matter lies in the fact that we cannot prove even our faithlessness to be un¬ worthy, unless we can bring ourselves steadfastly to accept some ideal by which our faithlessness itself can be judged. And this would imply that we were no longer faithless.
We have thus reached the root of moral skepti¬ cism. The worst that moral skeptics can say is that all choice of ideals is an accidental caprice, that ideals have no basis but this caprice, and that a moral code depends for its successful propagation wholly on the persuasive personal force of the man that happens to have it and to teach it.
For the first, then, we provisionally accept this skeptical view. W^ e shall regard the moral ideals in this light. We shall seek no impossible proof for any of them. But we shall try to see whither the skeptical view itself leads us.
128 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY \ If we look now for a final and perfectly cold¬ blooded statement of this moral skepticism, a state¬ ment that shall let us see once for all its meaning, its foundation, and its scope, the present author knows of no better expression of it than the one that is con¬ tained in the appendix to Mr. Arthur Balfour’s “ Defense of Philosophic Doubt,” 1 under the title “ The Idea of a Philosophy of Ethics.” Mr. Bal¬ four has shown us by the book in question that he has a very useful office in philosophic discussion, and we can only thank him for having made posi¬ tive advance in ethics easier, by his clear statement of the difficulties that in the past have barred the way.
“Scientific judgments and ethical judgments deal,” says Mr. Balfour, “ with essentially different sub¬ ject-matters.” Scientific propositions state “facts or events, real or hypothetical.” Ethical proposi¬ tions do not “ announce an event,” nor yet do they tell any “ fact of the external or internal world.” Ethical writers too often consider the “ psychology of the individual holding the moral law.” But this is no matter for ethics, but only for psychological science. In fact, “ if a proposition announcing ob¬ ligation require proof at all, one term of that proof must always be a proposition announcing obligation, which itself requires no proof.” “ There is no arti¬ fice by which an ethical proposition can be evolved from a scientific or metaphysical proposition, or any combination of such.” “ The origin of an ultimate ethical belief can never supply a reason for believing 1 Loudon, MacMillan & Company, 1879.
ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM 129 it, since the origin of this belief, as of any other mental phenomenon, is a matter to be dealt with by science; and my thesis is that (negatively speaking) scientific truth alone cannot serve as a foundation for a moral system; or (to put it positively), if we have a moral system at all, there must be contained in it, explicitly or implicitly, at least one ethical proposition, of which no proof can be given or re¬ quired.”
The reader may ask: Is all this the loftiest ideal¬ ism, or is it simply philosophic skepticism about the basis of ethics? We may leave the reader to ex¬ amine for himself Mr. Balfour’s very ingenious dis¬ cussion, but one or two very obvious and simple consequences may be quoted from the rest of the es¬ say, and these will serve well enough to show here tbe drift of the discussion.
“ An ethical proposition is one that prescribes an action with reference to an end.” Every such prop¬ osition “ belongs to a system.” “ The fundamental proposition of every such system states an end, which the person who receives that system regards as final — as chosen for itself alone.” “ When two suck systems conflict, their rival claims can only be de¬ cided by a judgment or proposition not contained in either of them, which shall assert which of these re¬ spective fundamental ‘ ends ’ shall have precedence.” « If revenge against a particular individual is for me an end-in-itself, a proposition which prescribes shooting him from behind a hedge may be one of the dependent propositions belonging to that particular system.” “ Though under the name ethical are in- 130 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY eluded not only moral, but also non-moral and im¬ moral systems, the distinctions regarded from the outside between these subdivisions are not essential, and have no philosophic import.” Such then is the skeptical outcome of this very idealistic position from which we ourselves started. Thus viewed, the moral world seems essentially chaotic. Each end, if chosen, has its own way of marshaling acts as good and bad. But one end cannot establish itself theoretically over against another. The warfare among them is practical, but is not rationally to be judged or ended. Each says, “ In me is the truth about right and wrong. I am the Way.” But for one another they have, not arguments, but anathemas. They give no proof, only assertion and condemnation. It is the contemplation of this chaos that has suggested to us that plausible and yet dreadful pessimism of which modern thought has had so much to say, and of which this chapter has tried to give some notion.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MORAL INSIGHT Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths.
Shelley, Epipsychidion.
We have needed to dwell on our ethical skepti¬ cism, to experience the real strength of its doubts, in order that we should be able to get new and bet¬ ter methods of construction for our own doctrine. Deep as is the truth that lies at the basis of many ethical doctrines now either doubted or abandoned, one thing always seems defective about their fashion of building. This one defect has made us question their worth as theories. And our theoretical doubt, as we dwelt upon it, has become practical. We have seen how this ethical skepticism leads to the gloomiest pessimism. Both the skepticism and the pessimism we must meet fairly and fearlessly. And we must ask them how even they themselves are possible.
I.
Our skeptical criticism of ethical theories has been so far either internal or external. We have criticised each doctrine in itself, questioning either its consistency or its inner completeness; or else we 132 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY have criticised it with reference to other doctrines. In the first case our criticism led to no general skepticism, and had importance only in the special case. But the other kind of criticism was of more importance, and took another turn. We said to the doctrine: “ Perfect as your system may be in itself, your assumption of your highest end always finds over against itself an equally stubborn assump¬ tion of an exactly opposing end. And you have no proof to offer for your rejection of that end. You simply insist upon calling it a diabolical end; you hurl at it your anathema. Now we, who have wanted proof, not mere enthusiasm, we, who stand critically before your doctrine, and view it from without, and desire to know why we are to accept it, we feel a skeptical indifference about your end, as soon as we compare it with the opposing end, and as soon as comparing, we find the difference be¬ tween them to be one that rests, not on demonstra¬ ble truth, but on a mere kind of caprice. Practi¬ cally we may agree with you in choosing, as men of action, your aim. Our personal caprice may agree with yours. But theoretically we cannot jus¬ tify this aim. We find, in all that you say, no ob¬ jective moral truth, but only somebody’s capricious resolution. And even if we chance to accept your resolution, who knows when we shall change our minds, and begin acting in some new way, so that what we now call good shall be called evil? In brief, if there is to be possible anything more than moral preaching, if there is to be anything \vorthy of the name of demonstrated moral doctrine, then THE MORAL INSIGHT all your discussion must lead to something not de¬ pendent on the bare choice of individual moral agents. But in truth what you give us is just the fact of your choice. And hence it is that we are skeptics.”
What does this our skepticism mean? Unreflec- tive, self-satisfied skepticism always means mental death; but in self-critical skepticism, observant of itself as of everything else, moves the very life-blood of philosophy. And of this the whole of the present book will try to be an illustration. Just here, there¬ fore, we want to be as watchful of our skepticism as we were of the systems whose theoretical weakness led us hither. What is the sense of this theoretical skepticism of our present attitude? On our reply all else turns. And our reply is: This skepticism expresses an indifference that we feel when we con¬ template two opposing aims in such a way as mo¬ mentarily to share them both. For the moment we realize equally these warring aims. They are ours. The conflict is in us. The two wills here represented are our will. And for this reason, and for this only, can we feel the skeptical indecision. Had we the will to choose the one end alone, we should unhesi¬ tatingly choose it, and should not see enough of the opposing win to be skeptics. Had we only the will that chooses the opposing end, we should feel equally indifferent to the first. Had we neither will at all in mind, did we realize neither one of the opposing ends, we should be feeling no hesitation between them. Our doubt arises from the fact that momen¬ tarily and provisionally we are in the attitude of as- 134 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY suming both. Our indifference is not the indiffer¬ ence of ignorance, but of knowledge; not of failure to understand either end, but of readiness to realize both ends. Hence it follows that moral skepticism is itself the result of an act, namely, of the act by which we seek to realize in ourselves opposing aims at the same time. This observation is of the great¬ est importance to us, and we must dwell upon it. It shows us that above all our skepticism is the su¬ preme End that makes the skepticism itself possible.
The ethical aims themselves are all of them the expression of somebody’s will. Their conflict is the conflict of wills. Doubt about them depends upon the realization of their existence and of their oppo¬ sition. Therefore this doubt depends for its very existence on the conditions of this realization. We have tried to state what the conditions are. To realize opposing ends so completely that one feels a genuine doubt which of them to accept, implies, we say, the simultaneous provisional acceptance of both. And this may be shown in a more popular psycholog¬ ical way, as well as in a more general philosophical way. We take the psychological way first.
How can I know that there is anywhere a will, W, that chooses for itself some end, E? Really to know this implies something more than mere outer obser¬ vation of the facts. One must repeat in one’s own mind more or less rapidly or imperfectly this will, W, that one conceives to exist in somebody else. And this need of repetition is a well-known psycho¬ logical truth, very easily illustrated by all sorts of commonplace facts. Let us refer to some of these.
THE MORAL INSIGHT To think of a bodily act is to perform the act, or at least mentally to initiate the performance of the act. According to Professor Bain’s now generally accepted principle, the memory or the conception of an act is physiologically connected with the fainter excitation of just the same nerve-tracts as would be more intensely excited in the real performance of the act. Therefore it is true that to think of yawn¬ ing is to initiate a yawn, to think of walking is to initiate steps; and, in case of any excitable person, or in case of any momentary predisposition to per¬ form the act, the conception may immediately be¬ come the act, because the nascent excitation involved in the conception of the act may at once pass over into the completer excitation, and the ideal deed may become a visible fact. Thus the excited man, if not checked by company, may at once talk aloud to himself, his thoughts becoming words. If very much excited, he may mutter to himself even in the presence of company. He is much more apt to do this if he thinks not only of the words themselves, but of the act of speaking them, namely, if he im¬ agines himself talking to somebody, and emphatic¬ ally bringing his thoughts home to that other. In a weak state of body, this tendency to repeat an act whenever one conceives it may become quite dis¬ tressing. To think of vomiting may mean to vomit. Or again, to think of laughter or of tears may in such a case make one laugh or cry. Hence the wea man may dislike to begin laughing, because he knows that, other exciting causes apart, the mere memory that he has laughed may keep him laugh- 136 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY ing afresh long after the sense of the ridiculous has passed away, so that to begin laughing may mean total exhaustion before he can stop.
Imitation rests at least in part upon this tendency. An act is performed, we witness it, we see or know how it is done, we conceive the effort that would lead to the performance of it, and forthwith this con¬ ception becomes the performance. We imitate the gesture of the actor or of the story-teller before us, and we feel an inner imitation of many acts, even though we suppress the outward signs. In general, for us to realize an act means that we shall do it, either in outward fact, or through a nascent perform¬ ance that is not outwardly visible. Much of the recently so-called “mind-reading,” more accurately named by some psychologists “ muscle - reading,” rests upon this foundation. For the conception of acts that are not outwardly performed is often indi¬ cated by slight motions or tensions of arm or of fin¬ gers, or of the whole body, and the muscle-reader, getting some close contact with his subject, amuses a company by interpreting these unseen, but readily felt signs of the thoughts of his subject. Very deeply do such facts enter into the structure of our mental life. Mr. Galton, investigating word-associations, found in many cases that the idea immediately aroused by a word was a sort of dramatic reproduction of the act expressed by the word. This dramatic reproduction consisted, at least in part, in the feeling of effort in those muscles that would be concerned in performing the act itself. If the momentary association first aroused by the sudden and unexpected sight of the THE MORAL INSIGHT word involves this dramatic imitation of the act named, how much more would the thought involve the dramatic repetition of the act, if one were to dwell upon the nature of this act, and were fully to realize its nature in his own mind. So much then for psy¬ chological illustration of the view that we are here advancing. If two opposing fashions of action are present to our minds, and if mentally we are trying to realize them both, then mentally we are seeking to reproduce them both. Our skeptical hesitation between them expresses our effort to attain mentally both these ends at once. For what we have said about bodily acts will apply equally well to what we usually call mental acts, and even to general resolu¬ tions, all of which have a physical side, and are apt to be symbolized by some bodily gesture that we mentally or outwardly repeat when we think of the act or of the resolution in question.
But all this is not a bare accident of the psycholog¬ ical structure of our minds; it is a philosophical ne¬ cessity. What represents a Will but a Will? Who would know what it is to have an end unless he act¬ ually had ends himself? Who can realize a given aim save by somehow repeating it in himself? And so it is rationally and universally necessary that one shall realize the end of a moral system by reproduc¬ ing in himself the will that accepts this end. But, on the other hand, in so far forth as he reproduces this will alone, he cannot refrain from accepting the end. In so far forth as he reproduces this will, it is his will. And the end is his end. Therefore our skepticism itself was a hesitation, resulting from the 138 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY %