a man who insists in spite of all upon going to the real world, to find there in some way the sole basis for his ideal distinctions between good and evil, an ethical realist. Let us on the other hand call him who would somehow demonstrate if he could some ideal as the true and only moral ideal, without in any wise making it depend upon physical reality, a moral idealist. Let us then let the two parties discuss, in their opposing ways, the question at issue. Let us hear their views briefly stated and argued. First the view of the extreme ethical realists: “ Go to real¬ ity,” they say, “ and to whatever reality you need to consider. Thence derive your notion of duty. Mo¬ rality must not be built in the air, but on a solid foundation of natural fact. Your moral doctrine may have to depend upon all that you can find out about the universe.” — On the other hand we have the idealistic doctrine: “ Morality,” say the sup¬ porters of this view, “is for the first an ideal. From reality one learns the relations that are to be judged by the ideal, but cannot by any searching find the ideal itself. From reality one can learn the means; the End of action is an Ideal, independent of all real¬ ity save the bare existence of our choice of this End.
As Prometheus defied Zeus, so the moral conscious¬ ness could and must defy the forces of nature in case they made the ideal forever hopeless. If the good be unattainable, that makes it no less the good. If the existent world were the worst world imaginable, it would not be justified by the mere fact that it was the real world. Ideals must be realized in so far as we can realize them, but what can be realized need THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM 23 not therefore turn out to be the ideal. The judg¬ ments: This is, and, This is good, are once for all different; and they have to be reached by widely dif¬ ferent methods of investigation.” — Such are the two opposing views. We cannot yet repeat in detail the arguments for each, but we can suggest a few of them.
“ See,” says the supporter of the first view, “ how absurd it is to evolve moral theories out of one’s inner consciousness. What happens to such theories? Either nature favors them, and then they survive in the struggle for life, or they are unequal to the tasks of the real world, and then their supporters go mad, or die. But in the first case they are merely such theories as could have been much better reached by a process, not of guessing at truth, but of study¬ ing nature’s laws. In the second case, the result is enough for common sense people. The moral theory that is destined to die out for want of supporters can hardly triumph over more useful opinions. If we want a moral theory, we must therefore consider what kind of action, what rule of life, wins in the battle of existence, and tends most to outlive its rivals. That rule is the one destined to become universal.”
The maintainers of the second view are ready with their answer. “ What sort of morality is this?” they say. “ Is this the morality of the martyrs? Is this an ideal that can satisfy us? The preservation of truly valuable life may indeed be an end in itself, and therefore an action that tends, on the whole, to destroy rather than to save such life may be bad from any point of view; but the moral thinker is not, on 24 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY \ that account, bound to choose a code that will make its believers survive. The believers are not all who are affected by obedience to the code, and it may be the believer’s place to be sacrificed, either because his life is worth less than his ideal, or because the unbelievers may somehow be bettered through his death. And, in general, what would be the conse¬ quence of the consistent following out of the prin¬ ciple that the true goal is conformity to reality? Assume that, for instance, a man in society is to reg¬ ulate his actions solely according to the demands that society as a real power makes upon him, in view of his place in the social organism, and that morality thus expresses simply the requirements that the in¬ dividual must meet if he is to remain a successful member of this social organism. Then, to get your moral code, you are to examine the facts of social life. You are to see, for example, what each man must nowadays do if he is to be tolerable to his fellows. You will find something of this sort: It will not do for him to kill his fellows, or to steal from them, or openly to insult them. It will be un¬ profitable for him to be caught in cheating them, or in lying to them. He will do well to help them as far as his means allow, and so to get a reputation for kind-heartedness and public spirit, as well as for strict integrity. For such, at least in our society, are some of the requisite or useful kinds of adjust¬ ment to our environment. On these is founded our moral code, if it is to be founded on' reality alone.
“ But these requirements are not equally good in all societies. Once a power to kill certain kinds of THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM 25 people was a necessary condition to happy social life. A reputation for fearlessness, for prowess, for mili¬ tary skill, for a certain kind of cunning, for perfect willingness to take your weaker enemy’s property; all this was a part of the necessary adjustment to one’s environment. Was all this then for that soci¬ ety true morality? If morality were the body of rules governing successful adjustment to the social environment, then morality would be relative to the environment, and would vary with it. So even now such rules vary with one’s social position. Minis¬ ters of religion are considered to be best adjusted to the environment if they are outwardly meek, save when defending their creeds against heretics. But politicians are best adjusted when they are aggres¬ sive and merciless. A poet or artist is best adjusted if he has a reputation for very ideal and impersonal aims, and he can then even afford to leave his debts unpaid; but a business man must be very concrete in behavior, severely definite in his dealings with his fellows. And so runs the world away. Find your place, and farm it cleverly, for that is the whole duty of man.
“ Such would be,” say our idealists, “ the conse¬ quences of looking simply to reality for a definition of the moral code. There would no longer be a dif¬ ference between morality and cleverness. Practical skill in the art of living is what survives in this world: and if it is survival, or tendency to survival, that distinguishes a true from a false moral code, then universal cleverness as a moral code would on the whole tend to survive, with its adherents.
26 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY But a realistic opponent is not thus silenced. “ Such caricatures,” he insists, “ do not fairly repre¬ sent my doctrine.” He, too, has an ideal but it is wholly dependent on reality. What he means by conformity to reality as the foundation of a moral code is properly expressed by the more thoughtful advocates of the doctrine of evolution. “ Adjust¬ ment to one’s real surroundings is always,” they say, “ one very important element in morality. But there are higher and lower forms of adjustment. Cannibals, or conquerors, or bad politicians, may be sufficiently adjusted to their environment to be mo¬ mentarily successful; but true philanthropists and truly great statesmen -are better than they, since the statesmen and philanthropists have a higher form of adjustment than have the others, and are thus higher in the scale of progress. There is in the world a constant evolution of higher out of lower forms of life. This applies also to society. And on this fact of evolution depends the true morality. The ideal morality is that form of adjustment of the social man to his environment towards which society in its progress forever tends.” How then shall we define our moral code? “ Why, once more,” says the evo¬ lutionist, “ by the facts. Do not make your code first and then judge the world. You will do well to accept the universe even if you did not make it. But examine the world to see in what way it is tend¬ ing. Then conform yourself to that tendency; try to hasten- the realization of the coming ideal perfec¬ tion. Progress does not depend on you, but you will do well to assist progress. So, by experience, we THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM 27 are to find the direction in which society is moving, we are to discover the goal toward which this move¬ ment tends, and this object of life, once formulated, is to give us our moral code.”
Again, however, the idealist objects. This, he admits, is a view higher, no doubt, than the preced¬ ing; but is it a clear and consistent view? Will it bear criticism? In one respect, as appears to him, it fails badly. However certain and valuable the facts about evolution may be, the theory that founds morality wholly upon these facts of evolution is de¬ fective, because it confuses the notion of evolution with the notion of progress, the conception of growth in complexity and definiteness with the conception of growth in moral worth. The two ideas are not necessarily identical. Yet their identity is assumed in this theory. How does it follow that the state toward which a physical progress, namely, evolution, tends, must be the state that is to meet with moral approval? This is not to be proved unless you have already done the very thing that the doctrine of evo¬ lution wishes to teach you to do, that is, unless you have already formed a moral code, and that inde¬ pendently of what you know of the facts of natural evolution. lYhy is the last state in an evolution better than the former states? Surely not because it is the last stage, surely not because it is physically more complex, more definite, or even more perma¬ nent; but solely because it corresponds to some ideal that we independently form. Why should my ideal necessarily correspond with reality? Why should what I approve turn out to be that which ex- 28 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY ists? And why, if any correspondence is to exist, should that particular bit of reality that comes at the end of a physical process called evolution be just the one bit that is to answer my ideal demands? It will be very satisfactory if such correspondence be¬ tween the real and the ideal is found to result; but how can I know beforehand that it must result?
Evolution and progress: what do the terms re¬ spectively mean? Evolution, we learn, is an increase in the complexity, definiteness, individuality and organic connection of phenomena. But progress is any series of changes that meets with the constantly increasing approval of somebody. The growth of a tree or of a thistle is an evolution. The climbing of a hill for some purpose may throughout be a prog¬ ress. Evolution may or may not meet with the ap¬ proval of anybody; and a pessimist might fully accept some proposed law of evolution. But unless there is some approval from some source, we have no progress. How thoughtless then it is, our idealist insists, to confound such different notions. But is a case of evolution ever a process of degeneration? Certainly. You want to eat asparagus before it is full grown. Hence every moment of its evolution after a certain point is for you distinctly a degenera¬ tion. You want the potatoes in your cellar to keep fresh. If they sprout, a process of evolution has be¬ gun, but every moment of it is for you the reverse of progress. The egg that begins to incubate is in full course of evolution; but what if it is wanted for market? Might not the evolution of the whole world conceivably be for the moral consciousness THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM 29 what such cases of evolution are for the purposes of ordinary life?
“But,” the realist may say, “in fact the world does grow better. The course of evolution is on the whole a progress.” “ Be it so,” the idealist answers, “ but how can we know it? Only by first setting up our moral ideal, and then comparing the facts with this ideal. If we know what we mean by bet¬ ter, we can judge whether the world is growing better. But we may not pretend to determine what is better by simply observing how the world grows. Growth and improvement are not identical ideas. One may grow while growing ever worse.”
And thus a moral code, according to our idealist, does not, as a code, depend on physical facts; tells us nothing of what does exist, but tells us solely what ought to exist. If the ideal either does exist, or some day will exist, so much the better; but through all the changes of fate the terrible ought remains, and judges fearlessly the world, whether it be good or whether it be evil. But here the realist, to whom the moral code that is not built on natural fact is just a dream, interposes what shall just here be his final objection. “ Be it so,” he says, “ judge after your heart’s desire; but remember this, that some other idealist beside you will be judging the world in his own way, after what will seem to you the folly of his heart, and his judgment and yours will differ, as the dreams of any two dreamers must differ. Did Plato’s ideal agree with Paul’s? or did Byron judge the world after the same fashion as Wordsworth? Even so in the present day the 30 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY ideals war their wars, shadowy struggles, such as one would expect the tedious ghosts of Ossian’s heroes to carry on in their cloudy cars; but reality will never be one whit the wiser for all such deeds. For when you forsake the real world you have no basis left for your ideals but individual caprice, and every idealist will be his own measure of all things, and an elastic measure at that.”
To this, how can the idealist answer? Only, if at all, by the fact of his success in establishing such a criterion as shall be independent of his own caprice, without being realistic.
We have let the contending doctrines fight some part of their old battles over again. How shall we decide between them? Alas! the decision is the whole labor of founding a moral doctrine. We have not yet seen deeply enough into their opposition. They may both be one-sided. The truth may lie in the middle. But as yet we have no right to dog¬ matize. This capriciousness in the choice of ideals seems a grave defect in a moral system; we cannot submit to the objection that our boasted ideal is just our whim. Yet how shall we escape this? Equally unsatisfactory it seems to say: “ I believe in such and such ideal solely because I see it realized.” That is too much like saying, “ Might is right.” And thus we should come to an equal capriciousness on this side; for if might makes right, then another and opposing might, if triumphant, would make an¬ other and opposing right. And in this wise there would be no true distinction at all between right and wrong. There seems in fact so far only an acciden- THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM 31 tal distinction. This ideal or that is the highest be* cause somebody chances to choose it for his, or be¬ cause the physical world chances to realize it. This is a perfectly empty distinction.
But difficulties must not discourage us so early in the day. The world has talked of these matters be¬ fore. Let us turn to the history of some of the spec¬ ulations about the ideal. They may suggest some¬ thing to us.
CHAPTER III.
THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS Sure, if I find the Holy Grail itself, It too will fade, and crumble into dust.
Tennyson, Holy Grail.
The spirits I have raised abandon me, The spells which I have studied baffle me — The remedy I recked of tortured me.
I lean no more on superhuman aid.
Byron, Manfred.
We are yet without an ideal, and as we come nearer to our task, its difficulties increase. We have described above the remarkable position in which every moral idealist finds himself. He says that his moral doctrine is to be more than a mere bit of natural history. He wants to find out what ought to be, even if that which ought to be is not. Yet when some man says to him: “ Thy ideal is thus but thy personal caprice, thy private way of looking at things,” he does not want to assent. He wants to reply: “ My ideal is the true one. No other rational ideal is possible.” Yet to do this he seems to need again some external support in reality. He seems to require some authority based upon facts. He must somewhere find his ideal in the world of truth, ex¬ ternal to his own private consciousness. He must be able to say: “ Lo, here is the ideal! ” He must THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 33 be able to show it to us, so that we shall see it to be more than his whim. But thus he is in danger of forsaking his idealism. His position so far has there¬ fore seemed to us an uncertain one. We have felt the force of his needs; but we have not been able to see as yet just how they are to be satisfied. The satisfaction of them would in fact be a complete ethical doctrine. And the foundation of such a doc¬ trine is just what we here are seeking.
It is incumbent upon us yet further to show how the search for a moral ideal has in the past been hindered by the weight of this doubt about the exact relation of the real and the ideal. The controversy that the last chapter considered is a controversy end¬ lessly repeated in the history of moral doctrines. Everywhere we find a moral ideal maintained by some devoted idealist as the one perfectly obvious aim for human life. Everywhere there stands over against this ideal some critic who says: “ The choice of this aim for life is an accident. I reject this boastful ideal. For where in reality is found the firm basis of fact on which the ideal is founded? ” Then pos¬ sibly the idealist, relaxing the rigor of his idealism, points out in the external world some real or myth¬ ical support for his ideal. And thereupon either his critics reject the creed about the external world thus offered to them, or they deny the moral force of the supposed realities, or, again, themselves assuming an idealistic attitude, they reproach the idealist with his unworthy desertion of his own high faith, in that he has yielded to realistic demands, and has founded the lofty Ought on the paltry Is. And thus the con- 34 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY troversy continues. Often it seems to us that the struggle must be endless. At all events we must here look at some of its phases.
L In the days of the Sophists, Greek thought had reached its first great era of ethical skepticism. This skepticism was directed against the ideals of popular morality. “ They are not self-evident and necessary ideals,” said in substance the Sophists. “ They are conventions. They are private judgments.” The popular ideals were of course popularly defended against such assaults by the use of the national re¬ ligion. “ The gods made these distinctions,” it is replied. “ The gods are able to enforce them; there¬ fore, fear the gods.”
Skepticism had two answers to this defense. The one answer was simple: “ Who knows whether there are any gods, or what the gods, if they exist, may choose to do? ” The other answer was more subtle, because it really expressed in skeptical guise a new form of moral idealism. It is best preserved to us in a fine passage in the second book of Plato’s Re¬ public. Here the young men, Glaucon and Adei- mantos, confess that certain sophistic objections to the reality of moral distinctions are deeply puzzling to themselves. They ask Socrates to discuss the matter in some such fashion as to remove these doubts. They sum up the doubts in substance as follows: Grant that the gods are of irresistible might, and that they are disposed to enforce some moral law •, THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 35 still does that fact give any true distinction between good and evil as such? For whoever urges us to do right merely to get the favor of the gods, urges us in reality just to do what is prudent. Such doctrines make justice not desirable in itself, but desirable solely for what it brings in its train. And thus there would be no difference between good and evil as such, but only between what brings reward and what brings punishment. “ Therefore, O Socrates,” they in effect say, “ do thou defend for us justice in itself, and show us what it is worth in itself, and how it is different from injustice. But put us not off with stories about reward and punishment. Such is a brief summary of their two speeches.
No better could either the need or the difficulty of the task of moral idealism be set forth than in these eloquent statements. How does Plato lay the ghosts that he has thus raised? How does he give an independent foundation to the ideal of justice? He surely felt how hard a problem he was under¬ taking. He has, in fact, attempted several answers to it. But the main answer, given in the Repub¬ lic itself is insufficient, though noble. This answer is, in effect, that the properly balanced, fully and harmoniously developed soul, absorbed in the con¬ templation of eternal truth, cannot possibly desire injustice; that only the tyrannical soul, in which the desires have the upper hand, where nothing is secure, whose life is like the life of an ill-governed or even anarchic community, tumultuous, wretched, helpless before passion, only such a soul can desire injustice. Injustice, then, means desire for discord.
86 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY it means the victory of the desires over the reason, it is inconsistent with the life of the soul that is given to blessed contemplation of the eternal ideas. For such a blessed soul its blessedness is, in the fine phrase that Spinoza long afterwards created, not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; so that such a soul will not do the right as a means by which it may procure the blessed contemplation of the eter¬ nal, but, being engaged in this blessed contempla¬ tion, it is thereby enabled to do right.
But to the wicked soul of the unjust man Plato seemingly has no inducement to offer in order to per¬ suade it to become just, save the eloquent statement of the pains that accompany injustice, the picture of the warfare of desires, the proof of the wretched in¬ stability and of the possibly eternal misery in which the tyrannical soul must live. And thus Plato him¬ self would be in so far open to the objection that his Glaucon and Adeimantos had made to all previous moralists, namely, that they never gave a reason why justice in itself was to be chosen, but always made justice desirable by reason of the rewards that result from it. For Plato’s view, as for that of less ideal moralists, the unjust man should seek to be¬ come just because, until he does become just, he will be wretched. Can no other basis for the virtue of justice be found save this one? If none can be found save this, then whenever a soul exists that prefers the tumult of desire, with average success in injustice, to the solemn peace of the contemplation of ideal good apart from the satisfaction of sensuous desires, for that soul Plato’s argument will be worth- THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 37 less. Such a tyrannical man will delight to remain a tyrant, and that will be the end of life for him.
The suggestiveness, the deeper significance of this Platonic doctrine, we do not deny. But, as it stands, the doctrine is not complete nor consistent. For Plato himself has given us as the support for his ideal, a fact, or a supposed fact, of human nature. A moral skeptic will deal with it as Glaucon and Adeimantos had dealt with the popular morality. The supposed fact, they will say, may be doubted. Perhaps some tyrant will actually feel happier than some struggling and aspiring soul far higher up in the heavens. But, leaving that doubt aside, there is the other objection. The ideal justice has come to be founded on a bare physical fact, namely, on the constitution of the soul, which might, for all we can see, have been different.
Important as he is in concrete ethical questions, Aristotle does nothing of importance to remove this fundamental difficulty, since his position as to this matter is too near to Plato’s. Still less do the Epi¬ cureans, for whom in fact just this difficulty does not exist. Plainly they declare that they merely state physical facts. Generosity, fidelity to friends, and other idealistic activities they indeed regard as the part of the wise man, but the end of all is very frankly declared to be his selfish advantage. As Cicero expresses their view: 1 “ Cum solitudo et vita sine amicis insidiarum et metus plena sit, ratio ipsa monet amicitias comparare, quibus partis coni De Fin., I. 20, 66. Quoted in Zeller’s Philos, d. Gnechen, Th.
38 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY firmatur animus et a spe pariendarum voluptatum sejungi non potest.”