The caprices of moral instinct are not exhausted when one has enumerated, as nowadays men often do, as many practices as one can find approved or demanded by the consciences of filthy savages. Among civilized men, yes, in our own hearts, each of us can find numberless conflicting and capricious estimates of actions, and it has only a psychological interest to study them in detail, or to try to reduce them to any semblance of principle. Such con¬ science as we have about common matters is too eas¬ ily quieted; and, as a mere feeling, the conscience that can be called moral is not readily distinguish¬ able in this, or in any other respect, from a mere sense of propriety, from a reverence for custom, or from the fear of committing an offense against eti¬ quette. That certain blunders hurt us more than our lesser crimes, and that our remorse for them is like our remorse for venial immorality, only more intense, is nowadays a matter of frequent remark. You ride using another man’s season-ticket, or you 54 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY \ tell a white lie, or speak an unkind word, and con¬ science, if a little used to such things, never winces. But you bow to the wrong man in the street, or you mispronounce a word, or you tip over a glass of wa¬ ter, and then you agonize about your shortcoming all day long, yes, from time to time for weeks. Such an impartial and independent judge is the feeling of what you ought to have done. Shall ethics be founded on feeling, which to-day is and to¬ morrow is cast into the oven?
The traditional answer of the advocates of con¬ science, when these facts are urged against them, is well known. They say, various less dignified mental tendencies may at times be mistaken for conscience; but the moral sense is real and trustworthy notwith¬ standing all these mistakes. Shame, or love of praise, or sense of propriety may pass themselves off as conscience; but the genuine conscience, when you find it, is infallible. But we may still rejoin that, if the difficulty is of this nature, the consequence must be very much the same as what we are insist¬ ing upon. For if the question can arise whether a given impulse in me, which I take to be conscience, really is the voice of the infallible conscience or not, then this question cannot be decided by appeal to conscience itself; since the very problem then is: “ Of two impulses, both pretending to represent con¬ science, which is the genuine conscience?” And questions of this sort must be appealed to some higher tribunal than the conflicting impulses them¬ selves. It will not be enough to apply even Antig¬ one’s sublime test to the warring impulses, and to THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 55 say: This impulse is not of to-day nor of yesterday, and no man can tell whence it came, therefore it is the voice of infallible conscience. For, fine as that saying is, when applied to a genuine eternal truth, the test is not a sufficient one for us in our weakness to apply to the impulses that we find in our poor selves. For we soon forget whence came our preju¬ dices and even our bad habits, and we can fancy that to be of immemorial antiquity which has begun to be in our own parish, and within the memory of the old men. A child born in one of our far western settlements grows up amid a community that is a few years older than himself, and not as old as his eldest brother. Yet he shall look upon all these rickety, wooden houses, and half-graded streets, full of rubbish, as the outcome of an immense past; he shall hear of the settlement of the town as he hears of ancient history, and he shall reverence the oldest deserted, weather-beaten, rotting log-cabin of the place, with its mud chimney crumbling to dust, quite as much as a modern Athenian child may reverence the ruins of the Parthenon. A time when all these things were not, shall be beyond his conception. Even so, if moral truth be eternal, we yet dare not undertake to judge what it is by merely examining ourselves to see what customs or tastes or moral judgments feel to our present selves as if they must have been eternal. Such absolute validity one might possibly feel as belonging to his mother’s way of mak¬ ing plum-pudding. Snow, to use a comparison of Aristotle’s, is as white after one day as if it had been lying untouched and unmelted for a thousand 56 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY years. And high judicial authority lately expressed the opinion, a propos of a change in standard time, that usage may alter itself in a day as well as in a century, and be as authoritative in one case as in the other. Nothing feels older than a well-established custom, however recent it may be.
Conscience then cannot be recognized as infallible merely through the test of antiquity as judged by our feeling. Conscience furthermore, or emotions that pretend to the authority of conscience, may be found counseling or approving contradictory ways of action. Therefore conscience is no sufficient moral guide.
But even if all this were waived, if conscience were in actual agreement among all men, and if there were no difficulty in distinguishing the voice of conscience from the voice of passion, or from other prejudices or sentiments, it would remain true that no ultimate theory of the difference between right and wrong could be founded on the assertions of any instinct. Why an individual should obey his conscience unless he wishes to do so, cannot be made clear by conscience itself alone. Nor can the neces¬ sity and real truth of a distinction be made clear by the assertions of a faculty that, however dignified it may be, appears in the individual as a personal emo¬ tion, a prejudice or choice, determined by an im¬ pulse in him. Even if other people actually have this same impulse, that does not make their common prejudice necessary or rational. Conscience, if uni¬ versal, would still be only a physical fact. If* there are actually no differences among various consciences, THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 57 it is still impossible to see why there might not be. And the possibility is as fatal to the authority of bare conscience as the reality would be. In conscience alone, without some higher rational test, there is no ground evident wherefore its decisions might not have been other than they are. But what the mor¬ alist wants is such a distinction between right and wrong as does not depend upon any mere accident of reality, even upon the accidental existence of a moral sense. He wants to find the eternal ethical truth. We insist then that one of the first questions of the moralist must be, why conscience in any given case is right. Or, to put the case otherwise, ethical doc¬ trine must tell us why, if the devil’s conscience ap¬ proves of the devil’s acts, as it well may do, the devil’s conscience is nevertheless in the wrong.
The discussion has, we imagine, after all, a practi¬ cal importance in a way not always sufficiently re¬ membered. In the name of conscience many crimes have been done. In the name of conscience men condemn whatever tends towards true moral prog¬ ress, so long as this new element is opposed to popu¬ lar prejudice. In the name of conscience they kill the prophets, and stone every one that is sent unto them. In the name of conscience wars are waged, whole tribes are destroyed, whole peoples are op¬ pressed. If conscience is the great practical guide in common life, conscience is also, in many great crises, the enemy of the new light. It is the sensi¬ tive and penetrating eye of the heart, but it is often blind before the coming day, even because it has been so useful to us in finding our way in the night.
58 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY It ought to be a commonplace of morals that there are certain times when the moral reason must cast aside the moral instinct, when the lover of the right must silence the voice of conscience. The more dan¬ gerous such moments are, the more dreadful the mis¬ takes that people at such times are apt to make, the more necessary it is that the moralist should dis¬ cover some criterion whereby to decide when instinct fails. And this criterion cannot be conscience it¬ self. We must seek yet deeper.
V.
V.
Our criticism of conscience is only another exam¬ ple of the method before applied to the criticism of the moral ideals. You make a distinction between right and wrong, you give to this distinction the dig¬ nity of a principle, you deduce special moral judg¬ ments therefrom. But then some one asks you for any foundation for the principle, beyond your own caprice. You thereupon seek to produce an ultimate reason for your faith. And your ultimate reason — what is it but some fact external to your choice and to your ideal judgments? But such dead exter¬ nal facts were just what you wanted to avoid. You had said that an ideal must have only an ideal foun¬ dation. And now you say that the ideally right thing depends on God’s nature, on the existence of the universal Reason, or on the assertions of Con¬ science. Say thus what you will, ' have you done what you intended? Have you made evidefit the necessity of your ideal? If, per impossibile, you THE WARFARE OF THE MORAL IDEALS 59 suppose your present physical beliefs falsified, if the All-Fatner changed his mind, and came to hate his children, or if, per impossibile, the Devil triumphed, or the eternal Ideas melted away like snow, or the universal Reason became insane, or the Consciences of all men grew corrupt, would that alter the ideal for you? If the moral ideal assumes its desired position as judge of all things, then what matters it to the ideal if evil is triumphant in the world? “ Fiend, I defy thee with a calm, fixed mind,” the idealist will say, after the manner of Shelley’s Pro¬ metheus, and that however much the real world may threaten him. Therefore how can the Is pre¬ determine the Ought to be t But if the Ought to be be independent of the Is, how does discussion about the power of God, or his goodness, about the universality of conscience, or its inner strength as a feeling, affect our judgment of the ideal distinction between right and wrong?
Thus we are thrown back and forth between the conflicting demands of criticism. “ Give us a moral system that is no caprice of thine,” say the critics of one sort. That seems reasonable. Therefore we affirm, “ This system of ours is founded on a rock of eternal truth,” namely, on God’s will, or on the intui¬ tion of universal conscience, or on some like fact of the world. But thereupon other critics say to us. “ Wherein do you differ from those who say that might is right, or that success determines the right, or that whatever exists ought to exist? For after all you say, something that is, ought to be, merely because it is.” And always still other critics are 60 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY \ present, to doubt whether we are right about God or conscience as physical facts. Such critics very plausibly say, “ Why found moral truth, which ought to be so secure and clear, on physical or metaphys¬ ical doctrines that are so often doubted and so hard to establish? ” Such is the general difficulty illustrated in the warfare of the moral ideals. They want some high¬ est judge to decide among them. If they seek this judge in the real world, they seem to endanger their idealism. If they seek their judge among them¬ selves, the warfare begins afresh. For what one of them can be the sole judge, when they are all judges one of another?
CHAPTER IV.
ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DIS¬ CUSSIONS But if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that dark¬ ness!
Not even yet have we exhausted the perplexities involved in this fundamental difficulty of moral theory. Some one may say: “Let the ideals in general take care of themselves. We are concerned in this world with individual and concrete duties. These at least are plain.” But these also involve questions concerning the ideal. Let us see then how the same difficulty that has beset the more general moral doctrines, returns to plague us in case of the theoretical treatment of one of these plain duties. Our discussion will here gain in definiteness what it loses in generality. Let us choose a concrete moral question, namely, the problem of the true ground of the moral distinctions and other moral relations be¬ tween what people nowadays like to call altruism and what they like to call egoism.
Upon what, then, if upon anything, is founded the moral precept: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy¬ self? Or is there any foundation for it at all? To be quite familiar in discussing this problem, let us take it as it appears in recent discussion. The 62 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY \ answers of some recent moralists will illustrate for us afresh the great problem of ethics. W e shall find two classes of efforts made to solve the difficulty. On the one hand moralists appear whose tendency is mainly, although not always quite wholly realistic. They say that, assuming the selfish aim as from the beginning self-evident, the unselfish aim soon appears as a necessary concomitant and assistant of the self¬ ish aim. Such writers, from Hobbes to the present day, have insisted upon unselfishness as a more or less refined selfishness, the product of enlightenment. To this view one opposes very naturally the objec¬ tion that real unselfishness is thus in fact rendered impossible. The moral ideal resulting is therefore, whether right or wrong in itself, at all events at war with other well-known ideals. And hence the expla¬ nation satisfies nobody. One still lacks a judge to end the warfare.
On the other hand, however, more idealistic mor¬ alists have tried to make unselfishness dependent on some impulse, such as pity or sympathy, whose dic¬ tates shall be perfectly definite and self-evident, and yet not, like the supposed dictates of conscience, either abstract or mysterious. But to such a foun¬ dation one opposes very naturally again the objec¬ tion that all such judgments of feeling are capri¬ cious, that pity and sympathy are confused and deceitful feelings, wholly unfit to give moral insight, and that no ideal can be founded on the shifting sand of such realities.
The results of such criticisms will once more be skeptical, but the skepticism on which we are here ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 63 insisting is so necessary a foundation for ethics, that we make no apology for dwelling upon it yet farther, devoting to the special problems suggested by these recent discussions of selfishness and unselfishness a separate chapter.
I.
I.
In a collection of Servian popular tales may be found one that runs somewhat as follows: Once there lived two brothers, of whom the elder was very in¬ cautious and wasteful, but always lucky, so that in spite of himself he grew constantly richer, while the younger, although very industrious and careful, was invariably unfortunate, so that at last he lost every¬ thing, and had to wander out into the wide world to beg. The poor wretch, after much suffering, resolved to go to no less a person than Fate himself, and to inquire wherefore he had been thus tormented. Long and dreadful wildernesses were passed, and finally the wanderer reached the gloomy house. Now visit¬ ors at Fate’s dwelling dare not begin to speak when they come, but must wait until Fate shall address them, and meanwhile must humbly do after Fate whatever he does. So the wanderer had to live in the house for several days, silent, and busily imitat¬ ing Fate’s behavior. He found that Fate lives not always in the same way, but on some days enjoys a golden bed, with a rich banquet and untold heaps of treasure scattered about; on some days again is surrounded with silver, and eats dainty but some¬ what plainer food; on some days has brazen and copper wealth only, with coarse food; and on some 64 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY days, penniless and ragged, sleeps on the floor, digs the ground, and gnaws a crust. Each night he is asked by a supernatural voice: “ How shall those live who have this day been born? ” Fate always replies: “ As I have fared this day, so may they fare.”
Thus our beggar found the secret of his own mis¬ fortunes; for he had been born on a day of poverty. But when at last Fate broke the silence, the visitor begged him to tell whether there could be any way whereby he might escape from the consequences of his unlucky birth. “I will tell thee,” said Fate. “ Get thee home again, and ask thy brother to let thee adopt his little daughter. For she was born on one of the golden days. Adopting her, thou shalt thenceforth call whatever thou receivest her own. But never call anything thine. And so shalt thou be rich.” The beggar joyfully left Fate’s dreary house, with its sad round of days, and went back to the world of labor and hope. There, by following the advice that he had received, he became in fact very wealthy; since all that he undertook prospered. But the wealth was his adopted daughter’s. For always he called his gains hers. One day he grew however very weary of this, and said to himself: “ These fields and flocks and houses and treasures are not really hers. In truth I have earned them. They are mine.” No sooner had he spoken the fatal words than light¬ ning fell from heaven and began to burn his grain- fields, and the floods rose to drown his flocks. So that terror-stricken the wretch fell on his fkce and cried: “Nay, nay, O Fate, I spoke no truth; they ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 65 are not mine, but hers, liers alone.” And thereupon flame and flood vanished, and the man dwelt thence¬ forth in peace and plenty.
II.
The really deep thought that imperfectly expresses itself in this little Servian tale may suggest many sorts of reflections. Just now we shall busy our¬ selves with only one of the questions that are brought to mind by the story. Many who nowadays have much to say about what they call altruism, actually explain all altruism as a kind of selfish evasion of the consequences of cruder selfishness, so that at bottom they really counsel men much as Fate coun¬ seled the wanderer. They say in effect: “ To make thyself happy, do certain things called duties to thy neighbor. That we call altruism. Thou shalt have thy reward. For what is more useful to a man than a man? If therefore thou dost well to him, thou shalt make him in many ways of great service to thee. And so, to get happiness for thyself, see that thou be not openly merely a seeker of thy happi¬ ness; but call that which thou seekest his happiness. Calling it his will help to make it thine. Be selfish by casting aside grosser selfishness. Live for the others as the means of living for thyself. In co¬ operation is safety. Act therefore as a good mem¬ ber of the community, and thou shalt prosper. But such action requires altruism. As the man gave his wealth to his adopted daughter, so that he might own it himself and outwit his destiny, so must thou 66 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY make thy interests into the interests of society, and by so doing be true to thyself.” But now such al¬ truism, as one at once sees, has no right to parade itself as genuine altruism at all, and if it be the end of conduct, there is no moral couduct distinct from cleverness. But if this be true, it is at least incum¬ bent upon the moralist to explain why the popular ideal of unselfishness is thus so very far wrong.
More or less disguised, the doctrine here generally stated appears in modern discussion since Hobbes. Let us follow it into some of its hiding-places, and to that end let us distinguish selfishness and unself¬ ishness as ideals or ends of conduct, from selfishness and unselfishness as means, accidentally useful to get an end.
III.
Altruism is the name of a tendency. Of what tendency? Is it the result or the intent that makes a deed altruistic? Was our hero an altruist when he gave to his adopted daughter the name and the enjoyment of a possessor of wealth? Or would he have needed in addition to all this a particular dis¬ position of mind ere he could be called an altruist?
We need not dispute about mere names as such. Let everybody apply the name Altruism as he will; but possibly we shall do well to recall to the reader’s mind what ought nowadays to be the merest com¬ monplace of ethics, namely, that we cannot regard any quality as moral or the reverse, in so far as the expression of it is an external accident, with* which the man himself and his deliberate aim have nothing ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 67 to do. Ethical judgments deal with purposes. On any theory of right and wrong the man himself, not the accident of fortune, determines the moral char¬ acter of his act; and this view must be held equally whether one believes the man’s will to be free or to be bound. Hence the unforeseen or unintended out¬ come, or any other accidental accompaniment of my act, does not make me egoistic or altruistic in case egoism and altruism are to be qualities that have any moral character at all. If my property is acci¬ dentally destroyed by fire, and if the loss causes great damage to my creditors or to people dependent on me, the loss makes me no less or more an altruist, although I can no longer do good as before. If my purely selfish plan chances to do others good, I am no less an egoist, although I have made my fellows happy. In short, he who means anything, and does what he can to realize his intention, must be judged according to his intent. Circumstances control the outcome, and they make of the chance discoverer of the first bit of gold in a California mill-race a greater altruist, to judge solely by consequences, than a hero would be who sacrificed himself in a good cause, and lost the battle. But no moral system could make genuine saintliness out of the deed of the man who by chance has found what the world needed. And to take one more example, the power die stets das Bose will, und stets das Glute schafft, is not altruistic in the moral sense, however vast its creations may become.
All this we maintain, because, if you are morally criticising a disposition, you must study what it is, 68 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY not what are its accidental surroundings. Moral distinctions must apply to aims as such. Unless you are judging men exactly as you judge the north wind or the value of rain, not as consciously good or bad, but as mere forces that happen to produce such and such results under such and such conditions, you must study, not first the accidental circum¬ stances, but the men. And in fact all moralists, however much they may condemn the weighing of mere motives, however much they desire to take just the consequences into account, as Bentham did, are nevertheless forced to separate in their moral judg¬ ments accidental from expected consequences. We maintain that this abstraction of a disposition from its accidental expressions must be rigidly carried out in order to get a moral doctrine of any sig¬ nificance. Let others study natural forces. We here are studying men, and are considering what ideal of a man we can form. Whatever the acci¬ dents of the outer world give him in the way of means, we want to know his real intent, and to judge that. But if the intent of the man does alone make him altruistic or the reverse, then what, for example, is the position, in ethical controversy, of any system that declares altruism to be morally good because the