If we wish to discuss ethical problems in a fruitful manner and form just judgments of ethical theories, we must always bear in mind the fact that there is not merely one single ethical problem, but many. With the solution of one of these problems the solution of the others is not necessarily given, and thinkers who have treated a single problem have not, in dealing with that problem, always determined their position with reference to the others. At all events, it will be an especial and separate task to investigate the relation to each other, the reciprocal dependence or independence, of the different ethical problems. When we speak of the ethical problem as an especial philosophical problem, we must not forget that upon closer examination it resolves itself into a number of different problems.
The reason of this tendency to regard the ethical problem as simple and indivisible throughout, may be partly sought in the fact that philosophical ethics did not develop until the positive religions had lost their undisputed control over the minds of men. Religious ethics is simple and indivisible by virtue of its principle. It is founded on authority. Its contents are the revealed commands of authority; the feeling which impels us to pass ethical judgments is the fear or reverence or love with which men are filled in the presence of divine authority; the same motives impel man to follow in his conduct the commands of the authority; and the principles of the education of individuals and of the order of society are just as immediately given by definite relation to this authority. It is upon the whole the peculiarity of positive religions and the cause of their great importance in the history of mankind that they grant man satisfaction in a lump for all his intellectual wants. The true believer has concentrated in his belief his whole mental life; his belief is at once the highest science, the highest virtue, the highest good, and the highest Æsthetics. Philosophical ethics has sought too long to retain the simple unity which is peculiar to religious ethics. The mistakes of the greatest philosophical ethicists may be in part traced to this source. A criticism of Kant and Bentham would more fully illustrate this. The fundamental error—one so often found in the science of the past—is too great a love of simplicity.
I shall try, in the briefest possible manner, to give an outline of the most important ethical problems.
Ethical judgments, judgments concerning good and bad, in their simplest form are expressions of feeling, and never lose that character however much influence clear and reasoned knowledge may acquire with respect to them. An act or an institution that could awaken no feeling whatsoever would never become the object of an ethical judgment, could never be designated as good or bad. And the character of the judgment will be dependent upon the character of the feeling that dictates the judgment. From the point of view of pure egoism the judgment of the same act will be wholly different from what it is when regarded, say, from a point of view that is determined by motives of sympathy embracing a larger or smaller circle of living beings. An ethical system, accordingly, will acquire its character from the motive principle of judgment upon which it builds. This motive principle is the power that originally and constantly again gives rise to ethical judgments.
If our motive principle is to operate with clearness and logical consequence it must set up a definite standard. A test principle of judgment must be established that will furnish guidance in individual cases by enabling us to infer consequences from it in instances where simple, instinctive feeling fails. The natural course will be that the test-principles will correspond directly with the motive principles at their base. The relation between the two may, however, be more or less simple. If we fix upon the feeling of sympathy as our basis, regarding it as the main element of ethical feelings, it follows of itself that the criterion we adopt must be the principle of general welfare, that is the principle that all acts and institutions shall lead to the greatest possible feeling of pleasure among living beings. This principle merely defines with greater precision what is unconsciously contained in the feeling of sympathy and in the instinct that springs from this feeling. The same test-principle (as Bentham's "Deontology," for example, shows) may also be accepted as valid from the point of view of pure egoism, only in this case the relation between the motive principle and the test-principle is more indirect. We must in this case endeavor to prove that the happiness of others is a necessary means to our own happiness. Our own happiness is then the real end, but in order to reach this end we must take a roundabout course, and ethics is the presentation of the system of the courses thus taken. Kant arrives in a different way again at establishing the happiness of others as an end of ethics. It would be the business of a special investigation to determine the extent to which this varying motivation of the principle of test must influence the consequences derivable from it.
A third question is, By what motive shall an individual act be determined? The motive to action is not necessarily the same as the motive that dictates judgment. The man who is animated with love for his fellow-creatures has reason to rejoice that ambition and the instinct of acquisition constitute grounds of action of so very general a character; in that results become thereby possible which,—for such is the unalterable character of human nature,—would otherwise remain unaccomplished. A special investigation would have to point out whether cases occur in which motive of action and motive of judgment must coincide if the act is to be approved of, and whether there are not motives to action which would rob the act of all ethical character.
Different from the problems already mentioned is the pedagogic problem: How can the proper and necessary motives be developed in man? This problem arises as well with respect to the motive principle of judgment as with respect to the motive principle of action. It is clear that between points of view that rest upon entirely different psychological foundations, (the one, for example, starting from egoism, the other from sympathy, and the third from pure reason,) the discussion can be carried only to a certain point. The person who with conscious logic makes himself the highest and only aim can never be refuted from a point of view which regards every individual as a member of society and of the race, and therefore not only as an end but also as a means. If an understanding is to become possible, the emotional foundation adopted (the motive spring of judgment) must be changed; but the change is not effected by mere theoretical discussion: a practical education is demanded in addition thereto which life does not afford all individuals, although our inclination to make ourselves an absolute centre is always obstructed by the tendency of society to subject us all to a general order of things. There is an education of humanity by history the same as there is an education of single individuals in more limited spheres. This education demands its special points of view, which are not always directly furnished by general ethical principles. The same is true of the motive to action. For pedagogical reasons it may be necessary to produce or to preserve motives that do not satisfy the highest demand, because such motives are necessary transitional stages to the highest motives. Thus, ambition and the instinct of acquisition may be the means of attaining to true ethical self-assertion. Reverence for authorities historically given can be of extraordinary effectiveness in the development of character, since only thereby are concentration or fixity of endeavor as well as the power of joyful resignation acquired,—without our being able to see in such reverence the highest ethical qualities. A ground-color in fact must often be laid on before the final, required tint can be applied. The law of the displacement of motives operates here which in ethical estimation generally is of the utmost importance.
There must still be mentioned here finally the socio-political problem. This problem has reference to that particular ordered arrangement of society which is best adapted to a development in the direction of ethical ideals. As the former problem leads inquiry out of the domain of ethics into that of pedagogics, so this one leads us from ethics into political economy and political science.
Although in the present discussion I intend to occupy myself only with a single one of these problems, I have nevertheless mentioned them all in order that the light that I shall attempt to throw upon the problem I deal with may be seen in its proper setting. As will be observed from what follows, the principle of welfare will be misunderstood if the problem to whose solution it is adapted is confounded with any one of the other ethical problems. The systematism of ethical science is still so little advanced that it is necessary to draw out a general outline before we pass on to any single feature. The value of systematism is namely this, that we are immediately enabled to see the connection of the single questions with one another as well as their distinctive peculiarity. In ethics we are not yet so far advanced.
II.
1) If we accept the principle of welfare as our test or criterion in judging of the value of actions and of institutions, these are then good or bad according as in their effects (so far as we can trace them) they produce a predominance of pleasurable feeling or a predominance of painful feeling in a larger or smaller circle of sentient beings. Every action may be compared to a stone thrown into the water. The motion produced is propagated in large or in small circles; and the estimation of its value depends upon whether it produces in the places it strikes predominant pleasure or pain. Just as theoretical science explains the single natural phenomenon by its connection with other natural phenomena, so ethics tests the single feeling by its relation to other feelings: the satisfaction of a person acting over the accomplishment of the act is only then to be called justifiable or good when it does not create a disturbance in the pleasurable feeling of other beings, or when such a disturbance can be proved to be a necessary means of a greater or more extended pleasurable feeling. This principle, as a principle of test or valuation, corresponds directly with sympathy as motive of judgment. The extent to which it is possible to accept this from other points of view I cannot here investigate in detail.
The act of estimation, the testing, does not stop at the outer action but goes down to the motives of the person acting, to the qualities of his character, to the whole inner life from which the act has sprung. This has its ground in the nature and significance of the estimating judgment. Ethical judgments, in fact, are in their original and simplest form spontaneous expressions of feeling. But the great practical significance of such expressions of feeling lies in the fact that they operate decisively upon the will (upon the individual will and that of others) and produce motives of future action. Logically, accordingly, they must be directed towards the point at which an altering effect on the power that produces the act is possible, and this point lies precisely in the inner life, in the character of mind of the person acting. For this reason feelings and impulses, disturbances and desires, are also judged of according to the tendency which they have of producing acts and effects that will increase pleasurable feeling or avoid unpleasurable feeling in more extended or more limited circles.
Only by its effects do we know the power. We form by inferences our conclusions as to what takes place in the mind of a man, his motives and his capacity. Goodness or greatness that never expressed itself in action could never become the object of ethical approbation; it would not even exist in fact, but would rest upon a self-deception, upon an illusion. At least some inner activity, a longing and endeavor in the direction demanded by the ethical principle must manifest itself. The individual in self-judgment must often take refuge in this inner activity, and any deep-going, unpharisaical ethical estimation will have to follow him there;[122] but just here do we have a beginning of that which is demanded by the principle of welfare, except that in consequence of individual circumstances its prosecution is impossible.
[122] Compare my article "The Law of Relativity in Ethics" in the International Journal of Ethics, Vol. I. p. 37, et seqq.
Equally important as the principle that we can know the power only from the effects is the other principle that the effect need not appear at once. When good and great men are so often mistaken by their contemporaries the fact is explained by the circumstance that only a very wide-embracing glance can measure the significance of their efforts and activity. Their goodness and greatness is founded in the fact that their thought, their feeling, their will, comprehend far more than their short-sighted and narrow-minded contemporaries see. A long time may elapse before it is possible for them to be generally understood, and for what they have done to be assimilated. It is therefore by no means implied in the principle of welfare that people are to direct their conduct so as to be in accord with impulses and wants which men have at the moment. The principle of welfare demands in very fact that we should not shrink from the battle with prejudice and with inertia. The best thing, often, that we can do for others is to make them feel that they stand on entirely too low a level in their wishes and wants and do not make adequate demands generally. Thus, to take a single instance, the great artist often treads a solitary path ununderstood or even mistaken by the great mass. Yet in so doing he follows, perhaps without being aware of it, the principle of welfare,—if he rigorously observes the demands of art. He increases the mental capital of the species, and gives it a power which later on can operate in broad spheres. Only a short-sighted conception and application of the principle of welfare stops with the need of the moment and dismisses the consideration of the permanent conditions of life and the permanent sources of new life and new activity.[123]
[123] This last argument is taken from my Ethics (Danish edition, p. 94, German edition, p. 110).
2) The principle of welfare simply furnishes a norm which may be laid at the foundation of the testing of all classes of actions. But it by no means demands, as has at times been supposed, that consideration for welfare should also be the ground and motive for every act. We have recourse to general principles only in order to be able to set ourselves aright in cases in which direct judgment, instinctive feeling cannot determine the question presented, that is in cases of doubt, or when we have in view a systematic treatment of ethical questions. The ethical feeling may operate quite involuntarily and without real ratiocination, in that we can be moved directly by the act (whether possible or real) as it appears to us, just as in our Æsthetical feeling we may without Æsthetical reasoning be struck by the beauty of a work of art or of a landscape. Or, we follow with confidence the "unwritten laws" that are contained in custom, in tradition, and generally in so-called "positive morality." And in agreement precisely with the principle of welfare, is immediacy of this kind to be recommended and maintained, so long as it does not lead to the neglect of real problems and questions. It is the state of innocence out of which no one dare be wrested unnecessarily. Abstract principles become necessary aids when direct reliance fails; but frequently they can only be applied to individual concrete cases by the employment of a great number of complicated intermediary steps, and do not easily acquire a practical influence upon the will. Indeed, the principle of welfare may even demand quite different motives from ethical feeling or devotion to the requirements of positive morality. It is in fact most beautiful and best that a man should care for his wife and children because he loves them and not because his ethical instinct requires it. Where conscious duty has to be invoked in the innermost relations between man and man, it is as a rule a sign of an unfortunate state of affairs. Perfect love dispels not only fear but also duty.
In his "Ethics," at page 339, Wundt advances the following objection to the principle of welfare: "It is conceivable that a person should sacrifice himself for another; it is conceivable that a person should yield up life and possessions for definite ideal ends, for his country, for freedom, for religion, for science. But it has never come to pass, and never will, that people shall renounce a thing solely to increase the sum of happiness of the world." This objection overlooks the fact that the principle of the valuation of an act that is regarded as good need not be the motive to this act. The thought and feeling of the person acting may stop very properly at country, freedom, or any other ideal object, without the person's instituting any formal reflections whatsoever with regard to the reasons of the value of the ideal ends for which he sacrifices himself. But in systematic ethics or in practical cases of doubt we inquire what value and importance love of country, freedom, poetry, and science possess for human life. If, for example, freedom were not a good for a people, the individual would do wrong to sacrifice his life for it. It is never of course a question of the abstract notion of welfare of and in itself, just as in a single theoretical problem it is never a question of the abstract idea of cause. But in ethics we lay down the principle of welfare and in the theory of knowledge the principle of causality; endeavoring, thus, to go back through analysis to the final assumptions of our practical and theoretical intellectual activity.
3) It is no argument against the principle of welfare that pleasure must be so often bought with pain. Pain is in that case only the necessary transitional step, and the significance of the principle of welfare is precisely the requirement it makes that the duty of demonstration shall rest on those who maintain the necessity of such an intermediary step. Any infliction of pain must be supplied with a motive, whereas the feeling of pleasure in and of itself (that is if its causes do not at the same time produce additional painful effects) is justified. The principle of welfare simply says: Produce by thy conduct as much pleasure and as little pain as is possible! The degree to which it is possible to realise this demand, of this the principle in and of itself says nothing. A principle is not subverted by the difficulties of its application.
As experience teaches, there is a happiness that is not bought too dearly with pain. Clara's song in Goethe's "Egmont":
"Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrÜbt!"
has been cited in disproof of the principle of welfare. But let us hear Clara to the end and note the last line of the song, in which she gives the result of the entire train of her emotion. She says:
"GlÜcklich allein ist die Seele die liebt!"
The phenomenon is this. There is a movement of the heart and mind, a life of feeling, which are joined with a satisfaction so deep and great that the powerful oscillation between pleasure and pain does not destroy the total feeling of happiness, but strengthens it. Two psychological factors co-operate here. The one is, that the pain (the dis-pleasure or grief), unless it transcends a certain degree, forms the background of the pleasurable feeling and is thereby able to intensify the latter. In this very fact a sufficient motive lies to choose conditions of this sort in preference to such as do not stand so high in intensity but are nevertheless conditions of more unmixed pleasure. The other factor is, that there can be an element of attraction even in grief, simply because intense life, powerful movement, and the straining of faculties that come with it, produce of themselves satisfaction. All exertion of power which is not out of proportion is connected with a feeling of pleasure. The feeling of pleasure that accompanies grief and anxiety asserts itself in the fact that we do not wish to be transported out of it. An important element here is also the organic process connected with every powerful state of mind (the effect of the condition of the brain on the circulation of the blood, on breathing, and on the organs of digestion), granting that it is not the whole cause.
When Auguste Comte lost the woman who exerted so decisive an influence on the direction of his mind in the last period of his life, he said once in an outburst of sorrow evoked by her memory: "I owe it to thee alone that I shall not leave this life without having known in a worthy manner the best emotion of human nature…. Amid the severest pains that this emotion can bring with it I have never ceased to feel that the true condition of happiness is, to have filled the heart—though it be with pain, aye with bitterest pain."
Auguste Comte and Clara are accordingly quite in agreement, and the ethics of welfare is in agreement with them both. If we desire to be wholly secure against pain and anxiety, then we dare not love anything. But what if love were the greatest happiness, even though it brought as much sorrow again with it! With powerful action and great fulness of life come also great costs, great contrasts, and great vibrations. Yet who has said that the highest was to be had for little expenditure?
The feeling of pleasure is the only psychological criterion of health and power of life. That which in all its immediate or remote effects in all the creatures that it touches produces only pleasurable feeling, cannot possibly be condemned. Welfare, therefore, in the sense of permanent pleasurable feeling, is the final test-principle of action. Pain is everywhere the sign of an incipient dissolution of life.[124] This is exhibited in the simplest manner in the "physical" pain that arises through the tearing of organic tissue. But it also holds true of the "mental" pain that arises from anxiety, doubt, or repentance. It points to a disharmony between the different forces and impulses of the mind, a disharmony that can lead to the dissolution of consciousness. If pain is a necessary intermediary step, the fact is partly founded in the two psychological laws above mentioned, partly also in the circumstance that it means the dissolution of something in us that impedes a more free and more varied development of life. Childbirth is accompanied with pain because the new life can only come into the world at the cost of the old. Analogously the knowledge of truth is often gained with pain because prejudices and illusions must first be shattered. In the pain of repentance a lower self is dissolved in order that a new and higher self may develop.
[124] Compare my Psychology (Danish edition, pp. 315-318; German edition, pp. 343-347).
4) A circumstance that has especially fostered the opposition to the principle of welfare is undoubtedly the tendency to think exclusively, in connection with the expression 'pleasurable feeling,' of the most elementary sensual forms of pleasure. The latter are not excluded by the principle of welfare; the principle, however, takes all the aspects of human character into consideration, maintaining that permanent pleasurable feeling is not to be established with certainty if an essential aspect of this character is neglected. The defect of elementary feelings of pleasure is that for the great part they correspond to only momentary and limited relations.
A being whose feeling is of a purely elementary kind can maintain itself as long as the simple conditions of life to which it is adapted do not change. Thus some of the lowest animal forms like the infusoria and rhizopods appear to have existed throughout infinitely long periods of time in exactly their present condition. Here the adaptation to the given conditions is as good as perfect. The same may be the case with beings that at an earlier stage of their development have possessed more developed organs and forms. Animals that live free in their youth, afterwards however as parasites, lead a purely elementary life and lose all the nerves and muscles that do not directly subserve this form of existence. This is also true of man. Of the Fuegians, whose wretched existence (wretched in our eyes) he portrays in vivid colors in his "Journey Around the World," Darwin says: "There is no reason for believing that the Fuegians are diminishing in number; we must therefore assume that they enjoy a sufficient measure of happiness (of whatever character this may be) to give life value in their eyes. Nature, which makes habit an irresistible power and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the products of his wretched country." Primitive peoples of a higher type even (and not only primitive peoples) afford examples of an adaptation to conditions which excludes all motives to change and progress. It is dire necessity that has brought man into the path of progress. Where such a compulsion does not operate human emotional life is conditioned by a narrow sphere of relations only and is therefore itself narrow and restricted. Perhaps more complete, more unmixed satisfaction can be obtained here than would be possible under more manifold and more complicated circumstances. A small vessel may be fuller than a large one although it holds less.[125]
[125] Fieri potest, ut vas aliquod minus majore plenius sit, quamvis liquoris minus contineat. Cartesius, Epistola iv, Ad principem Palatinam de sita beata.
It might perhaps be objected to the principle of welfare, that we should really be obliged, in consistency with it, to make ourselves all little vessels, and that agreeably to the principle an existence limited to the primitive necessities of life and to purely elementary feelings, would stand just as high as a life taken up with intellectual labor and the activity of culture, or even higher, since an existence of the latter kind could scarcely be accompanied with so unmixed and secure a well-being, but would be united with trials and efforts constantly renewed and with unrest ever recurring. If—as it might be suggested—an existence like that of the Fuegians appears poor and wretched to us, since they often suffer from scarcity and want, let us take another example. Alexander von Humboldt came across a tribe in South America that lived from banana trees,—trees so fruitful that an acre of land planted with them would supply food for fifty human beings. The trees require no real expenditure of labor; only the earth about their roots must be broken with implements once or twice a year. The consequence is that the tribe is stupid and uncivilised. But the wants that it has are satisfied.
That which would make such a life unendurable for us, the strong desire for activity, development, and progress, this desire does not exist at such stages. It is,—a fact that must be remarked,—itself a consequence of development and progress.
Whereas Lamarck assumed an inner, innate impulse to development in all living creatures,[126] Darwin maintains, on the ground of experience, that development is invariably introduced by the influence of external causes. It was a difficulty to Lamarck how the very lowest forms of life could continue their existence, why they had not long since developed to higher stages. In Darwin's theory, which takes into consideration the external conditions of development, there is no difficulty on this point. A development that is favored in no way by external circumstances is simply impossible. As regards human beings, the anthropologist Th. Waitz has clearly proved, that the impulse and desire of development is itself a product of development. To this effect he speaks in his treatise "The Indians of North America," page 69: "A people without intercourse and not in competition with other peoples, a people which supplies its natural wants with relative ease or only by overcoming long accustomed difficulties regarded as inevitable, directly from its natural environment, and that feels satisfied therewith and lives a happy life: from such a people it is not to be expected that it will make any endeavors to civilise itself. He that has what he needs and therefore feels satisfied in all respects, will not work; people do not civilise themselves voluntarily in following some noble instinct of the heart. Is it different in fact in our modern society? Is not a long period of schooling and culture previously necessary to instil in man an interest for work as work? How many are there among the so-called learned and cultured that make endeavors in behalf of the education of themselves and others without they are required!"
[126] The theory of Lamarck is made the subject of an interesting criticism by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology, Part iii, Chap. 3.
It is peculiar to the state of nature in contrast to the state of civilisation, (in so far as a distinct contrast may be asserted,) that in the former the impulse to change of manner of life and thought must come from without, whereas in the latter an impulse to progress operates which be it now powerful be it now feeble never ceases entirely to operate. This difference is analogous to that that prevails between inorganic and organic existence. It is the peculiar character of an organism that the play of forces is preserved in it with a certain independence of the effects of the moment and of its immediate environment. So in civilised peoples an impulse is aroused to change life in all directions, to differentiate, to shape it, and to bring it to a point in every single direction. Spiritual antennÆ are grown which are in never ceasing movement. Through this a new species of feeling also is possible, a feeling that is determined not only by the definite ends that are attained but which links itself with the work, with the activity itself which is requisite to the acquisition of these ends. Man is thereby become more independent and more free, and his mental life, especially his emotional life, has gained in depth and intensity, it now being no longer determined merely by the external world, but essentially by the forces that are awakened in the inner world. Now ideal, and not merely elementary feelings act, and higher demands are made in life.
What I wish to maintain here is that the rise of the impulse to development is in perfect accord with the principle of welfare. That stability of the "state of nature" which now appears to us wretched now paradisian, is itself dependent on the stability of external conditions. Absolute stability, however, is not found in nature. If the immediate surroundings do not change, changes yet occur in other localities of nature and among other creatures, and the struggle for existence then either causes them to perish or to change in a corresponding manner. The beings that have changed by adaptation will obtain a decided advantage in the struggle for life over those that have remained stationary. This is the fate of many primitive peoples, or indeed civilised peoples, that have remained stationary or in a low state of culture. Extinction awaits them when a higher civilisation approaches.
What is true of peoples and races also holds good for individuals. A perfect adaptation to limited circumstances always involves a danger,—the danger that the individual when its conditions of life are changed and its horizon is enlarged will lack the inner conditions necessary to self-assertion. Childish naÏvetÉ, dreaming phantasy, sensual enjoyment, have each their rights, but they easily lead to a condition of somnambulism; security and happiness are always precarious here, and on awakening the greatest helplessness may take their place. Here, let us add, we leave entirely out of consideration the fact that such a condition often exists only at the cost of other individuals.
Welfare, accordingly, cannot be conceived as a passive state of things produced once for all and that is not itself in turn the point of departure of new and progressive development. Welfare, in the highest conception of it, must consist of a condition in which power is gathered and rich possibilities gained for the future, and which generates an impulse to frame new ends and to begin new endeavors. It is a condition that is desirable in and of itself as well as one that contains the germ of new desirable conditions,—a condition therefore that is not only an end but also a means, that has value not only as effect but also as cause. The feeling of pleasure is here directly bound up with activity, work, development, the unfolding of forces themselves, and not merely with the result that is obtained by the employment of the forces. Where such feeling of pleasure is possible there much suffering is endurable that at a lower stage would be the sign of the dissolution of all life. Expectation and longing, privation and disappointment will not be lacking; they will accompany with definite rhythmical alternation the joyful advancement toward the aim that man has set himself; but amid all oscillations the fundamental direction and the fundamental activity will be asserted. We will not work to live, we will not live to work; but in work will we find life.
This is the ideal that the principle of welfare holds up to us when thoroughly reasoned out. In how far it can be realised is a question that can only be answered experimentally for the time and the individual in question. It demands not only a change of the nature of individuals but also of the relations of society. The essential thing however is, that we here have a criterion by which we are able to test actions and institutions. This criterion corresponds to a tendency that leads throughout all organic nature, in that pleasure as a rule means life and progress, pain, retrogression and death. The principle of welfare asserts the right of life: every creature has the right to exist, to develop, and to obtain its full satisfaction, unless greater pain is thereby produced to itself or to others. The ethics that builds upon the principle of welfare seeks accordingly to continue the evolution of nature in a conscious and harmonious manner. It demands that means be found which the unconscious development of nature have not supplied, and it strives to mitigate or to exclude the unnecessary pain which the struggle for existence brings with it. It embraces a series of problems from compassionate alleviation and assistance up to the highest social, intellectual, and Æsthetical endeavors. It is the business of special ethics to treat these questions in detail.
5) From the fact, however, that welfare, properly understood, consists in activity and development, it does not follow that vice versa activity and development are always joined with welfare or lead to welfare. Because limitation of wants does not always lead to the aim set, unlimited variety of wants is not necessarily the proper state. Civilisation can assume forms and enter on paths that do not harmonise with the principle of welfare. We find in history accordingly, at times, distinct and decisive warnings against existing civilisations. Thus it was in Greece on the part of Socrates, the Cynics, and the Stoics, in the eighteenth century on the part of Rousseau, and in our day on the part of Leo TolstoÏ. The opposition of such great minds should surely make us watchful.
I leave out of consideration here the question in how far that which we call civilisation can be imparted to a people forthwith. The capacity for civilisation has, it is true, been prematurely and overhastily denied many primitive peoples.[127] But it is not therefore necessarily a good thing for a people to give up the forms of life that it has developed by its own fortunes and endeavors to allow itself to be regulated in accordance with forms and ideals that have been developed under entirely different circumstances. Thus directly, even the best-founded and most perfect civilisation cannot be communicated. Waitz who expressly maintains that no proof has been brought forward of the Indian's incapacity for civilisation, praises nevertheless the Indian chieftains who oppose the obtrusion of civilisation on their people, for their love to their people and their just comprehension of its true well-being.
[127] Compare my article in the International Journal of Ethics, No. I. p. 60.
The reason why conflict can arise between civilisation and welfare lies in the restiveness and restlessness of the aspirations of civilisation. It is the same with it as with that spontaneous, involuntary impulse to movement that leads to the use of forces and of the members merely because sufficient energy is present, without their use being guided by the consideration of a more valuable end, so that the results are accidental. The effort that goes with civilisation may lead in part to over-exertion, to an overstraining of forces; in part (in the case of extreme differentiation) to a one-sided direction of effort; and partly to isolation, to the fragmentary elimination of individual activities. In the single individual certain faculties are fostered (in the one intelligence, in the other physical power for work) at the cost of other faculties; the harmony, the capacity of feeling oneself as totality and unity is lacking. By such one-sidedness the individual becomes of value only as a wheel in a great machine: he serves merely as a means, not as an end. And such a one-sided individual development is connected with a one-sided social development. The suppression of certain features of the nature of the individual goes hand in hand with the suppression of single estates and classes of society. If we identify civilisation and ethics, without qualification, and regard progress as a safer criterion than welfare, we should overlook the fact that there exists also a social question. The social question is an ethical question and at the same time a question of the correction of civilisation,—both by means of the principle of welfare. Would it be right that the products of material and ideal civilisation should only fall to the share of a small minority, while all the rest should not be able to participate therein? This would clash completely with the ideal of society that flows from the principle of welfare. For the greatest welfare is present when every single individual so develops himself in an independent manner that just by this independent development of his own he assists others to a similar development from their point of view. Then does there exist a harmonious society of independent personalities. The idea of such a society is the highest ethical idea that flows from the principle of welfare. Every individual is then a little world for himself and yet stands in the most intimate reciprocal connection with the great world of which he is a part. The individual serves the race and the race serves the individual. Every position of isolation, every inequality in the distribution of possessions and of employments must be founded in the demands of the various circumstances and problems of life, and the faculties and impulses of each individual shall be developed as fully and richly as is compatible with the conditions of life of the whole race.
6) It follows from the considerations presented, that it is by no means always easy to apply the principle of welfare in individual cases. The particular relations of the affairs in question can be so complicated that we are not able to take a broad survey of them and foresee the results of our interference. We cannot deduce a priori from the principle of welfare any system of particular acts, any determinate order of society, any civilisation. Its value (like that of the principle of causality in the theoretical field) is to present and to formulate problems, and to serve as a guide to their treatment. It is regulative, not constructive. It presumes the immediate involuntary life of the individual and of society, and its function does not begin until the conscious discussion and treatment occurs of the value on the one hand of that which has thus been developed, and on the other of the manner in which the development shall be conducted in the future. All ethics thus acquires an historical character. We never—either in our own individuality or in society—commence from the very beginning, but are always obliged to start with a definite foundation and to work our way further under the guidance of the principles and ideals that spring from our nature.
III.
1) In the previous remarks I have essayed a discussion of the principle of welfare which may perhaps make clearer what was not so distinct in my former expositions ("Ethik," Chapters III and VII). The difficulty always occurs in the enunciation of a principle, that a direct demonstration of its validity cannot be given. Of so much greater significance is it then if an indirect proof can be adduced by showing that the very ones who contest it are themselves forced to employ it and actually to employ it without being aware of it.
I maintain now that Dr. Paul Carus in his book "The Ethical Problem," in which he combats the principle of welfare, has not been able to avoid giving such an indirect confirmation of the validity of this principle. Before attempting to show this in detail I shall make a few remarks concerning the criticism of my "Ethics" which Dr. Carus wrote in the first number of The Monist, and which in an abbreviated form is also embodied in the treatise above mentioned.
Dr. Carus thinks that I have practically surrendered the principle of welfare when I define welfare to consist in activity. His words are:
"If welfare is to be interpreted as activity, work, development; if this kind of active welfare is the greatest good, whatever admixture of pain and whatever absence of pleasurable feeling it may have; if the greatest amount of a state of continuous pleasurable feeling is not welfare in an ethical sense, what becomes of the utilitarian definition of welfare as pleasurable feeling? If, however, welfare is 'the state of a continuous pleasurable feeling,' how can we declare that the life of a pessimistic philosopher is preferable to that of a joyful fool?"
To this I answer, that if it could be proved that increasing pain followed necessarily on all advancement of civilisation (without this pain being compensated for, as Clara's philosophy demanded, by new and proportionately greater feelings of pleasure), in that case it would be impossible to combine civilisation and welfare. But only a pessimistic dogmatism—which is just as current in the atmosphere of to-day as optimistic dogmatism—could assert this. What experience teaches us is this, that we find ourselves amid a development, in a line of tendencies the final results of which we cannot foresee but which hitherto have evoked at many points new forces and have thereby opened new sources of satisfaction. Everything that arouses our greatest and most permanent pleasurable feeling has arisen within this development. This justifies our courage and our hope in behalf of further progress, although conflict and pain will as we may foresee not be wanting, and although the way leads through many deserts. Experience alone can show how far we shall be able to get. I agree with Dr. Carus that "this world of ours is not a world suited to the taste of a pleasure-seeker," if we understand by pleasure passive sensual enjoyment, an enjoyment which is not united with the rest and nourishment with which not only an immediate pleasurable feeling is connected but whereby power is also gathered for continued endeavor. If so many pleasure-seekers go through life without having their eyes opened to its true significance and purpose, this fact is precisely one of the things that clash with the principle of welfare, for the latter claims all faculties and powers, and demands that they that sleep be awakened,—that is if they really possess useful faculties. For perhaps the "joyful fool" cannot accomplish more than he does. Wherefore then disturb him, if his pleasure harms neither himself nor others and if his awakening will only lead to unrest and pain for himself and perhaps also for others? I pointed out the fact in my "Ethics,"[128] that we can determine by the principle of welfare alone in what cases we are to destroy a state of equilibrium or shatter an illusion.
[128] Danish edition, p. 94. German edition, p. 109.
I have admitted the possibility of a conflict between civilisation and welfare. Wherever such a conflict arises, there, according to my conception, appears an ethical problem, which must be determined by the principle of welfare, since any order of things or any development that brought with it permanent and everlasting pain would be in effect a dissolution of life itself. Such pain, however, (as even pessimistic philosophers are optimistic enough to hope,) would destroy the will to live. If we live in spite of pain it is because there is always a surplus of satisfaction.
I give the idea of welfare no arbitrary extension when I deny that it should be limited to denote a passive condition produced once for all time. For our nature is at no stage wholly complete; no one condition can stand therefore as definitive. The future, and the new horizons opened, will make new demands on our capacities and our will, and in the testing of any state of things it must accordingly be a necessary point of view to establish whether in addition to the direct satisfaction which it probably affords it at the same time prepares the capacities and the possibilities of a continued development answering to the new relations. It may be necessary to choose some arduous employment which later necessarily brings with it long continued rest and inactivity. Darwin's struggle with his feeble health is a good example. The man who from love of country or to save a fellow-being risks his life, prefers the active satisfaction of a single moment (the satisfaction, namely, which he feels beforehand at the thought of saving his country or a human life) to the passive joys of years and years. It was such a moment in which Faust saw himself living in mind
"Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volk"
and which thereby made life of value to him, which all the earthly gratifications that the demon was able to obtain for him could not accomplish. In the face of the pleasure that such a moment can produce the thought of pain and death vanishes. Thus alone is self-sacrifice psychologically intelligible.
2) While I cannot see that Dr. Carus has pointed out a contradiction in my theory of welfare, I may further assert that he himself cannot without a self-contradiction escape recognising the principle of welfare. Dr. Carus indeed, in a certain sense, himself enunciates this very principle. He says, in the preface to "The Ethical Problem," page iii, "The aim of ethics is neither the welfare of self nor that of other individuals, but of those interests that are superindividual." The aim therefore is to be welfare, not however the welfare of individuals but of "superindividual interests." This strange expression is defined in certain subsequent passages of the book. Dr. Carus speaks, namely, later on, of "that superindividual soul-life which we call society."[129] It is admitted in this, that when we speak of welfare we speak impliedly of soul-life. But how can we give to society as such a soul-life that is different from the soul-life of the single individuals that have their existence simultaneously and successively in that society? This is merely a mythical and mystical personification of society, which may have arisen in the comparison, in many respects instructive, between society and an organism, which however can possess at best a poetical, but no scientific, value. The idea of society, if it is to be scientifically employed, must always be so applied that at every point the definite group of individuals which it represents may be established. The great importance of this idea consists in the fact that it expresses the common and permanent interests of individuals simultaneously and successively existing, in opposition to the interests of single individuals, or of a smaller group, or of a limited period of time. Ethical perception, (unless it starts from the point of view of egoistical individualism,) must apply its test from the point of view of society. It leads in this case to the consideration of our own and others' actions not only with respect to our own individual circumstances but sub specie Æterni so to speak, that is with respect to their relation to the great whole of which not only we, but also other human beings are parts. Along with the educative power of authorities, it is due to the sympathy in virtue of which the individual causes to re-echo in his own bosom the feelings of others, that ethical ideals have been formed in the human mind. But as soon as it is made impossible to transpose the idea of society into the idea of individuals that live under certain definite conditions, this idea contains no instruction for us in ethical respects. No ethical norms can in this case be deduced from it. Emotional mysticism takes the place of ethical thought and volition.
[129] Pages 33, 38, and 40.
Such a mysticism has of course its value. Powerful emotion leads naturally to a state in which all definite ideas recede, the mind becoming entirely occupied by emotional feeling. It will furthermore be difficult to represent by any adequate conception the great multitude of human characters on which our conduct in given circumstances can acquire decisive influence. The expression 'society,' or 'race,' characterises very well the unconcluded and the unsurveyable in so many of the consequences of human methods of action and order of life, and it will therefore not be possible to dispense with it. But transposition into concrete conceptions must always be possible. A welfare that at one or another stage is not the welfare of definite individuals is a self-contradiction, and any act that at one period or another does not lead to the welfare of definite individuals has no value.
In Wundt's "Ethics," pages 429 to 431, the same line of thought is found as this of Dr. Carus. Public well-being and progress, according to Wundt, do not consist in the well-being of the greatest possible number of individuals: for the individual is ephemeral! "However richly blest and however perfect the individual existence may be, it is but a drop in the ocean of life. What can individual happiness and individual pain mean to the world?" I should say to this: Yes, it is true, the ocean does not exist for the sake of the individual drops; but what is an ocean that does not consist of drops? And is not the whole ocean clear if every single drop is clear? And only then is it wholly clear.
Just as there are people who cannot see the woods for the trees, so there are also people who cannot see the trees for the woods. In ethics this method of conception leads to the consideration of human aspiration as the means of superhuman ends. Every ethics that seeks to stand on a basis of experience and remain within the possibility of progressive verification, must cling to the standpoint of "man with men." It need not for this reason overlook the fact, that ethical conduct, like all unfolding of power, is connected with the universal world-process.
3) Dr. Carus also approaches the principle of welfare upon another, less mystical path. He maintains, with great emphasis, that ethics must be based on facts, on insight into the real, the actual, order of nature. Our ideals—this is the opinion of Dr. Carus—arise through the wants which the relations of reality awaken in us, and must be realised by the means which the relations of reality supply.
"The new ethics is based upon facts and is applied to facts" (p. 18).
"Man wants something, so he conceives the idea how good it would be if he had it…. Only by studying facts will he be enabled to realise his ideals" (pp. 19 and 20).
"If you wish to exist, obey reason. Reason teaches us how to regulate our actions in conformity with the order of natural laws. If we do regulate them in conformity with the order of natural laws, they will stand; otherwise not. In the former case they will be good, they will agree with the cosmical conditions of existence; in the latter case they are bad, they will not agree with the cosmical conditions of existence; therefore they will necessarily produce disorder and evil" (pp. 31, 32).
It appears to me clear from this, that the reason why we must regulate our actions to conform with natural laws, must be the fact that otherwise they cannot "stand," which is explained more in detail in what follows, to mean that they are constituted to produce "disorder and evil,"—which in its turn must be surely understood as meaning that disorder is itself an evil. If disorder were no evil, and if no further evils resulted from actions which are not "in conformity with the order of natural laws," what foundation would Dr. Carus in that case be able to give his ethics? I wholly agree with Dr. Carus that our conduct if it is to be ethical must support itself upon as profound a comprehension of the relations of reality as physical science, psychology, and social science alone can furnish. But this requirement can only be made good through and by the principle of welfare. It has validity only for the person who wills that his conduct shall "stand" and produce no evil, either in extended or in limited circles. If pain and death were not evils, this requirement would have no validity.
To judge from his somewhat indefinite expressions one might suspect in Dr. Carus here a votary of egoistic hedonism, were it not that a number of other passages in his book exclude this suspicion.
However, it seems quite clear to me that his final criterion must coincide with the principle of welfare. His ethics is an ethics of expediency, in that his ultimate criterion is the influence of actions on the life of mankind.
4) Dr. Carus justly emphasises the relation of ethics to our world-conception at large. But this connection does not mean that ethics can be derived by deduction from a philosophical system previously given. Ethics is an independent discipline which starts from its own peculiar assumptions (which cannot of course stand in contradiction to other established assumptions), although it is obliged to make much use of the results furnished by other sciences. Ethics has an independent foundation in the laws of feeling and volitional life, just as the theory of knowledge has its foundation in the laws of sensations and perceptions. In conformity with the law of economy, (which must prevail in science even though it should not prevail in nature,) we must restrict the established postulates of the single sciences to the least possible limit. If after doing this agreement between the single sciences finally occurs, this result will be all the more valuable.
According to Dr. Carus ethics is to be derived now from a philosophical total world-conception, as according to his view ("The Ethical Problem," p. 71) it originally arose through the influence of the positive religions.[130] Very weighty objections can be made in my opinion against this latter assumption. It is a fact that the lower a religion stands the less ethical character it possesses, and the very lowest religions it is probable possess no ethical value whatever. The question then arises how religion gradually acquired its ethical character. The ethical ideas which were perceived in the nature of the deity must have had a natural origin, and this origin can be sought only in the life of man with men. The ethical norms and ideas developed themselves here spontaneously and have been just as spontaneously projected or hypostatised as the attributes of divinity. In the history of the religion of Greece we can see clearly exhibited the development of gods as powers of nature to gods as the expression of an ethical order of nature. Compare for instance, the DodonÆan and the Homeric Zeus with the Zeus that appears in the ideal belief of Æschylus. The experiences are made in human life that lead to the formation of divine ideals. Gods grow better and more gentle according as men themselves grow better and gentler. Religious conceptions are idealised experiences. If religion is a factor in the development of ethics it is because man conceives and represents his essential ideals in a religious form. The movement proceeds therefore from experience to experience; that which acts on nature is, as Shakespeare says, always an art that has been produced by nature itself. How could man understand the meaning of the ethical qualities attributed to his deities if he were not acquainted to some extent with these qualities through experience?
[130] Dr. Carus expresses himself differently in The Open Court (1890, p. 2549), where religion and ethics are called twins; whereas in The Ethical Problem the latter is the daughter of the former.
That which distinguishes philosophical from theological ethics is not the fact that the former is constructed on the basis of some philosophical system and the latter upon ecclesiastical dogmatism, but the fact that philosophical ethics brings out into full consciousness the psychological basis upon which ethical life has actually always more or less indirectly builded, and draws all the consequences implied in this. In this it furnishes an independent contribution to a philosophical system.
5) It seems to me to be perfectly justified, that the distinguished men who lead the Ethical Societies keep these institutions as independent as possible not only of all definite dogmatic tendency of thought but also of all unnecessary philosophical hypotheses and speculations. With respect to what concerns the first principles of ethics itself, it is not necessary for the practical ethicist to occupy any definite point of view, although it would be very fortunate if he were acquainted with the discussion of these principles and could take part in an independent manner in the same. He who proposes to teach applied mathematics or employ it in practice need not begin with a definite position with respect to the nature and origin of mathematical principles. So also in ethics there is a complete group of ideas and endeavors which are independent of the manner in which the first principles are conceived. The essential thing for the Ethical Societies is, (as Dr. Stanton Coit has said in his beautiful book "Die Ethische Bewegung in der Religion,") agreement as to the methods of development of character and as to the type of character to be developed.
Dr. Carus can have really nothing to object to in this method of conception, inasmuch as it is his conviction that in the passage from the supernatural to the natural establishment of ethics the "substance of our morality" will not be changed. In an article in The Open Court, at page 2575, he says: "The most important moral rules are not to be altered…. Some of them will be altered as little as our arithmetical table can be changed." In this passage less importance for the contents of ethics is attributed to the various points of view than I should be obliged to assign. Yet all the sooner should Dr. Carus really admit that the Ethical Societies have added to their other services that of holding a proper course between the different dogmatic and philosophical systems.
6) This last dispute it appears to me also testifies to the expediency of distinguishing between the different ethical problems. By so doing Dr. Carus would also have been more just in his position with regard to utilitarianism. The latter has not arisen so much from the impulse to supply a motive for ethical conduct as from the impulse to acquire an absolute criterion. It is true the powerful influence of Hobbes and Locke brought it about that many of the later utilitarians embraced the egoistic theory; but by their side marched another group of utilitarian ethicists (among the earlier, Bacon, Cumberland, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson) who did not subscribe to this theory. So far as I know, Hutcheson was the first with whom the formula occurs: "The greatest happiness of the greatest number." These very historical facts show how important it is in the treatment of ethical problems to apply the maxim "Divide et impera!" I have therefore prefaced this my apology for the principle of welfare by calling attention to the relative and mutual independence of ethical problems.
