Object of Part Two and of Present Chapter.—From the history of morals, we turn to the theoretical analysis of reflective morality. We are concerned to discover (1) just what in conduct it is that we judge good and evil, right and wrong (conduct being a complicated thing); (2) what we mean by good and evil, right and wrong; (3) on what basis we apply these conceptions to their appropriate objects in conduct. But before we attempt these questions, we must detect and identify the moral situation, the situation in which considerations of good and evil, right and wrong, present themselves and are employed. For some situations we employ the ideas of true and false; of beautiful and ugly; of skilful and awkward; of economical and wasteful, etc. We may indeed apply the terms right and wrong to these same situations; but if so, it is to them in some other light. What then are the differentiating traits, the special earmarks, presented by the situation which we identify as distinctively moral? For we use the term moral in a broad sense to designate that which is either moral or immoral: i.e., right or wrong in the narrower sense. It is the moral situation in the broad sense as distinct from the non-moral, not from the immoral, that we are now concerned with.

The Moral Situation Involves Voluntary Activity.—It will be admitted on all hands that the moral situation is one which, whatever else it may or may not be, involves a voluntary factor. Some of the chief traits of voluntary activity we have already become acquainted with, as in the account by Aristotle, already noted (ante, p. 12). The agent must know what he is about; he must have some idea of what he is doing; he must not be a somnambulist, or an imbecile, or insane, or an infant so immature as to have no idea of what he is doing. He must also have some wish, some desire, some preference in the matter. A man overpowered by superior force might be physically compelled by some ingenious device to shoot a gun at another, knowing what he was doing, but his act would not be voluntary because he had no choice in the matter, or rather because his preference was not to do the act which he is aware he is doing. But if he is ordered to kill another and told if he does not he will himself be killed, he has some will in the matter. He may do the deed, not because he likes it or wishes it in itself, but because he wishes to save his own life. The attendant circumstances may affect our judgment of the kind and degree of morality attaching to the act; but they do not take it entirely out of the moral sphere.[104] Aristotle says the act must also be the expression of a disposition (a habit or ????), a more or less settled tendency on the part of the person. It must bear some relation to his character. Character is not, we may say, a third factor, It is making clear what is implied in deliberation and wish. There may be little deliberation in a child's act and little in an adult's, and yet we may regard the latter as much more voluntary than the child's. With the child, the thought is superficial and casual, because of the restricted stage of organization or growth reached (see p. 10): his act flows from organic instinct or from accidental circumstances—whim, caprice, and chance suggestion, or fancy. The adult's act may flow from habitual tendencies and be accompanied by an equally small amount of conscious reflection. But the tendencies themselves are the outcome of prior deliberations and choices which have finally got funded into more or less automatic habits. The child's act is to a slight extent the expression of character; the adult's to a large extent. In short, we mean by character whatever lies behind an act in the way of deliberation and desire, whether these processes be near-by or remote.

Not Everything Voluntary is Morally Judged.—A voluntary act may then be defined as one which manifests character, the test of its presence being the presence of desire and deliberation; these sometimes being present directly and immediately, sometimes indirectly and remotely through their effects upon the agent's standing habits. But we do not judge all voluntary activity from the moral standpoint. Some acts we judge from the standpoint of skill or awkwardness; others as amusing or boring; others as stupid or highly intelligent, and so on. We do not bring to bear the conceptions of right and wrong. And on the other hand, there are many things called good and bad which are not voluntary. Since what we are in search of must lie somewhere between these two limits, we may begin with cases of the latter sort.

(1) Not Everything Judged Good or Right is Moral.—We speak, for example, of an ill-wind; of a good engine; of a watch being wrong; or of a screw being set right. We speak of good and bad bread, money, or soil. That is, from the standpoint of value, we judge things as means to certain results in themselves desirable or undesirable. A "good" machine does efficiently the work for which it is designed; "bad" money does not subserve the ends which money is meant to promote; the watch that is wrong comes short of telling us time correctly. We have to use the notion of value and of contribution to value; that is a positive factor. But this contribution to valuable result is not, in inanimate objects, something meant or intended by the things themselves. If we thought the ill-wind had an idea of its own destructive effect and took pleasure in that idea, we should attribute moral quality to it—just as men did in early times, and so tried to influence its behavior in order to make it "good." Among things that promote favorable or unfavorable results a line is drawn between those which just do so as matter of fact, and those in which meaning so to do, or intention, plays a part.

(2) Good in Animal Conduct.—Let us now consider the case of good and bad animal conduct. We speak of a good watch-dog; of a bad saddle-horse, and the like. Moreover, we train the dog and the horse to the right or desired kind of action. We make, we repair the watch; but we do not train it. Training involves a new factor: enlistment of the animal's tendencies; of its own conscious attitudes and reactions. We pet, we reward by feeding, we punish and threaten. By these means we induce animals to exercise in ways that form the habits we want. We modify the animal's behavior by modifying its own impulses. But we do not give moral significance to the good and bad, for we are still thinking of means to ends. We do not suppose that we have succeeded in supplying the hunting dog, for example, with ideas that certain results are more excellent than others, so that henceforth he acts on the basis of his own discrimination of the less and the more valuable. We just induce certain habits by managing to make certain ways of acting feel more agreeable than do others. Thus James says: "Whether the dog has the notion of your being angry or of your property being valuable in any such abstract way as we have these notions, is more than doubtful. The conduct is more likely an impulsive result of a conspiracy of outward stimuli; the beast feels like acting so when these stimuli are present, though conscious of no definite reason why"[105] (Psychology, Vol. II., p. 350, note). Or putting it the other way: if the dog has an idea of the results of guarding the house, and is controlled in what he does by loyalty to this idea, by the satisfaction which he takes in it, then in calling the dog good we mean that in being good for a certain result, he is also morally good.

(3) Non-moral Human Acts.—There are also acts evoked by an idea of value in the results to be reached, which are not judged as coming within the moral sphere. "Conduct is three-fourths of life," but in some sense it is more: it is four-fourths. All conscious human life is concerned with ends, and with selecting, arranging, and employing the means, intellectual, emotional, and practical, involved in these ends. This makes conduct. But it does not follow that all conduct has moral import. "As currently conceived, stirring the fire, reading a newspaper, or eating a meal, are acts with which morality has no concern. Opening the window to air the room, putting on an overcoat when the weather is cold, are thought of as having no ethical significance. These, however, are all portions of conduct" (Spencer, Principles of Ethics, Vol. I., p. 5). They all involve the idea of some result worth reaching, and the putting forth of energy to reach the result—of intelligently selected and adapted means. But this may leave the act morally indifferent—innocent.

Introduction of Moral Factor.—A further quotation from Spencer may introduce discussion of the needed moral qualification:

This illustration suggests two differing types of conduct; two differing ways in which activity is induced and guided by ideas of valuable results. In one case the end presents itself directly as desirable, and the question is only as to the steps or means of achieving this end. Here we have conduct which, although excited and directed by considerations of value, is still morally indifferent. Such is the condition of things wherever one end is taken for granted by itself without any consideration of its relationship to other ends. It is then a technical rather than a moral affair. It is a question of taste and of skill—of personal preference and of practical wisdom, or of economy, expediency. There are many different roads to most results, and the selection of this path rather than that, on the assumption that either path actually leads to the end, is an intellectual, Æsthetic, or executive, rather than an ethical matter. I may happen to prefer a marine view to that of the uplands—that is an Æsthetic interest. I may wish to utilize the time of the walk for thinking, and may find the moor path less distracting; here is a matter of intellectual economy. Or I may conclude that I shall best get the exercise I want by going to the water fall. Here it is a question of "prudence," of expediency, or practical wisdom. Let any one of the ends, Æsthetic, intellectual, hygienic, stand alone and it is a fit and proper consideration. The moral issue does not arise. Or the various ends may be regarded as means to a further unquestioned end—say a walk with the maximum of combined Æsthetic interest and physical exercise.

(4) Criterion for Moral Factor.—But let the value of one proposed end be felt to be really incompatible with that of another, let it be felt to be so opposed as to appeal to a different kind of interest and choice, in other words, to different kinds of disposition and agency, and we have a moral situation. This is what occurs when one way of traveling means self-indulgence; another, kindliness or keeping an engagement. There is no longer one end, nor two ends so homogeneous that they may be reconciled by both being used as means to some more general end of undisputed worth. We have alternative ends so heterogeneous that choice has to be made; an end has to be developed out of conflict. The problem now becomes what is really valuable. It is the nature of the valuable, of the desirable, that the individual has to pass upon.[106]

Suppose a person has unhesitatingly accepted an end, has acquiesced in some suggested purpose. Then, starting to realize it, he finds the affair not so simple. He is led to review the matter and to consider what really constitutes worth for him. The process of attainment calls for toil which is disagreeable, and imposes restraints and abandonments of accustomed enjoyments. An Indian boy, for example, thinks it desirable to be a good rider, a skilful shot, a sagacious scout. Then he "naturally," as we say, disposes of his time and energy so as to realize his purpose. But in trying to become a "brave," he finds that he has to submit to deprivation and hardship, to forego other enjoyments and undergo arduous toil. He finds that the end does not mean in actual realization what it meant in original contemplation—something that often happens, for, as Goldsmith said: "In the first place, we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, nature cooks it for us."

This change in apparent worth raises a new question: Is the aim first set up of the value it seemed to be? Is it, after all, so important, so desirable? Are not other results, playing with other boys, convivial companionship, which are reached more easily and pleasantly, really more valuable? The labors and pains connected with the means employed to reach an end, have thrown another and incompatible end into consciousness. The individual no longer "naturally," but "morally," follows the selected end, whichever of the two it be, because it has been chosen after conscious valuation of competing aims.

Such competitions of values for the position of control of action are inevitable accompaniments of individual conduct, whether in civilized or in tribal life. A child, for example, finds that the fulfillment of an appetite of hunger is not only possible, but that it is desirable—that fulfillment brings, or is, satisfaction, not mere satiety. Later on, moved by the idea of this sort of value, he snatches at food. Then he is made aware of other sorts of values involved in the act performed—values incompatible with just the value at which he aimed. He brings down upon himself social disapproval and reproach. He is termed rude, unmannerly, greedy, selfish. He acted in accordance with an unhesitatingly accepted idea of value. But while reaching one result he accomplished also certain other results which he did not intend, results in the way of being thought ill of, results which are disagreeable: negative values. He is taught to raise the question of what, after all, in such cases is the really desirable or valuable. Before he is free to deliberate upon means, he has to form an estimate of the relative worth of various possible ends, and to be willing to forego one and select the other. The chapters on Hebrew and Greek moral development have shown this same process at work in the life of a people.

Summary and Definition.—If we sum up the three classes of instances thus far considered, we get the following defining traits of a moral situation, that is, of one which is an appropriate subject of determinations of right and wrong: Moral experience is (1) a matter of conduct, behavior; that is, of activities which are called out by ideas of the worth, the desirability of results. This evocation by an idea discriminates it from the so-called behavior of a pump, where there is no recognition of results; and from conduct attributed to the lower animals, where there are probably feelings and even dim imagery, but hardly ideas of the comparative desirability or value of various ends. Moral experience is (2) that kind of conduct in which there are ends so discrepant, so incompatible, as to require selection of one and rejection of the other. This perception of, and selection from, incompatible alternatives, discriminates moral experience from those cases of conduct which are called out and directed by ideas of value, but which do not necessitate passing upon the real worth, as we say, of the value selected. It is incompatibility of ends which necessitates consideration of the true worth of a given end; and such consideration it is which brings the experience into the moral sphere. Conduct as moral may thus be defined as activity called forth and directed by ideas of value or worth, where the values concerned are so mutually incompatible as to require consideration and selection before an overt action is entered upon.

End Finally at Issue.—Many questions about ends are in reality questions about means: the artist considers whether he will paint a landscape or a figure; this or that landscape, and so on. The general character of the end is unchanged: it is to paint. But let this end persist and be felt as desirable, as valuable; let at the same time an alternative end presents itself as also desirable (say keeping an engagement), so that the individual does not find any way of adjusting and arranging them into a common scheme (like doing first one and then the other), and the person has a moral problem on his hands. Which shall he decide for, and why? The appeal is to himself; what does he really think the desirable end? What makes the supreme appeal to him? What sort of an agent, of a person, shall he be? This is the question finally at stake in any genuinely moral situation: What shall the agent be? What sort of a character shall he assume? On its face, the question is what he shall do, shall he act for this or that end. But the incompatibility of the ends forces the issue back into the question of the kinds of selfhood, of agency, involved in the respective ends. The distinctively moral situation is then one in which elements of value and control are bound up with the processes of deliberation and desire; and are bound up in a peculiar way: viz., they decide what kind of a character shall control further desires and deliberations. When ends are genuinely incompatible, no common denominator can be found except by deciding what sort of character is most highly prized and shall be given supremacy.

The Moral and Indifferent Situations.—This criterion throws lights upon our earlier discussion of morally indifferent acts. Persons perform the greater bulk of their activities without any conscious reference to considerations of right and wrong, as any one may verify for himself by recollecting the general course of his activity on any ordinary day from the time he arises in the morning to the time he goes to bed at night. His deliberations and wants are mostly concerned with the ends involved in his regular vocation and recreations. But at any time the question of his character as concerned with what he is doing may arise for judgment. The person may later on realize that the type or kind of character which is to prevail in his further activity was involved in deeds which were performed without any such thought. He then judges them morally, approving or disapproving. On the other hand, a course of action which at the time presented a moral crisis even, may afterwards come to be followed as a matter of course. There is then no fixed line between the morally indifferent and the morally significant. Every act is potential subject-matter of moral judgment, for it strengthens or weakens some habit which influences whole classes of judgments.