CHAPTER XVI THE PLACE OF REASON IN THE MORAL LIFE; MORAL KNOWLEDGE 1. PROBLEM OF REASON AND DESIRE

Intelligence and Reason in a Moral Act.—A voluntary act is one which involves intention, purpose, and thus some degree of deliberateness. It is this trait which marks off the voluntary act from a purely unconscious one (like that of a machine) and from one which yields to the superior urgency of present feeling, one which is pushed on from behind, as an instinctive or impulsive act, instead of being called out by some possibility ahead. This factor of forethought and of preference after comparison for some one of the ends considered, is the factor of intelligence involved in every voluntary act. To be intelligent in action is, however, a far-reaching affair. To know what one is really about is a large and difficult order to fill; so large and difficult that it is the heart of morality.[158] The relevant bearings of any act are subtler and larger than those which can be foreseen and than those which will be unless special care is taken. The tendencies which strongly move one to a certain act are often exactly those which tend to prevent one's seeing the effect of the act upon his own habits and upon the well-being of others. The internal forces and the external circumstance which evoke the idea of an end and of the means of attaining it are frequently also those which deflect intelligence to a narrow and partial view. The demand for a standard by which to regulate judgment of ends is thus the demand not only for intelligence, but for a certain kind of intelligence.

In short, a truly moral (or right) act is one which is intelligent in an emphatic and peculiar sense; it is a reasonable act. It is not merely one which is thought of, and thought of as good, at the moment of action, but one which will continue to be thought of as "good" in the most alert and persistent reflection.[159] For by "reasonable" action we mean such action as recognizes and observes all the necessary conditions; action in which impulse, instinct, inclination, habit, opinion, prejudice (as the case may be) are moderated, guided, and determined by considerations which lie outside of and beyond them. Not merely to form ends and select means, but to judge the worth of these means and ends by a standard, is then the distinctive province of reason in morals. Its outcome is moral knowledge; that is judgments of right and wrong, both in general, and in the particular and perplexing cases as they arise. This is the topic of the present chapter.

Typical Problems.—The problem of moral knowledge is in its general form: Is there a distinct and separate faculty of moral reason and knowledge, or is there but one power of judgment which varies with its object? The former view is the intuitional (from Latin, intueor: to look at); it is associated with theories, which, like the Kantian, emphasize attitudes, not results and intentions; while the view which holds that there is but one form of thought which, in morals, concerns itself with results, and with their association with the present aim, is the empirical. There are two especial difficulties which lead to the upholding of the intuitional point of view, difficulties which any theory of moral knowledge has to meet. They are (I) The Relation of Desire and Reason, and (II) the Knowledge of Private and General Good.

1. Desire and Reason.—Ordinary knowledge in practical matters follows the line set by desire. Hunger makes us think of food and of how to get it; sociable desire, of friends, and how to secure their companionship, and so on. Now a surging mass of desires, vehement and bulky, may concentrate itself upon the idea of any end; and as soon as it does so, it tends to shut out wider considerations. As we have just seen, it is the object of reason to give us a calm, objective, broad, and general survey of the field. Desires work against this, and unless (so runs the argument) there is a faculty which works wholly independent of desires, as our ordinary practical knowledge does not, it is absurd to suppose there can be a rational principle which will correct and curb desire.

2. Private and General Good.—Since the wide and permanent good is social, it is urged that unless we have an independent faculty of moral knowledge, our judgment will be subservient to the ends of private desire, and hence will not place itself at the public point of view. Or, if it does so, it will be simply as a matter of expediency to calculate better the means for getting our own pleasure. In general, it is urged that only a faculty of knowledge completely independent of personal wishes, habits, purposes can secure judgments possessing inherent dignity and authoritativeness; since these require an elevated, impartial, universal, and necessary point of view. We shall in the sequel attempt to show that this view of knowledge results from the false conception of desire as having pleasure for its object, and from a false conception of the relation of intent and motive. When these errors are corrected, there is no ground to assume any special faculty of moral intelligence, save as the one capacity of thought is specialized into a particular mental habit by being constantly occupied in judging values. We shall try to show that the broad and public point of view is secured by fusion of impulses with sympathetic affections. We shall begin with stating and criticizing the views of Kant, who upholds the doctrine of a separate independent Moral Reason in its most extreme form.

§ 2. KANT'S THEORY OF PRACTICAL REASON

Kant is at one with the hedonist as regards the natural object of desire; it is pleasure. All purposes and ends that spring from inclination and natural tendency come under one head: self-love. Hence, the ordinary use of intelligence is confined to the matter of passing upon what constitutes the individual's private happiness and how he shall secure it. There are then fundamental contrasts between ordinary practical activity and genuinely moral activity, contrasts which reflect themselves in the theory of the nature and function of moral knowledge. (1) The moral end is unqualified, absolute, categorical. It is not something which we can pick or leave at our option. Morality is the region of final ends, ends not to be disputed or questioned; and reason must set forth such final ends. Since, however, happiness is not a morally necessary end, intelligence in its behalf can only give hypothetical counsel and advice: if you would be happy, or happy in this, or that way, then take such and such measures. Reason which promulgates ends must be of a different sort from the intelligence which simply searches for means.

(2) Morality is not qualified, but certain in its requirements. The most inexperienced, the humblest, the one most restricted in his circumstances and opportunities, must know what is morally required as surely as the wisest and most educated. Hence moral reason must utter its precepts clearly and unambiguously. But no one can be sure what happiness is, or whether a given act will bring joy or sorrow. "The problem of determining certainly what action would promote the happiness of a rational being is insoluble." (Abbott's Kant, p. 36.) The demand for certainty of precepts in moral matters also requires a special faculty.

(3) Morality, which is inexorable and certain in its demands, is also universal in its requirements. Its laws are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, the same for one as for another. Now happiness notoriously varies with the condition and circumstances of a person, as well as with the conditions of different peoples and epochs. Intelligence with reference to happiness can only give counsel, not even rules, so variable is happiness. It can only advise that upon the average, under certain conditions, a given course of action has usually promoted happiness. When we add that the commands of morality are also universal with respect to the different inclinations of different individuals, we are made emphatically aware of the necessity of a rational standpoint, which in its impartiality totally transcends the ends and plans that grow out of the ordinary experience of an individual.

An A Priori Reason Kant's Solution.—The net outcome is that only a reason which is separate and independent of all experience is capable of meeting the requirements of morality. What smacks in its origin and aim of experience is tainted with self-love; is partial, temporary, uncertain, and relative or dependent. The moral law is unqualified, necessary, and universal. Hence we have to recognize in man as a moral being a faculty of reason which expresses itself in the law of conduct a priori to all experience of desire, pleasure, and pain. Besides his sensuous nature (with respect to which knowledge is bound up with appetite) man has a purely rational nature, which manifests itself in the consciousness of the absolute authority of universal law.[160]

Formal Character of Such Reason.—This extreme separation of reason from experience brings with it, however, a serious problem. We shall first state this problem; and then show that its artificial and insoluble character serves as a refutation of Kant's theory of a transcendental, or wholly non-natural and non-empirical, mode of knowledge. Reason which is wholly independent of experience of desires and their results is, as Kant expressly declares, purely formal. (Abbott's Kant, p. 33; p. 114.) That is to say, it is empty; it does not point out or indicate anything particular to be done. It cannot say be industrious, or prudent, generous; give, or refrain from giving, so much money to this particular man at this particular time under just these circumstances. All it says is that morality is rational and requires man to follow the law of reason. But the law of reason is just that a man should follow the law of reason. And to the inevitable inquiry "What then is the law of reason?" the answer still is: To follow the law of reason. How do we break out of this empty circle into specific knowledge of the specific right things to be done? Kant has an answer, which we shall now consider.

Kant's Method.—He proceeds as follows: The law is indeed purely formal or empty (since, once more, all specific ends are "empirical" and changeable), but it is so because it is universal. Now nothing which is universal can contradict itself. All we need to do is to take any proposed principle of any act and ask ourselves whether it can be universalized without self-inconsistency. If it cannot be, the act is wrong. If it can be, the act is right. For example:

The principle if made universal simply contradicts itself, and thus reveals that it is no principle at all, not rational. Summing this up in a formula, we get as our standard of right action the principle: "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature" (Op. cit., p. 39).

The procedure thus indicated seems simple. As long as an individual considers the purpose or motive of his action as if it were merely a matter of that one deed; as if it were an isolated thing, there is no rationality, no consciousness of moral law or principle. But let the individual imagine himself gifted with such power that, if he acts, the motive of his act will become a fixed, a regular law in the constitution of things. Would he, as a rational being, be willing to bring about such a universalization,—can he, with equanimity as a reasonable being, contemplate such an outcome? If he can, the act is right; if not (as in the case of making a lying promise), wrong.

No sensible person would question the instructiveness of this scheme in the concrete. It indicates that the value of reason—of abstraction and generalization—in conduct is to help us escape from the partiality that flows from desire and emotion in their first and superficial manifestations, and to attain a more unified and permanent end. As a method (though not the only one) of realizing the full meaning of a proposed course of action, nothing could be better than asking ourselves how we should like to be committed forever to its principle; how we should like to have others committed to it and to treat us according to it? Such a method is well calculated to make us face our proposed end in its impartial consequences; to teach the danger of cherishing merely those results which are most congenial to our passing whim and our narrow conception of personal profit. In short, by generalizing a purpose we make its general character evident.

But this method does not proceed (as Kant would have it) from a mere consideration of moral law apart from a concrete end, but from an end in so far as it persistently approves itself to reflection after an adequate survey of it in all its bearings. It is the possibility of generalizing the concrete end that Kant falls back upon.

Other illustrations which Kant offers enforce the same lesson. He suggests the following:

The Social End is the Rational End.—These illustrations make it clear that the "contradiction" Kant really depends upon to reveal the wrongness of acts, is the introduction of friction and disorder among the various concrete ends of the individual. He insists especially that the social relations of an act bring out its general purport. A right end is one which can be projected harmoniously into the widest and broadest survey of life which the individual can make. A "system of nature" or of conduct in which love of life should lead to its own destruction certainly contradicts itself. A course of action which should include all the tendencies that make for amusement and sluggishness would be inconsistent with a scheme of life which would take account of other tendencies—such as interest in science, in music, in friendship, in business achievement, which are just as real constituents of the individual, although perhaps not so strongly felt at the moment. A totally callous and cruel mode of procedure certainly "contradicts" a course of life in which every individual is so placed as to be dependent upon the sympathy and upon the help of others. It is the province of reason to call up a sufficiently wide view of the consequences of an intention as to enable us to realize such inconsistencies and contradictions if they exist; to put before us, not through any logical manipulation of the principle of contradiction, but through memory and imagination a particular act, proposal, or suggestion as a portion of a connected whole of life; to make real to us that no man, no act, and no satisfaction of any man, falls or stands to itself, but that it affects and is affected by others. Our conclusion is: the right as the rational good means that which is harmonious with all the capacities and desires of the self, that which expands them into a coÖperative whole.

Kant's Introduction of Social Factors.—The further development which Kant gives the formula already quoted (p. 312) goes far to remove the appearance of opposition between the utilitarian social standard and his own abstract rationalism. Kant points out that according to his view the moral or rational will is its own end. Hence every rational person is always an end, never a means:—this, indeed, is what we mean by a person. But every normal human being is a rational person. Consequently another formula for his maxim is: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, as an end, never as a means merely." The man who contemplates suicide "uses a person merely as a means to maintaining a tolerable condition of life." He who would make a lying promise to another makes that other one merely a means to his profit, etc. Moreover, since all persons are equally ends in themselves and are to be equally regarded in behavior, we may say the standard of right is the notion of a "Kingdom of Ends"—the idea of "the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws."[161]

These propositions are rather formal, but the moment we put definite meaning into them, they suggest that the good for any man is that in which the welfare of others counts as much as his own. The right is that action which, so far as in it lies, combines into a whole of common interests and purposes the otherwise conflicting aims and interests of different persons. So interpreted, the Kantian formula differs in words, rather than in idea, from Bentham's happiness of all concerned "each counting for one and only one"; from Mill's statement that the "deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures." In all of these formulÆ we find re-statements of our conception that the good is the activities in which all men participate so that the powers of each are called out, put to use, and reËnforced.

Consequent Transformation of Theory of Reason.—Now if the common good, in the form of a society of individuals, as a kingdom of ends, is the object with reference to which the ends of desire have to be rationalized, Kant's theory of an a priori and empty Reason is completely made over. In strict logic Kant contradicts himself when he says that we are to generalize the end of desire, so as to see whether it could become a universal law. For according to him no end of desire (since it is private and a form of self-love) can possibly be generalized. He is setting up as a method of enlightenment precisely the very impossibility (impossible, that is, on his own theory that private happiness is the end of desire) which made him first resort to his a priori and transcendental reason. No more complete contradiction can be imagined.

On the other hand, if we neglect the concrete, empirical conditions and consequences of the object of desire, there is no motive whatsoever that may not be generalized. There is no formal contradiction in acting always on a motive of theft, unchastity, or insolence. All that Kant's method can require, in strict logic, is that the individual always, under similar circumstances, act from the same motive. Be willing to be always dishonest, or impure, or proud in your intent; achieve consistency in the badness of your motives, and you will be good! Doubtless no one, not even the worst man, would be willing to be universally consistent in his badness. But this is not in the least a matter of a purely formal, logical inconsistency of the motive with itself;[162] it is due rather to that conflict among diverse desires, and different objects for which one strives, which makes him aware that at some time he should want to act kindly and fairly.

Organization of Desires from the Social Standpoint.—What Kant is really insisting upon at bottom is, then, the demand for such a revision of desire as it casually and unreflectively presents itself as would make the desire a consistent expression of the whole body of the purposes of the self. What he demands is that a desire shall not be accepted as an adequate motive till it has been organized into desire for an end which will be compatible with the whole system of ends involved in the capacities and tendencies of the agent. This is true rationalization. And he further warns us that only when a particular desire has in view a good which is social will it meet this requirement. This brings us to our next problem. Just what is the process by which we judge of the worth of particular proposals, plans, courses of actions, desires? Granted that a generalized good, a socialized happiness, is the point of view at which we must place ourselves to secure the reasonable point of view, how does this point of view become an operative method?

§ 3. MORAL SENSE INTUITIONALISM

So far, our conclusions are (1) that the province of reason is to enable us to generalize our concrete ends; to form such ends as are consistent with one another, and reËnforce one another, introducing continuity and force, where otherwise there would be division and weakness; and (2) that only social ends are ultimately reasonable, since they alone permit us to organize our acts into consistent wholes. We have now, however, to consider how this conception takes effect in detail; how it is employed to determine the right or the reasonable in a given situation. We shall approach this problem by considering a form of intuitionalism historically prior to that of Kant. This emphasizes the direct character of moral knowledge in particular cases, and assimilates moral knowledge to the analogy of sense perception, which also deals directly with specific objects; it insists, however, that a different kind of faculty of knowledge operates in the knowledge of acts from that which operates in the knowledge of things. Our underlying aim here is to bring out the relation of immediate appreciation to deliberate reflection, with a view to showing that the reasonable standpoint, that of the common good, becomes effective through the socialized attitudes and emotions of a person's own character.

Moral Sense.—This theory holds that rightness is an intrinsic, absolute quality of special acts, and as such is immediately known or recognized for what it is. Just as a white color is known as white, a high tone as high, a hard body as existent, etc., so an act which is right is known as right. In each case, the quality and the fact are so intimately and inherently bound together that it is absurd to think of one and not know the other. As a theory of moral judgment, intuitionalism is thus opposed to utilitarianism, which holds that rightness is not an inherent quality but one relative to and borrowed from external and more or less remote consequences. While some forms of intuitionalism hold that this moral quality belongs to general rules or to classes of ends, the form we are now to consider holds that the moral quality of an individual act cannot be borrowed even from a moral law, but shines forth as an absolute and indestructible part of the motive of the act itself. Because the theory in question sticks to the direct perception of the immediately present quality of acts, it is usually called, in analogy with the direct perception of eye or ear, the moral sense theory.

Objections to Theory.—The objections to this theory in the extreme form just stated may be brought under two heads: (1) There is no evidence to prove that all acts are directly characterized by the possession of absolute and self-evident rightness and wrongness; there is much evidence to show that this quality when presented by acts can, as a rule, be traced to earlier instruction, to the pressure of correction and punishment, and to association with other experiences. (2) While in this way many acts, perhaps almost all, of the average mature person of a good moral environment, have acquired a direct moral coloring, making unnecessary elaborate calculation or reference to general principles, yet there is nothing infallible in such intuitively presented properties. An act may present itself as thoroughly right and yet may be, in reality, wrong. The function of conscious deliberation and reasoning is precisely to detect the existence of and to correct such intuitive cases.[163]

I. Direct Perception as Effect of Habits.—It must be admitted, as a result of any unprejudiced examination, that a large part of the acts, motives, and plans of the adult who has had favorable moral surroundings seem to possess directly, and in their own intrinsic make-up, rightness or wrongness or moral indifference. To think of lying or stealing is one with thinking of it as wrong; to recall or suggest an act of kindness is the same as thinking of it as right; to think of going after mail is to think of an act free from either rightness or wrongness. With the average person it is probably rare for much time to be spent in figuring out whether an act is right or wrong, after the idea of that act has once definitely presented itself. So far as the facts of moral experience in such cases are concerned, the "moral sense" theory appears to give a correct description.

(1) But the conclusion that, therefore, moral goodness or badness is and always has been an inherent, absolute property of the act itself, overlooks well-known psychological principles. In all perception, in all recognition, there is a funding or capitalizing of the results of past experience by which the results are rendered available in new experiences. Even a young child recognizes a table, a chair, a glass of milk, a dog, as soon as he sees it; there is no analysis, no conscious interpretation. Distance, direction, size, under normal circumstances, are perceived with the same assurance and ease. But there was a time when all these things were learning; when conscious experimentation involving interpretation took place. Such perceptions, moreover, take place under the guidance of others; pains are taken indelibly to stamp moral impressions by associating them with intense, vivid, and mysterious or awful emotional accompaniments.[164]

Anthropological and historical accounts of different races and peoples tell the same story. Acts once entirely innocent of moral distinctions have acquired, under differing circumstances and sometimes for trivial and absurd reasons, different moral values:—one and the same sort of act being stamped here as absolute guilt, there as an act of superior and heroic virtue. Now it would be fallacious to argue (as some do) that because distinctions of moral quality have been acquired and are not innate, they are therefore unreal when they are acquired. Yet the fact of gradual development proves that no fixed line exists where it can be said the case is closed; that just this is henceforth forever right or wrong; that there shall be no further observation of consequences, no further correction and revision of present "intuitions."

(2) Our immediate moral recognitions take place, moreover, only under usual circumstances. There is after all no such thing as complete moral maturity; all persons are still more or less children—in process of learning moral distinctions. The more intense their moral interests, the more childlike, the more open, flexible, and growing are their minds. It is only the callous and indifferent, or at least the conventional, who find all acts and projects so definitely right and wrong as to render reflection unnecessary. "New occasions teach new duties," but they teach them only to those who recognize that they are not already in possession of adequate moral judgments. Any other view destroys the whole meaning of reflective morality and marks a relapse to the plane of sheer custom. Extreme intuitionalism and extreme moral conservatism; dislike to calculation and reflection, for fear of innovations with attendant trouble and discomfort, are usually found to go together.

II. Direct Perception No Guarantee of Validity.—This suggests our second objection. The existence of immediate moral quality, the direct and seemingly final possession of rightness, as matter of fact, is not adequate proof of validity. At best, it furnishes a presumption of correctness, in the absence of grounds for questioning it, in fairly familiar situations. (a) There is nothing more direct, more seemingly self-evident, than inveterate prejudice. When class or vested interest is enlisted in the maintenance of the custom or institution which is expressed in a prejudice, the most vicious moral judgments assume the guise of self-conscious sanctity. (b) A judgment which is correct under usual circumstances may become quite unfit, and therefore wrong, if persisted in under new conditions. Life, individual and social, is in constant process of change; and there is always danger of error in clinging to judgments adjusted to older circumstances. "The good is the enemy of the better." It is not merely false ideas of the values of life that have to be re-formed, but ideas once true. When economic, political, and scientific conditions are modifying themselves as rapidly and extensively as they are in our day, it is reconstruction of moral judgment that needs emphasis, rather than the existence of a lot of ready-made "intuitions." When readjustment is required, deliberate inquiry is the only alternative to inconsiderate, undirected, and hence probably violent changes:—changes involving undue relaxation of moral ties on one side and arbitrary reactions on the other.

Deliberation and Intuition.—It is indeed absurd to set immediate recognition of quality and indirect calculation of more or less remote consequences, intuition and thought, over against each other as if they were rivals. For they are mutually supplementary. As we saw in a previous chapter, the foresight of future results calls out an immediate reaction of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, of happiness or dislike. (See p. 272.) It is just as false to say that we calculate only future pains and pleasures (instead of changes in the world of things and persons) as it is to say that anticipations of the changes to be wrought in the world by our act are not accompanied by an immediate emotional appreciation of their value. The notion that deliberation upon the various alternatives open to us is simply a cold-blooded setting down of various items to our advantage, and various other items to our disadvantage (as Robinson Crusoe wrote down in bookkeeping fashion his miseries and blessings), and then striking an algebraic balance, implies something that never did and never could happen. Deliberation is a process of active, suppressed, rehearsal; of imaginative dramatic performance of various deeds carrying to their appropriate issues the various tendencies which we feel stirring within us. When we see in imagination this or that change brought about, there is a direct sense of the amount and kind of worth which attaches to it, as real and as direct, if not as strong, as if the act were really performed and its consequence really brought home to us.

Deliberation as Dramatic Rehearsal.—We, indeed, estimate the import or significance of any present desire or impulse by forecasting what it would come or amount to if carried out; literally its consequences define its consequence, its meaning and importance. But if these consequences were conceived merely as remote, if their picturing did not at once arouse a present sense of peace, of fulfillment, or of dissatisfaction, of incompletion and irritation, the process of thinking out consequences would remain purely intellectual. It would be as barren of influence upon behavior as the mathematical speculations of a disembodied angel. Any actual experience of reflection upon conduct will show that every foreseen result at once stirs our present affections, our likes and dislikes, our desires and aversions. There is developed a running commentary which stamps values at once as good or evil. It is this direct sense of value, not the consciousness of general rules or ultimate goals, which finally determines the worth of the act to the agent. Here is the inexpugnable element of truth in the intuitional theory. Its error lies in conceiving this immediate response of appreciation as if it excluded reflection instead of following directly upon its heels. Deliberation is actually an imaginative rehearsal of various courses of conduct. We give way, in our mind, to some impulse; we try, in our mind, some plan. Following its career through various steps, we find ourselves in imagination in the presence of the consequences that would follow: and as we then like and approve, or dislike and disapprove, these consequences, we find the original impulse or plan good or bad. Deliberation is dramatic and active, not mathematical and impersonal; and hence it has the intuitive, the direct factor in it. The advantage of a mental trial, prior to the overt trial (for the act after all is itself also a trial, a proving of the idea that lies back of it), is that it is retrievable, whereas overt consequences remain. They cannot be recalled. Moreover, many trials may mentally be made in a short time. The imagining of various plans carried out furnishes an opportunity for many impulses which at first are not in evidence at all, to get under way. Many and varied direct sensings, appreciations, take place. When many tendencies are brought into play, there is clearly much greater probability that the capacity of self which is really needed and appropriate will be brought into action, and thus a truly reasonable happiness result. The tendency of deliberation to "polarize" the various lines of activity into opposed alternatives, into incompatible "either this or that," is a way of forcing into clear recognition the importance of the issue.

The Good Man's Judgments as Standard.—This explains the idea of Aristotle that only the good man is a good judge of what is really good. Such an one will take satisfaction in the thought of noble ends and will recoil at the idea of base results. Because of his formed capacities, his organized habits and tendencies, he will respond to a suggested end with an emotion which confers its appropriate kind and shade of value. The brave man is sensitive to all acts and plans so far as they involve energy and endurance in overcoming painful obstacles; the kindly man responds at once to the elements that affect the well-being of others. The moral sense or direct appreciations of the good man may thus be said to furnish the standard of right and wrong. There are few persons who, when in doubt regarding a difficult matter of conduct, do not think of some other person in whose goodness they believe, and endeavor to direct and clinch their own judgment by imagining how such an one would react in a similar situation—what he would find congenial and what disagreeable. Or else they imagine what that other person would think of them if he knew of their doing such and such an act. And while this method cannot supply the standard of their own judgment, cannot determine the right or wrong for their own situations, it helps emancipate judgment from selfish partialities, and it facilitates a freer and more flexible play of imagination in construing and appreciating the situation.

§ 4. THE PLACE OF GENERAL RULES

Between such a highly generalized and formal principle as that of Kant, and the judgment of particular cases, we have intermediate generalizations; rules which are broad as compared with individual deeds, but narrow as compared with some one final principle. What are their rational origin, place, and function? We have here again both the empirical and the intuitional theories of knowledge, having to deal with the same fundamental difficulty: What is the relation of the special rule to the general principle on one side and to the special case on the other? The more general, the more abstractly rational the rule, the vaguer and less applicable it is. The more definite and fixed it is, the greater the danger that it will be a Procrustean bed, mutilating the rich fullness of the individual act, or destroying its grace and freedom by making it conform servilely to a hard and fast rule. Our analysis will accordingly be devoted to bringing to light the conditions under which a rule may be rational and yet be of specific help.

I. Intuitionalism and Casuistry.—Utilitarianism at least holds that rules are derived from actual cases of conduct; hence there must be points of likeness between the cases to be judged and the rules for judging them. But rules which do not originate from a consideration of special cases, which simply descend out of the blue sky, have only the most mechanical and external relation to the individual acts to be judged. Suppose one is convinced that the rule of honesty was made known just in and of itself by a special faculty, and had absolutely nothing to do with the recollection of past cases or the forecast of possible future circumstances. How would such a rule apply itself to any particular case which needed to be judged? What bell would ring, what signal would be given, to indicate that just this case is the appropriate case for the application of the rule of honest dealing? And if by some miracle this question were answered so one knows that here is a case for the rule of honesty, how would we know just what course in detail the rule calls for? For the rule, to be applicable to all cases, must omit the conditions which differentiate one case from another; it must contain only the very few similar elements which are to be found in all honest deeds. Reduced to this skeleton, not much would be left save the bare injunction to be honest whatever happens, leaving it to chance, the ordinary judgment of the individual, or to external authority to find out just what honesty specifically means in the given case.

This difficulty is so serious that all systems which have committed themselves to belief in a number of hard and fast rules having their origin in conscience, or in the word of God impressed upon the human soul or externally revealed, always have had to resort to a more and more complicated procedure to cover, if possible, all the cases. The moral life is finally reduced by them to an elaborate formalism and legalism.

Illustration in Casuistry.—Suppose, for example, we take the Ten Commandments as a starting-point. They are only ten, and naturally confine themselves to general ideas, and ideas stated mainly in negative form. Moreover, the same act may be brought under more than one rule. In order to resolve the practical perplexities and uncertainties which inevitably arise under such circumstances, Casuistry is built up (from the Latin casus, case). The attempt is made to foresee all the different cases of action which may conceivably occur, and provide in advance the exact rule for each case. For example, with reference to the rule "do not kill," a list will be made of all the different situations in which killing might occur:—accident, war, fulfillment of command of political superior (as by a hangman), self-defense (defense of one's own life, of others, of property), deliberate or premeditated killing with its different motives (jealousy, avarice, revenge, etc.), killing with slight premeditation, from sudden impulse, from different sorts and degrees of provocation. To each one of these possible cases is assigned its exact moral quality, its exact degree of turpitude and innocency. Nor can this process end with overt acts; all the inner springs of action which affect regard for life must be similarly classified: envy, animosity, sudden rage, sullenness, cherishing of sense of injury, love of tyrannical power, hardness or hostility, callousness—all these must be specified into their different kinds and the exact moral worth of each determined. What is done for this one kind of case must be done for every part and phase of the entire moral life until it is all inventoried, catalogued, and distributed into pigeon-holes definitely labelled.

Dangers of Casuistry.—Now dangers and evils attend this way of conceiving the moral life, (a) It tends to magnify the letter of morality at the expense of its spirit. It fixes attention not upon the positive good in an act, not upon the underlying agent's disposition which forms its spirit, nor upon the unique occasion and context which form its atmosphere, but upon its literal conformity with Rule A, Class I., Species 1, sub-head (1), etc. The effect of this is inevitably to narrow the scope and lessen the depth of conduct. (i.) It tempts some to hunt for that classification of their act which will make it the most convenient or profitable for themselves. In popular speech, "casuistical" has come to mean a way of judging acts which splits hairs in the effort to find a way of acting that conduces to personal interest and profit, and which yet may be justified by some moral principle. (ii.) With others, this regard for the letter makes conduct formal and pedantic. It gives rise to a rigid and hard type of character illustrated among the Pharisees of olden and the Puritans of modern time—the moral schemes of both classes being strongly impregnated with the notion of fixed moral rules.

(b) This ethical system also tends in practice to a legal view of conduct.—Historically it always has sprung from carrying over legal ideas into morality. In the legal view, liability to blame and to punishment inflicted from without by some superior authority, is necessarily prominent. Conduct is regulated through specific injunctions and prohibitions: Do this, Do not do that. Exactly the sort of analysis of which we have spoken above (p. 327) in the case of killing is necessary, so that there may be definite and regular methods of measuring guilt and assigning blame. Now the ideas of liability and punishment and reward are, as we shall see in our further discussion (chs. xvii. and xxi.), important factors in the conduct of life, but any scheme of morals is defective which puts the question of avoiding punishment in the foreground of attention, and which tends to create a Pharisaical complacency in the mere fact of having conformed to command or rule.

(c) Probably the worst evil of this moral system is that it tends to deprive moral life of freedom and spontaneity and to reduce it (especially for the conscientious who take it seriously) to a more or less anxious and servile conformity to externally imposed rules. Obedience as loyalty to principle is a good, but this scheme practically makes it the only good and conceives it not as loyalty to ideals, but as conformity to commands. Moral rules exist just as independent deliverances on their own account, and the right thing is merely to follow them. This puts the center of moral gravity outside the concrete processes of living. All systems which emphasize the letter more than the spirit, legal consequences more than vital motives, put the individual under the weight of external authority. They lead to the kind of conduct described by St. Paul as under the law, not in the spirit, with its constant attendant weight of anxiety, uncertain struggle, and impending doom.

All Fixed Rules Have Same Tendencies.—Many who strenuously object to all of these schemes of conduct, to everything which hardens it into forms by emphasizing external commands, authority and punishments and rewards, fail to see that such evils are logically connected with any acceptance of the finality of fixed rules. They hold certain bodies of people, religious officers, political or legal authorities, responsible for what they object to in the scheme; while they still cling to the idea that morality is an effort to apply to particular deeds and projects a certain number of absolute unchanging moral rules. They fail to see that, if this were its nature, those who attempt to provide the machinery which would render it practically workable deserve praise rather than blame. In fact, the notion of absolute rules or precepts cannot be made workable except through certain superior authorities who declare and enforce them. Said Locke: "It is no small power it gives one man over another to be the dictator of principles and teacher of unquestionable truths."

II. Utilitarian View of General Rules.—The utilitarians escape the difficulties inherent in the application to particular cases of a rule which has nothing to do with particular cases. Their principles for judging right and wrong in particular cases are themselves generalizations from particular observations of the effect of certain acts upon happiness and misery. But if we take happiness in the technical sense of Bentham (as meaning, that is, an aggregate of isolated pleasures) it is impossible for general rules to exist—there is nothing to generalize. If, however, we take happiness in its common-sense form, as welfare, a state of successful achievement, satisfactory realization of purpose, there can be no doubt of the existence of maxims and formulÆ in which mankind has registered its experience. The following quotations from Mill bring out the essential points:

"We think utility or happiness much too complex and indefinite an end to be sought except through the medium of various secondary ends concerning which there may be, and often is, agreement among persons who differ in their ultimate standard; and about which there does in fact prevail a much greater unanimity among thinking persons, than might be supposed from their diametrical divergence on the great questions of moral metaphysics" (Essay on Bentham).