Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude

by John Dewey; Boyd Henry Bode; Harold Chapman Brown; Horace Meyer Kallen; George H. Mead; Addison Webster Moore; Henry Waldgrave Stuart; James Hayden Tu

JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS

Writing about ethics has tended to take one of two directions. On the one hand we have description of conduct in terms of psychology, or anthropology. On the other a study of the concepts right and wrong, good and bad, duty and freedom. If we follow the first line we may attempt to explain conduct psychologically by showing the simple ideas or feelings and the causal connections or laws of habit and association out of which actions arise. Or anthropologically we may show the successive stages of custom and taboo, or the family, religious, political, legal, and social institutions from which morality has emerged. But we meet at once a difficulty if we ask what is the bearing of this description and analysis. Will it aid me in the practical judgment "What shall I do?" In physics there is no corresponding difficulty. To analyze gravity enables us to compute an orbit, or aim a gun; to analyze electric action is to have the basis for lighting streets and carrying messages. It assumes the uniformity of nature and takes no responsibility as to whether we shall aim guns or whether our messages shall be of war or of peace. Whereas in ethics it is claimed that the elements are so changed by their combination—that the process is so essential a factor—that no prediction is certain. And it is also claimed that the ends themselves are perhaps to be changed as well as the means. Stated otherwise, suppose that mankind has passed through various stages, can mere observation of these tell me what next? Perhaps I don't care to repeat the past; how can I plan for a better future? Or grant that I may discover instinct and emotion, habit and association in my thinking and willing, how will this guide me to direct my thinking and willing to right ends?

The second method has tended to examine concepts. Good is an eternal, changeless pattern; it is to be discovered by a vision; or right and good are but other terms for nature's or reason's universal laws which are timeless and wholly unaffected by human desires or passions; moral nature is soul, and soul is created not built up of elements,—such were some of the older absolutisms. Right and good are unique concepts not to be resolved or explained in terms of anything else,—this is a more modern thesis which on the face of it may appear to discourage analysis. The ethical world is a world of "eternal values." Philosophy "by taking part in empirical questions sinks both itself and them." These doctrines bring high claims, but are they more valuable for human guidance than the empirical method?[65]

"The knowledge that is superhuman only is ridiculous in man." No man can ever find his way home with the pure circle unless he has also the art of the impure. It is the conviction of this paper that in ethics, as in knowledge, thoughts without contents are empty; percepts without concepts are blind. Description of what has been—empiricism—is futile in itself to project and criticize. Intuitions and deductions a priori are empty. The "thoughts" of ethics are of course the terms right, good, ought, worth, and their kin. The "percepts" are the instincts and emotions, the desires and aspirations, the conditions of time and place, of nature, and institutions.

Yet it is misleading to say that in studying the history of morals we are merely empiricists, and can hope to find no criterion. This would be the case if we were studying non-moral beings. But moral beings have to some degree guided life by judgments and not merely followed impulse or habit. Early judgments as to taboos, customs, and conduct may be crude and in need of correction; they are none the less judgments. Over and over we find them reshaped to meet change from hunting to agriculture, from want to plenty, from war to peace, from small to large groupings. Much more clearly when we consider civilized peoples, the interaction between reflection and impulse becomes patent. To study this interaction can be regarded as futile for the future only if we discredit all past moral achievement.

Those writers who have based their ethics upon concepts have frequently expressed the conviction that the security of morality depends upon the question whether good and right are absolute and eternal essences independent of human opinion or volition. A different source of standards which to some offers more promise for the future is the fact of the moral life as a constant process of forming and reshaping ideals and of bringing these to bear upon conditions of existence. To construct a right and good is at least a process tending to responsibility, if this construction is to be for the real world in which we must live and not merely for a world of fancy or caprice. It is not the aim of this paper to give a comprehensive outline of ethical method. Four factors in the moral life will be pointed out and this analysis will be used to emphasize especially certain social and constructive aspects of our concepts of right and good.

I

The four factors which it is proposed to emphasize are these:

(1) Life as a biological process involving relation to nature, with all that this signifies in the equipment of instincts, emotions, and selective activity by which life maintains itself.

(2) Interrelation with other human beings, including on the one hand associating, grouping, mating, communicating, coöperating, commanding, obeying, worshiping, adjudicating, and on the psychological side the various instincts, emotions, susceptibilities to personal stimulation and appropriate responses in language and behavior which underlie or are evoked by the life in common.

(3) Intelligence and reason, through which experience is interrelated, viewed as a whole, enlarged in imagination.

(4) The process of judgment and choice, in which different elements are brought together, considered in one conscious universe, evaluated or measured, thereby giving rise reciprocally to a self on the one hand and to approved or chosen objects on the other.

(1) Life. Life is at least the raw material of all values, even if it is not in itself entitled to be called good without qualification. For in the process of nourishing and protecting itself, the plant or animal selects and in the case of higher animals, manipulates; it adapts itself to nature and adapts nature to itself; it shows reciprocal relation of means to end, of whole to part. It foreshadows the conscious processes in so many ways that men have always been trying to read back some degree of consciousness. And life in the animal, at least, is regarded as having experiences of pleasure and pain, and emotions of fear, anger, shame, and sex, which are an inseparable aspect of values. If it is not the supreme or only good, if men freely sacrifice it for other ends, it is none the less an inevitable factor. Pessimistic theories indeed have contended that life is evil and have sought to place good in a will-less Nirvana. Yet such theories make limited appeal. Their protest is ultimately not against life as life but against life as painful. And their refutation is rather to be intrusted to the constructive possibilities of freer life than to an analysis of concepts.

Another class of theories which omit life from the good is that which holds to abstractly ontological concepts of good as an eternal essence or form. It must be remembered, however, that the idea of good was not merely a fixed essence. It was also for Plato the self-moving and the cause of all motion. And further, Plato evidently believed that life, the very nature of the soul, was itself in the class of supreme values along with God and the good. The prize of immortality was καλόν and the hope great. And with Aristotle and his followers the good of contemplation no less truly than the good of action had elements of value derived from the vital process. Such a mystic as Spinoza, who finds good in the understanding values this because in it man is "active," and would unite himself with the All because in God is Power and Freedom. The Hebrew prophet found a word capable of evoking great ethical values when he urged his countrymen to "choose life," and Christian teaching found in the conception of "eternal life" an ideal of profound appeal. It is not surprising that with his biological interests Spencer should have set up life of greatest length and breadth as a goal.

The struggle of the present war emphasizes tremendously two aspects of this factor of life. National life is an ideal which gets its emotional backing largely from the imagery of our physical life. For any one of the small nations involved to give up its national life—whatever the possibilities of better organized industry or more comfortable material conditions—seems to it a desperate alternative. Self-defense is regarded by the various powers at war as a complete justification not merely for armed resistance or attack but for ruthless acts. And if we are tempted to say that the war involves a prodigal waste of individual life on a scale never known before, we are at the same time compelled to recognize that never before has the bare destruction of life aroused such horror.

For never before has peace set its forces so determinedly to protect life. The span of human life has been lengthened: the wastefulness of accident and disease has been magnified. The dumb acquiescence with which former generations accepted the death of infants and children and those in the prime of life has given way to active and increasingly successful efforts to preserve. The enormous increase in scientific study of biology, including eugenics, reflects not only an advance of science but a trend in morality. It is scarcely conceivable that it should grow less in absolute importance, whatever crises may temporarily cause its depreciation relatively to other values.

One exception to the growing appreciation calls for notice—the interest in immortality appears to be less rather than greater. The strong belief in life beyond the grave which since the days of ancient Egypt has prevailed in the main stream of Western culture seems not only to be affected by the scientific temper of the day, but also to be subject to a shift in interest. This may be in part a reaction from other-worldliness. In part it may be due to loss of fervor for a theological picture of a future heaven of a rather monotonous sort and may signify not so much loss of interest in life as desire for a more vital kind of continuance. It is not true that all that a man hath will he give for his life, yet it is true that no valuing process is intelligible that leaves out life with its impulses, emotions, and desires as the first factor to be reckoned with.

(2) The second factor is the life in common, with its system of relations, and its corresponding instincts, emotions, and desires.

So much has been written in recent years on the social nature of man that it seems unnecessary to elaborate the obvious. Protest has even been raised against the exaggeration of the social. But I believe that in certain points at least we have not yet penetrated to the heart of the social factor, and its significance for morals.

So far as the moral aspect is concerned I know nothing more significant than the attitude of the Common Law as set forth by Professor Pound.[66] This has sought to base its system of duties on relations. The relation which was prominent in the Middle Ages was that of landlord and tenant; other relations are those of principal and agent, of trustee, etc. An older relation was that of kinship. The kin was held for the wergeld; the goël must avenge his next of kin; the father must provide for prospective parents-in-law; the child must serve the parents. Duty was the legal term for the relation. In all this there is no romanticism, no exaggeration of the social; there is a fair statement of the facts which men have recognized and acted upon the world over and in all times. Individualistic times or peoples have modified certain phases. The Roman law sought to ground many of its duties in the contract, the will of the parties. But covenants by no means exhaust duties. And according to Professor Pound the whole course of English and American law today is belying the generalization of Sir Henry Maine, that the evolution of law is a progress from status to contract. We are shaping law of insurance, of public service companies, not by contract but by the relation of insurer and insured, of public utility and patron.

Psychologically, the correlate of the system of relations is the set of instincts and emotions, of capacity for stimulation and response, which presuppose society for their exercise and in turn make society possible. There can be no question as to the reality and strength of these in both animals and men. The bear will fight for her young more savagely than for her life. The human mother's thoughts center far more intensely upon her offspring than upon her own person. The man who is cut dead by all his acquaintance suffers more than he would from hunger or physical fear. The passion of sex frequently overmasters every instinct of individual prudence. The majority of men face poverty and live in want; relatively few prefer physical comfort to family ties. Aristotle's φιλία is the oftenest quoted recognition of the emotional basis of common life, but a statement of Kant's earlier years is particularly happy. "The point to which the lines of direction of our impulses converge is thus not only in ourselves, but there are besides powers moving us in the will of others outside of ourselves. Hence arise the moral impulses which often carry us away to the discomfiture of selfishness, the strong law of duty, and the weaker of benevolence. Both of these wring from us many a sacrifice, and although selfish inclinations now and then preponderate over both, these still never fail to assert their reality in human nature. Thus we recognize that in our most secret motives, we are dependent upon the rule of the general will."[67]

The "law of duty," and I believe we may add, the conception of right, do arise objectively in the social relations as the common law assumes and subjectively in the social instincts, emotions, and the more intimate social consciousness which had not been worked out in the time of Kant as it has been by recent authors. This point will receive further treatment later, but I desire to point out in anticipation that if right and duty have their origin in this social factor there is at least a presumption against their being subordinate ethically to the conception of good as we find them in certain writers. If they have independent origin and are the outgrowth of a special aspect of life it is at least probable that they are not to be subordinated to the good unless the very notion of good is itself reciprocally modified by right in a way that is not usually recognized in teleological systems.

(3) Intelligence and reason imply (a) considering the proposed act or the actually performed act as a whole and in its relations. Especially they mean considering consequences. In order to foresee consequences there is required not only empirical observation of past experience, not only deduction from already formulated concepts—as when we say that injustice will cause hard feelings and revolt—but that rarer quality which in the presence of a situation discerns a meaning not obvious, suggests an idea, "injustice," to interpret the situation. Situations are neither already labeled "unjust," nor are they obviously unjust to the ordinary mind. Analysis into elements and rearrangement of the elements into a new synthesis are required. This is eminently a synthetic or "creative" activity. Further it is evident that the activity of intelligence in considering consequences implies not only what we call reasoning in the narrower sense but imagination and feeling. For the consequences of an act which are of importance ethically are consequences which are not merely to be described but are to be imagined so vividly as to be felt, whether they are consequences that affect ourselves or affect others.

(b) But it would be a very narrow intelligence that should attempt to consider only consequences of a single proposed act without considering also other possible acts and their consequences. The second important characteristic of intelligence is that it considers either other means of reaching a given end, or other ends, and by working out the consequences of these also has the basis for deliberation and choice. The method of "multiple working hypotheses," urged as highly important in scientific investigation, is no less essential in the moral field. To bring several ends into the field of consideration is the characteristic of the intelligent, or as we often say, the open-minded man. Such consideration as this widens the capacity of the agent and marks him off from the creature of habit, of prejudice, or of instinct.

(c) Intelligence implies considering in two senses all persons involved, that is, it means taking into account not only how an act will affect others but also how others look at it. It is scarcely necessary to say that this activity of intelligence cannot be cut off from its roots in social intercourse. It is by the processes of give and take, of stimulus and response, in a social medium that this possibility of looking at things from a different angle is secured. And once more this different angle is not gained by what in the strict sense could be called a purely intellectual operation, although it has come to be so well recognized as the necessary equipment for dealing successfully with conditions that we commonly characterize the person as stupid who does not take account of what others think and feel and how they will react to a projected line of conduct. This social element in intelligence is to a considerable degree implied in the term "reasonable," which signifies not merely that a man is logical in his processes but also that he is ready to listen to what others say and to look at things from their point of view whether he finally accepts it or not.

The broad grounds on which it is better to use the word intelligence than the word reason in the analysis with which we are concerned are two. (1) It is not a question-begging term which tends to commit us at the outset to a specific doctrine as to the source of our judgments. (2) The activity of intelligence which is now most significant for ethical progress is not suggested by the term reason, for unless we arbitrarily smuggle in under the term practical reason the whole activity of the moral consciousness without inquiry as to the propriety of the name we shall be likely to omit the constructive and creative efforts to promote morality by positive supplying of enlarged education, new sources of interest, and more open fields for development, by replacing haunting fears of misery with positive hopes, and by suggesting new imagery, new ambitions in the place of sodden indifference or sensuality. The term reason as used by the Stoics and by Kant meant control of the passions by some "law"—some authority cosmic or logical. It prepared for the inevitable; it forbade the private point of view. But as thus presenting a negative aspect the law was long ago characterized by a profound moral genius as "weak." It has its value as a schoolmaster, but it is not in itself capable of supplying the new life which dissolves the old sentiment, breaks up the settled evil habit, and supplies both larger ends and effective motives.

If we state human progress in objective fashion we may say that although men today are still as in earlier times engaged in getting a living, in mating, in rearing of offspring, in fighting and adventure, in play, and in art, they are also engaged in science and invention, interested in the news of other human activities all over the world; they are adjusting differences by judicial processes, coöperating to promote general welfare, enjoying refined and more permanent friendships and affections, and viewing life in its tragedy and comedy with enhanced emotion and broader sympathy. Leaving out of consideration the work of the religious or artistic genius as not in question here, the great objective agencies in bringing about these changes have been on the one hand the growth of invention, scientific method, and education, and on the other the increase in human intercourse and communication. Reason plays its part in both of these in freeing the mind from wasteful superstitious methods and in analyzing situations and testing hypotheses, but the term is inadequate to do justice to that creative element in the formation of hypotheses which finds the new, and it tends to leave out of account the social point of view involved in the widening of the area of human intercourse. More will be said upon this point in connection with the discussion of rationalism.

(4) The process of judgment and choice. The elements are not the sum. The moral consciousness is not just the urge of life, plus the social relations, plus intelligence. The process of moral deliberation, evaluation, judgment, and choice is itself essential. In this process are born the concepts and standards good and right, and likewise the moral self which utters the judgment. It is in this twofold respect synthetic, creative. It is as an interpretation of this process that the concept of freedom arises. Four aspects of the process may be noted.

(a) The process involves holding possibilities of action, or objects for valuation, or ends for choice, in consciousness and measuring them one against another in a simultaneous field—or in a field of alternating objects, any of which can be continually recalled. One possibility after another may be tried out in anticipation and its relations successively considered, but the comparison is essential to the complete moral consciousness.

(b) The process yields a universe of valued objects as distinguished from a subjective consciousness of desires and feelings. We say, "This is right," "That is good." Every "is" in such judgments may be denied by an "is not" and we hold one alternative to be true, the other false. As the market or the stock exchange or board of trade fixes values by a meeting of buyers and sellers and settles the price of wheat accurately enough to enable farmers to decide how much land to seed for the next season, so the world of men and women who must live together and coöperate, or fight and perish, forces upon consciousness the necessity of adjustment. The preliminary approaches are usually hesitant and subjective—like the offers or bids in the market—e.g., "I should like to go to college; I believe that is a good thing"; "My parents need my help; it does not seem right to leave them." The judgments finally emerge. "A college education is good;" "It is wrong to leave my parents"—both seemingly objective yet conflicting, and unless I can secure both I must seemingly forego actual objective good, or commit actual wrong.

(c) The process may be described also as one of "universalizing" the judging consciousness. For it is a counterpart of the objective implication of a judgment that it is not an affirmation as to any individual's opinion. This negative characterization of the judgment is commonly converted into the positive doctrine that any one who is unprejudiced and equally well informed would make the same judgment. Strictly speaking the judgment itself represents in its completed form the elimination of the private attitude rather than the express inclusion of other judges. But in the making of the judgment it is probable that this elimination of the private is reached by a mental reference to other persons and their attitudes, if not by an actual conversation with another. It is dubious whether an individual that had never communicated with another would get the distinction between a private subjective attitude and the "general" or objective.

Moreover, one form of the moral judgment: "This is right," speaks the language of law—of the collective judgment, or of the judge who hears both sides but is neither. This generalizing or universalizing is frequently supposed to be the characteristic activity of "reason." I believe that a comparison with the kindred value judgments in economics supports the doctrine that in judgments as to the good as well as in those as to right, there is no product of any simple faculty, but rather a synthetic process in which the social factor is prominent. A compelling motive toward an objective and universal judgment is found in the practical conditions of moral judgments. Unless men agree on such fundamental things as killing, stealing, and sex relations they cannot get on together. Not that when I say, "Killing is wrong," I mean to affirm "I agree with you in objecting to it"; but that the necessity (a) of acting as if I either do or do not approve it, and (b) of either making my attitude agree with yours, or yours agree with mine, or of fighting it out with you or with the whole force of organized society, compels me to put my attitude into objective terms, to meet you and society on a common platform. This is a synthesis, an achievement. To attribute the synthesis to any faculty of "practical reason," adds nothing to our information, but tends rather to obscure the facts.

(d) The process is thus a reciprocal process of valuing objects and of constructing and reconstructing a self. The object as first imaged or anticipated undergoes enlargement and change as it is put into relations to other objects and as the consequences of adoption or rejection are tried in anticipation. The self by reflecting and by enlarging its scope is similarly enlarged. It is the resulting self which is the final valuer. The values of most objects are at first fixed for us by instinct or they are suggested by the ethos and mores of our groups—family, society, national religions, and "reign under the appearance of habitual self-suggested tendencies." The self is constituted accordingly. Collisions with other selves, conflicts between group valuations and standards and individual impulses or desires, failure of old standards as applied to new situations, bring about a more conscious definition of purposes. The agent identifies himself with these purposes, and values objects with reference to them. In this process of revaluing and defining, of comparing and anticipation, freedom is found if anywhere. For if the process is a real one the elements do not remain unaffected by their relation to each other and to the whole. The act is not determined by any single antecedent or by the sum of antecedents. It is determined by the process. The self is not made wholly by heredity, or environment. It is itself creating for each of its elements a new environment, viz., the process of reflection and choice. And if man can change the heredity of pigeons and race horses by suitable selection, if every scientific experiment is a varying of conditions, it is at least plausible that man can guide his own acts by intelligence, and revise his values by criticism.

The self is itself creating for each of its elements a new environment—this is a fact which if kept in mind will enable us to see the abstractness and fallacies not merely of libertarianism and determinism, but of subjectivism and objectivism. Subjective or "inward" theories have sought standards in the self; but in regarding the self as an entity independent of such a process as we have described they have exposed themselves to the criticism of providing only private, variable, accidental, unauthoritative sources of standards—instincts, or emotions, or intuitions. The self of the full moral consciousness, however,—the only one which can claim acceptance or authority—is born only in the process of considering real conditions, of weighing and choosing between alternatives of action in a real world of nature and persons. Its judgments are more than subjective. Objectivism in its absolutist and abstract forms assumes a standard—nature, essence, law—independent of process. Such a standard is easily shown to be free from anything individual, private, or changing. It is universal, consistent, and eternal, in fact it has many good mathematical characteristics, but unfortunately it is not moral. As mathematical, logical, biological, or what not, it offers no standard that appeals to the moral nature as authoritative or that can help us to find our way home.

II

If we are dissatisfied with custom and habit and seek to take philosophy for the guide of life we have two possibilities: (1) we may look for the good, and treat right and duty as subordinate concepts which indicate the way to the good, that is, consider them as good as a means, or (2) we may seek first to do right irrespective of consequences, in the belief that in willing to do right we are already in possession of the highest good. In either case we may consider our standards and values either as in some sense fixed or as in the making.[68] We may suppose that good is objective and absolute, that right is discovered by a rational faculty, or we may consider that in regarding good as objective we have not made it independent of the valuing process and that in treating right as a standard we have not thereby made it a fixed concept to be discovered by the pure intellect. The position of this paper will be (1) that good while objective is yet objective as a value and not as an essence or physical fact; (2) that a social factor in value throws light upon the relation between moral and other values; (3) that right is not merely a means to the good but has an independent place in the moral consciousness; (4) that right while signifying order does not necessarily involve a timeless, eternal order since it refers to an order of personal relations; (5) that the conception of right instead of being a matter for pure reason or even the "cognitive faculty" shows an intimate blending of the emotional and intellectual and that this appears particularly in the conception of the reasonable.

(1) We begin with the question of the synthetic and objective character of the good. With G. E. Moore as with the utilitarians the good is the ultimate concept. Right and duty are means to the good. Moore and Rashdall also follow Sidgwick in regarding good as unique, that is, as "synthetic." Sidgwick emphasized in this especially the point that moral value cannot be decided by physical existence or the course of evolution, nor can the good be regarded as meaning the pleasant. Moore and Russell reinforce this. However true it may be that pleasure is one among other good things or that life is one among other good things, good does not mean either pleasure or survival. Good means just "good."

A similar thought underlies Croce's division of the Practical into the two spheres of the Economic and the Ethical. "The economic activity is that which wills and effects only what corresponds to the conditions of fact in which a man finds himself; the ethical activity is that which, although it correspond to these conditions, also refers to something that transcends them. To the first correspond what are called individual ends, to the second universal ends; the one gives rise to the judgment concerning the greater or less coherence of the action taken in itself, the other to that concerning its greater or less coherence in respect to the universal end, which transcends the individual.[69] Utilitarianism is according to Croce an attempt to reduce the Ethical to the Economic form, although the utilitarians as men attempt in various ways to make a place for that distinction which as philosophers they would suppress. "Man is not a consumer of pleasures. He is a creator of life." With this claim of the distinctive, synthetic, character of the moral consciousness and of the impossibility of testing the worth of ideals by cosmic laws, or by gratification of particular wants as measured by pleasure, I have no issue. The analysis of the moral judgment made above points out just how it is that good is synthetic. It is synthetic in that it represents a measuring and valuing of ends—instinctive and imagined, individual and social—against each other and as part of a whole to which a growing self corresponds. It is synthetic in that it represents not merely a process of evaluating ends which match actually defined desires, but also a process in which the growing self, dissatisfied with any ends already in view, gropes for some new definition of ends that shall better respond to its living, creative capacity, its active synthetic character. Good is the concept for just this valuing process as carried on by a conscious being that is not content to take its desire as ready made by its present construction, but is reaching out for ends that shall respond to a growing, expanding, inclusive, social, self. It expresses value as value.

Value as value! not as being; nor as independent essence; nor as anything static and fixed. For a synthetic self, a living personality, could find no supreme value in the complete absence of valuing, in the cessation of life, in the negation of that very activity of projection, adventure, construction, and synthesis in which it has struck out the concept good. A theory of ethics which upholds the synthetic character of the good may be criticized as being not synthetic enough if it fails to see that on the basis of the mutual determination of percepts and concepts, of self and objects, the synthetic character of the process must be reflected in the ultimate meaning of the category which symbolizes and incorporates the process.

(2) We may find some light upon the question how moral value gets its distinctive and unique character, and how it comes to be more "objective" than economic value if we consider some of the social factors in the moral judgment. For although the concept good is rooted in the life process with its selective activity and attending emotions it involves a subtle social element, as well as the more commonly recognized factors of intelligence.

Within the fundamental selective process two types of behavior tend to differentiate in response to two general sorts of stimulation. One sort is simpler, more monotonous, more easily analyzable. Response to such stimulation, or treatment of objects which may be described under these terms of simple, analyzable, etc., is easily organized into a habit. It calls for no great shifts in attention, no sudden readjustments. There is nothing mysterious about it. As satisfying various wants it has a certain kind of value. It, however, evokes no consciousness of self. Toward the more variable, complex sort of stimuli, greater attention, constant adjustment and readjustment, are necessary.

Objects of the first sort are treated as things, in the sense that they do not call out any respect from us or have any intrinsic value. We understand them through and through, manipulate them, consume them, throw them away. We regard them as valuable only with reference to our wants. On the other hand, objects of the second sort take their place in a bi-focal situation. Our attention shifts alternately to their behavior and to our response, or, conversely, from our act to their response. This back and forth movement of attention in the case of certain of these objects is reinforced by the fact that certain stimuli from them or from the organism, find peculiar responses already prepared in social instincts; gesture and language play their part. Such a bi-focal situation as this, when completely developed, involves persons. In its earlier stages it is the quasi-personal attitude which is found in certain savage religious attitudes, in certain æsthetic attitudes, and in the emotional attitudes which we all have toward many of the objects of daily life.

Economic values arise in connection with attitudes toward things. We buy things, we sell them. They have value just in that they gratify our wants, but they do not compel any revision or change in wants or in the self which wants. They represent a partial interest—or if they become the total interest we regard them as now in the moral sphere. Values of personal affection arise as we find a constant rapport in thought, feeling, purpose, between the two members of our social consciousness. The attitude is that of going along with another and thereby extending and enriching our experiences. We enter into his ideas, range with his imagination, kindle at his enthusiasms, sympathize with his joys or sorrows. We may disagree with our friend's opinions, but we do not maintain a critical attitude toward him, that is, toward his fundamental convictions and attitudes. If "home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," as Frost puts it, a friend is one who, when you go to him, has to accept you.

Moral values also arise in a social or personal relation—not in relation to things. This is on the surface in the form of judgment; "He is a good man," "That is a good act." If it is less obvious in the practical judgment, "This is the better course of action," i.e., the course which leads to the greater good, or to the good, this is because we fail to discern that the good in these cases is a something with which I can identify myself, not a something which I merely possess and keep separate from my personality. It is something I shall be rather than have. Or if I speak of a share or participation it is a sharing in the sense of entering into a kindred life. It is an ideal, and an ideal for a conscious personal being can hardly be other than conscious. It may be objected that however personal the ideal it is not on this account necessarily social. It embodies what I would be, but does not necessarily imply response to any other personality. This, however, would be to overlook the analyses which recent psychology has made of the personal. The ideal does not develop in a vacuum. It implies for one thing individuality which is conceivable only as other individuals are distinguished. It implies the definition of purposes, and such definition is scarcely if ever attempted except as a possible world of purposes is envisaged.

Æsthetic valuation is in certain respects intermediate between the valuation of things on the one hand and the moral evaluation of acts of persons or conscious states on the other. Æsthetic objects are in many cases seemingly things and yet even as things they are quasi-personal; they are viewed with a certain sympathy quite different from that which we feel for a purely economic object. If it is a work of art the artist has embodied his thought and feeling and the observer finds it there. The experience is that of Einfühlung. Yet we do not expect the kind of response which we look for in friendship, nor do we take the object as merely a factor for the guidance or control of our own action as in the practical judgment of morality. The æsthetic becomes the object of contemplation, not of response; of embodied meaning, not of individuality. It is so far personal that no one of æsthetic sensibility likes to see a thing of beauty destroyed or mistreated. The situation in which we recognize in an object meaning and embodied feeling, or at least find sources of stimulation which appeal to our emotions, develops an æsthetic enhancement of conscious experience. The æsthetic value predicate is the outcome of this peculiar enhancement.

It seems that the social nature of the judgment plays a part also in the varying objectivity of values. It is undoubtedly true that some values are treated as belonging to objects. If we cannot explain this fully we may get some light upon the situation by noticing the degree to which this is true in the cases of the kinds of values already described.

Economic values are dubiously objective. We use both forms of expression. We say on the one hand, "I want wheat," "There is a demand for wheat," or, on the other, "Wheat is worth one dollar a bushel." Conversely, "There is no demand for the old-fashioned high-framed bicycle" or "It is worthless." The Middle Ages regarded economic value as completely objective. A thing had a real value. The retailer could not add to it. The mediæval economist believed in the externality of relations; he prosecuted for the offenses of forestalling and regrating the man who would make a profit by merely changing things in place. He condemned usury. We have definitely abandoned this theory. We recognize that it is the want which makes the value. To make exchange possible and socialize to some degree the scale of prices we depend upon a public market or a stock exchange.

In values of personal affection we may begin with a purely individual attitude, "I love or esteem my friend." If I put it more objectively I may say, "He is an honored and valued friend." Perhaps still more objectively, we—especially if we are feminine—may say "Is not X dear?" We may then go on to seek a social standard. We perhaps look for reinforcement in a small group of like-minded. We are a little perplexed and, it may be, aggrieved if other members of the circle do not love the one whom we love. In such a group judgment of a common friend there is doubtless greater objectivity than in the economic judgment. The value of a friend does not depend upon his adjustment to our wants. As Aristotle pointed out, true friendship is for its own sake. Its value is "disinterested." If a man does not care for an economic good it does not reflect upon him. He may be careless of futures, neglectful of corn, indifferent to steel. It lessens the demand, lowers the values of these goods, an infinitesimal, but does not write him down an inferior person. To fail to prize a possible friend is a reflection upon us. However the fact that in the very nature of the case one can scarcely be a personal friend to a large, not to say a universal group, operates to limit the objectivity.

In the æsthetic and moral attitudes we incorporate value in the object decisively. We do not like to think that beauty can be changed with shifting fashions or to affirm that the firmament was ever anything but sublime. It seems to belong to the very essence of right that it is something to which the self can commit itself in absolute loyalty and finality. And, as for good, we may say with Moore in judgments of intrinsic value, at least, "we judge concerning a particular state of things that it would be worth while—would be a good thing—that that state of things should exist, even if nothing else were to exist besides."

With regard to this problem of objectivity it is significant in the first place that the kind of situation out of which this object value is affirmed in æsthetic and moral judgments is a social situation. It contrasts in this respect with the economic situation. The economic is indeed social in so far as it sets exchange values, but the object valued is not a social object. The æsthetic and moral object is such an object. Not only is there no contradiction in giving to the symbolic form or the moral act intrinsic value: there is entire plausibility in doing so. For in so far as the situation is really personal, either member is fundamentally equal to the other and may be treated as embodying all the value of the situation. The value which rises to consciousness in the situation is made more complete by eliminating from consideration the originating factors, the plural agents of admiration or approval, and incorporating the whole product abstractly in the object. In thus calling attention to the social or personal character of the æsthetic or moral object it is not intended to minimize that factor in the judgment which we properly speak of as the universalizing activity of thought, much less to overlook the importance of the judgmental process itself. The intention is to point out some of the reasons why in one case the thinking process does universalize while in the other it does not, why in one case the judgment is completely objective while in the other it is not. In both æsthetic and moral judgments social art, social action, social judgments, through collective decisions prepare the way for the general non-personal, objective form. It is probable that man would not say, "This is right," using the word as an adjective, if he had not first said, as member of a judicially acting group, "This is right," using the word as a noun. And finally whatever we may claim as to the "cognitive" nature of the æsthetic and moral judgment, the only test for the beauty of an object is that persons of taste discover it. The only test for the rightness of an act is that persons of good character approve it. The only test for goodness is that good persons on reflection approve and choose it—just as the test for good persons is that they choose and do the good.

(3) Right is not merely a means to good but has a place of its own in the moral consciousness. Many of our moral choices or judgments do not take the form of choice between right and wrong, or between duty and its opposite; they appear to be choices between goods. That is, we do not always consider our value as crystallized into a present standard or feel a tension between a resisting and an authoritative self. But when they do emerge they signify a distinct factor. What Moore says of good may be said also of right. Right means just "right," nothing else. That is, we mean that acts so characterized correspond exactly to a self in a peculiar attitude, viz., one of adequate standardizing and adjustment, of equilibrium, in view of all relations. The concept signifies that in finding our way into a moral world into which we are born in the process of valuing and judging, we take along the imagery of social judgment in which through language and behavior the individual is constantly adjusting himself, not only to the social institutions, and group organization but far more subtly and unconsciously to the social consciousness and attitudes.

This conception of an order to which the act must refer has usually been regarded as peculiarly a "rational" factor. It is, however, rather an order of social elements, of a nature of persons, than of a "nature of things." In savage life the position of father, wife, child, guest, or other members of the household, is one of the most prominent facts of the situation. The relationship of various totem groups and inter-marrying groups is the very focus of moral consciousness. Even in the case of such a cosmic conception of order as Dike and Themis, Rita and Tao, the "Way" is not impersonal cosmos. It is at least quasi-personal. And if we say such primitive myth has no bearing on what the "nature" of right or the "true" meaning of right is, it is pertinent to repeat that concepts without percepts are empty; that the term means nothing except the conceptual interpretation of a unique synthetic process in which an act placed in relation to a standard is thereby given new meaning. So long as custom or law forms the only or the dominant factor in the process, we have little development of the ideal concept right as distinct from a factual standard. But when reason and intelligence enter, particularly when that creative activity of intelligence enters which attempts a new construction of ends, a new ordering of possible experience, then the standardizing process is set free; a new self with new possibilities of relation seeks expression. The concept "right" reflects the standardizing, valuing process of a synthetic order and a synthetic self. Duty born similarly in the world of social relations and reflecting especially the tension between the individual and the larger whole is likewise given full moral significance when it becomes a tension within the synthetic self. And as thus reflecting the immediate attitudes of the self to an ideal social order both right and duty are not to be treated merely as means to any value which does not include as integrant factors just what these signify.

This view is contrary to that of Moore, for whom "right does and can mean nothing but 'cause of a good result,' and is thus identical with useful."[70] The right act is that which has the best consequences.[71] Similarly duty is that action which will cause more good to exist in the Universe than any possible alternative. It is evident that this makes it impossible for any finite mind to assert confidently that any act is right or a duty. "Accordingly it follows that we never have any reason to suppose that an action is our duty: we can never be sure that any action will produce the greatest value possible.[72]

Whatever the convenience of such a definition of right and duty for a simplified ethics it can hardly be claimed to accord with the moral consciousness, for men have notoriously supposed certain acts to be duty. To say that a parent has no reason to suppose that it is his duty to care for his child is more than paradox. And a still greater contradiction to the morality of common sense inheres in the doctrine that the right act is that which has the best consequences. Considering all the good to literature and free inquiry which has resulted from the condemnation of Socrates it is highly probable—or at least it is arguable—that the condemnation had better results than an acquittal would have yielded. But it would be contrary to our ordinary use of language to maintain that this made the act right. Or to take a more recent case: the present war may conceivably lead to a more permanent peace. The "severities," practised by one party, may stir the other to greater indignation and lead ultimately to triumph of the latter. Will the acts in question be termed right by the second party if they actually have this effect? On this hypothesis the more outrageous an act and the greater the reaction against it, the better the consequences are likely to be and hence the more reason to call the act right and a duty. The paradox results from omitting from right the elements of the immediate situation and considering only consequences. The very meaning of the concept right, implies focussing attention upon the present rather than upon the future. It suggests a cross-section of life in its relations. If the time process were to be arrested immediately after our act I think we might still speak of it as right or wrong. In trying to judge a proposed act we doubtless try to discover what it will mean, that is, we look at consequences. But these consequences are looked upon as giving us the meaning of the present act and we do not on this account subordinate the present act to these consequences. Especially we do not mean to eliminate the significance of this very process of judgment. It is significant that in considering what are the intrinsic goods Moore enumerates personal affection and the appreciation of beauty, and with less positiveness, true belief, but does not include any mention of the valuing or choosing or creative consciousness.

(4) If we regard right as the concept which reflects the judgment of standardizing our acts by some ideal order, questions arise as to the objectivity of this order and the fixed or moving character of the implied standard. Rashdall lays great stress upon the importance of objectivity: "Assuredly there is no scientific problem upon which so much depends as upon the answer we give to the question whether the distinction which we are accustomed to draw between right and wrong belongs to the region of objective truth like the laws of mathematics and of physical science, or whether it is based upon an actual emotional constitution of individual human beings."[73] The appraisement of the various desires and impulses by myself and other men is "a piece of insight into the true nature of things."[74] While these statements are primarily intended to oppose the moral sense view of the judgment, they also bear upon the question whether right is something fixed. The phrase "insight into the true nature of things" suggests at once the view that the nature of things is quite independent of any attitude of human beings toward it. It is something which the seeker for moral truth may discover but nothing which he can in any way modify. It is urged that if we are to have any science of ethics at all what was once right must be conceived as always right in the same circumstances.[75]

I hold no brief for the position—if any one holds the position—that in saying "this is right" I am making an assertion about my own feelings or those of any one else. As already stated the function of the judging process is to determine objects, with reference to which we say "is" or "is not." The emotional theory of the moral consciousness does not give adequate recognition to this. But just as little as the process of the moral consciousness is satisfied by an emotional theory of the judgment does it sanction any conception of objectivity which requires that values are here or there once for all; that they are fixed entities or "a nature of things" upon which the moral consciousness may look for its information but upon which it exercises no influence. The process of attempting to give—or discover—moral values is a process of mutual determination of object and agent. We have to do in morals not with a nature of things but with natures of persons. The very characteristic of a person as we have understood it is that he is synthetic, is actually creating something new by organizing experiences and purposes, by judging and choosing. Objectivity does not necessarily imply changelessness.

Whether right is a term of fixed and changeless character depends upon whether the agents are fixed units, either in fact or in ideal. If, as we maintain, right is the correlate of a self confronting a world of other persons conceived as all related in an order, the vital question is whether this order is a fixed or a moving order. "Straight" is a term of fixed content just because we conceive space in timeless terms; it is by its very meaning a cross-section of a static order. But a world of living intelligent agents in social relations is in its very presuppositions a world of activity, of mutual understanding and adjustment. Rationalistic theory, led astray by geometrical conceptions, conceived that a universal criterion must be like a straight line, a fixed and timeless—or eternal—entity. But in such an order of fixed units there could be no selection, no adjustment to other changing agents, no adventure upon the new untested possibility which marks the advance of every great moral idea, in a word, no morality of the positive and constructive sort. And if it be objected that the predicate of a judgment must be timeless whatever the subject, that the word "is" as Plato insists cannot be used if all flows, we reply that if right=the correlate of a moving order, of living social intelligent beings, it is quite possible to affirm "This is according to that law." If our logic provides no form of judgment for the analysis of such a situation it is inadequate for the facts which it would interpret. But in truth mankind's moral judgments have never committed themselves to any such implication. We recognize the futility of attempting to answer simply any such questions as whether the Israelites did right to conquer Canaan or Hamlet to avenge his father.

(5) The category of right has usually been closely connected, if not identified, with reason or "cognitive" activity as contrasted with emotion. Professor Dewey on the contrary has pointed out clearly[76] the impossibility of separating emotion and thought. "To put ourselves in the place of another ... is the surest way to attain universality and objectivity of moral knowledge." "The only truly general, the reasonable as distinct from the merely shrewd or clever thought, is the generous thought." But in the case of certain judgments such as those approving fairness and the general good Sidgwick finds a rational intuition. "The principle of impartiality is obtained by considering the similarity of the individuals that make up a Logical Whole or Genus."[77] Rashdall challenges any but a rationalistic ethics to explain fairness as contrasted with partiality of affection.

There is without question a properly rational or intellectual element in the judgment of impartiality, namely, analysis of the situation and comparison of the units. But what we shall set up as our units—whether we shall treat the gentile or the barbarian or negro as a person, as end and not merely means, or not, depends on something quite other than reason. And this other factor is not covered by the term "practical reason." In fact no ethical principle shows better the subtle blending of the emotional and social factors with the rational. For the student of the history of justice is aware that only an extraordinarily ingenious exegesis could regard justice as having ever been governed by a mathematical logic. The logic of justice has been the logic of a we-group gradually expanding its area. Or it has been the logic of a Magna Charta—a document of special privileges wrested from a superior by a strong group, and gradually widening its benefits with the admission of others into the favored class. Or it has been the logic of class, in which those of the same level are treated alike but those of different levels of birth or wealth are treated proportionately. Yet it would seem far-fetched to maintain that the countrymen of Euclid and Aristotle were deficient in the ability to perform so simple a reasoning process as the judgment one equals one, or that men who developed the Roman Law, or built the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, were similarly lacking in elementary analysis. Inequality rather than equality has been the rule in the world's justice. It has not only been the practice but the approved principle. It still is in regard to great areas of life. In the United States there is no general disapproval of the great inequalities in opportunity for children, to say nothing of inequalities in distribution of wealth. In England higher education is for the classes rather than for the masses. In Prussia the inequality in voting strength of different groups and the practical immunity of the military class from the constraints of civil law seem to an American unfair. The western states of the Union think it unfair to restrict the suffrage to males and give women no voice in the determination of matters of such vital interest to them as the law of divorce, the guardianship of children, the regulation of women's labor, the sale of alcoholic liquors, the protection of milk and food supply. Are all these differences of practice and conviction due to the fact that some people use reason while others do not? Of course in every case excellent reasons can be given for the inequality. The gentile should not be treated as a Jew because he is not a Jew. The slave should not be treated as a free citizen because he is not a free citizen. The churl should not have the same wergeld as the thane because he is lowborn. The more able should possess more goods. The woman should not vote because she is not a man. The reasoning is clear and unimpeachable if you accept the premises, but what gives the premises? In every case cited the premise is determined largely if not exclusively by social or emotional factors. If reason can then prescribe equally well that the slave should be given rights because he is a man of similar traits or denied rights because he has different traits from his master, if the Jew may either be given his place of equality because he hath eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, or denied equality because he differs in descent, if a woman is equal as regards taxpaying but unequal as regards voting, it is at least evident that reason is no unambiguous source of morality. The devil can quote Scripture and it is a very poor reasoner who cannot find a reason for anything that he wishes to do. A partiality that is more or less consistently partial to certain sets or classes is perhaps as near impartiality as man has yet come, whether by a rational faculty or any other.

Is it, then, the intent of this argument merely to reiterate that reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions? On the contrary, the intent is to substitute for such blanket words as reason and passions a more adequate analysis. And what difference will this make? As regards the particular point in controversy it will make this difference: the rationalist having smuggled in under the cover of reason the whole moral consciousness then proceeds to assume that because two and two are always four, or the relations of a straight line are timeless, therefore ethics is similarly a matter of fixed standards and timeless goods. A legal friend told me that he once spent a year trying to decide whether a corporation was or was not a person and then concluded that the question was immaterial. But when the supreme court decided that a corporation was a person in the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment it thereby made the corporation heir to the rights established primarily for the negro. Can the moral consciousness by taking the name "reason" become heir to all the privileges of the absolute idea and to the timelessness of space and number?

Suppose I am to divide an apple between my two children—two children, two pieces—this is an analysis of the situation which is obvious and may well be called the analytic activity of reason. But shall I give to each an equal share on the ground that both are equally my children or shall I reason that as John is older or larger or hungrier or mentally keener or more generous or is a male, he shall have a larger piece than Jane? To settle this it may be said that we ought to see whether there is any connection between the size of the piece and the particular quality of John which is considered, or that by a somewhat different use of reason we should look at the whole situation and see how we shall best promote family harmony and mutual affection. To settle the first of these problems, that of the connection between the size of the piece and the size of the hunger or the sex of the child, is seemingly again a question of analysis, of finding identical units, but a moment's thought shows that the case is not so simple; that the larger child should have the larger piece is by no means self-evident. This is in principle doubtless the logic, to him that hath shall be given. It is the logic of the survival of the strong, but over against that the moral consciousness has always set another logic which says that the smaller child should have the larger piece if thereby intelligent sympathy can contribute toward evening up the lot of the smaller. Now it is precisely this attitude of the moral consciousness which is not suggested by the term reason, for it is quite different from the analytic and identifying activity. This analytical and identifying activity may very well rule out of court the hypothesis that I should give John the larger piece because he has already eaten too much or because he has just found a penny or because he has red hair; it has undoubtedly helped in abolishing such practices as that of testing innocence by the ordeal. But before the crucial question of justice which divides modern society, namely, whether we shall lay emphasis upon adjustment of rewards to previous abilities, habits, possessions, character, or shall lay stress upon needs, and the possibility of bringing about a greater measure of equality, the doctrine which would find its standard in an a priori reason is helpless.

If we look at the second test suggested, namely, that of considering the situation as a whole with a view to the harmony of the children and the mutual affection within the family, there can be even less question that this is no mere logical problem of the individuals in a logical genus. It is the social problem of individuals who have feelings and emotions as well as thought and will. The problem of distributing the apple fairly is then a complex in which at least the following processes enter. (1) Analysis of the situation to show all the relevant factors with the full bearing of each; (2) putting yourself in the place of each one to be considered and experiencing to the full the claims, the difficulties and the purposes of each person involved; (3) considering all of these as members of the situation so that no individual is given rights or allowed claims except in so far as he represents a point of view which is comprehensive and sympathetic. This I take it is the force of President Wilson's utterance which has commanded such wide acceptance: "America asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask in the name of humanity." Kant aimed to express a high and democratic ideal of justice in his doctrine that we should treat every rational being as end. The defect in his statement is that the rational process as such has never treated and so far as can be foreseen never will treat human beings as ends. To treat a human being as an end it is necessary to put oneself into his place in his whole nature and not simply in his universalizing, and legislative aspects: Kant's principle is profound and noble, but his label for it is misleading and leaves a door open for appalling disregard of other people's feelings, sympathies, and moral sentiments, as Professor Dewey has indicated in his recent lectures on "German Philosophy and Politics."

The term "reasonable," which is frequently used in law and common life as a criterion of right, seems to imply that reason is a standard. As already stated, common life understands by the reasonable man one who not only uses his own thinking powers but is willing to listen to reason as presented by some one else. He makes allowance for frailties in human nature. To be reasonable means, very nearly, taking into account all factors of the case not only as I see them but as men of varying capacities and interests regard them. The type of the "unreasonable" employer is the man who refuses to talk over things with the laborers; to put himself in their place; or to look at matters from the point of view of society as a whole.

Just as little does the term reasonable as used in law permit a purely intellectualistic view of the process or an a priori standard. The question as to what is reasonable care or a reasonable price is often declared to be a matter not for the court but for the jury to decide, i.e., it is not to be deduced from any settled principle but is a question of what the average thoughtful man, who considers other people as well as himself, would do under the circumstances. A glance at some of the judicial definitions of such phrases as "reasonable care," "reasonable doubt," "reasonable law," as brought together in Words and Phrases Judicially Defined, illustrates this view. We get a picture not of any definite standard but of such a process as we have described in our analysis, namely, a process into which the existing social tradition, the mutual adjustments of a changing society and the intelligent consideration of all facts, enter. The courts have variously defined the reasonable (1) as the customary, or ordinary, or legal, or (2) as according with the existing state of knowledge in some special field, or (3) as proceeding on due consideration of all the facts, or (4) as offering sufficient basis for action. For example, (1) reasonable care means "according to the usages, habits, and ordinary risks of the business," (2) "surgeons should keep up with the latest advances in medical science," (3) a reasonable price "is such a price as the jury would under all the circumstances decide to be reasonable." "If, after an impartial comparison and consideration the jury can say candidly they are not satisfied with the defendant's guilt they have a reasonable doubt." Under (4) falls one of various definitions of "beyond reasonable doubt." "The evidence must be such as to produce in the minds of prudent men such certainty that they would act without hesitation in their own most important affairs." There is evidently ground for the statement of one judge that "reasonable" (he was speaking the phrase "reasonable care," but his words would seem to apply to other cases) "cannot be measured by any fixed or inflexible standard." Professor Freund characterizes "reasonable" as "the negation of precision." In the development of judicial interpretation as applied to the Sherman Law the tendency is to hold that the "rule of reason" will regard as forbidden by the statute (a) such combinations as have historically been prohibited and (b) such as seem to work some definite injury.

III

The above view of the function of intelligence, and of the synthetic character of the conscious process may be further defined in certain aspects by comparison with the view of Professor Fite, who likewise develops the significance of consciousness and particularly of intelligence for our ethical concepts and social program.

Professor Fite insists that in contrast with the "functional psychology" which would make consciousness merely a means to the preservation of the organic individual in mechanical working order, the whole value of life from the standpoint of the conscious agent consists in its being conscious. Creative moments in which there is complete conscious control of materials and technique represent high and unique individuality. Extension of range of consciousness makes the agent "a larger and more inclusive being," for he is living in the future and past as well as in the present. Consciousness means that a new and original force is inserted into the economy of the social and the physical world."[78] On the basis of the importance of consciousness Professor Fite would ground his justification of rights, his conception of justice, and his social program. The individual derives his rights simply from the fact that he knows what he is doing, hence as individuals differ in intelligence they differ in rights. The problem of justice is that of according to each a degree of recognition proportioned to his intelligence, that is, treat others as ends so far as they are intelligent; so far as they are ignorant treat them as means.[79] "The conscious individual when dealing with other conscious individuals will take account of their aims, as of other factors in his situation. This will involve 'adjustment,' but not abandonment of ends, i.e., self-sacrifice. Obligation to consider these ends of others is based on 'the same logic that binds me to get out of the way of an approaching train.'"[80]

The point in which the conception of rights and justice and the implied social program advocated in this paper differs as I view it from that of Professor Fite is briefly this. I regard both the individual and his rights as essentially synthetic and in constant process of reconstruction. Therefore what is due to any individual at a moment is not measured by his present stage of consciousness. It is measured rather by his possibilities than his actualities. This does not mean that the actual is to be ignored, but it does mean that if we take our stand upon the actual we are committed to a program with little place for imagination, with an emphasis all on the side of giving people what they deserve rather than of making them capable of deserving more. Professor Fite's position I regard as conceiving consciousness itself too largely in the category of the identical and the static rather than in the more "conscious" categories of constant reconstruction. When by virtue of consciousness you conceive new ends in addition to your former particular ideas of present good the problem is, he says, "to secure perfect fulfilment of each of them." The "usefulness" or "advantage" or "profitableness" of entering into social relations is the central category for measuring their value and their obligation.

Now the conception of securing perfect fulfilment of all one's aims by means of society rather than of putting one's own aims into the process for reciprocal modification and adjustment with the aims of others and of the new social whole involves a view of these ends as fixed, an essentially mechanical view. The same is the implication in considering society from the point of view of use and profit. As previously suggested these economic terms apply appropriately to things rather than to intrinsic values. To consider the uses of a fellow-being is to measure him in terms of some other end than his own intrinsic personal worth. To consider family life or society as profitable implies in ordinary language that such life is a means for securing ends already established rather than that it proves a good to the man who invests in it and thereby becomes himself a new individual with a new standard of values. Any object to be chosen must of course have value to the chooser. But it is one thing to be valued because it appeals to the actual chooser as already constituted; it is another thing to be valued because it appeals to a moving self which adventures upon this new unproved objective. This second is the distinction of taking an interest instead of being interested.

The second point of divergence is that Professor Fite lays greater stress upon the intellectual side of intelligence, whereas I should deny that the intellectual activity in itself is adequate to give either a basis for obligation or a method of dealing with the social problem. The primary fact, as Professor Fite well states it, is "that men are conscious beings and therefore know themselves and one another." It involves "a mutual recognition of personal ends." "That very knowledge which shows the individual himself shows him also that he is living in a world with other persons and other things whose mode of behavior and whose interests determine for him the conditions through which his own interests are to be realized."

What kind of "knowledge" is it "which shows the individual himself"? Professor Fite has two quite different ways of referring to this. He uses one set of terms when he would contrast his view with the sentimental, or the "Oriental," or justify exploitation by those who know better what they are about than the exploited. He uses another set of terms to characterize it when he wishes to commend his view as human, and fraternal, and as affording the only firm basis for social reform. In the first case he speaks of "mere knowing"; of intelligence as "clear," and "far-sighted," of higher degrees of consciousness as simply "more in one." "Our test of intelligence would be breadth of vision (in a coherent view), fineness and keenness of insight."[81]

In the second case it is "generous," it will show an "intelligent sympathy"; it seeks "fellowship," and would not "elect to live in a social environment in which the distinction of 'inferiors' were an essential part of the idea."[82] The type of intelligence is found not in the man seeking wealth or power, nor in the legal acumen which forecasts all discoverable consequences and devises means to carry out purposes, but in literature and art.[83]

The terms which cover both these meanings are the words "consider" and "considerate." "Breadth of consideration" gives the basis for rights. The selfish man is the "inconsiderate."[84] This term plays the part of the amor intellectualis in the system of Spinoza, which enables him at once to discard all emotion and yet to keep it. For "consideration" is used in common life, and defined in the dictionaries, as meaning both "examination," "careful thought," and "appreciative or sympathetic regard." The ambiguity in the term may well have served to disguise from the author himself the double rôle which intelligence is made to play. The broader use is the only one that does justice to the moral consciousness, but we cannot include sympathy and still maintain that "mere knowing" covers the whole. The insistence at times upon the "mere knowing" is a mechanical element which needs to be removed before the ethical implications can be accepted.

Once more, how does one know himself and others? Is it the same process precisely as knowing a mechanical object? Thoughts without percepts are empty, and what are the "percepts" in the two cases? In the first case, that of knowing things, the percepts are colors, sounds, resistances; in the case of persons the percepts are impulses, feelings, desires, passions, as well as images, purposes, and the reflective process itself. In the former case we construct objects dehumanized; in the latter we keep them more or less concrete. But now, just as primitive man did not so thoroughly de-personalize nature, but left in it an element of personal aim, so science may view human beings as objects whose purposes and even feelings may be predicted, and hence may, as Professor Fite well puts it, view them mechanically. What he fails to note is that just this mechanical point of view is the view of "mere knowing"—if "mere" has any significance at all, it is meant to shut out "sentiment." And this mechanical view is entirely equal to the adjectives of "clear," "far-sighted," and even "broad" so far as this means "more in one." For it is not essential to a mechanical point of view that we consider men in masses or study them by statistics. I may calculate the purposes and actions, yes, and the emotions and values of one, or of a thousand, and be increasingly clear, and far-sighted, and broad, but if it is "mere" knowing—scientific information—it is still "mechanical," i.e., external. On the other hand, if it is to be a knowledge that has the qualities of humaneness, or "intelligent sympathy," it must have some of the stuff of feeling, even as in the realm of things an artist's forest will differ from that of the most "far-sighted," "clear," and "broad" statistician, by being rich with color and moving line.

And this leads to a statement of the way in which my fellow-beings will find place in "my" self. I grant that if they are there I shall take some account of them. But they may be there in all sorts of ways. They may be there as "population" if I am a statistician, or as "consumers," or as rivals, or as enemies, or as fellows, or as friends. They will have a "value" in each case, but it will sometimes be a positive value, and sometimes a negative value. Which it will be, and how great it will be, depends not on the mere fact of these objects being "in consciousness" but on the capacity in which they are there. And this capacity depends on the dominant interest and not on mere knowing. The trouble with the selfish man, says Professor Fite, is that he "fails to consider," "he fails to take account of me."[85] Well, then, why does he fail? Why does he not take account of me? He probably does "consider" me in several of the ways that are possible and in the ways that it suits him to consider me. I call him selfish because he does not consider me in the one particular way in which I wish to be considered. And what will get me into his consideration from this point of view? In some cases it may be that I can speak: "Sir, you are standing on my toe," and as the message encounters no obstacle in any fixed purpose or temperamental bent the idea has no difficulty in penetrating his mind. In other cases it may interfere with his desire to raise himself as high as possible, but I may convince him by the same logic as that of an "approaching railway train"—that he must regard me. In still other cases—and it is these that always test Individualism—I am not myself aware of the injury, or I am too faint to protest. How shall those who have no voice to speak get "consideration"? Only by "intelligent sympathy," and by just those emotions rooted in instinctive social tendencies which an intellectualistic Individualism excludes or distrusts.

IV

What practical conclusion, if any, follows from this interpretation of the moral consciousness and its categories? Moral progress involves both the formation of better ideals and the adoption of such ideals as actual standards and guides of life. If our view is correct we can construct better ideals neither by logical deduction nor solely by insight into the nature of things—if by this we mean things as they are. We must rather take as our starting-point the conviction that moral life is a process involving physical life, social intercourse, measuring and constructive intelligence. We shall endeavor to further each of these factors with the conviction that thus we are most likely to reconstruct our standards and find a fuller good.[86]

Physical life, which has often been depreciated from the moral point of view, is not indeed by itself supreme, but it is certain that much evil charged to a bad will is due to morbid or defective conditions of the physical organism. One would be ashamed to write such a truism were it not that our juvenile courts and our prison investigations show how far we are from having sensed it in the past. And our present labor conditions show how far our organization of industry is from any decent provision for a healthy, sound, vigorous life of all the people. This war is shocking in its destruction, but it is doubtful if it can do the harm to Great Britain that her factory system has done. And if life is in one respect less than ideals, in another respect it is greater; for it provides the possibility not only of carrying out existing ideals but of the birth of new and higher ideals.

Social interaction likewise has been much discussed but is still very inadequately realized. The great possibilities of coöperation have long been utilized in war. With the factory and commercial organization of the past century we have hints of their economic power. Our schools, books, newspapers, are removing some of the barriers. But how far different social classes are from any knowledge, not to say appreciation, of each other! How far different races are apart! How easy to inculcate national hatred and distrust! The fourth great problem which baffles Wells's hero in the Research Magnificent is yet far from solution. The great danger to morality in America lies not in any theory as to the subjectivity of the moral judgment, but in the conflict of classes and races.

Intelligence and reason are in certain respects advancing. The social sciences are finding tools and methods. We are learning to think of much of our moral inertia, our waste of life, our narrowness, our muddling and blundering in social arrangements, as stupid—we do not like to be called stupid even if we scorn the imputation of claiming to be "good." But we do not organize peace as effectively as war. We shrink before the thought of expending for scientific investigation sums comparable with those used for military purposes. And is scholarship entitled to shift the blame entirely upon other interests? Perhaps if it conceived its tasks in greater terms and addressed itself to them more energetically it would find greater support.

And finally the process of judgment and appraisal, of examination and revaluation. To judge for the sake of judging, to analyze and evaluate for the sake of the process hardly seems worth while. But if we supply the process with the new factors of increased life, physical, social, intelligent, we shall be compelled to new valuations. Such has been the course of moral development; we may expect this to be repeated. The great war and the changes that emerge ought to set new tasks for ethical students. As medievalism, the century of enlightenment, and the century of industrial revolution, each had its ethics, so the century that follows ought to have its ethics, roused by the problem of dealing fundamentally with economic, social, racial, and national relations, and using the resources of better scientific method than belonged to the ethical systems which served well their time.

Only wilful misinterpretation will suppose that the method here set forth is that of taking every want or desire as itself a final justification, or of making morality a matter of arbitrary caprice. But some may in all sincerity raise the question: "Is morality then after all simply the shifting mores of groups stumbling forward—or backward, or sidewise—with no fixed standards of right and good? If this is so how can we have any confidence in our present judgments, to say nothing of calling others to an account or of reasoning with them?" What we have aimed to present as a moral method is essentially this: to take into our reckoning all the factors in the situation, to take into account the other persons involved, to put ourselves into their places by sympathy as well as conceptually, to face collisions and difficulties not merely in terms of fixed concepts of what is good or fair, and what the right of each party concerned may be, but with the conviction that we need new definitions of the ideal life, and of the social order, and thus reciprocally of personality. Thus harmonized, free, and responsible, life may well find new meaning also in the older intrinsic goods of friendship, æsthetic appreciation and true belief. And it is not likely to omit the satisfaction in actively constructing new ideals and working for their fulfilment.

Frankly, if we do not accept this method what remains? Can any one by pure reason discover a single forward step in the treatment of the social situation or a single new value in the moral ideal? Can any analysis of the pure concept of right and good teach us anything? In the last analysis the moral judgment is not analytic but synthetic. The moral life is not natural but spiritual. And spirit is creative.

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