Chapter II.—THE MORAL STRUGGLE OR THE REALIZING OF IDEALS.
LXVI.
Goodness as a Struggle.
We have already seen that the bare repetition of identically the same acts does not consist with morality. To aim at securing a satisfaction precisely like the one already experienced, is to fail to recognize the altered capacity and environment, and the altered duty. Moral satisfaction prior to an act is ideal; ideal not simply in the sense of being conceived, or present to thought, but ideal in the sense that it has not been already enjoyed. Some satisfaction has been enjoyed in a previous activity, but that very satisfaction has so enlarged and complicated the situation, that its mere repetition would not afford moral or active satisfaction, but only what Kant terms 'pathological' satisfaction. Morality thus assumes the form of a struggle. The past satisfaction speaks for itself; it has been verified in experience, it has conveyed its worth to our very senses. We have tried and tasted it, and know that it is good. If morality lay in the repetition of similar satisfactions, it would not be a struggle. We should know experimentally before hand that the chosen end would bring us satisfaction, and should be at rest in that knowledge. But when morality lies in striving for satisfactions which have not verified themselves to our sense, it always requires an effort. We have to surrender the enjoyed good, and stake ourselves upon that of which we cannot say: We know it is good. To surrender the actual experienced good for a possible ideal good is the struggle.
We arrive, in what is termed the opposition of desire and duty, at the heart of the moral struggle. Of course, taken strictly, there can be no opposition here. The duty which did not awaken any desire would not appeal to the mind even as a duty. But we may distinguish between a desire which is based on past satisfaction actually experienced, and desire based simply upon the idea that the end is desirable—that it ought to be desired. It may seem strange to speak of a desire based simply upon the recognition that an end should be desired, but the possibility of awakening such a desire and the degree of its strength are the test of a moral character. How far does this end awaken response in me because I see that it is the end which is fit and due? How far does it awaken this response although it does not fall into line with past satisfactions, or although it actually thwart some habitual satisfaction? Here is the opposition of duty and desire. It lies in the contrast of a good which has demonstrated itself as such in experience, and a good whose claim to be good rests only on the fact that it is the act which meets the situation. It is the contrast between a good of possession, and one of action.
From this point of view morality is a life of aspiration, and of faith; there is required constant willingness to give up past goods as the good, and to press on to new ends; not because past achievements are bad, but because, being good, they have created a situation which demands larger and more intricately related achievements. This willingness is aspiration and it implies faith. Only the old good is of sight, has verified itself to sense. The new ideal, the end which meets the situation, is felt as good only in so far as the character has formed the conviction that to meet obligation is itself a good, whether bringing sensible satisfaction or not. You can prove to a man that he ought to act so and so (that is to say, that such an act is the one which fits the present occasion), but you cannot prove to him that the performance of that duty will be good. Only faith in the moral order, in the identity of duty and the good, can assert this. Every time an agent takes as his end (that is, chooses as good) an activity which he has not already tried, he asserts his belief in the goodness of right action as such. This faith is not a mere intellectual thing, but it is practical—the staking of self upon activity as against passive possession.
LXVII.
Moral Badness.
Badness originates in the contrast which thus comes about between having the repetition of former action, and doing—pressing forward to the new right action. Goodness is the choice of doing; the refusal to be content with past good as exhausting the entire content of goodness. It is, says Green, 'in the continued effort to be better that goodness consists'. The man, however bad his past and however limited his range of intellectual, æsthetic and social activity, who is dissatisfied with his past, and whose dissatisfaction manifests itself in act, is accounted better than the man of a respectable past and higher plane of life who has lapsed into contented acquiescence with past deeds. For past deeds are not deeds, they are passive enjoyments. The bad man, on the other hand, is not the man who loves badness in and for itself. Such a man would be a mad man or a devil. All conduct, bad as well as good, is for the sake of some satisfaction, that is, some good. In the bad man, the satisfaction which is aimed at is simply the one congruent with existing inclinations, irrespective of the sufficiency of those inclinations in view of the changed capacity and environment: it is a good of having. The bad man, that is to say, does not recognize any ideal or active good; any good which has not already commended itself to him as such. This good may be good in itself; but, as distinguished from the good which requires action, that which would fulfill the present capacity or meet the present situation, it is bad.
Thus Alexander terms badness a survival, in part at least, of former goodness. Hinton says (Philosophy and Religion, p. 146), "That a thing is wrong does not mean that it ought never to have been done or thought, but that it ought to be left off". It will be noted that we are not dealing with the metaphysical or the religious problem of the nature and origin of evil, but simply with an account of bad action as it appears in individual conduct.
Badness has four traits, all derivable from this basal fact. They are: (1) Lawlessness, (2) Selfishness, (3) Baseness, (4) Demoralization.
1. Lawlessness. When desire and duty, that is, when desires based on past having and on future acting, conflict, the bad man lets duty go. He virtually denies that it is a good at all—it may be a good in the abstract but not a good for him. He denies that obligation as such has any value; that any end is to be consulted save his own state of mind. He denies that there is law for conduct—at least any law beyond the inclination which he happens to have at the time of action. Keeping himself within that which has verified itself to his feeling in the past, he abrogates all authority excepting that of his own immediate feelings.
2. Selfishness. It has already been shown that the self is not necessarily immoral, and hence that action for self is not necessarily bad—indeed, that the true self is social and interest in it right (see Sec. [XXXV]). But when a satisfaction based on past experience is set against one proceeding from an act as meeting obligation, there grows up a divorce in the self. The actual self, the self recognizing only past and sensible satisfaction, is set over against the self which recognizes the necessity of expansion and a wider environment. Since the former self confines its action to benefits demonstrably accruing to itself, while the latter, in meeting the demands of the situation, necessarily contributes to the satisfaction of others, one takes the form of a private self, a self whose good is set over against and exclusive of that of others, while the self recognizing obligation becomes a social self—the self which performs its due function in society. It is, again, the contrast between getting and doing.
All moral action is based upon the presupposition of the identity of good (Sec. [XL]), but it by no means follows that this identity of good can be demonstrated to the agent at the time of action. On the contrary, it is matter of the commonest experience that the sensible good, the demonstrable good (that is, the one visible on the line of past satisfaction) may be contradictory to the act which would satisfy the interests of others. The identity of interests can be proved only by acting upon it; to the agent, prior to action, it is a matter of faith. Choice presents itself then in these cases as a test: Do you believe that the Good is simply your private good, or is the true Good, is your good, one which includes the good of others? The condemnation passed upon the 'selfish' man is that he virtually declares that good is essentially exclusive and private. He shuts himself up within himself, within, that is, his past achievements, and the inclinations based upon them. The good man goes out of himself in new action. Bad action is thus essentially narrowing, it confines the self; good action is expansive and vital, it moves on to a larger self.
In fine, all conduct, good and bad, satisfies the self; bad conduct, however, aims at a self which, keeping its eye upon its private and assured satisfaction, refuses to recognize the increasing function with its larger social range,—the 'selfish' self.
Light is thrown upon this point by referring to what was said about interest (Sec. [XXXIV]). Interest is active feeling, feeling turned upon an object, and going out toward it so as to identify it with self. In this active and objective interest there is satisfaction, but the satisfaction is in the activity which has the object for its content. This is the satisfaction of the good self. In the bad self, interest is reduced to mere feeling; for the aim of life in such a self is simply to have certain feelings as its own possession; activity and its object are degraded into mere means for getting these sensations.
Activity has two sides; as activity, as projection or expression of one's powers, it satisfies self; as activity, also, it has some end, some object, for its content. The activity as such, therefore, the activity for its own sake, must involve the realization of this object for its own sake. But in having, in getting, there is no such creation or maintenance of an object for itself. Objects cease to be 'ends in themselves' when they cease to be the content of action; and are degraded into means of private satisfaction, that is, of sensation.
3. Baseness. For, when we say that bad action takes account of ideals only on the basis of possession, we say, in effect, that it takes account only of sensible satisfaction. As it is in the progressive movement of morality that there arises the distinction of the law-abiding and the lawless self, of the social and the selfish self, so in the same aspect there comes into existence the distinction of the low, degraded, sensual self, as against the higher or spiritual self. In themselves, or naturally, there is no desire high, none low. But when an inclination for an end which consists in possession comes into conflict with one which includes an active satisfaction—one not previously enjoyed—the contrast arises. It is wrong to say, with Kant, that the bad act is simply for pleasure; for the bad act, the choice of a past satisfaction as against the aspiration for a wider good, may have a large content—it may be the good of one's family; it may be scientific or æsthetic culture. Yet the moment a man begins to live on the plane of past satisfaction as such, he has begun to live on the plane of 'sense', or for pleasure. The refusal to recognize the ideal good, to acknowledge activity as good, throws the agent back into a life of dwelling upon his own sensible good, and thus he falls more and more into a life of dwelling upon mere sensations. What made the past good a good at all was the spirit, the activity, in it, and when it is no longer an activity, but a mere keeping, the life is gone out of it. The selfish life must degenerate into mere sensuality—although when sensuality is 'refined' we call it sentimentality.
4. Demoralization. Morality is activity; exercise of function. To cease this activity is not to remain on the attained level, for that, when attained, was active. It is to relapse, to slip down into badness. The moral end is always an activity. To fail in this activity is, therefore, to involve character in disintegration. It can be kept together only by constant organizing activity; only by acting upon new wants and moving toward new situations. Let this activity cease, and disorganization ensues, as surely as the body decays when life goes, instead of simply remaining inert as it was. Bad conduct is thus unprincipled; it has no center, no movement. The good man is 'organic'; he uses his attainments to discover new needs, and to assimilate new material. He lives from within outwards, his character is compact, coherent; he has integrity. The bad man, having no controlling unity, has no consistent line of action; his motives of conduct contradict one another; he follows this maxim in relation to this person, that in relation to another; character is demoralized.
The bad man is unstable and double-minded. He is not one person, but a group of conflicting wills. So far as he is really bad he becomes as many persons as he has desires. His conduct cannot be made universal. He always makes exceptions in favor of himself. He does not want moral relations abolished, but relaxed or deflected in his own case, while they still hold for other men.
This is the truth at the basis of Kant's contention regarding goodness as conduct whose maxim is capable of generalization. See also Bradley, Op. cit., pp. 261-271. And Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 309-312.
LXVIII.
Goodness in its Relation to the Struggle.
1. Two aspects of this we have already noted; one, that of conscientiousness, or habitual alertness and responsiveness of intelligence to the nature of obligation, both in general and as to the specific acts which are obligatory. The other is that goodness, in this relation, consists in progressive adjustment, involving aspiration as to future conduct, and correlative humility as to present achievements of character.
2. We may state what has already been suggested, that goodness as self-sacrifice or self-renunciation has also its place here. The moral attitude is one of renunciation, because, on account of the constantly growing wants and circumstances, the satisfactions which belong to the actually realized self must be given up for active goods. That the self-sacrifice takes largely the form of the surrender of private interests to the welfare of the whole, is explained by what has just been said regarding selfishness. Self-sacrifice is not in any way the moral end or the last word. Life is lost that it may be found. The smaller local life of the private self is given up in order that the richer and fuller life of the social or active self may be realized. But none the less the self-sacrifice at the time that it is made is genuine and real. While it is involved in the very nature of morality that moral conduct shall bring greater activity, larger life, the motive of the agent in self-sacrifice is not to give up the lesser satisfaction for the sake of getting a greater. It is only so far as he is already moral that he is convinced that the new duty will bring satisfaction, and his conviction is not one of sense, but of faith. To the agent at the time of action, it is a real satisfaction which is given up for one that is only ideal, and given up because the ideal satisfaction is ethical, active—one congruent to duty, while the actual satisfaction is only pathological; that is, congruent to the actualized self—to the having, instead of the doing self.
3. Goodness is not remoteness from badness. In one sense, goodness is based upon badness; that is, good action is always based upon action good once, but bad if persisted in under changing circumstances. The moral struggle thus presents itself as the conflict between this "bad" and the good which would duly meet the existing situation. This good, of course, does not involve the annihilation of the previously attained good—the present bad—but its subordination; its use in the new function. This is the explanation of the apparently paradoxical statement that badness is the material of good action—a statement literally correct when badness is understood as it is here. Evil is simply that which goodness has to overcome—has to make an element of itself.
Badness, as just spoken of, is only potential—the end is bad as contrasted with the better. Badness may also, of course, be actual; the bad end may be chosen, and adopted into character. Even in this sense, goodness is not the absence of evil, or entire freedom from it. Badness even on this basis is the material of goodness; it is to be put under foot and made an element in good action. But how can actual evil be made a factor of right conduct? In this way; the good man learns from his own bad acts; he does not continue to repeat such acts, nor does he, while recognizing their badness, simply endeavor to do right without regard to the previous bad conduct. Perceiving the effect of his own wrong acts, the change produced in his own capacities, and his altered relations to other people, he acts so as to meet the situation which his own bad act has helped to create. Conduct is then right, although made what it is, to some degree, by previous wrong conduct.
In this connection, the introduction of Christianity made one of its largest ethical contributions. It showed how it was possible for a man to put his badness behind him and even make it an element in goodness. Teaching that the world of social relations was itself an ethical reality and a good (a redeemed world), it taught that the individual, by identifying himself with the spirit of this ethical world, might be freed from slavery to his past evil; that by recognizing and taking for his own the evil in the world, instead of engaging in an isolated struggle to become good by himself, he might make the evil a factor in his own right action.
Moreover, by placing morality in activity and not in some thing, or in conformity to an external law, Christianity changed the nature of the struggle. While the old struggle had been an effort to get away from evil to a good beyond, Christianity made the struggle itself a good. It, then, was no longer the effort to escape to some fixed, unchanging state; the constant onward movement was itself the goal. Virtue, as Hegel says, is the battle, the struggle, carried to its full.
4. The conception of merit. This is, essentially, the idea of social desert—the idea that an agent deserves well of others on account of his act or his character. An action evokes two kinds of judgments: first, that the act is right or virtuous, that it fulfills duty. This judgment may be passed by any one; as well by the agent as by any one else. It is simply the recognition of the moral character of the act. But a right act may also awaken a conviction of desert; that the act is one which furthers the needs of society, and thus is meritorious.
This is not a judgment which the agent can pass upon his own act. Virtue and duty are strictly coextensive; no act can be so virtuous, so right, as to go beyond meeting the demands of the situation. Everything is a duty which needs to be done in a given situation; the doing of what needs to be done is right or virtuous. While the agent may and must approve of right action in himself, he cannot claim desert or reward because of its virtuousness; he simply does what he should.
Others, however, may see that the act has been done in the face of great temptation; after a hard struggle; that it denotes some unusual qualification or executes some remarkable service. It is not only right, but obligatory, for others to take due notice of these qualities, of these deeds. Such notice is as requisite as it is to show gratitude for generosity, or forgiveness to a repentant man.
Two errors are to be avoided here; both arising from the identification of merit with virtue. One view holds that the virtue and merit consist in doing something over and above duty. There is a minimum of action which is obligatory; to perform this, since it is obligatory, is no virtue. Anything above this is virtuous. The other view reverses this and holds that since no man can do more than he ought, there is no such thing as merit. Great excellence or heroism in one man is no more meritorious than ordinary conduct in another; since the one man is naturally more gifted than the other. But while one act is no more right or virtuous than another, it may be more meritorious, because contributing more to moral welfare or progress. To depreciate the meritorious deed is a sign of a carping, a grudging or a mean spirit.
The respective relations of duty, virtue and merit have been variously discussed. Different views will be found in Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, Bk. III, ch. iv; Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, pp. 187-195 and 242-247; Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 293-303; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, pp. 78-81; Laurie, Ethica, pp. 145-148.