CHAPTER III. The Biological View of Ethics.
We shall best arrive at an adequate estimate of Mr. Spencer's ethical system by studying first what he terms the biological view of ethics. But to do this properly requires a survey not only of Chapter VI., which bears this title, but also of the following chapter, which deals with the psychological view. We hold that Mr. Spencer, in this division of his subject into separate stages, makes a false arrangement of his studies. For as on the one hand he endeavours to include the study of biology as a branch of physics, on the other hand he treats it as incapable of comprehensive developmental study apart from the factors of feeling and mind. These divisions are marked features of the form into which Mr. Spencer has thrown his study of human conduct, but they do not correspond with his actual treatment of the subject. The course of thought cannot be fitted into the formal outline. It is found that the understanding of biology is as dependent upon a knowledge of psychology as it is upon a knowledge of physics. The sequence of dependent stages as set forth does not hold good. The conduct of animal and perhaps vegetable organisms is not explicable as the action of mere physical aggregates, and is little understood without the admission of a subjective factor of feeling or mind. It is all very well for Mr. Spencer to argue, as he does in Chapter V., on the "Physical View," that since all conduct is objectively physical action it may be separately studied from the physical point of view; but since the actions of organisms are not to be explained within the limits of physical laws this is a very useless reminder, and Mr. Spencer himself makes nothing of the study since he cannot work out the line of causation in terms of the physical factors only. On the other hand we find that our author has not proceeded three pages into the biological view before he introduces the subjective factors of Pleasure and Pain, which he eventually establishes not merely as the accompaniments of life-sustaining and life-diminishing acts, but even as the causes of further actions which shall at the same time tend to secure Pleasure and avoid Pain, and thus sustain the organism in a continuance of existence. Only for three pages can the purely biological view of animal organisms as physical moving equilibria be maintained; and then with section 32 comes the introduction of subjective factors—factors which are treated not merely as the concomitants of physical processes conducted wholly within and according to the laws of physical sequence, but as actual factors interfering with and affecting the line of causation. It is true Mr. Spencer recognises and deals with the difficulty which obviously arises as to the separability of the psychological view from a biological view which admits the factors of Pleasure and Pain. But the distinction he makes, while justifiable, does not deal with the fundamental difficulty. Psychology treats, roughly speaking, of mentality; it comprises a study of the establishment of sets of inner relations, (i.e., associations of thought, relations of ideas, relations of sequences, the powers of remembrance, of discrimination and identification,) with sets of external relations, namely, the actual existences of which the inner relations are the representatives. The establishment of such inner relations corresponding to outer relations and their widening growth, must have a marked influence upon human conduct so that it may very well be separated for convenience of study from the earlier forms of organic conduct, in which such action is little recognisable. But how to form the connective law is the difficulty. Moreover, it is one thing to establish the fact of evolution, and another thing to explain it. We ourselves admit the fact, indeed, but search in vain for the explanation.
Are we to look for the origin of Pleasure and Pain in those laws of the moving equilibrium which necessitate the generation of internal forces equal and in opposition to external inimical forces? If so, Pleasure and Pain must be regarded as forces—as factors—in the organism, and we must regard the subjective as generated by external physical factors operating upon internal physical factors, and we must regard these subjective factors not merely as concomitant, but as producing physical effects by way of reaction.
So far as it goes there may be a physical view of purposed conduct, and so far as it goes there may be a psychological view, but between the two the biological view is a mere disorderly mixture, borrowing its terms first on one hand and then on the other, and assigning its determining causes first to the physical moving equilibrium theory, and then again to the anticipation of Pleasure and Pain. But the biological law which should co-ordinate these two sets of laws is not formulated, and hence we find more or less gliding, or more or less sudden transition from one set of terms or laws to the other, a defect which is concealed in some measure by the formal divisions of the chapters. But if the course of thought is carefully followed it is found that the actual treatment does not properly fit in. There is an unmistakeable transition from the purely physical set of factors to the purely subjective, and there is no co-ordinated biological law at all. The chapter is a transitional one, it is true, but only in the sense of gradually leaving off the employment of one set of terms, and the gradual employment of another set of terms in the treatment of the same phenomena.
Mr. Spencer argues well in Chapter V. as to the concomitance of pleasure-giving acts with life-sustaining acts, and of pain-giving acts with decrease of life; but which is prior in the chain of causation? Or, to repeat the old difficulty, is the subjective factor present in the line of causation at all? Is it merely a concomitant of the physical line of events?
Mr. Spencer proposes to deal with feelings and functions in their mutual dependence,[9] and so admits the subjective as a factor. Thus there are feelings which are sensations and serve partly as guides and partly as stimuli towards actions for the sustenance and preservation of life. And there are feelings which are classed as emotions which also act in a very potent way as guides and stimuli, such as fear and joy. Hence, in treating of conduct under its biological aspect we are compelled to consider that inter-action of feelings and functions which is essential to animal life in all its more developed forms.[10]
Following upon this we are taught that Pleasure is a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness, and Pain a feeling which we seek to keep out of consciousness. This certainly accords to the subjective factor a commanding position in the physical action of organisms; it also implies a foresight of the results of actions, and a certain degree of advance in psychology but throws no light upon the lower stages of biological action. Mr. Spencer says, however, that "fit connections between acts and results must establish themselves in living things even before consciousness arises." This is followed by an interesting study of the proposition that "after the rise of consciousness these connections can change in no other way than to become better established," and that "whenever sentiency makes its appearance as an accompaniment, its forms must be such that in the one case the produced feeling is of a kind that will be sought—Pleasure, and in the other case is of a kind that will be shunned—Pain." "It is an inevitable deduction from the hypothesis of evolution that races of sentient creatures could have come into existence under no other conditions" than that "pains are the correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare."
All this may be admitted, granted the existence of the subjective factor; but at what stage does it commence to have such a potent influence upon the development of organisms, and whence came it at all? Mr. Spencer says, "fit connections between acts and results must establish themselves in living things even before consciousness arises." "At the very outset life is maintained by persistence in acts which conduce to it, and desistance from acts which impede it." It would seem that if life can be maintained by means of unconscious persistence in beneficial acts and unconscious desistance from injurious acts, such a process might continue in more complex organisms without the assistance of consciousness, and that the continuance and development of life could be explained in terms of the same factors and processes which originated life, and regulated and propagated the existence of races in the lowest forms of organisms. Mr. Spencer clearly holds that such races of organisms were originated and maintained by the action of physical laws before sentiency became a factor in their sustaining or generative actions. What need then for sentiency in the subsequent development? Mr. Spencer's argument is good, that, granted the concomitance of Pleasure and Pain with life-sustaining and life-diminishing acts respectively, the attainment of the one and the avoidance of the other acts on the increase of life; but he says that, previous to the advent of sentiency, life was sustained in much the same way. There is this difference in it, however, that only where the requisite acts were performed or avoided in pre-sentient organisms did such organisms continue to exist, and that these acts were not consciously performed, but only happened in the course of physical sequence; whereas in the case of sentient creatures Pleasure is consciously sought, and Pain is intentionally avoided. But it seems to us that when acts are determined by the anticipation of Pleasure or Pain, we enter upon the domain of psychology, and when they are determined by physical factors without consciousness we remain in the province of physics, so that there is no intermediate science of Biology at all. And by this we mean, not that for convenience we may not so arrange our classes of study, but that there are no laws of physics which will account for the development of organisms, and there are no biological processes which do not imply the action of a subjective factor; and that there is no true biological law which properly expresses the correllation of the two. Mr. Spencer starts with a Biology from which the subjective is completely absent, and ends with a Psychology of the highest description: but he fails to express the biological law which accounts for the growth of the one out of the other, or expresses the law of their correlation in a concomitant growth.
How then can we arrive at any ethical rule by the study of Biology? In this way. An organism is a moving equilibrium: it is a law of moving equilibria that they counterbalance by means of new adjustments antagonistic forces in the environment, and absorb forces from the environment favourable to their continuance. Their continued existence depends upon such continuous absorption and adjustment. But as environment varies, so do adjustments; and thus there is a wonderful variety of different moving equilibria, which form important parts of one another's environment. The suitable structures and functions which have thus been evolved are therefore relative to the environment, and the inherited structure and functions forming a moving equilibrium are fitted for particular environments and no other. There is no absolute moving equilibrium; all are relative. "That which was defined as a moving equilibrium, we define biologically as a balance of functions. The implication of such a balance is that the several functions in their kinds, amounts, and combinations, are adjusted to the several activities which maintain and constitute complete life; and to be so adjusted is to have reached the goal towards which the evolution of conduct continually tends." But completeness of life means primarily the completeness of life in each individual organism as regards its continued existence, and the full satisfaction of all its functions during the period of its existence. The biologically good is all that conduces to this end, and the biologically bad is all that detracts from it. The biologically good and bad are therefore relative to the consensus of functions which constitute an animal or other organism. The biologically good and bad are therefore individual. That which is good for the individual is the right conduct, and that which is bad for it is wrong conduct. It is therefore right for the big fishes to eat the little ones, for the bird to prey upon the insect; it is a fit satisfaction for the functions of the lion to devour the antelope, for one tribe to slay or drive out another tribe in order to possess itself of more fertile plains and more delightful countries. And so, as long as the functions delight in egoism, and there is no counterforce of sympathy included among them, it is right to tyrannise, to subject others to the service or passions of the dominant organisms. They subserve the biological law—they are conducive to complete relative life. The biological law does not recognise the lives of others until sympathy has become part of the functions of the organism.
The question here arises, how far the ethical law is to be determined by the biological law, for if the biological law is dominant, and the ethical dependant, the latter can only be explained and justified by the former. But we at once see that the two things are not identical and co-extensive. We recognise the difference between the biologically efficient and the ethically good and bad. The law of Biology refers to the actions of each individual in regard to itself alone, whatever the functions, etc., which constitute that self. It relates to its good alone, irrespective of the good of others, unless, and until, sympathy with others has become part of the functions of the individual.
But Mr. Spencer seeks to make the biological view of conduct identical with the ethical by introducing the conception of quantitative life. In this case an organism has more life the greater the number of correspondences it has with the environment. And since the environment is constituted of two classes of objects, the objective and the subjective—the purely physical and the organisms possessing feeling—so the correspondences established in the individual are of two kinds, the psychological and the emotional. In the former class are comprised all the objects and relations of the inorganic world, the great laws and intricacies of nature and her past history, including the history of organisms and of man. In the latter are included all the feeling, living creatures around us, with their pleasures, hopes, and pains, and all the characters, noble and beautiful, delicate or brutal, passionate or aspiring, who have ever trod the stage of history, or wrought or thought for us in antecedent ages. In fact all the patient work and mighty achievements of science, and all the emotional relations of men have afforded scope for the quantitative increase of life; and in proportion to the increase so it is suggested that life became ethical. The biological law is the continuous adjustment of organisms to environment, and the increase of adjustment is the increase of life.
This may be so; but it is a denial of Ethics as being coeval with Biology; it makes the one simply a late outcome of the other. According to this view, Ethics is something which has supervened upon the process, and which requires a separate analysis. But we have seen that increase of correspondence is of two kinds—it takes place in the direction of intellect, and it takes place in the direction of emotion, whether of sympathy or antipathy. But it is with the latter class of phenomena alone that Ethics is concerned. The increased quantitative life which is identical with the increase of knowledge has no ethical aspect. It is increased relations of an emotional nature only which admit that term. In fact it is to societarian relations alone that it is applicable. Increase of life may proceed in the direction of intellect or recognition of the facts and relations of the external world, and yet the life may never be termed ethical; while on the other hand there may be but little increase of intellect, yet a great increase of ethical relations. Therefore, increased quantitative life, considered as a mode of identifying the biological law with the ethical law, except by way of comprehension in a larger classification, fails in the end because it is not true that the increase of correspondences need be in the special direction of increase of emotional correspondences: and thus we find that ethics is not to be affiliated upon the main line of biological progress, but with one distinguishable result of it—namely the relation of the individual with its subjective environment—that is to say, Society.
And here it is fit that we should take notice of Mr. Spencer's account of Good and Bad Conduct, given in chapter 3 of the "Data of Ethics." A good knife, gun, or house are such in virtue of their capacity for fulfilling the purposes for which they were designed. A good day or a good season are such as satisfy certain of our desires. A good pointer or a good ox are so in reference to certain of our requirements. A good jump, or good stroke at billiards, are those which accomplish the desired ends. And bad things are those which do not subserve desired ends.
Mr. Spencer then proceeds to study the ethically good and bad, and to discuss the application of these terms to actions as regards the welfare of self, of offspring, and of fellow citizens. Acts are said to be good and bad according as they affect the welfare of self. Here it is indicated that acts are judged according to their degree of biological efficiency. In the next class—namely, acts relating to offspring—a father and mother are again judged according to their efficiency in those capacities, although the egoistic element is present in a subordinate degree. "Most emphatic, however, are the applications of the words good and bad to conduct throughout that third division of it comprising the deeds by which men affect one another. In maintaining their own lives" (biological laws) "and fostering their offspring, men's adjustments of acts to ends are so apt to hinder the kindred adjustments of other men, that insistence on the needful limitations has to be perpetual; and the mischiefs caused by men's interferences with one another's life-subserving actions are so great, that the interdicts have to be peremptory."
The general meaning of "good" and "bad" as applied to actions, then, has reference to their efficiency. The differences of their meaning are due to the end regarded. The meanings are harmonised, however, when we consider that they are applicable to different degrees in the evolution of conduct; the conduct to which we apply the name good is the relatively more evolved conduct, and "bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively less evolved. This involves a reference to the three stages of biological evolution, the individual, the offspring, and society."
"Lastly, we inferred that establishment of an associated state, both makes possible and requires a form of conduct such that life may be completed in each and in his offspring, not only without preventing completion of it in others, but with furtherance of it in others; and we have found that this is the form of conduct most emphatically termed good."[11] From this Mr. Spencer infers the contemporaneous achievement of the greatest totality of life in self, and this is supposed to vindicate the affiliation of Ethics upon Biology.
We have, however, already shown that the enlargement of the relations between the individual and the subjective environment is the special ethical relation, and that the enlargement of the relations between the individual and the objective environment is non-ethical, thus specialising the ethical interpretation of the enlargement of biological relations. We must also notice that Mr. Spencer's affiliation of biology with ethics relates to a remote ideal future and not to an actual present or a historic past. The biological law is the adaptation of the individual to its own special surroundings, and not the adaptation of its remote and changed descendant to its remote and changed environment. According to the fitness of the individual for supplying itself with food, whether of a vegetable or animal nature, and according to its capacities for, self preservation or defence, so will it be deemed biologically perfect. This is a relative, an individual standard, without reference to the subjective environment except in so far as this subjective environment subserves some internal function of sympathy. But even in this case the ethical relation is subordinate to the biological and is relative to the actual individual and not to a future ideal descendant. Moreover, the biological standard is always individual and singular and is not societarian.
We therefore come to the conclusion that the biological point of view does not furnish us with any ethical theory. The biological law is not individual completeness; it is individual suitability to environment. It is true, individual greatness may be the most complete life; but when that is not possible from the nature of the inherited organism, or from the nature of the surroundings, then the actually best thing, because relatively best, is conformity to the surroundings. The man who cannot adapt the environment to himself will prudently adapt himself to the environment. That is the biological law; whether it be the ethical law is another question. Abstract quantitative life may not be attainable either intellectually or in relation to the emotional surroundings. Therefore the more skilful adaptation having in view the particular functions of the organisms, (whether they include sympathies with the subjective surroundings, or not), is the biological law—although it may not be regarded as the ethical law.
Quantitative life, viewed biologically, i.e., individually, does not mean an ideal quantitative life, but the most that an individual organism can get. This depends upon the organism's own nature and capacities, and upon the nature of the environment. That some descendents some day may have other natures and other surroundings, is not to the point. The presence of subjective surroundings in the environment affects the individual according to the nature of his own feelings: it affects him in the first place according to his possession or non-possession of sympathy, and in the second place according to his position of command or subserviency.
If Biology takes cognisance of Ethics, it is from a prudential point of view alone. It means a recognition of the penalties of legal enactments or social laws. As a matter of calculation it takes account of the consequences of actions, and the conduct varies accordingly.
And if we are unable to accept the biological view as identical with the fundamentals of Ethics, so we are unable to accept the correlative that the preponderance of pleasurable feelings is indicative of the ethically correct life. For this criterion again is relative to the individual, and prescribes that course of conduct which to him is most largely pleasurable. It is only ethical when the surrounding conditions are such as to make the personally pleasurable harmonise with what is also pleasurable to the subjective environment—again showing the external or social origin and authority of the ethical imperative.
Before quitting this subject, it would-be as well to notice the narrow limitation assigned to the relation of feeling and function in the chapter on the biological view. Pleasure is there described as the correlative of life-sustaining acts, and Pain as the correlative of life-destructive acts; and we are told that under these conditions alone sentient creatures could evolve. This would apparently limit the range of the evolution of feeling to those classes of actions which are essential to the mere continuance of existence. If the growth of feeling is co-extensive with the growth of actions essential to existence, then Pleasure and Pain should be limited to the feelings involved in the supply of food, the escape from enemies, the pursuit of prey, &c. If to these should be added the larger, but as yet unexplained, view of Biology, which makes the individual a part only of a greater moving equilibrium—namely the species to which he belongs—then there will be an extension of feeling (that is, of Pleasure and Pain) to the acts requisite for the propagation of the race and the care of off-spring. But to these two classes of functions, human pleasures and pains are not limited. Beyond what may be termed the essential growth of feeling, there has been a super-growth of feeling concomitant with every extension of the correspondences between the inner relations and the outer relations. In the converse of the organism with its environment there has grown up a vast extension of knowledge as to external facts; and in the classification and reasoning upon these there has supervened a vast interest, which has been pleasurable quite apart from any life-sustaining necessity. So in the arts of life there has arisen a pleasure in the exercise of ingenuity and skill of manufacture, far above the requisites for bodily preservation. In the spread of æstheticism and the appreciation of the beautiful in Painting, Statuary, Architecture and Decoration generally, there has been manifested an amount of taste or feeling, utterly beyond any value it may have as "life-sustaining." Poetry, Music, Literature, along with all the other highest manifestations of civilization, are not the outcome of the necessities of existence, but a work super-imposed upon the poor and bare adaptations which are sufficient for simple existence. The same may be said of all those fine sympathies of man for man, of man for noble ideals of humanity, and even of the more homely love and good feeling of simple natures. Our friendships, our admirations, all that makes man something over and above the mere brute animals, is due to this larger growth of feeling beyond what is essential to the mere continuance of life—and if we should identify Pleasure and Pain merely with the conditions of life-sustaining and life-destructive acts, we should form a very inadequate conception of their place in human life. This of course is on the understanding that the biological law implies only self continuance or race continuance. That this is Mr. Spencer's original view is manifest from the fact that he theoretically derives life from the consideration of the laws of the moving equilibrium. But if we take the larger view, (which, however, is not derivable from the former), that life is correspondence between inner relations and outer relations, and is to be measured quantitatively by the increase of the number of correspondences, then of course the whole estimation of pleasures and pains is changed.
Under the latter view the organism enters into correspondence with all the individual objects of the environment, and not only has a present regard, but a past and a future interest. The scope of interest in the larger minds embraces long lines of history leading up and down the eras of development. In narrow measures of family or local interest, the social feeling has first risen, but as the framework of tribes or nations becomes knit together, so the social feelings acquire a wider interest. The merely biological interests have become enlarged by means of an internal growth, so as to have regard for other sentient existences. Altruism becomes a part of Egoism. We care for others, not by compulsion, but from natural growth of interest. Into the causes and incidents of this growth it is not necessary to enter. It is a simple fact of human nature that the pains and pleasures of others affect us much, and sometimes very keenly indeed.
Thus we find that the purely biological law, regarded as the adjustment of a moving equilibrium to its environment, derived from and exemplified in the physical moving equilibrium of the solar system, the spinning top, the steam engine, &c., does not afford us much insight into ethical theory, even if the equilibrations have a concomitant of feeling. In any approach from the purely biological towards the ethical, we are thrown for our explanations upon efficient subjective factors—upon the interaction of feeling organisms and sympathetic organisms.
If we attempt to apply the biological law as an explanation of the super-growth of correspondences over and above the actual necessities of continued existence, and as an explanation of the growth of sympathy or altruism, we have to suppose that the external forces have generated in the organism internal forces in opposition or balance therewith. But this theory of the moving equilibrium, difficult to understand and accept in its simplest applications, transcends all powers of human comprehension when it attempts to deal with the subjective relations of organisms, and, it appears to us, entirely fails to account for the growth of sympathy or altruistic feeling.