FOOTNOTES:
[22] George Clarke Cox, “The Public Conscience,” p. 25.
CHAPTER X
THE ACQUISITION OF AN ETHICAL TECHNIQUE
“One of the reasons why pantheistic revery has been so popular is that it seems to offer a painless substitute for genuine spiritual effort.... When pushed to a certain point the nature cult always tends towards sham spirituality.
‘Oh world as God has made it
All is beauty,
And knowing this is love, and
Love is duty,
What further can be sought for or desired?’
It seems to follow from these lines of Browning, perhaps the most flaccid spiritually in the English language, that to go out and mix oneself up with the landscape is the same as doing one’s duty. As a method of salvation this is even easier and more æsthetic than that of the Ancient Mariner, who, it will be remembered, is relieved of the burden of his transgression by admiring the color of water-snakes!”
Irving Babbitt, “Rousseau and Romanticism.”
“Objection: Will not this end in ethical scepticism? Answer: Nothing is further from scepticism than the conception of a reality subject to laws, and of a rational action based on the knowledge of those laws.”
L. Levy-Brühl, “Ethics and Moral Science,”
Table of Contents, p. xi.
“In the preceding pages we have no doubt often hurt—but we have hurt to heal. The good surgeon probes deeply in order that he may not have the operation to perform again. Even a minute amount of diseased tissues left behind can prevent the return of vigorous and creative health. Thus what may seem to the anxious patient unnecessary cruelty may be the greatest kindness. A sentimental compromise is never welcomed by the mature judgment of the brave man. And in this day when so many have willingly given their lives for the sake of a human ideal, is it just and right to flinch in the spiritual warfare which confronts our generation? We are seeking nothing less than a renaissance in which men’s energies will be wisely and loyally directed to what is greatly human and humanly great. In such a service we must will to be hard on ourselves and on others.”
Roy Wood Sellars, “The Next Step in Religion,” p. 211.
Little did Descartes dream that his attempt to find truth by the method of candid doubting was a sign that human evolution had “turned a corner,” or that the method he employed was to be the precursor of an ethical renaissance. Yet the introduction of this one form of psychological test as a philosophic instrument was an entering wedge of such power that where great darkness had been, much light was shed; and where the stolid inertia of many centuries had existed, movement and life and enlightenment began to appear. But nature is slow, and always takes plenty of time to play its elaborate game; indeed, often nature seems to us to proceed by circuitous paths where we would make an open right of way. However, even though it was several centuries after Descartes before the first psychological laboratory was founded, the development of thought toward the recognition and use of the psychological method was nevertheless steadily proceeding. Today there is no word we are more wont to conjure with than the word psychology. And even if the foolish always use it with derision, yet those who are wise know well to what an extent it is symbolical of a new era of human development, on the threshold of which era we now confidently stand.
What is this psychological method which has so silently become established, and what has it to do with the acquisition of an ethical technique? It is the method of analysis, experiment, and constructive scepticism, which treats all phenomena objectively, that is, by leaving out the personal equation, and by asking not how do we preconceive that things should appear, but only how do they appear with our personal bias in abeyance.
Such a method, which, by the way, is the essence of psychological science, is very difficult to achieve. Indeed, for many it is constitutionally impossible. The history of physical science records how great were the struggles of men to become objectively-minded even toward their external environment, struggles which have only recently become successful. Witness the fact that for many centuries the alchemists sought for the philosopher’s stone, a mineral which they falsely preconceived to have the power of transmuting lead into gold; witness the fact that the science of anatomy was for generations denied its birth on account of pious prejudice and taboo; and witness even today that many physical objects are said to be bewitched when they fail to operate as expected, and that luck at cards is still stoutly affirmed by otherwise estimable people. Indeed, there are thousands of farmers in the United States who appeal to the methods of divination in planting their crops and shingling their houses. Consequently, it is plain that if the power to become objectively-minded toward the physical world is so rarely attained, it is even more difficult to become detached and un-self-conscious toward the mental and social behavior of our fellow-men. Nevertheless, this method of detachment, of looking at old things with new eyes, is just what hundreds of teachers of psychology are training thousands of students every year to employ; and its salutary effects are being felt in every corner of the civilized world.
To some persons all this may come as a surprise, since the criticism has already been publicly uttered that the study of psychology tends to make one incurably introspective. On these grounds alone the self-styled hard-headed business man often hastily classifies psychology among the foibles of women and poets. This, however, is simply another error due to hostile preconceptions. For even though some psychologists have fallen into the practice of cultivating Psyche for her own sake, yet their method originated from distinctly other motives. Psychology, it is true, when cultivated by persons constitutionally possessed of an introversive bias, may not always eradicate that bias, any more than will the putting of an army rifle into the hands of a timid man make him forthright into a model top-sergeant.
In another strain, it is sometimes alleged that psychology is simply a new head set upon the body of ancient Roman stoicism. But it must be remembered that the detachment which the Stoics cultivated lacked all the elements of a scientific inquisitiveness. It was marked chiefly by a sweet indifference and unconcern, traits which were derived from the belief that Reason which ruled the world was interested only in the headlines of universal news. The psychologist, far from being indifferent to the most transient phenomena of human experience, regards them most steadfastly. Nevertheless, he endeavors to maintain an equality of interest in all human affairs, knowing full well that as soon as he takes sides, he loses his sense of the proportions of the whole. Unlike the Stoic, he admits the reality and inevitableness of pain and anguish; yet while he studies these phenomena, he keeps a sharp lookout lest his personal equation obtrude itself in the shape of sympathetic sorrows,—these he steadfastly refuses to add to his report of the objective facts. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that had not the elements of stoic indifference been a basic capacity of human protoplasm, the psychological attitude might not have been evolved.
Curiously enough, psychology has been both defended and attacked on the basis of its supposed kinship with certain doctrines of Jesus, as, for example, the Golden Rule. No psychologist is greatly interested in any debate carried out on these lines. When Edwin Holt’s “The Freudian Wish” first appeared a few years ago, some caustic reviewer accused its author of “having gotten religion in the form of Freud.” It is doubtful whether anyone, be he Christian or non-Christian, would regard such a remark either as a help or a hindrance to the acceptance of psychology as a contribution to the technique of ethics. As far as the Golden Rule is concerned, its relations to scientific method may be briefly indicated by saying that while this maxim can be interpreted to imply a kind of other-regard which seems to possess the elements of scientific detachment, yet other things must also be considered before final judgment is passed. For this hypothetical imperative,—“Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them,”—is only possible of application among equals of intellect or of sentiment, and it can be used then only by a forehanded and judicious person, one with discriminative sympathies, and able to mature his wishes into wills. Psychology ventures to make no universal rules of conduct, especially since it must first take an inventory of human nature in order to find out what rules there are to which man will give his uncoerced and unconscious loyalty.
Let it not be assumed, however, that the psychologist urges an ethical moratorium while he is pursuing his search into the secret places of human nature. The method of scientific detachment has itself provided such an insight into the problems of conduct as to make any such assumption absurd. He who catches a glimpse of what it means to understand his fellow-men, rather than to regard them primarily as creatures to be classified as either good or bad, virtuous or vicious, begins to grow into an ethically adult person. He at once loses that ancient, clandestine, stultifying tendency to obtrude his own bias into his social environment, and he no longer finds his chief comfort in adoring those who are most like unto himself, or in mentally lynching in advance those who rub his ego the wrong way. Scientific neutrality hath also its victories. The application of the psychological method to prison reform, where the criminal is regarded as an effect as well as a cause of social mal-adjustments, has already been acknowledged as humanly great. Is it not possible that we see in such phenomena the passing of an age in which maxims were necessary, and the birth of an era where the educative methods of wise and kind men will take their places?
The further drift of this would be hard, indeed, to conceal. Ethics as a branch of psychology is inevitably bound up with the abolition of praise and blame, and of reward and punishment, as the chief themes in the judgments we pass upon our fellow-men. The tendency to make such bi-polar judgments usually implies a prejudice inherited from a pre-scientific age. With this change, of course, many of the traditional moral categories will be replaced by the true categories of the understanding,—categories derived from psychological insight into the ethical potentialities of the natural man. Even now, however, such a replacement is in progress, the results of which are neither small nor unimportant.
We refer here to the wide-spread use of trait analyses, both in business and in education, by which a man is estimated on the basis of his tendencies, capacities, and powers. His body is measured for its strength and resiliency, and where defects are discovered, a regimen leading to the re-education of his physique is prescribed. His mental developments are tested, and the common attributes of the human mind, such as sensory acuity, retention, discrimination, and the like, are estimated and recorded. The special talents he possesses are revealed by performance tests, and his hitherto undeveloped potentialities are induced to betray themselves. The emotions from which he either profits or suffers are discovered by methods adroitly devised for the purpose. Likewise, the individual’s sociability,—whether it be merely gang-attachment, or a zest for cooperative endeavors,—is made a matter of sympathetic study; while still other bases upon which a man may be estimated are employed in the attempt to help him find out just what manner of man he is.
While it is admitted that physical and mental tests are often stupidly devised and bigotedly inflicted on the testee, yet it seems likely that we have given here a method which can be employed to the greatest advantage even in every-day ethics. For the psychological method, in that it teaches one first to become analytical and discriminative, replaces the old, unfounded prejudice that men are unequivocally either good or bad, virtuous or vicious, saints or sinners, by a desire to know just what can be done with and for them. And while the methods of psychology will probably always rank men on a scale from low to high, and will always employ opposite poles in its judgments, yet in the multitude of such antonyms there is safety. Scientific judgments are, by being unemotional, devoid both of that extreme congratulation and sharp censure which attach to purely moral estimates, while the wide range of observation upon which they are made provides for the greatest number of human contacts and of educative measures possible. To extol a man is often not much different in effect than to blame him, and both praise and blame can equally hinder his power to acquire an ethical technique. Men differ too variously to be fitted to any one Procrustean bed; the human mind has infinitely more than two dimensions. Moreover, the moralist’s use of bi-polar judgments tends inevitably to separate men, rather than to unite them, or to teach them to cooperate with one another. And when we consider that from now on, at least, the predicaments of this planet will be common liabilities of the whole human race, the pragmatic urgency to employ the methods of psychology in attaining social harmony are undisguisedly patent.
The benefits derived from employing the psychological method in ethics are, however, by no means exclusively social. The use of this method reacts directly upon the user in several significant ways. In the first place, the man who employs even as few as twenty-five of the newer categories in making a trait analysis of his fellows, soon becomes aware of the fact that his former analysis of himself is in need of revision. Exaggerated self-preference is thus broken down, and replaced, not by its opposite,—self-abasement,—but by an estimate which arises from comparisons and contrasts resulting from the use of an objective standard. Again, the user of this method learns that human behavior is not the product of some mysterious mental element called “character,” but that character itself is the product of traits, and, furthermore, that every trait has had a developmental history, which is at every point a record of the effect of environmental stimulus upon original nature. His own character thereafter becomes subject to scientific scrutiny, and he realizes, for example, that his previous emotional repugnances were not always signs of incorruptibility, but very frequently, indeed, signs of the extent to which his own desires had been prevented from reaching their maturity. And, only to mention one more of the many benefits of such new scientific insight, the use of this method reveals that times out of number purely moral judgments are employed to quench, rather than to quicken thought, and are uttered not so much to indicate that discriminative sympathies are being acquired, as to show that they have long since ceased to germinate. Henceforth the employment of the psychological method goes hand in hand with the urgency to prevent as many young minds as possible from suffering on account of a retarded development.
Such a change of emphasis from traditional morals to scientific methods implies unequivocally that the problems of ethics are henceforth to be solved by experts. Already the recognition of the need of such a change is evident in the reliance that is being placed upon psychiatrists and other medical men to assist in the cure of those who are maladjusted to their environment. Health-clinics likewise are being both promoted and attended by those who realize that the virtues go as deep as the viscera, and that often such things as ignorance of the shape of one’s stomach have been the source of many a lapse from normality. This reliance upon trained experts is, moreover, a sign of still further changes in our occidental philosophy of life. It means that we are acquiring the conviction that constructive criticism is better than ritual, and analysis more efficacious than prayer. For we have begun to see that progress must come by honest, painstaking efforts in the here and now, rather than by presuming upon the perfection of a universe which we have only begun to understand. It is indeed the well-born sentiment of many thousands of people today that science wisely employed for the benefit and use of men is the only true word of God.
Herewith, also, the question of what sort of ideals an applied mechanistic psychology of conduct provides may have an answer. On this point we need not be dumb, nor can we make a “sentimental compromise.” When the mechanist asserts that we are what we do, he does not thereby denounce ideals; on the contrary, he thus only affirms his purpose to take the whole question of ideals seriously, more seriously, in fact, than it was ever taken before. Herein also he declares for the Ethics of Hercules rather than the “Ethics of Cinderella.” For while he must admit that there is, accordingly, no class of people who can be truthfully said to be “the pure in heart,”—owing to the fatigue of attention incident to all other-worldly contemplation,—yet he also asserts that the man who knows his capacities and powers as the result of an objective analysis, is by that means equipped to advance to more inclusive levels of conduct than he who merely cultivates an inner life of private mystery. The mechanist would therefore let new standards grow out of the development of natural human capacities, out of the struggle to educate men so that their desires and abilities mature simultaneously, and out of the freedom which can thus be achieved by those able to achieve it.
“Great love comes from great knowledge,” said Leonardo da Vinci, and the advance of science today in all its branches corroborates this assertion. Although at the present hour it does not seem clear just what the universe is doing, yet they who recognize even in seemingly disastrous tumults the struggles of man to enlarge his power to think, will see that even if nature’s way appears to be circuitous and even at times crude, it is nevertheless nature’s inevitable way. Much lamentation is heard today over the changes which evolution has brought to this planet, and the outcry is even raised that science has taken away our souls. Is it necessary to reply that a faith in stagnation is clearly out of joint with the creative functions of time, or that the loss of an ancient belief may be the sign of a truly ethical advance? Indeed, we can well be assured that the type of soul which is composed of self-stifled desires, of restless sentiments due to an ignoble retreat from reality, of the fear of ultimate annihilation, not only will die, but it also ought to die. There is another and a better kind of soul,—the one created out of sagacity, skill, and kindness, which generates power, wisdom, and peace,—and this type of soul, as long as the sun remains hot, and the earth’s crust keeps flowering into men, will have its immortality guaranteed. This is the mechanist’s religion,—a consequence of, rather than an apology for, his ethics. For religion, though it be a word made base by those who claim to have an endless copyright on truth, and a retroactive monopoly on the deeper human emotions, means to a mechanist something more closely allied to its original signification. It means a reliance on that much of nature, and a support from that much of humanity, as contributes to the development of a man’s talents, to the freedom of his actions, and to his peace of mind. The new labors of Hercules will consist in making this true for the whole human race.