CHAPTER III.
DARWINISM AND MORAL PRINCIPLES.
§ 1. Darwinistic Naturalism and Moral Principles.
If we consider the ethical consequences of a view of the world which, proceeding from Darwinism, permits the universe, man included, to be taken up into a mechanism of atoms—a mechanism in which everything, even the ethical action of man, finds its sufficient explanation—we certainly cannot perceive how such a view of the world is able to arrive at firm moral principles. If man, even in his spiritual life and moral action, is a mere product of nature, originated through descent, and if his whole spiritual life is fully consumed by these merely mechanical factors, then all moral principles are also nothing else than inherited customs founded upon those instincts which in the struggle for existence have proven to be the most beneficial to man. Then their influence is subject to continual change, always corresponding to the existing state of human development. As these moral instincts have displaced the former instincts of the animal predecessors of man—say, e.g., of sharks, of marsupialia, of lemurides—so they must
also expect it any time to be displaced in turn by new and still more useful instincts. And even in the same period of the development of mankind, the moral or immoral principles which have actual authority in each nation or tribe, have their full right of existence as long as they are not displaced by still more advantageous instincts. Moral principles in which infanticide, prostitution, and cannibalism have a place, are inferior to the highest form of Christian morality only so far as they do not hold their own in the struggle for existence, when nations having those low views come into collision with nations of higher moral culture; but in themselves they have full value and full right, so long as they attain the end of all instincts, and so far as we can speak of ends at all; in such naturalism, apart from human activity, the end consists only in the preservation of the individual and the species in the struggle for existence.
Under these suppositions, moral principles not only lose their objective and solid consistency in the mass of mankind, but they also become irrevocably subject to the arbitrariness of the single individual. An individual who either has not, or asserts that he has not, a determined moral instinct, or who allows it to be smothered by some other instinct which in a normal individual is subordinate, but in him stronger, is fully justified in his immoral action so long as he is successful with it. Every individual is entirely his own master and his own judge. If man is morally good, it may be the consequence of an especially happy individual disposition, or of an especially clear perception, or of happy circumstances and influences; but it is not the consequence of a free subordination under the authority
of a moral law; for there is neither freedom nor an objective moral authority. The single man is but the product of a certain sum and mixture of powers of nature, acting of necessity, which may with him turn out fortunately or unfortunately. If, on the other hand, man is morally perverted, society may defend itself against his perversity; wisdom may try to convince him of the bad consequences of his perversity for himself and society; the effect of his perversity may make him sensible of the bad consequences of his actions: but there is no other objectively valid corrective of his perversity. If he is successful in his immoral action, and if he silences his conscience, this voice of the unobserved higher instinct in favor of the preferred lower—which unfortunately, as is well known, succeeds oftenest and most easily in the case of those whose perversity has become the most habitual, and in whom another grouping of instincts would be most desirable—then the whole affair is settled, and he is absolved. Let us be understood correctly. We do not say that all advocates of mechanical or monistic ethics draw these conclusions in reality; we know very well that many a man is better than his system; but it seems to us inevitable that the logical pursuit of that naturalistic principle leads to this dissolution of all solid fundamentals of moral principles, and that it is but an inconsequence, certainly worthy of honor and of notice, if all the advocates of naturalism do not profess this dissolution of all moral principles with the same cynic frankness that is shown by many of their partisans.
We do not say too much, when we charge ethical naturalism with dissolution of all moral principles. Let
us examine them, for a moment, according to the old but still fundamental division into duty, virtue, and highest good.
According to the principles of that ethical naturalism, there can be no duty at all, no objective moral law, binding absolutely and in general. The motives of action are either the strongest and most durable instincts, or, in case of high culture, conventional agreement of that which benefits society. In the one as well as in the other case, when the duty is neglected, the appeal is not made to something absolutely objective and binding, but either to the highest instinct (and to this every individual has the right to answer with a Quod nego), or to agreement and custom; and as to this, every individual has the right to make his reformatory or revolutionary attempt at change—of course only upon the condition that his attempt is successful, and that it stands proof.
Relatively it is easiest for ethical naturalism to establish a principle of virtue, inasmuch as we have to look upon virtue as the principle of individual perfection, and inasmuch as even naturalism, by means of the indestructible impulse of man to attain moral ideas, can postulate an ideal of human action. But on closer examination even the naturalistic idea of virtue vanishes under our hands. Virtue, as individual morality, is constituted of the factors of duty and of the highest good, which form the motives of virtuous action. Now a system of morality which, as we have seen, is entirely wanting in an objective solid principle of duty as the motive of action, and which likewise, as we shall see immediately, is wanting in an objectively established highest good as the end of action, cannot possibly
produce any other idea of virtue than an abstract formal one. In ethical naturalism, even this form is subject to change. For, according to this system, not only the motive and end but also the form of moral action depend on that which in every circle of society and at every time proves to be the most successful form. It is the proof of success or failure which gives this form a certain traditional authority and a relative solidity—but only a relative one, and only until it is displaced by a still more successful form.
That, finally, ethical naturalism is also wanting in an objective end of moral action, in the idea and meaning of the highest good, is indeed not denied by naturalism itself. It is true it speaks with predilection of the idea of species, which man is to represent and to realize, and in that respect we can say that the highest good of naturalistic ethologists is the species or the idea of species.[[11]] But the idea of species is only the empty vessel which first becomes valuable by reason of its contents. Now, if we ask ethical naturalism the properties with which that idea of species is to be endowed, it certainly mentions properties, but those which are too rich; namely, it mentions the idea of all that is good in human life and the forms of human life, in concreto, the whole sum of all the conditions and acquisitions of the culture of mankind, art, nature, and science: the comprehensive idea of these acquisitions, the enjoyment of them, the work at them, is the highest good. Now, since no human individual can enjoy them all and work at them all at the same time, every individual, as
to disposition, inclination, and circumstances, has to enjoy a part of them, to work at a part of them, and to renounce a part of them. And since each single one of these good things, however valuable to the individual, may be refused to or taken away from him, he has again to learn to be satisfied with that idea of species, however little it is able to offer him, when separated from the empiric possessions of this earthly life. Thus with naturalism the highest good is either mentioned in an abstraction which does not offer us anything, or which, if we ask the meaning of that abstraction, is instantly drawn down into the low sphere and the varied multiformity of empirical and individual life, left to the chance of individual taste, and confounded with that which is connected with the highest good only in the second line and in a derived manner—namely, with the formations and actions of life which strive at and serve the realization of the highest good. Ethical naturalism is not able to produce out of itself an objective highest good which is for each individual alike attractive, rich, and comprehensive.
Moreover, since ethical naturalism proves itself insufficient for the principles of any and all morality, it is but a natural conclusion that it is still less able to produce those principles which are characteristic of the highest representation of human morality known to mankind, namely: Christian morality. Ethical monism has no room for three ethical fundamental views, whose full possession morality owes to Christianity, and which gives to Christian morality its highest motive power. One of these is a deeper conception of evil as a sin, as a positive rebellion against the good; another is faith in a future
absolute realization of the highest good in an end sometime to be reached by mankind and the individual and by means of a moral order of the world; and the third is the acknowledgment of the full worth of personality. Evil—to which of course no objective valid moral law, but only one conventionally established, stands opposed—is to ethical naturalism nothing but the action of an instinct which in this given case is not beneficial to man in his struggle for existence; the category of good and evil is entirely replaced by the category of the useful and detrimental. With the disappearance of the idea of sin as a transgression of the divine law, the correlated idea of holiness also disappears from the system of ethical naturalism. Besides, blessedness, complete harmony of the outer and inner man with the ideal in the state of mankind as well as of every individual, complete realization of the highest good for the whole as well as for the single through the means of moral work and perfection on the part of man and of holy and loving guidance and endowment on the part of God, is an aim which naturalism is not able to acknowledge, since, according to it, mankind and individuals continue in the ever-flowing stream of earthly incompletion until both reach their destiny in annihilation. A moral order of the world is an impossibility to it, since no holy and loving Ruler and Governor of the world, but only a blind mechanism, causes the course of things. Finally, the personality of man can be only perceived in its worth and in its full importance, when, in the first place, it is in the possession of freedom, of full moral responsibility; and when, in the second place, it lives beyond the span of its short earthly existence and may hope for a full realization of
all its ideals of virtue and the highest good for itself as well as for mankind. Both these points must be contested by monism and naturalism. The place of freedom is taken by absolute determinism; even man is only a natural product, the highest which naturalism knows, but still no more than a product of nature; his personality and his life, bound to the material body, cease with the death of this body, and therefore never reach the ideal of either morality or blessedness. All ideals are and must forever remain objective illusions which came forth out of the power of the corresponding noble impulse, imaginative objective conceptions of the moral impulses.
§ 2. Scientific Darwinism and Moral Principles.
Whilst Darwinistic naturalism surely injures the moral principles, the Darwinistic theories are friendly to them, if they, as mere scientific theories, restrain themselves within the limits of natural science. But in no other point of the entire realm of contact between the natural and intellectual sciences is it more difficult to observe the boundary-line than in reflecting upon the moral self-determination of man; here natural science is always in danger of going beyond its limits.
In the question as to the relation of the evolution theories to religion, the boundary-line can everywhere be easily drawn in theory and easily observed in practice. For it is entirely natural for man to look upon the phenomena of the visible world on the one hand, with a religious mind, as works and actions of an almighty Creator and Ruler of the world, on the other, with his observing and reflecting mind, as products of natural causes. With this double view, man by no means feels
himself dragged hither and thither between two conflicting views; he is able in his logical contemplation of the world scientifically to establish and arrange each for itself and both in their harmony, and has the full consciousness that the one, like the other, has subjective as well as objective truth. Or, if a single individual does not have this consciousness, he must at least admit that it is not Darwinism primarily which created the difficulty of this combined view of the world, but that the latter existed for man in the past as well as in the present.
But the relation of the Darwinian theories to ethical problems is quite a different thing. Here, in the first place, it is not the same process which is to be explained as well in regard to its natural conditions as to its moral cause. It is true that this double view deserves attention in so far as we can look upon every action which results from a moral determination also in reference to its natural side. If I have to raise my arm in consequence of a moral determination, then physiology and mechanism can demonstrate with it the whole theory of the motion of members. But this is not the question, when we treat of the relation between the natural and the ethical. In this example, the moralist examines the motives of my action, the scientist describes and explains the activity of the nerves and muscles of my arm, and as long as the scientist is not guilty of going beyond the boundary to which he is tempted, and which even now we are endeavoring to make clear, as long as he does not include the ethical motives in his physiological attempts at explanation, the one keeps himself neutral with reference to the other; each of them knows that he is
operating in a field which at first has nothing in common with that of the other. In a moral action, as such, the question is no longer as to a process which is to be explained as well in regard to its natural conditions as to its ethical cause, but of a process which either has its ethical cause, and then in its ethical value no natural cause, or which even in its ethical motives belongs to the causal connection of empirical nature with its indestructible chain of natural causes and natural effects. Now at this point the scientist, as such, is always exposed to the danger of denying the first part of our dilemma and affirming the second. For, in moral action, something which is elevated above nature and its causal connection always makes its way into this causal connection of nature, and with its action and the effects of this action wholly enters into this connection: and natural science which has to deal particularly with this causal connection of nature and with it alone, is on that account nevertheless always tempted to explain everything that it sees coming into this connection, in all its causes (even in those which no longer belong to this natural causal connection), out of it. It is therefore always tempted to trace even ethical action which, with its deeds, makes its way and enters into this causal connection, but which with its motives stands above it, as to its motives, back to a natural causal connection; and thus to contest the independence of ethical motives and their principles—which independence is not dependent on nature, but, on the contrary, frequently contradicts it. Ethics must adhere to the fact that the ethical determination of the will has its origin not in a natural condition, but in the ethical centre of personality; although all the conditions under which the ethical motive
originates and acts, belong completely to the causal connection of natural life, in which man himself stands as to the whole natural part of his being. The ethical realm stands above the natural realm, and shows its superiority partly by the category of moral demands whose imperativeness cannot have grown out of the mechanical necessity of the natural law, because it often enough contradicts the latter and carries out its demands in opposition to it, partly by the consciousness of individual responsibility which cannot be got rid of even by him who mentally establishes a system of determinism that denies responsibility, partly by the voice of the injured conscience which cannot merely be the dislike of a dissatisfied higher natural impulse, when it can speak of the same action for years, even for an entire human life, and even, where man has counterbalanced that once felt dissatisfaction of the higher impulse, by an oft-repeated satisfaction of it. In Book I, [Chapter V, § 1], we tried to show that even Darwin seems not to have entirely avoided this danger of explaining the moral from physical causes; while at the same time we acknowledge that he otherwise esteems the realm of the moral, and that he even finds the lofty position of man above the animal world still more decidedly expressed in his moral than in his intellectual qualities.
But such an intrusion of the physical into the ethical is by no means a necessary consequence of scientific Darwinism—only an ever-present temptation of it. He who once admits that even by means of development something new can originate, that even under the full influence of the evolution theory there appeared in the series of creation entirely new phenomena with the
appearance of life and the organic, and of sensation and consciousness, and still more with the appearance of self-consciousness and freedom, which phenomena no evolution theory is able to explain; and he who takes into consideration the weight of that other obvious fact that, in the origin and the growth of each single man, a time in which he acts with moral responsibility follows in gradual development a time in which he had but the value and the life of a cell,—such an one can explain the whole origin of mankind according to the evolution theory, and yet see something absolutely new coming forth with the appearance of moral determination. All conditions of the moral determinations of the will may be and are naturally conditioned, as, indeed, in this world the entire spiritual life of man is certainly bound to the conditions of his corporeal life; all preliminary stages of moral types which preceded the temporal appearance of moral beings, and which surround us still, those stages which appear in the animal world, may have preceded and prepared the way for the introduction of morally responsible beings into the world: the moral determination of the will itself nevertheless remains something new and independent—something which transcends nature.
If this fact is once admitted, then ethics also has free play to establish independently and render valid its principles. And then we have no longer any reason to treat of the relation of the different ethical principles to naturo-historical Darwinism; for this relation is that of absolute mutual peace.