II.
1) If we accept the principle of welfare as our test or criterion in judging of the value of actions and of institutions, these are then good or bad according as in their effects (so far as we can trace them) they produce a predominance of pleasurable feeling or a predominance of painful feeling in a larger or smaller circle of sentient beings. Every action may be compared to a stone thrown into the water. The motion produced is propagated in large or in small circles; and the estimation of its value depends upon whether it produces in the places it strikes predominant pleasure or pain. Just as theoretical science explains the single natural phenomenon by its connection with other natural phenomena, so ethics tests the single feeling by its relation to other feelings: the satisfaction of a person acting over the accomplishment of the act is only then to be called justifiable or good when it does not create a disturbance in the pleasurable feeling of other beings, or when such a disturbance can be proved to be a necessary means of a greater or more extended pleasurable feeling. This principle, as a principle of test or valuation, corresponds directly with sympathy as motive of judgment. The extent to which it is possible to accept this from other points of view I cannot here investigate in detail.
The act of estimation, the testing, does not stop at the outer action but goes down to the motives of the person acting, to the qualities of his character, to the whole inner life from which the act has sprung. This has its ground in the nature and significance of the estimating judgment. Ethical judgments, in fact, are in their original and simplest form spontaneous expressions of feeling. But the great practical significance of such expressions of feeling lies in the fact that they operate decisively upon the will (upon the individual will and that of others) and produce motives of future action. Logically, accordingly, they must be directed towards the point at which an altering effect on the power that produces the act is possible, and this point lies precisely in the inner life, in the character of mind of the person acting. For this reason feelings and impulses, disturbances and desires, are also judged of according to the tendency which they have of producing acts and effects that will increase pleasurable feeling or avoid unpleasurable feeling in more extended or more limited circles.
Only by its effects do we know the power. We form by inferences our conclusions as to what takes place in the mind of a man, his motives and his capacity. Goodness or greatness that never expressed itself in action could never become the object of ethical approbation; it would not even exist in fact, but would rest upon a self-deception, upon an illusion. At least some inner activity, a longing and endeavor in the direction demanded by the ethical principle must manifest itself. The individual in self-judgment must often take refuge in this inner activity, and any deep-going, unpharisaical ethical estimation will have to follow him there;[122] but just here do we have a beginning of that which is demanded by the principle of welfare, except that in consequence of individual circumstances its prosecution is impossible.
[122] Compare my article "The Law of Relativity in Ethics" in the International Journal of Ethics, Vol. I. p. 37, et seqq.
Equally important as the principle that we can know the power only from the effects is the other principle that the effect need not appear at once. When good and great men are so often mistaken by their contemporaries the fact is explained by the circumstance that only a very wide-embracing glance can measure the significance of their efforts and activity. Their goodness and greatness is founded in the fact that their thought, their feeling, their will, comprehend far more than their short-sighted and narrow-minded contemporaries see. A long time may elapse before it is possible for them to be generally understood, and for what they have done to be assimilated. It is therefore by no means implied in the principle of welfare that people are to direct their conduct so as to be in accord with impulses and wants which men have at the moment. The principle of welfare demands in very fact that we should not shrink from the battle with prejudice and with inertia. The best thing, often, that we can do for others is to make them feel that they stand on entirely too low a level in their wishes and wants and do not make adequate demands generally. Thus, to take a single instance, the great artist often treads a solitary path ununderstood or even mistaken by the great mass. Yet in so doing he follows, perhaps without being aware of it, the principle of welfare,—if he rigorously observes the demands of art. He increases the mental capital of the species, and gives it a power which later on can operate in broad spheres. Only a short-sighted conception and application of the principle of welfare stops with the need of the moment and dismisses the consideration of the permanent conditions of life and the permanent sources of new life and new activity.[123]
[123] This last argument is taken from my Ethics (Danish edition, p. 94, German edition, p. 110).
2) The principle of welfare simply furnishes a norm which may be laid at the foundation of the testing of all classes of actions. But it by no means demands, as has at times been supposed, that consideration for welfare should also be the ground and motive for every act. We have recourse to general principles only in order to be able to set ourselves aright in cases in which direct judgment, instinctive feeling cannot determine the question presented, that is in cases of doubt, or when we have in view a systematic treatment of ethical questions. The ethical feeling may operate quite involuntarily and without real ratiocination, in that we can be moved directly by the act (whether possible or real) as it appears to us, just as in our æsthetical feeling we may without æsthetical reasoning be struck by the beauty of a work of art or of a landscape. Or, we follow with confidence the "unwritten laws" that are contained in custom, in tradition, and generally in so-called "positive morality." And in agreement precisely with the principle of welfare, is immediacy of this kind to be recommended and maintained, so long as it does not lead to the neglect of real problems and questions. It is the state of innocence out of which no one dare be wrested unnecessarily. Abstract principles become necessary aids when direct reliance fails; but frequently they can only be applied to individual concrete cases by the employment of a great number of complicated intermediary steps, and do not easily acquire a practical influence upon the will. Indeed, the principle of welfare may even demand quite different motives from ethical feeling or devotion to the requirements of positive morality. It is in fact most beautiful and best that a man should care for his wife and children because he loves them and not because his ethical instinct requires it. Where conscious duty has to be invoked in the innermost relations between man and man, it is as a rule a sign of an unfortunate state of affairs. Perfect love dispels not only fear but also duty.
In his "Ethics," at page 339, Wundt advances the following objection to the principle of welfare: "It is conceivable that a person should sacrifice himself for another; it is conceivable that a person should yield up life and possessions for definite ideal ends, for his country, for freedom, for religion, for science. But it has never come to pass, and never will, that people shall renounce a thing solely to increase the sum of happiness of the world." This objection overlooks the fact that the principle of the valuation of an act that is regarded as good need not be the motive to this act. The thought and feeling of the person acting may stop very properly at country, freedom, or any other ideal object, without the person's instituting any formal reflections whatsoever with regard to the reasons of the value of the ideal ends for which he sacrifices himself. But in systematic ethics or in practical cases of doubt we inquire what value and importance love of country, freedom, poetry, and science possess for human life. If, for example, freedom were not a good for a people, the individual would do wrong to sacrifice his life for it. It is never of course a question of the abstract notion of welfare of and in itself, just as in a single theoretical problem it is never a question of the abstract idea of cause. But in ethics we lay down the principle of welfare and in the theory of knowledge the principle of causality; endeavoring, thus, to go back through analysis to the final assumptions of our practical and theoretical intellectual activity.
3) It is no argument against the principle of welfare that pleasure must be so often bought with pain. Pain is in that case only the necessary transitional step, and the significance of the principle of welfare is precisely the requirement it makes that the duty of demonstration shall rest on those who maintain the necessity of such an intermediary step. Any infliction of pain must be supplied with a motive, whereas the feeling of pleasure in and of itself (that is if its causes do not at the same time produce additional painful effects) is justified. The principle of welfare simply says: Produce by thy conduct as much pleasure and as little pain as is possible! The degree to which it is possible to realise this demand, of this the principle in and of itself says nothing. A principle is not subverted by the difficulties of its application.
As experience teaches, there is a happiness that is not bought too dearly with pain. Clara's song in Goethe's "Egmont":
"Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt!"
has been cited in disproof of the principle of welfare. But let us hear Clara to the end and note the last line of the song, in which she gives the result of the entire train of her emotion. She says:
"Glücklich allein ist die Seele die liebt!"
The phenomenon is this. There is a movement of the heart and mind, a life of feeling, which are joined with a satisfaction so deep and great that the powerful oscillation between pleasure and pain does not destroy the total feeling of happiness, but strengthens it. Two psychological factors co-operate here. The one is, that the pain (the dis-pleasure or grief), unless it transcends a certain degree, forms the background of the pleasurable feeling and is thereby able to intensify the latter. In this very fact a sufficient motive lies to choose conditions of this sort in preference to such as do not stand so high in intensity but are nevertheless conditions of more unmixed pleasure. The other factor is, that there can be an element of attraction even in grief, simply because intense life, powerful movement, and the straining of faculties that come with it, produce of themselves satisfaction. All exertion of power which is not out of proportion is connected with a feeling of pleasure. The feeling of pleasure that accompanies grief and anxiety asserts itself in the fact that we do not wish to be transported out of it. An important element here is also the organic process connected with every powerful state of mind (the effect of the condition of the brain on the circulation of the blood, on breathing, and on the organs of digestion), granting that it is not the whole cause.
When Auguste Comte lost the woman who exerted so decisive an influence on the direction of his mind in the last period of his life, he said once in an outburst of sorrow evoked by her memory: "I owe it to thee alone that I shall not leave this life without having known in a worthy manner the best emotion of human nature…. Amid the severest pains that this emotion can bring with it I have never ceased to feel that the true condition of happiness is, to have filled the heart—though it be with pain, aye with bitterest pain."
Auguste Comte and Clara are accordingly quite in agreement, and the ethics of welfare is in agreement with them both. If we desire to be wholly secure against pain and anxiety, then we dare not love anything. But what if love were the greatest happiness, even though it brought as much sorrow again with it! With powerful action and great fulness of life come also great costs, great contrasts, and great vibrations. Yet who has said that the highest was to be had for little expenditure?
The feeling of pleasure is the only psychological criterion of health and power of life. That which in all its immediate or remote effects in all the creatures that it touches produces only pleasurable feeling, cannot possibly be condemned. Welfare, therefore, in the sense of permanent pleasurable feeling, is the final test-principle of action. Pain is everywhere the sign of an incipient dissolution of life.[124] This is exhibited in the simplest manner in the "physical" pain that arises through the tearing of organic tissue. But it also holds true of the "mental" pain that arises from anxiety, doubt, or repentance. It points to a disharmony between the different forces and impulses of the mind, a disharmony that can lead to the dissolution of consciousness. If pain is a necessary intermediary step, the fact is partly founded in the two psychological laws above mentioned, partly also in the circumstance that it means the dissolution of something in us that impedes a more free and more varied development of life. Childbirth is accompanied with pain because the new life can only come into the world at the cost of the old. Analogously the knowledge of truth is often gained with pain because prejudices and illusions must first be shattered. In the pain of repentance a lower self is dissolved in order that a new and higher self may develop.
[124] Compare my Psychology (Danish edition, pp. 315-318; German edition, pp. 343-347).
4) A circumstance that has especially fostered the opposition to the principle of welfare is undoubtedly the tendency to think exclusively, in connection with the expression 'pleasurable feeling,' of the most elementary sensual forms of pleasure. The latter are not excluded by the principle of welfare; the principle, however, takes all the aspects of human character into consideration, maintaining that permanent pleasurable feeling is not to be established with certainty if an essential aspect of this character is neglected. The defect of elementary feelings of pleasure is that for the great part they correspond to only momentary and limited relations.
A being whose feeling is of a purely elementary kind can maintain itself as long as the simple conditions of life to which it is adapted do not change. Thus some of the lowest animal forms like the infusoria and rhizopods appear to have existed throughout infinitely long periods of time in exactly their present condition. Here the adaptation to the given conditions is as good as perfect. The same may be the case with beings that at an earlier stage of their development have possessed more developed organs and forms. Animals that live free in their youth, afterwards however as parasites, lead a purely elementary life and lose all the nerves and muscles that do not directly subserve this form of existence. This is also true of man. Of the Fuegians, whose wretched existence (wretched in our eyes) he portrays in vivid colors in his "Journey Around the World," Darwin says: "There is no reason for believing that the Fuegians are diminishing in number; we must therefore assume that they enjoy a sufficient measure of happiness (of whatever character this may be) to give life value in their eyes. Nature, which makes habit an irresistible power and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the products of his wretched country." Primitive peoples of a higher type even (and not only primitive peoples) afford examples of an adaptation to conditions which excludes all motives to change and progress. It is dire necessity that has brought man into the path of progress. Where such a compulsion does not operate human emotional life is conditioned by a narrow sphere of relations only and is therefore itself narrow and restricted. Perhaps more complete, more unmixed satisfaction can be obtained here than would be possible under more manifold and more complicated circumstances. A small vessel may be fuller than a large one although it holds less.[125]
[125] Fieri potest, ut vas aliquod minus majore plenius sit, quamvis liquoris minus contineat. Cartesius, Epistola iv, Ad principem Palatinam de sita beata.
It might perhaps be objected to the principle of welfare, that we should really be obliged, in consistency with it, to make ourselves all little vessels, and that agreeably to the principle an existence limited to the primitive necessities of life and to purely elementary feelings, would stand just as high as a life taken up with intellectual labor and the activity of culture, or even higher, since an existence of the latter kind could scarcely be accompanied with so unmixed and secure a well-being, but would be united with trials and efforts constantly renewed and with unrest ever recurring. If—as it might be suggested—an existence like that of the Fuegians appears poor and wretched to us, since they often suffer from scarcity and want, let us take another example. Alexander von Humboldt came across a tribe in South America that lived from banana trees,—trees so fruitful that an acre of land planted with them would supply food for fifty human beings. The trees require no real expenditure of labor; only the earth about their roots must be broken with implements once or twice a year. The consequence is that the tribe is stupid and uncivilised. But the wants that it has are satisfied.
That which would make such a life unendurable for us, the strong desire for activity, development, and progress, this desire does not exist at such stages. It is,—a fact that must be remarked,—itself a consequence of development and progress.
Whereas Lamarck assumed an inner, innate impulse to development in all living creatures,[126] Darwin maintains, on the ground of experience, that development is invariably introduced by the influence of external causes. It was a difficulty to Lamarck how the very lowest forms of life could continue their existence, why they had not long since developed to higher stages. In Darwin's theory, which takes into consideration the external conditions of development, there is no difficulty on this point. A development that is favored in no way by external circumstances is simply impossible. As regards human beings, the anthropologist Th. Waitz has clearly proved, that the impulse and desire of development is itself a product of development. To this effect he speaks in his treatise "The Indians of North America," page 69: "A people without intercourse and not in competition with other peoples, a people which supplies its natural wants with relative ease or only by overcoming long accustomed difficulties regarded as inevitable, directly from its natural environment, and that feels satisfied therewith and lives a happy life: from such a people it is not to be expected that it will make any endeavors to civilise itself. He that has what he needs and therefore feels satisfied in all respects, will not work; people do not civilise themselves voluntarily in following some noble instinct of the heart. Is it different in fact in our modern society? Is not a long period of schooling and culture previously necessary to instil in man an interest for work as work? How many are there among the so-called learned and cultured that make endeavors in behalf of the education of themselves and others without they are required!"
[126] The theory of Lamarck is made the subject of an interesting criticism by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology, Part iii, Chap. 3.
It is peculiar to the state of nature in contrast to the state of civilisation, (in so far as a distinct contrast may be asserted,) that in the former the impulse to change of manner of life and thought must come from without, whereas in the latter an impulse to progress operates which be it now powerful be it now feeble never ceases entirely to operate. This difference is analogous to that that prevails between inorganic and organic existence. It is the peculiar character of an organism that the play of forces is preserved in it with a certain independence of the effects of the moment and of its immediate environment. So in civilised peoples an impulse is aroused to change life in all directions, to differentiate, to shape it, and to bring it to a point in every single direction. Spiritual antennæ are grown which are in never ceasing movement. Through this a new species of feeling also is possible, a feeling that is determined not only by the definite ends that are attained but which links itself with the work, with the activity itself which is requisite to the acquisition of these ends. Man is thereby become more independent and more free, and his mental life, especially his emotional life, has gained in depth and intensity, it now being no longer determined merely by the external world, but essentially by the forces that are awakened in the inner world. Now ideal, and not merely elementary feelings act, and higher demands are made in life.
What I wish to maintain here is that the rise of the impulse to development is in perfect accord with the principle of welfare. That stability of the "state of nature" which now appears to us wretched now paradisian, is itself dependent on the stability of external conditions. Absolute stability, however, is not found in nature. If the immediate surroundings do not change, changes yet occur in other localities of nature and among other creatures, and the struggle for existence then either causes them to perish or to change in a corresponding manner. The beings that have changed by adaptation will obtain a decided advantage in the struggle for life over those that have remained stationary. This is the fate of many primitive peoples, or indeed civilised peoples, that have remained stationary or in a low state of culture. Extinction awaits them when a higher civilisation approaches.
What is true of peoples and races also holds good for individuals. A perfect adaptation to limited circumstances always involves a danger,—the danger that the individual when its conditions of life are changed and its horizon is enlarged will lack the inner conditions necessary to self-assertion. Childish naïveté, dreaming phantasy, sensual enjoyment, have each their rights, but they easily lead to a condition of somnambulism; security and happiness are always precarious here, and on awakening the greatest helplessness may take their place. Here, let us add, we leave entirely out of consideration the fact that such a condition often exists only at the cost of other individuals.
Welfare, accordingly, cannot be conceived as a passive state of things produced once for all and that is not itself in turn the point of departure of new and progressive development. Welfare, in the highest conception of it, must consist of a condition in which power is gathered and rich possibilities gained for the future, and which generates an impulse to frame new ends and to begin new endeavors. It is a condition that is desirable in and of itself as well as one that contains the germ of new desirable conditions,—a condition therefore that is not only an end but also a means, that has value not only as effect but also as cause. The feeling of pleasure is here directly bound up with activity, work, development, the unfolding of forces themselves, and not merely with the result that is obtained by the employment of the forces. Where such feeling of pleasure is possible there much suffering is endurable that at a lower stage would be the sign of the dissolution of all life. Expectation and longing, privation and disappointment will not be lacking; they will accompany with definite rhythmical alternation the joyful advancement toward the aim that man has set himself; but amid all oscillations the fundamental direction and the fundamental activity will be asserted. We will not work to live, we will not live to work; but in work will we find life.
This is the ideal that the principle of welfare holds up to us when thoroughly reasoned out. In how far it can be realised is a question that can only be answered experimentally for the time and the individual in question. It demands not only a change of the nature of individuals but also of the relations of society. The essential thing however is, that we here have a criterion by which we are able to test actions and institutions. This criterion corresponds to a tendency that leads throughout all organic nature, in that pleasure as a rule means life and progress, pain, retrogression and death. The principle of welfare asserts the right of life: every creature has the right to exist, to develop, and to obtain its full satisfaction, unless greater pain is thereby produced to itself or to others. The ethics that builds upon the principle of welfare seeks accordingly to continue the evolution of nature in a conscious and harmonious manner. It demands that means be found which the unconscious development of nature have not supplied, and it strives to mitigate or to exclude the unnecessary pain which the struggle for existence brings with it. It embraces a series of problems from compassionate alleviation and assistance up to the highest social, intellectual, and æsthetical endeavors. It is the business of special ethics to treat these questions in detail.
5) From the fact, however, that welfare, properly understood, consists in activity and development, it does not follow that vice versa activity and development are always joined with welfare or lead to welfare. Because limitation of wants does not always lead to the aim set, unlimited variety of wants is not necessarily the proper state. Civilisation can assume forms and enter on paths that do not harmonise with the principle of welfare. We find in history accordingly, at times, distinct and decisive warnings against existing civilisations. Thus it was in Greece on the part of Socrates, the Cynics, and the Stoics, in the eighteenth century on the part of Rousseau, and in our day on the part of Leo Tolstoï. The opposition of such great minds should surely make us watchful.
I leave out of consideration here the question in how far that which we call civilisation can be imparted to a people forthwith. The capacity for civilisation has, it is true, been prematurely and overhastily denied many primitive peoples.[127] But it is not therefore necessarily a good thing for a people to give up the forms of life that it has developed by its own fortunes and endeavors to allow itself to be regulated in accordance with forms and ideals that have been developed under entirely different circumstances. Thus directly, even the best-founded and most perfect civilisation cannot be communicated. Waitz who expressly maintains that no proof has been brought forward of the Indian's incapacity for civilisation, praises nevertheless the Indian chieftains who oppose the obtrusion of civilisation on their people, for their love to their people and their just comprehension of its true well-being.
[127] Compare my article in the International Journal of Ethics, No. I. p. 60.
The reason why conflict can arise between civilisation and welfare lies in the restiveness and restlessness of the aspirations of civilisation. It is the same with it as with that spontaneous, involuntary impulse to movement that leads to the use of forces and of the members merely because sufficient energy is present, without their use being guided by the consideration of a more valuable end, so that the results are accidental. The effort that goes with civilisation may lead in part to over-exertion, to an overstraining of forces; in part (in the case of extreme differentiation) to a one-sided direction of effort; and partly to isolation, to the fragmentary elimination of individual activities. In the single individual certain faculties are fostered (in the one intelligence, in the other physical power for work) at the cost of other faculties; the harmony, the capacity of feeling oneself as totality and unity is lacking. By such one-sidedness the individual becomes of value only as a wheel in a great machine: he serves merely as a means, not as an end. And such a one-sided individual development is connected with a one-sided social development. The suppression of certain features of the nature of the individual goes hand in hand with the suppression of single estates and classes of society. If we identify civilisation and ethics, without qualification, and regard progress as a safer criterion than welfare, we should overlook the fact that there exists also a social question. The social question is an ethical question and at the same time a question of the correction of civilisation,—both by means of the principle of welfare. Would it be right that the products of material and ideal civilisation should only fall to the share of a small minority, while all the rest should not be able to participate therein? This would clash completely with the ideal of society that flows from the principle of welfare. For the greatest welfare is present when every single individual so develops himself in an independent manner that just by this independent development of his own he assists others to a similar development from their point of view. Then does there exist a harmonious society of independent personalities. The idea of such a society is the highest ethical idea that flows from the principle of welfare. Every individual is then a little world for himself and yet stands in the most intimate reciprocal connection with the great world of which he is a part. The individual serves the race and the race serves the individual. Every position of isolation, every inequality in the distribution of possessions and of employments must be founded in the demands of the various circumstances and problems of life, and the faculties and impulses of each individual shall be developed as fully and richly as is compatible with the conditions of life of the whole race.
6) It follows from the considerations presented, that it is by no means always easy to apply the principle of welfare in individual cases. The particular relations of the affairs in question can be so complicated that we are not able to take a broad survey of them and foresee the results of our interference. We cannot deduce a priori from the principle of welfare any system of particular acts, any determinate order of society, any civilisation. Its value (like that of the principle of causality in the theoretical field) is to present and to formulate problems, and to serve as a guide to their treatment. It is regulative, not constructive. It presumes the immediate involuntary life of the individual and of society, and its function does not begin until the conscious discussion and treatment occurs of the value on the one hand of that which has thus been developed, and on the other of the manner in which the development shall be conducted in the future. All ethics thus acquires an historical character. We never—either in our own individuality or in society—commence from the very beginning, but are always obliged to start with a definite foundation and to work our way further under the guidance of the principles and ideals that spring from our nature.