III.
1) In the previous remarks I have essayed a discussion of the principle of welfare which may perhaps make clearer what was not so distinct in my former expositions ("Ethik," Chapters III and VII). The difficulty always occurs in the enunciation of a principle, that a direct demonstration of its validity cannot be given. Of so much greater significance is it then if an indirect proof can be adduced by showing that the very ones who contest it are themselves forced to employ it and actually to employ it without being aware of it.
I maintain now that Dr. Paul Carus in his book "The Ethical Problem," in which he combats the principle of welfare, has not been able to avoid giving such an indirect confirmation of the validity of this principle. Before attempting to show this in detail I shall make a few remarks concerning the criticism of my "Ethics" which Dr. Carus wrote in the first number of The Monist, and which in an abbreviated form is also embodied in the treatise above mentioned.
Dr. Carus thinks that I have practically surrendered the principle of welfare when I define welfare to consist in activity. His words are:
"If welfare is to be interpreted as activity, work, development; if this kind of active welfare is the greatest good, whatever admixture of pain and whatever absence of pleasurable feeling it may have; if the greatest amount of a state of continuous pleasurable feeling is not welfare in an ethical sense, what becomes of the utilitarian definition of welfare as pleasurable feeling? If, however, welfare is 'the state of a continuous pleasurable feeling,' how can we declare that the life of a pessimistic philosopher is preferable to that of a joyful fool?"
To this I answer, that if it could be proved that increasing pain followed necessarily on all advancement of civilisation (without this pain being compensated for, as Clara's philosophy demanded, by new and proportionately greater feelings of pleasure), in that case it would be impossible to combine civilisation and welfare. But only a pessimistic dogmatism—which is just as current in the atmosphere of to-day as optimistic dogmatism—could assert this. What experience teaches us is this, that we find ourselves amid a development, in a line of tendencies the final results of which we cannot foresee but which hitherto have evoked at many points new forces and have thereby opened new sources of satisfaction. Everything that arouses our greatest and most permanent pleasurable feeling has arisen within this development. This justifies our courage and our hope in behalf of further progress, although conflict and pain will as we may foresee not be wanting, and although the way leads through many deserts. Experience alone can show how far we shall be able to get. I agree with Dr. Carus that "this world of ours is not a world suited to the taste of a pleasure-seeker," if we understand by pleasure passive sensual enjoyment, an enjoyment which is not united with the rest and nourishment with which not only an immediate pleasurable feeling is connected but whereby power is also gathered for continued endeavor. If so many pleasure-seekers go through life without having their eyes opened to its true significance and purpose, this fact is precisely one of the things that clash with the principle of welfare, for the latter claims all faculties and powers, and demands that they that sleep be awakened,—that is if they really possess useful faculties. For perhaps the "joyful fool" cannot accomplish more than he does. Wherefore then disturb him, if his pleasure harms neither himself nor others and if his awakening will only lead to unrest and pain for himself and perhaps also for others? I pointed out the fact in my "Ethics,"[128] that we can determine by the principle of welfare alone in what cases we are to destroy a state of equilibrium or shatter an illusion.
[128] Danish edition, p. 94. German edition, p. 109.
I have admitted the possibility of a conflict between civilisation and welfare. Wherever such a conflict arises, there, according to my conception, appears an ethical problem, which must be determined by the principle of welfare, since any order of things or any development that brought with it permanent and everlasting pain would be in effect a dissolution of life itself. Such pain, however, (as even pessimistic philosophers are optimistic enough to hope,) would destroy the will to live. If we live in spite of pain it is because there is always a surplus of satisfaction.
I give the idea of welfare no arbitrary extension when I deny that it should be limited to denote a passive condition produced once for all time. For our nature is at no stage wholly complete; no one condition can stand therefore as definitive. The future, and the new horizons opened, will make new demands on our capacities and our will, and in the testing of any state of things it must accordingly be a necessary point of view to establish whether in addition to the direct satisfaction which it probably affords it at the same time prepares the capacities and the possibilities of a continued development answering to the new relations. It may be necessary to choose some arduous employment which later necessarily brings with it long continued rest and inactivity. Darwin's struggle with his feeble health is a good example. The man who from love of country or to save a fellow-being risks his life, prefers the active satisfaction of a single moment (the satisfaction, namely, which he feels beforehand at the thought of saving his country or a human life) to the passive joys of years and years. It was such a moment in which Faust saw himself living in mind
"Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volk"
and which thereby made life of value to him, which all the earthly gratifications that the demon was able to obtain for him could not accomplish. In the face of the pleasure that such a moment can produce the thought of pain and death vanishes. Thus alone is self-sacrifice psychologically intelligible.
2) While I cannot see that Dr. Carus has pointed out a contradiction in my theory of welfare, I may further assert that he himself cannot without a self-contradiction escape recognising the principle of welfare. Dr. Carus indeed, in a certain sense, himself enunciates this very principle. He says, in the preface to "The Ethical Problem," page iii, "The aim of ethics is neither the welfare of self nor that of other individuals, but of those interests that are superindividual." The aim therefore is to be welfare, not however the welfare of individuals but of "superindividual interests." This strange expression is defined in certain subsequent passages of the book. Dr. Carus speaks, namely, later on, of "that superindividual soul-life which we call society."[129] It is admitted in this, that when we speak of welfare we speak impliedly of soul-life. But how can we give to society as such a soul-life that is different from the soul-life of the single individuals that have their existence simultaneously and successively in that society? This is merely a mythical and mystical personification of society, which may have arisen in the comparison, in many respects instructive, between society and an organism, which however can possess at best a poetical, but no scientific, value. The idea of society, if it is to be scientifically employed, must always be so applied that at every point the definite group of individuals which it represents may be established. The great importance of this idea consists in the fact that it expresses the common and permanent interests of individuals simultaneously and successively existing, in opposition to the interests of single individuals, or of a smaller group, or of a limited period of time. Ethical perception, (unless it starts from the point of view of egoistical individualism,) must apply its test from the point of view of society. It leads in this case to the consideration of our own and others' actions not only with respect to our own individual circumstances but sub specie æterni so to speak, that is with respect to their relation to the great whole of which not only we, but also other human beings are parts. Along with the educative power of authorities, it is due to the sympathy in virtue of which the individual causes to re-echo in his own bosom the feelings of others, that ethical ideals have been formed in the human mind. But as soon as it is made impossible to transpose the idea of society into the idea of individuals that live under certain definite conditions, this idea contains no instruction for us in ethical respects. No ethical norms can in this case be deduced from it. Emotional mysticism takes the place of ethical thought and volition.
[129] Pages 33, 38, and 40.
Such a mysticism has of course its value. Powerful emotion leads naturally to a state in which all definite ideas recede, the mind becoming entirely occupied by emotional feeling. It will furthermore be difficult to represent by any adequate conception the great multitude of human characters on which our conduct in given circumstances can acquire decisive influence. The expression 'society,' or 'race,' characterises very well the unconcluded and the unsurveyable in so many of the consequences of human methods of action and order of life, and it will therefore not be possible to dispense with it. But transposition into concrete conceptions must always be possible. A welfare that at one or another stage is not the welfare of definite individuals is a self-contradiction, and any act that at one period or another does not lead to the welfare of definite individuals has no value.
In Wundt's "Ethics," pages 429 to 431, the same line of thought is found as this of Dr. Carus. Public well-being and progress, according to Wundt, do not consist in the well-being of the greatest possible number of individuals: for the individual is ephemeral! "However richly blest and however perfect the individual existence may be, it is but a drop in the ocean of life. What can individual happiness and individual pain mean to the world?" I should say to this: Yes, it is true, the ocean does not exist for the sake of the individual drops; but what is an ocean that does not consist of drops? And is not the whole ocean clear if every single drop is clear? And only then is it wholly clear.
Just as there are people who cannot see the woods for the trees, so there are also people who cannot see the trees for the woods. In ethics this method of conception leads to the consideration of human aspiration as the means of superhuman ends. Every ethics that seeks to stand on a basis of experience and remain within the possibility of progressive verification, must cling to the standpoint of "man with men." It need not for this reason overlook the fact, that ethical conduct, like all unfolding of power, is connected with the universal world-process.
3) Dr. Carus also approaches the principle of welfare upon another, less mystical path. He maintains, with great emphasis, that ethics must be based on facts, on insight into the real, the actual, order of nature. Our ideals—this is the opinion of Dr. Carus—arise through the wants which the relations of reality awaken in us, and must be realised by the means which the relations of reality supply.
"The new ethics is based upon facts and is applied to facts" (p. 18).
"Man wants something, so he conceives the idea how good it would be if he had it…. Only by studying facts will he be enabled to realise his ideals" (pp. 19 and 20).
"If you wish to exist, obey reason. Reason teaches us how to regulate our actions in conformity with the order of natural laws. If we do regulate them in conformity with the order of natural laws, they will stand; otherwise not. In the former case they will be good, they will agree with the cosmical conditions of existence; in the latter case they are bad, they will not agree with the cosmical conditions of existence; therefore they will necessarily produce disorder and evil" (pp. 31, 32).
It appears to me clear from this, that the reason why we must regulate our actions to conform with natural laws, must be the fact that otherwise they cannot "stand," which is explained more in detail in what follows, to mean that they are constituted to produce "disorder and evil,"—which in its turn must be surely understood as meaning that disorder is itself an evil. If disorder were no evil, and if no further evils resulted from actions which are not "in conformity with the order of natural laws," what foundation would Dr. Carus in that case be able to give his ethics? I wholly agree with Dr. Carus that our conduct if it is to be ethical must support itself upon as profound a comprehension of the relations of reality as physical science, psychology, and social science alone can furnish. But this requirement can only be made good through and by the principle of welfare. It has validity only for the person who wills that his conduct shall "stand" and produce no evil, either in extended or in limited circles. If pain and death were not evils, this requirement would have no validity.
To judge from his somewhat indefinite expressions one might suspect in Dr. Carus here a votary of egoistic hedonism, were it not that a number of other passages in his book exclude this suspicion.
However, it seems quite clear to me that his final criterion must coincide with the principle of welfare. His ethics is an ethics of expediency, in that his ultimate criterion is the influence of actions on the life of mankind.
4) Dr. Carus justly emphasises the relation of ethics to our world-conception at large. But this connection does not mean that ethics can be derived by deduction from a philosophical system previously given. Ethics is an independent discipline which starts from its own peculiar assumptions (which cannot of course stand in contradiction to other established assumptions), although it is obliged to make much use of the results furnished by other sciences. Ethics has an independent foundation in the laws of feeling and volitional life, just as the theory of knowledge has its foundation in the laws of sensations and perceptions. In conformity with the law of economy, (which must prevail in science even though it should not prevail in nature,) we must restrict the established postulates of the single sciences to the least possible limit. If after doing this agreement between the single sciences finally occurs, this result will be all the more valuable.
According to Dr. Carus ethics is to be derived now from a philosophical total world-conception, as according to his view ("The Ethical Problem," p. 71) it originally arose through the influence of the positive religions.[130] Very weighty objections can be made in my opinion against this latter assumption. It is a fact that the lower a religion stands the less ethical character it possesses, and the very lowest religions it is probable possess no ethical value whatever. The question then arises how religion gradually acquired its ethical character. The ethical ideas which were perceived in the nature of the deity must have had a natural origin, and this origin can be sought only in the life of man with men. The ethical norms and ideas developed themselves here spontaneously and have been just as spontaneously projected or hypostatised as the attributes of divinity. In the history of the religion of Greece we can see clearly exhibited the development of gods as powers of nature to gods as the expression of an ethical order of nature. Compare for instance, the Dodonæan and the Homeric Zeus with the Zeus that appears in the ideal belief of Æschylus. The experiences are made in human life that lead to the formation of divine ideals. Gods grow better and more gentle according as men themselves grow better and gentler. Religious conceptions are idealised experiences. If religion is a factor in the development of ethics it is because man conceives and represents his essential ideals in a religious form. The movement proceeds therefore from experience to experience; that which acts on nature is, as Shakespeare says, always an art that has been produced by nature itself. How could man understand the meaning of the ethical qualities attributed to his deities if he were not acquainted to some extent with these qualities through experience?
[130] Dr. Carus expresses himself differently in The Open Court (1890, p. 2549), where religion and ethics are called twins; whereas in The Ethical Problem the latter is the daughter of the former.
That which distinguishes philosophical from theological ethics is not the fact that the former is constructed on the basis of some philosophical system and the latter upon ecclesiastical dogmatism, but the fact that philosophical ethics brings out into full consciousness the psychological basis upon which ethical life has actually always more or less indirectly builded, and draws all the consequences implied in this. In this it furnishes an independent contribution to a philosophical system.
5) It seems to me to be perfectly justified, that the distinguished men who lead the Ethical Societies keep these institutions as independent as possible not only of all definite dogmatic tendency of thought but also of all unnecessary philosophical hypotheses and speculations. With respect to what concerns the first principles of ethics itself, it is not necessary for the practical ethicist to occupy any definite point of view, although it would be very fortunate if he were acquainted with the discussion of these principles and could take part in an independent manner in the same. He who proposes to teach applied mathematics or employ it in practice need not begin with a definite position with respect to the nature and origin of mathematical principles. So also in ethics there is a complete group of ideas and endeavors which are independent of the manner in which the first principles are conceived. The essential thing for the Ethical Societies is, (as Dr. Stanton Coit has said in his beautiful book "Die Ethische Bewegung in der Religion,") agreement as to the methods of development of character and as to the type of character to be developed.
Dr. Carus can have really nothing to object to in this method of conception, inasmuch as it is his conviction that in the passage from the supernatural to the natural establishment of ethics the "substance of our morality" will not be changed. In an article in The Open Court, at page 2575, he says: "The most important moral rules are not to be altered…. Some of them will be altered as little as our arithmetical table can be changed." In this passage less importance for the contents of ethics is attributed to the various points of view than I should be obliged to assign. Yet all the sooner should Dr. Carus really admit that the Ethical Societies have added to their other services that of holding a proper course between the different dogmatic and philosophical systems.
6) This last dispute it appears to me also testifies to the expediency of distinguishing between the different ethical problems. By so doing Dr. Carus would also have been more just in his position with regard to utilitarianism. The latter has not arisen so much from the impulse to supply a motive for ethical conduct as from the impulse to acquire an absolute criterion. It is true the powerful influence of Hobbes and Locke brought it about that many of the later utilitarians embraced the egoistic theory; but by their side marched another group of utilitarian ethicists (among the earlier, Bacon, Cumberland, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson) who did not subscribe to this theory. So far as I know, Hutcheson was the first with whom the formula occurs: "The greatest happiness of the greatest number." These very historical facts show how important it is in the treatment of ethical problems to apply the maxim "Divide et impera!" I have therefore prefaced this my apology for the principle of welfare by calling attention to the relative and mutual independence of ethical problems.