And there are other considerations which suggest that, as development proceeds, the forces of organic selection diminish. While man was in the making we may easily believe that those possessing no congenital instinct for loyalty failed, and that failure involved elimination. In such circumstances, the hereditary instinct would become an inbred characteristic of the race. But in a civilised, or even in a semi-civilised, world, the success of one competitor has rarely involved the extinction of the other—at least by mere slaughter. When extinction has followed defeat, it has been due rather to the gradual effects of disease and hardship, or to other causes more obscure, but not less deadly. The endless struggles between tribes, cities, nations, and races, have in the main been struggles for domination, not for existence. Slavery, not death, has been the penalty of failure; and if domination has produced a change in the inherited type, it is not because the conquered has perished before the conqueror, but because, conquest having brought them together, the two have intermarried. There is thus no close or necessary connection between biological “fitness” and military or political success. The beaten race, whose institutions or culture perish, may be the race which in fact survives; while victors who firmly establish their language, religion, and polity may, after a few centuries, leave scarce a trace behind them of any heritable characteristics which the anthropologist is able to detect.
This observation, however, suggests a new point. Is there not, you may ask, a “struggle for existence” between non-heritable acquirements which faintly resembles the biological struggle between individuals or species? Religious systems, political organisations, speculative creeds, industrial inventions, national policies, scientific generalisations, and (what specially concerns us now) ethical ideals, are in perpetual competition and conflict. Some maintain themselves or expand. These are, by definition, the “fit.” Some wane or perish. These are, by definition, the unfit. Here we find selection, survival, elimination; and, though we see them at work in quite other regions of reality than those explored by the student of organic evolution, the analogy between the two cases is obvious.
But is the analogy more than superficial? Is it relevant to our present argument? Can it explain either the spread of higher moral ideals or their development? Let us consider for a moment some examples of this psychological “struggle for existence.” Take, as a simple case, the competition between rival inventions—between the spinning-jenny and the hand-loom, the breech-loader and the muzzle-loader, pre-Listerian and post-Listerian methods of surgery. Unless the environment be strongly charged with prejudice, ignorance, or sinister interests, the “fittest” in such cases is that which best serves its purpose. Measurable efficiency is the quality which wins. But this supplies us with no useful analogy when we are dealing with ethics. Morality, as I have already insisted, is not an invention designed to serve an external purpose. The “struggle for existence” between higher and lower ethical ideals has no resemblance to the struggle between the spinning-jenny and the hand-loom. It is a struggle between ends, not between means. Efficiency is not in question.
A like observation applies to that quality of our beliefs which might be described as “argumentative plausibility.” This is to abstract theorising what efficiency is to practical invention. It has survival value. Both, of course, are relative terms, whose application varies with circumstances. An invention is only efficient while the commodity it produces is in demand. A theory is only plausible while it hits off the intellectual temper of the day. But if efficiency and plausibility be thus understood, the more efficient invention and the more plausible doctrine will oust their less favoured rivals. They are the “fittest.” But as morality is not a means, so neither is it a conclusion. Whatever be its relation to Reason, reasoning can never determine the essential nature of its contents. Plausibility, therefore, is no more in question than efficiency.
I do not, of course, deny that ethics are always under discussion, or that the basis of moral rules and their application are themes of unending controversy. This is plainly true. But it is also true that there is no argumentative method of shaking any man’s allegiance to an end which he deems intrinsically worthy, except by showing it to be inconsistent with some other end which he (not you) deems more worthy still. Dialectic can bring into clear consciousness the implicit beliefs which underlie action, but it cannot either prove them or refute them. It is as untrue to say that there is no disputing about morals as to say that there is no disputing about tastes. But also it is as true; and the truth, properly understood, is fundamental.
What pass for opposing arguments are really rival appeals; and it is interesting to observe that the appeal which, to the unreflecting, seems the most rational is the appeal to selfishness. I am told[6] that on any fine Sunday afternoon in some of our big towns you may find an orator asking why any man should love his country. “What,” he inquires, “does a man get by it? Will national success bring either to himself or to any of his hearers more food, more drink, more amusements? If not, why make personal sacrifices for what will never confer personal advantage?” To this particular question it might be replied (though not always with truth) that the antithesis is a false one, and that on the whole the selfish ideal and the patriotic ideal are both promoted by the same policy of public service. But there is another question of the same type to which no such answer is possible. We have all heard it, either in jest or in earnest. “Why” (it is asked) “should we do anything for posterity, seeing that posterity will do nothing for us?” The implication is infamous, but the statement is true. We cannot extract from posterity an equivalent for the sacrifices we make on its behalf. These are debts that will never be recovered. The unborn cannot be sued; the dead cannot be repaid. But what then? Altruism is not based on egoism; it is not egoism in disguise. The ends to which it points are ends in themselves; and their value is quite independent of argument, neither capable of proof nor requiring it.
In what, then, consists the psychological (as distinguished from the organic) “fitness” of the higher moral ideals? If it cannot be found in their practical efficiency, nor yet in their argumentative plausibility, where shall we seek it?
Sometimes, no doubt, the explanation is to be found in their association with a culture, other elements of which do possess both these kinds of “fitness.” Thus Western morality—or (to be accurate) Western notions of morality—find favour with backward races, because they are associated with Western armaments and Western arts. Again, they may be diffused, perhaps as part of some militant religion, by the power of the sword or by its prestige. They reach new regions in the train of a conqueror, and willingly or unwillingly the conquered accept them.
But these associations are seemingly quite casual. The prestige of Western arts and science may assist the diffusion of Western morals, as it assists the diffusion of Western languages, or Western clothes. Conquests by Mahommedan or Christian States may substitute a higher for a lower ethical creed in this or that region of the world. Such cases, however, leave us still in the realm of accident. The causes thus assigned for the spread of a particular type of ethical ideal have nothing to do with the quality of that type. They would promote bad morals not less effectively than good; as a hose will, with equal ease, scatter dirty water or clean. Moreover, the growth of the higher type in its place of origin is left wholly unexplained. Its “fitness” seems a mere matter of luck due neither to design nor to any natural imitation of design.
The rigour of this conclusion would be little mitigated even if we could connect psychological fitness with some quite non-moral peculiarity habitually associated with the higher morality, but not with the lower. If, for example, the former were found to lead normally to worldly success, its repute would need no further explanation. If, in private life, those endowed with Sir Charles Grandison’s merits usually possessed Sir Charles Grandison’s estate, if, in political or national life, victory and virtue went ever hand in hand, morality might be none the better, but certainly it would be more the fashion. Heaven would be wearied with prayers for an unselfish spirit, uttered by suppliants from purely selfish motives. Saints would become the darlings of society, and the book of Job would be still unwritten.[7]