This new ethics is a mixture of self-deception, arrogance, sensuality and irresponsibility. In their works these realists reveal their cold, absolutely surfeited, caring for nothing. They measure a man’s strength not by the power to subdue but by the weakness of being subdued by passion. They preach that there is no merit in self-control, sex-repression, generosity, service, and proclaim that man’s unpardonable sin is that of denying his nature, his greatest crime against life is the rigid repression of the blood. They know of nothing holier than the sumptuous, sensuous, time-worshipping world of paganism. All their writings are replete with unending thrills and climaxes, all taken from the domain of sex. Their gaze roves in voluptuous quest over the nudity of erotic sin and social transgression.
Such high-sounding phrases as “live to fulfill your nature, profess the faith of life, or woman’s desire for self-expression, her desire to live and find her true destiny” crope out everywhere in their writings and only serve to befuddle weak minds. What does self-expression, nature, destiny, mean in the mouths of people, drunk with the ravages of sensual pleasure? What will it profit to these apostles of sensuality, when they have fulfilled their nature, when they have found their destiny? At the hour of death they hold in their hands only the ashes of spent fancies.[DN]
Philosophy of pleasure.—Another philosophy of life akin to the morality of love is the philosophy of pleasure or rather of happiness. The partisans of the hedonic philosophy proclaim the sole reason of man’s existence is to procure the greatest possible amount of happiness in this world.
Now in a certain respect, this is quite true. The ultimate appraiser of all relative values is the promotion of happiness. The hedonic is the supreme test of terrestrial values. The motive for most of man’s actions is the desire for happiness. All advances of humanity, the ethical, the artistic, the scientific and especially the material, have contributed to the enhancement of human welfare. Civilization means the victory of man over nature, in the interest of the greatest good to the greatest number. Culture is the pursuit of happiness of humanity. Progress means the advance towards a higher and higher level of humanity’s well-being. Commerce, industry, art and science must enhance the welfare of human society. Social ends cannot be served unless they tend to the gratification of the desire for happiness. In all dreams of a future utopia, human welfare and happiness is the goal. But is it possible that the attainment of happiness and of the fleeting transitory joy shall be the only purpose of life? The philosophy of pleasure allots to man not only the right but also the duty of making his attainment of happiness the only aim of his life. All law, custom, and ethics, the three spontaneous regulators of the species “man,” are claimed by this philosophy to exist for the sole purpose to plane the road that leads to happiness.
But if this be true, if the value of life be only hedonic, if the sole and only meaning of life is to enjoy and die, then man’s existence is mere vanity. Then the community, nation, race and humanity have no positive value. Civilization is a failure, progress is worthless, and all our virtues are only the aberrations of the spirit. This is the pessimism in which all philosophies, that proclaim the hedonic to be the only aim of existence, must end and actually do end.[DO] But if life has no meaning at all, if everything is, as Heine sings,
“Fantastic, aimless is my song
“As love, as life, as creator and creation.”
mere vanity, whence this will to live, this most deep-seated part of our being, this unparalleled tenacity to life, manifested in the lowest plant to the highest animal. There must be something behind this will to live, something behind this tenacity not only of the individual’s life, but of the life of future generations. If the only end in life are joys that know no bounds, whence comes the emotion that causes men to die for an abstract principle, such as honor, truth, liberty, justice, etc.? Who has implanted in man this spirituality, this will to work for a future he knows not?
Moral standard in nature.—Behind the tenacity of every organic being to life must be searched the standard of morality, behind this tenacity must lie the will of the First Cause, of the Supreme Intelligence. The place to look for the will of the Creative Power is, therefore, nature. But the philosopher must not look only in one part of nature, insensate or irrational nature, but in entire nature, human nature included.
It was the trick of the ages for the philosopher, high up on a pedestal, to discuss the immutable laws of irrational nature in the cosmos, without including the rational philosopher himself as a part of nature. It was “Hic homo, hic natura.”