Human nature and the social order

by Charles Horton Cooley

The same objection applies to any form of the antithesis self versus other, considered as a general statement of moral situations. It is a fallacious one, involving vague and material notions of what personality is—vague because material, for we cannot, I think, reflect closely upon the facts of personality without seeing that they are primarily mental or spiritual, and by no means even analogous to the more obvious aspects of the physical. As a matter of fact, ego and alter, self and sympathy, are correlative, and always mingled in ethical judgments, which are not distinguished by having less self and more other in them, but by being a completer synthesis of all pertinent impulses. The characteristic of a sense of right is not ego or alter, individual or social, but mental unification, and the peculiar feeling that accompanies it.

Egoism can be identified with wrong only when we mean by it some narrow or unstable phase of the self; and altruism, if we take it to mean susceptibility to be impressed by other people, is equally wrong when it, in turn, becomes narrow or unstable, as we see it in hysterical persons. As I have already said, I hold altruism, when used, as it seems to be ordinarily, to denote a supposed peculiar class of impulses, separate from another supposed class called egoistic, to be a mere fiction, engendered by the vaguely material idea of personality just mentioned. Most higher kinds of thought are altruistic, in the sense that they involve a more or less distinct reference to other persons; but when intensely conceived, these same kinds of thought are usually, if not always, self-thoughts, or egoistic, as well.

The question whether a man shall keep his dollar or give it to a beggar, for example, looks at first sight like a question of ego versus alter, because there are two physical bodies present and visibly associated with the conflicting impulses. In this merely physical sense, of referring to one material body rather than another, it is in fact such a question, but not necessarily in any properly mental, social, or moral sense.

Let us look at the matter a moment with reference to various possible meanings of the words altruism and altruistic. Taking the latter word as the most convenient for our purpose, I can think of three meanings, any one of which would answer well enough to the vague current usage of it: first, that which is suggested by another person, that is by his appearance, words, or other symbols; second, that which is for the benefit of another; third, good or moral.

In the first sense, which carries no moral implication at all, it is altruistic to give to the beggar, but the word is also applicable to the greater part of our actions, since most of them are suggested by others in some way. And, of course, many of the actions included are what are generally called selfish ones. To strike a man with whom we are angry, to steal from one of whom we are envious, to take liberties with an attractive woman, and all sorts of reprehensible proceedings suggested by the sight of another person, would be altruistic in this sense, which I suppose, therefore, cannot be the one intended by those who use the word as the antithesis to egoistic.

If we use the word in the second sense, that of being for the benefit of another, to give to the beggar may or may not be altruistic; thoughtful philanthropy is inclined to say that it is usually for his harm. It may, perhaps, be said that we at least intend to benefit or please him, that this is the main thing, and that it is a question whether the action has an I-reference or a you-reference in the mind of the actor. As to this I would again call attention to what was said of the nature of I and you as personal ideas in Chapter III., and of the nature of egotism in Chapter VI. Our impulses regarding persons cannot, in my opinion, be classified in this way. What could be more selfish than the action of a mother who cannot refuse her child indigestible sweetmeats? She gives them both to please the child and to gratify a shallow self which is identified with him. To refuse the money to the beggar may be as altruistic, in the sense of springing from the desire to benefit others, as to give it. The self for which one wishes to keep the dollar is doubtless a social self of some sort, and very possibly has better social claims upon him than the beggar: he may wish to buy flowers for a sick child.

I need hardly add that to give the money is not necessarily the moral course. The attempt to identify the good with what refers to others as against what refers to one’s self is hopelessly confusing and false, both theoretically and in practical application.

In short it is hard to discover, in the word altruism, any definite moral significance.

The individual and the group are related in respect to moral thought quite as they are everywhere else; individual consciences and the social conscience are not separate things, but aspects of one thing, namely, the moral Life, which may be regarded as individual by fixing our attention upon a particular conscience in artificial isolation, or as general, by attending to some collective phase, like public opinion upon a moral question. Suppose, for instance, one were a member of the Congress that voted the measure which brought on the war with Spain. The question how he should vote on this measure would be, in its individual aspect, a matter of private conscience; and so with all other members. But taking the vote as a whole, as a synthesis, showing the moral drift of the group, it appears as an expression of a social conscience. The separation is purely artificial, every judgment of an individual conscience being social in that it involves a synthesis of social influences, and every social conscience being a collective view of individual consciences. The concrete thing, the moral Life, is a whole made up of differentiated members. If this is at all hard to grasp, it is only because the fact is a large one. We certainly cannot get far unless we can learn to see organization, since all our facts present it.

The idea that the right is the social as opposed to the sensual is, it seems to me, a sound one, if we mean by it that the mentally higher, more personal or imaginative impulses have on the whole far more weight in conscience than the more sensual. The immediate reason for this seems to be that the mind of one who shares the higher life is so thronged with vivid personal or social sentiments, that the merely sensual cannot be the rational except where it is allied with these, or at any rate not opposed to them. It is for the psychologist to explain the mental processes involved, but apparently the social interests prevail in conscience over the sensual because they are the major force; that is, they are, on the whole, so much more numerous, vivid, and persistent, that they determine the general system of thought, of which conscience is the fullest expression.