A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

by Cora May Williams

CHAPTER IV

THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THOUGHT, FEELING, AND WILL IN EVOLUTION

Hume, in his essay on the Passions, writes: "What is commonly, in a popular sense, called reason, and is so much recommended in moral discourses, is nothing but a general and calm passion which takes a comprehensive and a distant view of its object, and actuates the will, without exciting any sensible emotion. A man, we say, is diligent in his profession from reason; that is, from a calm desire of riches and fortune. A man adheres to justice from reason; that is, from a calm regard to public good, or to a character with himself and others. The same objects which recommend themselves to reason in this sense of the word, are also the objects of passion, when they are brought near to us, and acquire some other advantages, either of external situation, or congruity to our internal temper; and by that means excite a turbulent and sensible emotion. Evil at a great distance is avoided we say from reason; evil near at hand produces aversion, horror, fear, and is the object of passion." We know no state of consciousness from which elements of thought are excluded; consciousness is not a state of rest, but a continual passage from percept to concept, or from concept to percept, or if from percept to percept even then with the intervention of concepts. Judgment, exclusion and inclusion, has part in all consciousness; and thus pleasure and pain must be regarded as always accompanied by thought-elements, though the thought-factors may escape notice because of the prominence of violent emotion, just as, in like manner, feeling may draw less attention when of a less turbulent nature. This is not equivalent to saying that emotion must always be accompanied by a representation of its object. To this last statement might be objected that emotion may not be, at first, connected with its proper object, just as so-called purely physical pain may not be, in the beginning, combined with any perception of the object producing it, may not even be localized, in fact. But to this objection may be answered that our conception of "its" object, in the case of emotion, is similar to our conception of "the" end of any particular act; that which we regard as "the" object of the emotion may be entirely different from the object in the consciousness of the being subject to the emotion. That is to say, emotion speedily connects itself with some object, or even if felt for some time as vague want is yet combined with thought, in that we make mental search for its object or, where it is too faint to induce this action, tend to turn to memories or imaginations sad or joyful, according as the feeling tinges our mood with exhilaration or sadness; but the objects with which it connects itself in thought may be quite other than those which onlookers regard as its proper object. Into many an emotion of childhood and growing adolescence, for instance, the adult reads a meaning and object of which he is aware the individual subject to the emotion has no thought. Physical feeling may not be connected with any distinct perception of the object producing it (as, for instance, when one bruises oneself in the dark), but it is never unconnected with thought-images. The intermediate links between this outwardly stimulated physical feeling and so-called purely mental emotion are represented by localized organic feelings, passing by imperceptible degrees into non-localized feeling experienced as mood. But feeling on any plane is not, as conscious, uncombined with thought.

It follows that, as connected with the human will, emotion is never uncombined with thought. This fact is implied in the definition of will as the conscious determination on some definite course of conduct which, as definite, is an exclusion of other courses, and thus involves judgment. Where action takes place without conscious predetermination, we call it "organic," "automatic," "reflex," or "involuntary," the pain or pleasure connected with the act rising into our individual, centralized consciousness when the action has already taken place or during its progress. In the latter case, part of the act rises into consciousness as result, as already performed, and the will may then interpose to check and prevent the elements not yet performed.

The question as to whether thought is always accompanied by feeling, at least by feeling as pleasure or pain, may appear more difficult than the previous one. That thought is not always connected with violent emotion as pleasure or pain is evident. But, as Höffding says, "feeling may be strong and deep without being violent." If we examine carefully any train even of abstract and apparently, at first glance, wholly unemotional reasoning, we can generally trace a distinct vein of varying feeling accompanying the thought,—perhaps extreme interest in the problem involved and pleasure in its solution, hope as we seem to be on the point of finding the key to it, disappointment when the hope proves a delusive one, shame or impatience at our failure, or pride in our readiness, and exultation when we have finished our work. All these feelings may relate to the mere solution of the problem as end, or may pass beyond it to ends more or less distant and complicated, to which the solution of the problem then appears as means. Even if we could suppose all other feeling to be excluded, we cannot conceive of a train of thought untinged with mood,—interest or weariness, exhilaration or depression,—the dim complex of perhaps many elements, but admitting of general classification on the side of either the pleasurable or the painful, the agreeable or the disagreeable.

Is feeling the result of thought, or thought the result of feeling? which of the two is to be accorded the greater importance with regard to the will? and what is the significance of feeling as pleasure and of feeling as pain with respect to the will? These are some of the questions generally considered in one form or another in the discussion of the relations of mental functions. The first question may be interpreted in any one of several different ways. It may be regarded as referring to particular excitations, objects, or ends, or to precedence at the earliest beginning of consciousness in general, or to the initial state of consciousness in the case of the individual organism. Since we are not able to determine as to where consciousness does begin, either absolutely in nature as a whole or relatively in the individual, whether there is, indeed, any such thing as an initial state, and since we can predicate nothing certainly as to the nature of such a state if there be one, the interpretation of the question which has reference to this relative or absolute beginning of consciousness cannot be answered. If we regard the question, however, as having reference to particular excitations, objects, or ends, it is evident that sometimes one, sometimes the other of the two functions appears more prominent in the beginning; pain or pleasurable excitation sometimes makes itself felt before it is connected in consciousness with any distinct object, and again perception may give us thought-images which only consideration renders painful or pleasurable. But there is no real beginning in either case; in consciousness as we know it, thought and feeling are continually intermingled, and only their direction varies with varying excitation, now thought, now feeling, assuming the greater prominence.

This last consideration has important bearings on a question which we have previously discussed and to which we may, at this point, revert for a moment. The fact alone that we know nothing of a beginning of consciousness, but only its variation, is sufficient to make us doubt whether we are in possession of any data from which to pronounce dogmatically on the absence of consciousness in the case of organisms differing from our own, or even in the case of inorganic matter. Why may we not equally well suppose merely a difference in the direction of consciousness corresponding to differing organization and function in the one case and differing composition or constitution and corresponding motion in the other? Our error begins in assuming no ends possible in action except such as we ourselves would set, and so in assuming no end to be present in cases where no end would exist for the human being, or where the end which would be involved for us cannot have come within the experience of the organism performing the act. In the latter case, we speak of "blind instinct" or of "automatism." We forget that an "end" is merely some one of such constant results of function as are brought within the circle of our experience; which end may come to lie farther and farther away, for the same act, as the circle of experience widens and varies in direction, even in beings as similar as individuals of the human species. With the attainment of manhood and womanhood, whole regions of thought and feeling, whole classes of motives, are opened up which are wholly unknown to the child and would be incomprehensible to him; the ends of the scientist, the man of letters, the idealist in morals, the sensualist, and the boor, may differ radically in performing the same or very similar acts. However, there is a certain community of ends in human beings, due to common organization and experience, which enables them to judge to some extent of each other's ends. But these data of organization and experience fail us when we come to judge of beings not human, and hence we are liable to error in their case. A superior being of an entirely different species from our own might be greatly puzzled to discern the motives which could govern some of our acts,—those, for instance, which incite the miser to starve in misery with a fortune hidden in the cellar. A superior being of another species gifted with pessimistic views, if we can suppose such, regarding our action externally as we regard brute-action and plant-function, might imagine our whole action to be directed to the attainment of our own death, since that is what we finally achieve as the result of action, and sometimes with most purposeful rapidity; and he might suppose the suicide, and the miser, and the opium-eater, and the drunkard, and the glutton, to be only the more intelligent members of the species, the others to be led chiefly by blind instinct. It is a fundamental mistake to suppose that there can be no "ends" but those of which we are conscious.

The question as to the existence of any causal relations in the old sense between thought and feeling has already been answered in previous considerations; all we can assert is sequence or simultaneity. Indeed, as psychology has rarely troubled itself with any direct question of this sort, its introduction may appear foolish. Yet feeling is sometimes, by imputation, treated as a mere attribute of thought, while again, as we shall see, it is often considered as an independent, directing, if not perception, at least the subsumption of percepts in thought. And, indeed, it is difficult to perceive why, if feeling and thought be regarded as two quite distinct yet simultaneous activities, the same problem as to precedence might not arise, under the concepts of cause and effect, as in the case of physiological process and consciousness as a whole.

But a question with which Psychology and Ethics have occupied themselves as a most important one is that of the relation of pleasure and pain to the will. A point around which strife particularly rages is the problem as to whether it is the pleasurableness of the end which moves the will to seek it; and on the view taken as to the truth on this point theories of freedom or determination of the will are often based, the advocate of free will arguing that the power of choosing the painful proves his theory, the determinist declaring that the invariable might of the pleasurable over the will shows the subordination of the latter. But I cannot, for my own part, see how the demonstration of the fact that the will may be moved by the imagination of a painful end rather than, or as well as, by that of a pleasurable one is a proof of its freedom; as I also fail to perceive how it is proved that the will is determined because it invariably chooses the pleasurable rather than the painful end. In either case, choice may be said equally to depend on motive, and in either case the will may be said equally to choose. It is true in either case that the strongest motive moves; it is true in either case that the will decides upon the act with a feeling of its own spontaneity and freedom, and guides the movement of the body in the performance of the act. That which is shown in an invariable connection of the will with pleasurable motives is a constancy which we find elsewhere in nature and which forbids us to regard will as something outside and above the rest of nature. As we have seen, however, the theory of a compulsion of nature anywhere by constancy or law, or of the compulsion of one particular part by the rest, is untenable.