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

by Cora May Williams

The old question as to the relation between health and happiness may be answered by the statement that the two coincide. The statement is not meant, however, in the sense that the happiness which we at present attain is coincident with health in an absolute sense or that, vice versa, perfect happiness is, or can be, coincident with that which we ordinarily term health. The two terms are generally very ill-defined; sometimes the one, sometimes the other, is used in an absolute sense in connection with the discussion of the parallel term in a comparative sense. Perfect happiness must coincide with perfect health; for perfect health must coincide with perfect fulfilment of all function, and this coincides with the gratification of all desire. At present desires conflict, and the gratification of one is bought at the expense of others. This partial gratification corresponds to a partial health; but we too often forget, in the discussion of health and happiness, that health is no more perfect than is happiness. The individual is not yet in harmony with himself. But this means that he also is not in harmony with the environment.

In the development of thought, feeling, and will, we have noticed a certain parallelism, the attainment of new knowledge, the deviation of feeling into new channels, and the direction of will to new ends; indeed, our analysis must bring us to regard this development as something more than a parallelism, since, as we have seen, thought, feeling, and will, cannot be defined as separate organs of mind. And we are here led to notice a theory sometimes advanced, that the feelings of one individual can never be changed by another. You may present a man with arguments, say the advocates of this theory, but this is all; you cannot bring him to act on the arguments unless his feeling is already of the right sort before you present your arguments; if it is not, you cannot in any way alter it. Now a certain general foundation of character, of fundamental feeling, must always be conceded; but this is not what these theorists mean when they say that arguments can never alter feeling. "Of what use would it be to argue with my child and tell her that this or that act of hers is selfish," said a man to me not long ago of his three-year-old daughter; "if she is selfish, arguing with her will not make her less so; showing her that she is selfish will never have any effect upon her selfishness; you may change opinions by argument, but not feelings." The theory reminds us of the old idea of the will as something above other phases of nature and so supreme above their influence; it replaces this theory of the uncaused nature of the will by one of the like absolute independence of feeling. And yet, strange to say, this theory is oftenest advanced by just those who assert the variability of will in accordance with law, under the influence of the environment, and unite with these already incongruous theories the wholly contradictory one that it is feeling which furnishes the motive to will. To appeal to any one except through the medium of thought is certainly impossible; the feelings cannot be influenced except by representation and argument. Feeling cannot be taken by itself and so influenced. But the person endeavoring to convince does not desire to arouse indefinite feeling; he invariably wishes to excite it with regard to some definite end. To change opinion is also to change feeling in some degree. Whether an appeal to another is successful or not depends on the nature of the appeal and upon the consciousness of the individual to whom the appeal is made; but this means that not the nature of consciousness alone decides the result. In any excitation by the environment, the result is conditioned, not by the one factor alone but by both; and no excitation can leave the individual entirely unchanged; the multiplication of infinitesimal single excitations constitutes the whole of evolution. A first appeal or argument may be felt only as disagreeable interference; but an accumulation of appeals at first disagreeable and met only with rebuffs may eventually result in total change of both ends and feelings. The amount of appeal necessary differs with the person appealed to; it may be large or small, excessively large or excessively small, but the general fact remains, that feelings vary as thought widens, and that an accompanying change of ends takes place. Thought and feeling are not two separate and independent things, but are, on the contrary, vitally united.

We may put our old familiar question with regard to cause and effect in a new form in respect to the development of thought, feeling, and will. In considering the process of evolution, will, and, therefore, the conscious exercise of function, is ordinarily treated as the effect of pleasure; but our course of analysis identifies function and its exercise and rather brings function into the foreground, though the assertion of precedence in importance has been avoided. The course was chosen partly because it affords an opportunity of propounding the following questions: Is lapse of time, amount of exercise, or pleasure, the cause of habit? Or is habit the cause of function? Or is pleasure the cause of continued exercise of function? Or is function the cause of pleasure? Or is a minimum of interference the cause of pleasure and of function in a particular direction? Or is not, rather, continued exercise of function the cause of the absence of interference wherever and as far as it exists? We find all these various suggested theories advocated, by direct statement or by implication, in the treatment of the evolution of function by different authors, and indeed we frequently find several of the theories included, by implication, in the work of the same author. The vital connection of unimpeded function and pleasure is apparent, and the necessity of the time element in the development of function may also be asserted; but there is not, according to our theory, any reason for introducing the concept of cause into the relations.

Our analysis of the development of thought, feeling, and will, has an important bearing on the teleological argument. If all habit comes, in time, to be pleasurable, if pleasure merely follows the line of exercise of function, whatever that line may be, and ends are thus mere matters of habit, and habit, exercise, is a matter of the action and reaction of all conditions, then it is evident that the force of the teleological argument is at once destroyed. We cannot pass beyond nature, by this route, to the inference of a transcendental cause. Man's action being a part of nature and the result of all conditions as much as is the motion of the wind or the waves, the results he produces, like theirs, only change and never creation, the only inference we could make from his will to other will must be an inference to will that is a part of nature, a result if also a condition, a link in the chain of nature, its ends coördinate with habit but not the cause of it, and no more determining than determined.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] See Avenarius' formulæ of "complete vital maintenance": f(R) = -f(S); f(R) + f(S) = o, "Kritik der reinen Erfahrung."

[136] "Problems of Life and Mind," Ser. II. p. 103.

[137] See essay by Petzoldt above considered.

[138] "Biologische Probleme," p. 96; "erfordern."