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

by Cora May Williams

Our whole analysis of the course by which conscience is developed tends to show the truth of that which Darwin claimed, namely, that the moral instinct is a development and organization of many special instincts. But there are those who claim conscience to be a special sense, and who generally mean much more than merely that it is, at present, an organization of subordinate instincts. A dim analogy of the special sense organs generally has part in their conception, and religious reference is often made to "the original constitution of man." But evolution knows nothing of an original constitution of man; it knows only of a gradual development of the human. And it must be remembered that, in evolution, that may become inherent which was not so before. Any theory which regards even an organization of special instincts as a special sense may, moreover, be objected to on the same grounds on which the old idea of special faculties of thought, feeling, and will was criticized. The old argument, used to prop the belief in conscience as an original, higher gift, and so, in the original creation of fixed species,—the argument that the same fundamental rules of moral conduct are to be found in all societies,—has already been answered in the demonstration that uniformities of human nature and necessary similarities in all social constitution render the fundamental rules of forbearance, aid, honesty, and truth necessary to all societies alike; while our analysis of the course of development by which social organization grows more and more complex, shows the necessity as well as the reality of progress in outward and inward observance of these rules. Du Prel argues that even life on any of the heavenly bodies, supposing such to exist, must have some points of resemblance to our own, although the differences due to different planetary conditions may be great; but resemblances must assuredly be considerable where there is a common basis of species.

The Utilitarians are doubtless right in asserting that all rules of morality may be traced to utility. However, there is considerable ambiguity about the word "utility." Mr. Spencer's earlier objections to Utilitarianism, given in "Social Statics,"—namely, that we cannot make the greatest good of the greatest number our object because it is impossible to perceive, without omniscience, where the greatest good lies, and because the standard of utility is a changing one, cannot be regarded as apposite, for we might as well say that a man cannot endeavor to secure his own health, or that it is not well for him to do so, because he does not possess a knowledge of all the intricate workings of the organs of his body and so may make mistakes, or that he cannot seek it to-day because the conditions necessary to secure it will have changed by to-morrow; but Mr. Spencer's later objections to Utilitarianism touch an important truth. He says, for instance, in his "Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals": "Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses and means and proximate ends; but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered." Stephen has another pertinent criticism of Utilitarianism, namely that the utilitarian, in his anxiety to have his feet on solid earth, and to assign definite and tangible grounds for every conclusion, is likely to favor the prosaic rather than the poetical, and to leave out of account, or rank as of little importance, finer sorts of pleasure.[178] The utilitarian is, in fact, liable to fall into a similar error to that already noticed on the part of those who claim that egoism is the foundation of all morality, present as past. While accepting the theory of evolution, the utilitarian fails to perceive, in many cases, that this lends to his terms a progressive and increasingly complex meaning. The error has its source, doubtless, in the fact that the utilitarian school represents a recoil from the older, superstitious Intuitionalism, which not only defended a doctrine of conscience as a sort of supernatural or half-supernatural instinct, on a plane above ordinary instinct, but, relying upon it as of such character, practically denied to reason any authority in matters of morality. In the strong reaction from these ideas, and under the fear of ceding any ground of advantage to the enemy, Utilitarianism has gone to an equally inadmissible extreme of disregarding "mere impulses" of sympathy, and has tended to reject all conceptions of morality where it was not possible to unravel, beyond the criticism of opponents, the intricate web of social conditions. It is for this reason also that Utilitarianism is often egoistic; in the endeavor to analyze back to tangible grounds of action, it was much easier to adopt the evidently original basis of sympathy and altruism—that is, egoism—as the present basis also, than to trace out later developments in the many-sided organization of society. In rejecting instinct, it was but consistent and natural to overlook also the significance of habit in matters of morality; and thus the poet, the moral enthusiast, the martyr, and the rigid adherent of truth, came to be looked at askance. I do not mean to aver that all Utilitarianism has fallen into these errors, though the tendency is distinctly in this direction; neither the connection of a theory of utility with a disregard of the finer sorts of happiness, and the more distant and complex workings of social forces, nor the connection of a theory of moral instinct with superstition, is a necessary one.

A re-reaction against this bald Utilitarianism has set in; but some of the forms which it takes on can no more be indorsed by the consistent evolutionist than can the system from which it is a revolt. When Sidgwick defends Intuitionalism with the argument that the rightness of some kinds of action is known without consideration of ulterior consequences, we may answer that it is true that tradition furnishes us with many rules that we may follow without consideration of the consequences of our acts, but that it is very doubtful whether we act with the highest degree of morality in so doing. As to the "knowing" of the rightness of the acts, this is surely a matter of judgment, must, therefore, involve the considerations of consequences in some form, though the course of reasoning followed to the attainment of what is often termed "knowledge" in this sense may not be elaborate, and may, indeed, go no farther than a reflection on the approval and disapproval of society.

The terms "higher" and "lower" have been used in our previous considerations with regard to pleasures. The legitimacy of their use in this connection has often been questioned. From an evolutional standpoint, however, either they are legitimate here, or else objection may be made, on similar grounds, to their application to man as distinguished from the brutes or even from the original protoplasmic cell with which evolution began. The later developments of the desires, the newer social ends, are as much higher as the human species is higher than the species from which it has been evolved through continued adaptation. As, in the attainment of altruism, egoism is not lost in the sense that the individual no longer seeks that which is most pleasurable to him, but simply reaches a higher plane, so the fundamental animal desires and instincts still move us, but in a quite different form, being closely interwoven, in their later development, with all the ideals and aspirations with which social life has supplied us. The advocates of a "return to nature" make, therefore, a fundamental mistake in theory. Human development is also natural. The same mistake is made when we are told that we must be animals in practice because we are animals by nature, or that we must "copy nature" because we are a part of it. The former assertion ordinarily commits the fallacy of using the word "animal" in two senses. The latter assertion involves the fallacy of first making man a part of the nature, which he is to copy, in order, then, to prove that he must regard himself as something outside nature and must, therefore, slavishly follow. But if man is himself a part of the nature he must copy, one may question why he may not simply copy himself rather than any other part; for obviously he is unable to copy all parts, there being many antagonisms in nature. I have heard the argument used in defence of cruelty to animals; nature is cruel, therefore man must be cruel. But as a matter of fact, there is no more reason why man should copy any other part of nature, than there is reason why the horse should imitate the habits of the hog, or turtle-doves take example by the tiger. Necessity may sometime compel a choice between two cruelties, to which there is no third alternative; but this is a different argument; let us say, in this case, that we are so compelled (if, indeed, there is no other alternative; for this argument, like the other, is often used as a convenient excuse for mere selfishness, where there are alternatives); let us not employ a wholly fallacious and misleading argument which opens the way to the free exercise of selfish disposition.

Objections are often made to theories of the development of higher moral qualities from egoism, on the ground that such a derivation is degrading to that which is best in man. Some color is lent to this view by arguments like that just noticed. But we may question whether facts can be logically chosen or rejected according to their agreeableness, or even their moral utility, in any case. And, again, some of us may fail to discover any degradation in this theory of evolution. The flower may grow from carrion, but we do not find it the less beautiful, the less pleasing to our various senses. And we should have exactly as good reason to regard the carrion as elevated by its office as to regard the flower as degraded by the source of its life. As a matter of fact, we merely find the flower pleasing and the carrion abhorrent. We are used to this particular connection of the pleasing with the abhorrent, and accept it as we accept much that may be to us disagreeable in our own physical organization; but we have not yet accustomed ourselves to the ideas of mental and moral evolution, and our recoil from them is an illustration of the displeasing character of the wholly New. The same argument of degradation was at first brought forward also against the theory of an evolution of the human form from that of lower species, and of the "purely intellectual faculties" from the animal mind.

The question as to whether struggle is an essential element of virtue has been so thoroughly answered by Gizycki, Stephen, and others, that it would be superfluous to say much about it here; however, our analysis would not be complete without some consideration of it. "The man is the strongest," writes Stephen, "who can lift the heaviest weight or who can lift a given weight with the greatest ease. But (and it is a proof of the loose argument which has often been accepted in ethical disputes) the two cases have sometimes been confounded. It would plainly be absurd to say, 'The man is strongest who lifts the greatest weight, therefore the man who makes the greatest effort; therefore the man who makes the greatest struggle to lift a given weight.' But it has occasionally been said that a man is most virtuous who resists the greatest temptation; therefore the man who has the greatest struggle; therefore the man who has the greatest difficulty in resisting a given temptation. Though the fallacy does not occur in this bare form, it is not infrequently implied in the assumption that the effort, taken absolutely, is the measure of merit.... We are thus led to excuse a man for the very qualities which make him wicked. True, he committed a murder, but he was so spiteful that he could not help it; or he was exceedingly kind, but he is so good-natured that it cost him no effort."[179]

The difficulty lies in the fact that the struggle arising in any particular case may result from any one of several general conditions of character, between which it is often difficult to distinguish. An absence of struggle may mean simply a general weakness of character which makes a man ready to yield to any and almost all momentary influences, good or evil; the agreement with another's argument may signify absence of the power to reason for oneself; but, on the other hand, it may mean the highest intellectual power of unbiassed judgment; the act that follows such agreement as its result may mean will-power, or it may mean vacillating weakness that, if led by a good influence at the present moment, will be as easily or nearly as easily swayed by an evil one, the next. We are all acquainted with persons who invariably agree with all sides, and shilly-shally in a corresponding manner in their action, accomplishing little or no positive good in any direction, though often positive evil. For the reason of this frequent weakness of character in what we call the "good-natured" person, the term "good-natured" has come to have a certain idea of mental and moral inferiority connected with it. In a similar manner, some men who are generally called "good" are swayed to a greater extent by tradition and lack of courage to act for themselves than by strong desire to know and do the right, and thus, very unfortunately, the excellent word "good" even comes to be looked upon with a certain degree of disdain. On the other hand, a man may find much difficulty in doing right in a certain instance, because of the strength of emotions that would be, under ordinary circumstances, morally desirable and are, in themselves, admirable even in the moment of his temptation, although a yielding to this temptation would, nevertheless, involve great wrong. No one could blame the agony and struggle of the switchman who, in the moment when he is about to rescue a passenger-train from imminent collision by switching it to another track, suddenly perceives his baby-girl seated upon the rails. Strong and ennobling love between man and woman may involve, under certain conditions, temptation and struggle; even the best of our impulses may not always be followed, if we desire to act morally. Few, if any persons could refuse admiration and respect to the love between Phillip Tredennis and Mrs. Amory in Mrs. Burnett's "Through one Administration." But not all strong feeling is of an admirable nature; the revengefulness of the murderer, the vicious lust of a Joseph Phillippe, the impatience of the constitutionally belligerent man, are not to be praised, but condemned. Stephen's argument, therefore, that struggle is adjudged an element of virtuous character in many cases because its absence would show "a defect in some faculty of enjoyment," includes too much; for Jack the Ripper, and others who especially delight in crime, possess faculties of enjoyment the entire absence of which in other men we do not look upon as a defect.[180] Stephen restates his position in another form, saying that "If a man resists any inducement because it has no charms for him, his act does not prove virtue unless the inducement be such as to appeal only to the wicked." It is only because, incidentally, those qualities moulded in human society, and therefore fundamentally good, may come into conflict with each other, that we fall into the habit of connecting the idea of struggle with morality; in face of the fact that readier response to moral stimulus must constitute all moral advancement.

And these reflections lead us to remark on the common fallacy that strength of emotion means necessarily a lack of the moral direction of emotion, and that conversely moral self-direction argues weakness of emotional capacity. The direction of emotion is changed with evolution, as we have seen, but this does not mean that emotion is lessened in force. In the man of highest morality, the emotions are merely moulded to a greater harmony with social needs, a harmony that is not weakness but strength, not mere narrow reaction upon momentary impulse or one-sided sympathy with a few to the exclusion of the many, but, in contrast to this lower impulsiveness, an all-sidedness that is the result of reflection and choice. I say this all-sidedness is "the result" of reflection; for I do not mean to intimate that the moral man is less impulsive than the immoral man, or that he is obliged to consider long before every act. Merely his impulsiveness is of a higher sort; in it both racial and individual adjustments to social needs find expression; and reason always stands, figuratively speaking, in the background, ready to suppress the spontaneity where the conditions are such that it ceases to be moral. It has been part of our whole analysis to show that reason and instinct, thought and feeling, are by no means antagonistic. Simply, feeling may take one direction in one man, another in another; in the criminal, it is developed in the direction of anti-social acts; in the profligate, it takes the same direction, but in a less degree; the original savage is stronger in him than in the moral man, who belongs to a later and higher type, and finds his pleasure in acts in accordance with the welfare of his fellow-men and fellow-women. As the human being is a higher development than other species because he is adapted to a wider circle of nature, so just as truly the moral man is a higher human development, because function is, in him, adjusted to a wider circle of conditions—to complex social requirements which represent the happiness of his fellow-men. Altruism is not, because a later development, "artificial," as Barratt calls it, any more than man is artificial in comparison with the ape, or the ape is artificial in comparison with original protoplasm. Nor can virtue consist, as Barratt conceives, in a yielding to all emotions,[181] as long as man has not yet attained the highest summit of morality where all emotions follow moral directions, without conflicts and without constraint. But neither can morality be distinguished as "a constraining power opposed to instinct and emotion in general,"[182] as Stephen at one point defines it. Struggle and constraint are not necessarily elements of moral action; kind and moral action often follows upon impulse with no effort whatever; and, on the other hand, the basest characters may know struggle of an extreme nature when the directions of self-interest conflict.

We have already noticed the origin of punishment in revenge, which is the outcome of a fundamental, egoistic instinct of self-defence; and we have traced its development up to the monopolization of its extremer forms by society as a whole through state organization. It is impossible for analysis to give any adequate representation of the workings of Reward and Punishment in society, except as we draw an exact line between legal and other forms. But such a distinction, however convenient for particular purposes, is obviously scientifically injustifiable in a general theory of social morals. The constraint of family disinheritance and social ostracism, of threats of all sorts, of vituperation, of disapproval and coldness, are only higher forms of revenge or punishment, by which men influence each other's action, as savages influence each other through physical suffering and the fear of it, in a more primitive and less humane manner; and state reward for services, praise, and approval, are all forms of encouragement, by which men similarly incite each other not merely to a negative abstention from undesirable acts, but to a positive performance of desirable acts. With the development of sympathy, punishment tends to become less brutal on the one side, while, on the other, the less brutal forms come to have as great influence as the more brutal ones formerly had. Furthermore, the distinct calculation of the attainment of egoistic ends gives place to the impulsive reaction of the sense of justice on the one hand, and, on the other, to the readier response to disapproval and to the desires of others, through social predispositions and affections which are more altruistic than egoistic.

But there are two diametrically opposed schools, neither of which perfectly agrees with the theory of will as stated in a preceding chapter of this work, and both of which may therefore take exception to the theory of recompense which follows naturally upon that theory. The one, the school which asserts Free Will not in a natural, but in a supernatural, or half supernatural sense, may object to the grounds for punishment assumed in our analysis; this school is answered by the demonstration of the actual course of development taken by reward and punishment. The other school maintains, on the ground that man is a part of nature, that there is no merit in conscientiousness, and that evil-doing, being as much dependent upon organization and social environment as disease, cannot, on scientific grounds, be punishable. It is to be noticed, however, that many of the advocates of the theory that state punishment is injustifiable yet inflict punishment upon their own children; and we may remind them, in this connection, that they can scarcely claim the will of the child to be freer or less the result of general social conditions than that of the adult, and that, moreover, they themselves are the most immediate links in the chain of conditions producing this will. Furthermore, they are inconsistent in their practice if they visit any blame on evil-doers or criminals; they are logically restricted to, at most, an "I differ with you in opinion," to Jack-the-Ripper, to the cruelest of slave hunters, or to the Chinese who are said to have regarded with indifference the burning of their fellow-men on the ship "Shanghai," while they exerted themselves to secure the wreckage. Nor, if punishment and blame are inadmissible, on the ground of the determination of the will, can they consistently show greater consideration to benevolent than to malevolent men, no matter how great the public benefits these men have conferred, or what aid they have given to the advancement of society? If it is unjust to punish criminals because their acts are determined, then it is also wholly unjust to the rest of mankind to praise a Bruno, or a dying Sir Philip Sidney giving the cup of water offered him to another. If good men might be criminals, had they the criminal organization, it is equally true that ordinary and selfish men might be Brunos and Sir Philip Sidneys if they had the organization of Brunos and Sir Philip Sidneys; why then do ordinary men the injustice of praising and admiring such nobility of character? Nor can a theory of determinism which refuses to blame the individual consistently lay the blame of crime and badness on society as a whole, as it often does; for society as a whole is composed of individuals, all of whom are equally determined in their action. Or, if we choose to regard society as a unit, then it may be said that it is as much the product of nature as a whole as the individual is its product. If it be objected that we do not blame nature as a whole because it is soulless, we may inquire what is meant by soulless; society has no composite soul, no soul except in its individuals. The real significance of the objection is that we cannot influence nature, by our blame, to the production of better characters; but it is also true that we cannot influence society except through the individuals composing it; and here we have, again, in a nutshell, the real reason and justification of punishment and blame.