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

by Cora May Williams

But it is to be questioned whether the artist does not lose as much as he gains, or even more, by an immoral license of any sort. True, the artist must know human nature; but the best portrayers of criminal characters have not themselves been criminals; and if ever we should have a murderer-poet, we should in all probability feel the lack, in his verse, of various things, among these of the higher realism which comprehends higher as well as lower types. It is impossible to be merely the spectator of one's own life even if one is an artist; and especially is this true where passion is concerned. The emotions one feels, the acts one performs, must mould one's character, one's thought, opinion, the mental world in which one lives, and so one's creative genius. Nature is by no means all dunghill or reptile-haunted swamp, or even common kitchen; she has also her seas and mountains, and skies, her fields and woods, and even her sunny gardens and dainty parlors. The snow-mountain glowing under the flush of dawn is as real as the reeking dunghill; but the power to appreciate and portray the one may be lost by too close association with the other, as the fine sense of smell is dulled by sojourning in foul odors. To the rake, the character of the self-controlled and virtuous becomes incomprehensible and chimerical; and his attempts to represent it are likely to be tinged with an atmosphere of unreality. Of this we have much evidence in literature. To raise oneself to the higher standard in practice and comprehension requires an effort; but it is comparatively easy to allow oneself to sink to a level for which generations of one's ancestors has prepared innate if latent tendencies. On the other hand, though we desire to know men and things through art, we desire to keep with us through its aid, above all, that which most pleases us in the actual world—the beautiful in form, coloring, and idea, in nature outside man and in man himself; the good, if it is the truly good, and not cant or hypocrisy, is also the beautiful, and the loss of the power to portray it is a large one. And beyond the more easily definable loss which we have noticed, there is a still further one, felt in a subtle tone, a shade, an atmosphere; and which, if closely knit with our moral perceptions, is still an æsthetic as well as a moral one. The evolution of morality, could, indeed, no more take place without leaving its impress on art than without leaving it on humor. The higher sense of humor, in very proportion to its keenness, experiences a revulsion at the grotesque and gross vulgarity which passes for humor among the savage and half-civilized; and with time, the immoral comes to revolt too much to permit of æsthetic enjoyment. Had Dickens been a murderer himself, instead of the tender-hearted man he was, the world would doubtless have lost in every way æsthetically as well as morally by the fact. The old theory of the total emancipation of art from all claims of morality cannot be maintained from even the æsthetic standpoint, and certainly not from the ethical standpoint. Art has every right to be non-moral (if that which delights innocently is ever anything but positively moral), but it has none to be immoral,—to use the mighty power it possesses in the cause of evil of any sort.

Nor is it even true that all nature belongs to art. In all its history, sculpture has never, except in a few isolated cases, reproduced the forms of the withered and decrepit. The painter of the extreme realistic school may occasionally portray the scenes of the dissecting-room, but pictures of sores and ulcers are left to adorn the pages of medical works or patent-medicine advertisements. There are moral sores and ulcers as little suited to artistic literature, and belonging properly to works on social healing alone. The depiction of evil in due proportion and with such limitations belongs to the accurate representation of human character. But let its portrayal include no sin against man; let not the artist dip his hands in the dunghill, for humanity's sake and also for his art's sake; lest his picture reek of it, and we find the offal mixed with the colors.

The cant and superstition with which marriage has often been invested has doubtless been the source of the rebellion of many vigorous and original minds from the old morality; the morality founded on tradition and not on reason and sympathy has always this disadvantage. Undoubtedly, the sale of human flesh for gold or any other sordid consideration, is evil, whether done under the sanction of the marriage-law or without it. Undoubtedly also, the marriage-rite performs no miracle or magic spell, as the superstition of the past has imagined. Nevertheless, it is of importance as a civil contract, a public acknowledgment, which furnishes data to the state, and places it in a position to protect any injured party, and to fix the responsibility for the maintenance and education of offspring. Considering the number of individuals whose welfare is seriously concerned in these most intimate relations of life, with all their passions, the state cannot relinquish this right of arbitration, which should especially be employed for the protection of the weaker individuals concerned—the wife and children. Unfortunately, it has, as yet, too often been used rather in securing the power of tyranny and abuse than in protecting. This fact is perceptible even in modern law, as, for instance, in the unequal divorce-laws of England, and in the fact that wife-beaters are often treated with great leniency by English magistrates, while the man who abuses his mistress is liable to relatively severe punishment as having no especial power over the latter. It is, undoubtedly, the result of such laws, together with other evils incidental to the average of marriages under the present conditions of human character, that on some sides a theory has grown up in favor of the total abolition of marriage. But neither in its general application, nor in this particular instance, is the Anarchistic conception which finds the source of all evil in law, scientifically justifiable. The conditions of the evil lie in human nature itself, in the incompleteness of its evolution; of the present stage the injustice of present law is a part. The remedy lies, therefore, as far as the law is concerned, in its correction, not in its abolishment.

The ideal of love is enduring faithfulness. But when that ideal is not only unfulfilled, but marriage brings, instead of happiness, only misery, shall the bond be indissoluble, difficult, or easy to loose?

In countries where women are wholly dependent upon men, perfect facility of divorce means substantially the power of repudiation on the part of men. As long as women are incapable of efficient self-support, the advantage of very easy divorce lies largely on the side of the husband. Marriage concerns, in any case, the welfare, not of one person alone but that of husband, wife, and children, and society as a whole must place some restrictions on the selfish action of the individual which may be to the lasting disadvantage of all others concerned. But as society advances, as the education and social independence of women increase, too great stringency becomes undesirable, its advantages continually diminish in comparison with its disadvantages. Forced family relations where all the affection that might render them for the good of those thus related is lacking, are obviously in themselves undesirable, and in most cases where wife and children can be provided for independently of such relations, an evil to be avoided. Assuredly, it is undesirable that the moral should be tied indissolubly, or practically so, to the immoral,—that a mother, for instance, should not only be forced to bring forth children to a father whose evil qualities they may inherit, but be compelled to endure the further ruin of their character through his influence, besides bearing the personal agony of the enforced companionship with a man whose principles she can but despise. But all character is at present faulty; and a desire for perfection in husband or wife therefore certain to disappointment; hence, the relinquishment of all divorce-restrictions whatsoever is too likely to lead to promiscuity; and unless such appears desirable to society, neither public opinion nor state-law can place the power of repudiation in the hands of individuals. It is a choice of evils; the state must take human nature as it finds it, and deal with it on this basis. It has sometimes been proposed to make some substitution for the old form of marriage, as, for instance, by the adoption of a period of probation, of two, three, or five years' marriage before the signing of the final life-contract; by this method, it was proposed to obviate the necessity for divorce. As far as this last proposal is concerned, it may be remarked that applications for divorce are by no means always made in the earlier period of married life, and that, furthermore, any such arrangement would offer the very best opportunities for the unscrupulous libertine.

But beyond this, it may be repeated that, as Höffding has said, it is not in the nature of love worthy the name to calculate the possibility of its own ending, and that the highest form of love is enduring. Enduring relation must, then, form the ideal on which we must fix our eyes, even while failing to attain it; divorce, while given in cases where union seems no longer desirable, must be looked upon as indicating a failure of marriage to fulfil its end. The influence of an ideal held in mind is the continual moulding of reality to a form more nearly resembling it. But to descend to a form of contract which starts with the assumption of separation as possible or probable is to lose sight of the ideal, to relinquish it from imagination, and to do away with its influence upon public opinion, and so upon the evolution of institutions and habits. We certainly need better divorce-laws and the wider recognition of the desirability of divorce in many cases, but not the practical acceptance of an ideal of promiscuity.

The plan of such short contracts could never be carried out practically for any length of time, in any modern civilized society. Even if adopted for a time, it would speedily be abolished. Man naturally desires and takes means of enforcing, at first with the lower means of compulsion, then with the higher through the sympathies themselves, faithfulness in woman; woman also, and equally, desires faithfulness in man, but is not able to secure it. The gradual growth of woman's social independence must, however, place her more and more in a position to know of the life of men and to enforce the faithfulness she desires; that is, to punish unfaithfulness with the same penalties of disability for marriage by which men have hitherto enforced faithfulness in women. We may easily perceive that this is the direction of development. In countries where women are wholly dependent upon men, the character of a suitor in any respect is a thing little inquired into, the chief object of the parents, who ordinarily have the most to say about the matter, being to secure a husband for the girl at any cost. With the progress of society, women become less and less ready to accept the known drunkard or the confessed libertine, and it is only the seclusion of women and their consequent ignorance of the lives of men that makes marriage, at present, still comparatively easy to the discreet and clever profligate. The coördinate increase of regard for purity in wives with the aggravation of the character of prostitution, supposed above for the sake of the discussion, is possible only up to a certain point, as an oscillation in one direction resistance to which is continually accumulating, and must result in reaction in the opposite direction. The two principles are mutually contradictory, incompatible, and impossible as enduring factors in the same society. The growth of a more widely diffused and stronger sentiment against prostitution and in favor of faithfulness has, indeed, as yet led chiefly to the greater exclusion of prostitutes from association with the rest of society, and made profligacy more and more secret; but, at the same time, the gradually increasing sympathy has formed an accumulating resistance which is rapidly taking shape in the realization that the prostitute is not more guilty in furnishing the supply than is the man whose demand makes self-profanation a source of income, that the misery of prostitution is immoral, and that the only remedy is prevention. There is no alternative to this remedy that progress can realize except, as has been shown, general promiscuity. It is best, then, that we should make up our minds between these two and act accordingly; for the action of every individual tells, for good or ill, upon society as a whole. What is the ideal? I think the answer is plain; no man who has any conception of the higher joys of love which is also friendship, intellectual companionship, can hesitate; and if this is so, then duty is plain also. No man has a right to deplore the evil by word who encourages it in any way by his act.

It is sometimes averred by those who oppose the economic independence and educational equality of women with men, that women can mingle with the world on a plane of equality with men only at the sacrifice of all the chivalry and admiration which men now give to women. But this objection opposes every step of women's progress, from the harem upwards, and every step has proved its falseness. True, in the lands where women are freest, they are less favored with insincere and fulsome compliments, with vows and protestations which, when put to the test, mean nothing, or worse than nothing. The case is, however, far otherwise with the attentions which mark sincere regard, and the consideration paid by physical strength to comparative weakness. It would, indeed, be peculiar if higher intellectual powers, a clearer insight into the "severely true," the cultivation of that nobility of character which results from self-knowledge through knowledge of others and the habit of self-reliance, should render women less attractive. The pioneers in any cause need to be the hardier individuals, and so are often those who please little æsthetically; and the kicks and scoffs of the world may take from the disposition what little grace it at first possessed; but this does not prove the moral rightness of the kicks and scoffs, or the moral culpability of those who dare to adhere to their purpose in spite of them. In the countries where excessive difficulties are placed in the way of women's work in the higher professions (there are very few placed in the way of her overwork in other directions), these have resulted naturally in the suppression of effort on the part of the majority of the more finely constituted and more sensitive, and have left the field to the hardier and less fine; but in the United States, where women are freest in every way, they have lost neither in natural grace nor in the attention and regard of men; on the contrary, they have gained in both, and they have, furthermore, left the mark of their refining influence on the whole civilization of the country. As long as women are weaker than men physically, a higher moral standard must have regard for this weakness. When, through a more healthful life, women become more nearly equal to men in endurance, certain forms of attention will be less necessary, and will, doubtless, fall off somewhat, only to make room for a higher plane of mutual helpfulness. Yet I doubt whether the time will ever come when the grace and beauty of women, the associations of love and the memories of family affection, will not stir men of finer fibre to peculiar kindness, repaid as the appreciation of women can well repay.

There is another protest—which comes especially from the party that most exclaims against the evils of competition—against the "superstitious" respect for age. The reason is, obviously, that age tends by nature to conservatism. But the evils of the struggle for existence are not those alone of outward conditions; these are often far less hard than the bitter spirit of mental antagonism that sears and saddens the heart. Youth is daring and originative; middle age is less venturesome, but it possesses, on the other hand, a wider range of experience. Between youth and youth, or youth and middle age, the battle is more equal. But age no longer possesses the power to cope with the world physically or mentally; it is fixed in habit, and apt to follow one accustomed round of thought; we are certainly not likely to convince it by violence. It has borne its share of violence and has done its part in the battle. It has advanced with its generation, though it may not be able to advance any longer with ours. Our ideal should certainly be that of forbearance, not of intolerance towards it.

Modern opinion is becoming dissatisfied with the old methods of dealing with criminals—with the methods which continually return the criminal to society not bettered by incarceration, and ready to commit all manner of crimes again. Both the protection of society and the welfare of the criminal would be better served by a course of discipline that should only then give him back to society when he is fitted to live in harmony with it and to enjoy the advantages conferred by such harmony. Recent experiments in reformatories have demonstrated the immense advantage of methods which attempt something like this. Among the improved reformatories for children, many of them without walls, bolts, or bars, some have sent out cured from eighty to eighty-five per cent of the offenders committed to them. The Elmira reformatory deals especially with offenders sentenced for their first state's prison offence, and its method is at once eminently humane and remarkably successful. Offenders may be sent to it at the discretion of the judges. It contains three grades. Members of the first of these wear better clothing, eat better food, enjoy various special privileges, and are used, to some extent, as officers and monitors for the other grades. Members of the second grade are less well provided for and honored than those of the first; and members of the third grade are worst clothed and fed, and have the fewest privileges. Every man who enters the prison is submitted to a minute examination as to his antecedents, his mental, moral, and physical condition and capabilities. He is then placed in the second grade, from which he may go up or down, according to his work and conduct. Eight hours' work a day are required, and compulsory school is held in the evening, at which the common English branches are taught, and elementary instruction given in Law, Political Economy, Ethics, etc. Discussion and thought on the subjects taught are encouraged, and everything possible is done to awaken interest. "Perfect" work and conduct for six months—the standard of "perfection" is high—and a mark of 75 in a scale of 100 in the school secure a man advance into the next higher grade; and the same standard maintained for six months in the highest grade entitle a man to release on parole; so that the term of imprisonment need not exceed a year. The man must be willing, industrious, good-tempered, obedient, energetic, who gets release in this time. Work is found for every man released; he is closely watched for six months more, and if his conduct does not keep up the standard required, he is returned to the reformatory and must begin over again; if, on the other hand, his conduct and work, an attested report of which must be handed in each month, is satisfactory for these six months, he is honorably discharged. The obdurate malefactors serve out their full sentence, as they would in state's prison. Of those who go out from the institution, eighty per cent return to society reformed; and the superintendent is of the opinion that this percentage could still be raised were the time of detention made indeterminate and wholly dependent upon reform. All prison reformers are coming to recognize the desirability of such indeterminate sentences. The work of the men at Elmira pays over two-thirds of the expenses of the institution, and even if we consider only dollars and cents, this method of dealing with crime is evidently the cheapest; for under the old method we have to take into account the expenses of the later crimes of the men released without improvement of character. The method of parole of first offenders, newly introduced into France, and in use to some extent in other countries also, seems to have rather less to recommend it, except in special cases; since the moral, intellectual, and industrial discipline of the reformatory are lacking.