LESLIE STEPHEN
"The Science of Ethics" (1882)
While with regard to the matter of Ethics,—the general classifications of right and wrong conduct,—moralists are almost unanimous, with regard to its form,—the essence and criterion of right and wrong,—there is great disagreement. All widely spread opinions deserve respect by their mere existence; they are phenomena to be accounted for. On the subject of morals, as on all other subjects, opinions gradually modify and approach each other; but a perfect agreement will probably not be arrived at.
Leaving aside metaphysical questions, however, we may be able to find, as in physical science, some constants or ultimate elements which, though they, according to the metaphysician's view, require further analysis, yet constitute, within their sphere, scientific knowledge independent of metaphysics. The follower of Hegel means, in all probability, precisely the same thing as the follower of Hume, when he says that a mother loves her child; though, when they come to reflect upon certain ulterior imports of the phrases used, they may come to different conclusions. The formula remains the same; for all purposes of conduct it evokes the same impressions, sentiments, and sensible images, and it therefore represents a stage at which all theories must coincide, though they start, or profess to start, from the most opposite bases. "Mothers love their children" is not unconditionally true; some mothers do not love their children; but the statement is of worth as approximating scientific truth. It may be well to attempt to ascertain in how far it may be rendered scientific.
In the physical sciences, the statements of laws arrived at by the labor of generations are ideal statements, in which a mass of modifying circumstances are disregarded for the sake of simplification. Even in these sciences, the power of prediction is small. Of the complicated conditions of human action we have even less accurate knowledge than of those of physical phenomena, though this does not lead us, any more than in the physical sciences, to suppose that prediction would not be possible if we knew the conditions. So far as man is a thing or an animal, it is comparatively easy to determine his conduct. Given a starving dog and a lump of meat in contact, you can predict the result. But to determine the behavior of a human being with a glass of water presented to his lips, you must be able to calculate the action of human motive and to unravel the tangled skein of thought and feeling in its variation in the individual under consideration. Moreover, much of the life of the individual is ruled, not by conscious motive, but by automatic habit, acquired through education. The prediction of action in society as a unit is not less difficult than the prediction of individual action, for if individual differences neutralize each other, so that a certain uniformity in the influence of circumstances is shown by statistics, it is not the less difficult to predict what these uniformities will be. Society as an organism, not a mere aggregate, presents, in the interaction of more complicated conditions, greater difficulties than does the individual as such; and it may be said that prediction of the course of history, even in general terms and for a brief period, would require an intellect as much superior to that of Socrates as the intellect of Socrates is superior to that of an ape.
And yet mankind does possess knowledge of conduct, which does not differ in kind from scientific knowledge; there is, in fact, but one kind of knowledge, which passes into scientific knowledge as it becomes more definite and articulate. The knowledge that mankind possesses consists in what we have thus far taken for granted, that under the same circumstances of outward environment and inward character, human conduct does not change. Of society, as of an organism, we cannot say a priori that it is so and could not have been otherwise; we can only show, a posteriori, how different parts mutually imply each other, so that, given the whole, we can see that any particular part could not have been otherwise. Our gain from such knowledge is the recognition that there may be discoverable laws of growth essentially relevant to our investigation of conduct. So long as reasoning was conducted upon the tacit assumption that social phenomena can be satisfactorily explained by studying their constituent elements separately, attention was diverted from the important principles of the interrelation of parts to the whole. The theory of evolution brings out the fact that every organism, whether social or individual, represents the product of an indefinite series of adjustments between it and its environment. Every race or society is part of a larger system, product of the continuous play of a number of forces constantly shifting with an effort towards general equilibrium, so that every permanent property represents, not an accidental similarity, but a correspondence between the organism and some permanent conditions of life. To solve the problem of existence by calculation is an impossibility; but our own lives are working it out; the evolution of history is the solution of our problem. And when we fully recognize that a problem is being solved, we have only to gain some appreciation of its general nature and conditions, in order to reach some important, though limited, conclusions, which may fairly be called scientific, as to the meaning of the answer. These conclusions are not scientific in the sense of giving us quantitative and precise formulæ, but they may be so far scientific as to be certain and reliable.
Thus we may be able to show how a given set of instincts corresponds to certain permanent conditions under which they were developed, and (returning to the problem of differing theories of morals with which we started) to show what is the cause of differing opinions. Our investigations of the problem of morality have nothing to do, in the first instance, with moral principles which are, or profess to be, deduced from pure logic, independent of any particular fact; they deal with actual moral sentiments as historical facts. The word moral, as used in our considerations, does not, therefore, refer to an ideal moral code, but to the one actually existing in the case considered.
Ethical speculation, as thus understood, must be concerned with psychological inquiries—inquiries in regions where the vague doctrines of common sense have not yet crystallized into scientific coherence; we must therefore proceed with caution.
The contention between materialist and idealist is irrelevant to our discussion. The fact that mechanical processes underlie all mental process does not make the latter the less a fact; nor can the mechanical statement ever supersede the psychological statement. The proposition that hunger makes men eat will express truth, whatever material implications are involved in the statement.