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

by Cora May Williams

Altruism is the faculty essentially necessary to moral conduct; but the altruistic sentiment is not to be identified with morality. The elementary sympathy must be regulated and disciplined, in order that it may give rise to true morality. Virtues, for instance, which belong to the type of truthfulness and justice, generally imply a severe restraint of the immediate sympathetic impulses.

We recognize the internal motive as desirable, and recognize a difference between the man who acts only from prudential motives and the one who acts from moral motives. We consider the latter meritorious, that is, that he has a certain claim upon society, inasmuch as he has done for nothing what another man will only do for pay, or has refrained from action from which a less moral man can be restrained only by coercion. Wherever society finds sacrifice of the individual necessary, it pays for it in terms of merit. Merit is the value put upon virtue; it is a function of the social forces, by which our characters are moulded.

Every character is developed under circumstances, and depends upon mutual adjustment with these; we cannot disentangle the two factors. Upon the power to infer future action the science of Ethics depends. The action of the individual is not a matter of chance; in this sense it is caused. But the instinct from which the action springs is not something external to the man, which moves him; there is not the man plus the instinct; the whole man, including the instinct, acts in a certain way, in which he would not act if he did not possess the instinct. We are accustomed to say that a man has inherited certain qualities; but the man is not one thing and the inherited qualities another; the whole man is inherited. Merit implies effort. This does not mean that effort, taken absolutely, is the measure of merit. Such an assumption would lead to our excusing men for the very qualities that make them wicked,—the murderer because of his spiteful disposition, for instance. The man is most meritorious who is virtuous with the least effort—provided always that he has the normal passions of a man. By these, however, since they are morally neutral, he is accessible to temptation and to a certain struggle.

Conscience appears, historically, as a development of simpler instincts; it is not a primary or a separate faculty; material morality makes its appearance long before the conscious recognition of a moral law. The existence of conscience is undeniable. Yet moralists are much given to exaggerate the sorrow which it actually excites. In almost every case, the pain which we feel for a bad act is complex, and due only in part to our conviction that we have broken the moral law. If we regard conscience as a separate faculty judging of action by some inherent power, we have to attribute to it reason and feeling. It is not a primary attribute of the agent (to borrow Spinoza's language), but a mode of the attributes.

There is, indeed, a sensibility which seems to have as good a claim as any to be regarded as elementary, and which is clearly concerned in most of our moral judgments: the sense of shame. This is excited by the consciousness of the judgment of others. It operates, however, not only in cases of a breach of morality; but often more strongly even in cases not concerned directly with morality; and may even operate against the moral code. But the variation is clearly not indefinite. Social development implies the development of a certain type of character, which includes, as essential, certain moral qualities; the consciousness of the code and of the condemnation of certain classes of acts, which it would cause, is implied in the sense of shame. The sense is closely connected with the instinctive disgust before noticed. It seems to have especial reference to decency and indecency. The value of the sense of decency cannot be measured by a consideration of a particular set of bad consequences from indecent actions other than the shock to decency; we must consider the whole difference between a state of society which does, and one which does not, possess it; it is an essential symptom of refinement and delicacy. Again, the judgments of conscience may be compared to æsthetic judgments. The difference between the æsthetic and other pleasures depends upon the form of gratification, not upon the instincts gratified, and seems to correspond to the difference between work and play. The artist may appeal to our moral emotions, giving us imaginary ideals; but emotion at the contemplation of such types is in the æsthetic phase when we simply enjoy their contemplation, and it passes into the practical phase as soon as it begins to have a definite relation to the conduct of our lives. Only in so far as the moral law has become internal, is the delight in heroic or benevolent energy spontaneous; in so far, we may speak of the existence of a moral, as of an æsthetic, sense. A man of fine moral sensibility may, indeed, like the artist, perceive finer moral discords than can be measured by formulæ; and may thus supply a more delicate test. But the complex problem of a difference in moral judgment may yet be solved approximately by reference to the test of social welfare; the highest type is that which is best fitted for the conditions of social welfare. The collective experience of the race is always progressing towards a more accurate solution of the problem.

The utilitarian theory, which makes happiness the criterion of morals, coincides approximately with the evolutionist theory which makes health of the society the criterion; for, as we have seen, health and happiness approximately coincide. The utilitarian theory fails, however, in one or two respects. It gets rid, as much as possible, of a priori truths, and rejects intuitions; it bases its argument on the assumption that all knowledge is empirical and the ethical problem to be solved by a summing up of the consequences of action. It thus neglects the truth which is implied by evolution,—that the organism itself is solving the problem; it neglects the instinctive sense generated by social evolution. Moreover, it considers society as an aggregate of similar individuals, taking little account of the variability of human desire. And, further, the utilitarian theory lays its stress upon morality as extrinsic; according to it, love of morality for its own sake, as love of the means to the end, must be as unreasonable as the miser's love for his gold. Association, in this sense, means illusion; and the more reasonable we become, the more we should deliver ourselves from the bondage of such errors; the theory fails just at the point where true morality begins. Furthermore, in substituting the external rule: "Do this," for "Be this," it seems to fall into the error of expediency. Though lying is assumed to be, on the whole, detrimental to happiness, truth is maintained to be desirable only where it contributes to happiness. The utilitarian destroys, to some extent, the force of the objection to this by asserting the danger of trusting ourselves. The force of this objection is only seen, however, when it is applied, not to the external, but to the internal code; we instinctively feel the danger to character in the lie, and hesitate to trust human nature in the establishment of such a precedent, just as we object to permitting the taking of life even in cases where prolonged life means prolonged misery, because we cannot trust human nature with the decision as to life and death. We make binding laws of morality, and leave it to the man of exceptional qualities to break them; for the generality of mankind, the stricter code is safer.

What is the sanction of morality? Why should a man be virtuous? The answer depends upon the answer to the previous question: What is it to be virtuous? If, for example, virtue means all such conduct as promotes happiness, the motives to virtuous conduct must be all such motives as impel a man to aim at increasing the sum of happiness. These motives constitute the sanction, and the sanction may be defined either as an intrinsic, or as an extrinsic, sanction; that is, it may be argued either that virtuous conduct leads to consequences which are desirable to every man, whether he be or be not virtuous; or, on the other hand, that virtuous conduct as such, and irrespectively of any future consequences, makes the agent happier. The problem is, thus, to find a scientific basis for the art of conduct. The "sanction" must supply the motive power by which individuals are to be made virtuous. This is, for the practical moralist, the culminating point of all ethical inquiry. Now there is, by our theory, a necessary and immediate relation between social vitality and morality. But it does not follow that there is the same intimate connection in the individual case. The sacrifice of some of its members may be essential to the welfare of the society itself.

We have, then, to answer three questions: first, whether the virtuous man, as such, is happier than the vicious; second, whether it is worth while, on prudential grounds, for the vicious man to acquire the virtuous character; and third, whether it can be worth while, in the same sense, for the vicious man to observe the moral law.

If any man outside the pulpit were to ask himself what were the main conditions of happiness, the answer would certainly include health as the first, most essential, most sufficient condition. But the whole process of nature, upon the evolutionist doctrine, implies a correlation between the painful and the pernicious, and thus the elaboration of types in which this problem is solved by an ever-increasing efficiency and complexity of organization. Hence we may infer that the typical or ideal character, at any given stage of development, the organization which, as we may say, represents the true line of advance, corresponds to a maximum of vitality. It seems, again, that this typical form, as the healthiest, must represent not only the strongest type—that is, the type most capable of resisting unfavorable influences—but also the happiest type; for every deviation from it affords a strong presumption, not merely of liability to the destructive processes which are distinctly morbid, but also to a diminished efficiency under normal conditions. However, the typical man, though he is, on this theory, the virtuous man, is also much more than is generally understood by that name. Happiness is the reward offered, not for virtue alone, but for conformity to the law of nature, "Be strong." Beauty, strength, intellectual vigor, æsthetic sensibility, prudence, industry, and so forth, are all implied in the best type, and are, so far, conducive to happiness. If virtue be taken in the narrower sense as implying chiefly the negative quality of habitual abstinence from forbidden actions, there is no reason to suppose that it coincides with happiness. You can raise a presumption that moral excellence coincides closely with a happy nature only when you extend "moral" to include all admirable qualities. It is chiefly practical reasons which cause an attempted evasion of this conclusion; the practical moralist holds that the non-social qualities may be left to take care of themselves, but that stress must be laid upon the social qualities as the more important, in order to obtain them in society.

Sympathetic motives may lead to self-sacrifice; but this is also true of selfish motives; gin is a more potent source of imprudence, even in a moderate sense, than family affection; and the sympathetic motives have on their side the far greater intrinsic advantage, that they promote ends more permanent, far richer in interest, and giving a proper employment to all the faculties of our nature, besides the intrinsic advantages that spring from friendly relations with the society of which we form a part. It is, however, true that higher activity of any sort may cause pain in an uncongenial medium, and that, hence, the man who is morally in advance of his age may suffer through his morality; every reformer who breaks with the world, though for the world's good, must expect much pain. "Be good if you would be happy," seems to be the verdict even of worldly prudence; but it adds in an emphatic aside, "Be not too good." We must acknowledge that excessive virtue cannot be recommended to the selfish person upon grounds intelligible to him. There is, however, a general advantage in possessing more varied possibilities of enjoyment, and in being on the side of the strongest forces, those of progress.