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

by Cora May Williams

If intelligence is to bear the fruit which we thus demand of it, its nature must be such as not only to be nourished by actual life, but also to uplift by its increase the whole man. And this is, in fact, the case; where it is not so, we have to do with a one-sided development such as existing circumstances often condition, but which cannot be regarded as normal. This point of view is the necessary consequence of the unity which we postulate of man. If thought and will have their origin in feeling, and if will clarifies itself through the clarification of thought, then all advance in thought leads, in general, to an advance in feeling, and true intelligence is inseparable from true love. We use the word "love" here, as designating intelligence in its highest sense, and declare, moreover, that we would desire to see this meaning alone attached to love. Over against the conception of love which we find in Hartmann and Schopenhauer, we place the conception of Spinoza, who designates it as a free, reasonable activity, and says of it as distinguished from passion that "the love of both man and wife has for its cause, not a pleasing exterior merely, but especially freedom of soul."

If we regard intelligence and love in their highest antithesis, the one appears as the appropriative, the other as the self-devoting conception of things. But since we form a conception of things and make them our own only in proportion to our intelligence, our attitude towards them must be according to this measure; and since there is no action without reaction, intelligence must be broadened by love as well as love clarified by intelligence. The highest of all is intelligence; but it is love that first lends it creative power; without love it cannot create, but only destroy. Everything great and noble that man can point out as his work is due to love—love of mankind, love of country, love of knowledge, love of art, love of labor in general. If the devotion is deficient in purity, determined by extraneous motives, the work will bear marks of the deficiency. The reason why the power of love is so much greater than every other power is that its all-embracing, boundless character reacts upon it as a feeling of eternity, enabling it to undertake all things, as if it might conquer even death. Life, considered in its parts, is cheerless; but love, regarding it in its totality, points out to it the way of salvation through itself. Love is the concrete element which exalts the abstraction of Intelligence to incarnate Idea; therefore is love the idealizing principle from which intelligence draws belief in its own aims. And if one questions whence comes the conception of immortality, impossible to be won from experience, love must confess itself guilty of originating it, being unable, to exist without this self-delusion.

Carneri thus places himself in direct opposition to Schopenhauer's and Hartmann's notion of love, which, he says, "falls like a deep shadow over their whole conception of the world"; and he pleads in favor of a standpoint which shall make self-perfection the aim of existence for woman as for man. He propounds a theory of education for woman which, according to his own statement, places him at one in spirit with Mill; but he avers that he cannot follow the latter in his more extreme views, which, he says, were evidently assumed by Mill only in view of the strength of the enemy with which he had to contend. The book ends with the following paragraph:—

"We do not run after ideals; hence no plan floats before us, according to which the world should be shaped anew. He who understands how to read the book of History knows that, in no one place does the identity of form and content come more clearly into view than in others, and that, with every new content, there is always a new form also. The modern state has by no means outlived itself yet, and those who endeavor to do away with it know not what they are about. Instead of thinking upon a new form, let us devote our care to the clarification of the content. No one deceives himself as to the suffering in the world; but he deceives himself who thinks that he alone can bring about a better condition. Only the action of all can better things. Therefore, that which remains for us to do can be summed up in these few words: Let us make every effort possible to place every one in a position to help himself. This is the only ethical conception of universal reform. Let us prize knowledge above all things, and let us show that we so prize it by increasing it and diffusing it as much as lies in our power; let us prize it above all things, and prove that we do so by using it for the good of mankind. By knowledge we have become human beings, because knowledge has brought us to a comprehension of the Beautiful and the Good. It is knowledge that sets life an end in the attainment of the Good, and knowledge that glorifies our path to that end. Let us educate for ourselves wives that shall not merely dimly feel what we think, but such as will bring to the execution of our will a clear understanding. Let us educate for ourselves wives who, fired by the same feelings as our own, will unite their efforts with ours in the education of a generation that shall take morally the stand upon which the science of the century finds itself. Let us seek true happiness if we would find virtue. It is to no wisdom, but it is likewise to no foolishness that we owe the existence of the world. Man can be foolish; but he can also be wise; and if he is wise, then the world too is wisely arranged."

Carneri begins his "First Principles of Ethics" ("Grundlegung der Ethik," 1881) with an investigation of the origin of primary concepts and our knowledge through these. In order to bring light into our conception, we must first of all learn the way to the concept; for then only can we see how the concept completes itself in the judgment, and becomes, in reasoning, the criterion of its own worth.

The problem which first presents itself to us is that of Life in general. The problem is inseparable from that of corporeality. If we follow phenomena to their last conceivable reduction, we finally pass from the perception of mass to the concept of matter; but further than this we cannot go. At least, we can perceive only material things, and that which we call the spiritual in distinction from the corporeal has always something corporeal as its basis; and if we do not wish to dispense with the reliable guidance of experience, we shall not overleap this barrier. Science cannot reckon with supernatural factors.

What matter is we cannot know; that it exists, however, that the phenomena of nature are no empty seeming, sensation, as the felt result of the mutual relation between us and the outer world, testifies. Sensation is the basis of our self-consciousness, of the only full and irrefutable certainty that we possess. As to what true Being or Existence is, there is disagreement; but there can be none regarding the fact that we are conscious of our sensations; and upon this consciousness rests the postulate of the materiality[66] of all existence. In order to assert the materiality of all phenomena, we are forced to distinguish between a corporeal and a non-corporeal action of matter; matter operates mentally when its division or differentiation proceeds so far that the resulting phenomena can no longer be perceived by the senses, but only conceived by thought. The indivisibility of mind from corporeality follows directly from this definition of the mental side of nature. We distinguish between the two only for convenience' sake. The newer Psychology knows nothing of Sensuality in the old sense of the word, since the basis of all psychical effects is physical.

For matter operating mentally, as for matter operating corporeally, there are no specific energies; it is, as Wundt expresses it, functionally indifferent. The differing results of a high differentiation of centralized organisms arise in accordance with the changing combinations of elementary parts and nerve activities. These results are not, however, to be regarded as the mere effects of matter, but as phenomena of the same, in fact, as the consummation and crown of the whole evolution of nature. Even in the sense-organs we see the differentiation of matter advance beyond the sphere of sense-perception. Therefore, in distinguishing between mind and matter, we are still in the realm of the natural, and follow the path of experience, if by experience is understood not alone immediate experience, but also the conclusions which directly or by strict analogy may be drawn from it.

The theory of an atom-soul and the theory of an organizing principle must be abandoned as teleological, and so inconsistent with the facts of evolution. The theory which holds force to be a transcendental existence, a something outside of matter, must also be rejected. With the endless divisibility is given an endless motion, inward or outward; the endlessly divisible matter exists in endless motion, or what is the same, the endless motion is the endlessly divided matter. Hence motion, like matter, can never diminish; only the form of its appearance changes.