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

by Cora May Williams

It is by the agency of no other being that, in the mutual relation of physical and mental activity, consciousness is attained; man himself comes to a feeling of himself. In the being endowed with soul, who on the one hand attains, through integration, an independence that appears as the impulse to self-preservation, on the other hand becomes conscious of this impulse to self-preservation through a centralized nervous system that raises the part-sensations to feelings of the whole, sensation divides into two chief functions, which appear as passion and thought. We are not concerned, in thought and passion, with opposites, but with an opposition which a single phenomenon develops through manifold action and reaction with the rest of the world of phenomena. The distinction is merely a convenience in finer investigations; there is, in fact, as little thought without emotion as emotion without thought. And since emotion always manifests itself as will, this highest opposition is best defined as that of thought and will. In order to understand the human being, we must analyze these two sides of consciousness.

Carneri's examination of the primary laws of thought can be only touched upon here. In the law of Identity, or, negatively speaking, the law of Consistency,[72] there comes to our consciousness a more general Species which includes a determinate species. "The adequate, clear, correct, corresponding[73] concept is consistent with itself," means, the adequate concept finds itself again in every object which it includes. The law of Identity expresses, therefore, not entire sameness, with which the cessation of all thought would be reached, but simple consistency. It affords us, thus, the means of recognizing the Untrue in that which is not what it is called, hence also the means of recognizing the True. The law of Excluded Middle contains an extension or doubling of the law of Identity, in that the identity here appears, not in the form of consistency, but in that of contradiction; as, "either—or." Not one, but two cases are supposed, only one of which can exist or be true. The disjunctive proposition which corresponds to it is not less determinate than the categorical proposition which corresponds to the law or judgment of Identity, but is rather, on the contrary, a more forcible affirmation of it. In this determinate nature lies the worth of the Excluded Middle. Du Bois Raymond's address on the Limits of Knowledge has caused much joy to conservative thinkers; but these have made much more out of it than it really means. There is either for us a transcendental, or there is not; and if not, then we are limited to the knowledge of nature. The scientific limit set to our knowledge by our hypotheses and theories is, however, merely a limit set for the purpose of rounding knowledge to a whole, not of closing it to a further advancement; but such hypotheses must be consistent with experience and founded upon it; otherwise we leave knowledge behind us and abandon the hope of it. We cannot say what, within the province of science, man will not know, except that he never will know everything.

The law of Causality is the most important law of thought, after that of Identity. Reason and result are often confused with cause and effect. The reason on account of which we do a thing is not, however, the cause by which it occurs. The cause is the complexity of all conditions which make it possible, and the reason of its performance coincides with a conscious design on our part that constitutes our purpose. Causality has nothing in common with the concept of purpose. The principal of Sufficient Reason has been made the bridge between Causality and Design. Probably human experience reached first the conception that nothing occurs without sufficient reason, and only later, by a further mental step, the conviction that everything for which the necessary conditions exist takes place. With this conviction, the concept of causality became clear; but, at the same time the bridge which connects it with the theory of design in the succession of events was destroyed, so that only a logical leap can restore us to this incomplete conception of earlier experience. Causal necessity excludes purposed necessity. That which takes place may be regarded as, in one direction, conformable to an end, but may, on the other hand, conform to no end in any direction. A succession of events conforms to purpose only in so far as it is regarded by a particular consciousness which combines it in thought with ends of its own or such as it ascribes to another consciousness. In the law of Causality, as in the law of Identity, the necessity of self-consistency and the self-consistency of Necessity reaches expression. The sufficient reason is simply the completeness of the conditions, with the existence of which the event takes place, and the absence of which the event fails to take place.

Spinoza's "Will and intellect are one and the same" is the ethical law of Identity. All thought is willed; that is, indivisible from a certain coloring which it has in virtue of its identity with the will, just as all will is connected with thought; there is, indeed, a will-less thought, which might, however, just as correctly be called "unthinking thought,"[74] just as "unthinking willing" is, in reality, will-less willing. In all mental operations, the identity of the two functions is found. A will is unthinkable without something willed—an end, given by thought. It is the fact that, in his practical life, man recognizes purpose as a necessity, which causes him to read purpose into nature.

"At the basis of identity lies a concept which throws light upon the teleological principle. This is the concept of the General. The basis of the principle of identity is a concept of species which embraces the general in contrast to the singular and particular; just as the judgment of Identity constitutes an advance to still greater Generality. The concept of the General which reaches expression in species coincides with the concept: Law of Nature. The Law is, for a particular circle of events, what the Species is for a particular circle of objects. As in the Species, the characteristics are expressed which an object must exhibit in order to belong to it, so in the Law the conditions are expressed which much exist in order that the instance included under it may take place. The relation of Identity to Causality is unmistakable. Species and Law include no mere plurality of objects and instances, for as often as the instance comes to pass the law is fulfilled, and the number belonging to a species is, in conception, limitless. Worlds like our earth may come into existence again and again; hence specimens of a certain species, eternally destroyed, may eternally renew themselves, and instances which fall under a certain law may eternally occur. Simply their conditions must exist in order that they may occur. Such cases form, therefore, a whole; and this is Totality in Little." The importance of every whole which sets itself over against the greater whole has already been noticed. The former whole constitutes the concept of Individuality which, as Undivided Unity, becomes independent. "The limitlessness which we claim for the whole is one of conception; we thus seek to make that which is incomprehensible conceivable." The concept does not need to be imagined; it may be thought. "Every one knows what he means when he opposes the whole to the part. The whole is not a larger part, but the opposite of the part, as 'all' constitutes the opposite of the many and the particular."

What we aim at, in this analysis, is a true Realism in the conception of the Purposeful. The Purposeful is that which conduces to an end, the Useful. From Individuality follows the individual nature of ends. Every man has his own ends, and in the attempt to attain his ends does not hesitate to set himself in opposition to all the rest of mankind. If he is sufficiently energetic and cunning, he may even succeed, for a time, in his endeavors, to the harm of humanity. Yet to have the whole of humanity against oneself is to endeavor to proceed in the direction of greater resistance, and the process must, sooner or later, result in the triumph of the stronger power. In the struggle for existence, in its larger as well as its smaller manifestations, the individual seeks, with all his power, to satisfy the impulse to happiness which arises with conscious existence; while the species, as the complex of all energies developed by its parts, has an impulse to self-preservation of its own, which, by its action as type, has originated and preserved for centuries the conception of changeless kind.

"Here is the beginning of the dawn, whose sun, however, in order to become visible and impart warmth, must rise still higher. The certainty afforded in the law of Identity in positive form, in the law of Contradiction in negative form, in the law of Excluded Middle in the form of an opposition, and in the law of Sufficient Reason in conditional form, is based upon Causality, Community of Species, or Totality. For this reason, deduction and induction are only then to be relied upon when the first form of reasoning has for its middle proposition one that expresses causality, community of species, or totality, and the latter form of reasoning takes these for its point of departure. The analysis of Deduction is of worth as clarifying and confirming thought, and thus extending its field as often as the syntheses of Induction stand the proof of the process of clarification. The supernaturalism of Dualism leads to a dead, the natural character of Monism to a living, dialectic,—to the dialectic of Becoming. The concept assumes a concrete form, and, as higher and higher rising sun, enables us to conceive what it will be to us as Idea. The understanding knows nothing of ideas; their realm is that of the reason; yet since the reason is but a higher development of the understanding, the commencement of this dawn must be perceptible in it. Moreover, the division which we make between the two originates in our genetic treatment of the subject, which seeks to explain the concept by showing the course of its development. Yet the distinction is no empty abstraction which may not claim life and form to a certain extent. The human being is always the whole human being; but he is not always uniformly developed, either physically or mentally. In one individual the understanding, in another the reason, manifests itself more plainly in thought. This is also true of the race, the people, and the epoch, as of the individual. Modern development has turned more and more from the ideal to material interests; we seem to be progressing towards a reaction," but what that reaction will be, we cannot say; it may be a reaction in the worst sense. The mistakes of the understanding cannot be predicted. With the point of culmination, the extreme is reached, and in Spiritualism may be found traces of a touching of extremes. Yet the influence of the understanding is to be relied on in so far as it is the clear mirror of Necessity. The understanding may err, just because it is conscious; but experience always corrects these mistakes. Nature, as gifted with mind, is no new nature; the laws of thought are the natural laws of the mind. In their mirror the will sees the accomplishment of the first mental development, and learns to comprehend this, on higher mental planes, as Common Weal.

The opposition of the individual to the rest of the world which arises with self-consciousness and individuality is greater, the greater the individuality. To the struggle for existence is added the struggle for happiness, which, separating into numberless desires that gain in attractiveness with every obstacle opposed to their satisfaction, is the origin of all the passions,—of greed, jealousy, envy, hatred, etc. Through passion, which is the exaggeration of activities that, in a normal form, are good, man is led into a struggle for false happiness, just as the concepts under which his passions arise are false. The individual against the world cannot attain happiness for himself. The greatest good, peace of soul, freedom from passion, is attained only through knowledge, by which the concepts of the individual are corrected; it is attained, not as dead incapability of emotion, but only as clear enjoyment of life after past storm. Labor and education are the path to true happiness and, through true happiness, to virtue. The passions are not separate existences; the whole man is the passion of his heart; the whole man feels, just as the whole man thinks. But just for this reason, because of the identity of will and understanding, the correction of the concept is the correction of will. This is not saying that will and understanding are never in opposition to each other; the apparent opposition is, however, merely a hesitation of the will, which does not know what it really will. It is true that one passion can be conquered only by another; we cannot will an emotion that leads to a certain course of action; but we can fix our attention on the objects which produce it, and by thus reaching a clear recognition of their actual and necessary relations, affect our own action. It is true that man does as he wills; but he wills necessarily as he does. According to the doctrine of freedom, it must be exactly those who act without knowing wherefore they act, and who are thus driven by blind impulse, who are the most fully self-determined. A real freedom and conquest of necessity can, on the contrary, be attained only by obedience. Just as, in the animal, the summation of impulses and desires reaches a focus in feeling, so in man, in proportion to his development, the summation is in consciousness, the focus of which is the point of concentration of the will's activity. Spinoza's "Will and understanding are one" means: the activity of the will is the realization of the activity of thought. Every one, the more self-sacrificing, as the less self-sacrificing man, does that which is to him the pleasantest; egoism turns the scale in both cases; only in the one case the egoism has a basis of broader love. And since we act according to our conception of things, the question of our responsibility is the question of our full possession of consciousness. The necessity of nature must take away our desert, as far as a future life and its reward are concerned; but from the standpoint of a being who desires happiness and attains to it through evolution, necessity gains a new aspect. Natural Selection is Natural Necessity.

Yet not in the understanding, as such, but in the reason, is the reconciliation of the same with will. Reason in the narrower sense is a higher development of the understanding, constitutes its completion and perfection, and presupposes a high degree of culture; though in a wider sense, as the half-unconscious modification of the impulses by adjustment to the needs of the species, it develops early in man. By it alone man becomes man in the full sense of the word. The activity of the mere understanding is an analytical, that of the reason a synthetical one, the return of cold consciousness to warm feeling, of abstract mind to concrete nature. Truth lies, for the reason, in Totality; hence, to it, the General alone is comprehensible. It has to do, not with abstract concepts, to which nothing in the realms of the mental or physical corresponds, but with concepts of species, concrete concepts, which we call, in distinction from abstract concepts, ideas. By ideas is not meant existences in the Platonic sense, but the Typical in species.