Natural Selection does not prefer the individual as far as morals are concerned, but only nations. Moral rules are variable, but not steadily progressive. Man is by nature selfish; simply habit tames men and makes them, by change in nerves and muscle, more amenable to rule.
The good man is probably worse off than the bad man. Pain exceeds pleasure in all beings. Everything, love included, becomes worthless when attained, and labor begins again for new attainment. Man is, moreover, the most unhappy of all beings, for he feels most strongly, and in his complicated organism there is almost always something out of order. For this reason, sympathy[86] brings more pain than pleasure. The bad man has only pangs of conscience to disturb him, and, if he is superstitious, the fear of punishment after death. It is difficult to say whether the bad man or the good man is happier. In fact, happiness depends rather on temperament, power of self-control, and health. Possibly these truths may seem harmful; and if the good man is higher than the bad man, and goodness should be sought, only so much of the truth should be revealed as is not antagonistic to this end. But the good man is not the higher, although, because goodness is useful, our education has attempted to make us believe this. The animals may be unselfish as well as man; on the other hand, the disinterested search for truth is not found among the animals. The attainment of truth is, moreover, pleasurable to the searcher, turning painful desire for truth to pleasurable fulfilment.
Dr. Ree's later book, "The Origin of Conscience" ("Die Entstehung des Gewissens," 1885), does not add anything distinctly new in theory to this first book; it is rather noticeable for what it omits of the pessimism of the earlier book, for a more moderate, thoughtful, and less assertive tone, than for additional theories or even much further elaboration of the old theories, except as regards the derivation of the Sense of Justice. It traces the savage custom of the revenge of death through its displacement by the payment of blood-money, up to the final substitution of state punishment. Punishment does not grow out of revenge, but succeeds it. It is not revenge, though the desire that the guilty may be punished and the desire for revenge may be mixed, in some cases. Pain, not the Sense of Justice, drives the savage to revenge. Punishment does not grow out of the Sense of Justice, but the latter out of the former. The interference of the state with the revenge of the individual is at first a mediation between the two parties for the maintenance of peace in the interest of the community; later, the state arrives at a method of punishment for the purpose of prevention.
Hume's theory of the origin of religion has been confirmed by Anthropology. The savage sees in natural phenomena the action of living beings endowed with mental faculties like his own, and he gradually comes to transfer this action to beings not in, but, according to his new idea, behind, phenomena. The gods of primitive religions are moral only as the peoples whose gods they are, are moral. As society progresses, religion falls behind, and a new interpretation of old doctrines must be introduced in order to bring it up to the later standard. Then the gods, as moral with the morality of this later date, are imagined as commanding the later standard, and to the fear of punishment by the state is added, as a preventive force, that of the punishment of the gods. The gods command what men command, forbid what men forbid. The God of the Old Testament, Jahveh, was, like Zeus, a nature-god, and took revenge as men did. When a later date demanded a standard of greater humanity, Christ came, and he represented the God of the Old Testament, no longer as revengeful and passionate, but as possessing the attributes of sympathy which he felt in himself. The later standard of the New Testament takes into consideration motives as well as deeds, and commands positively as well as forbids. But the God of the New Testament is not wholly love; if his love is unreturned, he becomes angry, like men.
The Categoric Imperative in the individual is merely the result of his individual education. Conscience alone accomplishes little; other motives than the desire to do right—fear of punishment, etc.—are stronger. Nothing is, in itself, good or bad, but only so far as it is useful or harmful.
Sympathy is to some degree innate,—how it arose we cannot say; but it has been preserved by natural selection.
FOOTNOTES:
[83] P. 46.
[84] P. 78.
[85] See, in contradistinction to Ree's theory of vanity, Sigwart's admirable essay on this subject, contained in his "Kleine Schriften."