In the course of life, men are disposed to attribute bad motives to their opponents. Such an attitude makes criticism easier and panders to the common wish to speak evil of one’s neighbours. Notwithstanding the numerous precedents for such an attitude amongst politicians and journalists, it must be discarded from any serious study of morality.
The motives and the conscience are elusive elements of little use in any attempt to value human conduct. We have to fall back on the consequences of action. Now it is easy to show that the social instinct often leads to action which is not good. It frequently happens that men, acting with the highest and best intentions, do much harm. Schopenhauer long ago pointed out that morality based on sentiment is a mere caricature of real morality. Impelled by the altruistic wish to do good, men often lavish unreflecting charity and do harm to others and to themselves. In Timon of Athens Shakespeare depicted
A most incomparable man; breathed, as it were,
To an untirable and continuate goodness,
and who gave away to the right and the left, creating around him a cloud of parasites. He finally ruined himself and became a hopeless misanthrope. Shakespeare put his verdict in the mouth of Flavius:—
Undone by goodness. Strange, unusual blood,
When man’s worst sin is, he does too much good.
Morality, founded purely on sentiment, has inspired the attacks on vivisectors which in all confidence spread evil amongst men.
It is a surprising result of the great complexity of human affairs, that society is sometimes better served by wicked acts than by acts inspired by the most generous feelings. Thus extremely rigorous measures of repression are often more successful than the half-measures employed by humane and charitable administrators.