Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

“For example, we take the axioms of arithmetic and geometry, and we find that we have distinct consciousness that they are Necessary truths. We cannot conceive them altered any where or at any time. The sciences which are deduced from these and from similar axioms are then, Exact sciences.

“Again: we take the ultimate facts of geology and anatomy, and we find that we have distinct consciousness that they are Contingent truths. We can readily suppose them other than we find them. The sciences, then, which are induced from these and similar facts are not Exact sciences.

“If, then, morals can be shown to bear this test equally with mathematics,—if there be any fundamental truths of morals holding in our minds the status of those axioms of geometry and arithmetic of whose Necessity we are conscious, then these fundamental truths of morals are entitled to be made the basis of an Exact science the subsequent theorems of which must all be deduced from them.—(P. 76.)...

“Men like Hume traverse the history of our race, to collect all the piteous instances of aberrations which have resulted from neglect or imperfect study of the moral consciousness; and then they cry, ‘Behold what it teaches!’ Yet I suppose that it will be admitted that Man is an animal capable of knowing geometry; though, if we were to go up and down the world, asking rich and poor, Englishman and Esquimaux, what are the ratios of solidity and superficies of a sphere, a right cylinder and an equilateral cone circumscribed about it, there are sundry chances that we should hear of other ratios besides the sesquialterate.

“He who should argue that, because people ignorant of geometry did not know the sesquialterate ratio of the sphere, cylinder and cone, therefore no man could know it, or that because they disputed it, that therefore it was uncertain, would argue no more absurdly than he who urges the divergencies of half civilised and barbarian nations as a reason why no man could know, or know with certainty, the higher propositions of morals.”

After analysing the Utilitarian and other theories which derive Morality from Contingent truths, I conclude that “the truths of Morals are Necessary Truths. The origin of our knowledge of them is Intuitive, and their proper treatment is Deductive.”

The third Chapter treats of the proposition, “That the Moral Law can be obeyed,” and discusses the doctrine of Kant, that the true self of Man, the Homo Noumenon, is free, self-legislative of Law fit for Law Universal; while as the Homo Phenomenon, an inhabitant of the world of sense, he is a mere link in the chain of causes and effects, and his actions are locked up in mechanic laws which, had he no other rank, would ensue exactly according to the physical impulses given by the instincts and solicitations in the sensory. But as an inhabitant (also) of the supersensitive world his position is among the causalities which taking their rise therein, are the intimate ground of phenomena. The discussion in this chapter on the above proposition cannot be condensed into any space admissible here.

The fourth Chapter seeks to determine Why the Moral Law should be Obeyed. It begins thus:—

“In the last Chapter (Chapter III.) I endeavoured to demonstrate that the pure Will, the true self of man, is by nature righteous; self-legislative of the only Universal Law, viz., the Moral; and that by this spontaneous autonomy would all his actions be squared, were it not for his lower nature, which is by its constitution unmoral, neither righteous nor unrighteous, but capable only of determining its choice by its instinctive propensities and the gratifications offered to them. Thus these two are contrary one to another, ‘and the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit.’ In the valour of the higher nature acquired by its victory over the lower, in the virtue of the tried and conquering soul, we look for the glorious end of creation, the sublime result contemplated by Infinite Benevolence in calling man into existence and fitting him with the complicated nature capable of developing that Virtue which alone can be the crown of finite intelligences. The great practical problem of human life is this: ‘How is the Moral Will to gain the victory over the unmoral instincts, the Homo Noumenon over the Homo Phenomenon, Michael over the Evil One, Mithras over Hyle?’”

In pursuing this enquiry of how the Moral Will is to be rendered victorious, I am led back to the question: Is Happiness “our end and aim?” What relation does it bear to Morality as a motive?