Conscience & Fanaticism: An Essay on Moral Values

by George Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers

It is not sufficiently realized that many so-called geniuses, imaginative, histrionic and poetical, can never deserve the highest place, for they are the sounding-boards of the world; their superlative quality is receptivity; they are instruments, not players; they voice the great masses, and they share with publicists and politicians a desire to be incriminated in the movement of their surroundings. Wieninger, in his "Sex and Character," emphasizes the dependence of publicists and tribunes of the people upon the masses they would lead. The politician, like the prostitute, has to court the populace; she is a woman of the streets—he is a man of the streets. For this reason he denies to the great politician and the man of action the quality of true greatness. "The man of action shares with the epileptic the desire to be in criminal relation to everything around him, to make them appanages of his petty self. The great man feels himself defined and separate from the world, a nomad amongst nomads, and as a true microcosm he feels the world already within him."

The really great men, the Kants, the Descartes, Leibnizs or Spencers, and the greatest artists are wholly creative, purposive, dynamic; they owe no allegiance to the masses, for they are greater than the masses; they realize all without reflecting all; they seek nourishment where they will, and they spew out what they will; this perfect freedom is necessary for the attainment of truth. Truthfulness is a necessary attribute of genius, but not of statecraft or government, or of poetical effusions of the imagination.

While we are dealing with the subject of instincts it may not seem out of place to refer to the widely held belief that maternal impressions during pregnancy have a direct influence on the temperament of the child, and are often responsible for inducing definite tendencies of aversion and attraction and even physical resemblances. Although such acquired tendencies, admitting their existence, cannot strictly be classed with the instincts or tendencies inherited from former generations, since they are acquired after the inception of, and by, the new individual; yet they have a resemblance in that they are both pre-natal acquirements, and are manifested in the same way. Writers on heredity and biology are apt to dismiss the subject as unworthy of serious consideration, and to account for any instances of the sort attributed to this cause as based on pure coincidence. It is, however, significant that the great majority of mothers who have given the matter any thought are, as a rule, firmly convinced of the reality of pre-natal influences. When the principles of suggestion are applied to the case, it will be seen that the conditions of pre-natal existence are favourable for the reception by an unborn child of strong telepathic suggestions from its mother. The embryo mind is entirely receptive; any violent psychic disturbance in the mother must react upon the child. Most people know of some instance which points to the "impression" theory, and which it would be impossible to account for in any other way.

There appear to be no reasonable grounds for denying that maternal impressions may sometimes be held accountable for temperamental tendencies, not easily attributable to heredity, although it would, of course, be absurd to attempt to account for all abnormalities in the same way. The naturally greater receptivity and suggestibility of women, shown by their quick response to emotional suggestion, their credulousness, and the fact that women are the best mediums,[68] becomes very much more marked during pregnancy. At such times some women, normally distinguished by their vigour and initiative, become conspicuously impressionable; they become, in fact, ready "conductors" of suggestion. It follows that the influences that bear strongest upon them also bear upon the child.

Greater importance should not be attached to the psychic environment of a child than to its inherent hereditary qualities, which irrevocably determine its native tendencies and the limits of its ultimate possibilities. Environment may modify or enhance a child's inherent characteristics in an infinite variety of ways, but cannot nullify them or transcend by one iota the limit of its potential development.

In a previous chapter we discussed the view of those who regard moral judgment as an emotion or intuition of the "good" and the "right," and who find justification for our rules of conduct by referring them to the Divine Will, which is supposed to inspire them by means of the "moral organ" or conscience. We believe that a correct appreciation of psychology makes it abundantly clear that although there are many impulsive, instinctive and emotional factors totally unconnected with any rational or intellectual process which do, indeed, affect our moral judgments and give rise to ethical conventions, these factors can give no validity to moral codes; and that, stripped of the sentiments and emotions with which they are obscured, moral systems must be judged by principles of utility, while they are enforceable according to the universality with which they are desired. It is, moreover, equally absurd to look upon moral values as ultimate and irreducible categories of good and evil, irrevocably codified by an omniscient Deity for the conduct of humanity for all time, and supposedly accessible to the intelligence of all who consult their conscience. This latter position, which is maintained by Theistic "Rationalists," leads to precisely the same "conclusion" as the arguments of the "Intuitionalists," the only difference between them being that the conscience of the "Rationalists" is a thinking and intellectual organ, while the conscience of the Intuitionalists is an emotional and instinctive organ. But this amicable convergence is not accidental but a sine qua non, since in either case the object aimed at is identically the same, that object being the establishment of conscience, dependent on morality, on a pinnacle of ethical omniscience and infallibility, where its authority shall be unquestionable and absolute. They may well be left to their quarrel, which in reality amounts to little more than verbal quibbling.

Instinct, as we have seen, must inevitably play a very large part in the evolution of public morality and the moral impulse of every individual. Careful statistics have shown that criminal tendencies make their appearance with unfailing persistency in selected degenerate families. The genealogical record of one family may show a murderer in every generation; pauperism, prostitution and drunkenness are characteristics of another, and so on. Heredity will primarily determine a man's inherent characteristics—his instincts, temperament, disposition and, eo facto, his "conscience." Other factors, above all his immediate psychic environment, may, indeed, modify these tendencies for better or worse, but under the most favourable conditions Cosmic Suggestion, in its aspect of "public conscience," can never altogether supplant strong inherent tendencies. Those who believe in the conscience myth sometimes object that the voice of conscience always calls in the right direction, but that a man may, throughout a long life of crime, stifle and inhibit that "still small voice," yet in the end (perhaps when faced with the extreme penalty of the law) the wretched sinner will exhibit the symptoms of the most genuine and heartfelt remorse and express the greatest horror of his evil deeds. This type of explanation shows a total failure to interpret psychological processes. It may, indeed, be a common occurrence for a condemned criminal, brought suddenly face to face with the prospect of plenary punishment, to experience real sorrow and shame at his conduct. The emotion will probably be perfectly genuine. The prisoner, with little hope of enjoying the fruits of his felony and removed from the direct counter-influence of a criminal environment, will be in the best possible frame of mind to respond to the right cosmic suggestion—universal horror and detestation of his deed. Such a suggestion, reacting upon the instinct of self-preservation, will readily kindle emotions of remorse, self-horror and sorrow. Penitence need have nothing to do with any true ethical appreciation of the action of which it is supposed to be the object. Many cases have been recorded of miserable old women accused of witchcraft, who, learning for the first time at their trial of the crimes they were supposed to have committed, have become convinced of their guilt, and suffering the keenest pangs of remorse have died with penitence and resignation.

Fear is the chief element of remorse: fear of our fellow-men, vague fears for the future, or in the most literal sense the fear of Divine retribution or God. Racine dramatizes this emotion in the famous confession of Athalie: filled with dread at the words of warning uttered by the ghost of her mother Jezebel, she recalls her vision:

Tremble, m'a-t-elle dit,

fille digne de moi;