A Handbook of Ethical Theory

by George Stuart Fullerton

In Cicero, Nature becomes fairly garrulous to man on all matters of deportment: "Let us follow Nature, and refrain from whatever lacks the approval of eye and ear. Let attitude, gait, mode of sitting, posture at table, countenance, eyes, movement of the hands, preserve the becomingness of which I speak." [Footnote: De Officiis, i, 35, translated by Peabody,]

118. THE APPEAL TO NATURE AND INTUITIONISM.—The moralists who urge us to follow nature, whether human nature or Nature in a wider sense, we may, hence, regard as intuitionists of a sort. Those who emphasize human nature evidently depend upon their moral intuitions to give them information as to its characteristics. It is intuition that paints for them their pattern. They do not take man as they actually find him; they call for the suppression of some traits, and the exaggeration of others.

Nor are those who appeal to Nature in a wider sense less guided by moral intuitions. The appeal is never made without restrictions and limitations. No one dreams that the bird, the ant, the spider, the bee, can be regarded as satisfactory teachers of morals to human beings. Each may be occupied in putting in order its corner of the universe; but the order attained is not a human order, and there is in it much that is revolting to the moral judgments of mankind. Man must have a standard of his own. He listens to Nature only when she tells him what he already approves.

As a form of intuitionism the doctrine of following.. nature may be criticised in much the same way as other forms. One great merit it has. It calls attention to the fact that ethics is a discipline which has no significance abstracted from the nature of man. It appears absurd to say that man ought to do what it is not in man, under any conceivable circumstances, to do. And, like other forms of intuitionism, it has the merit of avoiding that short-circuiting which may easily prove seductive to the egoist or the utilitarian. He who accepts as his end either his own happiness or that of men generally may easily be induced to take short cuts to that end, and pay little attention to moral maxims as such. He may treat lightly that great system of rules and observances by which men are guided in their relations with one another, and which prevent human societies from relapsing into a chaos.

On the other hand, the follower of nature, like other intuitionists, may easily be thrown into perplexity by the fact that what seems to him natural, and, hence, right, may not be approved by other men. He cannot prove that he is right and they are wrong. He appears condemned to take refuge in subjective conviction, that is, in mere dogmatism.

II. PERFECTION

119. PERFECTION AND TYPE.—When we speak of a thing as more or less perfect, we commonly mean that it is more or less perfect in its kind. A good saw makes a poor razor; a good chair, a more than indifferent bed. A bee crushed by a blow, a bird with a broken wing, we regard as imperfect. But it scarcely occurs to us to ask ourselves whether the bee is more or less perfect than the bird, or the bird than the spider. Swift's Houyhnhnms at their best could not be either perfect horses or perfect men. They were creatures with a perfection of their own, and one appropriate to their hybrid nature.

To every creature its own perfection. This principle men seem to assume tacitly in their judgments. They set up a standard for each kind, and they conceive the individual to attain or to fall short, according to the degree of its approach to, or of its divergence from, the allotted standard.

If we take perfection in this sense—and we usually have no other sense in mind in our judgments of perfection—the doctrine that it is the whole duty of man to strive to attain to perfection is none other than the doctrine that it is his duty to follow nature, his proper nature as man. And any difficulties which may legitimately be urged upon the attention of the moralist who recommends the following of nature may with equal justice be urged upon the attention of him who exhorts us to aim at perfection.

Thus, if it is doubtful just what nature demands of us, it seems no less doubtful what obligations are laid upon us when we make perfection our goal. That goal cannot mean for each man simply the developing to the utmost of all the capacities which he possesses. There are men rich in the possibilities of sloth, of indifference to future good, of egoism, even of malignant feeling. Nor does the average man furnish the pattern of perfection. The perfectionist does not regard the average man as the embodiment of his ideal. He seeks to better him.