A Handbook of Ethical Theory

by George Stuart Fullerton

That, in striving to attain perfection, a man should remain a man, with essentially human characteristics, seems evident. But what sort of a man he should be is not as clear. Until we are in a position to give some reasoned account of what we mean by perfection as an ideal, and to show that it is a desirable goal for man, we appear to be setting up but a vague end for human endeavor, and to be assuming intuitively that it is a desirable end.

120. MORE AND LESS PERFECT TYPES.—So much for perfection as synonymous with the ideal human nature of which ancient and modern moralists have treated. It appears, however, possible to use the word "perfection" in a somewhat different sense.

Man is not merely man; he is a living being, and there are living beings of many orders. The plants, the simpler forms of animal life, the brutes which we recognize as standing nearer to us, and man may, from this point of view, be referred to the one series. Some members of this series we characterize as lower, and others we speak of as higher in the scale.

Now, such designations as higher and lower cannot be applied indiscriminately. There is little sense in the assertion that a bit of string is higher than a straight line, or a hat than a handkerchief. Some significant basis of comparison must be present. Things must be recognized as approximating to or diverging from an accepted standard in varying degrees.

Such a basis of comparison is present when some objects possess the same qualities in a more marked degree than do others. But this is not the only possible basis of comparison. We may assume that the possession of certain qualities marks a creature as higher, and that the creature which has them not, or has them imperfectly developed, thereby stamps itself as being of a lower order.

Something like this appears to determine our judgments when we assign to various creatures their place in the scale of living beings. We do not mean that the higher possess to a greater degree all the capacities possessed by the lower. Many things which the plant does man cannot do at all; and, among the animals, those which we recognize as higher may be lacking in many capacities present in a marked degree in the lower. In ranking one living creature as higher, and, thus, as more perfect, than another, we assume that the "nature" of the one, with its various capacities and lacks of capacity, is, on the whole, of more worth than the "nature" of another.

It might be maintained that, in his estimate of the worth of different kinds of beings man is influenced by his partiality for the distinctively human, rating creatures as lower or higher in proportion to their divergence from or approximation to his own type. Undoubtedly this plays a part in men's judgments. We are partial to ourselves. And yet judgments of perfection and imperfection cannot wholly be explained on this principle.

"I think we must admit without proof," writes Professor Janet, [Footnote: The Theory of Morals, Book I, chapter iii, English translation, New York, 1883, p. 48.] a brilliant apostle of the doctrine of perfection, "that things are good, even independently of the pleasure which they give us, in themselves and by themselves, because of their intrinsic excellence. If anyone were to demand that I should prove that thought is worth more than digestion, a tree more than a heap of stones, liberty than slavery, maternal love than luxury, I could only reply by asking him to demonstrate that the whole is greater than one of its parts. No sensible person denies that, in passing from the mineral kingdom to the vegetable kingdom, from this to the animal kingdom, from the animal to man, from the savage to the enlightened citizen of a free country, Nature has made a continual advance; that is to say, at each step has gained in excellence and perfection."

One is naturally impelled to ask from what point of view things so disparate as the mineral, the plant, the brute, man, thought and digestion, liberty and slavery, can be compared with one another at all, and referred to any sort of a series. What is, in its essence, this excellence or perfection of which we have more shining evidence as we go up in the scale? Janet identifies it with intensity of being, with activity. The greater the activity, the greater the perfection.

To the identification of perfection and activity we may hesitate to assent. It does not seem clear that there is greater activity manifested in a snail than in a burning house, in maternal love than in furious hate, in quiet thought than in passion. Yet it seems significant that judgments of worth do not appear out of place in comparing such things.