[CHAPTER X.]
THE OBJECTS OF MORAL JUDGMENT.
A full view of the ethical reality and its meaning for us requires yet an examination into the question: Of what may we justly affirm moral quality? Where does the conscience apply the distinctions of right and wrong? What are properly the objects, and the only objects, of moral approval or condemnation? Or, to put it in a way possibly more easily understood, to what human activities or features of life does moral quality belong?
It has already been noted in general that only personal beings can be moral agents or become, in what they are and do, objects of moral judgment. Apart from personality, no place for virtue or vice can be found. Of things, whether natural products or products of human industry, as rock or star or stream, or ship or watch or engine, we cannot predicate moral character. We may speak of them as beautiful, useful, or perfect, or as ugly, useless, or faulty, but all distinctly ethical terms are inapplicable to them. The moral approbation or condemnation which we feel for the temper, words, and actions of men is felt toward them as personal phenomena. Detached from personality they would no more be subjects of praise or blame than the temperature of the sea, the noise of the wind, or the down-pour of rain Moral character belongs to them only as the characteristics and manifestations of the self-conscious and self-directed life of a moral agent. To the question what activities of a moral agent may have ethical quality, it ought to be sufficient to say that it belongs to all his conscious and self-directed conduct. Obligation claims sway over the whole personality. But for clearness and definiteness, it is necessary to specify.
Personal Actions.
1. The action itself, in its external form, may be right or wrong, as in conformity to moral relations or incongruous with them. It may be either the deed that is due to the relations and a fulfilment of the duty they call for, or it may be one that clashes with their rational and actual requirement. It may be in itself just the action in which conduct is rightly adjusted to the actual relations—an act that ought to appear in them. Or it may be in itself an action whose very form contradicts the moral demand of the relations, and which ought not to be done, no matter how good a motive may prompt the deed. For example, the motive to use them in a worthy charity could never justify a theft of goods or money, nor could filial care of a helpless parent be in itself wrong, even should a bad motive inspire it. Moral law repudiates the first deed; it condemns the wrong motive in the second, but declares the material of the deed itself to be right and good.
We must here distinguish between the moral character of the doer and of the deed. The quality of right and wrong belongs to the action; guilt or innocence belongs to the person. This is the basis of the well known fact that in some cases the doer of a wrong act may nevertheless be held as innocent and even virtuous in it. He may have honestly meant to do right, and acted from praiseworthy motives, but from not understanding correctly or fully the situation, may have done what has violated the moral call of the relations. The action may be condemned, while he himself may be acquitted of guilt. The full ethical demand, however, requires such a use of all our faculties of knowledge and behavior, as not only to maintain a good intention, but to keep our outward conduct in harmony with objective righteousness.
Many writers have shown a disposition to deny moral quality to the external action. Locating it all in the inner sentiment or intention, their analysis separates the visible part from its source, and holds up to view the action, so separated, as mere physical motion, characterizable as useful and expedient or the contrary, but neither moral nor immoral. Independently of its motive it is resolved into mere natural movement, as non-ethical as a muscular spasm, sleepwalking, the dashing of a wave, or the biting of frost. But this is as misleading as it is plausible. The error becomes clear by the following considerations:
(1) The supposed separation of the deed from the inward intention falsifies the actual facts in the case. The essential element in the problem is that we are contemplating, not physical movement only, like spasms or waves, but personal deeds, as acts of moral agents. Of course, moral quality does not attach to the action of non-moral beings, as the striking of clocks or the barking of dogs, but to deeds of self-directing personality. Let it be freely admitted that the inner sentiment does give quality to conduct. The obligation to the conduct that shall fulfil duty attaches to the personal agent; the innocence or guilt also belongs to him. But there is obligation upon him with respect to conduct only because conduct, in its external forms as well as inward springs, forms the total material of morality. There could be no responsibility for conduct if no moral quality belonged to actions. To separate—after the manner referred to—the action from the personal moral agent and think of it as physical motion only, makes it no longer the action about whose character we are inquiring.
(2) We must bear in mind several just distinctions in the application of the term right. Along with duty, obligation, merit, innocence, or guilt, it may be affirmed of the moral agent. We may say, "he is right," in doing so or so. We may speak of the inner sentiment as right or wrong. So we may of the external action. For the true and full extent of moral quality, we must make it cover the agent himself, and both the inner and outer sides of his personal conduct. Conduct has an internal and an external part. The motive is only one part. An action is relatively right, with respect to the agent, when he has the right will in right motive; it is absolutely right only when it is also shaped into accordance with the relations so as to realize the moral demand upon the person. The distinction, often made, between formal right and material right, throws the point into clear light. It is well stated by Prof. Bowne: "The former depends upon the attitude of the agent's will toward his ideal of right, the latter depends on the harmony of the act with the laws of reality and its resulting tendency to produce and promote well-being. Conduct which is formally right may be materially wrong; and conduct which is materially right may be formally wrong; but no conduct can be even formally right when the agent does not aim to be materially right. The ideal of conduct demands both formal and material rightness, and as long as either is lacking the outcome is imperfect.... If one does 'the best he knows,' it is often said nothing more can be demanded of him. And yet it is plain that this formal righteousness is altogether insufficient for the person's well-being. The reason is that the law of well-being is independent of our will. If we misconceive that law and act accordingly, we may be formally right, but because of the misconception we should be materially wrong. It is, then, by no means sufficient that one be formally right, that is, true to his convictions of duty; he must also be materially right, that is, in harmony with reality and its laws. Formal rightness, of course, is ethically the more important, as it involves the good will; but material rightness is only less important, as without it our action is out of harmony with the universe."[62]
(3) The moral consciousness, when unperverted by speculative theory, does in fact judge the actions of men. It steadily holds them as essentially right or wrong, over and above all question as to the motives for them. It is found perpetually condemning even well-meant deeds as traversing duty and righteousness, hardly able to excuse the blundering ignorance to which they are due. This feeling of reprobation is genuine, normal, and wholesome. On the other hand the overthrow of this feeling and the adoption of the claim of a non-ethical character for actions, tends directly and strongly to consequences which witness against the validity of the claim. The demoralizing effect has often been illustrated. The resolving of duty into a mere matter of good intentions has led off into ways and forms of behavior shocking to enlightened consciences. It has made quite plausible the illusion that "the end sanctifies the means," and in the name of religion has stretched men on the rack and lighted the faggots at the stake. Under a fancy that purity is simply a thing of the heart, men have been known to excuse not a little sensualism of life. While ethics must lay stress on the inner good-will, it must also look after the harmony of the outward acts with the law of right relations. No amount of good motive can make blasphemy or murder right or virtuous.