On Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics

by Malcolm Guthrie

It is difficult to imagine under a system of evolution, even if an universal subjective factor be admitted, the operation of a teleological activity as ordinarily understood. Nevertheless, we find a teleological faculty evolved in man. And even if we accept Mr. Matthew Arnold's description, the question arises, Has the eternal power a conscious intention of making towards righteousness from the first or from any time? Or is it implicit in the original relations of the subjective to the chemical and physical that it makes through Biology towards righteousness—is righteousness merely another expression for a completed biological law involved in the original relations of atoms with an omnipresent subjective and relative factor?

And again, what, scientifically viewed, is our personal relation to that inscrutable power which makes for righteousness? Here comes in the ethical problem as affected by the religious, and both as affected by our views of evolution. Professor Fiske says of the propositions recognised by all religions "that men ought to do certain things and ought to refrain from doing certain other things; and that the reason why some things are wrong to do and other things are right to do, is in some mysterious but very real way connected with the existence and nature of this divine Power."

The fact that personal responsibility to the inscrutable Power belongs to the essence of all religions is one thing, and the establishment of it as a scientific truth is another. The fact of its existence and of its universality is a presumption in its favour, but is not more than a presumption. What has science to say to it? With this point Professor Fiske next deals. He says that science, after all its searchings, finds, in its ultimate enquiries, not only inexplicable laws whose effects it can calculate though the laws themselves remain unexplained, but also long processes which are not explicable by the known laws, and which will probably remain for ever inexplicable. If he does not say so in those words, we presume that must be what he means: for if he only means that all cosmical histories are explicable by known laws, these laws being themselves inexplicable, the inscrutable or Divine Power is only antecedent to cosmical histories, and is not present in them, nor does it affect the future. Nevertheless, what Professor Fiske has to say of the results of scientific enquiry does not amount to much. "The doctrine of evolution asserts, as the widest and deepest truth which the study of nature can disclose to us, that there exists a power to which no limit in time or space is conceivable, and that all the phenomena of the universe, whether they be what we call material or what we call spiritual phenomena, are manifestations of this infinite and eternal Power."

But this scientific truth does not in its mere enunciation bear upon the question as to our ethical relationship to the Unknown Power. It is only when we study its spiritual or subjective manifestation as an orderly development that we can recognise a power to which we owe a moral obligation. The scientific evidence of moral obligation to the inscrutable power rests, not upon the recognition of the power of which the cosmos is a manifestation, nor upon the fact of its inscrutability, but upon the knowledge of the subjective factor, its manifested history, and the inductions to be drawn from a study of that history in the laws of the working of altruistic sympathy, of quantitative life, and of the harmony of life as already set forth. Professor Fiske's conclusion is a good statement of this scientific establishment of personal responsibility to the divine power, and of religion as the crown and sanction of Ethics.

"Now, science began to return a decisively affirmative answer to such questions as these when it began, with Mr. Spencer, to explain moral beliefs and moral sentiments as products of evolution. For clearly, when you say of a moral belief or a moral sentiment that it is a product of evolution, you imply that it is something which the universe through untold ages has been labouring to bring forth, and you ascribe to it a value proportionate to the enormous effort that it has cost to produce it. Still more, when with Mr. Spencer we study the principles of right living as part and parcel of the whole doctrine of the development of life upon the earth; when we see that, in an ultimate analysis, that is right which tends to enhance fulness of life, and that is wrong which tends to detract from fulness of life—we then see that the distinction between right and wrong is rooted in the deepest foundations of the universe; we see that the very same forces, subtle, exquisite, and profound, which brought upon the scene the primal germs of life and caused them to unfold, which through countless ages of struggle and death have cherished the life that could live more perfectly, and destroyed the life that could only live less perfectly, and humanity, with all its hopes, and fears, and aspirations, has come into being as the crown of all this stupendous work—we see that these very same subtle and exquisite forces have wrought into the very fibres of the universe those principles of right living which it is man's highest function to put into practice. The theoretical sanction thus given to right living is incomparably the most powerful that has ever been assigned in any philosophy of Ethics. Human responsibility is made more strict and solemn than ever, when the eternal power that lives in every event of the universe is thus seen to be in the deepest possible sense the author of the moral law that should guide our lives, and in obedience to which lies our only guarantee of the happiness which is incorruptible—which neither inevitable misfortune nor unmerited obloquy can ever take away."

This appears to us the best statement yet made of the logical results of the enquiry into Evolution when pursued to its furthest point. Some enquirers halt at the materialistic point, but an irresistible logic leads the honest and open-minded enquirer beyond this stage of thought, and he finds in the recognition of the existence of the subjective, and in the history of its development, a law of spiritual life. He finds a law of relation in subjective individuals which induces the establishment of a quantitative life in the increase of the number of correspondences with the external world both in Time and Space, and, which induces also the establishment of altruistic feeling—a feeling that expands to a greater or less comprehension of the great life of the subjective throughout the cosmical history; and in this recognition he finds also a sense of personal responsibility towards a Power which demands from him a surrender, so that he shall work towards its great ideal, and find his happiness therein. What more there may be in natural religion is beyond the scope of our present volume, though we hope at same future time to treat of this important subject. Our present view is limited to the consideration of Ethics, and how that science is affected by the recent large generalisations of Biological history. Certain definite conclusions of a religious character have come forward as the result of our studies, and since these have an ethical import, it is necessary to refer to them in this place.

Nevertheless the study of Evolution assists Ethics, although it can bring no argument to bear upon those who possess little moral aspiration, and can add nothing to the forcefulness of social pressure. Its point d'appui is in the existence in most men of the moral aspirations. Through them it will work upon individuals of their environment, and upon the teachers and legislators who form and guide society. To them is disclosed the fact that their aspirations coincide with the tendencies of nature. They find that they are going with the stream, are in fact part of the historic stream itself. They recognise in society three movements. The first is the growth of altruism or sympathy. The second is the enlargement of quantititive life. The third is the approach towards a harmony or equilibration of life. The recognition of these truths imparts a deeper faith in moral progress, and gives a greater breadth of view, and a more intelligent and charitable interpretation of human action. Philosophers, teachers, and statesmen, understanding the movements of society from age to age, and discerning the goal to which it inevitably works, can read more intelligently its primary phases, and assist more skilfully in its onward movement. The more extended recognition of the social aim throughout society will guide and increase social pressure in a corresponding direction, not only in the proper application of social rewards and penalties, but in the ethical inculcations, and eventually in the hereditarily established intrinsic motives.

Nor will prophets, the ripest fruit of evolution, be wanting in the future. Ages produce not only the working results but the religious voices. There are always men who give utterance to the thought and to the aspirations of their time. Standing in the fore-front of the advancing race, they face the mysterious darkness of the future illumined but by the lights drawn from the Power working through the subjective history.

FOOTNOTE:

[15] "Evolution and Religion," by John Fiske, M.A., LL.B. London: J. C. Foulger, The Modern Press, 1882. Price Twopence.