Morals and the Evolution of Man

by Max Simon Nordau

This primitive man of the golden geological period before the Ice Age knew no Morality, and as far as human intelligence can tell he would never have known of it had there been a continuance of the paradisaic conditions obtaining at the time of his birth, and had the climate not deteriorated. The occurrence of murderous frosts, the necessity of seeking protection from them in natural caves or artificially constructed shelters, and of kindling and maintaining fires, the diminution or disappearance of vegetable food, and the need to replace it by the booty of the chase or fishing—all these forced him to unite his efforts with those of other men who shared his wretched lot on earth. But in order to maintain this community with others he had to learn a new science, one he had hitherto not known because he had had no need of it: consideration for his fellows. He might no longer think of himself alone, consider his own inclinations in all eventualities, give way to all his moods or yield to every whim; he had unceasingly to bear his neighbour in mind and take care not to annoy him, not to make an enemy of him, not to become hateful to him. Forbearance towards his neighbour was the necessary condition of their life in common, just as their life in common was the necessary condition of self-preservation. The penalty for selfish indulgence was stern persecution, punishment, perhaps death; in any case, expulsion from the community. Man, therefore, stood before the choice of self-control or destruction, and this dilemma taught him Morality.

Such, we must imagine, were the beginnings of Morality. It was not prearranged or purposely sought; it grew naturally from the companionship of men and developed simultaneously with society. If the struggle for existence made life in communities a necessity, the first coercive law of the community was to enjoin upon its members a mode of conduct which alone rendered the existence of the community possible, and the fundamental rule of this conduct was mutual consideration. Without this two egoisms cannot exist side by side and develop. They either destroy or shun one another. This phenomenon may also be observed among the higher animals. Elephants, living in herds, expel quarrelsome individuals and force them to wander alone far from the rest. The natives of Ceylon and India fear these "bachelor elephants" as being specially savage and malicious. They think that they grow like this because of their loneliness. That is probably a false conclusion. It is much more likely that these animals have been driven from their herd because they were savage and malicious, because their characters were opposed to discipline. Here we come upon the first faint foreshadowing of the phenomenon of Morality in an animal community.

Now that we have introduced the idea of the growth and development of Morality, it becomes obvious that it must have begun with mere indications, and that from rude, dim, undeveloped beginnings it gradually grows more perfect, more refined, more nicely differentiated. At first man avoids only the most brutal injuries to his neighbour, such as hurting him, doing him bodily harm, threatening to kill him, openly robbing him. In proportion as he becomes more spiritually sensitive, as he learns to feel the insult and humiliation of injuries other than those inflicted with a fist or club, he is led to refrain from giving his fellow-men similar offence, which though it deals no gaping wounds, yet hurts his spiritual sensibilities. A series of values is developed, growing ever longer, ever more complicated, with more and more gradations, until, going far beyond the simple, artless commandments, "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife nor his goods," it reaches the pitch of agonized self-reproach, because of the slightest and most secret impulses to dislike, injustice, covetousness, dissimulation, etc.

Morality must be regarded as a support and a weapon in the struggle for existence in so far as, given present climatic conditions on earth and the civilization arising therefrom, man can only exist in societies, and society cannot exist without Morality. The chain of thought runs as follows: without morality no society, without society no individual existence; consequently, Morality is the essential condition for the existence of the individual as well as for that of the community. However, we must always bear in mind the reservation, "given the present climatic conditions on earth." Had the earth continued to be the paradise it must have been at the birth of our species (since otherwise the latter could simply not have originated), the necessity would never have arisen for the individual to band himself together with others of his kind, no society would ever have developed, and there would have been no Morality. Serious as the subject is, one cannot but smile at the thought of the comic figure the learned, professorial Neo-Kantians would cut with their dogma of the absolute and cosmic nature of Morality, if they propounded it among men whose wants Nature's bounty was able to satisfy as easily as the frog is satisfied in his puddle or the crow on his tree top. They would find no trace of absolute Morality among mankind, and would be reduced to seeking it among the stars.

The very nature of Morality, in that it is an aid to man in the struggle for existence, makes it easy to understand the origin and nature of the concepts Good and Bad. There are propensities and actions which facilitate life in a community which, indeed, alone make it possible: love of one's neighbour, helpfulness, liberality, consideration for the feelings of others, and amiability. There are others which make such a life difficult or absolutely impossible: uncompromising selfishness, violence, cruelty, rapacity, instinctive hostility to one's neighbour. Men recognized that the former were beneficial to them, the latter harmful. The former aroused their liking, the latter their disapproval, dislike and animosity. The quality of feeling which accompanied the perceptions of actions of the former kind was akin to that with which they responded to beneficial, profitable, useful and welcome sense impressions. The quality of feeling, which actions of the second category gave rise to, was akin to that due to harmful and repellent sense impressions. Following the law of analogy, they placed on an equal footing actions which were felt to be pleasing and pleasant sensations of taste and smell; similarly with disagreeable actions and unpleasant sense impressions; and finally they called the former good and the latter bad, using terms originally applicable only to the realm of the senses.

Not everything that is pleasant to the senses is beneficial. There are poisons which are pleasing to taste, but none the less noxious for that, such as (to give only one example) alcoholic drinks and impressions of a certain order, like voluptuousness, which man greedily pursues, even though they ruin his health. But these are exceptions. As a rule, not only man, but all living creatures, derive pleasant sensations from beneficial things; and it is probable that that category of sensations, which we are conscious of as being pleasant, is nothing but the state of cœnesthesis, when the organism functions particularly energetically under the influence of the absorption of food or of a special stimulus of the senses, when it feels its life processes carried on particularly vigorously, freely and harmoniously; just as we feel that state of cœnesthesis to be unpleasant, which occurs when the organism functions badly, slackly, and in a manner calculated to endanger the continuance of life. With the reservation that has been indicated we can say in general that Good is equivalent to beneficial and pleasant, Bad to harmful and unpleasant. This is true of the transferred and spiritualized as well as of the immediate and material meaning of these expressions of value. The significance of the words Good and Bad, the point of departure, development and change of conception they indicate, suffice to justify the Utilitarians and the Hedonists or Eudæmonists among the moral philosophers, and to confute the contentions of their critics, who deny all connexion between Morality and a practical purpose, profit or pleasure, and declare these to be unworthy humiliations of its majesty.

They wriggle, with the agility of a contortionist on the music-hall stage, to get over the obvious and palpable aim of moral conduct. They display all the cunning of dishonest sophistry in their arguments to prove that the element of subjective satisfaction which moral action yields is non-existent, and that, therefore, the Hedonists and Eudæmonists are wrong. They stir up an opaque cloud of words, phrases and formulæ to hide the fact, which nevertheless emerges clearly, that he who acts morally expects to derive pleasurable emotions from his action, or at least tries thereby to avoid probable painful emotions, and that moral conduct, just as it is designed to give the individual subjective satisfaction which is a kind of pleasure, is also meant to be a benefit, or at any rate a supposed benefit, to the community.

Morality must never try for a reward and never expect one. It must be absolutely disinterested. It has no business to pursue any aim outside itself. Thus say the mystics of moral philosophy, juggling with words; and they think they are doing especial honour to Morality and raising it to a particularly proud eminence. But Morality has no need of this artificial and false grandeur to maintain its lofty place among the phenomena of life, and it is derogatory neither to its authority nor to its influence to be recognized as a beneficial force conducive to happiness.

The opponents of Utilitarianism and Eudæmonism in Ethics, if they speak in good faith, may be excused on the grounds that their analysis of the phenomenon of Morality is shallow. For them Morality is something absolute, which exists by itself as an eternal and unalterable law of the Universe, but which is revealed in the individual and therefore must be conceived individually as a quality which has become human, as a human value. If anyone persists in looking upon Morality as an absolutely individual matter, without any connexion with anything outside the individual, if anyone obstinately shuts his eyes to the fact that Morality has not been developed by the individual out of his own immediate needs and in consideration of himself alone, but that it is, on the contrary, a creation of society and has no sense or significance except as a social phenomenon, then indeed he can with some show of justification deny Utilitarianism and Hedonism. For truly, looked at from the point of view of the individual, moral conduct appears neither pleasant nor immediately beneficial. On the contrary, it is, as a rule, directly opposed to his own apparent interest, and it is achieved with difficulty by sacrifice and renunciation, which are never pleasant and often very painful.

Once in a drawing-room, during a game of definitions, I heard a light-hearted young lady define Duty in the following terms: "Duty is that which we do unwillingly." A stern professor contradicted her at once with the solemnity he thought due to his position, and assured her reprovingly: "It is my duty to give lectures, and I do this duty gladly. If you were right, madam, expressions such as 'zealous in one's duty' and 'willing performance of duty' would have no meaning and could never have been coined." That seems convincing, but yet it is wrong. Expressions such as "zealous in one's duty" and "willing performance of duty" were not coined until society had developed its system of Morality and had educated its members to strive for its approval by conducting themselves in accordance with this system, to look on its approval as a flattering distinction and to fear its disapproval as a disgrace. Such phrases are Pharisaical, calculated to exercise a suggestive influence profitable to society. They are the sugar to sweeten the pill; but the young lady was honest and the professor conventional; the pill is bitter. Thinkers recognized and admitted this thousands of years ago. Antiphon, the sophist, says: "The law, the outcome of an agreement, coerces nature, the result of growth, and goes against the interest of the individual." The same idea is expressed by the tragic poet in the lines: "The gods have placed sweat before virtue." This was said in the very same words by Lao Tse, the disciple of Meng Tse, the pupil of Confucius and the reformer of his doctrine.