Morals and the Evolution of Man

by Max Simon Nordau

These men are the rulers, ministers who cling to office, high officials, party leaders and professional politicians who would like to become ministers, generals who seek to make themselves conspicuous, publicists who hope to derive personal profit by dint of bowing and scraping before the men in power, by flattering the stupidest and most despicable prejudices of the masses, or even by implanting such prejudices with persuasive talk and purposely leading them astray. These men are formed on the same model as all individuals of the species and are therefore full of human weaknesses, a prey to all human desires, moved by all human impulses. They are selfish, vain, the sport of likes and dislikes, of self-deception as to the value of their ideas, opinions and judgments, disputatious, arrogant, greedy of possessions, power and pleasure, spurred by the instinct to magnify and swell their personality and impose it upon others. And these men are to be liberated from the discipline of the moral law? They are to be superior to the moral law?

For whom, then, was the moral law created and developed if not for these men—whose actions, although they spring from the same motives and aspire to the same satisfaction of self as those of all other men, can be fraught with consequences incomparably more evil, because they make use of the state machine for their purposes. Through the force and momentum given by the machinery of the state these actions are boundlessly augmented, their range being indefinitely increased and their results multiplied a thousandfold. The simplest logic shows that these men within the state machine, rendered so specially dangerous by their terrible armament and weapons, far from being liberated from the coercion of moral law, ought to be subjected to it with extraordinary severity, a severity which should be greater than that which suffices for the average man, in proportion as their power to do harm is greater than that of the man in the street.

Now all this time, rather carelessly, or at any rate weakly, I am making a concession to the pious devotees of the religion of the state, by speaking of the state machine,—a dubious expression, coined to deceive by rousing superstitious ideas. The phrase is a picture, a rhetorical figure that one must be careful not to take literally. There is no state machine. There is only a relation of men to one another and to traditional habits, organized rules of command, obedience and equable conduct—habits into which the community of men has fallen in accordance with the law of least resistance, in order to promote their own interests, at least theoretically, without being forced to exert themselves continually to form new judgments, decisions and arrangements which the ever-shifting, ever-changing conditions of life render necessary.

Here again, behind the word, we find men, always only men. Just as those who command, from whose will all state action emanates, are men, so also the instruments by which they carry out their decisions are only metaphorically speaking, levers and wheels, parts of a machine of steel and iron; in reality they are officials, soldiers and policemen, they are judges and bailiffs; in short, they are men. And these men, who in all private relations with their fellow men are sternly required to submit to the dictates of Morality and the demands of the Law, are the same on whom other men, the leaders of the state, impose the duty of breaking all these precepts and laws; as ambassadors they must deny and dishonour the signatures to treaties; as leaders or paid servants of the press bureau they must systematically spread lies; as attorneys of the state they must persecute and maltreat those who tell the truth; as policemen they must tear the fathers of families from wife and children and hunt them into the barracks; as soldiers they must invade a foreign land, murder unknown and innocent men, rob them of their property, burn down their houses, lay waste their lands, in a word, do everything that is punishable with prison and gallows; they must perpetrate all crimes which the aim and end of Morality and Law are to prevent and condemn. If one defends such action, where can one find the courage and the justification to require these men at one time to honour the Ten Commandments and at another to disregard them, to be criminals in the name of the state in the morning and to be moral private persons and law-abiding citizens in the afternoon? After all, they only have one nature, one mind, one character and one set of perceptive faculties.

To realize the monstrosity of this doctrine of twofold Morality, public and private, and of the non-compulsoriness of moral law for the state, it suffices to refer again to the fundamental concepts of Morality. Individuals have banded themselves together in a community in order to be able to live more easily, or to live at all, under the present conditions obtaining on our planet. Lest society should be disintegrated by the quarrels of its members, and the latter should find themselves exposed single-handed to a hopeless struggle for existence, a limitation of their unfettered whims and desires, the curbing of their selfishness, control of their impulses and the exercise of consideration for their neighbours have been imposed upon them.

This coercion is Morality, and society can enforce it by vigorous measures; but for the most part this is unnecessary, for society has inculcated in its members the faculty of urging upon themselves in every situation the dictates of the community and of insisting on obedience to them. This faculty is conscience. The means by which conscience, inspired and assisted by reason, determines the will to keep in check or to suppress organic impulses and inclinations, desires and appetites, is inhibition; moreover, the development and strengthening of inhibition does not alone promote the aims of the community, but is of the highest biological importance to the individual himself, apart from his relations to society, as it renders him stronger and more efficient, differentiates him more subtly, and raises him to a higher level of development.

Now the state is a special development of society; it owes its existence to the same necessities as the latter, its task is to minimize the struggle for existence for the individual, to protect him from avoidable dangers and to ensure the safety of his life, the fruits of his labour and that measure of freedom which is compatible with life in a community. But if the state puts an end to the coercion instituted by the community and therefore by the state itself; if it does away with Morality for itself, that is, for a number of individuals, be they few or many, that act in its name; if it allows selfishness, appetites and ruthlessness to have the same free play as with creatures of a lower order than man, or as with men before they formed themselves into communities; if in the pursuit of its plans beyond the bounds of Morality it intensifies the struggle for existence in a tragic manner, exposes men to the most terrible dangers, brutally destroys their liberty, gravely threatens their life and property or even devotes them to ruin—why, then it destroys the assumptions on which the state itself is based, denies its own aim, deprives itself of any right to existence, and the individuals have thenceforward but one interest, namely, to drive away this bogey of the state and with all possible means to force the men, who make use of it and the superstitions clinging to it, to respect the moral law which the community has created to overwhelm anti-social, immoral individuals, to render them harmless and if necessary to destroy them.

One point there is on which the Machiavellian or practical politicians are particularly fond of talking nonsense, and that is the state's loyalty to treaties. Is the state bound by a treaty? Must it honour its signature? Must it perform what it has undertaken to do? The detestable, unanimous answer is "No. A treaty cannot hinder the state from doing what its interest demands." Prince Bismarck is often cited on this point, as he once said: "The only sound foundation for the state is state egoism." And another time: "A treaty is only valid rebus sic stantibus, if the situation is the same as when it was concluded; if the circumstances change, it becomes invalid by the very fact." Such views are revolting, however great a name be appended to them. Contract, or treaty, is the basis of the law. Whoever breaks it is dishonoured, and doubly dishonoured is he who from the beginning enters upon it with the idea at the back of his mind of deriving every possible advantage from it and of breaking it when the time comes to fulfil obligations.

The phrase, "sound egoism," whether it refer to a private person or to the state, must make every decent man blush for shame. Egoism may be sound, but it is always the contrary of moral. It is just as convenient for the individual as for the state to think only of his own advantage and unhesitatingly to sacrifice his neighbour's rights to it; but Morality arose and was constituted a rule of human relations in order to break the back of this selfishness and to teach man consideration for his neighbour. It is no valid excuse to say that state egoism is no sin, but a virtue and a merit, that it is different in character from the egoism of the individual. That is not true. It is not different in character. It is of exactly the same character as in private life. The responsible leader of the state who is guilty of a breach of treaty makes believe to himself and others that he does not do it for his own sake, but in the interests of the state. But who is the state? I have already given the answer to this. The state consists of men, the interests served by a breach of treaty are those of men, not, as a rule, of all, not even of many members of the state, but of a few, of a class, a group, perhaps of only one family whose power, wealth and reputation it is intended to increase. So-called state egoism is in actual fact the private egoism of many individuals, who break the law, or tolerate and condone a breach of the law, for the sake of pocketing ill-gotten gains; and no one is so stupid as to let himself be bamboozled into believing that the shameful crime of breaking a treaty for the purpose of "sound" egoistic grabbing becomes moral when it is perpetrated not by one individual but by thousands or millions of individuals.

The reservatio mentalis, too, of "rebus sic stantibus" is an unwarrantable and wicked reservation. Nothing prevents a decent man when making a contract from adding a clause reserving the right to terminate it if the essential conditions should change. If the other party to the contract does not agree to this, well, then the contract cannot be concluded. But to sign it with the mental reservation that one will disavow one's signature if the obligations undertaken become irksome, that is swindling. There is one consideration so simple that it is inconceivable that those who break contracts do not realize it. In some concrete case the leader of the state judges it to be profitable to the state to disregard good faith. What guarantee has he that his judgment is right? He is a man, and no man is infallible. But all mankind have made good faith the foundation of their life in communities, and if a single man has the temerity to draw a conclusion violating the immutable convictions and doctrines of all mankind, he must be mad not to see that most probably he is wrong and that all mankind in every age and every clime is right. I have left out of consideration the fact that any possible advantage arising from the breach of faith would not excuse him morally, and setting aside the ethical aspect of the case, I dwell only on the logical argument.