Morals and the Evolution of Man

by Max Simon Nordau

In the savage, or rather in man at a low stage of civilization, the power of inhibition is far from having reached such perfect development. It is not very robust, works defectively and often fails. Little civilized man, if he has a conscience, cannot even with the best intentions always obey it punctually. His instinct is stronger than his insight. He is not master of his impulses; rather it is they that master him. All who have described tribes of low civilization have observed that their reactions resemble reflex movements and that they lack self-control. Moral conduct, that is, control of their selfishness and consideration for their fellow men, is difficult for them if it demands effort, sacrifice and painful renunciation. However, we need not trouble to go to the negroes of the Congo or the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands to observe the inefficiency of the power of inhibition. We need only look around us. We shall find enough instances among ourselves. The uneducated, the badly educated and abnormal people on whom teaching and example make no impression cannot follow the precepts of Morality, although they know them. To express it as the Roman poet does, they know the better and approve it, but they have a longing for the worse. So it is wrong to say that a savage can be just as virtuous as a Socrates or an Aristides. He could not, even if he would. He would lack the organic means: a sufficiently trained intelligence to point out his moral duty, a sufficiently developed faculty of inhibition to follow the admonition of his intelligence. Bouillier's objection to moral progress will not hold water. The Romantics who have invented the fairy tale of the noble savage and who declare in Seume's words: "See, we savages are better men after all," are out of touch with reality. Like civilization, and simultaneously with civilization, Morality progresses towards improvement, towards perfection.

The Kantian moralist, like the theologian, is forbidden by the logic of his system to admit the possibility of moral progress. If the moral law is categorical, that is, unlimited by any special purpose, if it exists within us, eternal and immutable as the stars above us, we should be hard put to it to say how this unalterable block, placed in our souls we know not how or by whom, could receive an impetus to progressive development, or in what way this development could be carried out. That which is categorical is absolute, and the concept of progress in the absolute, as in the infinite and the eternal, has no sense. But whoever regards Morality from the biological and sociological point of view is forced to assert its progress, just as the dogmatic mystic, who believes in the categorical imperative, is forced to deny it.

Let us recapitulate the fundamental concepts. Regarded biologically Morality is Inhibition, the development of which is of the greatest importance to the individual, as it enables him not to waste the living force of his cell plasm and of his organs in sterile reflex movements, but to store it up and hold it ready for useful purposes. The stronger his power of inhibition the better he is armed for the struggle for existence, and the better he is armed the more efficient he is. Denial of the progressive development of Inhibition implies a denial that modern man can maintain himself with more ease and security against Nature and hostile or injurious natural phenomena, and that he is more successful in competition with other men than his predecessors on earth. But this latter denial is obviously nonsense. The only individuals who do not take part in progressive development are the degenerates. They are organically inferior, their faculty of inhibition is defective or altogether lacking, they are slaves of impulses which their will and intelligence have no means of controlling, they are the outcome of morbidly arrested or retrograde development, they are the victims and refuse of a civilization too intensive, too exhausting and wearing for some men, and they are destined to fall out of the ranks of a race moving majestically forward and to lie helplessly by the roadside.

From the sociological point of view Morality is the bond which unites the individuals in a community, the foundation upon which alone society can be built up and maintained. For it implies a victory over self, consideration for one's neighbour, recognition of his rights, concession of his claims, even when valued possessions must unwillingly be given up and painful renunciation of attainable satisfaction is required. This is neighbourly kindness and the charity of the Bible, Hutcheson's and Hume's benevolence, Adam Smith's sympathy and Herbert Spencer's altruism; it is the necessary condition on which alone individuals can live peaceably together and helpfully assist each other to make life easier. If most or all individuals lack it, we have Hobbes's war of all against all; then man is as a wolf to other men, and each one is condemned to the state of a beast roaming in loneliness. If a few, a minority, lack it, then the majority will not tolerate them in its midst, but will expel them from the community as a dangerous nuisance and deprive them of the privilege of mutual aid and of the advantage of joint responsibility.

The species of man, like every other species of organism and like every individual, wants to live. It can only achieve this by adapting itself to existing natural conditions. The more suitable and perfect the adaptation the more easily and securely it lives. Under the present conditions of the universe and the earth a solitary human individual could not manage to exist, let alone develop into an intelligent being. The form his adaptation to circumstances has taken is that of union in an organized community. For the existence of society and the adjustment of the individual in it is the indispensable condition for the life of the species as well as of the individual. Society can only continue to exist if individuals learn to consider one another and practise benevolence towards each other. Society therefore created Morality and inculcated it in all its members, because it was its first need, the essential condition which rendered its existence possible, just as the species created society, because it could only continue to live as an organized society.

Thus Morality with the strictest logical necessity has its place in the totality of efforts which human beings had to make, and still have to make, in order to preserve life, to make it sufficiently profound and to enrich it with satisfactions, that is, with pleasurable emotions of every kind, so that they may continue to have the will and the eager desire to maintain their existence by effort and struggle; in short, in order to make life seem worth living, even at the cost of constant toil and moil. Without society it is impossible for the individual to exist; without Morality it is impossible for society to exist; the instinct of self-preservation furnishes society with habits and rules governing the mutual relations of its members and with institutions for economizing force; all these together we call civilization. The development and improvement of civilization is obvious; it is proved by the fact that it draws nearer and nearer to its goal, namely, the establishment of satisfactory relations between individuals and groups, and the attainment of a maximum of satisfaction with a minimum of individual effort. But it would be incomprehensible if Morality, the essential condition for the existence of society which creates civilization, should have no part in the indisputable, because easily demonstrable, progress of the latter.

Morality occupies such a large place in civilization that the mistaken view has arisen among many moral philosophers that it is the aim of civilization and has no aim other than itself. Closer investigation shows this to be an error, a reversal of the true relation. Morality is no aim, certainly no aim to itself, it is a means to an end, the most important, most indispensable means to the one end, to bring about civilization, to maintain and refine it, and adapt it more and more to its task. But the task of civilization, as I have shown, is to preserve, facilitate and enrich the life of the individual and the species. Morality therefore is the most important form in which the instinct of self-preservation in the species is manifested, and to deny progress to it implies the assumption that the species does not possess the impulse to preserve and beautify its existence, that its instinct of self-preservation flags, that it does not recognize its aim and is ignorant of the path leading to its goal. This assumption, however, is contradicted by all, and supported by none, of the phenomena observable in the life of the species—the absolute increase of the population of the earth, the prolongation of individual life and of the age of efficiency, the combating of every kind of harmful thing.

The steadfast self-control of civilized man compared with the unreliability of the savage, who appears capricious and unaccountable because he freely obeys every impulse, proves the progressive development of the faculty of inhibition in the individual organism. The order and definite organization of modern society, the rule of law, men's equality before the law, the guarantee of freedom and respect for the person, all these compared with the state of nations in earlier times (actually anarchy under a mantle of tyranny and the unlimited power of a few mighty ones over the helpless masses) prove the progressive development of civilization in the social organism. But logically the progressive development of Morality itself must correspond to the progressive development of its instrument, inhibition, and of its product, civilization.

The conclusion to which we are forced by theoretical considerations is fully endorsed by observation of actual life. It is sufficient to indicate broad facts to one who denies moral progress. Slavery, which Aristotle thought a law of Nature, which Christianity tolerated, which modern states, such as England, France, the United States and Brazil, defended and protected by law, was everywhere abolished some years ago. The objection is raised that modern hired labour is merely slavery of the proletariat under another name, that the exploitation of workmen by employers is a hypocritical continuation of serfdom. But that is sophistry. The hired labourer is not bound to his contract. He can break it. "Yes, at the price of starvation." That used to be the case, but nowadays organized working men are no longer at the mercy of powerful capital, and therein lies progress. They are in a position to make conditions and not seldom to force their acceptance. They have the right to strike, to move from place to place, to form unions. The community has recognized the duty of mitigating, at least to some extent, the evils to which faulty economic organization exposes the workman. It has instituted accident and health insurance, old age pensions, and, in some places, assistance for those who are out of work through no fault of their own. All this is still very defective, but these are hopeful beginnings, all the same, and, above all, it shows the awakening of a social conscience that earlier ages did not know.

Justice is administered more and more humanely, that is, morally. It is a century since legal torture was abolished. Society is ashamed to get at the truth easily by torturing a suspect who after all may be innocent. The condemned man is no longer branded or mutilated; he suffers no corporal ill-treatment of which the results can never be obliterated. Capital punishment is still a blot on the honour of civilization. But for more than a century now, since the time of Beccaria, it has been violently opposed and has already been abolished in some states; the others will no doubt have to follow suit within a short time. Consider that in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century a thief was hanged if he had stolen a thing of no more value than the rope that was to hang him, and even children of fourteen years were condemned to this fate. To-day the judge pronounces sentence of death, even where it is still legal, with grave misgivings and searchings of conscience, and the execution, formerly a public spectacle, is carried out more or less secretly, because the conviction is gradually ripening in society that by the cold-blooded killing of a man it is perpetrating a crime which it must keep as secret as possible. The sentence is now almost everywhere deferred, and thus the conviction becomes a very emphatic warning which points out the path of repentance, of conversion and improvement to the guilty man, and leaves him the possibility of becoming a decent human being again. Special courts for children mitigate the stern penal code and modify it according to the needs of unripe, youthful characters. Imprisonment for debt is a half-forgotten thing of the past and regarded more or less as a joke. What these changes have in common is that they one and all indicate a deepening of the community's feeling of duty and responsibility towards the individual, greater respect for persons on the part of the law, an increase of the will to resist the first impulse of anger, revenge and mercilessness. These tendencies, however, are the very essence of Morality.