The ethics of Hercules

by Robert Chenault Givler

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

It would be an impertinence for an amateur in physiological science to assert that the significance of ethical values can be understood only through a study of the mechanics of the human body, were not the ethical implications of physiology so numerous, so compelling, and so plainly apparent. Ever since anatomists and physiologists first began to demonstrate that all the vital functions of man were dependent upon his intimate structure; and more recently that conduct and thought are in the strictest sense of the term functions of man’s flesh, they have been laying the foundations,—even if unconsciously,—of a scrupulously natural science of ethics. The purpose of this book is to attempt the formulation of such a science.

There is little need to state that any proposal to deal with ethics in a thoroughly naturalistic manner will be met with considerable resistance. Although it has been everlastingly recognized that human conduct is the direct product of human bodies, especially as is evidenced by our bestowal of rewards and punishments on individually specified persons, nevertheless, the opinion still widely prevails that a man and his actions are two such different things that the former cannot be defined in terms of the latter. Against this naturalistic or mechanistic view,—that a man is what he does,—several classes of people tenaciously hold contradictory opinions.

There are, for example, those who consider ethics as the humble handmaid of what is curiously termed “revealed religion,” and who consequently hold that all the knowledge necessary for the conduct of life has long ago been vouchsafed us by Infallible Wisdom. To such persons it is of no importance that human nature has actually altered to such an extent as to make it necessary to find new solutions even for ancient problems; nor does it seem to occur to them that the homage devoted to the past may often be simply a pleasant way of escape from the intellectual responsibilities of the present. A mechanistic ethics plans to undermine the notion that the ethical truth of one generation is necessarily sufficient for the problems of the generation that succeeds it, and aims to supersede it with the view that man’s progress is dependent, not upon his ability to escape from his problems, but rather upon his ability to analyse and solve them.

Again, there are those who regard ethics solely as a subject for philosophical discussion on the basis of an ideal never illustrated by any one man, but only conceived in abstract terms. “How should the ideal man behave?” is the sole burden of their discussion. Even the mechanist hesitates to condemn this esthetic attitude toward conduct too severely. For it is well known that thinking may involve preparation for action, and that consequently he who thinks out the best course of conduct in advance may be more likely to act accordingly when a real problem is to be solved. On the other hand, the human body and brain are so constructed that all fanciful romancing is necessarily tinged with delusion to such an extent that he who conceives an ideal apart from the actual is bound to lose his orientation. And the sequel of this loss is everywhere manifest in purely philosophical discussions about ethics. In the effort to extricate themselves from the verbalism in which they are entangled, ethical theorists have invariably either rejected the world as evil, or else they have dug themselves in under a mountain of meaningless words. To all such persons a mechanistic ethics seeks to restore a glimpse of the reality they have sought in vain, by showing that the highest ideals need not be in any way fictitious.

Resistance to a naturalistic ethics may also be expected from those biologists and physiologists who regard the human body essentially as a corpse animated by a psyche. These people are known as vitalists, and their number is very great. The customary gloom of these men is doubtless derived from their attitude toward the human body, which they know best either in the form of specimens preserved in alcohol, or microscopic slides of slaughtered tissue. Now, to be sure, such objects of intense study do not of themselves yield an adequate picture of a living, thinking man. But these morphologically-minded persons, instead of pertinaciously remembering what manner of organism they have slain for research, and instead of keeping ever in mind that all human tissues actually die while performing their normal functions, deem it somehow necessary to postulate a vital, that is, an immortal principle, which makes the organism go. A more perverse logic does not arise even in the realms of theology. Oddly enough, the conversation of these men is not so happy as their metaphysic might indicate. “No, no,” they will repeat in a plaintive outcry, “you can never find the secret of life.” The sentiment underlying such a remark is not difficult for even a casual student of psychology to detect. Moreover, logicians know that when a man states a problem in terms of a mystery, and seeks thereby to hinder the search for its solution, he commits an error which has been called “the fallacy of initial predication.”[1] Obviously, indeed, we have already found out fully a thousand of the secrets of living matter,—for instance, its principal chemical ingredients, its dependence upon oxygen, its optimal temperature, its rate of dying with different vital organs removed, and the like,—and so when a vitalist speaks of “the Secret of Life,” he simply shows that he is still a worshipper of magic. Although the way of intellectual progress lies in another direction, yet, since the majority of mankind court mystery as a way of escape from the “despotism of fact,” the vitalist can be expected to lead a voluble resistance against a mechanistic ethics. Nevertheless, even he can perhaps be induced to recognize that although Psyche does seem to regulate Homo, yet it is always the structure of Homo that determines what manner of function he shall manifest. And if the mechanist can elicit this admission from the vitalist, he can at least maintain his chief contention. Otherwise, seeing that the mechanists are on the whole younger men than the vitalists, nature’s own slow processes will have to soften the asperities of this conflict.

Having thus begun our outline of a mechanistic ethics by stating the chief points of its disagreement with certain traditional ways of thinking, let us now proceed to establish without interruptions the foundations upon which this science of human conduct is to be built. And first a word as to its antecedents.

All modern scientific thinking, which is essentially a pertinacity of attention,—a dogged following upon a clue sagaciously intuited,—is our heritage from ancient Greek thought, and particularly from Socrates. And it is quite a significant, though oft-forgotten fact, that while almost all our scientific inquiry has been directed toward the conquest of physical nature, Socrates himself scorned to devote his powers to any but the subjects of ethics and the theory of knowledge. It is, then, something like a return to the chief interest of Greek life to employ the methods of general science in the analysis of the ethical problem. “Know thyself” was the well-known motto of Socrates; but it has required an infinitude of other knowledge before we could see clearly enough to know ourselves. Nevertheless, we may now say that in thus employing modern science strictly in the interest of ethics, the homage to Socrates is no less profound than the implied confidence in the trend of that civilization which originated in his brilliant mind.

The antecedents of a naturalistic ethics, however, are not all located in one man. With varying emphases, we find similar tendencies appearing in Aristotle, in Leonardo da Vinci, in Hobbes, in Spinoza, in John Stuart Mill, in Herbert Spencer, and in many other wise and kind men. Today this same influence is more aggressive and expanding than ever before. Lucien Levy Brühl, Edwin Holt, John Dewey, William Morris Davis, George Clarke Cox, and Roy Wood Sellars are typical representatives of the movement devoted to making ethics as objective as the science of mechanics. Consequently it would seem that the attempt we shall make here to define ethical values in terms of man’s biological functions is not a forlorn hope, either historically unforeseen, or lacking contemporary sympathizers.

What, then, is implied by the statement that ethical values are to be defined in terms of man’s biological functions? In the first place, we imply that just as man’s body, by means of brain, sense organ, muscle and gland, makes, upon stimulation, all the mind it ever manifests, so likewise that same body of man, through the mechanisms just enumerated, creates ethical notions. That is to say, the realm of ethics is coincident with the realm of human behavior in so far as that behavior is judged to be good or bad, right or wrong, virtuous or vicious. Now the body of man performs many and various functions, some of which are called physical, some chemical, some mental, and some ethical; and any structure of man’s body, such as an arm or a leg, can be shown to perform all these four types of function at the same time. Such a statement will cause no surprise to those who have followed the trend of psychological and ethical theory in the last decade. And while it is obviously impossible to prove any theory to the negatively suggestible obstructionist, it is a very hopeful sign that today great numbers of even untutored men are disbelieving in the transcendence of mental and ethical qualities, and are relocating them among the natural phenomena of the world. Hereafter, then, we shall also understand ethical values to be achievements of man’s mind, which is a function of his protoplasm, which is a function of the sun.