On the Ethics of Naturalism

by W. R. Sorley

but includes non-moral impulses in the former,

To a large extent this distinction of two classes of impulses is justified. There seems no doubt that the social, and what are usually termed moral, feelings have a tendency to return into consciousness after any temporary depression or exclusion, which is not shared by some of the feelings with which they most commonly conflict. Other impulses, not usually classed as moral, no doubt share this characteristic of persistency or recurrence. "The wish for another man's property," says Darwin, "is as persistent a desire as any that can be named." The selfish feelings have obviously this persistent character. But an evolutionist may perhaps maintain that it is one of the defects of ordinary moral opinion that it depreciates the necessity and value for life of the selfish feelings, just because they are so strong as to stand in need of no encouragement. And it is not necessary that the evolutionist morality should agree at all points with ordinary moral opinion or moral intuition. It recognises, or ought to recognise the agency of immoral as well as moral forces, admitting that it is by the action of both of these that man as he is at present has been produced, although the principle of the survival of the fittest has tended, though by no means uniformly, towards the elimination of the immoral factor. We may admit, therefore, that there is a pressure on the will of the average individual towards certain kinds of conduct rather than others, or, put more precisely, that while all acts are performed in consequence of pressure on the will, the pressure towards certain kinds of acts is a permanent force which, although overcome for the time, always tends to reassert itself, while the tendency towards other acts inconsistent with these is more intermittent and variable, and does not reassert itself in the same way. But this subjective experience is so limited in accuracy and extent as to be an unfit test of morality.

In the first place, selfish conduct is as necessary for the preservation and development of man as "altruistic" conduct, and must therefore have given rise to an equally great and persistent pressure on the will: so that the subjective criterion of persistency leaves untouched what is often regarded as the most difficult question of morals, the balance of social and individual claims. |is restricted to previous habits of acting,| In the second place, this subjective tendency is only a recurrence of antecedent advantageous characteristics, and does not lead us beyond the status quo, so that, if any progress is to be made in the future, it will be only possible through the pressure of new external conditions: no function is left for any ethical ideal which points beyond past and present habits of action. |and cannot define nature of morality.| In the third place, subjective tendency only enables us to say generally that some acts or tendencies are more persistent than others, without giving any further description of what sort of acts these are. Were these tendencies or impulses a perfect guide to conduct, this defect would be of little practical consequence. It would prevent our having a definite ethical theory only in circumstances in which no ethical theory would be likely to be asked for. But the line between the more and less persistent motives is a narrow and shifting one. The impulses which are the residua of advantageous ancestral actions are counteracted by other impulses, residua of actions which would not be counted as moral, though we inherit tendencies to them because they formed a real part of our ancestral activity. We therefore stand in need of some characteristic by which to distinguish the one class of tendencies from the other. And as the only subjective characteristic is that of strength or persistency, and this has been found insufficient, an objective standard is shown to be necessary.

Thus subjective standard acknowledged to depend on

The impossibility of the subjective test doing duty alone without support from some objective criterion, is practically acknowledged by the writer who has discussed this part of the subject with greater penetration than any other investigator on the same lines. "The average man," it is said, "feels the pressure upon his own individual will of all the unknown natural sequence of motive which caused his ancestors to do on the whole more often the right thing than the wrong"[252]—or, as we must read it without objective assumption, "to do on the whole more often one class of acts than another." The right must be defined simply as that to which this "special feeling in the subject is directed," and it therefore becomes necessary "to discover what descriptions of acts inspire this feeling."[253] Thus, with greater facility than would be permitted to a critic, we are made to pass from the subjective to the objective method of determination.

(b) Objective standard:

The question, What is right? is thus relinquished for the question, What is good? Good is said to be of three kinds—natural, sensible, and moral. But as by sensible good is meant pleasure,[254] and pleasure is not the end, and as by moral good is meant "the pursuit of natural good under difficulties,"[255] it follows that natural good is the end we seek. We have thus to determine, as exactly as may be, this objective standard called natural good. It is interpreted in two ways, which, however, may be "not necessarily inconsistent": (α) "the perfection of the type as it is," and (β) "the absolute abundance and variety of vital power."[256]

(α) Conformity to the type.

This phrase, "the perfection of the type as it is," is somewhat misleading. When "the perfection of the type" is said to be the end, we naturally regard the type as something that needs to be brought to perfection, and ex hypothesi is not perfect at present, or "as it is." But if "the perfection of the type as it is" is the standard, this implies, unless the standard itself is faulty, that the type is already perfect, and, therefore, that the perfection spoken of is the characteristic of a thing which conforms to the type, and not something to which the type has to conform. This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that imperfection is defined as "only departure from the class type."[257] Plainly, then, the objective standard meant is conformity to the type. What, then, is the type? Concerning things made by art the answer is easy. The type, as Mr Stephen puts it, represents the |The type defined as what best serves its purpose| "maximum of efficiency,"[258] or, as we may say, is that which most fully realises the purpose for which the thing was formed. The best bow is that which shoots truest and farthest with a relatively small expenditure of strength by the archer; that which best realises the purpose of a bow is the typical bow. A similar explanation of types may be given regarding animals modified by artificial selection. The typical pointer or hunter can be defined from this teleological point of view; and, as long as people lived in the belief that all things were made for man, it was natural to fix the type of each class by reference to the human purpose it could best subserve. So also, as long as people think that, whether all things were made for man or not, all things may be made use of by him, there will be a tendency towards the same anthropomorphic interpretation of types. If, then, the typical products of art, and, to a large extent, the typical products of nature, are those which best serve human purposes, or best correspond with human ideals, how shall we define the typical man himself—the type which it is our perfection to conform to? "Every reasoning agent," it may perhaps be allowed,[259] "represents a certain type;" but the type can no longer be defined merely as "maximum of efficiency," for it is the end or purpose of this efficiency which now requires determination. In defining the typical man, we must have no idea of final cause or purpose which is not rooted in the nature of his organism.