Recent Tendencies in Ethics / Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge

by W. R. Sorley

Now I am willing to admit that Green showed a correct instinct in examining the nature of man before entering upon his properly ethical enquiry. One must know what man is before one can say what his 'good' or his duty is; and it is only because man's nature cannot be accounted for as a merely natural or animal product that the way is open for an idealist ethics such as Green's. But perhaps Green laid too much stress on the problem of historical causation. What matters it how we came by our knowledge, provided it is the case that we can know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness was attained? And the question here is whether the special results reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty. As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that the consciousness which is in man and which raises him above nature is the manifestation of—the "reproduction" of itself by—an eternal self-consciousness. Man's own self-consciousness in knowledge and volition is simply God's self—consciousness "reproduced" (to use Green's term) in man's animal nature: so that the animal body and its temporal activities become in some unexplained (and no doubt inexplicable) way "organic" (to use Green's terminology once more, where no terminology seems adequate) to a spiritual reality which is eternal and infinite.

I am far from denying the greatness of this conception or its practical value. There is no stronger support to moral endeavour than the conviction that the moral life is a realisation of the divine purpose, that in all goodness the spirit of God is manifest, that the good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker. By whatever metaphor this may be expressed—and Green's statement that the divine self—consciousness 'reproduces' itself in human morality is also a metaphor—it betrays the assurance that moral achievement is permanent, and that (in spite of all apparent failures) goodness will prevail. He who fights for the good may be confident of victory.

This is the practical value of the conception; but in order that it may have this practical value, the distinction of good from evil must be first of all made clear. Green's appeal to an eternal self-consciousness does nothing of itself to elucidate this distinction. Tendencies to exalt selfish interest over common welfare, and to prefer sensual to what are called higher gratifications, enter into the nature of man, and have fashioned his history. Green does not even ask the question whether these also are not to be considered manifestations or 'reproductions' of the eternal self-consciousness. But his metaphysical view does not exclude them; and if they are included, morality disappears for lack of any criterion between good and evil. If good is to be discriminated from evil, it must be by some other means than by describing the whole conscious activity of man as a reproduction of the divine. Instead of doing anything to solve the problem of the meaning of goodness, Green simply brings forward a new difficulty—that of understanding how the temporal process in which human morality is developed can be related to a reality which is defined as out of time or eternal. This difficulty cannot be avoided in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone. Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism has followed, and not only from the representatives of opposed schools. Writers whose intellectual affinities are on the whole the same as his have let their dialectic play around his fundamental conceptions with a result very different from that which he contemplated. Mr Bradley, like Green, has faith in an eternal Reality, which might be called spiritual, inasmuch as it is not material; like Green, he looks upon man's moral activity as an appearance—what Green calls a reproduction—of this eternal reality. But under this general agreement there lies a world of difference. He refuses, by the use of the term self-consciousness, to liken his Absolute to the personality of man, and he brings out the consequence, which in Green is more or less concealed, that the evil equally with the good in man and in the world are appearances of the Absolute.

Mr Bradley's whole work is ruled by the distinction between "Appearance" and "Reality," which gives his book a title. On the one hand there is the Absolute Reality, spoken of as perfect, and described as all—comprehensive and harmonious throughout. Neither change nor time nor any relation can belong to it. But intelligence works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations; it is, therefore, excluded from reality. Truth is mere appearance. The same judgment must be passed on our moral activity. We strive after and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from reality.[1] Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, pp. 402, 410.]

This needs no elaboration. If all predication involves relation, and relation is excluded from reality,[1] then no predicate—not even truth or goodness—can be asserted of the real. Nay more, to be consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute (for the two terms are here interchangeable) is perfect, or one, or all-comprehensive, or harmonious: for all these are predicates. Ens realissimum is the only ens reale; all else is mere appearance.

[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 32-34.]

Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought. For what is an appearance, and what is it that appears? It can only be reality that thus appears; the 'mere' appearance is yet an 'appearance of reality.' It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay—strange as it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley's first line of thought—"degrees of reality." Relations are excluded from reality; and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees. The logic is unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value of its own.

Here, then, is another view of the universe—not an unchanging, relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world and sometimes 'experience,' But the two views are connected. For it is assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive; and it is further asserted that these two characteristics of harmony and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the "degree of reality" possessed by any "appearance." The more harmonious anything is—the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions—the higher is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness—the fewer predicates left outside it—the higher also is its degree of reality. No attempt is made at a measured scale of degrees of reality, such, for example, as is offered by the Hegelian dialectic; but a sort of rough classification of various 'appearances' is offered. In this classification a place is given to goodness which is comparatively high, and yet "subordinate" and "self-contradictory." [1]

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 420.]