THE ETHICS OF
HERCULES

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SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL THEORY
Harry E. Barnes
THE ORAL STUDY OF LITERATURE
Algernon Tassin
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL THEORY
Albert G. A. Balz
ESSAYS IN ECONOMIC THEORY
Simon Nelson Patten
THE ETHICS OF JOURNALISM
Nelson A. Crawford
THE TREND OF ECONOMICS
Various Writers
AN ANALYSIS OF WRITING
Harold P. Scott

THE ETHICS OF
HERCULES

A Study of Man’s Body as the Sole
Determinant of Ethical Values

BY
ROBERT CHENAULT GIVLER, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy in Tufts College

NEW YORK  ALFRED · A · KNOPF  MCMXXIV

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Published, March, 1924

Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, N. Y.
Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York.
Bound by H. Wolff Estate, New York.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEDICATED
TO
THE THOUSAND MEN
OF MY GENERATION
WHOSE THOUGHT I HAVE THE HONOR
OF MAKING ARTICULATE.

“Waste not free energy; treasure it and make the best use of it.”
Wilhelm Ostwald, “The Imperative of Energetics.”

PREFACE

This book deals with ethics as a strictly natural science, and particularly as a branch of mechanistic psychology. It regards the realm of ethics as coterminous with the arena of human activity, and holds that the problems of conduct, being exclusively man’s problems, are to be solved by the methods of applied science. Moreover, since human conduct is in the last analysis dependent upon the postures and manœuvres of our muscle-fabric, he who would understand ethics must first comprehend something of the mechanics of the human organism. Indeed, this book attempts to show, not only that ethics and physiology can no longer be studied apart from one another, but also that it is the structure and functions of the human body which have determined just what our ethical values are.

Such a program is not strictly original, for the student of philosophy will readily find its antecedents. Nevertheless, while many ethical writers have heretofore given numerous intimations of a mechanistic scheme in ethics, yet usually as they proceed to discuss what are called higher things, they seem to forget that it is the human body which performs every human action, even those deeds which move us most profoundly. No such faltering, we trust, will be found in these pages. Indeed, it may be stated at the outset that one of the fundamental conceptions from which this book originated is that the well-being of the physiological organism is the final criterion of whatever is ethically valuable.

The title, “The Ethics of Hercules,” is doubly symbolical. Those who have heard of this ancient hero will immediately recognize the emphasis which is placed upon that type of personality who with strength, skill, and persistence works out the problem that lies nearest at hand. Moreover, Hercules the valiant, the thoroughbred who never once shirked from his task, is here contrasted with Cinderella, the patron goddess of all those ineffectual dreamers, who, instead of balancing their ethical books day by day, whimper after the supernatural, and cultivate an inner life of subterfuge and disorder. We hold here that no man can have freedom given to him, but that he must earn it by positively constructive, honest efforts to adjust himself to and gain control of his environment. The motto of Cinderella is, “Where you are not, there is happiness,” while the motto of Hercules is, “Friends lost, something lost; honor lost, much lost; pluck lost, all lost.”

The realization that in all science many false starts are made before a single true one is achieved, makes for caution and vigilance. Seeing, however, that the trend of ethical thought has been continually growing more and more mechanistic, it seems not unlikely that we are at the beginning rather than at the end of a chapter in the empirical science of human nature. If this book utters no more than the first sentence of that chapter, the effort will not have been in vain.

CONTENTS

THE ETHICS OF
HERCULES

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.

A second implication of our basic assertion is that since our knowledge of man has, after a hundred false starts, just recently become in any way accurate, so must our views on ethical questions be regarded as still in the infancy of their truth. Moreover, just as scientific inquiry in every other field is subject to revision upon each new discovery of signal importance, so must ethical science, during the period of its infancy, be subject countless times to an equally sweeping revision. In other words, the scientific attitude toward ethics forestalls any attempt or wish to draw on some phantom bank account to eke out the ethical resources of mankind, insufficient though such resources may at times appear to be. He who, like the mechanist, believes that virtue is a strictly natural phenomenon, must not carry a-priori standards into his work, but must believe that an accurate description of human nature will furnish all the necessary data for an applied science of human conduct. To be sure, since man is a creature who likes and dislikes, who prefers and rejects, this very fact precludes an ethics without any mention of ideals of one sort or another. Nevertheless, it is our particular business here not to establish or insist on any set of ideals in advance of an empirical study of human conduct, for it may well be that what we call our highest ideals are, in the light of science, in need of considerable revision.

With this by way of introduction, we shall at once proceed with the work already proposed. And just as a new proprietor of an old business begins by taking inventory, so shall we at once take stock of the ethical resources of man. Our method for the time being will be the method of the statistician. Following the arrangement of our data as we find them, we shall first seek to answer that most interesting and, indeed, fundamental question, namely, Why do our ethical judgments always occur in pairs of antonyms? This enquiry will bring us to the very center of the ethical problem. Next we shall ask just what our ten principal ethical concepts really mean, and shall seek to discover their relationships to one another. Finally, we shall endeavor to show how the knowledge thus derived, when combined with insight into the mechanics of body and mind, furnishes us with an ethical technique which transcends both in scope and effectiveness all that we have hitherto possessed.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] R. B. Perry, “Present Philosophical Tendencies,” p. 127.

CHAPTER II

A PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN ALL SUCH WORDS AS “GOOD” AND “BAD,” AND “RIGHT” AND “WRONG”

“A word is the shadow of an act.”

Democritus.

It is a fact of the greatest significance that the words by which we convey our ideas of value always occur in pairs, one of which is the opposite of the other. In esthetics the beautiful is contrasted with the ugly, and the charming with the disgusting; in logic the true clashes with the false, and in philosophy the real with the unreal; in matters of public and private economy the cheap is antithetical to the expensive, and the generous to the miserly; while in ethics we constantly hear the words good and bad, right and wrong, virtuous and vicious employed to denote the opposition and contradiction of human interests and ideals. What is the ultimate reason why we thus employ such pairs of antonyms in our judgments of praise or blame, our expressions of desire or aversion, and in our estimations of merit or defect?

This modern question, upon which the founding of a true science of ethics depends, cannot be answered by any appeal to the speculative metaphysics of bygone generations. We have passed out of that period in which men were content with an explanation based on the Zoroastrian hypothesis of a world divided between the warring forces of light and darkness, while our ears are now equally unresponsive to the bi-polar principles of love and hate which Empedocles propounded. Even our recent Emerson’s “Law of Compensation,” born though it was of canny, scientific thinking, is not marked by the least sign of that finality which the answer we seek should possess. It is, indeed, our conviction that the presence of antonyms in human speech is not to be accounted for by the assumption of a theory concerning the world as a whole, but rather by an examination of some of the baldest facts of our everyday experience. Nay more, it is our declared purpose to show that the metaphysical and theological notions of Empedocles and Zoroaster are themselves to be explained by reference to the physics and the physiology of man,—in terms of the structure and functions of the human body. But before we can comprehend the significance of such a thesis, it is first necessary to understand some of the physiological mechanisms underlying thought and speech.

The Rise of Mechanistic Psychology

Ever since William James employed the phrase “the stream of thought” to describe mental phenomena, the whole trend of psychology has been altered. Not only did the wide-spread use of that phrase result in the giving up of many traditional beliefs in regard to things mental, but it also stimulated the most profitable investigations in psychological science. One of the most ancient of the beliefs which it demolished was the belief in Ideas as eternal, external, and immutable. According to the notion of a stream of consciousness (itself a variable conception), ideas are sensory images which show individual variations, which never are exactly repeated, and which have meaning only when they refer or lead to some concrete reality. This view, which finally replaced the ancient Platonic conception, is now held by practically all psychologists. Moreover, the influence of James’ teaching was such as to show that will, intellect, feeling, and the like were not separable parts of a mind (i. e., faculties) which were capable of acting independently, but were merely handy words to indicate the various qualities of the stream of thought. The stream flows swiftly,—call that impulsiveness; it flows again broadly and deeply with many glancing eddies,—call that deliberation; it flows once more with swift descent and foam,—call that strong feeling. Nevertheless, the stream of thought is one stream, and mental phenomena one and all specify its labile and fluid consistency. And now let us see to what further developments this striking conception has led.

Obviously, the astute, enquiring person at once asks, “What makes this stream of thought? To what is its flowing character due?” At first it might seem that one must despair of any satisfactory reply. One feels as did William Harvey, almost hopeless in his quest after the secret of the circulation of the blood. But just as Harvey boldly experimented with his eye on the critical features of his problem, so have a multitude of keen investigators devised test after test to discover the laws of mental phenomena. And while we cannot yet say that “Science has laid her doomful hand” upon all of the intricate secrets of mind, nevertheless, it is becoming more and more certain that the stream of thought is just as much a bodily function as is the breath-stream and the blood-stream. Strangely enough, this conception is not brand-new. It was Aristotle who said, “If the eye were an organism, vision would be its soul.” Similar thinking is revealed in our modern view that mind is a function of the body, and that it depends upon the body for its existence. It “is generated by the body as the result of its immediate contacts with the environment, in much the same way as electricity may be generated by a turbine that has been placed in the midst of a tumbling waterfall.” Moreover, the stream-like character of thought, the play of feeling, the linger and strain of deliberation and expectation are due to the manner in which the storage battery of the brain releases energy, and to the way in which the muscles and glands transform it. William James wrote in 1890, “All consciousness is motor,” that is, it is dependent upon the expression mechanisms of the body; and today we have demonstrated the fundamental rôle of the muscles and glands of the body in “the transformation of the common energies of nature into the special energies of mind.”

It can be seen at once that such a philosophy of mind furnishes the most striking and far-reaching ethical implications. If what we call our mental life turns out upon close inspection to be dependent upon bodily functions, it follows that conduct and thought differ only in the degree to which the body is excited to activity (molar motion). In a word, conduct is overt (visible), while thought is covert (invisible), behavior. Edwin Holt, in the “Freudian Wish,” speaks of thought (‘wish’ as he terms it there) as “a course of action which the living body executes or is prepared to execute with regard to some object or some fact of the environment.” (pp. 56-7.) John Dewey voices a similar tendency in his “Human Nature and Conduct” when he says that bodily habits do our thinking. (Italics mine.) “The habit of walking is expressed in what a man sees when he keeps still, even in dreams.” (p. 37.) Thus the old idols are tumbled to the ground. Over the doorway of the Germanic Museum at Harvard is the inscription: “Es ist der Geist der sich den Koerper baut.” Complete reversal of such an animistic and subjectivistic sentiment is proposed by Dewey when he declares that a man stands erect, not because he wills to, but because he can. His willing is the result, and not the cause, of the muscular contractions which elevate the chest and keep it convex. The old dualism of mind and body, and the older superstition that mind rules matter, have both received their death-blows. In their place a complete mechanistic philosophy is now securely enthroned. It would thus seem likely that a natural history of virtue will not long hence be written.

Of all the vexed questions which psychologists have had to answer, perhaps none is more difficult than the question as to the place of language in the mental economy. What is language for? How did it originate? What is its relation to thinking? To overt activity? It is at once apparent that the answers to these questions are highly important to ethics, since the words good and bad, right and wrong, and the like, play such a prominent rôle in our judgments upon our fellow-men. Neither does it seem possible to understand why we employ these pairs of antonyms until we know what the single terms of the pairs signify. And while it will require several of the following chapters to give a satisfactory answer to some of the above questions, it is readily agreed that our judgments of value are employed principally for two purposes:—(1) to sort out some of the objects of the environment, e. g., by calling these good and those bad, etc., and (2) to indicate to other persons what kind of behavior is to be expected of us with regard to the objects thus designated. That is our common experience. If a man calls a shop a good shop, his future behavior toward it can be predicted. If he calls his neighbor vicious he can be expected not to leave his wheelbarrow or his lawn-mower out at night. Moreover, if we know what sort of things a man calls bad, virtuous, or right, his whole social philosophy can be plotted from the data provided by these particular judgments. To state it briefly, speech becomes an instrument for the transmission of meanings. Before we proceed further, let us see just what this involves in terms of bodily mechanisms.

A Mechanistic Interpretation of the Meaning of Words

To the superficial observer of a man who declares that something is cheap, or beautiful, or good, the sight of his lips moving and the sound of the words as they are produced might appear to be the whole phenomenon. Nevertheless, if anyone were to look carefully behind the scenes of this performance, one would find a much more elaborate play being enacted than is apparent on the surface. Just as we know now from the findings of the physiologist that when the eye sees, far more structures than the retina are affected, and just as we are now certain that when the ear hears, many more organs than the ear-drum and cochlea take part in the response to the stimulus, so we are convinced that when the words we speak have a meaning, a neuro-muscular drama of a very elaborate character is being silently performed within our skin.

Novelists and story-tellers of all ages seem to have intuited this truth in their portrayal of human emotions. They speak of “pent-up anger,” of “stifled sorrow,” and they describe often in minute detail the course of a passion that in seeking to get adequate expression causes the face to flush, the hand to clench, or the body as a whole to be violently agitated. The Iliad and the Odyssey abound in descriptions of this sort, and every novelist since the days of Homer has felt the need of such portrayals in order to make his characters understood. Indeed, the cultivation of this technique is the essence of dramatic art. But mark, that such emotions are aroused not only when a person is confronted by the physical facts of battle, murder, or sudden death, for example, but also by the bare mention of the words or phrases which appropriately describe such catastrophes. The more carefully such a person is observed, the plainer will it become that the agitation which his body is covertly manifesting would, if it were unhindered in its free expression, result in an elaborate pantomine appropriate to the events described by the story-teller. In other words, the emotions which a thrilling narrative arouses are substitutes for the overt activity which the auditor might be expected to manifest were he actually a participant in the scene described. When, then, we say that a dramatic situation moves us, the description is absolutely accurate. Indeed, from the most credible scientific evidence we possess, the emotions which are thus aroused are characterized by all the organic stresses and strains which are present in the most violent overt activity of which we are capable. We inwardly writhe and tussle, we half-start one kind of positive behavior, only to find it checked by the initiation of its opposite,—in a word, we display on a small scale all the conduct appropriate to the situation. And this elaborate arousal to activity is, we undertake to say, precisely what gives every dramatic scene or narrative its meaning.

Dr. George W. Crile has coined the appropriate phrase “action-pattern” to describe the mechanism involved in the cases just cited. Crile’s “action-pattern” is, indeed, practically identical with Holt’s “specific response,” and with Titchener’s “motor set,” of which phrases the latter two are today familiar to most students of psychology. Briefly, this action-pattern is simply a more or less fixed way in which some part of the body produces a movement. It depends principally upon the physical structure of the part, as well as upon its muscle and nerve supply, and secondly upon the habits of movement which external stimuli have repeatedly produced in it. Thus every healthy leg has acquired the action-patterns of walking and running, and some legs have in addition the patterns of kicking, or of “stepping on the gas” in open level country. What we call the most skilful parts of the body are those which have the greatest number of action-patterns. The hands, lips, eyes, and tongue could on this point be properly called the reservoirs of intelligence. Certainly in the evolution of man they have played the strategical part. Moreover, it is supposedly these action-patterns, these habits of movement, which are aroused whenever we are said to remember or imagine, to cogitate or ponder; and this is, I take it, what Dewey implies when he says that bodily habits do our thinking. I have elsewhere shown[2] how one action-pattern of the human hand performs yeoman service in this respect, and it would not be difficult to demonstrate that every action-pattern is capable of generating a multitude of thoughts. When, then, we say that a novelist or poet has portrayed a moving, tragic scene, we shall now understand that he has re-aroused in us bodily habits which we started to acquire when we first became acquainted with grief.

While we do not claim that all cases of meaning involve such wide-spread and imperative bodily disturbances as those which occur in connection with tragic or erotic situations, it is nevertheless a valid inference that words which stimulate us to no activity whatsoever mean nothing to us. Certain it is, at least, that the more meaningful or significant any word is, the more does it stir up latent tendencies to action throughout our whole organism. Political and religious slogans are telling examples of this. “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” “Remember the Maine!” and “For God, for Country, and for Yale!” have been for some persons phrases of the maximal philosophic content. Moreover, the same word may arouse different meanings (or action-patterns) in different people, depending not only on how the word is spoken, but also on the mood of the auditor. It is a matter of common observation that the shout of “Fire!” calls forth by no means the same responses from an insured landlord as it evokes from an uninsured tenant, while the mention of water will stimulate one sort of reflex action in a thirsty man, and quite another sort in a man who has just been rescued from drowning.

It is plain, then, that if physiological science has achieved the least light upon the problems of psychology, the meaning which any word or phrase possesses is not something that the sound of the word or its written symbol is endowed with, or something that filters through from any Platonic realm of ideas, but the meaning of any word is given to it by the person who speaks or hears it. Moreover, this endowment of meaning is implicit in the arousal of action tendencies at the time when the word is spoken or heard. In the example recently cited, the word “fire” had a different meaning for the insured landlord from what it had for the uninsured tenant because the habits of precaution which the former had acquired established a different motor attitude toward fire than did the procrastination of the latter. Consequently, the shouting and the conflagration were stimuli in the presence of which the landlord could be calm, while the tenant could not.

The application of this principle of the dependence of meaning upon action-patterns extends, however, to other situations than those in which emotional riots are observable. Indeed, we undertake to say that even such plain, concrete words as basket, horse, and river have a meaning because they arouse us to motor activities of one sort or another. It may well be, of course, that we start to think of a basket in terms of its color, or shape, or its cost; and of a horse in like terms; while we think of a river only in connection with its height during seasons of drought or flood: but eventually the basket will, by implying receptacle, lead in our imagination to the acts of filling and emptying; while the horse will be finally pulling our loads or carrying our weight on his back; and the river will be either waded or swum by us, or become related to our necessities or pastimes (our habits) in some other manner. And when we thus develop a specific action-pattern toward such an object, we are said to know what it means. It has long been a maxim in education that not until we know how to use and control our environment, do we become fully intelligent towards it. The theory and the fact of action-patterns gives unusual support to this particularly profitable maxim. Spinoza laid down the principle that the will and the intellect are one and the same, and this principle too has complete verification from mechanistic psychology. Thought is dependent upon bodily activity, and it does not matter for our present purpose whether that activity be overt or subtly concealed.

The question now arises: Does the meaning of abstract terms, of the terms we use in our judgments of value, consist in the same kind of motor tendencies as those which are aroused by concrete terms? From the following considerations I believe we can say that it does.

To begin with, abstract terms are one and all the result of the process of abstraction. This process consists in our picking out some common feature or quality from a great variety of objects, and giving it a name in order to fix it in our memory. For example, fire, the inside of ripe watermelon, and the outside of ripe cherries may all be called red. The concept, or abstract term, “red” can thereafter be used on occasion as a gestural sign for all these various objects when their color is being signified. Moreover, the process of abstracting these common qualities is itself a motor process. It is, physiologically speaking, the same sort of activity as collecting postage stamps or beetles’ wings. Indeed, the simplest perception of any concrete object, any red object, for example, involves motor activity of a highly elaborate character. When we look at such an object, not only is the retina of the eye stimulated, but various muscles and glands are simultaneously activated to an elaborate transformation of energy. Likewise, when we hear, taste, smell, or have any other perception, other characteristic transformations of energy are taking place through the arousal of action-patterns. Now we have just stated that abstract terms are derived from the multifarious perception of concrete objects. In what, then, does the meaning of abstract terms consist? It consists in their function of recalling some of the particular experiences from which they were derived. Such an abstract word as “red” has, then, a meaning for us simply because it arouses in any of its phases that particular action-pattern which all sorts of red things have stimulated in us.

This same principle may now be applied to show how even the meaning which attaches to the words we employ to convey judgments of value may be explained in physiological terms. For the highly abstract character which the words cheap, beautiful, and good seem at times to possess is simply due to the fact that at the mention of any such word we are simultaneously stimulated to so great a variety of actions that we are unable to follow any one of them through to its conclusion. When such a condition persists, the meaning is said to be vague.

It is, of course, not to be forgotten that every time we use a word, whether we read it, speak it, or hear it, the meaning it arouses is traceable to the fact that firm bonds have been established between the eye, ear, and throat mechanisms on the one hand, and related parts of the body which are involved on the other. This union of the reading-reflexes with the somatic-reflexes is provided for by a very simple mechanism called the conditioned reflex. By such a device, any two reflexes which have been aroused together frequently enough by external stimuli will ever thereafter tend to arouse each other. That is why the word “fire” which we all were taught to use to indicate a certain kind of object, will, even if spoken in a wilderness of snow, make us feel some of the effects which flame once produced upon us. Contrariwise, the blindfolded man will, by no other cue than the touch of his fingers, name such objects as carpet, leather, sandpaper, and nails. And from what we have already said about the source of the meaning of abstract terms being traceable to concrete experiences, we may now say that such words as cheap, beautiful, and good, one and all owe their significance to the fact that they too exhibit the law of the conditioned reflex both in their origin and in their maturity.

How the “All-or-none” Principle Helps to Disclose an Amazing Secret

It being thus apparent that words possess meaning because they arouse motor tendencies in us, let us now see what justification there is for the assertion previously made that these motor tendencies need not be at all visible as overt actions in order to perform their epistemological function. This justification is found in the all-or-none principle of nervous and muscular activity,—a principle having the most far-reaching consequences for both psychology and ethics. We are all familiar with the fact that less work is involved in lifting the arm leisurely to a horizontal position than in moving it through the same radius with a heavy weight held in the hand. However, we are not all familiar with the fact that in the case of the leisurely movement only a few of the myriad nerve and muscle fibers of the arm are being innervated, the rest being completely passive, while in the case of lifting the heavy weight, the proportion of fully active and inertly passive fibers is just the opposite. But this is exactly the case. According to the all-or-none principle discovered by Lucas and Adrian,[3] whenever a single nerve fiber functions at all, it acts in its maximum capacity. Never is such a fiber partially activated; in its all-or-none functioning it is as uncompromising as gravity. Consequently, even though the arm may feel uniformly flabby when it is indolently moved about, some few of its nerve and muscle fibers are working to their limit.

This being the case, it is readily apparent that the various qualities of muscular movement,—languid, intentional, unintentional, or deliberate,—have one and all a strictly quantitative basis. If a man’s smile spreads out into a grin, this change in the quality of his countenance is caused by the simple addition of fully functioning neuro-muscular units under the skin of his face. If the grin dwindles to the smile, and that again vanishes into a look only faintly reminiscent of pleasure, the opposite process of subtraction is then taking place. Consider now the further implications of this law of Lucas and Adrian. For the logical inference is that when we merely think of lifting our arm, but do not lift it visibly, an essential part of the arm-lifting mechanism has been nevertheless specifically stimulated to activity; it is only because not enough muscle fibers have been innervated to overcome the inertia of the limb that the arm does not rise. That is, indeed, our common experience. When we lie abed on a cold winter morning and speculate on the question of getting up, our imagination of the heroic deed is perfectly of a piece with the real business of shivering on the drafty floor. Indeed, according to the all-or-none principle, since even the slightest neuro-muscular activity is positive, the terms “overt” or “covert” as applied to action refer merely to what an observer can or cannot readily perceive. This principle can be justly applied to the problem of the meaning of words. The implication is sound that even though the action-patterns which are aroused by words are unfelt by us or invisible to an onlooker, these motor tendencies are just as truly positive physiological events, so far as they go, as are the most violent efforts we openly manifest. For the pattern of action is the same; the only difference is in the number of nerve and muscle fibers involved.

It was a motto of Jesus that “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Although the particular phrase, “in his heart,” is now regarded as too wild a hyperbole to be justified by the facts, yet the all-or-none principle furnishes an unsuspected substantiation of the essential truth of this motto with respect to certain individuals. We have long known that thinking did somehow lead to action,—that both the rogue and the philanthropist, the slanderer and the coquette often schemed and planned secretly for years without giving any outward hint of what their future behavior was to be. History is full of the trouble caused for those who had “no art to read the mind’s construction in the face” of him who could “smile and smile and be a villain.” And now the secret is out why for so many centuries it was believed that thought produced action and mind ruled matter. Thought is action, but action of so elusive a character as to be totally beyond the unaided eye to detect; and thought “leads” to action for the same reason that a spark can produce a conflagration and a hole in a dyke produce a flood. In all three cases the greater effect is due to the magnification of the exciting cause. The ancients held that mind ruled the body for the reason that, being ignorant of the fact of covert muscular responses, they assumed an incorporeal cause for a series of events whose end-term alone they were able to discern as embodied in the movements of matter.

It is thus finally apparent how by means of the law of the conditioned reflex and the all-or-none principle, both concrete and abstract terms serve not only as gestural signs, but also serve to imply and predict human activities. We have shown that every word which has a meaning ipso facto implies action. It matters not whether that action be sudden or violent, or merely one that is carried out on “low gear,” so to speak, by the neuro-muscular mechanisms of the body. Neither does it matter whether that action be precise or groping, specific or diffuse; if the word has a meaning it will be accompanied by an action-tendency, and that tendency will be added to the kinetic potentialities,—the character,—of the individual. For if it is the case that by the law of the conditioned reflex, words get meaning, it is equally to be asserted that by virtue of the all-or-none principle, they keep it. Moreover, Holt to the contrary notwithstanding, it is such demonstrable physiological principles as these, and not the mysterious Freudian categories, which are the keys whereby the secrets of mind will be unlocked.

Having thus dealt with the problem of how the neuro-muscular mechanisms of the body generate and maintain the meanings of words, let us now return to the original question of this chapter, namely, What is the ultimate reason why we employ such pairs of antonyms as “good” and “bad” in our judgments of praise or blame, our expressions of desire or aversion, and in our estimations of merit or defect? Our answer is that the felt opposition and contradiction of antonyms is due to the conflict of motor tendencies, and in support of this theory we cite a well-recognized physiological principle,—the law of reciprocal innervation.

The Physiological Explanation of the Opposition of Antonyms

Every freely moving part of the body, such as the leg, the arm, and the head, is equipped principally with two sets of muscles, called, from their functions, the flexors and the extensors. The flexors are those muscles which for example, upon contracting, draw the legs and the arms toward the body and fold them close to it, and which lower the head upon the chest; while the extensors stretch out the arms and legs, open wide the hands, and raise the head to an erect posture. Other parts of the body are similarly equipped for producing motions of an opposite character in the skeletal system.[4] The eyeballs are lowered by the use of a different muscle than that by which they are elevated; the muscle which depresses the wings of the nose is a direct antagonist of the other muscles which control the movements of this organ, and so on throughout the whole of our movable bodily structures. Moreover, when one such pair of muscles is contracted, the opposed member is normally relaxed, and vice versa; or, as the physiologist would say, the two muscles are reciprocally innervated.[5]

However, it must not be understood that this law refers only to the visible contractions of the muscles which produce the overt behavior of a man, for it equally explains the case where a very small number of nerve and muscle fibers are activated. That is to say, the law of all-or-none and the law of reciprocal innervation can both operate in the face or the hand at the same time. Indeed, we must not neglect to consider that all of the myriad fibers of our largest muscles are never simultaneously contracted; rather is it the rule that these fibers contract in relays,[6] thereby automatically saving us from the fatigue and exhaustion which would otherwise ensue. Moreover, the more intelligent and skilful we become, or, as we sometimes say, the more our head saves our heels, the fewer muscle fibers are required to generate and maintain any specific action-tendency. Consequently, then, the law of reciprocal innervation can be exhibited in the antagonism of extremely small muscular units, such as we have postulated to be involved in certain cases of meaning provided they be anatomically situated in the correct position for producing antagonistic strains. Now the experimental demonstration of the law of dynamogenesis at the hands of Richet, Charcot, etc., revealed that just such slight movements of an opposed character are produced when we merely “think” of up and down, right and left, in and out, and the like. In every case of this sort, some part of the movable, skeletal system performs overtly or covertly the appropriate movement, thereby giving meaning to the word. We may therefore, unless we read all signs incorrectly, safely affirm that whatever be the action-pattern which any abstract term arouses in us, the antonym of that term, if indeed it be its logical and physiological antonym, arouses action-patterns of an opposite character.

Our physiological explanation of the meaning of words and the contradiction of antonyms is now complete. For if, as we have previously shown, even abstract terms acquire and keep their meaning by virtue of the reflex tendencies which they arouse, it is likewise apparent that the basis of logical opposition and contradiction is to be found by an examination of the baldest facts of the physics and physiology of the human body. In brief, then, antonyms are those words whose utterance stimulates us so to react as to illustrate the law of reciprocal innervation. And this, moreover, is the only reason why cheap is the opposite of expensive, true the contradictory of false, and good the antithesis of bad.

Two words more, however, remain to be said. The first of these is, that the number of pairs of antonyms we have in our vocabulary signifies how many different pairs of antagonistic motor tendencies or action-patterns we could, were we fully aroused, overtly manifest. Since thought is either a rehearsal for, or a rumination upon, action, it is essentially a process which employs the same structures of the body as those which are activated in our buying and selling, our giving and taking, our toil and our play. The second word is, that if it be due strictly to our muscular architecture that antonyms occur in human speech, we can now safely affirm that any philosophy or religion which construes the universe as divided between the warring forces of light and darkness, or as everywhere illustrating the bi-polar principles of love and hate, is likewise based upon the law of the reciprocal innervation of antagonistic muscles. Such philosophies are, indeed, profound, since they attempt to inscribe on the firmament the drama of man’s limitations.

With this by way of introduction, we are now prepared to examine the various terms by which we are wont to convey our ideas of ethical value, in order to see just what the words “good,” “bad,” “right,” “wrong,” and the like really mean. And while the difficulties of such a task are admittedly great, yet the presumption is entirely in favor of the methods of mechanistic psychology to give a strictly scientific interpretation to the subject matter of ethics.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] “The Intellectual Significance of the Grasping Reflex,” Jour. of Phil., Vol. XVIII, No. 23, pp. 617-628.

[3] See “Journal of Physiology” (1909), 38, 113-133; ibid. (1914), 47, 460-474; also Bayliss, W. M., “Principles of General Physiology,” 383-4; Starling, E. H., “Principles of Human Physiology,” 205-6.

[4] Mark carefully, that according to this, so-called “voluntary” movement (or will) is simply movement produced by one member of any pair of antagonistic muscles. This physical equipment is of paramount importance to the function of willing. Note also, that “free will” always did mean the choice of two alternatives!

[5] See Bayliss, op. cit., pp. 494-8; Starling, op. cit., pp. 335-6.

[6] This is especially observable in all free-hand or free-arm movements, as, for example, when one tries to throw missiles in quick succession at a target. In spite of one’s own verbal suggestions, both speed and accuracy vary with every shot. This peculiar property of muscle should henceforth factor into our definitions of chance and luck.

CHAPTER III
THE BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICATION OF THE WORD “GOOD”

“... The majority attend to words rather than to things; and thus very frequently assent to terms without attaching to them any meaning, either because they think they once understood them, or imagine they received them from others by whom they were correctly understood.... Wherefore, if we would philosophize in earnest, and give ourselves to the search after all truths we are capable of knowing, we must, in the first place, lay aside our prejudices; in other words, we must take care scrupulously to withhold our assent from the opinions we have formerly admitted, until upon new examination we discover that they are true.” Descartes, “The Principles of Philosophy,” LXXIV, LXXV.

What do we mean by the word “good”? That is to say, how shall we describe the action-pattern which the stimulus of this word arouses in us? What does it mean when we use it, and what does it mean to us when others employ it in their speech? Before we can answer these questions, it is first essential to scan the list of things to which this word is applied, for only by so doing can we identify the term good with some specific function of the human organism.[7]

Although such a task is a difficult one, the difficulty does not appear to be insurmountable. In spite of the fact that nearly eighty significations are possessed by this word, they will, nevertheless, if pondered long enough, reveal some common core of meaning. And if we now bear in mind that every such synonym implies a motor mechanism that is developing a specific attitude toward the environment, we shall hope to find a true solution to the problem of the meaning of the concept “good”.

The term good is used as an adjective, noun, and adverb, and occasionally (Ex. 15) as a verb; in addition, it has sometimes an idiomatic significance, in which case its exact status as a part of speech is doubtful. These differences, however, need not concern us here. Good has originally an adjectival signification, and by derivation implies fitting or suitable. This is highly important, for since fitting and suitable exclusively describe things which help us realize our purposes, we may consider the relationship between good and human behavior to be inseparable. The type of action-pattern implied by this word may also be faintly foreseen.

We have now the canvas stretched on which our picture of good may be delineated. Let us proceed to sketch in the first faint lines of the picture. In the New Oxford Dictionary it is stated that good is the “most general adjective of commendation, implying the existence in a high, or at least satisfactory degree of characteristic qualities, which are either admirable in themselves [sic!] or useful for some purpose.” This definition succeeds far better in combining the theory of the Epicureans (good is what you like), of the Platonists (the good is the typical), and of the Benthamites (the good is the useful), than it succeeds in throwing a clear light upon the question we are here attempting to answer, namely, what sort of responses does the human organism make toward those objects and persons which it calls “good”? From Palmer’s definition of good as “good for” (“The Nature of Goodness,” p. 13), we are able to derive even less assistance, especially since it avoids the main issue in containing the very word to be defined.

Let us now attack this problem by a new method. A survey of all the things which this word good indicates reveals not only that it denotes (or simply points out) a host of distinguishable objects and properties, but that it also connotes (or implies) an exceedingly numerous array of human activities. And while the sum total of all these denotations and connotations appears at first to be an unwieldy mass, it can, I think, be suitably dealt with under the following five classes:—

A. That which is useful, fit, serviceable, and the like, for any purpose whatsoever. With such primitive use of the term, the purpose involved is neither praised nor blamed. The burglar’s jimmy is as “good” for his purpose as is an overcoat to keep out the cold. Some ethical writers refer to this as immediate, as opposed to remote or mediate good, or as non-moral as opposed to moral good. It is “good for,” without any limitations as to what the “for” implies. William James might have called it “decerebrate good.”

B. That which is useful, fit, or serviceable in the sense of being continuously or continually so. An extended time being here introduced, good now becomes almost synonymous with dependable. Our concept here may refer to anything that sustains life, or brings peace and contentment in society, and hence at one moment it emphasizes intelligence and skill, while at another it points directly to benevolent, spiritual, and esthetic agencies. Moreover, it not only denotes property (Ex. 28, “goods”), but also frequently connotes an emotional enthusiasm in the possessor of it.

C. That which fulfils expectation. This signification is sometimes equivalent to “normal” or “typical,” which terms are also frequently included in the connotation of “useful” and “dependable.” But here a distinctly new factor enters into the use of this concept, namely, the tone of voice by which the word “good” is uttered, for all colors and shades of emotion and sentiment may be registered by this means. Hence the concept “good” may be used to imply that which just passably fulfils expectation, or—

D. It may be used to indicate that expectation has been greatly and even suddenly exceeded, in which case it sometimes denotes the presence of something which is rated far above the normal, the immediately useful, or the mildly beneficent (thereby identifying itself with some of the significations exhibited in Class B), or—

E. It may be merely expletive. Here the use of the term “good” rapidly becomes exotic. It signifies only surprise, shock, or spasm. “Good” as an expletive also becomes closely allied with “good” as an adverb, in which case its significance as a term by which to express a judgment of value rapidly evaporates.

The Results of an Experiment to Determine Which of These Five Classes Are Implied by the Seventy-Nine Significations of the Word “Good”

The choice of these five classes was the result of a test carried out over a period of several years. Each one of the seventy-nine significations was printed on a separate slip of paper, and then, first choosing one of them at random, and employing it as a tentative standard, the points of similarity and difference between it and the remaining significations were determined and recorded. From this procedure there gradually arose, by differentiation and condensation, the five classes we have just indicated, which, as may be observed, are defined so as to include as many and to exclude as few of the uses of “good” as possible. Had our classes been defined with too great emphasis upon the meaning of any single term of our array, the whole idea of a classification would have had to be abandoned.

Having thus determined upon these five classes as representative and significant, one hundred college students were asked to ponder these classes in connection with the subjoined array of the common uses of the word “good,” to choose one of the classes as the one most appropriate in each case, and then to choose as many other of these classes as seemed to be involved, and to rank them in order of their importance. For example, they were shown the first two terms of the array,—(1) “Good food; fit to eat, untainted,” and (2) “Good food; nutritious, palatable,” and were asked whether they belonged in Class A, B, C, D, or E. It was at once seen that membership in more than one class was implied in both cases, but it was also admitted that nutritious and palatable food (No. 2) was a more dependable “good” than was the food specified by example No. 1. First choices were consequently indicated on this basis. After that, second, third, and succeeding choices were made for Nos. 1 and 2; following which, the remainder of the array was treated in the same manner.

The average of the results derived from this experiment indicates that Class B (dependable “good”) has a majority of votes, it being given first place 49 times, and a subsidiary place 75 times. Class C was given first place 20 times, and a secondary place 65 times. Class A was the first to be implicated in 5 uses of the word “good,” and was mentioned as a later choice 26 other times. Class D was voted to be the one most obviously implied only 2 times, but was mentioned in an associative relationship 59 times, while Class E, which received only one vote, got that for first place. The importance of Class B is thus clearly apparent. However, an almost equally significant fact seems to be that there were only five cases in which one class alone was implicated, whereas two classes were used in 18 cases, three classes were used in 34 cases, and four classes were simultaneously implicated by 20 terms of this array. The appended chart renders this distribution and overlapping more obvious. From all this, moreover, we seem to be warranted in inferring that, with all the unlikeness there is between these various synonyms for “good” when taken one at a time, when taken all together (sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza would say) there is more of a common core of meaning in them than one might naïvely expect. Consequently, we may safely presume that if we can satisfactorily define any one of the preceding five classes of “good” in physiological terms, we shall at the same time have hinted the definitions of all the remaining classes.

CHART

Showing the distribution of the 79 significations of the word “Good.”

(Explanation in text.)

Key

= First Choice.
= Second Choice.
= Third Choice.
= Fourth Choice.
= Not Chosen.

Classes A B C D E

In this connection one important thing must be borne in mind. Which is, that in attempting to reach our final definition of “good” we need only to abstract the common characteristic,—in mathematical parlance,—the greatest common divisor of all the particular uses for which this word is employed. Consequently the definition we are searching for cannot be expected to have any bias toward private or provincial conceptions of the term “good.” It must be catholic and unpartisan.

The Action-Patterns Implied by the Use of the Word “Good”

We are now prepared to answer the question propounded at the opening of this chapter: “What do we mean by the word ‘good’? That is to say, how shall we describe the action-pattern which the stimulus of this word arouses in us?” For if we can find out “what the organism is doing” when its vocal organs are uttering this concept, we shall be able to discover what the word “good” means.

It does not appear especially difficult to find what we are now seeking. We have just given the total array of uses to which this word is put, and we have also reduced that array to some measure of coherence by means of our five classes. Is it not, indeed, a matter of the commonest observation just what conduct human beings manifest when they use the term “good” and signify thereby what is included in Class A? It will be recalled that this class includes “that which is useful, fit, serviceable, and the like, for any purpose whatsoever.” Keeping our eye upon the specific behavior patterns implied by this class of “good,” we may now venture the following mechanistic interpretation: When a man is ready to perform any action, he calls anything GOOD which assists or furthers that particular action-tendency. Or, the same thing may be conveyed in the following words: Any stimulus that evokes a response we are ready to make we are wont to call good.

Any picture of the human race that one may draw furnishes evidence of the cogency of this definition. The child calls candy “good,” not because he knows that sugar is muscle food, but simply because he craves it, and sucks it in his mouth with avidity. This mode of speech he got long ago from his parents. His wanting the candy makes it “good” to him when he gets it, because the candy is a stimulus that evokes a response he was ready to make. The boy of ten wants a top that will spin like those which the other boys have, and he calls his a “good” top, when it satisfies the action-pattern which he has been developing. The rough youth of seventeen gives his bullying chum a “good” punch in the eye, by which he again means that the action-tendency he was covertly developing toward him has been provided a chance to expand into a full excitation. The college man of twenty-two calls a dance tune a “good” one, when, by its rhythmic effects it induces him to caper and relax, and satisfy his semi-sexual tendencies in public. And the old man of sixty-five often speaks of his wife as a “good” woman, because she has always had his dinner ready for him piping hot when, upon coming home, his whole alimentary system was keyed up to perform elaborate acts of chewing and swallowing. These and countless other cases, taken from every hour of the day and night, fully support the mechanistic interpretation which we have just given. But mark, that no question is in place here as to whether all such persons ought to use the word “good” in such connections. The fact that they do use it is, for the present, the only essential item to be considered in an empirical science of human conduct.

Just as when we enquired into the basic nature of antonyms, we carried our investigation a little below the surface of the organism, so may we here carry on a similar study to advantage. It is obvious that the readiness with which we respond to the objects called “good” is necessarily dependent upon the integrity of certain internal mechanisms, which, though never observed in their uninterrupted working, have nevertheless been deduced from a multitude of scientific investigations. Moreover, it has been discovered that every response we make is chiefly a function of the muscular and nervous systems of the body. How, indeed, would a child reach out for candy unless his arm were an extensible hinge, and how could it be extended unless something, namely, his triceps muscle, pulled on the radial bone, and how also could the muscle contract, unless a motor nerve from the spinal cord were stimulated to perform this specific activity? We do not, of course, specify that the definition of “good” be restricted to imply only this particular set of facts, but on the other hand we stipulate that this significant mechanism be not lost sight of by him who seeks without prejudice to understand how ethical concepts originate. Even more specific information than this is now available. Any muscle that is ready to contract (or, as the vitalist would say, to do Psyche’s bidding in attaining Homo’s good) is said to be in a condition of tonus or elastic tension. So far, then, as the muscles are concerned, the “good” of Class A implies a normal muscular tonus, which can, under the proper conditions, be developed into a full contraction. Physicians know that in both of the abnormal conditions of tetanus and contractured tonus, the organism cannot obtain some of the things which are essential for its adaptation of the world about it. The possession of a normal muscular tonus is, then, an ethical desideratum of no mean importance.

Every such muscular contraction as we have just described is brought about by means of a nervous impulse, originating at a receptor organ, either external or internal, which impulse proceeds toward a muscle or a group of muscles. However, this impulse (which in a sense may be thought of as a desire on its way to fulfilment), is often subject to a rather eventful history of interruptions before it finally produces muscular action. Between the individual nervous strands along the pathway of its motion the impulse may encounter blockades, unless electrically charged particles (called ions) are present at the various gaps in considerable numbers. Here again, then, we reach a further refinement in our understanding of what one class of “good” means. The “permeability of the synapses” (to use a phrase descriptive of the above situation), thus becomes a large determinant in human action. And if one of the classes of our concept is definable in terms of actions that are facilitated, the light which neurology throws upon ethics is not to be despised.

Our next adventure is the search for the various implications of the term “good” as employed with respect to Class B. This class, as previously stated, involves the general notion of dependability. Things of this class are nominally useful, fit, or serviceable, not merely with reference to the desire of the moment, but also and more particularly they are useful for the future also. Nevertheless, this phrase, “useful for the future,” must be taken to mean “imagined as continuously or continually useful,” for although we commonly regard tomorrow as a sort of package that is coming to us in the mail, it is strictly something not yet existing and consequently unreal. Just as William James said, “The feeling of past time is a present feeling,” so is the feeling of dependability here to be interpreted not as a property of objects, but as a condition of the organism. And, while no incontrovertible evidence of the nature of such a condition has yet been brought to light, it is directly in line with the facts as we know them to assert that the “good” included in Class B implies both a maintenance of muscular tone and a steady permeability of the synaptic membranes involved in the action-patterns aroused by the things we keep calling “good.” To which we might also safely add, that the receptor organ requisite for initiating such an energy transformation has also become so attuned to receiving the stimulus as to show what the psychologists call a lowered threshold. Suppose we now condense this whole account, and state it more pointedly by saying that Class B refers to those objects that produce the responses for which the organism has mobilized its maximum available energies. Some of these dependable “goods” may thus imply habitual responses, while others may simply imply a craving long denied its overt satisfaction. And I doubt not that between these two extremes every man can find his own “highest good.”

In passing, it might be pertinent to remark that the “good” implied by Class B is always life-enhancing, were it not for the fact that this obtrudes a standard not warranted by all users of this term. For the snap judgment (or even the pondered conclusion) of an exceedingly great number of people makes money the chief dependable “good,” that of others puts friends and companions in this category, while with fewer still knowledge is so regarded. Some of these things do not always turn out to be life-enhancing,—time, place, circumstance, and the ductless glands alter the assumed value of any such hypothesis. Hence “good” has been here defined simply in terms of what the organism is doing, and not in terms of any spurious teleological principle. Empirical science has no books to balance. He who watches a little closely will see that as far as conduct reveals it (which is, indeed, very far), all sorts of things that are not particularly life-enhancing are chosen hourly as the “highest goods” in the sense of being greedily and furiously pursued. Sexual excitement, drug-taking, gourmandizing, idling, and the latest styles in clothing vie with any and all of these soberer values for first place in the attention of numberless people. And while many a man may choose for himself, yet none can choose for all.

Class B includes skilful and kind persons as objects to which the term “good” is customarily applied. No new difficulties confront our attempt to pronounce the physiological implications of our concept as thus employed, even if we are obliged to alter to some slight extent our previous point of view. The skilful man is called “good” simply because he does or can mobilize his energy to produce something which is regarded as useful, fit, or serviceable. Likewise, the skilful or kind person is one who may be counted on to assist in maintaining, restoring, or increasing any state of things that is regarded as desirable. And we who employ the concept “good” to praise or encourage such a man insinuate that the same mobilization of energy is going on within us. Indeed, as could be readily shown, all perceptions of persons involve an imitative or empathic response. That is why skill and virtuosity of all sorts are agreeable to behold. They furnish numerous outlets for subconscious action-tendencies.

As regards Class C, the concept “good” points to “that which fulfils expectation,” that is, the normal or typical thing. These words “normal” and “typical” (“implying the existence of characteristic qualities”) are related to the word “good” by means of the conditioned reflex. Our experience with all such things as motor-cars, for example, involves not only cognition, but eventually discrimination and comparison as well. Thereafter, when we hear of a good motor-car, we think of such a one as we have been trained to regard as capable of a certain kind of performance. The same thing holds with respect to all other objects and persons concerning whom we have become discriminative. “Good,” thus employed, seems to imply that energy is being mobilized to perform selective activity, and also that the sense organs have become specially attuned to receive a specific stimulus. The “good” cat is not any old beast of the back alley, but a mouser with a certain number of catches to her credit. The “good” grocer (that is, supposedly normal) is one who gives full weight and makes prompt deliveries. Moreover, there is implicit in all such uses of this value predicate some reference to that dependability which was discussed in connection with Class B. Here, then, we may state that Class C implies the mobilization of energy for the performance of such action as will maintain our physical or mental equilibrium. And this, physiologically speaking, is ultimately a matter of the progressive coordination of reflexes and the maintenance of muscular tone.

The objects referred to by class D are those which greatly or even suddenly exceed expectation, whence, as has been hinted before, the signification of our concept frequently approaches that of an expletive. Let us see what physiological mechanisms provide this shade of meaning. It is generally realized that not only do our successes and failures, our disappointments and satisfactions attune our neuro-muscular mechanism to respond to the typical or normal thing by calling it “good,” but these same successes and failures may also whet our appetite for things which, by exceeding the average, shall make up for those experiences which have been especially disappointing. All normal protoplasm is insatiable for the maximum success. And hunger of any sort, physiologically speaking, may be described as a condition in which the motor mechanism is activated to greater efforts than usual in order to relieve the condition of want. Consequently, the physiological implications of the concept “good” may be made as precise with respect to Class D as with any of the preceding classes. The action-patterns implied by this class are those which are exhibited by anyone when, after long privation, the tensions he has accumulated are suddenly relieved by the appearance of the desired stimulus. Indeed, such action-patterns may sometimes be described as rapacity, as is illustrated in the case of our crying out “Good!” when some misfortune has befallen a particularly annoying prig.

The physiological implications of the term “good” as regards Class E have already been sufficiently hinted in our delineation of that class. Moreover, the surprise, shock, and spasm which it connotes prevent its having an important rôle to play in our judgments of value.

Let us now sum up and condense these several points. From the foregoing it appears that he who uses the word “good” is at the same time exhibiting a certain specific motor attitude toward the environment which gives this word its meaning. As we have already shown, the action-pattern involves the following physiological conditions:—(1) the presence, maintenance, or even heightening of muscular tone, (2) the permeability of the synaptic membranes, especially of those along the motor pathways, (3) selective activity and selective excitability, and (4) normally, the nice coordination of the motor responses involved in overt action. This positively responsive condition of the organism may now be expressed in simpler words by saying that the word “good” is the sign of an outgoing reaction. That is to say, in the first place, the things we call “good” release the energy that is ready to be discharged; in the second place, we participate more fully in that environment which contains a “good” than in one that does not; and in the third place, the effect of the presence of continuously “good” stimuli is to render us more and more responsive, and to provide a wide margin of resiliency for our organic interior.

Our definition of good in physiological terms has now been achieved.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The following list of uses of the word “good” has been taken from Murray’s New Oxford Dictionary, The Century Dictionary and Encyclopedia, Webster’s, and the Standard Dictionary. From the same sources also were derived the lists given in the following five chapters. It should, however, be well noted that the lexicographer rarely attempts such an analytical definition of words as we are in search of here. He confines himself chiefly to the etymology of a word and its synonyms, and to citing quotations which illustrate the accepted usage of words. As a result, the man who looks into a dictionary will increase his range of associations long before he will be stimulated to perform that most fruitful of all mental activities,—critical analysis.

The Uses of the Word “Good”

1. Good food; fit to eat, untainted.

2. Good food; nutritious, palatable.

3. Good medicine; useful as a remedy.

4. Good soil; fertile, arable.

5. Good ice; easy to skate on.

6. Good ice; fit to dissolve in drinking water.

7. Good ship; capable, or under sail, or expressing pride in the owner, or as an expression of well-wishing.

8. Good cat; able mouser, house-broken, etc.

9. Good child; quiet, obedient, not troublesome.

10. Good person for: capable, thorough, skilful, competent, clever at, in concord with.

11. “To can no good,” (colloq.); to be untrained.

12. Good for a period of time; well able to accomplish.

13. In good earnest; vigorously and effectively.

14. Good king; one who fulfils his function, or is beloved by his subjects.

15. To good; to improve land by manuring it.

16. Good space or time for; available for the purpose.

17. Good opinion; favorable or approving, laudatory.

18. Good cry; beneficent, profitable, salutary, wholesome.

19. Good spirits; not depressed or dejected, indicative of resilience or ambition.

20. Good offices; friendly use of power.

21. Good man; kind, benevolent, gentle, gracious, friendly, favorably disposed, virtuous, skilful, commendable, pious, devout, or religiously approved.

22. Good season; holy days.

23. The good book; “tending to spiritual edification.”

24. The good God; “connoting perfection or benevolence.”

25. Highest good; conventional phrase of philosophers.

26. “Antonio is a good man”; reliable, safe, able to fulfil his engagements, financially sound.

27. “A man of good”; of property, standing, rank.

28. Goods; property, merchandise, wares, live-stock, cattle, etc.

29. “A great good”; a large sum of money.

30. To yield a good product or result; to turn to a person’s advantage.

31. To the good; balance on the credit side, excess of assets over liabilities.

32. “Good fors”; colloquial in South Africa for promissory notes, drafts, “I.O.U.’s,” etc.

33. Good wind; favorable, not too weak or too strong.

34. Good health; conducive to peace of mind and longevity.

35. Good order; stable, satisfying.

36. Good complexion; gratifying, favorable, advantageous, etc.

37. Good face; fair or smooth, or indicating intellectual ability or trustworthiness of character.

38. Good play; agreeable, amusing, skilful.

39. Good fame; honorable, not sullied.

40. To have a good night of it; to sleep undisturbedly and to be refreshed by so doing.

41. To have a good time of it; period of enjoyment.

42. Good will; benevolence.

43. “Good morning”; elliptical for well wishing.

44. “Good bye”; elliptical for well wishing at departure.

45. To take in good part; to be somewhat pleased, or at least not displeased.

46. “Good to overcome”; easy to overcome.

47. To appear or seem good; implying various degrees of commendation, depending, however, upon the accent of the speaker.

48. A good deal; an amount greater than expected.

49. A good deal; adequate, abundant, ample, sufficient.

50. As good as; practically or to all intents and purposes the same.

51. To be as good as one’s word; to act up to the full sense of the letter or the meaning.

52. To make good; to succeed, fulfil, or perform, carry out or succeed in performing.

53. To make good; to fill up even or level.

54. To make good; to repair or restore, to compensate for, to supply a deficiency, to pay a debt.

55. To make good; to secure prisoners for the night.

56. To make good; to prove to be true or valid, to demonstrate or substantiate a statement.

57. Good for a certain amount; spoken of a person expected to pay or contribute.

58. Good debts; those which are expected to be paid in full.

59. To make one’s part good; to make a successful resistance.

60. To become good for; to fulfil expectation.

61. To come to good; spoken of a dream that comes true.

62. Good birth; average or above the average, not humble or mean.

63. Good coin; genuine, not counterfeit.

64. Good purpose or conduct; commendable, acceptable, up to standard, not causing trouble.

65. Good jest; smart, witty, typical, or even exceptional.

66. Good right, claim, reason, plea, proposition; valid, sound.

67. Good legal decision, or contract; valid, effectual, not vitiated by any flaw.

68. To have a good mind to; to be ready to act, to have a matured intention.

69. “Our good wishes go with you”; expectation of happiness or prosperity.

70. For good and all; valid conclusion, finally.

71. “Good my lord”; courteous address, deferential attitude, expectation of favor or esteem.

72. Good life insurance risk; likely to live a long time.

73. “Good men and true”; spoken of a jury that is expected to render a fair verdict.

74. Good old; possibly a term of praise, or merely meaning very old.

75. “Good words!”; equivalent to “do not speak so fiercely,” or “I expected kind words from you.”

76. “The good people”; palliatory with reference to the fairies or witches.

77. Good gracious! good Peter! good God!; exclamatory, possibly signifying the presence of something that is unexpected, which may be either welcome or otherwise.

78. Good folk; used in a jocular or depreciatory sense.

79. Goody good; mildly depreciatory of trustful simplicity.

CHAPTER IV
THE ACTION-PATTERNS IMPLIED BY THE WORD “BAD,” WITH A NOTE ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF “EVIL”

“It is noteworthy that there has never been a problem of good, but always a problem of evil. Man takes the good in his life for granted, while he bewails the presence of evil in all its forms. May not reality be of such a character that evil is as natural as good?”

R. W. Sellars, “The Next Step in Religion,” pp. 153-5.

Good and bad, or good and evil, have from the most ancient times been held to be diametrical and thoroughgoing opposites of each other. In the system of Zoroaster this antithesis is metaphorically projected into the remotest heavens, where Mazda, the God of Light, whose deeds were goodness itself, endlessly strove to annihilate Angra, the tireless perpetrator of deceit. The Christian mythologists, in a characteristic imitation of pagan creeds, loved to imagine a final Day of Judgment, when the mild, spotless followers of the Lamb were to be rewarded by an eternal separation from the sooty henchmen of Satan. Similar conceptions, though none of them nearly so poetic, have tinged the thought of every subsequent era. Most of us are familiar with Milton’s fabulous version of the theology of the Middle Ages, in which God the Father is depicted as struggling against the powers of darkness, not, however, by sending irresistible cohorts to besiege and conquer Hell, but rather by counteracting their insidious propaganda in the playground of Adam’s Eden. Indeed, one has but to learn to read the simplest literature in any language to realize how much of what is called thinking consists simply in devising contrasts and antitheses. It is the orator’s chief tour de force, the historian’s commonplace, the dramatist’s all-important method of producing a plot, and, in fact, without it, no literature would seem to give an adequate picture of the realities of human life. Small wonder then, that in the philosophy of Empedocles, the world-view of Zoroaster, and the theology of Christendom, this stereotyped way of thinking, originating in and generated by the physics and physiology of man’s musculature, should be manifest; or that the common man should so readily and persistently hold to the diametrical opposition between good and bad, and right and wrong. The law of reciprocal innervation, being implicit in the body’s architecture, is necessarily a basic formula for man’s thought.

Even though this be admitted, it guides us only a little ways through the tangle of ethical problems. In the first place, no such dramatic portrayal as, for example, that of Zoroaster,—whatever theatrical agonies it might provoke,—has either reduced the sum of the world’s distresses, or furnished the least insight into the nature of the supposed opposites of goodness. For that matter, indeed, very little knowledge of this character has arisen out of ethical debate or speculation. The assumptions have been many, the facts few; and usually, whenever this discrepancy has been realized, overdrafts have been written on the phantom bank of theory with the vain hope that by this means ethical solvency could be attained. In the second place, it has scarcely occurred to any one to ask whether there was not some other way of looking at the ethical problem than in this duplex manner, for if an irreconcilable opposition in the field of ethics is assumed as a fundamental principle, nothing but an eternal deadlock can result in the conclusion. Now the empirical fact is that man’s muscles (the functions of which determine his thoughts), can do other things than oppose and counteract each other, for every day of our lives we see these other motor activities manifested. However, our traditional ethical theory would have it that the dilemma is inescapable,—that things are either good or bad, or actions either right or wrong, and people either virtuous or vicious, and that there is no middle ground, or possibility of reconciliation. Mark, however, that only in serious pathological cases do we observe a complete rigidity of the body due to chronic muscular antagonisms. Is it not therefore a valid inference that the mental rigidity of most adherents to the bi-polar theory in ethics is likewise a pathological sign, and, if so, are we not driven to the conclusion that man’s traditional ethical notions are symptoms of physiological malfunctioning?

Important as all this is, however, it cannot turn us aside from our interest in finding out just to what an extent the word “bad” is a real antonym to the word “good,” especially since knowledge of this sort is first necessary before we can employ the method of science in the service of the problems of human conduct. Let us, then, resume our original search.

The term “bad” is a gestural sign which we employ in two different senses,—to point out a deficiency or lack, (that is, to indicate merely the absence of good), and in a positive sense, to hint the presence of something definitely antagonistic to good. By an analogy, if money is a good, we should call it “bad” in the privative sense of the term for one to be without it; while it is “bad” in the positive sense for one to be deeply in debt. But even while we ponder these two behavior situations, they tend, at least partly, to coalesce, very much indeed as Classes A and B of “good” merged at times imperceptibly into one another. For if the man who is without money, but not in debt, passionately desires to purchase and spend, he will immediately place himself in the class of debtors, and experience therewith the positive form of “badness,” at least so far as his feelings of inhibition are concerned. However, just to what an extent these two categories of “bad” may be identified cannot be shown until we have first reviewed the separate uses to which this term is put,[8] and have also deduced the action-patterns which it implies.

It can be divined at once from a careful perusal of this brief array, herewith subjoined, that the concept “bad” is, on the whole, a far less variegated symbol than is the concept “good.” Its use is more restricted, its connotation is less rich in variety, and, as can be already predicted, the number of separate classes into which our array may be distributed is fewer than was the case with the term “good.” For while we have here hints of three classes which are, roughly speaking, negatives of Classes A, B, and C of “good,” we have nothing at all comparable to the negatives of Classes D and E. To wit:—

Class A. That which is useless, unfit, unserviceable, and the like, for any purpose whatever.

Class B. That which brings pain, discomfort, loss, or death. In some respects this class is the negative of Class B of “good,” having the general meaning of undependable. However, it is not the negative of every shade of meaning implied by that class, as can at once be seen when we consider that there are no “bads” which are the antitheses of goods, that is, property. For, as we have already observed, even some debts are good debts.

Class C. That which disappoints expectation.[9] Here also the negation is limited, for while with Class C of “good” the tone of the voice could convey an immense variety of meanings, here no such great array of nuances is found.

In consideration, then, of what has just preceded, we may emphatically deny that “bad” is a true antonym of the word “good.” Not only is this to be instantly deduced from the array of uses to which these terms are put, but also from the contents of the five classes of “good” and the three classes of “bad.” We shall presently discover whether “evil,” as an adjunct of the concept “bad,” makes up this discrepancy.

Resuming, then, our main theme, how shall we proceed to define privative and positive “bad” in physiological terms, and by what means shall we discover the action-patterns which are implied by the three classes of “bad” which we have just delimited?

In general, and from the reader’s own experience, “bad” means thwarting, inhibition, opposition, the interruption of action, the durable dissatisfactions of life. We need, however, to come at the matter a little more closely. In the preceding chapter we saw that when we are ready to act, the stimulus that elicits the reaction for which we are keyed up is called “good.” Employing the methods of inductive science, with our eye on the behavior possibilities of the human organism, we find the following stimulus-response situations adequate to reveal the origin of the word “bad.”

1. When we are ready to act in some precise manner, but no stimulus, that is, opportunity, is afforded for such action, the term “bad” adequately describes the situation. Here it becomes a gestural sign which may point either to the environment or to the organism. It is for this reason that a man in debt, hungry, and in want is said to be “in a bad way”; while in his predicament counterfeit money and tainted food would be unequivocally bad.

2. When we are ready to act, but are prevented from releasing the energy we have mobilized because the stimulus is inadequate, and does not call forth the exact response which we have been preparing to make, the situation may again be described as “bad.” “That’s too bad,” we sometimes say of a suit of clothes which, while adequately keeping out the winter’s cold, does not quite fit the shoulders.

3. When we are unready, to act in a certain way, but are summarily called upon to mobilize our energy for this purpose, the situation is again often described as “bad.” Unexpected, excess taxes always produce an emotional situation specifically related to this value predicate.

4. Any inadequate response, in other words, one that is faulty, erroneous, and the like, may be called “bad.” Sometimes, also, the person making such a response is described by the same term.

From this it appears that the general meaning of “bad” is within the scope of our discovery. Not only is this deducible from our previous identification of this concept with the useless, the independable, and with that which disappoints, but it is also plainly foreshadowed by the four behavior situations we have just described. “Bad” seems to imply that action, interest, purpose, and the like, have been thwarted; that the organism has become a center of inhibitions, and is in discomfort either because the energy which it has mobilized cannot be released into action, or because demands for such release cannot be met. Such a physiological condition is best described as incoordinate. And this term covers all three of our classes of “bad.” Moreover, by partial contrast with good, “bad” implies a withdrawing reaction, with either a slump in muscular tone (in which case we have privative “bad”), or else a sudden onset of unrelieved tensions—(positive “bad”). Accompanying such a condition, we may safely postulate synaptic impermeability and inhibition, together with varying degrees of unpleasant strain sensations. But mark, that we do not say that the “bad” is always equivalent to the painful.

Were physiological science sufficiently advanced, it would be possible for us to complete our definition of badness in terms of the mal-functioning of such internal systems as the alimentary canal, the cardiac, respiratory, and excretory mechanisms, and the endocrine glands. Our common experience indubitably indicates that all forms of thwarting and inhibition which prompt our exclamations, react violently upon the internal machinery. Indeed, it is not too much to claim that both the centrifugal and centripetal types of behavior which are implied by the terms “good” and “bad” respectively just as often as not have their source in the postures and manœuvres of our organic interior. That is, brief to say, why the healthy man and the dyspeptic, the optimist and the pessimist, will give precisely opposite accounts of the same external world. We remarked before that speech not only points out and distinguishes objects for us, but also implies and predicts human activities. Our analysis of good and bad fortifies this thesis beyond contradiction, and shows that any value predicate that has a specific reference to the environment has specific implications for the organism as well.

The Physiology of “Evil”

In some minds the term “evil” has primarily what is called a moral signification, and implies first and foremost anything “contrary to an accepted standard of righteousness,” or anything “inconsistent with or violating the moral law”; and consequently, it is equivalent to the terms “sinful” and “wicked.” Let us not meet such minds too intimately. Speaking in this fashion is not only vague, but misleading as well. For when duly examined, almost every so-called “standard of righteousness” becomes a totally unspecific category of behavior, while the term “moral law” is not law in any dependable sense of the term at all. Certainly it is not a law of nature,—of human nature,—for it does not adequately describe any typical behavior situations. Neither is it law to a jurist, since there is no organized force that can be brought to bear upon human beings to compel them to obey it in their actions, much less in their thinking. Moreover, the terms “sinful” and “wicked” are so narrow and provincial and so exclusively employed by religionists “to pelt their adversaries with,” that their equivalence to “evil” as a term of value in the broadest ethical sense is, to say the least of it, problematical. Whether unfortunately or not, none of the purely moral categories are fundamental for an understanding of the actual behavior of human beings. Indeed, as a usual thing, they hint uncritical and disorderly thinking in him who uses them, rather than specify any intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of human interests, or any analytical insight into the environment which now thwarts and now furthers such interests.

And now to our analysis. The term “evil” is much more assertive than is the word “bad,” and more forceful than all but a few significations of the word “good.” It originally had the adverbial force of up or over, two words whose empathic significance is worthy of remark. Today the term “evil” signifies either (a) “that which exceeds due measure,” or (b) “that which oversteps proper limits.” Here, then, we notice at the outset that “evil,” unlike either good or bad, always carries with it the presumption of standards or rules.

To a large extent the place in the language formerly occupied by the term “evil” is now held by the term “bad.” With the reasons for this change we are not especially concerned here, although it may be appropriate to point out that the popularity of any term that has been used almost exclusively by religionists for purposes of anathema is doomed. Besides, the word “evil” calls up literary associations which condemn it to modern minds. Such expressions as “The Evil One” (that is, the Devil of the Middle Ages), the “evil eye” (another outworn superstition), the “King’s Evil,” and a dozen other equally obsolete terms have fallen into such low repute that they have weakened, so to speak, the gestural significance of the remnants of this concept. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there is far more dramatic vocal quality attaching to the term “evil” than to either of the words “good” or “bad.” Few words in the language provide such an opportunity as does this one for the simultaneous display of eye-, lip-, and jaw-gestures, whose combined effects are none the less striking, no matter how empathically unpleasant they have become. We invite you to stand before the mirror, and say the word “evil” with clenched teeth and canines showing, and verify this remark.

While the term “evil” is employed as an adjective, a noun, and an adverb, we do not need to stop here to catalogue its uses under these three headings. All we need to consider is that “evil” is an intensification of “bad” in the positive sense of that term.[10] It is also a forceful negative of Class B of good, in the sense that it implies that which actively operates to produce incoordination, mal-adjustment, discomfort, and the like. It will be recalled that Class B of “good” included whatever conduced to life, health, pleasure, and stability. On the contrary, “evil” is a gestural sign that indicates any and all processes of disintegration, disruption, and confusion. It at once implies something which is energetically antagonistic to our purposes.

The definition of evil in mechanistic terms is now within our reach. We have said before that “evil” is an intensification of the term “bad,” which latter term was used to describe an incoordinate condition of the organism brought about because its wishes, interests, and purposes,—in a word, its action-patterns,—had been thwarted. Just what more than this does “evil” imply? It implies that our wishes have been thwarted to such an extent as to call forth from us the most energetic, antagonistic reactions of which we are capable. “Good” signifies an outgoing reaction, “bad” signifies a withdrawing reaction, while “evil” means that within the organism some of the available energies are being hastily mobilized to compensate for an outgoing reaction that has been thwarted. Of course, there are many persons who never attempt any compensation of such a constructive character as to prevent the recurrence of the same evil situation, either because they are physically unfit, or are poor in spirit, but in such cases the word “evil” is used without very much meaning.

Our definition of this concept will, I think, serve to provide a new interpretation of the statement made previously, namely, that “evil always carries with it the presumption of standards or rules.” What, precisely, does this statement mean? It means that whenever we have lost our organic equilibrium in the presence of a situation described as evil, whatever we do to recover it ipso facto at that moment defines not only the standard and rule by which our conduct is regulated, but such behavior also reveals to others just what the “problem of evil” really means to us. For example, if we are vexed and become profane, profanity is patently an integral factor in our philosophy of compensation. If we lose our money, and steal another’s to make good our loss, theft is a cardinal principle in our doctrine of equalization. We may, to be sure, immediately thereafter lament the outburst by which we attempted to “set things to rights,” but we cannot retrieve the action by which we defined and exhibited our practical ethical philosophy. Our recent Emerson had this scientific truth in mind when he said, “What you are speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you say.” Examples of another sort are equally illuminating. If Socrates is condemned to death for corrupting the Athenian youth, and calmly drinks the hemlock in order to remain a law-abiding citizen to the end, this deed of probity defines the dominant action-pattern in his philosophy of retaliation. If Jesus is crucified for blasphemy and inciting to insurrection, and manifests an attitude of non-resistance and equanimity, these action-patterns once more exhibit his method of dealing with the problem of evil. In every such case the bodily habits which have long accumulated are automatically released by the appropriate stimulus into overt behavior. In physiological terms, what a man does in response to evil, shows what sort of reciprocal innervations his body has acquired. And while such a mechanistic interpretation of an ethical standard may seem astonishing, yet such a modus agendi is, unless we are greatly deceived, the one which human beings actually employ, and consequently it is the only one which has any place in an empirical science of conduct.

A Further Remark on the Opposites of “Good”

From our definition of “evil” as an intensification of “bad” in the positive sense of that term, it can at once be noted that these two words do not even together supply a thoroughgoing antonym to the word “good.” For they do not strictly imply action-patterns which in the minute and fine are opposed to those underlying all the valid uses of the word “good.” It is not to the point that “in general” (which can only mean here vaguely) these words are antithetical to each other; our analysis has produced knowledge that henceforth discounts all such remarks. And, if anyone says that for the purposes of morality, the traditional antithesis is still valid, the answer is that morality, after all, is only custom, while ethics is primarily a critical insight into that reality which the moralist has always sought to make obscure.

A more important conclusion, however, is still to be drawn from the foregoing analysis. Which is, that “evil” is not, as has usually been concluded, an opposite of “good.” Indeed, if we have described the situation fairly, when we say that ‘evil denotes that our wishes have been thwarted to such an extent as to call forth from us the most energetic, antagonistic reactions of which we are capable,’ we can only deduce from this that the antagonistic reactions are aroused for the purpose of replacing something that is “bad” by something that is “good.” But if this be the case, then the emphatic quality attaching to the word “evil” is really a sign that we have already started an outgoing reaction that shall furnish the desired compensation. This two-fold meaning of the word “evil” is worthy of more than a passing remark, but suffice it to say that in the light of what has gone before, the “problem of evil” now becomes the problem of educating a man how to replace the “bad” with the “good,” rather than a problem over which the metaphysician may dawdle or the moralist mope.

FOOTNOTES:

[8]

The Uses of the Word “Bad”

I. The Privative Significations of the Word “Bad.”

1. Bad air; vitiated, which cannot sustain healthy respiration.

2. Bad coin; debased, counterfeit.

3. Bad food; deficient in nourishment.

4. Bad food; repugnant on account of its smell or taste, whether deficient in nourishment or not.

5. Bad shot or guess; incorrect, faulty, below standard or par.

6. Bad debts; those which cannot or are not expected to be paid.

7. To go bad; to decay.

8. Bad workmanship; defective, below par, sometimes called poor or worthless.

9. In a bad way; in a wretched or miserable state, unfortunate, unfavorable.

10. With a bad grace; unwillingly.

II. The Positive Significations of the Word “Bad.”

1. Bad air; noxious, poisonous.

2. Bad food or water; injurious to health, hurtful, dangerous, pernicious.

3. Bad company; depraved, wicked, vicious.

4. Bad fit (as of a shoe); causing inconvenience, displeasure, or pain.

5. Bad smell; unpleasant, offensive, disagreeable, troublesome, painful.

6. “Bad blood”; harsh, angry feeling.

7. In bad health; suffering from disease or injury, (in pain).

8. “To the bad”; to ruin, in deficit.

9. “In bad” (slang); spoken of a man who has made trouble for himself and others.

[9] In passing, it might be pertinent to consider the question as to whether the word “bad” is synonymous with ‘that which disappoints expectation.’ One might ask, for example, “Do not chronic pessimists literally expect catastrophe?” Here, as elsewhere, we must not be deceived by a trick of speech. For he who says, “I expect disaster,” is unwittingly making an equivocal statement. The man who makes such a remark cannot be implying that his whole body, with its numerous action-patterns, is completely set to receive the stimulus that will demolish his equilibrium. Rather should we infer from this utterance that he is at least partly prepared to resist it, partly to rejoice at the incident discomfiture to others, with the hope thereby of making his own troubles dwindle by comparison, and perhaps also partly anticipating the relief that will come when the suspense of waiting is over. None of these interpretations disallow the formulation of any of the above classes of “bad.” To be sure, there are certain abnormal types, like the sadist and the masochist, to whom pain is an erotic stimulus, but even so, their expectations are always directed to that particular element of the situation which, by affording an outgoing reaction, is for them a “good.”

[10]

The Significations of the Term “Evil”

1. That which causes or increases harm, injury, misfortune, or disease.

2. Such advice as is misleading, mischievous, or disastrous.

3. Any wish whose fulfilment would lead to calamity, trouble, or death.

4. Any abusive, malicious, or slanderous statement, (compare “evil tongue”).

5. Any period of time characterized by misfortune or suffering.

6. The term “evil” is also used in special senses, such as in the expression “social evil” (that is, prostitution). But such a use of this word, being special and more or less provincial, should not be over-emphasized in our definition. There are, moreover, many other social evils than prostitution, and some producing far more ethical disaster.

CHAPTER V
“RIGHT” AS A GESTURAL SIGN

“From every point of view, the overwhelming and portentous character ascribed to universal conceptions is surprising. Why, from Plato and Aristotle downwards, philosophers should have vied with each other in scorn of the knowledge of the particular, and in adoration of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more adorable knowledge ought to be that of the more adorable things, and that the things of worth are all concretes and singulars. The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things.... In sum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic ‘idol of the tribe.’” W. James, “Principles of Psychology,” Vol. I, Chap. XII, pp. 479-80.

There had been a murder in the Maritime Provinces, and two men, a jurist and a layman, were discussing it. The murdered man, it appeared, had from time to time missed some of his sheep, and one day, upon hearing a shot fired, ran down into his pasture, and came upon two boys, one of whom was carrying a gun, and the other a bag whose contours plainly revealed that it contained the body of a sheep. The farmer ordered the boys to follow him to town to give an account of their misbehavior; and this they proceeded to do without any show of resistance or word of objection. But suddenly, and without any warning, the boy who carried the gun shot the farmer in the back of the head, killing him instantly. The murderer was later apprehended, and put into the county jail, awaiting trial.

“And would they hang a boy of seventeen in Canada?” asked the layman.

“Why not?” enquired the jurist, “They can hang anyone here who has reached the age of discretion, and who knows the difference between right and wrong.”

“And will you tell me,” parried the layman, “just what that age is, and exactly what that difference is?”

The jurist eyed his inquisitor for a moment, and burst into a laugh. “Only a fool would ask such a question!” he retorted, and turned away.

All of which goes to show that a man may be proficient in legal technique, and yet be an ignoramus in ethics. Knowledge of the meaning of the word “right” is both possible and profitable, and it is hardly too much to suppose that such knowledge, when disseminated, might even produce a salutary effect upon legal theory and legal practice.

Anyone who endeavors to marshal the array of all the uses to which the word “right” is put, will be astonished to find out how extensive the list is. In point of the richness of its denotation and connotation, this concept exceeds the term “good.” And while it resembles that word in being used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb, it significantly differs from the term “good” in that it is employed to refer principally to the relations and functions of things, and hardly ever to objects of the physical environment.

No man’s span of perception is large enough, or his span of attention long enough, to surround the complete array of the uses of the word “right” unless this array be divided into classes. Such division will presently appear. And I think it can be shown that no matter how little in common some of the terms of this array seem, to a casual observer, to possess, when they are thus grouped into classes, they will be subtly linked together by adequate bonds. Let us then introduce:

Class A

The Word “Right” as a Term that is Descriptive of Certain Mathematical Relationships and Physical Functions.[11]

The original signification of our concept was straight, a word, be it noted, that is usually defined in the negative. (See Ex. 1, p. 76.) Why we have a negative definition for a word that seems to have a positive meaning, especially to mathematicians and draughtsmen, is not at first quite obvious. However, when this phenomenon is duly examined from the point of view of the mechanics of man’s locomotor apparatus, its secret is no longer hidden. All of the movements naturally produced by the appendages of the body are curvilinear: the arm being a lever, or radius vector, it always draws arcs in space or on paper; so does the hand as a whole, and so do the fingers. “Right” signifying straight, therefore, is defined negatively simply because straight lines are alien to the physics and mechanics of man’s original nature.

Where, then, did man get the notion of straightness, and what has this first class of the uses of “right” to do with ethics? Man got the notion of straightness, we surmise, from such things as freely falling bodies, which give not only the idea of perpendicular, but also and at the same time the ideas of direct and immediately; from the sunbeams which drew for him imaginary lines among the clouds and through the foliage of the forest; from his need of taking the shortest course across the fields in pursuit of wild animals for the supply of his larder; and from his reminiscent ponderings of the comparative merits of less and less curved and crooked arrows used in the chase. Moreover, man walks with the greatest safety and pursues his game with the greatest chances of success when his feet go without hesitation on a level or straight surface. Under these conditions he can attain his ends directly and immediately; as the saying is, “Things will then come out all right.” Consequently, even the straight line has ethical implications: the speed with which some actions are performed and the time required to cover the distance between man and his objective are very often the chief considerations in the attainment of a good or the avoidance of an evil thing.

And this brings us by a very slight transition to

Class B

“Right” as Descriptive of the Method (or Object) by Which the Desired End Can be Obtained.

Here the purpose involved, or the end sought, is neither praised nor blamed. Nor have we indeed as yet reached any basis by which a criterion of purposes and ends can be established. So far as we have gone, “right” implies technique, and nothing more.

The members of this class are as follows:

13. The “right” information.

14. “Right” whale; the one to capture in order to get whalebone.

15. “Rub your sarsnet well, the right way of the sarsnet.”

16. “Let it be a constant rule to scrub the boards the right way of the grain, that is, lengthwise.”

17. “The ship ceased rolling and righted herself.” (Compare this signification with perpendicular, previously given.)

18. “Stand it upright, or it will fall.”

19. “Whose inhabitants were right shooters (at an haires breadth and faile not).”

20. “Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows, And be a boy right out.”

21. “I am right of mine old master’s humour for that.”

Class C

“Right” as Descriptive of any Statement Which Reports the Facts; of any Opinion or Judgment that is Correct; and of any Person Who Judges, Thinks, or Acts in Accordance with the Facts or the Truth about a Matter.[12]

It will be observed that the significations in this class are all symptomatic of a slight change in the meaning of the concept “right.” The emphasis here is upon true opinions and judgments in contrast to false ones. Moreover, the range of behavior covered by Class C is somewhat broader than that denoted by the two preceding classes. He who now uses this word “right” becomes judicial, and makes statements he is willing to defend. More than this we cannot say. We assume many a time, no doubt, that the statements we call true are backed by something not ourselves; and while in some cases nature’s laws are in a sense “behind” our statements, yet unless this is the case, there is nothing whatever to fall back upon. Thus, while a man may demonstrate that dynamite is, as he says, truly explosive, yet in cases of the equitable adjustment of social frictions, where both parties pour out a tumult of exaggerations, no similar truth of opinion is obtainable. It would therefore be illogical to assume that we have reached any absolute criterion in passing from Class B to Class C of “right.” He who uses this concept in this connection has, indeed, ventured more than he who uses it only to imply the preceding two classes, but he is not thereby gifted with superior powers of discretion. All we can say is that he who undertakes to make a judgment with all the available information before him is more likely to be chosen as a referee again. He will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that if he makes mistakes, they will probably be some that he has never made before. And this way much of human progress lies.

Class D

“Right” as the Distinctive Epithet of the Hand Which is Normally the Stronger.[13]

The use of our concept in this connection is firmly bound to its use in the preceding classes. For it is no accident that in the mechanistic process called evolution human aims and purposes have come to be furthered and achieved principally through the power and skill of the arm and hand. The “right” arm and hand point reasonably straight, throw missiles in a fairly direct manner, and their powerful shots bring down the quarry immediately. (Class A.) These parts of the body are also among the most educible and skilful in the technique requisite for bringing about a desired end. Their action-patterns are indeed often the very method by which ambitions are achieved. (Class B.) And when we have reached a judgment that is deemed to be true or in accordance with the facts of the matter (Class C.), it is our “right” hand that is ready to be motivated in its defence. Even the art of writing, in the original sense of cutting, tearing, or scratching to produce a record or a design, is not at all distantly related to the functions of this part of the body.

With this clearly understood, the transition is easy to make to

Class E

Legal “Rights”; that is, Those Claims and Interests the Establishment and Protection of Which May Be Secured by Force and even Violence.[14]

As used in this connection, “right” is partially equivalent to might, since our concept here connotes an organized force,—a physical power,—which, under given conditions, can be employed for the purpose of establishing claims and protecting interests. This organized force is popularly referred to as “the Law,” especially by those who indulge in back-yard altercations and cry out: “If you do that again, I’ll have the Law on you!” And the ordinary man, whose six or seven years of public schooling have implanted in him the fixed habit of reifying all abstractions, understands the law as equivalent to a transcendental force of some kind which makes his threats effective. As befits the mental calibre of such a man, the law frequently becomes synonymous with the functions of the police, who are naïvely supposed to know when and how to protect everybody’s legal rights. This is an error. Not only are the police extremely ignorant persons, but they have scarcely any legal status whatever. They are “the tolerated remnant of the autocratic power which absolute monarchs once exercised over their subjects.” Law and legal rights are functions of the courts, while the police are simply unattached huskies hired to bring into court those who do not come there of their own initiative. We must look elsewhere for the source of the might which legal rights are said and felt to possess, namely, in the origin and function of law itself.

Briefly stated, law originated as a means to protect men against loss of property, against bodily harm, and against damage to their personality through the actions of their fellows. It did not originate as a means to prevent or repair the damage to life or property caused by cloudbursts or lightning, or the loss of income brought about by avalanches, laziness, or disease; it had only to do with actions for which some man could be held responsible. Now the actions which produce the loss of property, bodily harm, and damage to personality are usually actions arising from, as well as leading to, emotional disturbances. Theft, murder, and libel, for example, are about the most potent stimuli to violent retaliation that can be provided. Nevertheless, it is sound psychology that most emotions quickly cool if the stimulus be withdrawn, that wrath has to be nursed if it is to be kept warm, and that absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Here is where the law performs its chief function. For the law is simply an ingenious device to get a judgment on the conflict of human interests which shall not be tinged with the passions that provoked the conflict. And while legal procedure may not always be fair, especially in the eyes of the loser, its methods certify that it shall not be precipitous or rancorous in rendering a decision. Legal rights, therefore, are not equivalent to the capacity for revenge, but rather consist in the ability to get old quarrels looked at by new and unbiased eyes. Herein consists much of the prestige of the law, and since prestige has always been regarded as a kind of power, men are not slow to employ it in the establishment of their claims and the protection of their interests.

Law, however, is frequently misinterpreted when its function is thought to be preventative of discord, rather than judicial and equitable. Law is no guardian angel. No law can prevent the unobserved Richard Roe from murdering the defenceless John Doe; nor can it hinder the murderer (still unobserved) from altering Doe’s will to his own material advantage; neither can it be guaranteed to forestall the murderer from making the false plea that Doe was about to assault his daughter. The law did not make man in its own image; according to scripture it was God who did that. Law does not set out to protect the careless or the poor in spirit. Its machinery is normally put into operation only for those with enough initiative to look out for their own interests. If a patentee knowingly allows one infringement of his patent rights, he might as well donate his invention to the public. The law does not hunt for trouble, or carry on a bureau for the exchange of expressions of malcontent. It does not even demand that a clearly known offender of society, and one conscious of his offence, enter a plea of guilty. Actually, the function of law is simply to preserve and to restore order and peace in society, and not to define what that order and peace shall be. Were ninety per cent of the people in the world suddenly to become stubbornly devoted to thieving, the public peace would have to be redefined in terms of their attitude toward property. Moreover, as it is now, the law merely attempts to imitate the security which is provided by “gentlemen’s agreements,” which security is largely maintained without the help of the courts. For it is very plain that millions keep the peace, while only a few hundreds know the law. Law, then, may be fairly characterized as an impersonal referee, whose business it is to persuade and oblige the disturbers of the social equilibrium to employ the methods and standards of conduct which have always marked free men.

With this by way of introduction, it is not difficult to understand why “right” in the legal sense of the word is so closely related to might. For the term “legal rights” refers not only to those claims and interests which may be established and protected, but also and rather to those which have long been secured by force. In other words, some of them have the advantage of the momentum of custom and tradition. Now custom and tradition, whatever else they may be, are certainly action-patterns which are generated and maintained by the bodies of human beings. They are habits, both of overt action and covert thought,—response processes of the neuro-muscular apparatus. The tenacity of these habits, moreover, is due to the combined action of two well-known physiological mechanisms,—the conditioned reflex and the circular reflex. The conditioned reflex, which is dependent upon the repetition of stimuli, is particularly prevalent where day by day the same persons, the same kinds of property, and the same predicaments of living are met with; and so we may say that customs and traditions (and with them the inevitable claims and interests) are created by the environment as much as by the organism. The circular reflex, or proprio-ceptive reinforcement of any action-tendency, governs much of our behavior, even though we little suspect it. It underlies occupational postures, idiosyncracies of gait and of facial expression, and indeed, without circular reflexes we should not have either tenacity of purpose or the ability to hold a grudge. Its function in the establishment and maintenance of those action-patterns on which tradition depends is of paramount importance. And since these two reflexes are largely responsible for the difficulty with which habits of action and thought are broken, the support which they give to maintaining the tradition of legal rights is hardly to be overestimated. Thus, from the mechanistic point of view, the homage which we give to legal rights is after all simply equivalent to the expenditure of energy in our bodies for the purpose of maintaining particular habits of action. Indeed, in those who maintain the public peace, all the energy which goes into actions which promote the order of society is literally spent to uphold legal rights of one sort or another. It is this energy, this physical power, which we referred to recently when we said that “right” is partially equivalent to might.

And yet, in spite of the apparently great amount of muscle power that is, so to speak, behind all legal rights, from the logical point of view, the use and effectiveness of this power is altogether contingent upon the exact nature of the claim and interest which one desires to be secured. The logical statement of the situation here involved would take the form of a hypothetical proposition, namely, If the claim or interest is of a certain kind, then and then only may it be established and protected. And while this might seem at first to indicate that legal rights were seriously lacking in point of authority, yet this is not the case, for the strongest possible assertions that can be made are always couched in the form of hypothetical propositions. As Couterat states in his “Algebra of Logic,” “Every proposition which implies another is stronger than the latter, and the latter is weaker than the one which implies it.” The blunt categorical proposition is far less powerful, since by itself it implies nothing whatever, whereas hypotheticals leave no doubt as to the necessary consequences. All the laws of nature, which, by the way, cannot be broken, are stated in hypothetical form. Moreover, since it is the antecedent, and not the consequent, of a hypothetical proposition which gives it strength, it is easy to see that any particular claim and interest is rendered all the more likely of being established and protected if similar claims and interests have long been recognized in the law as valid. In practice we find this to be the case: the common law which is the oldest code is also the one to which new claims to legal right are invariably referred.

Having looked at the picture of legal rights from one angle, let us now look at it from another. While in strict logic the statement of these rights in the form of a hypothetical imperative gives them an undeniable strength, it must now be admitted that from the pragmatic point of view it signifies at times a discouraging weakness. For it has often been the case that the establishment of claims and the protection of interests has in practice depended upon such vexatious variables as the pet theories of experts (e. g., alienists), the hunger, fatigue, and stubbornness of jurymen, the internal secretions of judges, a crowded or empty condition of the jails, current sociological theory, and even such astonishing things as one’s affiliation with secret societies, or one’s political “pulls,” not to mention, except by a passing remark, the determination of a litigant to carry his case to the higher courts clear beyond the ability of his antagonist’s purse to follow him there. So that if we ask whether some particular claim or interest can and will be established or protected, the real answer in a large number of border-line cases is, “Nobody knows.” Justice, who carries in her hand a balance whereby to weigh the evidence fairly, has also her eyes blindfolded against seeing what manner of weights are put into either pan. This defect of law, however, is not to be wondered at when we remember that legal theory cannot anticipate all of the innumerable claims and interests which either honest or knavish persons are likely to support as valid. If the theory of law had been as complicated as human society has become, it could not have accomplished the half of what it has already achieved.