I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS (part 2 of 2)
Human beings, as plastic shapes, moulded by contact, adjust themselves to each other, and thus it comes about that certain personal claims are waived. Self-sacrifice is a real fact, a fact attested by the existence of the bad, to whom such sacrifice involves a loss of happiness and is impossible. It means the abandonment of a real good which the individual would seize under other circumstances. It is sometimes contended that real self-sacrifice is impossible, either (1) because the sacrifice is really pleasanter to the agent, or (2) because he is compensated for his loss. But the evident fact that self-sacrifice is pleasanter to the agent does not involve the seeking of his own pleasure by the agent, and even if it be admitted that there is always the forecast of compensation in the mind of the agent, yet part of the forecast is the picture of happiness foregone. But here, as before, it may be said that the element of reflection, the weighing of one's own and others' happiness against each other is read into the act by the onlooker, and is not necessarily involved. That his own self-sacrifice, the compensation of his own consciousness of right-doing outweighs, to the moral man, the pleasure of lower aims, does not mean that the individual is selfish in seeking self-sacrifice. And, in fact, that any ulterior aim of self-satisfaction beyond the act itself is sought, in self-sacrifice, by the moral man, is false; the greatest acts of heroism are characterized by complete absorption in the impersonal end sought, the good of the agent thus not lying beyond, but consisting in his action. Acts characterized by another spirit than this we do not term self-sacrifice.
As all conduct is a matter of will, so morality is concerned not merely with the virtues, the practical dealings of men, but also with all that strengthens or weakens the will and, in general, conduces to character. In judging a man, the significance of his individual gifts, and the responsibility which attends the cultivation of these gifts must be recognized. Not special virtues alone must be considered, but the whole man must be judged and the significance of his self-cultivation in this or that direction observed. This does not mean that the exceptional faults of exceptional men are to be condoned. On the contrary, there is no reason to suppose that special gifts confer a special privilege rather than a special responsibility. Judged in the entirety of their character, such men may not be worse than others, and this fact should be regarded; but we should not defend their sins as such. The neglect of self-cultivation in one direction may be necessary to action in another direction; but the moral criterion of such self-cultivation or action is to be found in morality as an equilibrium of powers.
Perfection is not itself sufficient to define the end. Perfect is that which is the best possible; perfection as a perfect activity rather than a perfect state (as we must conceive it) is equivalent to the best possible conduct. But the moral end can be understood as perfection only when by the best possible conduct is understood that which is the best possible under circumstances determined by morality itself. The fullest development as demanded by morality is not necessarily the perfection of development in any particular case, that is, with regard to any particular gift or individual. Or, in other words, perfection in both its absolute and its comparative meaning, is a conception which belongs, not to morality as such, but to the materials out of which morality is constituted. Take "perfect" as equivalent to "best," then perfection is equally involved in every good action. The good is always the best; what is right is perfect; morality discards degrees of comparison. But the degree of perfection to which any power or individual is to be developed is determined, morally, by the principle of equilibrium. Moreover, we may recognize degrees of perfection in individuals who are, nevertheless, not to be classified as of less or greater moral value.
There are two different conceptions of merit, the one as applied to magnitude of actual achievement, the other to magnitude of effort. The apparent discrepancy vanishes on reflection, since both conceptions apply to what passes beyond the average and measures the distance between the two.
Against the hedonistic doctrine, it has been urged by Green that pleasure as such is not the end of action, for even where the single pleasure is desired there is always the thought of a permanent self whose good is supposed to lie in the direction of this pleasure; while a sum of pleasures cannot, as such, be an object of desire, since pleasures, as separate and transitory in contradistinction from the permanent self, cannot be added together in fact, but only in thought; and with regard to a greatest sum of pleasures the difficulty is still greater, since pleasures admit of indefinite increase, and their sum can never be the greatest possible. In so far as desire is supposed to be for pleasures and nothing else, the argument that a sum of pleasures cannot be desired must be admitted. The transiency of the pleasures has, however, nothing to do with the question; the reason why a sum of pleasures cannot form a single pleasure is that they are pleasures with a higher idea--that of a series involving a plan. This does not prove that a sum of pleasures might not be the criterion of conduct. It must be admitted that "sum" is an unfortunate word, since it seems to imply that the pleasures must be combined in one total result; but such an interpretation of the word is not necessary. A series of pleasures is properly nothing more than an aggregate or combination of pleasures, partly successive, partly coexistent. Nor does the greatest possible happiness mean a happiness than which no greater is possible, but the greatest possible under the given conditions. The polemic is directed against the individualistic psychology, which regards mental states as a mere succession of events. So far the arguments enforce a great principle; a mere succession of feelings or sensations could never yield a conception of a sum apprehended as a sum. But this is irrelevant. For such an idea we require much more than sensation: we require memory, perception, the idea of a self. But this is only saying that morality requires more than mere sensation, and the argument assumes the standpoint it is fighting, treating mental states as mere events. It, moreover, introduces the idea of a permanent self as something superior to mere sensations, whereas perhaps this self is elaborated from sensational elements. Furthermore, if the proposition means that a mind which had only sensations could not have a sum of sensations, this may be denied. A sum is possible from three positions--that of the conception of a spectator, that of a reflecting consciousness, and that of a feeling consciousness which feels its states continuously, though it may not feel them as continuous, for such a feeling would argue comparison and reflection. The polemic, therefore, while in so far right as it is directed against individualistic psychology, seems to assign wrong reasons for a rejection of hedonism; Utilitarians, while speaking of pleasures in the language of psychology, treat them really as something more than mere events--treat them as we really combine them by processes much higher than sensation. A refutation of hedonism must consist in showing that pleasures really differ in kind, and cannot, therefore, be compared in intensity. "Pleasure" is often used as equivalent to a pleasant sensation; such pleasures differ in kind, as in the case of gratified hunger, ambition, and the like, and cannot be actually added, either in thought or in enjoyment, because incommensurable. "Pleasure" is often used, also, to refer, not to the sensation itself, but to its pleasantness, and here the same thing is true; if we distinguish the quality and the tone of feeling, as usual in psychology, the classification of tones as pleasurable and painful is insufficient. "The tones of colors and sounds, for instance, are more naturally represented by the mood of mind they suggest: red has a warm tone, black a sad, gray a sober, the organ a solemn tone."[82] The tone of some feelings is too indefinite for description,--a vague comfort or discomfort,--while the tone may rise to a condition to be described only by "bliss" or "rapture." Pleasure and pain depend, moreover, not only on the quality and quantity of the feeling, but on the whole condition of the mind, pleasure indicating agreement with the mind, pain non-agreement. Every pleasure being a function of the sensation in which it is an element, the supposed sum of pleasures must be made up of pleasures every one of which is qualified as that which is produced by a certain activity. "The sum of pleasures, therefore, re-introduces the distinctions and contents of the moral order, and, though an expression of the criterion of conduct, is therefore, like perfection, not an independent criterion." The element of quality in pleasure may be verified more easily as what may be called preferability. The term preferability does not mean that there is an inherent moral value in every pleasure, in virtue of which pleasures may be distinguished as higher or lower--obviously an erroneous view, for higher and lower is an antithesis established by morality itself; the value depends on the kind of pleasure, and the preferability is that in the good man's mind.
It might be objected that even though pleasures differ in kind, a comparison and summation of them might be possible, just as comparison and summation of weights is possible, although weight depends not on bulk alone but also on specific gravity. It cannot be denied that some numerical expression for qualities of pleasure may yet be found, by which they may be compared. But it is to be noted that, the higher we go in the scale of existence, the more distinct becomes the growth of a principle of selection or distribution which the members of a combination must follow in order to produce a given quantitative result. In chemistry we may obtain the atomic equivalent of sulphuric acid (98) in many ways, but we can obtain the acid itself only by specific combinations in specific proportions. In determining what food to give an animal, we must consider not bulk alone but the nutritiousness of various sorts. We might express the nutritiousness of various foods by numbers, but the numerical equivalent would tell us nothing, unless we knew the kinds of food to be combined. And in the same way we might express the sum of pleasures as end numerically, but until we know the kinds of activities and so of pleasures to be combined to this sum, the formula is useless to inform us as to the end or method of attaining it. The popular conception of happiness avoids all the difficulties and perplexities caused by setting up pleasure as the end, because in that conception pleasures and pains are never considered apart from conduct and character. Thus, though the end involves pleasure, the criterion is good conduct. The good conduct necessarily involves pleasure, for conduct which only outwardly conforms to the moral rule, and in which the agent does not take pleasure, is not really good.
The pleasure-formula thus represented as the standard of conduct is to be distinguished, as actual ethical pleasure in the act, from the pleasures attendant on the act as results, and which may be termed pathological in a Kantian sense. The ethical pleasure need not be unmixed, for the act which satisfies one part of a man's nature does not necessarily satisfy all the other parts. But the ethical pleasure must be present as the total reaction of character considered apart from the incidentals of result.
Pleasures and pains may be divided into two classes, active and passive; active pleasures being those attendant on an act, as gratification of an impulse, passive pleasures those which come to us as enjoyments, not as the gratification of the impulse producing an act, though perhaps resulting from our act. Active pains are those of want, passive those of suffering. The pleasures accompanying an act as pleasures of attainment are always pleasures of gratification, but not of gratification merely, for they gratify a sentiment directed towards an object previously present to the mind in idea; and it is because the volition realizes the idea that the pleasures are called pleasures of attainment, and in this fact lies also their ethical value. The ethical pleasure in the action itself is not to be confused with the mere pleasure in the explicit consciousness of right-doing, which argues special reflectiveness. The ethical pleasure meant is identical with the feeling of approbation, not as a reflection on the act as idea, but as present in the act itself. But the ethical pleasures are not independent of the incidental pleasures, but depend upon them, the latter themselves being considered in determining what acts are to be performed.
The pleasure-formula of the end represents the end in terms of all the ethical pleasures secured by good action; and now we can see how morality can be expressed in terms of all the pleasures and pains involved in action, the purely ethical pleasures being reckoned among the rest. Every pleasure is an inducement to persistence, every pain an inducement to change; hence, since the society of good persons, or the kingdom of powers within a man's own mind acquiesce in the moral order as the equilibrium in which all their claims are gratified as far as may be, it follows that the order of good conduct represents the maximum of happiness. The end thus involves the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
If pleasure is but a part of the standard of morality, is it, then, the object of conduct? If the idea before the mind to be realized in action is called the object of the action, then in the same sense the pleasure connected with the idea, which must be pleasant, is the object of conduct. The difficulty in agreeing that the pleasure of the idea is part of the object of desire arises from two causes: (1) confusion of the object of desire with the character or criterion of the object; (2) a misunderstanding of how the ideal object is related to the result. As to the latter cause, it may be said that the idea is only in this sense an idea of the result, that the result is the idea as it is realized; the elements of the idea are derived from the past, and the desire is not for the prospective pleasure of the end. As to the first cause, though it is false that the prospective pleasure must necessarily be part of the idea, the opposite conclusion is not necessarily legitimate that desire is not for pleasure at all. It is true that, in order to distinguish one object from another, we need to know what kind of an object it is; but to conclude that, therefore, the desire is not for pleasure, is to confuse the actual idea before the mind in desire with its quality. That we do not make pleasure an object in the sense that the pleasantness of the object itself is what we have before us in desire, is obvious. Such a desire would argue a reflectiveness which has been shown not to be necessarily characteristic of action. Nor is it the pleasure of an act which is the cause of the desire, even if we suppose this not in the sense that reflection apprehends it as cause. To suppose this is to confuse the cause with its sign. The pleasure is a function of the quality of the object. The element of reflectiveness may enter into a consideration of the object, and the prospective pleasure thus become an element of the object of desire. But it is only a part; the pleasure alone cannot be the object of desire. The pleasure which is thus a part of the object is not a future pleasure, but that which is actually present in our minds, belonging to the ideal object as part of it--the represented pleasure of attainment. To call the pleasure desired the prospective pleasure is to confound the reflection of the spectator with the actual fact in the mind of the agent to an act. The pleasure is, moreover, not pleasure in general, but the pleasure of the agent; but this is not stating that the act is necessarily selfish.
Since every object of desire and will includes pleasure, the so-called "paradox of hedonism"--that pleasure is lost by seeking after it--cannot be explained by holding that pleasure is not itself the object of desire, and that consequently pleasure is never, in enjoyment, what it is in idea. This last is true, for no idea is in reality what it is as idea. But the explanation lies rather in pointing out how foolish it is to seek for what is a sign or effect rather than for its cause.
In the good man, the pleasure of attainment is the ethical sense of approbation, and this is also goodness. It may, however, be asserted that it is not this ethical pleasure, this goodness as such, that is desired by the good man; again, it is only in exceptional cases of reflectiveness that goodness or the right action as such is distinctively desired; and herein lies Kant's mistake in asserting that a moral act must be done from a sense of duty.
Active pains, as wants, are what prompt to action, and are, so, the conditions of conduct. Though in themselves evil, as pain, they cannot be considered by themselves apart from the action to which they lead. As for passive pains, in so far as they are the result of evil action on the part of others, they ought not to have occurred, and we try to prevent their repetition by punishment. Those sufferings incidental to right conduct are to be borne, in so far as they are inevitable, as a necessary evil in that which, considered as a whole, is good. As soon as they cease to be inevitable, they are to be removed. We do not imagine, however, that pain may ever be wholly removed. But the statement that pain is inevitable to right conduct is not to be interpreted as an assertion that it is for the sake of goodness, as a discipline,--a metaphysical conception depending on the idea of a divine purpose.
Morality is thus a kind of optimism, not ignoring the reality of pains in right conduct, but treating them as part of the given conditions which it has to turn to the best account, by the creation of a conduct and character involving ethical pleasures. Pessimistic theories do not ignore this optimism of morality; but in such theories the fact of pain is emphasized and dwelt upon, and morality is regarded only as a means of lessening pain, or, as in the case of Von Hartmann, finally getting rid of it altogether by a universal suicide. It is impossible to determine whether existence represents an excess of pain or of pleasure, since the answer to the problem is a matter of individual temperament; and, moreover, pleasures and pains cannot be (as yet) merely quantitatively compared. Another error of pessimism consists in comparing pleasures and pains in detail and supposing the result to hold good in the general sum; but even in cases where pleasures are greatly outweighed by pains, the pains may sink in value considered in connection with the rest of life. The desirability of non-existence could be maintained only as a race should be developed desiring it; but the whole course of history is in the opposite direction.
The question, Is life worth living? involves two: (1) Is it actually preferable to the creature who lives it? (2) Can any life be said to have a real value; is any life subjectively, is any objectively, preferable? The answer to the first question is the fact of life, for the mysterious instinct of self-preservation called in to account for the continuance of existence is one of the elements to be considered in the problem, cannot be excluded. It is true that only certain kinds of life are preferable, but the very meaning of the principle of selection is the securing of the life that is worth living.
Having arrived at this answer, we can no longer compare existence and non-existence in respect to preferability, and the second problem presents itself to us as the question as to what existence is of value. The answer is the moral life, goodness, as including all the activities of character.
The moral end has sometimes been defined as social vitality. Vitality is, in strictness, the energy to live, and has two aspects. It is (1) the force which keeps a creature alive, or (2) the force which keeps it well. As implying the keeping up of vital functions, the notion of continued existence represents the end, but represents it in its lowest aspect, its least and poorest significance, and is an insufficient description; for not existence can be the end, but existence of a certain sort. "Existence, in fact, is an abstraction to which nothing corresponds in experience: nothing exists except upon certain terms. Given the type, the end of the creature is to continue the existence of that type; but continuance of existence is nothing more nor less than the performance of those functions which constitute the type of life in question: it is not separated from those functions as something which they subserve." If the functions in man or animal are said to be determined by the need of maintaining his existence, it may be answered that his existence is these functions. In this sense of continued existence as the repetition of vital functions in their order, it is true, but only secondarily true, that the end is to preserve life. But the doctrine of evolution implies much more than such preservation. It means the victorious continuance of life. But because a type is victorious, we cannot infer that the end of the type is to maintain its victorious existence in the sense of aiming at victory. To do this is to read into the end a theory of how the type came into existence. The end of a type is to act according to the type; the victory over rivals affords the opportunity of this. The preservation of existence is a condition of the end, not the end itself; to regard it as such is to confuse cause with effect.
Vitality as health, on the other hand, implies the equilibrium which constitutes good conduct good. It must, however, "be observed that health is not a further specification or a limitation of continued life, but is coextensive with it."
But health, as applied to morals, is a metaphorical term. Morality does not consist in mere physical vitality; on the contrary, some sacrifice of such vitality may be necessary, the perfect physical vitality may be inconsistent with the development of higher and finer mental functions. "With this proviso, vitality as health is simply another name for the character of good conduct which wins it the title of good."
There is often a distinction made between virtue and duty, the former word seeming to include the latter and go beyond it. However, it is not only virtuous to do one's duty, but it is also the duty of the individual to do his best. In fact, the two, virtue and duty, are coextensive, the term "virtue" describing conduct by the quality of the agent's mind, the term "duty" by the nature of the act performed. Nevertheless, there are actions to which it is more natural to apply the term "virtue," "duty" being colored by legal implications. In the legal sense, duty fixes, not the highest line of conduct, but the lowest limit, beneath which conduct must not fall. Virtue, as contrasted with duty in the legal sense, seems to be coextensive with merit. Negative merit, however, where a man is good in spite of some great disadvantage, does not make an act virtuous in distinction from dutiful conduct. It is the duty of a man with a passion for drink to repress it; but we do not term his performance virtuous, though it may be meritorious. Merit, that is, implies a scale within the range of good acts themselves. Virtue and duty coincide, however, only so long as the moral value of actions are considered. For we distinguish two different classes of virtues, or two senses of the word "virtue," corresponding to the distinction of ethical and pathological, the pathological virtues being certain gifts of emotion or sentiment, which are sometimes thought to make action more virtuous, but do not alter its real character. "Thus, for example, the virtue of benevolence may be thought imperfect without kindly feeling, though a man may be benevolent without any such spontaneous movement. Chastity, again, may in some natures be accompanied by, and flow from, a delicacy of feeling which makes all unlawful suggestions impossible. Now, if these emotions were necessary to their respective virtues, we should have to admit that duty was less than virtue. But we must maintain that they are excellences which do not alter the moral character of conduct, and may be absent altogether and leave the agent as virtuous as if they were present. Some persons, indeed, would say that there was less virtue in characters which possessed these emotional endowments.... In themselves, they are not virtues in the ethical sense, but only 'add a lustre' to habits of will. They may even be ineffectual, as often happens with very good-natured persons, or they may be positively bad. Courage, for instance, we admire even in a villain. We may conclude, then, that these excellences of disposition are only valuable in so far as they are helps to virtue, and we praise the brave villain on account of a quality which is of the utmost importance for actual goodness. They enter into our ideal of the perfect or complete character, though, if we estimate our ideal of perfection, we shall find, I think, that we attach less value to them when they are native than when they have been produced by a constant discipline."
It might seem, then, that we could classify duties under virtues. To a considerable extent such a classification is possible. But it must be imperfect, because there are duties--for example, filial duty, or the duty of casting one's vote in a political contest--which do not correspond to any general head of virtue, or may be ranked under several heads: and again, we may rank along with virtues which stand for duties qualities of conduct which do not correspond to duties in the same sense; as, for instance, in a list of heads of duties, wisdom and self-control. The enumeration mixes up two classifications, in the one of which we group observances together under certain heads, in the other of which we enumerate certain elements of good action in general, certain aspects which every good action presents, and we exhibit them as qualities in the agent's mind. The two classifications are combined in the ancient description of morality under the heads of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. The better classification is by moral institutions, where the moral life is already mapped out for us into its different parts. Such a scheme of classification will consider (a) the Individual, (b) the Family, (c) the Society, (d) the State; the fourth division including international duties, the third not being necessarily limited to a particular society, but extending to all mankind.
DYNAMICAL ANALYSIS--MORAL GROWTH AND PROGRESS
The previous description of morality supposes it to be stationary, and is like a section taken across the path of morality at any one time. It gives us no idea of the process and progress of morality. We have yet to show how the moral order is produced, and to examine the meaning and the law of moral progress.
As the moral organism may be compared to a species of which the various moral individuals are the members, so the moral ideal may be regarded as a species of which the various ideals in the minds of good men are the different individuals. We should thus expect to find the origin and growth of morality analogous to or, more strictly speaking, identical with, the growth of natural species.
"If an ultimate ideal were admissible, it would be impossible to assert that morality is essentially progressive." Morality, in the sense of an equilibrium, has at every stage a certain finality, in the sense that it is, for that stage, the ideal adjustment. But we cannot conceive of any ideal as final in the sense of stationary. The good is always ultimate but always in motion. "Moral progress admits of only two degrees of comparison, the superlative being identical with the positive." By "best" we do not imply a greater rightness in the ultimate condition, but only a highest development. Spencer's conception of the distinction between Absolute and Relative Ethics involves the conception of an ultimate "ideal congruity," or complete adaptation of man to his conditions, a mobile equilibrium including perfection as well as goodness, present choice being never between wrong and an absolute right, but always between two wrongs, the lesser of which is to have the preference. The picture is, in itself, perfectly legitimate; and in so far as Spencer "conceives that the only ideal is the absolutely right conduct, his conception is not only legitimate, but true." There is always, however, an absolute right that may be chosen; and "using the conception of a mobile equilibrium, we found it to be, not a goal of progress, but the meaning of goodness at any time." "The distinction of good and bad (right and wrong) arises within the limited range of conditions that are to be met by good action." That, as Sidgwick asserts, there is always some course of conduct which is right, the moral consciousness declares with certainty, and is thus against the relativity of morality. Mr. Spencer holds that any concomitant of pain makes an action wrong, therefore it is natural for him to regard all present morality as only relative. But to the good man the pleasure of doing right exceeds the possible attendant pains of an action; and except upon the understanding that, in a society of good men, every one will adjust himself with equanimity to the needs of others, not even the acts which are declared to be typical of absolutely right conduct can be free from concomitant pain. "Will the ideal state exhibit no competitions, such as rivalry in love, which can be ended indeed with the contentment of all persons, but assuredly not without attendant pain?"
The general error in theory on this subject lies in a misconception of the idea of "adjustment" to environment, the fact not being noted that the environment is not itself fixed and permanent. What the environment is depends upon the nature and faculties of the individual, the same environment being a different one for amoeba and human being, for the blind man and the man possessing sight; and what environment is and what the individual does are settled at one and the same time, the process of selection being one from both sides, and the variation of both. The adaptation "wherever it exists and so far as it exists" is, hence, perfect adaptation; if the lower organism is adapted to its environment, its adaptation is as perfect as that of the higher organism to its environment.
Every successful life means adaptation. "Every animal which can maintain its life is in adaptation to its environment." The bare formula of adaptation means nothing more than the fact of existence. "Adaptation to the conditions as such teaches us nothing as to the nature of the organism; for all functions are reactions upon the conditions, and therefore, so far, adaptations. But it points to something behind. It means that all the functions of the animal are adapted to the conditions, and this means that its functions are adapted or adjusted to one another under the conditions."
"The moral ideal consists in a certain equilibrium established on the basis of certain conditions--wants and sentiments in moral agents." It involves advance just for this reason, because the act of adjustment implied in good conduct itself alters the sentiments of the agent, and creates new needs demanding a new satisfaction. The change is not always in the same direction, however; for cultivation in one direction may cause the individual to become aware of capacities or wants in quite another direction, or the advocacy of one side of a question, persevered in, may so open up the other side as to end in complete change of view. In any case, however, there is an enlargement of experience, and the old facts are themselves changed by it as well as are the individuals subject to it.
This change or adjustment leads to a maladjustment requiring a new adjustment. This maladjustment is to be distinguished from the reaerrangements which are contemplated by the statical ideal and due to the mere rotation of wants in society; the latter are within the moral system as a system of mobile equilibrium. The maladjustment is of another sort. "The good act ceases to be good by its performance. The moral ideal ceases to satisfy." The two forms of change may be compared respectively to a shifting of position on the same locus, and to such a shifting of position as involves a shifting of locus. Thus, by change after change of this sort, a new variety replaces its parent, and this variety in time producing a fresh variety, there is finally reached a new species. Progress thus becomes a necessary fact, and the difference of so-called stationary societies from progressive ones can lie only in the comparative slowness of change.
"As there is a difference between different societies in rate of change, so there is a similar difference as between different parts of conduct." Law, a part of morality, lags behind in moral progress. However, there is nevertheless always advancement, otherwise legislators would be unnecessary. And the direct outward change of form is preceded by other change, laws which fall into disfavor by means of moral progress being modified, in application, within the possible limits of interpretation, and less and less rigidly enforced. There is good reason why law should have a certain permanence.
The moral standard appears to have a similar more or less fixed character, while morality itself is in continuous change. There are two reasons for this appearance: (1) the changes in the moral order are infinitesimal and not perceived by us except as accumulated through some period of time; and, moreover, what is commonly called the moral standard is only a kind of generalization from the extremely various opinions of different persons as to what is right, and differs from the real standard which "registers the conduct constituting equilibrium, and is possessed by the good man. Perfectly good men are impossible. The standard current is therefore nothing more than a common understanding, which every one, even every good man, expresses differently; it is no more an exact expression of the truth than is, let us say, a great scientific conception (like development) which regulates all knowledge, but is amongst the educated little more than the name of a general way of thinking, while the thing itself is becoming, at the hands of men of science, modified or even transformed." (2) The mistake is often made of describing morality, not by institutions, but in terms of virtues, and while the name applied to different virtues remains the same, their content changes from age to age.
This idea of variability affects the statical conception of order with regard to habit--the moral requirement being that the fixed habits of morality should not be so fixed as to be incapable of advancement; and with regard to conscience, of which it might be said that, instead of representing the moral order, it was more occupied in changing than in maintaining it, but which in reality thus represents the moral order, to which the ideal is a changing one.
Two difficulties or objections may arise with regard to this idea of a changing ideal. The progress has been represented by personifying the ideal and supposing the person to change with each new ideal. Again, "goodness consists, we saw, of a system of conduct in the individual himself or in society, and this system forms a series in time. It would seem to follow that, if goodness is always progressive, no second act would be performed under the same law, although the very idea of the law means a series of acts." But we are not to suppose that, if fifty good men in a society act rightly, fifty new ideals are established, for the ideal represents the equilibrium of the members of the society, and it depends on whether the new ideals of the fifty men represent the new equilibrium whether we shall call the persons good or bad. Again, the ideal at any moment would be in fact realized in a series, supposing the conditions did not alter meanwhile; and while the system of conduct is serial, it is realized at any one moment in the mind of the man whose sentiments correspond to its requirements.
"In this process we see exhibited the interplay of the element of goodness or rightness with that of perfection. In all actual goodness, we have perfection attained as well; but in the statical notion of goodness perfection is subordinate--only that exercise is perfect which is legitimate. But in the notion of progressive goodness, perfection regains its rights. For goodness, having secured perfection, creates new materials which destroy the old equilibrium and call for a new one. Goodness determines perfection, but change in perfection determines, therefore, changes in goodness." Morality is the creation of a better; this better is change from a lower to a higher development, not the growth of a greater rightness. All good conduct is absolutely good, and the good man of former days was as good as the good man of to-day, although he performed acts not allowable by the higher moral standard attained as highest development. Accordingly, there is no such thing as an absolute morality, in comparison with which other conduct is variable and relative. The relativity of good conduct, instead of being a reproach, is in reality its highest praise, for it implies that the conduct takes account of exactly those conditions to which it is meant to apply. This conception of morality as absolute runs into that of morality as an eternal and identical law: eternal, for the morality of given conditions remains eternally true for those conditions; identical, for although it cannot be called identical in the sense that virtues do not change with institutions, it is identical in form,--as an equilibrium of social forces in an order of conduct. The more important conception of the moral law is its unity in which, as the stages of one continuous law, its identity consists. "Progress is not mere destruction of the lower, but fulfilment."
In considering how morality arises, it would be erroneous to suppose that it comes into existence by an actual compromise. It arises through a process of continuous change, parts of which may be an insensible growth, parts the self-conscious adoption of a proposed new scheme. In the latter case, a slight reform may be adopted with but little opposition from members of the society other than the proposer, as meeting a recognized, common want; or, in the case of a more extended reform, the idea as first proposed may be long contended against, and only finally adopted after much alteration by reason of contact with such opposition. In its acceptance innumerable forces are combined, innumerable different motives determine its acceptation by different persons. Whatever the motive, however, the conduct of the person accepting it alters in accordance with its acceptation.
The chief importance of pleasure and pain lies in the part they take in such choice. They are "the tests of the act being suitable or the reverse to the character (in the widest sense) of the agent." If a reform does not suit the character, it will cause pain and urge to removal of the pain by resistance; and on the other hand, when the reform is accepted, it must be that it gives pleasure to the persons concerned. But in saying this we have to remember the distinction between ethical (or effective) and pathological (or incidental) pleasures and pains. The total reaction of character on a stimulus may be pleasurable, but this pleasure results from a mixture of pleasures and pains weighed against one another. This balancing of pleasures and pains is not reflective, but takes place by a kind of intuitive act in which only subsequent reflection may be able to distinguish the elements. The pleasure or pain involved in acceptance or rejection is not the ground of acceptance or rejection. The cause of the acceptance or rejection is the nature of the reform itself, its congruity or incongruity with the natures of the persons accepting or rejecting it. "When the new ideal is definitely established, those who do not obey it are bad, those who do are good." Those who were good under the old may thus be bad under the new ideal, and vice versa.
The gradual reform through the choice of individuals who act upon their feelings without knowing the whole aim or bearing of their conduct is similar to that where a definite reform is the end in view. It is a gradual adjustment of wills under new conditions and represents the position of equilibrium which would be completely realized if all the society were good.
The new ideal is not to be defined as merely the will of the majority, the possession of a majority being nothing but the fact of its prevalence. The ground of prevalence is that it represents the equilibrium. "There is no virtue in mere preponderance; it is not that reforms follow the majority, but that a majority is attracted by a suitable reform."
A new ideal arises by a struggle of varieties analogous to that in the organic world,--the word "struggle" being metaphorical in both cases, since actual conflict is not necessary to either. "The distinction of good and bad corresponds to the domination of one variety... which has come to prevail in virtue of its being a social equilibrium," and thus representing suitability to all the conditions of life. Evil is simply that which has been rejected and defeated in the struggle with the good.
The reformer, as not representing the predominating ideal and so the social equilibrium, and the man who turns out to be bad by the new ideal, thus stand originally upon the same level. "Each is an instance of a variety of the original species, but the former is the successful variety"; his ideal "represents the real forces of society and can be adopted by the whole." The struggle is one of character and conduct, and results not necessarily in the extinction of life, but in the extinction of unsuitable ideals.
"The distinction of the formally bad from the materially good rests upon the transition from the old ideal to the new, though sometimes we use those terms as describing what is only legally wrong though morally approved. A reformer, until his reform is established, is formally wrong. He can be considered materially right only prospectively;... time only can prove whether he had really forecast the movement of his society." "Sometimes a society may be so divided, as in our civil war, that neither variety is predominant. In such a case we must say, not that there was no rule of right, but that there was a different rule for each of the two halves of the nation." "There does not arise any need for the distinction of formally and materially right conduct, until the limits have been overstepped, within which it is in any age considered right for a man to act upon his own conviction. These limits are placed very differently in different ages."
Does good action, then, depend on the bad man as well as on the good? "Good and evil arise together, and good is therefore always relative to evil, but we do not therefore take our morality from the bad. We cannot, in fact, know who is bad until the standard is created, but once created, we maintain it against bad men by punishment. But, on the other hand, the moral standard does depend upon the forces which, when allowed free play, are distinguished as bad.... A large part of conduct consists of precautions which it is not only legitimate but incumbent to take, but which we should dispense with under happier conditions.... And in a second way, morality depends on 'badness,' for when a habit of action which we dislike and call bad comes to be strong enough to make itself felt, we seek to satisfy its claims as reasonable. There is... no external standard by which we can settle once and for all what claims are legitimate and what are not. We derive our conception of the reasonableness of things from our experience of their vitality and effective powers. A wise man who thinks the feelings and beliefs of his neighbors ridiculous will, by persuasion or force, resist them with all his energies, but when he finds them persist in spite of all his efforts, he will recognize that there are more things in human nature than stir within the narrow limits of his own breast. If what we now call bad conduct, murder, adultery, theft, could be conceived to become predominant under greatly changed and of course impossible conditions, it would cease to be bad and would be the ideal of life."
From the view that morality depends upon victory, misconceptions may arise. The question may be asked: Should one, in case of doubt, follow one's own conviction, or join the side it is thought will prevail? But that good is created by predominance is a theory of the means by which ideals come into existence, not a statement of the motive of those who participate in the struggle. The struggle is between characters and their forces, and not victory is the end, but the assertion of certain principles.
"Interest or good in general is a different conception from the right or the morally good. Interest means what is good for an individual considered from his own point of view, and without regard to similar claims of other individuals. It is the maximum of happiness or satisfaction which he can secure under his conditions. By 'maximum happiness' is meant that distribution of satisfactions or of the energies which produce them, any deviation from which on either side implies a less fulness of life." It refers, however, to his good as a social, not as an isolated individual.
As a general rule, interest is in agreement with goodness; misdeeds are unprofitable. But there are instances where goodness and interest do not coincide, though not in the case of the good man. That virtue and interest are in general identical means, statically, that morality is a reconciliation of interests by which wants are satisfied, and is established by the creation of a new type of character, which has wants of only certain kinds; and, dynamically, it represents the fact that forces are arrayed on the side of the good which are too powerful for the bad. "Good is the victorious ideal"; and though we may say that it would really be to the bad man's interest to be bad, if circumstances were such that his variety could maintain itself, we may add that such hypothetical interests cannot be secured. However, interest does not coincide with morality--
(1) Where the individual does not care for punishments and social censures. (2) Where a man, by reason of certain superiorities of force over others with whom he is more directly in contact, is able to obtain power and suppress their resistance, or where the moral weakness of others leaves him unpunished. In these exceptional cases, we have the contradictory phenomenon that an ideal which can maintain its existence is yet declared to be bad. "Such cases mark a stage of transition in the process by which the distinction of good or bad is established." In the struggle of animal species, the same phenomenon may be found; an exceptional individual of a vanishing variety maintains his existence for a time by reason of his exceptional endowment or of coming in contact merely with the weaker members of the successful variety.
There are two ways in which the moral ideal is maintained,--by education and by punishment. Punishment is the condemnation of wrong-doing by censure or by legal penalties. The unpleasant consequences of neglect of the self-regarding virtues are not punishment; but the reaction of the good forces of society against wrong-doing is as natural as the unpleasant physical effects of imprudence.
"If the question as to what moral sanction is means, 'What reason is there why morality exists?' the answer lies not in enumerating the penalties of wrong-doing, but in tracing the origin of morality as an equilibrium of the forces of society.... But the question, 'Why should I be moral?' means, most naturally and usually, What inducements are there to me to do right?" The answer is that motives differ for different individuals. With some, outer social inducements, with others, the approbation and disapprobation of conscience are stronger. These latter ethical pains and pleasures which are felt at the idea of an action stand on a different footing from feelings having regard to external rewards and punishments and also the prospective pleasures and pains of conscience. The man who does right because he shrinks from prospective pains of conscience is not a good man, but intermediate morally between the bad man who seeks only to escape legal punishment and the good man whose pains of conscience felt at the idea of a wrong act prevent his performing it.
Punishment wears different shapes according to the point of view from which it is regarded, but, in the distinctively moral view, is reformatory. All punishment is retribution, but not in the sense that it is personal vengeance. The value of this idea of retribution lies in the fact that it places punishment on a line with the process of self-assertion by which species maintain their life; it is a part of the reaction of the organism against anything which impedes its vitality. If, however, punishment avenges the evil deed, it is a confusion to say that it is for the sake of vengeance. The purpose in the mind of those punishing is not necessarily vengeance, and the idea of mere retribution is repugnant to the good man. From the juridic point of view, the object of punishment is prevention; from the moral point of view, reformation. The reformation seeks to destroy a bad ideal, and does not necessarily destroy the individual in whom it is found; but in some cases the wrong-doer's mind is so perverted that only death, it is judged, will suffice. "Here, too, paradoxical as it may seem, though perhaps the chief object of our punishment is the indirect one of bettering others, we punish with death in order to make him a good man and to bring him within the ideal of society.... The penalty of death is thought necessary to bring home to him the enormity of his guilt."
The object of punishment is not always achieved, but this matters not for its moral character, which lies in its conscious object. The idea of punishment as reconciling the criminal with society includes the aspect of retribution or expiation, under which punishment may be viewed from without; but it is only when the suffering is attended by reformation that it can be considered in a proper sense expiation or atonement.
Responsibility differs from obligation by introduction of the element of punishment. Obligation is the necessity of good conduct which arises out of the relation of the act to the order of which it forms a part. "Responsibility is the negative aspect of this relation. When I think of conduct as required of me, I think of it as my duty; when I think of it as conduct which if I do not perform, I shall be rightly punished, I have the sense of responsibility." The sense of responsibility is thus a knowledge of the requirements of the law, and it is only as we have law-abiding instincts that we feel it; and we feel it differently according as we think of the authority of the law as derived from its mere enactment or as founded upon the social good, or as established in our own conscience and self-respect, which represent the social good. As including recognition of certain conduct as right, the sense of responsibility is more than the mere knowledge and fear of punishment. "It is only those who can appreciate that punishment will be deserved to whom the idea of responsibility applies. There is, therefore, no difference between the fact of responsibility and the sense of responsibility, any more than there is between goodness and the feeling of approbation, or duty and the sense of duty. When we declare a bad man responsible, we mean that the good man holds him to be justly punished."
Responsibility depends, then, on two things,--that a man is capable of being influenced by what is right, and that whatever he does is determined by his character. This capacity depends on his being aware of the meaning of his acts, and so of their connection with other acts, and contains thus an element not present in the relations of animals.
"Except for the authority of one or two great names, there seems to be a general agreement that the will is determined by character." If character means the principle of volition, as it is regarded in our analyses, the assertion is a truism. It is no less true if character is defined as disposition; all our dealings with our fellow-men reckon on their acting in accordance with their character. The distinction made by Green that the mind acts from its own nature (the motive and the whole process of willing being within the mind) is no more and no less true of the action of other bodies. The emergence of new sentiments in character might be urged as an argument for free will; but this is of no more significance than the budding of trees in springtime. The sense of freedom is the sense of choice between two motives; but this merely depends upon the intellectual property that the object willed is present to consciousness,--in case of choice two objects being present to the mind. "So far is the consciousness of freedom from being a ground for assuming an arbitrary or undetermined power of volition that it is exactly what would be expected to accompany the process of determination when the object concerned was a conscious mind. Pull a body to the right with a force of twelve pounds and to the left with a force of eight; it moves to the right. Imagine that body a mind aware of the forces which act upon it; it will move in the direction of that which, for whatever reason, appeals to it most; and in doing so it will, just because it is conscious, act of itself, and will have the consciousness of freedom." But which motive is chosen is fixed and dependent upon character, that cannot choose otherwise than it does; and the sense of freedom is a sheer delusion. The feeling that one ought to have acted otherwise implies another sort of freedom, according to which he only is truly free who chooses the right; in such choice it is, however, the character which acts, and though a man is free, in this sense, if he chooses, his choice is determined. The argument of free will in regard to punishment does not explain punishment, but renders it inexplicable. It would be senseless to punish except as, by so doing, we can influence a man's character. Determinism does not make punishment wrong; it is not cruelty, but kindness to punish: it saves a man from worse, from degradation of character, enabling him to change his ideal, and thus bringing himself into equilibrium with his kind. The reason of certain doubts which are beginning to be felt to-day with regard to punishment is the larger knowledge of the dependence of men on their surroundings, hence of the culpability of society as a whole; it is not an objection to responsibility as such, but to the distribution of responsibility.
Education, the second means by which the moral ideal is defended, is not identical with social progress, by which the moral ideal is itself changed, but is the individual progress included within each definite moral ideal. Education and progress are, however, inseparably bound together, in that education goes hand in hand with punishment, and in that it leads to the discovery of new ideals. If we take only the irregular line which includes the good, and discard the ideals which are exterminated or left behind, the movement of ideals is continuous with education, and progress may therefore be described as an education of society. The education of children has to put them in possession of the present moral achievement, and to make them independent individuals,--so to penetrate them with the moral order that it shall appear in them as spontaneous character. It is an evolving of an ideal already present; for, to be capable of education, a person must have already set foot on the right path.
As in the physical world, so in the moral, we have the survival of many different genera and species,--various ideals of conduct or institutions of life, some of which may be grouped together by strong resemblances, others of which stand to each other in the relation of lower to higher organisms; the survival of archaic institutions in the higher as well as their history of progress showing their affinities with the lower. "History is the palaeontology of moral ideals," and provides us with a better means of studying the growth of morality than exists for the study of the growth of species. As in the organic world, varieties develop from species by a gradual and continuous movement of sentiment, each successful variation forming the basis of a new variation, and the differences of the varieties from each other and from the original species increasing with their distance from the original species, until the difference amounts to a difference of species. We may call these modifications "accidental," but, as in the physical world, they are so only as we regard them from the position occupied by a person before the event; they have their causes if we can find them. These causes are to be found in the contact of different minds. Variability depends to a considerable extent on the size of a genus, but only in so far as greater size involves greater complexity and variety of interests; the vast but homogeneous societies of the East being less progressive than the smaller but more complex ones of the West. "Where freer scope is left to individual inclinations or aptitudes, there the friction of mind against mind is more intense. New ideas are generated in the more vivid consciousness of the people, and life becomes more inventive."
Species developed from a common genus will show some common traits and some rules of mutual observance, savage peoples which have divided into tribes being an exception to the latter part of the statement, for the reason that lower societies have very little moral cohesion; they may be compared to lower organisms which reproduce themselves by fission, or to homogeneous colonies of animals, like sponges. Under the generic institutions we must not include those which arise merely as the result of similar circumstances. Ideals once formed advance at very different rates, though the tendency to divergence is always being corrected by the diffusion of ideas. But where one nation takes ideas from another, these ideas are not borrowed, in the sense that they come wholly from the other nation; there must have been, in the borrowing nation, a development of ideas up to the point that makes the borrowing possible,--a similar development to that of the nation from which the borrowing takes place, due to similar circumstances. The communication of moral ideas does not depend upon race-community, as is shown by the ready adoption of Western ideas by such nations as the Hindoos and Japanese.
In general language, we identify development and progress; and this is true also in the case of morality. Goodness means progress; wickedness, retrogression or else stagnation, which, compared with advance, is retrogression. "In changing from one form to another, morality changes from what is right under one set of conditions to what is right under another set, and such change from good to good is what we mean by becoming better. To deny this is to find some other standard of advance than in the actual movement which has taken place, to put an a priori conception of development in place of the facts." "The moral ideal is always, therefore, a progress, for either the society is single, and goodness represents the law of its advance, or if the society is part of a larger one, its ideal can be retrogressive only because the society is so far bad." "And since goodness and badness exhaust the field of moral possibilities, if the propositions that goodness means progress, and badness regress, are both true, we must be able to convert them, and maintain that all progress is due to goodness and all regress to badness." To do this, we must distinguish between degradation and a mere degeneration which involves a return to simpler conditions as an adaptation to changed environment. Such degeneration as adaptation to circumstances, in an individual or a society as a whole, is progress. Fish who become blind by living in the dark become thus better fitted to their circumstances, and the like is true of moral degeneration under simpler conditions. Old age and death are characteristic of the higher type of organism, in distinction from the lower types which, multiplying by fission, are practically eternal; they are conditions of the advantage of type, in which the individual is partaker. So a good society under simpler conditions is on the side of progress, though it may lie outside the main line of advance.
It is true that bad persons often help on progress, but the good they do lies in their representation of the will of society for progress, the evil lies in their use of this will as means to their own ends. It may be objected, too, that the good man is sometimes a hindrance to progress through stupidity; but to this is to be answered that intellect itself becomes morally characterized in action.
All events and institutions are thus determined by their conditions; but there is a movement forward distinguishable from the delay of stragglers and the resistance of enemies, and this distinction is enforced by the moral predicates of good and bad.
Our theory does not imply that whatever is, is right; such a statement involves the use of the word right in the sense of "correct," or "intelligible," "accountable by reflection." Nor is the doctrine fatalistic. Fatalism implies that men act at the impulse of some force which they do not understand; "but the history of mankind is the history of beings who, through their own gift of consciousness, subdue circumstances to their own characters." In judging a nation's development, we must not interpret it according to our own likings, as progression or retrogression; nor must we imagine retrogression from relaxation of duties in some certain directions, but must regard the society and its institutions as a whole.
The test of higher organization usually given is that of increasing differentiation of parts with corresponding specialization of function. But the main course of progress is not linear, or in one continuous direction; apparent reversions to former types are only apparent; the new type stands higher than the old. In other words, history moves in cycles. It follows, from this, that mere differentiation is insufficient for definition. While the differentiation advances, its significance alters, or, let us say, the relative places of specialization and of unity alter. Along with differentiation goes a process of integration. Great revolutions simplify. The result of greater and greater heterogeneity is to produce a new principle, which combines the warring elements. The definition of progress by increased differentiation is lacking in two ways: It tells us nothing of the forces by which progress is produced, and it gives no connected view of the actual facts of historical development. A general statement of progress in its formal sense is found in the conception of a struggle of ideals. But as in this struggle the survival of the fittest does not necessarily mean the destruction of those who represented the defeated ideal, but the supplanting of their ideal by another, the movement is one of comprehension, and we should expect to find, and do find, the history of morality exhibit the gradual development of a universal moral order, good not for one group of men but for all. It would be a misapprehension to regard this change as merely quantitative, as if the virtues were the same whether they applied on a larger or a smaller scale. "The quantitative extension is parallel with, and in reality proceeds from, a change in the conception of the human person himself." In primitive communities, the individual is so limited that he can hardly be called an individual at all. First among the Greeks do we find the person the embodiment of the social order, but in a limited sense. "When this limitation breaks down, and the individual stands forth as independent and self-conscious, the author of the laws he obeys, we have at the same time the extension of the area of persons with whom he is in moral relation."
"It matters little that the Western ideal of a society of humanity is realized to so slight an extent. The ideal exists and implies the inclusion of mankind." The principle of democracy, which we are engaged in working out, "continues, or perhaps supersedes, under much more complex conditions and over a wider range of institutions, the same principle as Christianity introduced." It is not merely an identical element in many individual states, but a comprehensive ideal. The power of naturalization, extradition laws, international action among the working classes, etc., imply this.
This "comprehension" is not merely one of breadth, but of depth as well: the ideal includes not only the present of mankind, but its whole future also. Duties have always been recognized to posterity, but the range of generations to whom they applied was small, and the interests which it was believed could be secured were limited also. Apres moi le deluge describes a form of selfishness of all ages, but different ages have understood the apres moi quite differently. At the present day, the range of responsibility is extending indefinitely.
A common political ideal does not mean a universal peace. Coarser forms of dispute disappear, but, on the other hand, as nations grow more refined in their ideals, they grow more susceptible. What a political humanity, or a political community of Europe, would mean, is the substitution of international punishment for the self-willed conflicts of irresponsible nations.
We cannot say what the future of society and of morality may be,--whether mankind will be able to take mechanical means against a period of ice, or whether human society may not, as a whole, be destroyed, to be replaced by a higher type of existence, which may arise on the earth from the development of humanity, or may, on some other planet, take up the tale of human civilization as we take up that of the civilization of Greece and Rome.
Two things follow from the progressive character of the moral ideal: (1) that the classification and description of duties will vary with each age; (2) that, as the ideal changes from age to age, the highest moral principle or sentiment will change with it.
At the present time, a belief has gained great authority, that the sense of duty is transitory and will finally disappear; but whether we, with Spencer, identify obligation with coercion, or understand it as the relation of a part of conduct to the rest, in neither sense is the proposition true as it stands. If duty means constraint, it by no means follows that constraint will cease with progress; for constraint arises from confronting one inclination with a higher idea, and its disappearance would mean that inclinations had become constant; this is, however, impossible. The fiction of a final stage of mobile equilibrium is an unwarranted conclusion from the fact that all morality involves a cycle of conduct in mobile equilibrium. But the theory represents a truth,--the truth that morality at no time implies in itself the sense of duty. The sense of duty, as involving the hard feeling of compulsion, of subjection to authority, and bound up with the sense of sin, a sense stronger in proportion to merit or the interval between first inclination and final moral willing, may and is giving place to a higher conception. In the family, this may already be found, where self-sacrifice and aid are matters of affection and rendered freely. In the higher ideal, we have that love of man for a higher and larger order than himself which morality represents as solidarity with society, a continually progressive society of free individuals; which religion represents as the love for and of God.
And at the last two questions may be asked: (1) whether the difficulties in which Christianity is placed at the present day do not arise from absorption of its highest idea into the conceptions and the practice of morality, so that the religious sentiment is starved; and (2) whether the ideal of a free cooeperation in the progress of humanity may not be used to interpret the belief in immortality, putting in the place of individual immortality the continuance of life in the persons whom the individual may affect. In "The International Journal of Ethics" July, 1892, Alexander combats some misinterpretations of "Natural Selection in Morals," which he says are partly due to Spencer's Individualism. Natural Selection in social life does not mean necessarily destruction of individuals, but is a struggle of ideals, such as that between Individualism and Collectivism,--in which Selection seems to favor Collectivism.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] The reference is here to Wundt, "Phys. Psych.," I. p. 485 (ed. II.).
APPENDIX TO PART I
PAUL REE
Dr. Paul Ree's "Source of the Moral Feelings" ("Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen," 1877), is written from a pessimistic and mechanical standpoint. The connection of thought and feeling in the region of morals is, according to Ree, a purely, or very nearly a purely, outward one, moral judgments not being the result of sympathy or antipathy, or related to these feelings in more than an external manner, but arising from associations of ideas engendered by education; the Sense of Justice being, in this manner, the effect of Punishment. A definite distinction is likewise made by Ree, between vice, which affects the individual only, and badness, which affects society, the profligate who satisfies his lust in the most unrestrained manner being regarded as perhaps unwise, but not bad, as long as he does not seduce the pure. The author fails, however, to show us how vice can be practised without social injury, and necessarily fails also--since his position takes into account no organic relations of characteristics--to notice the significance of profligacy as an inherent feature of character. He touches at one or two points, only, on Habit, and at one point alone on Heredity, where he raises the question of the hereditary character of Vanity, but arrives at no conclusion. He also makes the division of Egoism from Non-egoism a definite one, fully identifying the Good with the Non-egoistic, the Bad with the Egoistic. The Non-egoistic really exists; a man may relieve another's suffering in order to free himself from the sight of it; or he may relieve it for the other's sake. Nevertheless, non-egoistic action is rare; men are much more egoistic than the apes, who are rivals only with regard to food and sexual desire, while men are rivals not only with respect to these primitive wants, but with respect to many others besides, especially since they not only regard the present but provide for the future also.
Vanity, according to Ree, gives rise to envy, hatred, and malignity. But, the action of these passions being opposed to the safety of society, some persons[83] introduced punishment for its protection, and fear of punishment, and exchange of labor united men in peace. Deeds and never motives were at first considered in the infliction of punishment, but, outer compulsion not securing safety, the ideal of an inner condition of character which should secure it arose. "Good" and "useful" are synonyms, but men of later generations, receiving laws without explanation of their origin, fail to understand that the Good was, in its origin, simply the Useful, that the Bad was, in like manner, the Harmful, and that Punishment is for the purpose of prevention and not in the nature of a return for things done. The knowledge of this truth takes from life some of its grandeur; but the truth remains the truth, nevertheless.
The will is not free; the mistake of regarding it as free is the result of the failure to perceive that punishment looks to the future, not to the past,--is a means of prevention, not a requital. The right to punish does not rest, therefore, upon the Sense of Justice; but punishment is justifiable as a means of prevention. Its choice, like that of other evils as the alternatives of greater ones, is the practice of the principle, The end justifies the means. Those who repudiate this principle have not generally looked deeply into its meaning; moreover, it has been misused. In putting it in practice, several things must be observed:--
1. The end to be served must be a good one;
2. The choice of means causing pain is permissible only when no other means are possible;
3. The pain must be reduced to the least possible;
4. The pain must be less than would be involved in the omission of this particular choice.
* * * * *
The doctrine of eternal punishment is untenable, because:--
1. It presupposes the existence of a God.
2. Supposing a God to be existent, we cannot name him either good or bad. "God is good" means "He does good to the world and its inhabitants"; but of the world we know only the little earth, and of God we know nothing.
3. If we will, nevertheless, predicate goodness or badness of God, we must call him bad, since all beings known to us suffer much pain and have little pleasure. The gods of the savages, who are not yet led away by theological hair-splitting, are evil.
4. But if we still persist in naming God good, then we cannot suppose him to be also cruel, and even more cruel than the hardest-hearted of mortals.
5. The doctrine of eternal punishment assumes the existence of a soul; but the difference between human beings and the higher animals is not so great that one can ascribe an especial soul to men.
6. But if a soul exists, it cannot be tortured, since it is immaterial.
7. And the deeds which God will thus punish deserve, on the theory of punishment as prevention, no requital.
* * * * *
It is not immaterial to us whether men have a good or an evil opinion of us.
1. Because we hope for advantages from a good opinion.
2. Because we are vain.
Vanity arose, in the first place, because admiration was useful to men, just as it is useful to the birds at pairing-time, and habit rendered it agreeable in itself. Men therefore desire it, even when it has no especial use, because "they know that all admiration is followed by a strong feeling of pleasure."[84] The difference between man and the peacock in respect to vanity is merely that he desires to be admired for other things than outer appearance alone,--for courage, strength, cleverness, the tools of battle, and many other things. Since, among human beings, men and not women choose their mates, endeavoring to obtain one or more of the most beautiful women possible, women endeavor to render themselves beautiful, expending greater efforts as the stake is greater in their case than in that of the peacock. They endeavor to supplement their outward attractiveness by amiability, cleverness, household industry, and, in our days, wealth; but beauty always makes the strongest impression upon the man. Men desire to be admired rather for other things than outward appearance, though for this, too, to some extent.
But vanity may be objected to (1) on the ground that it is a desire to create envy, and envy is pain and gives rise to hatred; (2) on the hedonistic ground that the vain man more often suffers pain from not being admired than experiences pleasure from admiration; (3) on the intellectual ground that vanity renders a man incapable of impersonal interest in Nature, Art, Philosophy, and Science. Entire freedom from vanity could, however, be attained only by a life of complete isolation. Because of these reasons for blame, men do not confess that they act from vanity, but give other reasons for deeds prompted by this feeling.[85]
Ambition may be blamed on grounds similar to those on which vanity is blamed. However, this feeling urges to many useful acts, and without it few would find interest for great effort. And since, because of its usefulness, ambition is less blamed than vanity, men are more ready to acknowledge that they possess it.
We desire to appear well in the eyes of others, therefore we conceal our envy and hatred, and affect high courage, great honesty, and charity. Such hypocrisy is bad; but it is necessary. For if men were to show themselves as they are, with hearts full of hostility, they could not at all associate. In order to make frankness and peace both possible, men must become what they now pretend to be; but this does not lie in their power.
Malignant pleasure in others' pain arises from a comparison with our own more agreeable situation, or from the pleasure in our own superiority in any respect.
When a woman is seduced, it is in the interest of other women to ostracise her, since, if marriage were to be abolished, women would lose in position; the man who seduces her is blamed for bringing shame on her, but not for unchastity, for men have no interest in maintaining chastity in their own sex.
Caprice arises, not from change of mood, but from the pleasure of power experienced in now charming by amiability, now causing gloom by coldness, and again inspiring fear through anger.
If one desires anything from another, one should not say, "It is a little thing," but "It is very much that I ask"; since he who is asked gives more readily when he thinks he will appear very kind.
Natural Selection does not prefer the individual as far as morals are concerned, but only nations. Moral rules are variable, but not steadily progressive. Man is by nature selfish; simply habit tames men and makes them, by change in nerves and muscle, more amenable to rule.
The good man is probably worse off than the bad man. Pain exceeds pleasure in all beings. Everything, love included, becomes worthless when attained, and labor begins again for new attainment. Man is, moreover, the most unhappy of all beings, for he feels most strongly, and in his complicated organism there is almost always something out of order. For this reason, sympathy[86] brings more pain than pleasure. The bad man has only pangs of conscience to disturb him, and, if he is superstitious, the fear of punishment after death. It is difficult to say whether the bad man or the good man is happier. In fact, happiness depends rather on temperament, power of self-control, and health. Possibly these truths may seem harmful; and if the good man is higher than the bad man, and goodness should be sought, only so much of the truth should be revealed as is not antagonistic to this end. But the good man is not the higher, although, because goodness is useful, our education has attempted to make us believe this. The animals may be unselfish as well as man; on the other hand, the disinterested search for truth is not found among the animals. The attainment of truth is, moreover, pleasurable to the searcher, turning painful desire for truth to pleasurable fulfilment.
Dr. Ree's later book, "The Origin of Conscience" ("Die Entstehung des Gewissens," 1885), does not add anything distinctly new in theory to this first book; it is rather noticeable for what it omits of the pessimism of the earlier book, for a more moderate, thoughtful, and less assertive tone, than for additional theories or even much further elaboration of the old theories, except as regards the derivation of the Sense of Justice. It traces the savage custom of the revenge of death through its displacement by the payment of blood-money, up to the final substitution of state punishment. Punishment does not grow out of revenge, but succeeds it. It is not revenge, though the desire that the guilty may be punished and the desire for revenge may be mixed, in some cases. Pain, not the Sense of Justice, drives the savage to revenge. Punishment does not grow out of the Sense of Justice, but the latter out of the former. The interference of the state with the revenge of the individual is at first a mediation between the two parties for the maintenance of peace in the interest of the community; later, the state arrives at a method of punishment for the purpose of prevention.
Hume's theory of the origin of religion has been confirmed by Anthropology. The savage sees in natural phenomena the action of living beings endowed with mental faculties like his own, and he gradually comes to transfer this action to beings not in, but, according to his new idea, behind, phenomena. The gods of primitive religions are moral only as the peoples whose gods they are, are moral. As society progresses, religion falls behind, and a new interpretation of old doctrines must be introduced in order to bring it up to the later standard. Then the gods, as moral with the morality of this later date, are imagined as commanding the later standard, and to the fear of punishment by the state is added, as a preventive force, that of the punishment of the gods. The gods command what men command, forbid what men forbid. The God of the Old Testament, Jahveh, was, like Zeus, a nature-god, and took revenge as men did. When a later date demanded a standard of greater humanity, Christ came, and he represented the God of the Old Testament, no longer as revengeful and passionate, but as possessing the attributes of sympathy which he felt in himself. The later standard of the New Testament takes into consideration motives as well as deeds, and commands positively as well as forbids. But the God of the New Testament is not wholly love; if his love is unreturned, he becomes angry, like men.
The Categoric Imperative in the individual is merely the result of his individual education. Conscience alone accomplishes little; other motives than the desire to do right--fear of punishment, etc.--are stronger. Nothing is, in itself, good or bad, but only so far as it is useful or harmful.
Sympathy is to some degree innate,--how it arose we cannot say; but it has been preserved by natural selection.
FOOTNOTES:
[83] P. 46.
[84] P. 78.
[85] See, in contradistinction to Ree's theory of vanity, Sigwart's admirable essay on this subject, contained in his "Kleine Schriften."
[86] Dr. Ree appears to depart from his general theory here and identify sympathy with morality.
A REVIEW OF EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS
II. INTRODUCTION
Twenty years ago, any one about to deal with moral science from the standpoint of the Theory of Evolution, might have deemed it necessary to preface his work with a statement of cogent reasons for the assumption of such a standpoint. At a time when Theology saw in Darwinism only a weapon of the anti-theological party, and when even many scientists were not yet decided as to the worth of the new ideas, the right of the student to make use of them in psychological and ethical investigations might have been a subject for dispute. Yet even in the beginning the attitude of apology was assumed oftener without, than within, English-speaking countries, for the very reason that exactly among the race from which Darwin sprang, the warfare of his conception of animate nature with older systems was fiercest. At the present date, the attitude of opinion is changed in all countries. The Theory of Evolution has few, if it can be said to have any, enemies among the students of science. "With Louis Agassiz died the last opponent of Darwinism deserving scientific notice," says Haeckel.[87] Theology itself has ceased from extreme hostilities, and many theologians have even found in the idea of Evolution an argument with which to defend teleological doctrine. The present opponents of Darwinism as applied to psychology and ethics rather contest its special worth for these provinces than deny its validity in them. Nevertheless, a universal acceptance cannot be claimed for the theory; and since ethics is, above all other sciences, the one that should most desire to persuade rather than to alienate,--and this the more, the stronger its conviction of its own truth,--it may be well to state or restate some of the reasons which justify, from almost all modern standpoints, at least a tentative application of the ideas of Evolution to ethical theory. Such a statement, or restatement, must be an attempt to demonstrate the validity of the theory in this province, and to give some good reasons for supposing, a priori, that a survey of ethical questions from the point of view it furnishes may be of ethical utility. The proof of such utility can be found, ultimately, only in the results of the investigation itself.
There is but one phase of the theological doctrine of Creation with which the mere idea of an evolution of life, by itself considered, is directly at variance; this is the doctrine of Creation as taught by the older Theology, which accepted the opening chapters of Genesis as literal history, not as, by any possibility, an oriental allegory. Between the theory of Evolution and the idea of Creation as a primal formation of matter with force or motion in accordance with fixed laws, between it and the idea of an initial application of force from without,--an impulsion which set the universe in motion,--between it and the conception of a transcendental guidance through natural law or of a pantheistic order of development, there is no such necessary contradiction as could justify the denial of Evolution from the standpoint of any of these theories. It is, therefore, with the defenders of the older theological doctrine of creation only that an a priori defence of Evolution has to deal.
The argument which this doctrine has always regarded as one of its strongest defences is that of the universality of the notion of a Creating Spirit. But this defence is no longer available; modern research has proved the idea to be by no means universal. Sir John Lubbock says, "The lower races have no idea of a Creation; and among those somewhat more advanced it is, at first, very incomplete." "The lower savages regard their gods as scarcely more powerful than themselves;... they are not creators; they are neither omniscient nor all-powerful; far from conferring immortality on man, they are not even in all cases immortal themselves."[88] "Stuhr, who was, as Mueller says, a good observer of such matters, reports that the Siberians had no idea of a Creator. When Burchill suggested the idea of creation to the Bachapin Kaffirs, these 'asserted that everything made itself,' and that trees and herbage grew by their own will."[89] "As regards Tahiti, Williams observes that the 'origin of the gods and their priority of existence in comparison with the formation of the earth, being a matter of uncertainty even among the native priests, involves the whole in the greatest obscurity.'"[90] "When the Capuchin missionary, Merolla, asked the queen of Singa in Western Africa who made the world, she, 'without the least hesitation, readily answered, "My ancestors."'"[91] "The Bongos of Sudan had no conception of there being a Creator,"[92] the Adipones, the Californian Indians, before they came in contact with white men, the Crees, the Zulu Kaffirs, the Hottentots, had no idea of a creation. "Even in Sanscrit, there is no word for creation, nor does any such appear in the Rigveda, the Zendavesta, or in Homer."[93] The idea of a creation in any sense is not, then, universal, and cannot be asserted to be innate, a priori, primordial, or essential to human nature. Nor, assuming the standpoint of belief in a Creator, is there any ground for supposing that he would have chosen the one rather than any other method of creation. The internal as well as the external difficulties in the way of a too literal exegesis of the Old Testament are rapidly causing the abandonment of dogmatism with respect to this point; and any other interpretation than a literal one cannot, as has been said, logically object to a theory of Becoming based on scientific grounds.
It is in the nature of many of our greatest scientific theories that their simplicity and naturalness in the explanation of facts fill us with a sense of wonder that they had not long before suggested themselves to scientists. If, for instance, we were to attempt, in a Cartesian spirit, to free ourselves from all the prejudice of previous dogma and regard only the general course of nature, we could not logically avoid the conclusion, even from a superficial view, that a theory of the gradual development of existing forms has far more probability on its side than that of a creation from without which broke in upon natural process, and placed ready-made suns and planets in the heavens, and finished beasts and men upon the earth. Everywhere in the organic world we behold the process of growth, the development of germs, the passage of the inorganic into the organic, and of the organic into the inorganic again,--change and transformation under natural law.
The difficulty which difference of form and function in the various species offers to a theory of Evolution is by no means so large as has often been claimed; as great difference exists between the oak and the acorn, from which we know it, nevertheless, to spring; as much contrast is exhibited between the brown twigs of the trees and shrubs in winter and the brilliant foliage and flowers which they put forth under the warmer sun of spring; quite as great contrasts may be found, in the life of every human being, between the single cell and the individual completeness attained at birth, between infancy and morally characterized manhood and womanhood, between the vigor of full maturity and the deterioration of age. Even the chasm between the organic and the inorganic is not logically impassable. The necessity of nourishment is the natural bridge between the two, and the equivalence of conditions and result, the indestructibility of matter and motion, establish at once the necessity of the inference that the organic can exist only at the ultimate expense of the inorganic, from which it is continually renewed. Were our senses such that, having before been closed, they were suddenly opened to the perception of the daily observable facts of growth, these would probably appear to us very nearly as strange, anomalous, and impossible as the changes which, according to the Darwinian Theory, have resulted in the existence of different species; and it is obvious that the public mind, becoming gradually accustomed to the conception of the latter changes, does not now regard them as so wonderful and anomalous as they appeared to it in the beginning.
Processes involving complete change of form may be observed, at the present time, everywhere in nature; but they are observable, everywhere in the organic, as growth without breaches; even a primitive science has always recognized the gradual character of motion, the absence of gaps in the causal chain, at least outside of the initiative action of human will. Such a natural hypothesis of creation as we have above supposed, formed upon crude and superficial, but as far as it goes, logical reasoning from facts of observation, could not regard the process as other than a gradual one, in which simpler forms and conditions must be supposed to have preceded more complex ones; in other words, it could not logically conceive the process as other than an evolution.
Traces of an idea of Evolution may be found in various crude forms in nearly all the earlier Greek philosophers, especially in Anaximander, Heraclitus, Democritus, Empedocles, and later in Aristotle. Such traces may even be found in many heathen mythologies in contradistinction from the Judaic. The progress of investigation, establishing the universality of natural law and, in every province, the gradual character of change was, before Darwin, as it has been since his work, in the direction of such a theory, as was shown by the ready acceptance with which Darwinism met, if not by the world at large, at least by the majority of scientists. In England, France, and Germany, there were others at work under the influence of thoughts similar to if not identical with those that inspired the researches and experiments of Darwin; and the nebular theory of Kant had already claimed in Astronomy what the Darwinian claimed in Biology. "When Kant, in his Natural History of the Heavens, which has become the fundament of modern Astronomy, says, 'Give me matter and I will make you a world,' what he intended to express was that the natural laws of matter are perfectly competent to render comprehensible to us the development of our well-known solar system."[94]
In the very beginning, the theory of Evolution may be said to have had three distinct branches, represented by the Nebular Theory in Astronomy, Haeckel's Ontogeny, and the Biology of Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley; and to these should properly be added the Sociological Ethics of Spencer, which was not, however, worked out to a complete system. But Du Prel says of later research: "In the progress of modern science, no principle has proved so fruitful as that of evolution. All branches compete with one another in its use, and have brought about by its aid the most gratifying results. Geology interprets the significance of superimposed, hardened strata of the earth's crust in the sense of a history of the earth's development; Biology, in union with the study of fossils, arranges the living and petrified specimens of plants and animals in their order, and constructs a history of the evolution of organic life; Philology prepares a genealogical tree of languages, and finds in it signs which throw light on prehistoric times, and reveal facts forgotten for thousands of years; Anthropology discovers in the form and expression of human beings rudimentary signs that point to a theory of development from lower forms; and, finally, History reveals the evolution of civilization in far-distant historic times; and in all these branches it becomes apparent that we only then understand phenomena when we have comprehended their Becoming."[95]
It is due to the gradual perception of the fact that some such theory as that of Evolution is implied in the very conception of the constancy of nature that there has been a continual decrease of that negative form of criticism which has made much of the gaps in the direct proof. Modern science has so grown to, and by, the theory of Evolution that the overthrow of the latter means nothing more nor less than the destruction of science itself in its highest results. Even those who reject the conclusions of Evolution are found to make use of its methods, and must do so perforce. As the breadth and depth and height of the theory come to be perceived, it is seen that the demand for complete proof is nothing more nor less than a demand for the perfection of all branches of knowledge, the refusal of credit without such proof a refusal to place any confidence in the first principles of scientific theory until it has fully explored the universe and left nothing further to be discovered. But science would have less ground for complaint, if the opponents of Darwinism consistently refused, on the ground of the incompleteness of our knowledge, to form any theory whatever on the subject of man's nature and development, permitting the worth of the evolutional theory to be determined by its future results in application as hypothesis. But the peculiar spectacle is afforded us of a party rejecting a theory supported by numberless facts in all branches, and whose very breaches the direction of discovery continually tends to bridge, in favor of a dogma which cannot point to one scientific fact in its support,--a party demanding absolute perfection of proof as the condition of its acceptance of one theory, while it at the same time fiercely defends a conception of nature of which it cannot furnish the most imperfect proof. It is true that mankind has not beheld the evolution of the whole vegetable and animal kingdom. But neither had any human eye ever yet beheld the planet Neptune when Le Verrier prophesied its existence and calculated its size and position. The theory of Evolution is a reasoning from the constancy of nature, as was that of Le Verrier, only, in the case of the former, we have the observation and calculations of not one scientist alone, but of thousands, on which to rely. To demand of the scientist that he shall produce the organic from the inorganic, and practically demonstrate the change of form and function, and the process of separation of species, before the possibility of such development is conceded, is on a par with demanding of him an actual reproduction of the Glacial Period before the theory of its previous existence shall be accepted. There is no reason for supposing that, if spontaneous generation once took place, the peculiar complication of conditions which produced it will ever again recur or can be artificially constructed.
But science has no desire to be dogmatic. It readily acknowledges the total absence of direct and established proof at this particular juncture of the beginning of life. It can only point to the indirect testimony of Physiological Chemistry and Crystallogeny, to the simplicity of structure and movement in certain forms of life, and finally to the observed constancy of nature. But an exaggerated significance has been given to this chief flaw in the theory of Evolution, by those who, starting with the intention of defending Theology or the dignity of the Human, have been driven back, step by step, to this point, and fail to perceive that, arrived here, they have already abandoned the ground on which contest was possible. What significance a primal creation merely of lowest organisms can have, for either a defence of human dignity or for Christian Theology, it is difficult to perceive. As a matter of choice, it would seem to be more consistent with the omnipotence and dignity of a Creator to suppose that these very simple organisms arose, like other forms, under the action of natural law than that special interference was necessary in just their case. But, supposing such a special Creation, the following questions immediately present themselves from the theological standpoint: Are these special creations endowed with soul? If so, they must be immortal; if not, then soul arises in the process of evolution; if it arises as do all other things, qualities, functions, by growth,--that is, by the addition of infinitesimal increments (as we must, indeed, suppose it to arise if we regard it as "evolved")--then whence come these increments? If they come direct from a Creator, then surely no special favor towards man in the bestowment of soul can be alleged; and if they arise by natural causes, out of nature, then why may not their first beginning, their first infinitesimal appearance, also be supposed to be due to such causes?
The proof of an increase, a growth, of what have been called distinctively the mental faculties, throughout the animal kingdom, is every day stronger. No one believes, at the present date, with Descartes, that the animals are automata. Differences of mental power would seem to be but differences of degree; the facts all point to such a theory. The more scientific theologians have, indeed, abandoned this with the other minor points of contest above discussed, and devoted their efforts to argument from the moral nature of man. Philology, Anthropology, and Geology testify to mental progress, even in the human species; and if such a progress is a fact, it cannot have been without influence upon the moral nature of man, even supposing the latter to be God-given. Indeed, a merely physical progress or change cannot have been without such influence; for the most conservative theologians admit the strong action of the body upon the mind. It would seem, then, for all reasons, that an investigation of the process of mental evolution, or of evolution in general, ought not to be without results significant for any system of morality. If it is true that we learn wisdom and morality from human history, this can be so only because history gives us increased knowledge of the constancy of nature in those of its manifestations which specially concern the human, and thus enables us better to judge the present and predict the future. We should suppose that a still wider knowledge of our mental and physical evolution must be of yet greater worth to us in the same manner,--that the disclosure of more extended fields of nature to our vision must afford us new and valuable lessons with regard to ourselves; just as the telescope makes no discovery in the most distant regions of space that does not prove to have, in the end, its peculiar significance for our own planet. If our investigations should prove fruitless, as all such investigations have been said by some to be, the fact, established a posteriori, could not be disputed. But, considering all the points above noticed, such a result could not but astonish us; and we should even be inclined, after all that has been said, to suspect that the fault lay rather in the particular method than in the direction of our research.
FOOTNOTES:
[87] "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte," 8th ed., p. 109.
[88] "Origin of Civilization," p. 391.
[89] "Origin of Civilization."
[90] Ibid.
[91] Ibid.
[92] Ibid.
[93] Ibid.
[94] Du Prel: "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls."
[95] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls."
I. THE CONCEPTS OF EVOLUTION
The preceding considerations have made it evident that the idea of Evolution has undergone a broadening process since Darwin first brought it before the world. It is necessary to glance briefly at some of the chief phases and the general significance of this process in order to define the extent and intent of the concept as far as science has made such definition possible.
To Darwin himself the struggle for existence was always between the unities represented by complete organisms whether as isolated individuals, or in family, tribal, or national groups. Everywhere in his calculations, appearing unchanged in his results, is found the unknown quantity of variation from ancestral type, the known factors being heredity, and natural and sexual selection in the struggle for existence. Wallace's ideas as to color in birds deprive the theory of sexual selection of one of its most important points of application in Darwin's work. It is, in fact, easy to see that sexual selection cannot neutralize natural selection, that any particular form of sexual selection can arise and finally survive only by a harmony with the direction of natural selection, and that the two must therefore appear, even from any standpoint of freedom of the will, as continually attaining coincidence. It has been said, above, that the struggle for existence was, for Darwin, between the organisms as unities. This consistent position of the specialist has been criticised, from a more general point of view, by Lewes in his essay on the Nature of Life,[96] in which he asserts that we must logically "extend our conception of the struggle for existence beyond that of the competition and antagonism of organisms--the external struggle; and include under it the competition and antagonism of tissues and organs--the internal struggle." "Mr. Darwin," he says, "has so patiently and profoundly meditated on the whole subject, that we must be very slow in presuming him to have overlooked any important point. I know that he has not altogether overlooked this which we are now considering; but he is so preoccupied with the tracing out of his splendid discovery in all its bearings, that he has thrown the emphasis mainly on the external struggle, neglecting the internal struggle; and has thus, in many passages, employed language which implies a radical distinction where--as I conceive--no such distinction can be recognized. 'Natural Selection,' he says, 'depends on the survival, under various and complex circumstances, of the best-fitted individuals, but has no relation whatever to the primary cause of any modification of structure.'[97] On this we may remark, first, that selection does not depend on the survival, but is that survival; secondly, that the best-fitted individual survives because of that modification of its structure which has given it the superiority; therefore, if the primary cause of this modification is not due to selection, the selection cannot be the cause of species. The facts which are relied on in support of the idea of 'fixity of species' show, at any rate, that a given superiority will remain stationary for thousands of years; and no one supposes that the progeny of an organism will vary unless some external or internal cause of variation accompanies the inheritance. Mr. Darwin agrees with Mr. Spencer in admitting the difficulty of distinguishing between the effects of some definite action of external conditions, and the accumulation through natural selection of inherited variations serviceable to the organism. But even in cases where the distinction could be clearly established, I think we should only see an historical distinction, that is to say, one between effects produced by particular causes now in operation and effects produced by very complex and obscure causes in operation during ancestral development.... Natural Selection is only the expression of the results of obscure physiological processes."
The last statement is one to which Darwin himself would certainly not have objected. It is an extension of the principle implicitly involved in all his work and explicitly stated in his later work, although the chief emphasis is laid on outer conditions. The extension of the idea of competition from the outer condition of organisms to the more ultimate physiological unities of organ and tissue is a philosophic gain. It is evident, however, that that for which Darwin is seeking is not a philosophical generalization which shall include outer and inner change under one highest law, but, first of all, the particular causes of particular variation interesting to the specialist in biology. It is made too clear for mistake in "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" that the uncertainty with regard to such particular forms of cause is the spring of his declaration of our ignorance as to variation. The possibility of an inclusion of lower in higher generalizations he would not deny; though the special laws first occupy his attention. Doubtless, his work is not, as is no man's, wholly free from inconsistencies and contradictions,--which are due, in part, to the fact that every scientific theory is, even in the thought of the individual, an evolution. But the declaration of mystery in the question of variation is not equivalent to a theory of accident, of transcendental mystery, or of some special organic or vital force, such as Claude Bernard especially opposed; it is merely and simply a statement of the mystery of present ignorance. This fact is expressly stated in Darwin's later work. We find, for instance, in the introduction to a letter to the editor of "Nature," written in 1873, the origin of many instincts referred to "modifications or variations in the brain, which we, in our ignorance, most improperly call spontaneous or accidental;" and we have, in "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,"[98] such passages as the following: "When we reflect on the individual differences between organic beings in a state of nature, as shown by every wild animal knowing its mate; and when we reflect on the infinite diversity of many varieties of our domesticated productions, we may well be inclined to exclaim, though falsely, as I believe, that variability must be looked at as an ultimate fact, necessarily contingent on reproduction. Those authors who adopt this latter view would probably deny that each separate variation has its own proper exciting cause. Although we can seldom trace the precise relation between cause and effect, yet the considerations presently to be given lead to the conclusion that each modification must have its own distinct cause." It is "probable that variability of every kind is directly or indirectly caused by changed conditions of life. Or, to put the case under another point of view, if it were possible to expose all the individuals of a species during many generations to absolutely uniform conditions of life, there would be no variability.... The causes which induce variability act on the mature organism, on the embryo, and, as we have good reason to believe, on both sexual elements before impregnation has been effected." Darwin further considers, in this same book, some of the probable particular causes of variation, as given in climate and food. And it may be remarked, in this connection, that Rolph's criticism of the impossibility of progress under conditions of want is irrelevant as applied to Darwin, since the latter himself says expressly: "Of all causes which induce variability, excess of food, whether or not changed in nature, is probably the most powerful";[99] again: "We have reason to suspect that an habitual excess of highly nutritive food, or an excess relatively to the wear and tear of the organization from exercise, is a powerful exciting cause of variability."[100] Rolph's criticism is probably due to forgetfulness of the fact that Darwin limited the struggle for existence to that of complete organisms with one another, and that, under such a limitation of the conception to external struggle, a condition of want cannot be conceived as necessarily precluding a monopoly of abundance by best-fitted individuals.
Theories with regard to the special outer causes and resulting physiological conditions of variation have been gradually added to, as facts on this score have accumulated. But, as investigation advances, the question is seen to involve all the problems of the intricate chemical and mechanical nature of physiological structure in its manifold forms and degrees of organization. The field stretches out in this direction, under our contemplation, to an indefinite distance; and science appears as yet to have passed only the outer limits of its territory.
It is certain that the comparatively recent science of Physiological Chemistry will have many of the decisive words to say on this score, in the future. "When we see the symmetrical and complex outgrowths caused by a single atom of the poison of a gall-insect, we may believe that slight changes in the chemical nature of the sap or blood would lead to extraordinary modifications of structure," says the great seer of evolution himself.[101]
Among special theories of Evolution, a distinction may be made between: (1) such special theories as aim at biological simplification by reduction of all organic variation to one primary form of cellular process; (2) such theories as are content with less ultimate laws, by which the various ascertained forms of change are included in one general statement not involving special physiological or physical theory but applicable to all forms of life; (3) such theories as aim to give distinctive philosophic expression to a generalization like the last named, including in this statement both psychical and physiological phenomena; and (4) such theories as aim at an ultimate expression of the direction of evolution that shall include the phenomena of life, both physiological and psychical, under one head with all other natural phenomena. To the first class belong only "provisional" hypotheses, among the best known of which are those of Pangenesis, Perigenesis, and the Continuity of the Germ-Plasm. To the second, which are not merely tentative but have a broad foundation in known fact, belongs Haeckel's theory of Inheritance and Adaptation, a theory restated in substance, from independent research, by Eimer, whose ultimate general factors of analysis are the same with Haeckel's, though he deals, beyond these, with special facts and special theories of his own. Phases of the second class often entitle them to inclusion in the third. An example of the third class is found in Spencer's definition, "Life is the continual adjustment of inner relations to outer relations." The fourth and last class includes Fechner's "Tendency to Stability" and Spencer's theory of the rhythm of motion (see his "First Principles"), similar to which are certain ideas of Zoellner, Du Prel, and others; and similar elements to which are to be found in Haeckel's "Plastidule-Theory." In connection with this class, reference may be made to an article by Dr. J. Petzoldt in the "Vierteljahrschrift fuer wissenschaftliche Philosophie" under the title "Maxima, Minima, und Oekonomie," in which, among others, Fechner's views especially are discussed with reference to an ultimate principle of evolution. The first pages on the "Tendency to Stability" in Fechner's "Ideas concerning the Evolution of the Organic" ("Einige Ideen zur Schoepfungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen") are as follows:--
"For the sake of brevity I call relations of position and motions recurring at regular periods, that is after like intervals, in the particles forming a material system or in the centres of whole masses conceived as forming a larger system, 'stable relations.' Among such relations is to be reckoned the condition of rest of the particles or masses in relation to each other, as the extreme case, which we may call the state of 'absolute stability'; while a dissipation of the particles or masses, to infinity, in different directions, constitutes the other extreme of absolute instability.
"We do not speak of 'absolute stability,' but of 'full stability,' in cases where motion still takes place, but this brings continually, in exactly the same periods of time, the same relations of particles or masses, not only as regards position, but also as regards velocity and direction of the motion and change of velocity and direction....
"To absolute and full stability may be added, as third case, that of greater or less approach to full stability, which we may term briefly 'aproximate stability'... and of which we have an example in the chief bodies of our solar system.
"It may serve as a simplification of the consideration of stable relations of motion to remark... that, in an isolated system or one under constant outer conditions, exactly or very nearly the same relations of velocity and direction recur when exactly or very nearly the same relations in the position of the particles or masses return. As regards the velocity, this follows directly from the principle of the conservation of energy; as regards the direction, it is indisputably possible to assume the connection of its recurrence with that of the other relations, although I cannot remember that a direct general proof of this has been found.
"With these introductory specifications in mind, let us assume any number of material particles to be restricted, by forces of some sort, to motion within limited space, and the system either withdrawn from outer influences or under such as are constant; let us, moreover, suppose the system undisturbed by the interference of psychic freedom, or the latter impossible. In such case, certain initial positions, velocities, and directions of the parts of the system being assumed, all following states will be determined by these. And now, if there are among these conditions, either present at the beginning, or attained in the course of the motion, any such as have for their result a return of the same states after a given time, then the motion, and so also the positions of the parts conceived as at first undergoing alteration in form and velocity, will, unless they contain the immediate condition of periodic recurrence, continue altering until those of all the possible states are reached which contain the condition of recurrence; until this point is attained, the system will, so to speak, know no rest. Has the recurrence once taken place within a given time, then it must always take place anew within the same time, because the same conditions are there to determine it. And since these conditions are determinative of the whole course of motion from one recurrence to the next, the same course must be repeated; that is, in every like phase of the period a like state of motion will exist. But this gives us full stability of the system, a change, a deviation from the attained stability being possible only through changes in outer influences, the assumed constancy of which rendered the attainment of stability possible.
"This principle appears at first purely a priori; but the assumption should not be overlooked that there are among the conditions determining the motion such as lead to their own recurrence, and this is to be taken for granted, since it is necessary to assume that a system must continue to change until, but only until, the conditions of full stability are attained, in case it is attainable; and that this full stability, when once reached, cannot be again destroyed by the action of the system itself. The question presents itself as to how far calculation and experience permit us to lay down a more general principle.
"In a system in which only two particles or masses, withdrawn from outer influences, are determined to motion by mutual attraction and the influence of a primary impulse in another direction, calculation shows us that, motion to infinity being excluded, the attainment, and indeed the immediate attainment, of full stability is a necessity; and for swinging pendula and vibrating strings it may be calculated, from the nature of the moving forces, that they would remain in a condition of fully stable motion if outer resistance were removed; for, such obstacles present, they pass through an approximately stable condition to one of absolute stability. The power of purely mathematical calculation does not go beyond such comparatively simple cases....
"But if we call experience to our aid, it may be asserted, in accordance with very general facts, that, in a system left to itself or under constant outer conditions, and starting from any conceivable state, if not full stability at least a greater or less approximation to it is reached as final condition, from which no retrogression takes place through the inner workings of the system itself. The tendency to approximately stable conditions appears, or the actual state is attained, according to the measure in which variable outer influences are withdrawn. So that so little is lacking to our hypothesis, that, although it has at this point to make up for the impossibility of perfect demonstration, we are nevertheless justified in laying down the following law or principle:--
"In every system of material parts left to itself or under constant outer influences, so, then, in the material system of the universe, in so far as we regard it as isolated, there takes place, motion to infinity being excluded, a continuous progress from more unstable to more stable conditions, up to the attainment of a final condition of full or approximate stability."
From the union of the principle thus stated and that of the conservation of energy "it follows that no unlimited progress of the universe to absolute stability, which consists in perfect rest of the parts, can take place.... The energy manifested in the universe cannot be altered, in general, in its amount, but only in the form in which it manifests itself." "It cannot be asserted that the attainment of full stability in the universe would be the attainment of an eternal rest, but only of the most perfectly adjusted motions, and therefore such motions as would give rise to no variations.... But a condition which brings with it eternal repetition cannot be reached in finite time."
"To elucidation of this principle of the Tendency to Stability," says Dr. Petzoldt analyzing Fechner's work, "we have only to call to remembrance a number of natural phenomena, such as the ebb and flow of the tide, the circulation of moisture, periodic changes of temperature, and so forth, which exhibit great periods of approximate stability and in which we notice in general no retrogression.
"Not less does the constitution of organisms which are, 'so to speak, constituted dependent upon periodicity of their functions, and so upon stable relations of their life,' serve to confirm the theory. Only the concept of stability must be extended in their case, since not always the same, but only substitutive parts of the organic systems tend towards stability.
"Experience never gives us an example of an isolated system; on the contrary, every system is a part of higher systems. The inner relations of its stability are not conditioned by its own parts only, but also, more or less, by those of other systems, so that the destruction of one part-system is always only in the direction towards the stability of a higher, ultimately of the highest, system; that is, of the system of the universe."
"Thus the teleological principle coincides with the principle of the Tendency to Stability, and at the same time the latter constitutes the link between the former and the law of Causality. Though, in truth, this manner of looking at the matter signifies a generalization of the concept of 'end,' since it defines all stable conditions as ends. The view is justified, however, by the fact that the greatest possible physical satisfaction--for us, the criterion of teleology--is always bound up with the longest possible preservation or slow change of a stable organic condition. The physical Tendency to Stability 'bears with it a psychical tendency to the attainment and conservation of just those conditions' towards which the physical tendency is directed."
Of the fact that Lange "feels the lack of the proof of this 'Tendency to Stability,'" Dr. Petzoldt says: "But how is there a need of proof here? To prove is to refer back to known facts. But what is there in Fechner's remarks that stands in need of such a reference? They simply draw our attention to the result of evolution as a state which bears, in itself, the guarantee of some continuance. Can any one contest this? Is there anything further to prove? It is said that Gauss once remarked that Lagrange's equations of motion are not proved, but only historically stated. The case is exactly the same here. The fact is attested, merely, that evolution ends in a stable condition; and herein lies the pith and the great merit of the theory of the Tendency to Stability."
Dr. Petzoldt criticises, among other things, especially Fechner's concept of approximate stability, in that no distinction is made by the author between three different cases. The first case comprises forms of motion in which periodicity is only approximate, but in which, nevertheless, no retrogression in stability takes place; this case is illustrated by our solar system. The second case comprises forms of motion in which the stability increases up to a certain point, but beyond this, despite relative constancy in outer conditions, decreases again until complete destruction of the system supervenes; an illustration of this form of motion is found in all organisms. The third case comprises forms of motion which we cannot concede to be stable. "For, if we ascribe periodic motion to pendula and musical strings which vibrate in a resisting medium, this is nevertheless a periodicity, which continually changes in the same sense, and we certainly cannot say that pendula and strings approach, in a resisting medium, a condition of absolute, through a condition of approximate, stability. We recognize in these vibrations, decreasing in amplitude, merely unstable changes which tend toward a final stable condition,--namely that of rest."
The author finds a further ground of criticism in Fechner's assertion that organisms are entirely dependent upon the periodicity of their functions. Only a part of such functions are periodic. Periodicity is not conceivable without stability, but stability is conceivable without periodicity.
In the process of evolution towards a stable form of movement, Dr. Petzoldt recognizes briefly two factors, "Tendency and Competition."[102] Tendency is defined, in general, as the direction, actual or potential, of material parts or of mental or physical function; competition, as the conflict of tendencies, from which a tendency of a higher order results. "The concept of Competition is, like that of Tendency, to be taken in a general significance. A number of forces which act upon a single point compete. Different mental images, observations, concepts, laws, come into competition, from which result concepts and laws of lower and higher orders. The struggle for existence is only a special case of competition. Though this often ends with the immediate or gradual destruction of systems entering upon it, nevertheless only a middle worth between all the competing tendencies can be ascribed to the resultant. Even the conqueror is, after the struggle, other than what he was before it; a part of the tendency destroyed by him lives on in him, has combined with his original tendency to a resultant. Tendencies can as little disappear without compensation as can forces, whether the compensation consists in a strengthening or in a weakening of others, and the conservation of competing tendencies might be regarded as a further qualitative addition to the law of the conservation of force. Hence, in the examination of the effects of the struggle for existence, the like claim of all tendencies taking part in it is not to be left out of consideration. Each makes its full force felt. But not all attain to competition; of the numerous tendencies bound up in one organism, only a few unite, in the single case, to a resultant, which has a direction towards a definite issue." The less the opposition of competing tendencies of concepts or laws, the less the deviation of the resultant from its components, and the less the change these have to undergo. The higher concepts and laws are, the less are the number of distinguishing marks which they take from all single conceptions; for they are the resultants of very strongly opposed components.[103]
Fechner's views are related to, and, to some extent, dependent upon, certain ones of Zoellner adduced in connection with a consideration of sun-spots.[104] Du Prel, who also acknowledges special indebtedness to Zoellner, attempted in his "Struggle for Existence in the Heavens" ("Der Kampf ums Dasein am Himmel") to demonstrate the fact of a struggle and selection among the heavenly bodies analogous to that claimed for life upon the earth. The title of the book was afterwards changed to "The History of the Evolution of the Universe,"[105] its scope having "grown far beyond the limit of the former title." Du Prel finds one of the chief advantages of an application of Darwinian ideas to astronomy in the fact that, unlike our earth, the heavens in their immensity afford us existing, or to our eye existing, examples of the various stages of their evolution, in nebular mist, comets, suns, fixed stars, planets, rings, and moons,--all subject to processes of development, which we may to some extent observe. In the first chapter of this book, Du Prel says: "The existing condition of the Cosmos with respect to all forms of the Purposeful[106]--whether we regard the realm of the organic or the inorganic--can be looked upon only as an attained, moving equilibrium of forces. Immanent in Nature lies the capacity to develop from chaotic conditions to teleologic forms; for, in the ceaseless play of forces, all other than such combinations are by their nature given over to destruction, while it lies, on the contrary, in the essence of all purposeful combinations to be preserved. In every system of mechanical forces an adjustment of the same must finally be arrived at through the removal of all immanent oppositions." "It is impossible for nature to remain in chaotic conditions." "Every system of forces tends to a state of equilibrium. This is as true of the conflict of images in a human brain, from whose mutual accommodation the resultant of a unified theory of the universe arises, as of oppositions in the social organism, of the conditions of power and civilization of neighboring peoples, of the meteorologic states of the earth, of the mechanical forces of a solar system, or the atoms of a cosmic mist. Every war of the elements ends with an adjustment of ideal justice, for every 'moment' of force has influence proportioned to its power and the duration of its activity."[107]
There is one portion of Fechner's theory as above stated (its metaphysical phases being beyond the scope of the present chapter have not been touched upon) that raises a question which may perhaps appear to have in itself no special significance, but which nevertheless opens up, by its implications, new fields of inquiry, and may possibly lead to further theory. The condition of stability which evolution in the universe as a whole gradually approaches but can never attain to in finite time is declared, namely, to be one not of rest, but of motion. A question might be raised, here, as to the definition of the "infinite time" asserted to be necessary to the attainment of such full stability,--whether the phrase be used in the mathematical or the philosophic sense; and the question would be found, I believe, to involve the unanswerable problem of the finite or infinite character of the universe in space. Of a universe conceived under the philosophic concept of spatial infinitude, obviously no final state as the result of evolution can be predicated, the evolution supposing a progress which, as involving infinite matter, cannot be accomplished in finite time. If we, however, conceive the universe as occupying finite space and undergoing continual evolution as a whole in the direction of equilibrium, it is a question whether the end must not be attained in finite time. For a universe conceived as finite, however immense, there must be a finite number, however great, representing the changes necessary to the attainment of final equilibrium; and if progress in the direction of such equilibrium is of necessity continual, the final equilibrium must be attainable in finite time. The question of the nature of such a state of final, universal stability is bound up with the problem of motion through a perfect void, and of the possibility of the formation of such a void through the concentration of matter. Leaving out of consideration the problem in its metaphysical form, which concerns the possibility of conceiving inter-material space, it may be said that it is not now supposed that the heavenly bodies move through an absolute void; and the existence of any medium opposing resistance, however slight, is a condition rendering impossible the attainment of absolute stability of motion or a full stability which suffers no diminution and is, therefore, in effect, an absolute stability. It may be questioned whether the very nature of motion is not coincident with change, and this with action and reaction, or competition. Such a view would reduce evolution to a single ultimate principle, in place of Darwin's Variation and Selection through struggle, or Petzoldt's Tendency and Competition. We should have left, instead of these, only the final principle involved in moving matter considered in its ultimate parts. The metaphysical problem of the infinite divisibility of matter need not here concern us; the ultimate parts of an organism could not be, however, its organs as Lewes defined them, but rather, from a positive standpoint, the ultimate units recognized by science in cell and cell-parts. We may, indeed, since we know no beginning of motion, legitimately regard all tendency as itself resultant. Just as we cannot separate matter and motion, except by abstraction from reality, so, too, we cannot conceive of motion except as having definite direction; and thus we arrive, by a final analysis, at the ultimate philosophic principles of matter and its motion. I use these terms in no metaphysical sense, but merely as generic terms including under one head specific forms of material combination and the specific forms of motion of their wholes or parts.
The question of the character of a conceived state of final equilibrium may be approached from a somewhat different side, though the emphasis falls, as before, on the solidarity of the universe and the nature of motion as change. We may, for instance, regard the earth as an isolated system whose isolation makes possible the continual progress of the evolution taking place on its surface. But this whole evolution is, on the other hand, dependent upon the light and heat of the sun. Again, the sun is undergoing an evolution whose continuous progress may be regarded as in a certain sense dependent upon isolation; but we see, on reflection, that this very process is the result of the cooling nature of the sun's surroundings, and that it is sending its motion in every direction through space. The moon, which has passed through both the evolution that the sun is undergoing and that which is in progress upon the earth, is now passing through another stage which the earth must reach in time by diffusion of its atmosphere, in case its destruction is not accomplished by some catastrophic event before the arrival of that distant period. Suns and planets, all the heavenly bodies, are sending their influence in every direction through the unfathomable depths of space; and just as the capacity of the earth to be warmed by the influence of the sun involves its reciprocal capacity to act as a cooling medium for that body, so the conditions throughout the universe must be regarded as everywhere interdependent and mutually implying one another. Thus we again arrive finally at a universal action and reaction among the parts of the universe, all motion implying change of the direction of motion. Or, since we may and are, in fact, obliged to regard every direction or form of motion as a resultant,--for of motion as of matter we know no absolute beginning,--even this simple assumption may supply us with the conclusion which we have reached in a more roundabout way. We may regard motion in any direction as counterbalanced by a resistance in every other direction sufficient to produce it in this one; in other words, motion takes place at every instant, in the direction of least resistance, even though this direction may represent, in the next instant, through the action of new "moments" of force, the greatest resistance. Any direction as well as any change of direction implies, then, resistance; resistance is equivalent to the interference of force, or, in other words, to competition; and competition may, at any moment, become catastrophe. The difference between competition and catastrophe is one merely of degree, or rather it is a subjective difference depending upon the point of view of the observer. In other words, all that we can testify to is a certain periodicity of motion, all motion meeting with resistance, the accumulation of which finally induces motion in another sense. Larger periodicities are made up of smaller periodicities, and, according to the point of view taken, any period of such motion may be regarded as an evolution, that which Fechner terms "full" stability being only the maximum towards which motion during that period tends. Absolute stability can be conceived only as perfect rest, whether we conceive it as merely an abstraction, its realization as rendered impossible by the conservation of energy, or whether we conceive it as possible in a universe regarded as finite; an absolute stability of motion is a self-contradiction, and a full stability which knows no retrogression is equally a self-contradiction. Periodicity is, then, all into which the Tendency to Stability resolves itself for nature as we know it.
We perceive, in the actual universe, the fact of a certain imperfect periodicity. This wave form of movement in great and little plays, as Spencer has shown far more elaborately than Fechner, a large part in the universe.
But the evident fact of a present periodicity of imperfect form suggests another possible conception. We are under no necessity to regard the universe as finite either in space or time. On the contrary. We tend naturally to conceive of it as finite after the analogy of particular things which we perceive continually to arise and perish; but as concerns space, we have no knowledge of any limit, and, as concerns time, the conception of any actual beginning or end to the universe as a whole is only the ancient naive idea which science has disproved in showing that neither matter nor motion ever perish. An infinite universe is conceivable, in which not exactly the same but very similar forms, or forms of which the successive ones closely resemble each other though those widely separated may be very dissimilar, continue to arise and be destroyed to all eternity. The conception of a primal nebular mist is not a necessary inference from astronomic phenomena; it is as easy and as logical to regard the various phases of planetary development revealed to us by the telescope as so many phases of an evolution and dissolution continually recurring in different parts of the universe, one extreme of which is represented by the nebular mist, the other by the cold and lifeless remains of planets gradually suffering dissolution as they revolve through space. The greater the immensity of the universe is conceived to be, the nearer our conception of it must approach to this type. But the term Tendency to Stability is misapplied when applied to such infinite and imperfect periodicity--to the motion, thus conceived, of the universe as a whole.
The periodicity in the life of organic species may be compared to the wave-motions of light and heat as distinguished from those of water, the individual representing the single wave-length. The analogy is not, however, intended--to speak with Bacon--as one of nature, but merely as one of mind. And just here it may be questioned whether Fechner may not have been right, after all, in his assertion of the dependency of the organism upon periodicity of function, whether the periodic character of the individual life, dependent, as it must be supposed to be, on adaptation to a medium to some degree resisting, does not sacrifice its stability in so far as the increments of resistance lack uniformity. This is evidently the case in large relations; is it not logically necessary to suppose it so in minute relations, though the fact may not be so evident to the coarse measurement of the senses? Experience seems to prove that an approximate periodicity in larger relations, is most consistent with health; and it must be remembered that the non-periodic relations are subordinated to periodic ones, that not only in the case of waking and sleeping, working and eating, but also in those of rest and labor, a certain uniformity is necessary to the best mental and physical condition. A close observation will, I think, reveal a greater periodicity than was at first suspected; since much of it is of so-called "automatic," "unconscious," or "half-conscious" nature. It is to be noticed, here, that the termination of individual lives is often in the nature of a catastrophe, and a uniform periodicity of individual development and decay cannot be assigned, except in the form of an average that falls much below the figure attained by the thoroughly healthy individual. There is every reason to believe that if we could sleep, rise, eat, bathe, exercise, work, and rest with the regularity of a clock, we should be the better for it physically. But the irregularities outside the province of our will-power render it impossible for us to order our lives in this manner. Nor do we desire to do so. For these very irregularities, as representing greater or less change to which adaptation is necessary, are, in many cases and within certain lines, the conditions and signs of progress; though they may constitute in other cases and beyond these lines--that is, where they are of too great intensity or duration--conditions of retrogression, the imperfection in periodicity becoming catastrophe, which may extend beyond the individual to his offspring. We may thus infer that the final destruction of the individual organism is conditioned by its own progress and the progress of its species, but that on the other hand, when the destruction of the individual is too abrupt, it may mean catastrophe to the species also, or at least to a part of it, through heredity.
Our considerations so far have been of a nature to convince us that not isolation, but a constancy in the continual action of like relatively small increments of force in the same directions, is the condition of steady evolution. The less constant and the larger the increments, the nearer the changes involved resemble catastrophe, though the catastrophes themselves may be regarded in another light as forming part of an evolution of a higher order. The changes the sun is undergoing may be regarded as evolution in so far as the influence of the cooling medium is a constant one. The earth as a whole and in its parts may be regarded as passing through a process of evolution towards full stability in so far as the sun's heat is a constant quantity, the periodic changes of seasons and of day and night the same. The relation would seem, therefore, to be one of time--the time-relation involved in the duration of outer conditions as constant with reference to the period required for the attainment of stability. Thus the sun's influence upon the earth might appear approximately constant to the human individual, but might represent a rapid change in relation to some stupendous and long-continued evolution in some other part of the universe. Considerations which we have already noticed forbid our regarding any conditions of "full" as distinguished from absolute stability as anything other than peculiar states single in the system and thus unenduring maxima succeeded by decrease, although the process may be, with reference to any other particular process, so slow, the retrogression from the culminating point so gradual, as to be, with respect to this other process, inappreciable.
And while we are busied with matters which involve the whole multiplicity of relations in the universe, just a word with reference to cause and effect. Which one of these myriad material parts interacting at any moment shall we single out as the cause of the succeeding state? The solidarity of the universe as far as the complete interdependence of all its parts is concerned is clear to us. It is true we cannot reckon with all factors of the universe at once; and the concept of cause and effect is therefore a useful one. But the cause of anything must be, from a positive point of view, just what the methods prescribed for its discovery in any particular case shows it to be: namely, a factor, merely, in the manifold conditions determining a following state, the removal of which means the prevention of the succession of exactly that state. Which, for instance, shall we regard as the cause of an evil act--the character of a man or the temptation offered by circumstances? The change or removal of either means the change or removal of the act. Neither is complete without the other, and both are involved in the whole complexity of the universe, through heredity on the one hand and the action of nature external to life on the other.
And just here we may glance at Spencer's definition of life as "the continual adjustment of inner relations to outer relations." Though emphasizing an important side of evolution, it is evidently incomplete. Evolution is not only the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations, it is also the adjustment of outer relations to inner relations as well as of inner relations among themselves; or it is a process of mutual adjustment of all the parts engaged in it.
Our analysis, though crude and imperfect, may now be regarded as complete. Our scope will not allow of a more elaborate one. It is fitting, therefore, that we proceed to synthesis. The first matter which presents itself to us, in this connection, is the theory of Heredity and Adaptation mentioned above.
The theory is not a new one, wholly outside Darwin's conception of evolution. The concept of Adaptation represents simply the generalization of all those special causes with which Darwin more particularly occupied himself, and is, in essence, only a proclamation of that universal subjection to natural law which Darwin himself plainly asserted. As such a. generalization it is, however, a useful one; it furnishes us with an expression, for the organic world, of that universal action and reaction through which opposing forces move towards stability by mutual adjustment.
The law of Heredity, again, may be regarded as an organic expression of the more general principle according to which motion that, in the sense defined above, suffers only a minimum of interference, that is, motion which, by a certain equilibrium of mutual relations, is "approximately" or "fully" stable, tends to continue to take place in nearly the same directions, or nearly to repeat itself. It is thus apparent, also, that Heredity is closely related to the more special principle of Habit, or also of Use and Disuse, if only we remember that, whatever the metaphysical truths of Freedom or Determination, the psychical is always accompanied by what may be called equivalents of the physical under natural law. The special laws of Heredity are still enveloped in mystery; I refer, not to that mystery which may be regarded as surrounding all ultimate facts, if we choose to conceive them as expressing or concealing something further unknowable, but to the scientific mystery of ignorance, which time may dissolve. Biologists disagree on this question, the ultimate decision of which must be left to them. Still some general criticism on the results of research in this direction may be allowable from a philosophic standpoint.
The chief point at issue between various theories of Heredity seems to be the degree of importance to be attached to Adaptation: however we may express the question, this is the ultimate form to which it is reducible. Now it is obvious, from the foregoing analysis, that the form of theory which would be most useful to us, if such were attainable, would be one in which the degree of tendency to inheritance as well as the strength of inherited tendency is expressed in terms of the intensity and duration of exercise, use, function, habit, or form of motion or action (however we may choose to term it); and variation is regarded as the resultant of such tendency and change in the environment, or, in other words, deviation from constancy of influence. It may be useful to inquire to what extent such a general theory is authorized by special ones.
We have the testimony of two of the acknowledged greatest authorities--Darwin and Haeckel--as well as that of a score of other biologists, and specialists in related branches, to the inheritance of peculiarities acquired during the life of the individual.[108] Eimer lays especial stress on the fact, long witnessed to by one class of specialists, of the hereditary character of brain-diseases, among which may be reckoned some that are without doubt due to direct influence of the environment.[109] Haeckel and Eimer even instance cases in which mutilation has been inherited.[110] One such instance would be sufficient, in overthrowing the general denial of the inheritance of individual adaptation, to make probable the direct influence of the environment in other cases, the uniformity discoverable in the workings of natural law leading us to suppose that the one instance would not be isolated. It must have weight, too, as an argument, in the judgment of many doubtful cases. Not one such case alone is furnished us, however, but many well-authenticated ones. And it is to be remarked that even Weismann has gradually parted from his original theory, recognizing more and more clearly the element of adaptation in inheritance. It seems open to question, indeed, whether Weismann's theory, in withdrawing the germ-plasm from the direct influence of the environment with which the parent individual is in contact does not exempt it from the universal law of action and reaction. Eimer designates such an opposition as Weismann postulates of the germ-plasm to the rest of the organism as a "physiological miracle," and the artificial line thus drawn between the germ-cells before and after the beginning of development as "opposed to that conformity to law shown in the morphological and physiological unity of living beings."[111] Ancient ideas seldom conceived of a universality of action and reaction; and ancient belief, isolating phenomena, invested each with some special guiding power. This belief was maintained as the conception of a special vital force long after the increasing knowledge of nature had caused it to be abandoned with regard to inorganic phenomena; and the theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm seems to be a survival, with regard to the comparatively unexplored province of Embryology, of the idea of such a force.
The elements of which the organism is composed are not strange essences or entities peculiar to the organic; they are the same with those of inorganic matter, though their combinations differ somewhat from these, both in chemical composition and in the morphological arrangement of the composites. We can easily conceive these differences as cooerdinate with differences of general form and function; but it is inconceivable that the continual assimilation of matter in growth should be at any time without result in function, however comparatively small this result may be in higher forms representing an accumulation of energy from previous conditions. The separation of form and function is an abstraction, as is that of matter and motion; we cannot suppose the connection of particular functions with particular forms,--particular organization,--to be accidental, any more than we can suppose the particular properties of particular inorganic composites and elements to be accidental or these particular properties to be without result in the organic matter into which the particular composites and elements are taken up.
The environment must contain complementary conditions of function in order that the individual may even come into existence and survive at all. The great question is, then, how much is to be allowed for original tendency in primal organisms and how much is to be reckoned to the account of the action of the environment in the course of evolution. Even if we go back beyond the organic, assuming a development of the organic from the inorganic, we must come, in the last analysis, to irresolvable elements whose motion, as distinct and particular action and reaction, must have definite form. If we begin with a supposititious simple organism conceived as lowest,--the primal form to which the name "organism" may be applied,--we must likewise conceive of this as embodying motion distinctive as its form, which may be regarded as concomitant and cooerdinate with that form,--or, that is, as function. The ultimate elements of this organism represent positive factors and the primal organism itself must be regarded as a positive factor (or positive composite) without which the evolution of highest organisms would be impossible. We may, therefore, regard it as in this sense embracing the potentialities of evolution. But are we to regard it as representing potentiality in a further sense--in the sense that, beyond the particular life-motion cooerdinate with its particular composition and form, it represents an independent force that prefigures the whole animate evolution? To such an assumption the analogy--which is something far more than a mere analogy--of Embryology logically reduces us, on Weismann's theory, unless we assume a fixity of species that practically does away with the whole theory of Evolution and returns to the original darkness that on which Darwin threw light. Or, if we leave out of account this analogy and begin with sexual propagation, the problem, on Weismann's theory, is very nearly as difficult. Are we to look upon the conditions involved in the environment as mere negatives and simply developing the positive potentialities of the germ-plasm? If we resolve the environment into its elements, even the ultimate analysis must show it composed of positive factors of matter and motion, each one of which has its full worth in any resultant of incidence. The positivity of these elements takes from the primal germ-plasm any superiority of potentiality; the potentiality lies also in the environment. That the organism is in constant contact with the environment is evident; and that this contact, involving incidence of force, cannot be without result, and result representing a full equivalent of all the factors, is also evident. It may seem as if we could understand human progress, or progress in other species, in the limited province open to direct observation, on Weismann's theory; but evolution as a whole becomes, on this theory, a mystery, and indeed, as Eimer terms it, a miracle. Logical consistency thus tells against the theory; and undeniable exceptions to its fundamental conception, furnished by such authorities as Darwin and Haeckel, raise a further presumption against it, that, taken in connection with the logical inconsistencies noticed, constitutes the strongest probability against its truth.
The general experience of mankind has recognized, in a thousand ways, that the individual is "a creature of habit." The strength of the muscle, the cunning of hand or eye or ear, mental acuteness, and even liability to temptation in any direction, or, on the other hand, moral strength, all are coincident with exercise within the bounds set by the normal of the organ,--that is, within its ability to repair its waste in labor, an ability defined by the food-supply and its power of assimilation; for even the moral struggle that is so great as to exhaust physically ends in a weakness which may represent the very condition of conquest by the temptation opposed, if this present itself again before the system has had time to repair its loss. We may regard this weakness as a lessening of force in one particular direction, the resultant of action deviating in favor of the other of the opposing forces or tendencies manifested in the struggle. In this connection I cannot do better than refer to the "Kritik der reinen Erfahrung" already mentioned, in which the influence of the environment on the individual is minutely traced. The special feature of the work is its entire freedom from the thousand metaphysical implications which have gradually gathered about our philosophical vocabulary and which render it well-nigh impossible to write from any new standpoint without danger of misunderstanding. This perspicuity and exactness are secured by a new vocabulary which may seem at first glance, on account of its unfamiliarity, elaborate and incomprehensible, but which is, when mastered, the greatest possible aid to understanding. Nevertheless, the terminology of the book and the exceeding closeness of its analysis, while rendering it peculiarly valuable to the expert in Philosophy, place it beyond the grasp of the average reader; and Ethics is a science which concerns, not the specialist in Philosophy alone, but all thinking minds.
The influence of exercise even beyond the individual has long been recognized. Lamarck advanced the theory that the development of organs and their force of action is in ratio to their employment. Darwin also laid stress, particularly in his later works, on Use and Disuse, but he often defined the term more specifically than many other authors, Lamarck among them, seem to have done. The very mass and magnitude of Darwin's knowledge made it, as Huxley has said, somewhat unwieldy, and, in diverting the attention to minute features, sometimes prevented distinctness in broad generalizations; the very virtue of Darwin's work conditioned also its defect. If we begin with the general theory of use and disuse, we may regard each present form of organic action or function, whether conscious or unconscious, as in some manner the result of exercise, the processes of food-taking, digestion, repair of waste, being classed, not as, in any case, mere negative reactions, but as positive organic functions. If we apply the term "habit" to all these, it is evident that we must, in so doing, extend the significance of the word beyond its ordinary interpretation. From our present point of view, such an extension of meaning might be claimed to be legitimate; the question here is, in reality, only one of expediency, namely, whether it is not better to retain the more specific significance of the word. It may be useful, at least, to indicate the relations of Habit to Use and Disuse. In its ordinary interpretation, the term "habit" refers more particularly to a form of action acquired during the life of the individual, and may be used to imply the action of the will in its formation, or may simply have in view the organic concomitants of whatever mental action is included in such formation. Since our present standpoint supposes a certain equivalence of the mental and physical, that is, uniformity in their connection (without entering into the question of their dependence or independence, or considering which, in case of dependence, is to be regarded as dependent, which as fundamental and independent), we may leave for the moment the mental side of function out of account, to take it up later. Darwin's definition of habit was, as we have seen, no distinct and invariable one, and while he speaks of "inherited habit," referring both to forms of action acquired during the life of the individual and to such acquired through use favored by constancy of environment during several generations, it is not always plain whether he has in mind the action of the will, or only its organic equivalents. He inclines, like many other authors, to give prominence to the physical side of action in lower species, to the mental side in higher. If we use the term "habit" in the sense of tendency to function acquired by use, we employ what is certainly a useful terminology, yet we are in danger, if we do not carefully define our terms, of elevating to the position of a reality an abstraction that has none. Function and Tendency to Function are not separable; the distinction is not an inner, but an outer one, of favorable or unfavorable environment by which tendency to function becomes function or vice versa. To habit, then, we can attach, from our present standpoint, no distinctive implication beyond that of individual acquirement,--an implication obviously not fundamental in a theory of organic function. Use and disuse are rather the fundamental concepts with which, in a consideration of function under Heredity and Adaptation, we have to do.
But, in this connection, it is also obvious that, when we, from our point of view, distinguish between the organism as acted on by the environment and the environment as acting, we make a distinction that may be both useful and necessary for many purposes, but that is yet an arbitrary one. The organism is not the dependent, passive, the environment the independent, formative factor in the process of development, the organism is not purely reactive, the environment active, but the two are interactive; and from their interaction arises change, as resultant, in both organism and environment. So, too, if we return to Fechner's conception, the separation of function as effect from use and disuse as cause is an arbitrary one. Every function, as representing a state of more or less perfect, moving equilibrium, may be regarded either as the final form issuing from a long process of action and reaction or, as determined at present, by such a comparative constancy of all its conditions as makes the line followed by the resultant approximately a repetition of that which it has followed before; and we may lay stress upon either the inferior resistance in this line or the continual application of superior force, the accumulation of energy, in its direction. Use or exercise is function; long continuance of the same or approximately the same form of function may be regarded as concomitant with a certain constancy of environment, sufficient to furnish the complementary condition always necessary. The present form of function may be regarded as the result of an evolution of function in the sense that it is the end-form assumed by the same, but not in a sense that separates it from previous forms of function by a distinction of kind; since each of these may be regarded, in like manner, as the result of the preceding evolution. As in the definition of Habit, so in that of Use, the element of animal will or of a distinct vital principle is likely to be consciously or unconsciously included, lending it thus a superior significance to that of mere organic function regarded as its result. Again it must be said, however, that, whatever the metaphysical truth of freedom, will does not interfere with the equivalence of physical conditions and results or prevent perfect uniformity of relation between the physical and the psychical, and that a special vital force cannot be demonstrated. Disuse may be defined either as the mere discontinuance of Use or as Use in a sense opposed to the form of function particularly under consideration.
The idea of some special vital principle doubtless has its origin in the mysterious tendency of every organic form to develop along certain lines. The mystery involved is here, again, besides that of ultimate fact on which the metaphysician lays stress, the lack of the ability of present science to furnish such a description of the process as shall resolve it into its elements and demonstrate the uniformities of relation among these elements in this last analysis. But it is to be remarked that the metaphysician is apt to confuse these two meanings of the word "mystery," and regard the mystery of the organism as a greater metaphysical one than that of simpler processes whose elements are better known; and this in spite of the fact that he himself does not at all deny the uniformity in natural process which we term Law, or expect to find it less in an ultimate analysis than in a more superficial one. We understand the simple parallelogram by which the physicist represents to us the action of two forces at incidence, we may represent to ourselves the motion of any one of the heavenly bodies as the resultant of the centrifugal and centripetal forces, but when we come to consider the formation of a crystal, and watch the regularity of shape and grouping, this very uniformity which had been before an explanation now seems all at once to represent an insoluble mystery separating the process forever from those others. The more complicated the process becomes, the more the mystery appears to increase, until we build up, out of a negative ignorance, some positive new entity to baffle us. And yet neither do we deny, as has been said, the constancy of nature in its most final elements, nor can it at all be shown or supposed that those simpler processes we seemed to understand were less along fixed lines than the more complicated ones. If we grant, then, the insoluble mystery of the transcendental meaning of things claimed by the metaphysician, we cannot admit the presence of this mystery in the organic more than in the inorganic, nor discover in the science of the former any further element lacking than in that of the latter, except a remediable ignorance which, when remedied, can only reveal in new particulars the workings of natural law. It may be remarked, in this connection, that those who are so ready to claim the workings of some special force or power in the development of the organism make no assertion of such in the so analogous growth of the crystal. The passage of the inorganic into the organic and back into the inorganic is, in fact, no more (if the metaphysician will, no less) mysterious than the evaporation of water and its recondensation, the propagation of animal form no greater mystery than the continued flowing of a stream in spite of evaporation, or the growth of a crystal to the form of its kind. The propagation of species is, in one sense, an isolated fact; but so, in like sense, is the evaporation of water or the formation of the crystal of a particular chemical: but none of these phenomena are isolated in any other sense, as less or more than a part of a universal whole. We carry our notion of human importance into all our science, and so invest with greater weight and mystery ignorance that concerns our own life and that of allied forms. As we have seen, a connection of use, or of duration and intensity of function, with its strength is evident in the individual, and we are compelled to suppose the connection a constant one even where such constancy cannot be directly demonstrated. There is evidently a relation likewise between degree, or duration and intensity, of use or exercise of function, and strength of tendency in the species, which we must also suppose to be constant. Darwin distinctly recognizes this, everywhere in his work, in asserting that such function as is favored by the environment for several generations is more likely to be transmitted. But though the separation of organism and environment into cause and effect may be useful in the solution of some problems, it is yet to be kept in mind that the distinction is an arbitrary selection of some factors as dependent, others as independent variables, while all are, in fact, interdependent. Function may be regarded as at every moment determined by the factors given in environment and organism, in which either may seem the more important, according to the particular case or the point of view from which it is regarded. The tendency of the organism may represent such an accumulation of potential energy that a slight favorable element in the environment may be like a spark in a magazine of gunpowder, followed by results seemingly most disproportionate to its own significance; yet the accumulation of energy in the organism can have taken place only under previous favorable circumstances of the environment; and if we regard the organism in its relation to the whole environment, that is, to the universal conditions outside it, the primary importance may seem to attach to these. But yet, which is, in the last analysis, the more important to the explosion of the magazine--spark or powder? Either is insufficient without the other; the two are simply complementary and both indispensable to the result. So too habit, use, or exercise of function and influence of the environment cannot be held distinct; exercise of function is impossible without a sufficient complementary factor in the environment, but this is evidently sufficient only with the existence of that tendency in the organism of which it is the complement. Regarding strong tendency as the result of a long process of evolution in which the environment has presented sufficient complementary elements to condition its development, the strength of tendency being cooerdinate with the duration and intensity of the process of evolution, we can understand that any such change in the environment as shall prevent such function may be of so much significance, the suppression of the function represent so great departure from what was previous resultant, that even the destruction of the organism may supervene in cases where longest exercised and strongest functions are prevented; and we can understand, from the same standpoint, the slight comparative importance of the experience of individuals as influencing their descendants, except under especially favorable conditions of the organism.
All biologists make much of the mixture of types in sexual propagation; and Rolph, perhaps, lays especial stress on it in connection with progressive heredity. He calls attention to the intricacy of interaction of forces at once introduced by it in its action and reaction with the environment, and shows, in this connection, the extreme similarity of the younger generation to the parent where propagation is non-sexual, that is, does not involve such mixture of types. It may be said that every new factor in development introduces a complexity greater as the complexity of the conditions already attained by the organism is greater, since its influence on the different elements and combinations of elements varies; or (if we choose to put it thus) since the possible chemical compounds and especially the possible combinations and permutations of elements and parts increase enormously with the increase of the latter in number. But the importance of the presence of any particular new element in these complexities depends, further, on its particular nature.
The final decision of the principal question of progressive heredity which our argument concerns must be left to Biology; but biologists themselves have as yet discussed these questions chiefly from a philosophical standpoint,--on general, as distinguished from specific, grounds. All theory is at this point tentative. But if only for this reason we have a right, in assuming a working theory, to select that which seems best to accord with philosophic principles of universal application as well as with general biological fact. For the rest, it has at least been made evident, by all that has been said above concerning the constant contact and interaction of organism and environment, that the selection of one of these two factors as the positive and one as the negative, one as the formative the other as the formed, one as the active the other as the passive factor, one as independent the other as dependent, one as invariable the other as alone variable, is an arbitrary one. In dealing with the complexity of the universe, whether mathematically or logically, we cannot grasp all factors at once, and so are obliged to regard some sides to the exclusion of others, to disregard the variable and dependent nature of some factors in the consideration of that of others. The method is useful as well as necessary, useful because necessary; but we are too apt to forget that we are dealing with half-truths, devices of reason, and come to regard them as whole truths. Thus the abstraction of Natural Selection is too often elevated to a separate entity, a particular power residing in the environment as such. It is, on the contrary, a mere fiction, a device for assisting our comprehension of complex action and reaction. Not only does the action of the environment alter the organism, the action of the organism also alters the environment; or, to put it more plainly, the state of organism and environment at any moment is the result of the interaction of preceding states of organism and environment. Material combinations, whether organic or inorganic, when fitted to their environment, survive; those best fitted, where perfect fitness does not exist, thrive best; this is only another method of saying that absence of resistance is cooerdinate with the preservation of form and its inherent motion to the extent of the non-interference. As organic forms survive only to the extent to which they are in harmony with each other and with inorganic conditions, so inorganic forms or combinations survive unaltered only when they are in harmony with other inorganic conditions and uninterfered with by organic forms. Matter and motion in some form must survive, both being indestructible. Natural Selection in this sense, as at each moment regulating inorganic combinations and motions and organic form and function, is either ultimately the origin of variation, or else it is not its preserver. It is to be remembered that the organism is, from the physical point of view, simply form (that is, organization) and function; when we have subtracted these, we have subtracted the organism.
The inability of the reason to grasp all sides of the complexity of natural processes at once, even where these are known, is a thing to be kept in mind in our future investigations; we are apt to take our analyses for the syntheses of nature.
In the preceding considerations, an "equivalence of the Physical and the Psychical" has been assumed, which, though already in a measure defined, should have been, perhaps, more fully explained. It may be repeated that, in such equivalence, no materialistic assumption is made of the dependence of the Psychical on the Physical; nor is the intention to assert that the Psychical can be measured by the weights and measures of the Physical. The assertion is intended in the sense that there is always a physical function connected with the psychical, and that the relation of the two is not an accidental or variable, but a constant one. All that is claimed is, in other words, that, whatever the metaphysical truth as to the freedom of the will, such freedom cannot interfere with the constancy of nature. But, in fact, all that is postulated by physical science in the assertion of the equivalence of physical forces is such a uniformity or constancy of relation as we postulate of the Psychical and Physical; for the different forms of physical force can no more be measured by the same standards than can thought and brain-process.
It may be added, further, that by "force" as used in the above arguments, no metaphysical entity is implied; the word simply serves as the generic term embracing different forms of motion and the equivalent of motion in resistance, and enables us to deal with motion regarded as potential as well as with motion actually existent.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] "Problems of Life and Mind," second series, chap. on Evolution.
[97] "The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication," 1868, II. 272.
[98] Vol. II. Chap. XXII.
[99] "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," II. p. 257. See also "Origin of Species," 6th ed., I. pp. 7-9, etc.
[100] "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," II. p. 418.
[101] Ibid.
[102] For elaboration of definition and theory, vide the article in question, "Vierteljahrschrift fuer wissenschaftliche Philosophie," 1890.
[103] As confirming this analysis of evolution, reference is made to Mach: "Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklungen," p. 128, and "Beitrage zur Analyse der Empfindungen," pp. 25, 154; also Avenarius: "Kritik der reinen Erfahrung."
[104] See above essay by Petzoldt.
[105] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls," 1882.
[106] "Gestaltungen des Zweckmaessigen."
[107] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls," chap. I.
[108] See especially Darwin: "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication"; Haeckel: "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte," 8th ed., 1889, p. 179 et seq.
[109] "Die Entstehung der Arten auf Grund von Vererben erworbener Eigenschaften," p. 204 et seq.
[110] Ibid. p. 190 et seq.
[111] "Entstehung der Arten," p. 15.