The ethics of force

Preface

This little volume had its origin in a series of papers read to the Ethical Club of Washington, D.C., at the time just preceding and following the Spanish War. As it was designed that each should present its special topic with a degree of completeness, it was often necessary at the beginning of successive papers to outline the preceding. It is hoped that such repetitions are not greater than is desirable to keep the whole subject well in mind. While the chapters are in a sense independent, they relate to different phases of the same subject. The popular conceptions of heroism and patriotism are tremendous factors in every war. Differing widely as I do from these popular conceptions, any inference that I hold the things themselves at a lower valuation than others would be most erroneous. What I desire is that the conceptions be recast in the mold of the highest rationality.

To forestall any misconception as to my animus, it may be permissible to mention a circumstance to which I should not otherwise allude. It was my fortune, and in some respects my privilege, to serve in the ranks during the Civil War. Shortly after enlistment I had an attack of fever which nearly proved fatal. This was followed by a brief captivity, in which I had a taste of about all the forms of discomfort which could be had. A year iv PREFACE

later a bullet, having deprived me of an important member, terminated my active service, but added many months to my hospital experience. After this I rounded out my military career with another fever. If not much glory fell to my share, I had certainly an almost unique opportunity of seeing war on its seamy side. In spite of this, I am sure that my attitude toward it is not in the least based upon personal grounds. It should be clear, too, that I cannot possibly lack appreciation of and sympathy for the soldier. I may indeed confess that I have not succeeded wholly in ridding myself of the irrational sentiment which attaches itself to the concepts "heroism" and "patriotism," though these are not now satisfied by spelling the words with a capital letter nor by the bursting of firecrackers.

I am under no illusion that this book will have many readers or exert any remarkable influence. A few will, I trust, sympathize with my purpose and find in my labor of love some stimulus for further effort and fresher hope for the race. However this may be, every man born into the world owes it to himself to express, in some way, his deepest convictions ; and this debt I have endeavored to pay.

Contents

PAGB

I. Introduction i

II. The Ethics OF Heroism . ii

Introduction

That war, in modern times, whatever may have been true in the past, is an enormous economic mistake will hardly be questioned by any well-informed person. Why, then, among civilized peoples in whom the commercial instincts are strong, not to say predominant, does it continue ? Partly, no doubt, because it is regarded as inevitable. It is one of the mysterious dispensations of Providence, against which it is held to be useless to strive, and of which it is wrong to complain. Mainly, however, it is because the mass of men fail to realize its burden, or upon whom the burden falls. The government, they somehow think, provides for it. It may be the galled jade, but their withers are unwrung. Our system of indirect taxation, which also prevails in most countries, helps to conceal the facts. If its costs could be rendered in tax bills, to be paid like state, county, and school taxes, war would at once lose most of its popularity. Could it further be realized that every man, woman, and child born into the world, property holders or not, directly or indirectly share in its losses and wastes, it would lose the rest of it. There would remain a few who, trading upon the necessities of the government in the deranged conditions of affairs and reahzing a profit greater than their share in the burdens, would still be in favor of war, quite irrespective of the controversies out of which it might arise.

Still, these are mainly negative reasons and hardly explain the origin of a particular war, as, for example, the recent war in South Africa. To say that it was due to the greed of the British Government or to the obstinacy of President Kruger is easy; but for a nation to pay for a possession or privilege ten times more than it is worth, or for another to court annihilation rather than to make a reasonable concession, points not so much to greed and stubbornness as to stupidity.

In fact, wars are rarely designed. Selfishness and greed on the part of individuals, in both parties to the controversy, exist ; but neither the governments nor the persons responsible for the conduct of public business may have anything at stake. Interests clash, and some method of adjustment must be found. This is true everywhere : but if the parties are citizens of the same government, questions between them are settled in the domestic courts ; if of different governments, no adequate machinery exists for the purpose, and until the recent establishment of The Hague Court none has existed at all. The governments themselves come to the aid of their citizens and make themselves parties to the dispute. Each claims more than it is entitled to receive, intending to make graceful concessions for the sake of substantial gains. Meantime the commercial interests are insistent

INTRODUCTION 3

and clamorous for the whole, urging the government to extreme positions. In domestic affairs this would not even be thought of; but their adversaries are foreigners, to whom they owe no duty, not even that of courtesy. The governments are under no compulsion. They can go to war without violating international law. Finally, a point is reached, unexpectedly, where the national honor is involved, and nothing is left but mutual destruction.

But the conception of national honor has been derived from the ideas of heroism and patriotism still found under high civilization. How have these come about .'' We say sometimes they have been perverted. On the contrary, they are only too faithful a transmission of those which prevailed under a lower culture. They have not developed to meet the changed conditions of life.

Governments do not act upon the highest intelligence of the community, but upon a composite, called public opinion. Perhaps in a degree they cannot do otherwise ; but it is most unfortunate if those in authority have no higher standard, intellectual and moral, than that of the average citizen. However this may be, it is clearly futile to hope for the cessation of war through a realization of its wickedness. Wicked for whom .-• The enemy, of course, always. But if the mass of men can be brought to see its expensiveness, not to a figment called government, but to themselves, to see that national honor does not necessarily require the destruction of persons living under another government, with whom they may differ, and that an economical way of settling these differences is in actual use or perfectly practicable, then war will cease.

I have everywhere assumed that conditions existing at any period of human history are the results of an evolutionary process ; but I have here no concern for the theory of evolution itself, nor for the principle to which it owes its efficiency. As to this I claim no right to speak. I was slow to accept evolution as relates to the origin of species. Like the man mentioned by Mr. Fiske, I refused to be called a mammal or the son of a mammal. I was unwilling to recognize my remote simian ancestor, not to speak of tracing descent from a speck of protoplasm. I first observed its process in the law, the manner in which legal principles are evolved, and through which they take shapes widely different from those in which they began. Further consideration showed the same principle at work in language, literature, philosophy, religion, and finally in all forms of social organization. Not that all changes are beneficial. A condition at a given time may be leading forward or backward. The law of the survival of the fittest provides at the same time for the destruction of the unfit. Ideas and institutions grow, culminate, and disappear, in obedience to this law. That it exists in some form in the world of thought and social order there cannot be the slightest question, although Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley all came to the conclusion that the " survival of the fittest " did not account for the mind of man, Mr. Huxley especially excluding the aesthetic and ethical sense. It should be remembered, however, th^t these men were employed, in the main, with the study of physical forms and organisms rather than with psychic and social development, and that they had no special qualification for the latter

INTRODUCTION 5

task. Herbert Spencer has applied a form of it to account for all ideas, institutions, and social forms ; but his conclusions have not generally been accepted. The principle of utility, in its usual aspect, is not enough to account for the compulsory force in evolution, which takes into its grasp men and things, and compels changes unforeseen and undesired.

This coercive force Mr. Kidd finds in the religious sanction. Religion he defines as "a form of belief providing an ultra-rational sanction for that large class of conduct in the individual where his interests and the interests of the social organism are antagonistic, and by which the former are subordinated to the latter in the general interests of the evolution which the race is undergoing." This definition is defective in at least one respect, as it is the application of the principle of religion to a certain line of conduct which the definition contemplates, not the nature of religion itself. More recently - Mr. Kidd has supplemented his theory with the doctrine of projected efficiency, — that is, that an individual or group must not only be fitted to survive in the conditions prevailing in the present, but in those which will prevail in the future. In the movement of the race one who drops out of the ranks is doomed. This, it will be seen, applies more to the social groups than to individuals, whose lives are too short to feel the application of the principle in its full extent.

Mr. Fiske recognized the process of evolution in the formation of ideas and in the social order, but he conceived that in some way there had been a break or change of direction, from which he argues that man is the highest product of evolution and that, the physical form having been perfected, the process is now at work on the mental and moral nature, and that the psychic nature is or will be so far developed that it will be able to survive the loss of the physical organism.

Whatever the validity of the argument for immortality, I do not believe there has been any break or change of direction in the process of evolution; nor do I agree with Mr. Kidd that an ultra-rational factor forms its coercive power. That religion has in it an ultra-rational element is, I believe, true, as also that it has exercised an enormous and incalculable influence on the race; but religion as much as anything else is a product of evolution. The objection to Mr. Kidd's view, as to that of Mr. Fiske, is that at a given period — the advent of man in the world — the law of evolution has had imposed upon it from the outside a new character or force. No objection is made to the theistic assumption, as I think we must make that in any case. It lies at the very base of reasoning. We can only reason in terms of cause and effect. Evolution in no way explains origins. The process itself was somewhere instituted and put to work in the universe. The " power not ourselves which makes for righteousness " it is at least convenient to call God. But having established a process which has been at work during the entire period of the world's history and which still rigorously holds man in its grasp — his physical as well as his psychic nature — and controls all the movements of society, it is not only unwarranted by any evidence whatever, but illogical, to suppose that He has superseded it or given it a new force or direction. If we

INTRODUCTION - 7

cannot see in just what way it has evolved the aesthetic or ethical sense, neither can we see just how it has developed the sense of sight or hearing. We only infer that it has done so by comparing conditions known to have existed at long intervals. There is no question that, once evolved, these and all other senses and faculties are useful, and that they are developed and strengthened by use. The hand with its grasping power was not a ready-made device with which man was endowed, but was developed by the use of the tools and weapons which he handled. They in turn were developed in connection with the employment of the hand. The possession of reason and sagacity by man at the period when his social development began is assurried by Mr. Kidd as a reason for placing man's evolution in a class by itself ; but reason and sagacity had their origin among animals far below man, and have developed with their use.

The view I have undertaken to present is that mentality, beyond that rudimentary form of it found in the lower orders, grew out of the necessity of supplementing a feeble physical power and inefficient natui^al weapons with cunning in man's competition with more powerful animals. The ethical sense grew out of the realized advantage of combination. But two men each intent on killing and devouring the other cannot combine. For this a basis of confidence is necessary. To disarm suspicion by a simulated kindness would, though the kindness were temporary, be an advantage, and this through repetition would by and by become instinctive. If not very deep, it would in time have pretty well defined areas of employment, and could, within these limits, be trusted.

Thus, without design or expectation, altruism would commence its mission in the world, destined in the end, by its utility, to overshadow all the advantages which could be gained from individual effort and to subordinate the selfish and self-interested desires.

I do not think that any other principle than utility, in a very wide sense, is necessary to explain this ; but there is something in the application of it to which I wish to call a moment's attention. It is that utility itself is an ever-changing quantity, as it is, like everything, under the law of the survival of the fittest. The thing which to-day is useful may to-morrow be useless and an encumbrance. Our utilities are not usually foreseen, but are the result of something like accident. A principle thus revealed is wrought out by actual and repeated trials, and usually with many failures. Once fairly attained, if it is a utility, that with which it competes becomes an inutility. It is not enough that a device can secure something in itself useful : it must secure the most useful result attainable. The old process of steel making ceased to be useful with the discovery of the Bessemer process. The whole road of industrial progress is strewn with the wreckage of obsolete utilities. This, I believe, brings us pretty well into Hne with Mr. Kidd's doctrine of projected efficiency. What I have said about man living under artificial conditions and making his own environment is quite in harmony with it, if not identical.

On the other hand, a thing useful to high intelligence is worthless or a danger to a less disciplined or experienced mind. An automobile or a can of nitroglycerin

INTRODUCTION 9

would be anything but useful to an Andaman islander. The understanding of its use is as necessary as its capacity to perform a certain work or function. Thus we may see that from the inception of the simplest form of life up to its highest there has been struggle and reaction, — life upon its environment and environment upon life. With man, not quite for the first time, but in a practical and large sense, there began an era of partially artificial environment, which nevertheless gave its reaction to his struggle just as the natural one had. Man ceased to compete to a great extent with the lower animals and began to compete with himself. There is no danger of deterioration for lack of opportunity for struggle. On the contrary, this seems to grow more desperate from generation to generation.

Nor does it appear that the law of the survival of the fittest has been suspended, as applied to the physical organism, in the artificial environment of society, as has been sometimes thought. The physical perfection of individuals, destined to become the natural leaders of the group in trials of pure physical strength and agility, is no longer necessary, and the process has perhaps ceased, though this is not very clear ; but that the whole group is more efficient in this sense seems to be shown by the lengthened period of life. Mere strength has not always been a utility, even under the conditions of purely animal life. The cave bear and Hon, the mammoth, great saurian s, and fishes have perished, their very size probably making it harder to supply themselves with food. The competition which has gone on was not only between individuals but between species. This is why lO THE ETHICS OF FORCE

the record of the rocks proclaims " a thousand types are gone." If man is to continue at the head of creation, it will be through eternal struggle and adaptation to his environment, slowly changing by his own efforts, purposive and undesigned. Whether in the future of life upon the earth he shall be " sealed within the iron hills," and a nobler type succeed him, we are in no position to say. There is nothing now to suggest it, nor is it a matter of practical concern. But the changes of that future, if it shall in any way compare with the measureless past, where the horologue of time ticked off the eons, we cannot dimly conjecture.

II

A hero, as defined by Worcester, is "a man distinguished for valor, or for war-like achievements, a great warrior, a brave man." The bravery contemplated is animal daring exerted in the sphere of physical conflict; it is brute courage employed in the destruction of life or property, whether for purpose of defense or plunder. From the beginnings of the race this kind of courage has been held in extraordinary esteem. In the progress of mankind other qualities have come in for a qualified admiration, but this quality in all times, among all races, tribes, and nations, has called for the instinctive and vociferous applause of men. Not those who add to the comfort, safety, and well-being of others, but they who inflict pain, injury, wounds, and death are the envy of men and the idols of women. The Homeric tale of Venus deserting her skillful and ingenious spouse for the red-handed Mars is fairly typical. Though like courage and endurance be required, he is no hero who merely constructs, but he who destroys. He may, indeed, be the defender of his tribe or clan, or its leader against a neighboring tribe, but even if successful, that alone brings but a qualified approbation. That which appeals to his fellows is the spectacular bravery which seeks opportunities to display itself, delights in fighting for the demonstration of superiority, and in taking life and shedding blood as a dexterity. To complete the heroic ideal, he must bear his own life lightly and yield it up gayly where the chances go against him or his adversary proves to be the greater hero.

Here, indeed, is the fatal infirmity of the glory of combat. Every hero is doomed, sooner or later, through failing powers or uncontrollable circumstances, to defeat. The suitors in the Odyssey, brutal, repellent as they are, boastful, swaggering, cruel to the weak, were nevertheless heroes according to the definition, and fairly entitled to their high-sounding epithets. It is not for their cruelty or barbarity, for lack of skill or courage, that the poet holds them up for our disapprobation. It is merely that they had trespassed on the preserves of a still greater hero. Ulysses was no whit less savage or cruel, but he was stronger and more skillful in taking life.

Goliath was to the Israelites a savage monstrosity, but an unparalleled hero to the Philistines until his glory was appropriated by the shepherd lad. There were heroes of this type in David's bodyguard also. Chancing to hear their leader sigh for a drink of water from a certain spring, they broke through the Philistine lines to obtain it. David, however, had other qualities than daring, and had no mind to sacrifice his valuable material in any such feather-headed enterprise, and he turned the water on the ground in token of his disapproval of it. The story of the cavalier who sprang into the arena among the lions to rescue the glove of his lady is in point. The grain of sense, which, in fact, he showed was in throwing the glove in her face. But while in history, romance, song, and folklore the hero has always been glorified, it is among the Norsemen that the apotheosis of courage has been attained. No higher ideal of happiness or reward in the future life was found than that their heroes should hack each other to pieces every day, to be restored again at night, that this grim joy might go on forever.

There is, however, another element in the heroic ideal, or at least in the popular conception of the hero. The man who is slain may be just as brave as his adversary, and only less skillful, but scant admiration is wasted on him. To win unstinted applause one must succeed. The hero is such only while he is victorious. Success does as a rule carry with it the idea of physical perfection. In primitive times, when the combat was determined solely by force, the hero must needs be the stronger man. If stratagem, surprise, concealment, or duplicity were factors, he must also excel in these ; if skill in the use of arms, that, too, must be superadded. Finally, mysterious virtues in the weapons themselves became an element in the conception.. Supernatural aid seems only to heighten the admiration for the one who thus overcomes his adversary. The gods come to the rescue of the heroes in the Iliad, and David had the assistance of the all-powerful Jahveh. Durandal, the sword of Roland, possessed supernatural qualities in itself, and was first given to Charlemagne by an angel. When men came to fight on horseback their steeds shared semi-divine honors with them. In brief, as the facilities for taking life increased, it was necessary for the hero to be equipped with all the latest improvements. In the fine art of slaughter he must needs excel in his person, his characteristics, and his arms. Though bravery was a chief means of accomplishment, it was success that won applause, and it did not much matter how the factors contributing to it were proportioned to each other. It was a practical end or utility which was sought. It was merely a case of the survival of the fittest. The hero was the one who was better fitted than his opponents to resist the influences from without tending to the destruction of life.

But while physical courage has been the most applauded of human qualities, it has been the most common, I may say redundant. All men have not been heroes, because all cannot successfully compete with their fellows. Almost all men have desired to be, and have failed not for lack of courage but from the limitations of their physical organism. Only one in a group can stand at the head ; but never does a leader fall but plenty of his followers press eagerly forward to contend for the dangerous honor of taking his place. Never was a hope so forlorn that more men than enough have not dedicated their lives to the slender chance of its success. Lord Roberts gives a picturesque illustration where, at the relief of Lucknow, the guns had made a breach in a wall just large enough for a man to squeeze through. Scores of men raced for the opening, each one knowing perfectly that the winner would be shot dead as he passed through.

But in this form of courage the civilized man is not superior to the savage. He is probably decidedly inferior, but, because of his greater knowledge of the forces of nature, he is a far more formidable instrumentality for the destruction of life and property. Nor does man in any stage of culture possess this courage in a higher degree than the brutes. The reverse is the case ; and, indeed, the lower we descend in the scale, the more completely all moral considerations, all perceptions of consequence are eliminated, the more absolute, uncompromising, and inflexible it becomes. To this there are apparent exceptions, but these admit of easy explanations. The animals to whom we attribute gentleness and timidity, in a state of nature, will be found unprovided with the means of contending with the more savage and so-called courageous beasts on anything like equal terms. These will usually be found to have developed qualities which are an admirable substitute, — fleetness of foot or wing to enable them to escape pursuit, superior cunning, means of concealment or of occupying positions out of the reach of their antagonists. But even among these, displays of the most absolute daring are not at all rare. The wren, we are told on excellent authority, will " peck at the estridge " ; and we know that the humming-bird, that tiny bit of darting color, does not hesitate, under certain circumstances, to attack the lord of creation. Among the savage and cruel sorts the same principle may be observed. The wolf is accused of cowardice where he really uses judgment. He has the intelligence to measure the resources of his antagonist, and by himself will not attack a creature for which he is no match. But with his fellows he attacks the most formidable antagonist, and does not shrink from the wholesale destruction around him, nor from pains.

l6 THE ETHICS OF FORCE

wounds, and death to himself. The lemming in his migrations stops at nothing ; woe to the man or animal that stands in the way of the stream rolling on to the sea to lose itself in the waves. Even ants will attack large animals or men, and by their numbers overcome them. In their battles with other tribes they show the most incredible hardihood. They do not stop for the loss of legs and wings and the most frightful wounds. When the mandibles of another have severed the head of one of these warriors from his body he gives up the fight.

If, now, we observe the line of development, we shall see why physical courage was at its height among the lower orders. In these life fairly swarms, while the means for its maintenance, apart from other forms of life, are wanting. We have, therefore, the alternative presented to the three men of Bristol city: "Us must eat we." All life, indeed, subsists upon life, but here there are no removes, no disguises. It is a direct and square contest between two individuals as to which can and will eat the other.. Even if the weaker should escape for a time through flight or concealment, his necessities drive him to attack another. Ultimately the strong will be pitted against the strong.

The food supply was for a long time almost the sole question, and remained so long after the advent of man. It is only in very recent times that any demand arose for clothing or for shelter other than that which nature furnished ready made. For an immeasurable period the activities of the globe were directed to two objects only, ^the getting of food on the one hand, and to escape being converted into food on the other. Life was the stake, and to win was to use skillfully all the means provided and to fight to the bitter end. The will to sustain the pain, fatigue, uncertainty, and frightful alternatives must be supported by what we may call absolute physical courage. Probably it was entirely indifferent to danger because wholly unconscious of it. It shrank at no consequence because it perceived none. Combat was a mere commonplace, a function. Some mentality there must have been from the start, but no suggestion of a moral sense. To kill another for food was just as much a matter of course as it is for the housewife to cook the oatmeal for breakfast. Perhaps it should not be called courage, as there is nothing in the nature of man exactly corresponding to it. But it cannot be denied that it is the raw material out of which physical courage in man has been evolved. It adapted itself to existing conditions, as it has in man. It is true, too, that in proportion as courage in man has approached this pure and unqualified animal daring, — the instinctive response to appetite, — it has gained the greatest respect and applause.