from: https://archive.org/stream/ethicalstudiesse00brad/ethicalstudiesse00brad_djvu.txt --- Bradley Ethical Studies UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/ethicalstudiesseOObrad ETHICAL STUDIES Selected Essays The Library of Liberal Arts The Library of Liberal Arts OSKAR PIEST General Editor ETHICAL STUDIES Selected Essays F. H. Bradley With an introduction by Ralph G. Ross Professor of Philosophy, The University of Minnesota The Library of Liberal Arts published by Q. THE BOBBS-MERRILL compakt. mc A 8UBSIDIART OF HOWARD W. SAMS * CO.. INC. Publishers • Indianapolis • new vork F. H. Bradley: 1846-1924 Ethical Studies was originally published in 1876 COPYRIGHT ©, 1951 THE LIBERAL ARTS PRESS, INC All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Selected Bibliography vi Editor's Introduction vii Note on the Edition 2 ETHICAL STUDIES Why Should I Be Moral 3 Question rests on a dogmatic preconception; which is opposed to the moral consciousness; and is unreasonable. The end is self-realization; as is shown from morality; and from psychological considerations. It means realizing self as a whole; and an infinite whole. Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake 29 Happiness a vague phrase. Common opinion on pleasure. Hedonism irreconcilable with morality. Illusory nature of the Hedonistic end. My pleasure as the end gives no rule of life. And the pleasure of all is illusory; opposed to morality; and gives no practical guidance; it is dogmati- cally postulated; and irreconcilable with Hedonistic psy- chology. Further modifications of Hedonism. Qualitative distinction of pleasures is, in both its forms, untenable. Further criticism on Mill's view. Results. Duty for Duty's Sake 81 The end is the Good Will. This is the universal form. What "ought" means. Principle of noncontradiction. This con- tradicts itself. Duty and duties. Psychological objection. Practical uselessness of noncontradiction. Collision of duties unavoidable. My Station and Its Duties 98 Present result. Advance to a higher point of view. Individ- ualism criticized. The end is realization as a member of a community. The moral organism seems to be the solution of ethical problems. Satisfactoriness of this view. Relative and absolute morality. Intuitive character of moral judg- ments. Morality not a mere private matter. Criticism of the above view. Concluding Remarks 147 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Bradley Ethical Studies (1876) ; second edition, revised, with additional notes. Oxford, 1927. Principles of Logic (1883) ; second edition, revised, with Ter- minal Essays. Oxford, 1922. Appearance and Reality (1893) ; second edition, with appendix (1897), new edition. Oxford, 1930. Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford, 1914. Collected Essays. Oxford, 1935. Works about Bradley Campbell, Charles Arthur. Scepticism and Construction. London, 1931. Church, Ralph W. Bradley* s Dialectic. Ithaca, New York, 1942. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Francis Herbert Bradley (1926), re- printed in T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays. New York, 1932. Kagey, Rudolf, F. H. Bradley s Logic. New York, 1931. Metz, Rudolf. A Hundred Years of British Philosophy. London, 1938. Muirhead, John H. The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy. London, 1931, chapters V-IX. Ross, Ralph Gilbert. Scepticism and Dogma: A Study in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. New York, 1940. Taylor, Alfred Edward. Francis Herbert Bradley, 1846-1924. Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XI, 1924-5, pp. 458-468. VI INTRODUCTION I "It is unusual," wrote T. S. Eliot in 1926, "that a book so famous and influential should remain out of print so long as Bradley's Ethical Studies.'^ Bradley apparently planned a total revision of the book before he would allow republication, but when he died he left only some notes for his revision, making no change in the essentials of his belief. A second edition, with the notes, was published in 1927, fifty-one years after the book's appearance. Reading Bradley is always a pleasant experience, although it is sometimes mixed with exasperation. Indubitably, Bradley deserves his place in that long line of British philosophers who are masters of English prose — a line that includes Bacon, Hobbes, Berkeley, and Hume. Although he often lacks the clarity of his predecessors, Bradley has his own qualities: precision and inten- sity, wit that is sometimes caustic, an alteration of assurance and diffidence, and above all, a singular honesty that often startles the reader by admission of error. As with all good writers, Bradley's style brings one into the presence of the man, in his case a man always exciting, sometimes paradoxical, with a deep sense of his mission as a philosopher. Yet this man, who does not hide himself behind an impersonal mask of prose, whose style is that extension of personality that all work should be, was a recluse for most of his life, seldom seen by his colleagues, with no students, and perhaps no intimates. It was natural enough that Bradley should seek an academic career. An older half-brother, G. G. Bradley, was Master of University College, Oxford, and later Dean of Westminster. A younger brother, A. C. Bradley, became a distinguished literary critic and foremost Shakespearian scholar. F. H. Bradley (born January 30, 1846) early showed promise of scholarship and philosophic ability but failure to take a First Class in "Greats" vii viii Ethical Studies at Oxford, and a subsequent failure to obtain a Fellowship upset him deeply and gave him much concern for his future. In 1870, however, Merton College, Oxford, elected him to a Fellowship with life tenure, but with the traditional stipulation that it was terminable by marriage. A description of Bradley at about this time by his sister carries conviction, even allowing for her strong prejudice in his favor. His outward appearance was striking; he was tall and upright in carriage; well and muscularly made, singularly handsome, with large gray-blue eyes under dark eyebrows and lashes, a well-modelled fore- head, mouth, and chin; his head set well on his shoulders. It certainly was an arresting face . . . Athletic as a youth, Bradley's physical activities had been somewhat curtailed, shortly before he came to study at Oxford, by a severe attack of typhoid fever which was followed by pneumonia. But it was not until about a year after he became a Fellow of Merton that his whole mode of life was changed by a "violent inflammation of the kidneys" (never precisely diagnosed) which turned him into a Ufelong invalid. We can only speculate on the changes in Bradley made by ill-health: in later years, some regarded him as sensitive and kindly; others as splenetic. From 1871 on, although he attended college functions and concerned himself with the business and administrative affairs of Merton — junior colleagues sometimes being terrified by the mordant wit of the man rumored to be "the best mind in England" — he remained for the most part in his rooms, never teaching, seldom having guests, often leaving Oxford to avoid the cold. Indeed, his constant fear of cold and draughts raises psychological questions about Bradley which could only be answered if we had considerably more information. In any event, he was the type of invalid whose constant self-care helped him outlive his contemporaries. He died of blood-poisoning on September 18, 1924, in his 79th year, after a short illness. As a Fellow of Merton for fifty-four years, Bradley's life story is chiefly the intellectual life recorded in his writing. Each of his books made a great stir. Bosanquet called the publication Introduction ix of Ethical Studies "an epoch-making event." When William James read The Principles of Logic he used the same phrase, writing: "It is surely 'epoch-making' in English philosophy." Appearance and Reality called forth the comment from Edward Caird that it was the greatest event since Kant, and Muirhead went even farther back in intellectual history: "...nothing like it," he wrote, in reviewing the effect of the book, "had appeared since Hume's Treatise.'' In June, 1924, Bradley's accomplish- ments were officially recognized by the King, who awarded him the Order of Merit, a remarkable, almost unique, tribute to an English philosopher.^ II Bradley is ordinarily regarded as the most original and sys- tematic of those British thinkers who brought German philosophy to England and opposed the dominant native tradition of empiri- cism. Although writers like Coleridge and Carlyle were very much influenced by German thought, it still remained for a later group to master the technical equipment of the Germans and to apply it systematically. The most important members of this group were perhaps Green (predominantly a Kantian) ; Brad- ley, Bosanquet (usually treated as Hegelians) ; and McTaggart (an original thinker, with some resemblance to the Left Hegel- ians) ; but there were a host of others, who held academic — and sometimes political — ^posts of prime importance: Stirling, Caird, Nettleship, Haldane, Muirhead, Ward, Joachim, Pringle-Pattison, Seth, Rashdall, Taylor, Hoernle — to name only some of them. The attack that these men mounted against English empiricism and Scottish intuitionism was successful in that the rebels created a new orthodoxy and then had to fight a rear-guard action against the realists and pragmatists of another generation. What Eliot said of Bradley might be repeated by their admirers about the whole group: "He replaced a philosophy which was crude and raw and provincial by one which was, in comparison, catholic, civilized, and universal." ^ In 1949 the Order of Merit was awarded to Bertrand Russell. The political implication is clear, since a labor government was in power. X Ethical Studies In theory of knowledge and metaphysics, Bradley and most of the British Idealists emphasized both the creative powers of mind and the organic character of the universe, and they returned religion to eminence among "advanced" thinkers (McTaggart is a notable exception). By insisting that error and evil are results of viewing the world in its parts, but that the Whole is true and good, they became apologists for a kind of Christian theology, stated in new terms and demanding reason, not faith, for proof. In ethics and politics they were by and large supporters of conservatism (with some exceptions, like T. H. Green). To understand this, it is important to distinguish two historical traditions: that of nature, for the most part liberal; and that of society, chiefly conservative. Although these traditions can be found in ancient thought, it is the modern world, in which the lines have been drawn somewhat differently, with which we will concern ourselves. One can pose Locke and Hegel as representa- tives of almost antithetical positions — traditional empiricism and idealism respectively. To regard man as a creature of nature, or of God, capable of probable knowledge of the world, assured of natural law and natural right, is basic to English empiricism. It leaves its mark on documents like the Declaration of Inde- pendence and the Rights of Man. Society, it follows, should not violate natural rights, which are universal; institutions like the state are means for living well, and if they do not serve their purposes they should be altered or abolished. The indi- vidual act of thought attains tremendous importance. By thinking, men can discover whether or not their institutions are worthy, and how, if necessary, to change them. The general temper of this Lockean attitude is not changed by the utilitarian attack on natural law. Instead of a state of nature and natural rights, the utilitarians depend on other "uni- versal truths" about human psychology and the rational calculation of advantage. For earlier empiricists, individual liberty is a natural, or God-given, right; for John Stuart Mill it is a supremely useful social device, necessary for good government. We cannot, according to Mill, govern well without truth, and truth is a product of that human inquiry from which no one Introduction xi should be barred, for he may be right. Truth is not certain, and the great advantage of scientific procedures is that they can correct error; so no matter what our social decisions, people must be free to criticize, for we may be wrong. There is, of course, a variation on this school of nature which has a very different sound. If metaphysics, or the authority of a church, can yield absolute knowledge, then society should be reshaped in accordance with the truth, and no one should be allowed to question it. Why should error be allowed when truth is known? The reaction against the belief in natural man gave us a belief in social man and historical man. If man as we know him is essentially natural, not social, he has not changed through history; only the institutional forms of his society have changed. But if man is essentially social, he has changed along with changes in institutions. For the school of society, man is to be understood in terms of his history, his traditions, his institutions. These contain a kind of collective wisdom, for they embody the ways in which the race has solved its problems. The individual act of thought, and to some extent the individual himself, loses importance; for the act of thought is conditioned by society and, insofar as its conclusion differs from the conventional, the ac- cepted, it is opposing the history and the wisdom of the race. Hume, as a Tory in politics, had intimated portions of this argument, and had paved the way for Burke. But as an empir- icist, Hume had developed other theories which were used by the philosophical radicals. It was Burke, and to some extent Carlyle, who developed the conservative implications of social man in England. The Germans, especially Hegel (and in his own way, Marx) developed the full doctrine of "historicism." Social institutions in any specified locality and time, it was maintained, are pretty much of a piece. They exhibit an under- lying idea which can be discovered by examining them in their interrelations; and they are the necessary product of what preceded them. Equally, man's philosophies, his moral obligations, his artistic creations, are relative to, and integrated with, a given society and a given time. xii Ethical Studies This philosophy of society and history creates a paradox by its very statement. Is it not itself a product of a culture and an age, to be succeeded by another philosophy, equally true for its time? No, it can be answered, for it is a philosophy which explains philosophies, a sort of meta-philosophy. Its truth, then, is not relative, like the truth of other philosophies; it is absolute, and must not be superseded. This paradox and its resolution create further doctrine. Throughout history, there is a progression toward greater and still greater self-consciousness, an accretion of wisdom, until the process itself is finally understood. In the course of this process, society moves toward absolute truth, in its outlines at least, about the universe, society, and man. This assurance of truth in general, which does not always extend to truth in detail, is far from uncommon. People who are unsure of the laws of physics, the name of England's ruling house, and the size of the population of New York, are often sure of the nature and destiny of man, his purposes on earth, and the nature of his moral obligations. Bradley, who was honestly doubtful of many of his own conclusions, and who rejected much of the Hegelian pattern, could yet write about his doctrine of the Absolute : Outside our main result there is nothing except the wholly unmean- ing, or else something which on scrutiny is seen really not to fall outside. Thus the supposed Other will, in short, turn out to be actually the same; or it will contain elements included within our view of the Absolute, but elements dislocated and so distorted into erroneous appearance. And the dislocation itself will find a place within the limits of our system. The approval which won Bradley the Order of Merit can perhaps be better understood in terms of this background: The British Idealists were justifying the established social order; they were sanctifying tradition by making it reasonable; in a way they were justifying all traditions by making them right for their time and place, and then adding a fillip to their self- righteousness by making theirs the best, because it was the latest. Introduction xiii Hegel had done the same thing for Prussia; Marx did it for those rebels who allied themselves with the society to come; Bradley did it, less explicitly, for England. The absolute idealists, believing in the organic nature of the universe and in man as a part of the total organism, could not, however, rest entirely on society as a criterion of morals. They developed a twofold criterion based on the dual nature of man: as social and as ideal. This was an attempt to deal with man as a natural being by redefining nature so as to make it ideal, or spiritual, or experiential, and in consequence to redefine man. But the opposition between man as social and man as ideal created a new problem to be resolved dialectically on a higher level. In ethics, the problem was posed thus: man should fulfill his obligations as a member of society; he should also live up to his ideal nature; how, then, should he behave so as to reconcile the two? Naturalism has made us familiar with the belief that man is continuous with nature, not a perceptive and purposive creature set off from a blind and mechanical matter. Bradley's attitude toward man and his relations to the world is more romantic than naturalistic. "Man," says the romantic poet John Davidson, "is the Universe become conscious." Bradley writes: "What I mean by truth and reality is that world which satisfies the claim of the Universe present in and to what I call self." And then he puts it perhaps even more strongly : "... my desire and my will to have truth is the will and the desire of the world to become truth in me. Truth is a mode of the self-realization of myself and of the Universe in one." Bradley's belief in the continuity of the individual with the universe implies not only a special conception of the individual but also a special conception of the universe. It is as if the universe as a total structure actually strove to realize itself in the conscious- ness of man. That consciousness is a perspective on a common world, but it is not a perspective that can be shared directly with others; what sharing there is results from communication. The self is not to be identified with a perspective, or an individual consciousness. The self may not be distinguished, in any partic- jdv Ethical Studies ular experience, from the object of that experience (as in the instance of listening to music) ; on the other hand the self may become its own object of thought. We can now understand more clearly the pioblem of the dual nature of man. Society is not the sole criterion of morality, because man is not only a sbcial being; he is a part of the universe as well. His obligations would be inadequately met by the performance of social duty; he has also to live up to the conditions imposed on him as a being through whom universal truth and reality strive to be realized. Ill The publication of Ethical Studies was a setback to the influence of the Utilitarians. It wps the first full-scale work in ethics of the British Idealists and it pointed a direction which, for the most part, they took. The book contains a vigorous polemic, with all of Bradley's dialectical virtuosity in play, against both the Utilitarians and the Kantians. The Utilitarians, Bradley argued, did not understand the necessarily universal character of morals; and the Kantians understood the universal but provided it with no content. The categorical imperative urged a duty which it never defined, but it was a universal duty and Bradley tried to make it concrete. The general principle that Bradley urged as a moral guide was self-realization. This involves the problem of the nature of the self and, as we have seen, that is twofold. One of its aspects, the nature of man as social, is the basis for criticism of the school of nature in philosophy. In the chapter, "My Station and its Duties," Bradley presents the heart of his arguments. His position is more extreme than Rousseau's. Rousseau had regarded man's humanness as being a result of society; Bradley made society necessary for man's reality. . . . man is a social being; he is real only because he is social, and can realize himself only because it is as social that he realizes himself. The mere individual is a delusion of theory; and the attempt to realize it in practice is tjie starvation and mutilation of human nature, with total sterility or the production of monstrosities. Introduction rv Each individual man has a station in society; he is not merely an anonymous member of it. Every station is individual. It is not merely that a man is a lawyer; he is this lawyer, with these clients, and a particular set of cases that he has tried. Every citizen, or subject, will have certain moral obligations just insofar as he is a citizen or subject; he will have other obligations insofar as he is a farmer, husband, father, and so on; he will have still other obUgations insofar as he is himself, a specific and identifiable part of the larger network of social relations, uniquely determined by the totality of his own relations. This leads to a position at once stoical and conservative. Every station in life has obligations which should be fulfilled. In general, fulfilling them, doing one's work in the world is good. It is shallow to raise questions about whether there should be such a station as some man occupies or whether its obligations are worthy of being fulfilled. The existence of the station Is the product of a social history that embodies human wisdom. It is arrogant and pretentious to think that I, who result from that history and am formed by the institutions in which I was educated, can question their essential soundness. Bradley says: ". . . 'my station and its duties' teaches us to identify others and ourselves with the station we fill; to consider that as good, and by virtue of that to consider others and ourselves good too. It teaches us that a man who does his work in the world is good, not with- standing his faults, if his faults do not prevent him from fulfilling his station. It tells us that the heart is an idle abstraction ; Ave are not to think of it, nor must we look at our insides, but at our work and our life, and say to ourselves, Am I fulfilling my appointed function or not? Fulfill it we can, if we will: what we have to do is not so much better than the world that we cannot do it; the world is there waiting for it; my duties are my rights." Not only does this position dispose of the empiricists, but it also corrects the Kantians by showing how a man's specific duties can be discovered. To state the categorical imperative without qualification is for Bradley only to insist that we should fulfill undefined duties. What is to happen when a man has several duties and these conflict? Even in a particular case, what is the xvi Ethical Studies precise extent of our behavior in following our duty? Bradley conceives an "ordinary man" as thinking: One should give to the poor — in what cases and how much? Should sacrifice oneself — in what way and within what limits? Should not indulge one's appetite — except when it is right. Should not idle away one's time — except when one takes one's pleasure. Nor neglect one's work — but for some good reason. All these points we admit are in one way matter of law; but if you think to decide in particular cases by applying some "categorical imperative" you must be a pedant, if not a fool. In giving Kant's universal a particular content, Bradley has come perilously near to an identification of what is with what ought to be, so that, as with Hegel or Marx, it is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that what is, is right. Bradley did not even have the philosophical justification of an elaborate philosophy of history which, like Hegel's or Marx's (or for that matter St. Augustine's) , makes the good an inevitable outcome of historical development. He was not committed to the doctrine that what exists is necessary and what is necessary is right. His conserva- tism is more like Burke's: a belief in the wisdom of existing institutions and social relationships. But, with Hegel, Bradley believed in the organic character of society as well as the organic character of the world. The second aspect of man's nature is what saves him from a necessary acceptance of all that is conventional. As a part of the organic universe, man has other duties than those to society. Not only does the universe try to realize itself in man as truth and reality, but also as goodness. This goodness consists, at least in part, in trying to attain truth and reality and beauty. In a way, these obligations are based on our social nature, for we would not be real, or capable of understanding, except that we are social. But they transcend the social; just as social duties may be inconsistent with each other, so these universal obligations may be inconsistent with social obligations. We may regard this inconsistency as placing the whole matter on the level of Appear- ance (in Bradley's later terminology) and so driving us to Introduction xvii something still farther off in order to effect a reconciliation. What we are driven to, Bradley says, is religion. In religion, man's actual social self and his ideal universal self are somehow reconciled in the acceptance of God, and in the way in which we are at one and the same time set apart from God and yet united with Him. In later years, when Bradley had elaborated a complete meta- physical system, religion, too, seemed insufficient and even God was subordinated to the Absolute. But this is just a higher dialectical stage; the principles of the solution are the same. In practical terms, however, the problem of conflicting duties is not resolved however much it seems, verbally, to disappear. A man must act, and any attempt to reconcile the opposition between his duties as a social being and his duties as an ideal, or a natural being, by the invocation of religion only raises another problem: should one fulfill his religious duties even where they conflict with other duties? Bradley's emphasis on the social nature of man was a badly needed antidote to the extreme individualism of the empiricist tradition. Carried too far, the antidote is worse than the disease for it denies the individuality of man and leads to his total subordination to the State. Bradley was too honest to deny all other aspects of man's nature but the social one; he was too well aware of the power of the individual mind for any such folly. But Bradley's solution of man's dualism is not sufficient to permit criticism of the conventionally moral and of human institu- tions. The problem remains of doing justice to the natural and genetic aspects of man, on the one hand, and his social aspect, on the other. Then the philosopher, on the basis of an adequate social theory, must formulate criteria m terms of which we can make particular judgments of value, so that we can adjust society to changing conditions, preserving what is valuable and eliminating what is not valuable. IV For a time, Bradley and the other British Idealists constituted xviii Ethical Studies a new orthodoxy, as did their counterparts in America. Then empiricism and naturalism returned, in a more sophisticated version, and became, at the least, an equally accepted alternative. A good deal of the new sophistication of the empiricists was a result of idealist criticism. Mind was no longer regarded as passive, or initially "blank," nor were social influences on mind and behavior neglected. But reading Bradley today is not to be justified only by his historical importance, or the qualities of his prose, though they are excellent justifications. Bradley carried a specific set of beliefs about as far as they could go; he thought through the problems he set himself, with stubbornness and honesty. If we find some of his arguments to be purely verbal, even when he regards them as something more, we cannot thereby impugn his integrity. If we find his dialectic sometimes confusing or equivocal, we cannot therefore deprecate his brilliance. Our assumptions and our criteria may be different, and we can refuse to accept his conclusions. But we should be willing to learn from him and to formulate his best insights in our own terms. It is easy to be misled by the articulateness of contemporary naturalists into the belief that their doctrines are more widely understood and accepted than they actually are. Bradley's pre- suppositions are still current, even when they are called by a variety of names, and one can find them in political theories, in the writings of some gestalt psychologists, in the social philo- sophizing of some anthropologists, in educational philosophy, institutional theory, and so on. The basic difference between Bradley and most of those who share his assumptions is that Bradley carried the argument through. If we are prepared to follow him, to see where'the beliefs lead when they are treated with great intelligence and care, we can understand better the full implications of much contemporary thinking. RALPH G. ROSS New York University November, 1950 Ethical Studies (^Selected Essays) NOTE ON THE EDITION The material selected and reprinted here is of two kinds: the most important of Bradley's polemics (against the Utilitarians and against the Kantians) ; and the chief line of constructive theory in the Ethical Studies. It is essentially on the following Essays that Bradley's reputation as an original moralist must rest. The Essays have been reprinted in their entirety, including his Notes and footnotes. Spelling and punctuation have been revised to conform to current American usage. Since the author makes repeated references to several of the Essays which are not included in this edition, we here for the convenience of the reader give the table of contents of the complete edition. Essay I: The Vulgar Notion of Responsibility in Connection with the Theories of Free-Will and Necessity Essay II: Why Should I Be Moral Essay III: Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake Essay IV: Duty for Duty's Sake Essay V: My Station and Its Duties Essay VI : Ideal Morality Essay VII: Selfishness and Self-Sacrifice Concluding Remarks R. G. R. WHY SHOULD I BE MORAL? VVTHY should I be moral ?^ The question is natural, and yet ^^ seems strange. It appears to be one we ought to ask, and yet we feel, when we ask it, that we are wholly removed from the moral point of view. To ask the question Why? is rational; for reason teaches us to do nothing blindly, nothing without end or aim. She teaches us that what is good must be good for something, and that what is good for nothing is not good at all. And so we take it as certain that there is an end on one side, means on the other; and that only if the end is good, and the means conduce to it, have we a right to say the means are good. It is rational, then, always to inquire. Why should I do it? But here the question seems strange. For morality (and she too is reason) teaches us that, if we look on her only as good for something else, we never in that case have seen her at all. She says that she is an end to be desired for her own sake, and not as a means to something beyond. Degrade her, and she disappears; and to keep her, we must love and not merely use her. And so at the question Why? we are in trouble, for that does assume and does take for granted that virtue in this sense is unreal, and what we believe is false. Both virtue and the asking Why? seem rational, and yet incompatible one with the other; and the better course will be, not forthwith to reject virtue in favor of the question, but rather to inquire concerning the nature of the Why? ^ Let me observe here that the word "moral" has three meanings, which must be throughout these pages distinguished by the context. (1) Moral is opposed to nonmoral. The moral world, or world of morality, is opposed to the natural world, where morality cannot exist. (2) Within the moral world of moral agents, "moral" is opposed to immoral. (3) Again, within the moral world, and the moral part of the moral world, "moral" is further restricted to the'peisonal side of the moral life and the moral institutions. It stands for the inner relation of this or that will to the universal, not to the whole, outer and inner, realization of morality. 3 4 Ethical Studies Why should I be virtuous? Why should I? Could anything be more modest? Could anything be less assuming? It is not a dogma; it is only a question. And yet a question may contain (perhaps must contain) an assumption more or less hidden; or, in other words, a dogma. Let us see what is assumed in the asking of our question. In "Why should I be moral?" the "Why should I?" was another way of saying, What good is virtue? or rather. For Avhat is it good? and we saw that in asking, Is virtue good as a means, and how so? we do assume that virtue is not good, except as a means. The dogma at the root of the question is hence clearly either: (1) the general statement that only means are good; or (2) the particular assertion of this in the case of virtue. To explain: the question For what? Whereto? is either uni- versally applicable, or not so. It holds everywhere, or we mean it to hold only here. Let us suppose, in the first place, that it is meant to hold everywhere. Then (1) we are taking for granted that nothing is good in itself; that only the means to something else are good; that "good," in a word, = "good for," and good for something else. Such is the general canon by which virtue would have to be measured. No one perhaps would explicitly put forward such a canon, and yet it may not be waste of time to examine it. The good is a means: a means is a means to something else, and this is an end. Is the end good? No, if we hold to our general canon, it is not good as an end; the good was always good for something else, and was a means. To be good, the end must be a means, and so on forever in a process which has no limit. If we ask now What is good? we must answer, There is nothing which is not good, for there is nothing which may not be regarded as conducing to something outside itself. Everything is relative to something else. And the essence of the good is to exist by virtue of something else and something else forever. Everything 15 something else, is the result which at last we are brought to, if we insist on pressing our canon as universally applicable. But the above is not needed perhaps; for those who introduced Why Should I Be Moral? 5 the question Why ? did not think of things in general. The good for them was not an infinite process of idle distinction. Their interest is practical, and they do and must understand by the good (which they call a means) some means to an end in itself; which latter they assume and unconsciously fix in whatever is agreeable to themselves. If we said to them, for example : "Virtue is a means, and so is everything besides, and a means to every- thing else besides. Virtue is a means to pleasure, pain, health, disease, wealth, poverty, and is a good, because a means; and so also with pain, poverty, etc. They are all good, because all are means. Is this what you mean by the question Why?" They would answer No. And they would answer No because some- thing has been taken as an end, and therefore good, and has been assumed dogmatically. The universal application of the question For what? or Whereto? is, we see, repudiated. The question does not hold good every- where, and we must now consider, secondly, its particular applica- tion to virtue. (2) Something is here assumed to be the end; and further, this is assumed not to be virtue; and thus the question is founded, "Is virtue a means to a given end, which end is the good? Is virtue good? and why? i.e., as conducing to what good is it good?" The dogma A or B or C is a good in itself justifies the inquiry, Is D a means to A, B, or C? And it is the dogmatic character of the question that we wished to point out. Its rationality, put as if universal, is tacitly assumed to end with a certain province; and our answer must be this: // your formula will not (on your own admission) apply to everything, what ground have you for supposing it to apply to virtue? "Be virtuous that you may be happy {i.e., pleased)"; then why be happy, and not rather virtuous? "The pleasure of all is an end." Why all? "Mine." Why mine? Your reply must be that you take it to be so and are prepared to argue on the thesis that something not virtue is the end in itself. And so are we; and we shall try to show that this is erroneous. But even if we fail in that, we have, I hope, made it clear that the question Why should I be moral? rests on the assertion of an end in itself, which is not 6 Ethical Studies morality ;** and a point of this importance must not be taken for granted. It is quite true that to ask Why should I be moral? is ipso facto to take one view of morality, is to assume that virtue is a means to something not itself. But it is a mistake to suppose that the general asking of Why? affords any presumption in favor of, or against, any one theory. If any theory could stand upon the What for? as a rational formula, which must always hold good and be satisfied, then, to that extent, no doubt it would have an advan- tage. But we have seen that all doctrines alike must reject the What for? and agree in this rejection, if they agree in nothing else; since they all must have an end which is not a mere means. And if so, is it not foolish to suppose that its giving a reason for virtue is any argument in favor of Hedonism, when for its own end it can give no reason at all? Is it not clear that, if you have any Ethics, you must have an end which is above the Why? in the sense of What for?; and that, if this is so, the question is now, as it was two thousand years ago, Granted that there is an end, what is this end? And the asking that question, as reason and history both tell us, is not in itself the presupposing of a Hedonistic answer, or any other answer. The claim of pleasure to be the end, we are to discuss in another paper. But what is clear at first sight is that to take virtue as mere means to an ulterior end is in direct antagonism to the voice of the moral consciousness. That consciousness, when unwarped by selfishness and not blinded by sophistry, is convinced that to ask for the Why? is simple immorality; to do good for its own sake is virtue, to do it for some ulterior end or object, not itself good, is never virtue; and never to act but for the sake of an end, other than doing well and right, is the mark of vice. And the theory which sees in virtue, as in money-getting, a means which is mistaken for an end, * "The question itself [Why should I do right?] cannot be put, except in a form which assumes that the Utilitarian answer is the only one which can possibly be given. . . . The words 'Why should F mean 'What shall I get by,' 'What motive have I for' this or that course of conduct?" — F. Stephen, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (2nd ed., London, 1873), p. 361. Why Should I Be Moral? 7 contradicts the voice which proclaims that virtue not only does seem to be, but is, an end in itself/ 'There are two points which we may notice here. (1) There is a view which says, "Pleasure (or pain) is what moves you to act; therefore, pleasure (or pain) is your motive, and is always the Why? of your actions. You think otherwise by virtue of a psychological illusion." For a consideration of this view we must refer to Essay VII [omitted in this edition]. We may, how- ever, remark in passing, that this view confuses the motive, which is an object before the mind, with the psychical stimulus, which is not an object before the mind and therefore is not a motive nor a Why? in the sense of an end proposed. (2) There is a view which tries to found moral philosophy on theology, a theology of a somewhat coarse type, consisting mainly in the doctrine of a criminal judge, of superhuman knowledge and power, who has promulgated and administers a criminal code. This may be called the "do it or be d d" theory of morals, and is advocated or timidly suggested by writers nowadays, not so much (it seems probable) because in most cases they have a strong, or even a weak, belief in it, but because it stops holes in theories which they feel, without some help of the kind, will not hold water. We are not concerned with this opinion as a theological doctrine, and will merely remark that, as such, it appears to us to contain the essence of irreligion; but with respect to morals, we say that, let it be never so true, it contributes nothing to moral philosophy, unless that has to do with the means whereby we are simply to get pleasure or avoid pain. The theory not only confuses morality and religion, but reduces them both to deliberate selfishness. Fear of crimi- nal proceedings in the other world does not tell us what is morally right in this world. It merely gives a selfish motive for obedience to those who believe, and leaves those who do not believe, in all cases with less motive, in some cases with none. I cannot forbear remarking that, so far as my experience goes, where future punishments are firmly believed in, the fear of them has, in most cases, but little influence on the mind. And the facts do not allow us to consider the fear of punishment in this world as the main motive to morality. In most cases there is, properly speaking, no ulterior motive. A man is moral because he likes being moral; and he likes it, partly because he has been brought up to the habit of liking it, and partly because he finds it gives him what he wants, while its opposite does not do so. He is not as a rule kept "straight" by the contemplation of evils to be inflicted on him from the outside; and the shame he feels at the bad opinion of others is not a mere external evil, and is not feared simply as such. In short, a man is a human being, something larger than the abstrac- tion of an actual or possible criminal. 8 Ethical Studies Taking our stand then, as we hope, on this common conscious- ness, what answer can we give when the question Why should I be moral? — in the sense of What will it advantage me? — is put to us? Here we shall do well, I think, to avoid all praises of the pleasantness of virtue. We may believe that it transcends all possible delights of vice, but it would be well to remember that we desert a moral point of view, that we degrade and prostitute virtue, when to those who do not love her for herself we bring ourselves to recommend her for the sake of her pleasures. Against the base mechanical /Savavma, which meets us on all sides, with its "What is the use" of goodness or beauty or truth? there is but one fitting answer from the friends of science or art or religion and virtue, "We do not know and we do not care." As a direct answer to the question we should not say more; but, putting ourselves at our questioner's point of view, we may ask in return, Why should I be immoral? Is it not disadvan- tageous to be so? We can ask, is your view consistent? Does it satisfy you and give you what you want? And if you are satisfied, and so far as you are satisfied, do see whether it is not because, and so far as, you are false to your theory; so far as you are living not directly with a view to the pleasant, but with a view to something else, or with no view at all, but, as you would call it, without any "reason." We believe that, in your heart, your end is what ours is, but that about this end you not only are sorely misraken, but in your heart you feel and know it ; or at least would do so if you would only reflect. And more than this I think we ought not to say. What more are we to say? If a man asserts total skepticism, you cannot argue with him. You can show that he contradicts himself; but if he says, "I do not care" — there is an end of it. So, too, if a man says, "I shall do what I like because I happen to like it; and as for ends, I recognize none" — you may indeed show him that his conduct is in fact otherwise; and if he will assert anything as an end, if he will but say, "I have no end but myself," then you may argue with him and try to prove that he is making a mistake as to the nature of the end he alleges. But if he says, "I care not whether I am moral or rational, nor how much I con- Why Should I Be Moral? 9 tradict myself," then argument ceases. We who have the power believe that what is rational (if it is not yet) at least is to be real, and decline to recognize anything else. For standing on reason we can give, of course, no further reason; but we push our reason against what seems to oppose it, and soon force all to see that moral obligations do not vanish where they cease to be felt or are denied. Has the question, Why should I be moral? no sense then, and is no positive answer possible? No, the question has no sense at all; it is simply unmeaning unless it is equivalent to. Is morality an end in itself; and if so, how and in what way is it an end? Is morality the same as the end for man, so that the two are convertible; or is morality one side or aspect or element of some end which is larger than itself? Is it the whole end from all points of view or is it one view of the whole? Is the artist moral, so far as he is a good artist, or the philosopher moral, so far as he is a good philosopher? Are their art or science and their virtue one thing from one and the same point of view or two different things, or one thing from two points of view? These are not easy questions to answer, and we cannot discuss them yet. We have taken the reader now so far as he need go, before proceeding to the following essays. What remains is to point out the most general expression for the end in itself, the ultimate practical "why"; and that we find in the word self- realization. But what follows is an anticipation of the sequel, which we cannot promise to make intelligible as yet; and the reader who finds difficulties had better go on at once to Essay III ["Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake"]. How can it be proved that self-realization is the end? There is only one way to do that. This is to know what we mean when we say "self" and "real" and "realize" and "end"; and to know that is to have something like a system of metaphysic, and to say it would be to exhibit that system. Instead of remarking then that we lack space to develop our views, let us frankly confess that, properly speaking, we have no such views to develop, and therefore we cannot prove our thesis. All that we can do is partially to explain it, and try to render it plausible. It is a 10 Ethical Studies formula which our succeeding Essays will in some way fill up, and which here we shall attempt to recommend to the reader beforehand. An objection will occur at once. "There surely are ends," it will be said, "which are not myself, which fall outside my activity, and which, nevertheless, I do realize and think I ought to realize." We must try to show that the objection rests upon a misunder- standing; and, as a statement of fact, brings with it insuperable difficulties. Let us first go to the moral consciousness and see what that tells us about its end. Morality implies an end in itself — we take that for granted. Something is to be done, a good is to be realized. But that result is, by itself, not morality; morality differs from art in that it cannot make the act a mere means to the result. Yet there is a means. There is not only something to be done, but something to be done by me — / must do the act, must realize the end. Morality implies both the something to be done and the doing of it by me; and if you consider them as end and means, you cannot separate the end and the means. If you chose to change the position of end and means and say my doing is the end and the "to be done" is the means, you would not violate the moral con- sciousness; for the truth is that means and end are not applicable here. The act for me means my act, and there is no end beyond the act. This we see in the belief that failure may be equivalent morally to success — in the saying that there is nothing good except a good will. In short, for morality the end implies the act, and the act implies self-realization. This, if it were doubtful, would be shown (we may remark in passing) by the feeling of pleasure which attends the putting forth of the act. For if pleasure be the feeling of self and accompany the act, this indicates that the putting forth of the act is also the putting forth of the self. But we must not lay too much stress on the moral conscious- ness, for we shall be reminded, perhaps, that not only can it be, but, like the miser's consciousness, it frequently has been ex- plained; and that both states of mind are illusions generated on one and the same principle. Why Should I Be Moral? 11 Let us then dismiss the moral consciousness and not trouble ourselves about what we think we ought to do; let us try to show that what we do is, perfectly or imperfectly, to realize ourselves, and that we cannot possibly do anything else; that all we can realize is (accident apart) our ends, or the objects we desire; and that all we can desire is, in a word, self. This, we think, will be readily admitted by our main psycho- logical party. What we wish to avoid is that it should be admitted in a form which makes it unmeaning; and of this there is perhaps some danger. We do not want the reader to say, "Oh yes, of course, relativity of knowledge — everything is a state of consciousness," and so dismiss the question. If the reader believes that a steam engine, after it is made, is nothing but a state of the mind of the person or persons who have made it, or who are looking at it, we do not hold what we feel tempted to call such a silly doctrine; and would point out to those who do hold it that, at all events, the engine is a very different state of mind after it is made to what it was before. Again, we do not want the reader to say, "Certainly, every object or end which I propose to myself is, as such, a mere state of my mind — it is a thought in my head, or a state of me ; and so, when it becomes real, I become real"; because, though it is very true that my thought, as my thought, cannot exist apart from me thinking it, and therefore my proposed end must, as such, be a * We may remark that the ordinary "philosophical" person who talks about "relativity," really does not seem to know what he is saying. He will tell you that "all" (or "all we know and can know" — there is no practical diflFerence between that and "all") is relative to consciousness — not giving you to under- stand that he means thereby any consciotisness beside his own, and ready, I should imagine, with his grin at the notion of a mind which is anything more than the mind of this or that man; and then, it may be a few pages further on or further back, will talk to you of the state of the earth before man existed on it. But we wish to know what in the world it all means, and would suggest, as a method of clearing the matter, the two questions — (1) Is my consciousness something that goes and is beyond myself; and if so, in what sense? and (2) Had I a father? What do I mean by that, and how do I reconcile my assertion of it with my answer to question (1) ? 12 Ethical Studies state of me,^ yet this is not what we are driving at. All my ends are my thoughts, but all my thoughts are not my ends; and if what we meant by self-realization was that I have in my head the idea of any future external event, then I should realize myself practically when I see that the engine is going to run off the line, and it does so. A desired object (as desired) is a thought, and my thought, but it is something more and that something more is, in short, that it is desired by me. And we ought by right, before we go further, to exhibit a theory of desire; but, if we could do that, we could not stop to do it. However, we say with confidence that, in desire, what is desired must in all cases be self. If we could accept the theory that the end or motive is always the idea of a pleasure (or pain) of our own, which is associated with the object presented, and which is that in the object which moves us, and the only thing which does move us, then from such a view it would follow at once that all we can aim at is a state of ourselves. We cannot, however, accept the theory, since we believe it both to ignore and to be contrary to facts (see Essay VII) ; but, though we do not admit that the motive is always, or in most cases, the idea of a state of our feeling self, yet we think it is clear that nothing moves unless it be desired and that what is desired is ourself. For all objects or ends have been associated with our satisfaction, or (more correctly) have been felt in and as our- selves, or we have felt ourselves therein; and the only reason why they move us now is that when they are presented to our minds as motives we do now feel ourselves asserted or affirmed in them. The essence of desire for an object would thus be the feeling of our affirmation in the idea of something not ourself, felt against the feeling of ourself as, without the object, void and negated; and it is the tension of this relation which produces motion. If so, then nothing is desired except that which is identified with ourselves, and we can aim at nothing except so far as we aim at ourselves in it. ' Let me remark in passing that it does not follow from this that it is nothing but a state of me, as this or that man. Why Should I Be Moral? 13 But passing by the above, which we cannot here expound and which we lay no stress on, we think that the reader will probably go with us so far as this, that in desire what we want, so far as we want it, is ourselves in some form, or is some state of ourselves; and that our wanting anything else would be psychologically inexplicable. Let us take this for granted then; but is this what we mean by self-realization? Is the conclusion that, in trying to realize, we try to realize some state of ourself, all that we are driving at? No, the self we try to realize is for us a whole, it is not a mere collection of states. (See more in Essay III.) If we may presuppose in the reader a belief in the doctrine that what is wanted is a state of self, we wish, standing upon that, to urge further that the whole self is present in its states, and that therefore the whole self is the object aimed at; and this is what we mean by self-realization. If a state of self is what is desired, can you, we wish to ask, have states of self which are states of nothing (compare Essay I) ; can you possibly succeed in regard- ing the self as a collection or stream or train or series or aggregate? If you cannot think of it as a mere one, can you on the other hand think of it as a mere many, as mere ones; or are you not driven, whether you wish it or not, to regard it as a one in many, or a many in one? Are we not forced to look on the self as a whole which is not merely the sum of its parts, nor yet some other particular beside them? And must we not say that to realize self is always to realize a whole, and that the question in morals is to find the true whole, realizing which will practically realize the true self? This is the question which to the end of this volume we shall find ourselves engaged on. For the present, turning our attention away from it in this form, and contenting ourselves with the prop- osition that to realize is to realize self, let us now, apart from questions of psychology or metaphysics, see what ends they are, in fact, which living men do propose to themselves and whether these do not take the form of a whole. Upon this point there is no need, I think, to dwell at any 14 Ethical Studies length; for it seems clear that if we ask ourselves what it is we should most wish for, we find some general wish which would include and imply our particular wishes. And if we turn to life we see that no man has disconnected particular ends; he looks beyond the moment, beyond this or that circumstance or position ; his ends are subordinated to wider ends; each situation is seen (consciously or unconsciously) as part of a broader situation, and in this or that act he is aiming at and realizing some larger whole which is not real in any particular act as such, and yet is realized in the body of acts which carry it out. We need not stop here because the existence of larger ends, which embrace smaller ends, cannot be doubted; and so far we may say that the self we realize is identified with wholes, or that the ideas of the states of self we realize are associated with ideas that stand for wholes. But is it also true that these larger wholes are included in one whole? I think that it is. I am not forgetting that we act, as a rule, not from principle or with the principle before us, and I wish the reader not to forget that the principle may be there and may be our basis or our goal, without our knowing anything about it. And here, of course, I am not saying that it has occurred to every one to ask himself whether he aims at a whole, and what that is; because considerable reflection is required for this, and the amount need not have been reached. Nor again am I saying that every man's actions are consistent, that he does not wander from his end, and that he has not particular ends which will not come under his main end. Nor further do I assert that the life of every man does form a whole; that in some men there are not coordinated ends which are incompatible and incapable of sub- ordination into a system." What I am saying is that if the life of the normal man be inspected and the ends he has in view (as exhibited in his acts) be considered, they will, roughly speaking, be embraced in one main end or whole of ends. It has been said that "every man has a different notion of happiness," but this is scarcely correct unless mere detail be referred to. Certainly, ' The unhappiness of such lives in general, however, points to the fact that the real end is a whole. Dissatisfaction rises from the knowing or feeling that the self is not realized, and not realized because not realized as a system. Why Should I Be Moral? 15 however, every man has a notion of happiness, and his notion, though he may not quite know what it is. Most men have a life which they live and with which they are tolerably satisfied, and that life, when examined, is seen to be fairly systematic; it is seen to be a sphere including spheres, the lower spheres subordinating to themselves and qualifying particular actions, and themselves subordinated to and qualified by the whole. And most men have more or less of an ideal of life — a notion of perfect happi- ness which is never quite attained in real life; and if you take (not of course any one, but) the normal decent and serious man, when he has been long enough in the world to know what he wants, you will find that his notion of perfect happiness or ideal life is not something straggling, as it were, and discontinuous, but is brought before the mind as an unity, and, if imagined more in detail, is a system where particulars subserve one whole. Without further dwelling on this I will ask the reader to reflect whether the ends, proposed to themselves by ordinary persons, are not wholes, and are not in the end members in a larger whole; and if that be so, whether, since it is so, and since all we can want must (as before stated) be ourselves, we must not now say that we aim not only at the realization of self, but of self as a whole, seeing that there is a general object of desire with which self is identified, or (on another view) with the idea of which the idea of our pleasure is associated. Up to the present we have been trying to point out that what we aim at is self, and self as a whole; in other words, that self as a whole is in the end the content of our wills. It will still further, perhaps, tend to clear the matter if we refer to the form of the will — not, of course, suggesting that the form is anything real apart from the content. On this head we are obliged to restrict ourselves to the assertion of what we believe to be fact. We remarked in our last Essay [I] that, in saying "I will this or that," we really mean something. In saying it we do not mean (at least, not as a rule) to distinguish a self that wills from a self that does not will; but what we do mean is to distinguish the self, as will in general, from this or that object of desire, and, at the same time, to identify the two; to say. 16 Ethical Studies this or that is willed, or the will has uttered itself in this or that. The will is looked on as a whole, and there are two sides or fac- tors to that whole. Let us consider an act of will and, that we may see more clearly, let us take a deliberate volitional choice. We have conflicting desires, say A and B; we feel two tensions, two drawings (so to speak), but we cannot actually affirm ourselves in both. Action does not follow, and we reflect on the two objects of desire and we are aware that we are reflecting on them, or (if our language allowed us to say it) over them. But we do not merely stand looking on till, so to speak, we find we are gone in one direction, have closed with A or B. For we are aware besides of ourselves, not simply as something theoretically above A and B, but as something also practically above them, as a concentration which is not one or the other, but which is the possibility of either, which is the inner side indifferently of an act which should realize A, or one which should realize B, and hence, which is neither, and yet is superior to both. In short, we do not simply feel our- selves in A and B, but have distinguished ourselves from both, as what is above both. This is one factor in volition and it is hard to find any name better for it than that of the universal factor, or side, or moment.' We need say much less about the second fac- tor. In order to will, we must will something; the universal side by itself is not will at all. To will we must identify ourselves with this, that, or the other; and here we have the particular side, and ' As we saw in our last Essay [I], there are two dangers to avoid here, in the shape of two one-sided views, Scylla and Cheirybdis. The first is the ignoring of the universal side altogether, even as an element; the second is the assertion of it as more than an element, as by itself will. Against this second it is necessary to insist that the will is what it wills, that to will you must will something, and that you cannot will the mere form of the will; further, that the mere formal freedom of choice not only, if it were real, would not be true freedom, but that, in addition, it is a metaphysical fiction; that the universal is real only as one side of the whole and takes its character from the whole; and that, in the most deliberate and would-be formal volition, the self that is abstracted and stands above the particulars is the abstraction not only from the particular desire or desires before the mind, but also from the whole self, the self which embodies all past acts, and that the abstraction is determined by that from which it is abstracted, no less than itself is a moment in the determination of the concrete act. Why Should I Be Moral? 17 the second factor in volition. Thirdly, the volition as a whole (and first, as a whole, is it volition) is the identity of both these factors, and the projection or carrying of it out into external existence; the realization both of the particular side, the this or that to be done, and the realization of the inner side of self in the doing of it, with a realization of self in both, as is proclaimed by the feeling of pleasure. This unity of the two factors we may call the individual whole, or again the concrete universal; and, although we are seldom conscious of the distinct factors, yet every act of will will be seen, when analyzed, to be a whole of this kind, and so to realize what is always the nature of the will. But to what end have we made this statement? Our object has been to draw the attention of the reader to the fact that not only what is willed by men, the end they set before themselves, is a whole, but also that the will itself, looked at apart from any par- ticular object or content, is a similar whole; or, to put it in its proper order, the self is realized in a whole of ends because it is a whole, and because it is not satisfied till it has found itself, till content be adequate to form, and that content be realized; and this is what we mean by practical self-realization. "Realize yourself," "realize yourself as a whole," is the result of the foregoing. The reader, I fear, may be wearied already by these prefatory remarks, but it will be better in the end if we delay yet longer. All we know at present is that we are to realize self as a whole; but as to what whole it is, we know nothing and must further consider. The end we desire (to repeat it) is the finding and possessing ourselves as a whole. We aim at this both in theory and prac- tice. What we want in theory is to understand the object; we want neither to remove nor alter the world of sensuous fact, but we want to get at the truth of it. The whole of science takes it for granted that the "not-ourself" is really intelligible; it stands and falls with this assumption. So long as our theory strikes on the mind as strange and alien, so long do we say we have not found truth; we feel the impulse to go beyond and beyond, we alter and alter our views till we see them as a consistent whole. 18 Ethical Studies There we rest because then we have found the nature of our own mind and the truth of facts in one. And in practice again, with a difference, we have the same want. Here our aim is not, leav- ing the given as it is, to find the truth of it; but here we want to force the sensuous fact to correspond to the truth of ourselves. We say, "My sensuous existence is thus, but I truly am not thus; I am different." On the one hand, as a matter of fact, I and my existing world are discrepant; on the other hand, the instinct of my nature tells me that the world is mine. On that impulse I act, I alter and alter the sensuous facts till I find in them nothing but myself carried out. Then I possess my world, and I do not possess it until I find my will in it; and I do not find that until what I have is a harmony or a whole in system. Both in theory and practice my end is to realize myself as a whole. But is this all? Is a consistent view all that we want in theory? Is a harmonious life all that we want in practice? Certainly not. A doctrine must not only hold together, but it must hold the facts together as well. We cannot rest in it simply because it does not contradict itself. The theory must take in the facts, and an ultimate theory must take in all the facts. So again in practice. It is no human ideal to lead "the life of an oyster." We have no right first to find out just what we happen to be and to have, and then to contract our wants to that limit. We cannot do it if we would, and morality calls to us that, if we try to do it, we are false to ourselves. Against the sensuous facts around us and within us we must forever attempt to widen our empire; we must at least try to go forward or we shall certainly be driven back. So self-realization means more than the mere assertion of the self as a whole.® And here we may refer to two principles which Kant put forward under the names of "Homogeneity" and "Speci- fication." Not troubling ourselves with our relation to Kant, we may say that the ideal is neither to be perfectly homogeneous nor simply to be specified to the last degree, but rather to combine * I leave out of sight the important question whether any partial whole can be self-consistent. If (which seems the better view) this cannot be, we shall not need to say "Systematize and widen," but the second will be implied in the first. Why Should I Be Moral? 19 both these elements. Our true being is not the extreme of unity, nor of diversity, but the perfect identity of both. And "Realize yourself" does not mean merely "Be a whole," but "Be an infinite whole." At this word I am afraid the reader who has not yet despaired of us will come to a stop and refuse to enter into the region of nonsense. But why should it be nonsense? When the poet and the preacher tell us the mind is infinite, most of us feel that it is so; and has our science really come to this that the beliefs which answer to our highest feelings must be theoretical absurdities? Should not the philosophy which tells us such a thing be very sure of the ground it goes upon? But if the reader will follow me I think I can show him that the mere finitude of the mind is a more difficult thesis to support than its infinity. It would be well if I could ask the reader to tell me what he means by "finite." As that cannot be I must say that finite is limited or ended. To be finite is to be some one among others, some one which is not others. One finite ends where the other finite begins; it is bounded from the outside, and cannot go beyond itself without becoming something else, and thereby perishing.' "The mind," we are told, "is finite; and the reason why we say it is finite is that we know it is finite. The mind knows that itself is finite." This is the doctrine we have to oppose. We answer, The mind is not finite just because it knows it is finite. "The knowledge of the limit suppresses the limit." It is a flagrant self-contradiction that the finite should know its own finitude; and it is not hard to make this plain. Finite means limited from the outside and by the outside. The finite is to know itself as this, or not as finite. If its knowledge ceases to fall wholly within itself, then so far it is not finite. It knows that it is limited from the outside and by the outside, and that means it knows the outside. But if so, then it is so far not finite. If its whole being fell within itself, then in knowing * We have to dwell on the inherent contradiction of the finite. Its being is to fall wholly within itself; and yet, so far as it is finite, so far is it determined wholly by the outside. 20 Ethical Studies itself it could not know that there was anything outside itself. It does do the latter; hence the former supposition is false. Imagine a man shut up in a room, who said to us, "My facul- ties are entirely confined to the inside of this room. The limit of the room is the limit of my mind and so I can have no knowledge whatever of the outside" ; should we not answer, "My dear sir, you contradict yourself. If it were as you say, you could not know of an outside, and so, by consequence, not of an inside, as such. You should be in earnest and go through with your doctrine of 'relativity.' " To the above simple argument I fear we may not have done justice. However that be, I know of no answer to it; and until we find one, we must say that it is not true that the mind is finite. If I am to realize myself it must be as infinite; and now the question is, What does infinite mean? and it will be better to say first what it does not mean. There are two wrong views on the subject, which we will take one at a time. (1) Infinite is not-finite, and that means "end-less." What does endless mean? Not the mere negation of end, because a mere negation is nothing at all, and infinite would thus = 0. The endless is something positive; it means a positive quantity which has no end. Any given number of units is finite, but a series of units which is produced indefinitely is infinite. This is the sense of infinite which is in most common use, and which, we shall see, is what Hedonism believes in. It is however clear that this infinite is a perpetual self-contradiction and, so far as it is real, is only finite. Any real quantity has ends beyond which it does not go. "Increase the quantity" merely says, "Put the end further off"; but in saying that, it does say "Put the end." "Increase the quantity forever" means, "Have forever a finite quantity, and forever say that it is not finite." In other words, "Remove the end" does imply, by that very removal and the production of the series, the making of a fresh end; so that we still have a finite quantity. Here, so far as the infinite exists, it is finite; so far as it is told to exist, it is told again to be nothing but finite. (2) Or, secondly, the infinite is not the finite, no longer in the sense of being more in quantity, but in the sense of being some- Why Should I Be Moral? 21 thing else which is different in quality. The infinite is not in the world of limited things; it exists in a sphere of its own. The mind (e. g.) is something beside the aggregate of its states. God is something beside the things of this world. This is the infinite believed in by abstract Duty. But here once more, against its will, infinite comes to mean merely finite. The infinite is a some- thing over against, beside, and outside the finite; and hence is itself also finite, because limited by something else. In neither of these two senses is the mind infinite. What then is the true sense of infinite? As before, it is the negation of the finite; it is not-finite. But, unlike both the false infinites, it does not leave the finite as it is. It neither, with (1) , says "the finite 15 to be not-finite," nor, with (2) , tries to get rid of it by doubling it. It does really negate the finite so that the finite disappears, not by having a negative set over against it, but by being taken up into a higher unity in which, becoming an element, it ceases to have its original character and is both suppressed and preserved. The infinite is thus "the unity of the finite and infinite." The finite was determined from the outside, so that everywhere to char- acterize and distinguish it was in fact to divide it. Wherever you defined anything you were at once carried beyond to some- thing else and something else, and this because the negative, required for distinction, was an outside other. In the infinite you can distinguish without dividing; for this is an imity holding within itself subordinated factors which are negative of, and so distinguishable from, each other; while at the same time the whole is so present in each that each has its own being in its opposite, and depends on that relation for its own life. The negative is also its aflSrmation. Thus the infinite has a distinc- tion, and so a negation, in itself, but is distinct from and negated by nothing but itself. Far from being one something which is not another something, it is a whole in which both one and the other are mere elements. This whole is hence "relative" utterly and through and through, but the relation does not fall outside it; the relatives are moments in which it is the relation of itself to itself, and so is above the relation, and is absolute reality. The finite is relative to something else; the infinite is 5e//-related. 22 Ethical Studies It is this sort of infinite which the mind is. The simplest symbol of it is the circle, the line which returns into itself, not the straight line produced indefinitely; and the readiest way to find it is to consider the satisfaction of desire. There we have myself and its opposite, and the return from the opposite, the finding in the other nothing but self. And here it would be well to recall what we said above on the form of the will. If the reader to whom this account of the infinite is new has found it in any way intelligible, I think he will see that there is some sense in it when we say, "Realize yourself as an infinite whole"; or, in other words, "Be specified in yourself, but not specified by anything foreign to yourself." But the objection comes: "Morality tells us to progress; it tells us we are not concluded in ourselves nor perfect, but that there exists a not-ourself which never does wholly become ourself. And apart from morality, it is obvious that I and you, this man and the other man, are finite beings. We are not one another; more or less we must limit each other's sphere; I am what I am more or less by external relations, and I do not fall wholly within myself. Thus I am to be infinite, to have no limit from the out- side; and yet I am one among others, and therefore am finite. It is all very well to tell me that in me there is infinity, the perfect identity of subject and object — that I may be willing perhaps to believe, but nonetheless I am finite." We admit the full force of the objection. I am finite; I am both infinite and finite and that is why my moral life is a perpetual progress. I must progress because I have an other which is to be, and yet never quite is, myself; and so, as I am, am in a state of contradiction. It is not that I wish to increase the mere quantity of my true self. It is that I wish to be nothing but my true self, to be rid of all external relations, to bring them all within me, and so to fall wholly within myself. I am to be perfectly homogeneous; but I cannot be unless fully specified, and the question is. How can I be extended so as to take in my external relations ? Goethe has said, "Be a whole Why Should I Be Moral? 23 or join a whole,"^" but to that we must answer, "You cannot be a whole, unless you join a whole." The difficulty is: being limited and so not a whole, how extend myself so as to be a whole? The answer is, be a member in a whole. Here your private self, your finitude, ceases as such to exist; it becomes the function of an organism. You must be, not a mere piece of, but a member in, a whole, and as this must know and will yourself. The whole to which you belong specifies itself in the detail of its functions, and yet remains homogeneous. It lives not many lives but one life, and yet cannot live except in its many members. Just so, each one of the members is alive, but not apart from the whole which lives in it. The organism is homogeneous because it is specified, and specified because it is homogeneous. "But," it will be said, "what is that to me? I remain one member, and I am not other members. The more perfect the organism, the more is it specified, and so much the intenser becomes its homogeneity. But its 'more' means my 'less.' The unity falls in the whole and so outside me ; and the greater specifi- cation of the whole means the making me more special, more narrowed and limited, and less developed within myself." We answer that this leaves out of sight a fact quite palpable and of enormous significance, viz., that in the moral organism the members are aware of themselves, and aware of themselves as members. I do not know myself as mere this, against something else which is not myself. The relations of the others to me are not mere external relations. I know myself as a member; that means I am aware of my own function; but it means also that I am aware of the whole as specifying itself in me. The will of the whole knowingly wills itself in me; the will of the whole is the will of the members, and so, in willing my own function, I do know that the others will themselves in me. I do know again that I will myself in the others, and in them find my will once more as ^° "Immer strebe zum Ganzen, und kannst du selber kein Ganzes Werden, als dienendes Glied schliess' an ein Ganzes dich an.** — Vier Jahreszeiten, 45. 24 Ethical Studies not mine, and yet as mine. It is false that the homogeneity falls outside me; it is not only in me, but for me too; and apart from my life in it, my knowledge of it, and devotion to it, I am not myself. When it goes out my heart goes out with it, where it triumphs I rejoice, where it is maimed I suffer; separate me from the love of it and I perish. (See further. Essay V.) No doubt the distinction of separate selves remains, but the point is this. In morality the existence of my mere private self, as such, is something which ought not to be, and which, so far as I am moral, has already ceased. I am morally realized, not until my personal self has utterly ceased to be my exclusive self, is no more a will which is outside others' wills, but finds in the world of others nothing but self. "Realize yourself as an infinite whole" means "Realize your- self as the self-conscious member of an infinite whole, by realizing that whole in yourself." When that whole is truly infinite, and when your personal will is wholly made one with it, then you also have reached the extreme of homogeneity and specification in one, and have attained a perfect self-realization. The foregoing will, we hope, become clear to the reader of this volume. He must consider what has been said so far as the text, which the sequel is to illustrate and work out in detail. Mean- while, our aim has been to put forward the formula of self-realiza- tion and in some measure to explain it. The following Essays will furnish, we hope, something like a commentary and justifica- tion. We shall see that the self to be realized is not the self as a collection of particulars, is not the universal as all the states of a certain feeling; and that it is not again an abstract universal, as the form of duty; that neither are in harmony with life, with the moral consciousness, or with themselves; that when the self is identified with, and wills, and realizes a concrete universal, a real totality, then first does it find itself, is satisfied, self-deter- mined, and free — "the free will that wills itself as the free will." Let us resume, then, the results of the present Essay. We have attempted to show (1) that the formula of "what for?" must be rejected by every ethical doctrine as not universally valid; and that hence no one theory can gain the smallest advantage (except Why Should I Be Moral? 25 over the foolish) by putting it forward; that now for us (as it was for Hellas) the main question is, There being some end, what is that end? And (2), with which second part, if it fall, the first need not fall, we have endeavored briefly to point out that the final end with which morality is identified, or under which it is included, can be expressed not otherwise than by self-realization. NOTE Perhaps the following remarks, though partly repetition of the above, may be of service. There being an end, that end is realization, at all events; it is something to be reached, otherwise not an end. And it implies self-realization, because it is to be reached by me. By my action I am to carry it out; in making it real my will is realized, and my will is myself. Hence there is self-realiza- tion in all action; witness the feeling of pleasure. "Yes," it will be said, "but that does not show there is nothing but self-realization. The content of the act is not the self but may be something else, and this something else may be the end. The content is the end." This is very easy to say but it overlooks the psychological difl&culties. How is it possible to will what is not one's self, how can one desire a foreign object? What we desire must be in our minds; we must think of it; and besides, we must be related to it in a particular way. If it is to be the end, we must feel ourselves one with it, and in it; and how can we do that if it does not belong to us and has not been made part of us? To say "thoughts of what is and is to be exist in you, are in your head, and then you carry them out, and that is action" is futile ; because these thoughts, if desired, are not merely in me, they are felt to be mine, ideally to be myself, and, when they are carried out, that therefore is self-realization. Or shall we be told that "to talk of carrying out is nonsense. In action we produce changes in things and in ourselves, answer- ing to thoughts; things resemble thoughts, but, strictly speaking. 26 Ethical Studies thought is not realized, because that is unmeaning"? If we hold to this, however, we are met by the impossibility then of account- ing for thought and action as ordinarily viewed; we should know not the real, but something like the real, and should do not what we mean, intend, have in our minds, but only something like it. But this, unfortunately, is not action. If I do not what I will, but only something like it, then, strictly speaking, so far it is not my act and would not be imputed to me. An act supposes the content on each side to be the same, with a difference, or, under a difference, to be the same. It does suppose that what was in the mind is carried out; and, unless you think that something can be in the self and carried out by the self, without being of the nature of the self (and you would find the difficulties of such .a view insuperable), then you must say that volition is self-realization. But doubtless there are many persons who, not raising meta- physical or psychological questions but standing merely on facts, would say, "Theory apart, surely when I act I do realize more than myself. I quite see that I may not do so; but when I devote myself to a cause, and at my own expense help to carry it out, how then am I realizing only myself?" The difficulty no doubt is very serious and we cannot pretend here to go to the bottom of it. But we may point out that it arises from a preconception as to the self (i. e., the identification of it with the particular self) which cannot be defended. It is clear that, on the one side, selves do exclude one another. I am not you, you are not he; and, resting on this notion of exclusive- ness, we go on to look at the self as a repellent point, or, as we call it, a mere individual. But, apart from metaphysics, facts soon compel us to see that this is not a reality, but an abstraction of our minds. For, without troubling ourselves about the relation of one person to others, as soon as we imagine this mere "individual" acting, we see he must bring forth something, and, to do that, must have something in him, must have a content; and, if so, is not any longer a bare point which we now perceive to be a mere form. Hence we now try to give him a content which falls wholly within himself and is not common to him with others, and, finding it im- Why Should I Be Moral? 27 possible to account for facts on this supposition, suddenly we turn round and fly to the other extreme, and now suppose him to realize the sheer suppression of himself: not seeing that now we have abjured our premises without having refuted them, and are face to face with the psychological difficulty of how a man is to bring out of himself what was not in himself and part of himself, and with the facts which testify that action without interest is a fiction. But if from a better metaphysic, or attention to facts, we are willing to give up those metaphysical preconceptions we took for fact and now see to be futile, then we may also see that, though certainly one person cannot be, "like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once," yet that, beside being thus exclusive, nonethe- less in respect of their content (and that makes them what they are) persons are not thus exclusive; that I am what I will and will what I am, that the content qualifies me, and that there is no reason in the world why that content should be confined to the "this me." In the case of a social being this is impossible; and to point out any human being in whom his exclusive self is the whole content of his will, is out of the question. But, if so, where is the difficulty of my object being one and the same with the object of other people; so that, having filled the form of my personality with a life not merely mine, I have at heart, and have identified with and made one with myself, objective interests, things that are to be, and in and with the existence of which I am not to satisfy my mere private self; so that, as I neither will nor can separate myself from what makes me myself, in realizing them I realize myself, and can do so only by realizing them? (We shall come on this again — see especially Essay VII.) Well then, just as we must accept the teaching that "all is relative to self," but supplement and correct it with the teaching that "myself also is relative"; so we must accept the teaching of the selfish theory that I can will myself only, but correct it by the addition "and yet the self which is myself, which is mine, is not merely me." Hence that all willing is self-realization is seen not to be in collision with morality. To conclude — If I am asked why I am to be moral I can say 28 Ethical Studies no more than this, that what I cannot doubt is my own being now, and that since in that being is involved a self, which is to be here and now, and yet in this here and now is not, I therefore cannot doubt that there is an end which I am to make real; and morality, if not equivalent to, is at all events included in this making real of myself. If it is absurd to ask for the further reason of my knowing and willing my own existence, then it is equally absurd to ask for the further reason of what is involved therein. The only rational question here is not Why? but What? What is the self that I know and will? What is its true nature, and what is implied therein? What is the self that I am to make actual, and how is the principle present, living, and incarnate in its particular modes of realization? PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE'S SAKE TT is an old story, a theme too worn for the turning of sentences, and yet too living a moral not to find every day a new point and to break a fresh heart, that our lives are wasted in the pursuit of the impalpable, the search for the impossible and the unmeaning. Neither today nor yesterday, but throughout the whole life of the race, the complaint has gone forth that all is vanity; that the ends for which we live and we die are "mere ideas," illusions begotten on the brain by the wish of the heart — poor phrases that stir the blood, until experience or reflection for a little, and death for all time, bring with it disenchantment and quiet. Duty for duty's sake, life for an end beyond sense, honor, and beauty, and love for the invisible — all these are first felt, and then seen to be dream and shadow and unreal vision. And our cry and our desire is for something that will satisfy us, something that we know and do not only think, something that is real and solid, that we can lay hold of and be sure of and that will not change in our hands. We have said good-by to our transcendent longings, we have bidden a sad but an eternal farewell to the hopes of our own and of the world's too credulous youth ; we have parted forever from our early loves, from our fancies and aspira- tions beyond the human. We seek for the tangible and we find it in this world; for the knowledge which can never deceive, and that is the certainty of our own well-being; we seek for the palpable, and we feel it; for the end which will satisfy us as men, and we find it, in a word, in happiness. Happiness! Is that climax, or pathos, or cruel irony? Hap- piness is the end? Yes, happiness is the end which indeed we all reach after; for what more can we wish than that all should be well with us — ^that our wants should be filled and the desire of our hearts be gratified? And happiness cannot escape us, we must know it when we find it? Oh yes, it would be strange indeed to come to such a consummation and never to know it. And happiness is real and palpable, and we can find it by seeking 29 30 Ethical Studies it? Alas! the one question which no one can answer is, What is happiness? — which everyone in the end can answer is, what happiness is not. It has been called by every name among men, and has been sought on the heights and in the depths; it has been wooed in all the shapes on earth and in heaven, and what man has won it? Its name is a proverb for the visionary object of a universal and a fruitless search; of all the delusions which make a sport of our lives it is not one, but is one common title which covers and includes them all, which shows behind each in turn, but to vanish and appear behind another. The man who says that happiness is his mark, aims at nothing apart from the ends of others. He seeks the illusory goal of all men; and he differs from the rest that are and have been not at all, or only in his assertion that happiness is to be found by seeking it. "But happiness," will be the reply, "is vague because it has been made so — is impalpable because projected beyond the solid world into the region of cloud and fiction — is visionary because diverted from its object, and used as a name for visions. Such ends are not happiness. But there is an end which men can seek and do find, which never deceives, which is real and tangible and felt to be happiness — and that end is pleasure. Pleasure is something we can be sure of, for it dwells not we know not where, but here in ourselves. It is found, and it can be found; it is the end for man and for beast, the one thing worth living for, the one thing they do live for and do really desire, and the only thing they ought to set before them. This is real, because we feel and know it to be real; and solely by partaking, or seeming to partake, in its reality do other ends pass for, and impose on the world as happiness." We said that to answer the question, what happiness is, has been thought impossible; that there are few who, in the end, are unable to say what happiness is not. And if there be any one thing which well-nigh the whole voice of the world, from all ages, nations, and sorts of men, has agreed to declare is not hap- piness, that thing is pleasure and the search for it. Not in the school alone but round us in life, we see that to identify in the beginning pleasure and happiness leads in the end to the confes- sion that there "is nothing in it, evSaijxoviav oAws aSvvarov elvai. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 31 The "pursuit of pleasure" is a phrase which calls for a smile or a sigh, since the world has learned that, if pleasure is the end, it is an end which must not be made one, and is found there most where it is not sought. If to find pleasure is the end and science is the means, then indeed we must say Die hohe Kraft Der Wissenschaft, Der ganzen Welt verborgen! Und wer nicht denkt, Dem wird sie geschenkt, Er hat sie ohne Sorgen/ Common opinion repeats its old song that the search for pleas- ure is the coarsest form of vulgar delusion, that if you want to be happy in the sense of pleased you must not think of pleasure, but, taking up some accredited form of living, must make that ^ your end, and in that case, with moderately good fortune, you will be happy; if you are not, then it must be your own fault; but that, if you go further, you are like to fare worse. You had better not try elsewhere, or, at least, not for pleasure elsewhere. So far the weight of popular experience bears heavily against the practicability of Hedonism. But Hedonism, we shall be told, does not of necessity mean the search by the individual for the pleasure of the individual. It is to such selfish pleasure-seeking alone that the proverbial condemnation of Hedonism applies. The end for modern Utilitarianism is not the pleasure of one, but /^ the pleasure of all, the maximum of pleasurable, and minimum of painful, feeling in all sentient organisms, and not in my sentient organism; and against the possibility of realizing such an end common opinion has nothing to say. This we admit to be true, but in this shape the question has never fairly come before the popular mind; and it would be well to remember that if the indi- vidual, when he seeks pleasure, fails in his individual aim, such a ^ "^ Thus rendered in Mr. C. Kegan Paul's version of Faust: The highest might But whosoe'er Of science quite Expends no care, Is from the world concealed! To him it is revealed. 32 Ethical Studies fact ought at least to inspire us with some doubt whether, when mankind seek the pleasure of the sentient world, that end be so much more real and tangible. Opinion, then, as the result of popular experience so far as it has touched on the question, would appear to be against the prac- ticability of Hedonism. Still vulgar opinion must not count against philosophical theory, though it certainly may against the still more vulgar preconception as to the reality and palpable character of pleasure. But Hedonism, we must remember, does not assert itself simply as a theory which can be worked. It puts itself forward as moral, as the one and only possible account of morality. The fact is the moral world. Hedonism is the supposed explanation; and if we find that non-theoretical persons, who have direct cog- nizance of the fact, with but few exceptions reject the explanation, that ought to have great weight with us. And the case stands thus undeniably. When moral persons without a theory on the matter are told that the moral end for the individual and the race is the getting a maximum surplusage of pleasurable feeling, and that there is nothing in the whole world which has the smallest moral value except this end and the means to it, there is no gain- saying that they repudiate such a result. They feel that there are things "we should choose even if no pleasure came from them"; and that if we choose these things, being good, for ourselves, then we must choose them also for the race, if we care for the race as we do for ourselves. We may be told, indeed, that a vulgar objection of this sort is founded on a misunderstanding, and to this we shall have to recur ; but for the present we prefer to believe that never, except on a misunderstanding, has the moral con- sciousness in any case acquiesced in Hedonism. And we must say, I think, that supposing it possible that Hedonism could be worked, yet common moral opinion is decided against its being, what it professes to be, a suflBcient account of morals. For morality and religion believe in some end for the man and for the race to be worked out; some idea to be realized in man- kind and in the individual, and to be realized even though it should not be compatible with the minimum of pain and maximum Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 33 of pleasure in human souls and bodies, to say nothing at all about other sentient organisms. The end for our morality and our religion is an idea (or call it what you will), which is thought of both as the moving principle and final aim of human progress, and that idea (whatever else it may be, or may not be) most certainly is not the mere idea of an increase of pleasure and a diminution of pain. What we represent to ourselves as the goal of our being we must take as a law for the guidance alike both of this and that man, and of the race as a whole; and if you do not use the vague phrase "happiness," but say fairly and nakedly that you mean "feeling pleased as much as possible and as long as possible," then you cannot, I think, bring the Hedonistic end before the moral consciousness without a sharp collision. Now I am not saying that what is commonly believed must be true. I am perfectly ready to consider the possibility of the ordi- nary moral creed being a mistaken one; but the point which I wish to emphasize is this: The fact is the moral world, both on its external side of the family, society, and the State, and the work of the individual in them, and again, on its internal side of moral feeling and belief. The theory which will account for and justify these facts as a whole is the true moral theory; and any theory which cannot account for these facts may in some other way, perhaps, be a very good and correct theory, but it is not a moral theory. Supposing every other ethical theory to be false, it does not follow that therefore Hedonism is a true ethical theory. It does not follow because it has refuted its "intuitive moralists" (or what not?) that therefore it accounts for the facts of the moral con- sciousness. Admitted that it is workable, it has still to be proved moral — moral in the sense of explaining, not explaining away morality. And it can be proved moral by the refuting of some other theory, only on the strength of two assumptions. The first is that there must be some existing theory which is a sufi5cient account of morals, and that is an unproved assumption; the second is that the disjunction, that the "either — or" of "intuitive" and "utili- tarian" is complete and exhaustive, and that is a false assumption.' " "Whoever would disprove the theory which makes utility our guide must produce another principle that were a surer and better guide. 34 Ethical Studies At the cost of repetition, and perhaps of wearisomeness, I must dwell a little longer on the ordinary consciousness. There are times indeed when we feel that increase of progress means in- crease of pleasure and that it is hard to consider them apart. I do not mean those moments (if there are such) when the music- hall theory of life seems real to us, but the hours (and there must be such) when advance in goodness and knowledge, and in the pleasure of them, have been so intermingled together, and brought home as one to our minds (in our own case or in that of others), that we feel it impossible to choose one and not also choose the other. And there doubtless are hours again, when all that is called progress seems so futile and disappointing that we bitterly feel "increase of knowledge" is indeed "increase of sorrow," and that he who thinks least is happiest; when we envy the beasts their lives without a past or a future, their heedless joys and easily forgotten griefs; and when for ourselves, and if for ourselves then for others, we could wish to cease or be as they are "vo/i allem Wissensqualm entladen." These are the extremes; but when in the season neither of our exaltation nor of our depression we soberly consider the matter, then we choose most certainly for ourselves (and so also for others) what we think the highest life, i. e., the life with the highest functions; and in that life we certainly include the feeling of pleasure; but if the alternative is presented to us of lower functions with less pains and greater pleasures, or higher functions with greater pains and less pleasures, then we must choose the latter. "Now if we reject utility as the index to God's commands, we must assent to the theory of hypothesis which supposes a moral sense. One of the adverse theories which regard the nature of that index is certainly true." — Austin's Jurisprudence, I, 79. If we wished to cross an unknown bog, and two men came to us, of whom the one said, "Some one must know the way over this bog, for there must be a way, and you see there is no one here beside us two, and therefore one of us two must be able to guide you. And the other man does not know the way, as you can soon see; therefore I must" — should we answer, "Lead on, I follow"? Philosophy would indeed be the easiest of studies if we might arrive at truth by assuming that one of two accounts must be true, and prove the one by disproving the other; but in philosophy this is just what cannot be done. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 35 And the alternative is conceivable. If it is impossible in fact that a stage of progress could come where by advancing further in the direction of what seerns to it highest, humanity would decrease its surplus of pleasure (and I do not see how it is to be proved impossible)" — yet, at all events, the alternative can be brought directly before the mind. Advance in this direction (the higher) at the cost of pleasure, on the whole, after the pleasure of advance is counted in; advance in that direction (the lower) with the gain of pleasure, on the whole, even after the regrets of the nonadvance have been subtracted. The necessity for choice can be imagined; and there is no doubt, on the one side, what the choice of the moral man would be; there is no doubt, on the other side, what, if pleasure were the end, it ought to be. In such a case, what we think the most moral man and people would be therefore the most certain to act immorally, if Hedonism is morality. But these consequences, it will be urged, do not apply to modern Utilitarianism. That creed, we shall be told, whether for the man or the race is high and self-sacrificing. For not only does it place the end in the pleasure of all, not the pleasure of one; but in addition it distinguishes pleasures according to their quality. The greatest quantity of pleasure is not the end; there ^ Mr. Mill's assertion that "most of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable" (Utilitarianism, p. 21), calls for no remark; but the reader may perhaps think that Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the Evanescence of Evil (Social Statics, p. 73, flf.) should be noticed. His proof seems (so far as I understand it) to rest on the following assumptions: (1) The natural environment of mankind is stationary. Can this be proved? (2) Tljp spiritual environment of mankind is stationary. Not only can this not be proved, but the opposite is, or ought to be, supposed by the doctrine of evolution. Progress must alter the environment. (3) Apparently children are to be born in harmony with their surround- ings and remain so till death. (4) Moral evil in the sense of moral badness, is to disappear. It will be impossible to oppose one's private good to the general good, and act accord- ing to the former. Self-will will cease and with it the pain it brings. All these assumptions, I think, are wanted. Nos. 3 and 4 represent absolute impossibilities, so far as I understand the matter. No. 2 is impossible on the supposition of continual progress. No other supposition can be prove! to be true; and No. 1 cannot, I believe, be proved. How far Mr. Spencer's own teaching contradicts these assumptions is of no importance here. 36 Ethical Studies are pleasures we desire in preference to others even at the cost of discontent and dissatisfaction. These pleasures, then, are to be preferred, and these are the higher pleasures. Such a doctrine, it will be added, is surely moral. The doctrine, we admit, has done homage to popular opinion, so far as, for the sake of it, to sacrifice its own consistency and desert its principle. This we shall have to prove later on. But yet we cannot for a moment think that it has succeeded in satisfying the demands of morality. Virtue is still a mere means to pleasure in ourselves or others and, as anything beyond, is worthless, if not immoral; is not virtue at all. What is right is determined by that which is most "grateful to the feelings" of connoisseurs in pleasures, who have tried them all. No com- promise is possible on this point. Ordinary morality is clear that when it aims at virtue for itself and others, it has not got its eye on wages or perquisites; its motive, in the sense of the object of its conscious desire, is not the anticipated feeling of pleasure. What it has before its mind is an object, an act or an event, which is not (for itself at least) a state of the feeling self, in itself or others. To say that, in desiring the right, it proposes to itself a pleasure to be got by the right is to assert in the face of facts. To the moral mind that feeling is an accompaniment or a con- sequent and it may be thought of as such. But to think of it as more, to propose it as the end to which the act or objective event are the means, and nothing but the means, is simply to turn the moral point of view upside down. You may argue psychologically, if you wiU, and say that what is desired is pleasure (this is false, as we shall show in another Essay), and we are ready for argument's sake to admit it here; for here it makes not the smallest difference. The moral consciousness does not think it acts to get pleasure, and the point here at issue is not whether what it believes, and must believe, is or is not a psychological illusion, but whether Utilitarianism is in harmony therewith. Hedonism in any form must teach "morality is a means to pleasure"; and whether that pleasure is to be got in morality or merely by morality, yet the getting of the pleasure is the ultimate aim. Pleasure for pleasure's sake is the end and nothing else is Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 37 an end in any sense except so far as it is a means to pleasure. This, we repeat once more, is absolutely irreconcilable with ordinary moral beliefs. And not only is Hedonism repudiated by those beliefs as immoral, but as we saw, so far as the popular mind has pronounced upon it, it is also declared to be impracticable. These two points we wished to make clear, and with this result we have finished the first or introductory part of our undertaking. It remains to ask in the second place, Why is it that pleasure- seeking as the search for my pleasure is declared vain, and pleasure itself impalpable and misleading, a something which gives us no standard to work by and no end to aim at, no system to realize in our lives? We must look for an answer to the nature of pleasure. Pleasure and pain are feelings and they are nothing but feel- ings. It would perhaps be right to call them the two simple modes of 5e//-feeling ; but we are not here concerned with psycho- logical accuracy. The point which we wish to emphasize and which we think is not doubtful is that, considered psychically, they are nothing whatever but states of the feeling self. This means that they exist in me only as long as I feel them, and only as I feel them, that beyond this they have no reference to any- thing else, no validity and no meaning whatever. They are "subjective" because they neither have, nor pretend to, reality beyond this or that subject. They are as they are felt to be, but they tell us nothing. In one word, they have no content; they are as states of us, but they have nothing for us. I do not think it is necessary to dwell on this matter. Let us proceed to the application. The practical end, if it is to be a practical goal and standard, must present itself to us as some definite unity, some concrete whole that we can realize in our acts, and carry out in our life. And pleasure (as pain) we find to be nothing but a name which stands for a series of this, that, and the other feelings, which are not except in the moment or moments that they are felt, which have as a series neither limita- tion of number, beginning nor end, nor in themselves any refer- ence at all, any of them, beyond themselves. To realize, as such, the self which feels pleasure and pain means to realize this infinite 38 Ethical Studies perishing series.* And it is clear at once that this is not what is required for a practical end. Let us see the problem a little closer. On the one side our Hedonist is aware, however dimly, of him- self not as this, nor that, nor the other particular feeling or satis- faction, but as something which is not this, that, or the other, and yet is real, and is to be realized. Self-realization, as we saw, was the object of desire; and so, as above, on the one hand is the self, which we are forced to look on as a whole which is in its parts, as a living totality, as a universal present throughout, and con- stituted by its particulars; and this self is setting out, however unaware, to find itself as such and to satisfy itself as such, or not to find itself and not to satisfy itself at all. On the other side is the mere feeling self, the series of particular satisfactions, which the self has come (how, we need not here inquire) to take as its reality and as the sole possible field for its self-realization. The point to observe is the heterogeneous nature of the self to be satisfied, and of the proposed satisfaction, and the consequent impossibility of a solution for the problem. The practical diflBi- culty is soon forced on the seeker after pleasure. Pleasures, we saw, were a perishing series. This one comes and the intense self-feeling proclaims satisfaction. It is gone and we are not satisfied. It was not that one, then, but this one now; and this one now is gone. It was not that one, then, but another and another; but another and another do not give us what we want; we are still left eager and confident till the flush of feeling dies down, and when that is gone there is nothing left. We are where we began, so far as the getting happiness goes, and we have not found ourselves, and we are not satisfied. This is common experience and it is the practical refutation of Hedonism or of the seeking happiness in pleasure. Happiness for the ordinary man neither means a pleasure nor a number of *It is an abstraction, no doubt, to consider pleasurable feelings as mere pleasures, but it is not our abstraction but the Hedonist's. It is an abstrac- tion, again, to consider feelings as merely particular. They cannot be that if they are our feelings, if they are the feelings of a self. But we can make our mere feeling self, as the self which feels mere pleasure and pain an objec* only in the series of its feelings, and these (as such a series) have no relations, each either within itself or beyond itself. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 39 pleasures. It means in general the finding of himself or the satisfaction of himself as a whole, and in particular it means the realization of his concrete ideal of life. ^'This is happiness," he says, not identifying happiness with one pleasure or a number of them, but understanding by it, "in this is become fact what I have at heart." But the Hedonist has said, Happiness is pleasure, and the Hedonist knows" that happiness is a whole," How, then, if pleasures make no system, if they are a number of perishing particulars, can the whole that is sought be found in them? It is the old question, how find the universal in mere particulars? And the answer is the old answer, In their sum. The self is to be found, happiness is to be realized, in the sum of the moments of the feeling self. The practical direction is get all pleasures and you will have got happiness; and we saw above its well- known practical issue in weariness and dissatisfaction. The theoretical reason is simple. The sum or the All of pleasures is a self-contradiction, and therefore the search for it is futile. A series which has no beginning, or, if a beginning yet no end, cannot be summed; there is no All, and yet the All is postulated, and the series is to be summed. But it cannot be summed till we are dead, and then, if we have realized it, we, I suppose, do not know it, and we are not happy; and before death we cannot have realized it, because there is always more to come, the series is always incomplete. What is the sum of pleasures and how many go to the sum? All of how many is it, and when ^ I am quite aware that with some Hedonistic writers "happiness" is not distinguished from "pleasure." They are said to be simply the same. This is an outrage on language, which avenges itself in the confusion described below, footnote, p. 60. But the argument of the text is not aflFected by it. If happiness =1 pleasure, then "get happiness" = "get pleasure." What is pleasure? It is a general name, and "get happiness" will mean "get a general name." But a general name is not a reality, and cannot be got. The reality is the particu- lar. "Get happiness" will mean then, "get some one pleasure." Is that it? No, we are to get all the happiness we can. And so, after all our quibbling, "get happiness" does mean "get the largest possible sum or collection of pleas- ures." Mr. Green, in his Introduction to Hume's Treatise (II, 7), has made this so clear that one might have hoped it could not have been misunder- stood. On the whole subject of this Essay let me recommend the student to consult him. 40 Ethical Studies are we at the end? After death or in life? Do you mean a finite number? Then more is beyond. Do you mean an infinite number? Then we never reach it; for a further pleasure is con- ceivable, and nothing is infinite which has something still left out- side of it. We must say, then, that no one ever reaches happiness. Or do you mean as much pleasure as a man can get? Then every one at every point is happy and happiness is always complete, for, by the Hedonistic theory, we all of us get as much as we can.* * I am anxious that the reader should not pass by this argument as a verbal puzzle. Beside it there is certainly much more to be said against Hedonism; but the root of Hedonism is not understood, until it is seen (1) that pleasure, as such, is an abstraction (cf. Essay VH) ; (2) that the sum of pleasures is a fiction. On this latter head I fear that I must further enlarge. "Get all you can" is a familiar phrase, and is very good sense. I say to a boy, "Go into that room and fetch out all the apples you can carry"; and there is no nonsense in that. There is a given finite sum of apples, which I do not know, but which, under all the conditions, is the maximum. This is got and brought, and the task is accomplished. Why then not say, "Get all the pleasures you can"? For these reasons, (a) Let it be granted that there is a given finite sum of pleasures for the man to get; yet he never has got it. Only death puts an end to the work; and after death nothing, or the same unfinished task, (b) There is really no such sum. A pleasure is only in the time during which I feel it. A past pleasure means either an idea, or another (secondary) impression. Itself is nothing at all; I did get it, I have not got it; and the "did get" is not the pleasure. In order to have the sum of pleasures, I must have them all now, which is impossible. Thus you cannot reach the end, and the effort to reach it is not in itself desirable. You may say, if you please. The end is an illusion, and the effort worthless in itself, but this particular effort gives a specific pleasure, which is the end. But if you do this, then you either (i) sink considerations of quantity, and the greatest happiness principle is given up; or (ii) the same problem as above breaks out with respect to the sum of specific pleasures. If you admit that to get the greatest sum in life is unmeaning, then arises the question. Can you approximate, and make approximation the end? I wiU not raise the question. Can you approximate to a confessed fiction? and to avoid that, let us say. The end is for me, at any given moment of life, to be having then the greatest possible number of units of pleasure. Here we fall into the dilemma given in the text. Either happiness is never reached, or there is no one who does not reach the most perfect happiness imaginable. (1) // happiness means the greatest possible number of units then I never reach it. Whatever I have is finite, and beyond every finite siun another unit is conceivable. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 41 The Hedonist has taken the universal in the sense of all the particulars, and in this sense, here as everywhere, since the particulars are arising and perishing, the universal has no truth nor reality. The true universal, which unconsciously he seeks, is infinite, for it is a concrete whole concluded within itself, and complete; but the false universal is infinite in the sense of a process ad indefinitum. It is a demand for, a would-be, complete- ness, with everlasting present incompleteness. It is always finite, and so never is realized. The sum is never finished; when the last pleasure is reached we stand no nearer our end than at the first. It would be so, even if the pleasures did not die; but in addition the past pleasures have died; and we stand with heart unsatisfied and hands empty, driven on and beyond forever in pursuit of a delusion, through a weary round which never advances. There remains, then, to Hedonism either the assertion that happi- ness is completed in one intense moment, or the confession that happiness is impossible, or the attempt to place it elsewhere than in the sum of pleasures. The first is the ''nullo vivere consilio." It is the giving up of (2) // happiness means having all I can get, no matter how much or how little, then, given the truth of the common Hedonistic psychology, every man at every moment has absolute happiness. This is very obvious. "Why so? comes the objection, "if Mr. A. had done otherwise he would have had more pleasure." "You mean," I answer, "// he had been Mr. B." When, in ordinary language, we say, "He did not do what he could, or what was possible," we mean, "His energy did expend itself in this direction, failed to do so in that," and we impute inability as a fault, where it is the result of previous misdirection. But the common Hedonist cannot say this, because, according to him, there is only one possible direction of expenditure, i. e., the greatest seeming pleasure. You have no choice between pleasure and something else, you can do nothing but gravitate to what seems most pleasant, and you cannot alter what seems except by your will, i. e., by gravitation to what seems most pleasant. Every one has done his conceivable utmost to approximate and therefore is absolutely happy. I think the better plan for the Hedonist would be to make happiness a fixed finite sum, which can be got, and beyond which nothing counts; and similarly to fix an unhappiness point on the scale; but we have pursued the subject far enough. The question of the approximative character of all morality wUl be dis- cussed in another place. 42 Ethical Studies any practical goal or any rule of life, and we are not called upon to consider it further. The second is inevitable if happiness is equal to the sum, or the greatest possible amount, of pleasures; for one and the other are the same unreal fiction. The end, in this sense, exists only in the head of the Hedonistic moral man. His morality is the striving to realize an idea which can never be realized, and which, if realized, would be ipso facto annihilated. He would feel it no objection to his theory nor any comfort in his sorrow if we said to him that, if happiness could be, then the tale would be made up, the end would be reached, the search would be over, and with it all morality; for his morality is noth- ing to him as an end but only as a means; and the bitterness of his lot is filled up by the thought that the means he does not care for are always with him, and the end he lusts after away from him. His morality says, get what you never can get; never rest, never be satisfied, strive beyond the present to an impossible future. The above is the proverbial experience of the voluptuary. His road to happiness is well known to be the worst, since pleasure there cannot be where there is no satisfaction; and he must end (whatever else may become of him) by giving up his earnest search for the sum of pleasures. The third alternative is not to give up pleasure as an end, but to place happiness elsewhere than in the greatest possible amount of "grateful feeling." This is what the prudent man of the world, with a love for pleasure, generally does do. We take a certain quantity of pleasure, and absence of pain, as a fair amount, which we may call happiness, because we feel we can do with it; and to get this amount we take up some way of living, which we follow, in general without thinking of pleasure. If opportunity offers for delights by the way, we take them, but without incon- veniencing ourselves, without leaving the road too far, and without thinking too much about it. It is a good rule to get more, but a rule we must not make too much of, or follow to the point of endangering our happiness, i. e., the fixed and fair amount which comes to us from our course of life. Pleasure is still ostensibly the end; but really it has ceased to be so, and, whether we know it or not, our way of living is an end Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake * 43 to our minds and not a mere means. In short, we have got in- terests and these are objects of desire not thought of as means to pleasure. We have adopted happiness in the vulgar sense and real- ly have given up Hedonism as the consistent hunt after pleasure for pleasure's sake. Yet pleasure is still nominally the end, and hence the above view of life lies open to the following objections: "You tell me that pleasure is my end; and yet you tell me not to make it my end but to make some accredited type of life my end, and take the pleasure as it comes from that. I am to make getting pleasure my aim, though only by the way and at odd times. And in this manner you assure me that, in the long run, I shall secure the greatest amount of pleasurable feeling. It seems strange to have a mark one must not look at, but I should not care for that if I were sure to hit. Yet this is what I cannot tell if I shall do. I see men die, having reaped for themselves a harvest of painful self-denial; and the pleasure they made by it was but gleanings for others, when they were in the grave. Did they attain their end? And I, since our life at any moment may cheat us, shall I put off a present certainty for the sake of a doubtful future?" The answer must be, That is true enough; there is no certainty in life, but still it is more reasonable to act on probabilities. You may die, but the chances are you will live. You had better sup- pose that it will be so, and, taking the rules for living, the moral "Nautical Almanack,"^ direct your course by them; for, if you live as long as most men, you will certainly in this way get the most pleasure. And perhaps this answer may satisfy. But a new and serious difiiculty arises. It being admitted that life is to be regulated on probabilities, the question then occurs, Who is to judge for the probabilities? The moral end is for me to get the most pleasure I can; the moral rule is, "Act on the probability of your living, and therefore live for life as a whole"; but this moral rule tells me nothing about the moral Almanack. Why is that to be to me a law? What does it rest upon? What others have done and found? Will others be responsible for me, then? Am I to act upon my own opinion, or am I to follow the Almanack even ^ J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 36. « 44 • Ethical Studies against my opinion? Is the latter course right and justifiable? Will it, so to speak, excuse me in the Hedonistic judgment-day when charged with having missed my end by misconduct, to plead that I did what others did, and that, when my own belief would have brought me right, I followed the multitude, and therefore did evil? It appears to me that, if I am to seek my pleasure, it must be left to me to judge concerning my pleasure; and, this being so, the Almanack is not a law to me. It was made to be used by me according to my private views, not to be followed against them. And herewith all moral legislation disappears. For obviously, ( 1 ) circumstances get into strange tangles which cannot be provided against; and the course laid down in the Almanack as a law may, in peculiar cases, lead to pain instead of pleasure; and here I must disregard the Almanack. And obvi- ously, (2) not outward situations only, but men's temperaments differ. What brings pleasure to one brings none to another; and so with pain. You can speak generally beforehand, but it may not apply to this or that man. And the consequence is that the Almanack and its moral rules are no authority. It is right to act according to them. It is right to act diametrically against them. In short, they are not laws at all; they are only rules, and rules, as we know, admit of and imply exceptions. As Mr. Stephen has said: "A given road may be the direct way from one place to another, but that fact is no reason for following the road when you are offered a short cut. It may be a good rule not to seek for more than 5 per cent in investments, but if it so happens that you can invest at 10 per cent with perfect safety, would not a man who refused to do so be a fool?"^ And with this, if Hedonism be taken as the seeking my private pleasure, we have come to the end of Hedonism as a practical creed. Its aim was the getting for myself a maximum surplus of pleasurable feeling, and it gave me rules which it was my duty to ® F. Stephen, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, 2nd ed., p. 363. Mr. Stephen has put this part of the case so strongly that I have not thought it worth while to enlarge upon it. Kant is very clear and successful on this point. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 45 follow. But it is not in earnest with its rules; they may hold good or they may not hold good; I may keep them or break them, whichever I think most likely to issue in pleasure in my particular case. And it is not in earnest with its end. To aim at pleasure is not to get it, and yet the getting of it is a moral duty. We must aim at it then by the way, without caring or trying too much to get it. We are not to think about the rules except as servants which may be useful or worthless, and about the end, perhaps, the less we think the better. We are to please ourselves about the rules; we are to please ourselves about the end; for end and rules are neither end nor rules. Our positive aim in life is given up; we may content ourselves, as a substitute, with the resolve to live our life as we find it, to sink useless theories, and follow the bent of our practical leanings; or, saddened at our disenchantment, may embrace the conclusion that, if pleasure can- not be found, yet pain at least can be avoided. Not only in the school, but in life around us, does the positive beginning conduct to the negative result, to the making a goal of an absence, to the placing the end in a mere negation. We have shown, in the first place, the collision between popular opinion and Hedonism as the search for pleasure ; we have shown, in the second place, the reason why the seeking of my pleasure gives no practical end in life. On both points we have dwelt, perhaps, at unnecessary length; but we have not yet done justice to the doctrine which makes virtue a means, not to my pleasure, but to the pleasure of the "whole sentient creation" — to modem Utilitarianism which may be called, I suppose, our most fashion- able moral philosophy. This we must now notice, but only so far as our subject; compels us. A more detailed examination is not called for here, and, as we think, would not repay us anywhere. The end, as before, is the greatest amount of pleasurable feeling, yet not now in me, but in the sentient world as a whole. The first thing to observe is that (as we noticed above), if happiness means this, happiness is unrealizable — it can by no possibility be reached. If the greatest happiness, in the sense of the maxi- mum of pleasure, was, as applied to the individual, a mere "idea" or rather a self-contradictory attempt at an idea, which we saw 46 Ethical Studies by its very nature could not exist as a fact, then a fortiori, I should say, the realization of a maximum of pleasure in the "whole sentient creation" (which stands, I suppose, for what particular animal organisms are now and are to be hereafter) , is nothing but a wild and impossible fiction. \ Happiness, in the sense of "as much as you can," we saw, is never and nowhere realized; or, if anyone prefers it, is realized everywhere and without any drawback. In both cases, as a something set to be gained, it has no signification. Happiness in the meaning of a maximum of pleasure can never be reached; and what is the sense of trying to reach the impossible? Hap- piness, in the meaning of always a little more and always a little less, is the stone of Sisyphus and the vessel of the Danaides — it is not heaven, but hell. Whether we try for it or not, we always have got a little more and a little less® (than we might have), and never at any time, however much we try for it, can we have a little more or a little less than we have got. But theoretical considerations of this sort are likely neither to be understood nor regarded. Our morality, we shall hear, "is a practical matter." And I should have thought it indeed a prac- tical consideration, whether our chief good be realizable or no, whether it be irpaKTov kol kttjtov avOpwirw or exist only in the heads of certain theorists. But let this pass. We can avoid, I dare say, practical inconvenience by not meaning what we say or saying what we mean. Whatever, then, we may think about the possibility of the actual existence of the end, and the satisfactoriness (or otherwise) of aiming at the impossible and unmeaning, at all events our moral law and precept is clear. Increase the pleasure, i. e., multiply in number, and intensify in quality, the pleasurable feelings of sentient beings, and do the opposite by their pains. We have already noticed, but it may not be amiss to call si ® To define happiness as "increase in pleasure," or "the having more than we had," would not extricate us from our diflBculties, For then no stationary state could be happy at all, and no man would be happier than another save in respect of being in more intense transition. The actual amount of pleasure would go for nothing. But it is not worth while to develop the absurdities consequent on such a possible definition. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 47 attention once more to the fact that a doctrine of this sort is directly opposed to popular morality. If, by being changed into pigs, we secured an absolute certainty of a greater amount of pleasure with a less amount of pain, we (I speak for the ordinary person) should decline the change, either for ourselves or the race, and should think it our duty to do so. But, if we believe that the greatest amount of pleasure is the end, it would be our duty to strive after and accept such a change. And some such choice is not a mere theoretical possibility. Unless Fourier be much be- lied, his scheme of "phalansteries" was a practical proposal to seek for pleasure as the end, and all else as means. The ordinary moral man refuses to discuss such a proposal. He repudiates the end, and the means with it. But the "greatest amount of pleasure'^ doctrine must accept the end and calmly discuss the means; and this is not the moral point of view. It is surely imaginable (I do not say it is likely), that we might have to say to a large and im- moral majority, "If I wanted to make you happy, which I do not, I should do so by pampering your vices, which I will not."'° So much for the morality of the theory. Let us now consider its practicability and consistency. The end, as the pleasure of all, is, like my pleasure, not something which I can apprehend and carry out in my life. It is not a system, not a concrete whole. There are no means included in it; there are none which, in them- selves, belong to the end. Wanting to know what I am to do, "Increase the pleasure of all" gives me, by itself, no answer. "But there is no need that it should," will be the reply. The experience of mankind has discovered the means which tend to increase plea- sure; these are laid down in the moral Almanack (Mill, p. 36), and they may fairly be considered as included in the end. Here I think that Hedonism does not see a most serious dif- ficulty. It is the old question. What is the nature of the authority of the Almanack, and are its rules laws? If they are laws, on what do they rest? If they are not, are there any other moral laws; and without laws can you have morality? Let me explain the objection. You cannot, I object to the Hedonist, make these laws part of the end, and identify them therewith; for the ^° F. Stephen, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, p. 287. «^ 48 Ethical Studies end was clearly laid down as pleasurable feeling and there is no essential connection between that end and the laws as means. If the laws or rules are not feelings (and they are not), they must be mere means to feeling. The relation of the two, of the end and the means, is external. You cannot, from the conception of the end as such, conclude in any way to the rules as such. This seems to me quite clear; and, if it is so, then you can in your mind put the end on one side and the rules on the other, and contemplate the possibility of going to the end without these particular means. You may say you do not care for possibiHties ; experience shows the connection of means and end, and that is enough. This point I wish especially to emphasize: such an observed connection is not sufficient; or it is sufficient only if we are prepared to make one of the two following assumptions. The first is that the general opinion of mankind, which we suppose to exist and be embodied in these rules, is infallible; that it takes the only way, or the best way, to the given end; and also that 1 have no excuse for thinking otherwise. The second is that, whether I think the rules the best means to the end or not, I have in any case to sink my own view as to the right means to the given end, and take the rules as something which is not to be departed from. One of these two supposable assumptions is necessary. (1) Now with respect to the first, I see no ground upon which the Hedonist, were he so disposed, could maintain and justify such a strong asssertion of the o irdaL So/cet. Why am I bound to consider these laws infallible, in such a sense that any departure from them, in any case, must contribute less to the given end than a corresponding observance? And how to me is such a truth (if it be a truth) not to be an open question? How is my doubt or my denial of the truth to be ipso facto immorality? An example will help us. Let us take the precept. Do not commit adultery. How are we to prove that no possible adultery can in- crease the overplus of pleasurable feeling? How are we to show that a man's honest and probable view to the contrary is an immoral view? And, if we cannot show these things, what becomes of this first supposable assumption? (2) Then, if mankind may err, if the right of private judgment Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 49 is not to be suppressed, if the supposed general experience is not infallible, how can it be moral for me always to follow it even in the teeth of my own judgment? I may be perfectly aware that acting on rules is, speaking generally, the way to reach the end. I may even admit that the departure from rules in most cases has produced, and must produce, an effect detrimental to the end. I might, if I pleased, for argument's sake admit (though it would be contrary to fact, and no one could ask for such an admission) that every previous departure from rules has been a failure, and has decreased the surplus. But now the matter stands thus: I have taken all pains to form an opinion, and I am quite certain that my case is an exception. I have no doubt whatever that in this instance the breaking of a rule will increase the surplus. To say that I am a fool does not touch the question; to say that I must be mistaken does not touch the question; to say that I ought not to think as I do, or ought not to act accordingly, begs the question. The moral end is clear; I, after having thought over all considerations up to my lights, am clear as to the means. What right have you, what right has the world to tell me to hold my hand, to make your un- certain opinion the standard rather than the certain end? How shall I answer for it to my own conscience^^ if I do? What is this rule that is to come between me and my moral duty? Let us repeat our illustration. The rule says. Do not commit adultery. I wish to commit adultery. I am sure I do not want to please myself at all, in fact rather the contrary. I am as positive as I can be of anything, that the case is either not contemplated by the rule, or, if it is, that the rule is wrong, that the proposed act must diminish the sum of the pain, and must increase the sum of the pleasure of the sentient world as a whole, and this too after all consequences that I can reckon (and I can reckon no more) have been counted in. Is it immoral then to break the rule; or rather is it not immoral to keep it, to sacrifice a real good to a mere idea? My conscience is clear; and my dreams will not be broken by "the groans of an abstraction.'"* ^^ "And to my God," I might add, against those who drag the Deity into the question. ^' J, S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, I, 21. 50 Ethical Studies Now, if it be answered here that, on any theory of morals, collisions must arise — that I fully admit to be true: and again, that on any theory collisions of this kind must arise (i.e., not the conflict of moral ends, but the conflict of diverse reflective calculations as to the means to a given moral end) — that (though I absolutely deny it) I will admit for argument's sake, and argu- ment's sake alone. But (1) it belongs to the essence of Hedon- ism to provoke such collisions, and to justify the raising of casuistical questions on well-nigh every point of conduct, and this not merely theoretically, but with a view to one's own imme- diate practice. The reason is simple, and we have stated it already. The end for Hedonism has no means which belong to it and are inseparable from it. The means are external and so long as you get the end the means are immaterial. The relation of the means to the end is matter of opinion, and it can- not be more than matter of opinion. The opinion of any number of persons is still only an opinion. The end I am certain of. As to the means, I have nothing but the opinion of myself and others. The last appeal is to my private judgment. Now my private judgment may assure me that in 999 cases out of 1000 it contributes more to the end that I should not exercise my private judgment. It may assure me that, being what I am, it will con- tribute to the surplus if I never use my private judgment. But it need not so assure me. It may assure me that in the thousandth case I had better use my private judgment. And it may go a great deal further than this. The question is not. Do I and others act as a rule from habit, and according to general opinion? for that is a mere question of fact. The question is one of morals: ought my private judgment ever to come into collision with general opinion, as in fact it sometimes does and must? If not, why not? If it may, then ought I in such cases ever to follow it? and, if not, why not? If I may follow it in my own case once, why not twice? If here, why not there? And if anybody is ever to use their private judgment on any moral point, why may not I be the man, and this the case where I may? To put the whole matter in two words — the precepts of Hedonism are only rules, and rules may always have exceptions. They are not, and, so far Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 51 as I see, they cannot be made to be laws. I am not their servant but they are mine. And, so far as my lights go, this is to make possible, to justify, and even to encourage, an incessant practical casuistry; and that, it need scarcely be added, is the death of morality. Before I proceed, however, let me entreat the reader to remember that the question. Are Utilitarians immoral? is one question, and the question, Is their theory immoral? altogether another and the only one which we are concerned with. And (2), if it were true that no other moral theory was in a happier plight, what are we to say but "so much the worse for all moral theories," and not "so much the better for Hedonism." The moral consciousness is the touchstone of moral theories, and that moral consciousness, I appeal to it in every man, has laws which are a great deal more than rules. To that consciousness "Do not commit adultery" is a law to be obeyed; it is not the prescription of a more or less questionable policy. It is not a means, which in the opinion of A, B, and C will or may conduce to an end other than itself, and in the opinion of D may or wiU not do so. Let the Hedonist refute thrice or four times over, if he pleases, his rival theories; but he does not thereby establish his own, and is no nearer doing so than before. To proceed — the conclusion we have reached is that, supposing it to be certain that the end is the maximum surplus of pleasure in the sentient world, that end gives no standard for morality. The end is in itself most abstract and impalpable. The means are external and in themselves immaterial to the end; and the fixing the relation of means to end must always be matter of opinion; in the last resort it is, and (what is most important) it ought to be, matter of my private opinion. As it turned out before, so here also the rules are not laws; I can please myself about them; and a standard which is no standard, a law which is no law, but which I may break or keep, which is at the mercy of changing judgment and fleeting opinion, is no practical basis for me to regulate my life by.^' ^' To bring the matter home to the reader, I will produce an example or two of cases where Hedonism gives no guidance. If in certain South Sea Islands the people have not what we call "morality," but are very happy, is r^ 52 Ethical Studies The Utilitarian, I am perfectly aware, does not wish me to keep A the end continually before me, but rather to have my eye on the accredited means. The question is not, however, what the Utili- tarian wishes, but what his theory justifies and demands. One of the most serious objections to Hedonism is that, as we have seen, it is not in earnest with its own conclusions. It is no argument in favor of a theory, it is surely rather an argument against it, that it cannot teach the legitimate consequences of its principles. The greatest amount of pleasure then, if we take it for our end, we have found to be unrealizable, to be non- or im-moral, and it moral or immoral to attempt to turn them from their ways? If by an im- moral act, which probably will not be discovered, I can defeat a stroke of pernicious policy on a large scale, what am I to do? Is prostitution a good or a bad thing? To prove that it is bad we must prove that it diminishes the surplus of pleasant sensations, and is not this a fair subject for argument? Do I or do I not add to the surplus of "grateful feeling" by a given act or acts of sexual irregularity? This is a serious practical question, and I know that in many cases it is honestly answered in the affirmative; and in some of these cases, so far as such impalpable questions can be judged of, I should say the affirmation was correct. Is suicide ever allowable, and if so, when? and when not? Is murder, and if not, why not? and so on with all the crimes in the decalog and out of it. If any given act is to be shown immoral you must, if called on, exhibit the probability of its producing more pain than pleasure in the world, and is not this again and again a hopeless problem? Of course the Hedonist does not want the question raised. Of course he wants people to go by rules always, and that no one should ask any questions, except it be himself. That we quite understand. The point is, if I choose to raise such questions, on what ground can he say I may not? On what ground can he refuse to discuss the case? On what ground can he blame me if I take and act on a view which is other than his view? "The beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many subjects .... I admit, or rather earnestly maintain" (Mill, Vtil., p. 34). From the author of the Essay on Liberty this should mean a good deal. If the philosopher may make new rules, I suppose he may modify old ones. And who is "the philosopher"? Are we (as proposed for the franchise) to have an examina- tion, passing in which shall entitle a man to try "experiments in living"? Or shaU we leave it to private judgment? Then I should like to know in these days of "advanced thinking" who would not be a "philosopher," and how many would be left in the "multitude." Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 53 lastly in practice to be an unworkable doctrine. All this time we have taken the end for granted. But now we are to ask, What ground is there for taking the pleasure of the sentient creation as the moral end? What possible reason is there why I should look on this as that for which everything else must be given up, even my own pleasure and my own life? And here I think Hedonism is altogether helpless. The consistent, and the only consistent position, is to say that I desire my own pleasure, that the pleasure of others is in many ways conducive to my own, and that desiring the end I must desire the means also. But this is a return to the doctrine we discussed above, viz., that my pleasure is the end; and to accept this doctrine is to leave the standpoint of modem Utilitarianism, and to say. Its end is not an end; it is or it may be a mere means. The Hedonist in his distress may turn himself in various directions. (1) He may say, "The end is not provable because too good to be provable. It is self-evident, and nothing else is more certain." But having noticed already that the moral consciousness repu- diates the claim of his end to be the chief good, and it being clear that selfishtiess often in its practice, and sometimes in its theory, rejects its claim to be anything more than a means, I think we need not trouble ourselves with its pretense to self -evidence ; more especially as, according to the psychology of the ordinary Hedon- ist, to desire the end as such is a psychological impossibility. (2) The next resource is the Deus ex machina. Not only on a certain stage, but also with certain theorists the maxim seems to hold good, "When in trouble bring in the Deity." God, we shall be told, wills the greatest amount of pleasure of the whole sentient creation, and therefore we ought to do so likewise. Now, even if I were capable of it, I am not disposed to enter into the speculative theology of our "inductive" moralists; I will say to them merely, Lasst unsern Herrgott aus dem Spass, and go on. (3) But now I have to meet no less an antagonist than Mr. Mill himself; and he has proved that the Utilitarian end is desirable. Let us hear him: "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable O 54 Ethical Studies except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good; that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons" {UtiL, p. 52) Whether our "great modern logician" thought that by this he had proved that the happiness of all was desirable for each, I will not undertake to say. He either meant to prove this, or has proved what he started with, viz., that each desires his own pleasure. And yet there is a certain plausibility about it. If many pigs are fed at one trough, each desires his own food, and somehow as a consequence does seem to desire the food of all; and by parity of reasoning it should follow that each pig, desiring his own pleasure, desires also the pleasure of all. But as this scarcely seems con- formable to experience, I suppose there must be something wrong with the argument, and so likewise with the argument of our philosopher.^* The End as the pleasure of all is, starting from the theories of our Utilitarian moralists, not only unprovable but impossible. If my self is something which exists by itself and independent of other selves, if all that I desire and can desire is my pleasure, and if that pleasure is an isolated feeling of this particular self, then the sole desirable is a state or states of my own feeling, arid in the second place whatever is a means to that. To desire an object which is not the idea of my pleasure is psychologically im- possible, and no torturing and twisting of phrases will make a con- nection from such an idea to any such object. And such an object is the idea of the pleasure of others considered not as conducing to mine. I may happen to desire the pleasure of others, and I may happen not to do so. To tell me the pleasure of others is desirable for me is to tell me you think it will conduce to my own; to tell ^* Either Mill meant to argue, "Because everybody desires his own pleasure, therefore everybody desires his own pleasure" ; or, "Because everybody desires his own pleasure, therefore everybody desires the pleasure of everybody else." Disciples may take their choice. To us it matters not which interpretation be correct. In the one case Mill has proved his point by a pitiable sophism; in the other he has not proved any point at all. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 55 me I ought to desire it either says that again, or it is nonsense. Ought is the feeling of obligation, and "when the feeling ceases the obligation ceases." The Utilitarian believes on psychological grounds that pleasure is the sole desirable; he believes on the strength of his natural and moral instincts that he must live for others; he puts the two together, and concludes that the pleasure of others is what he has to live for. This is not a good theoretical deduction,^" but it is the generation of the Utilitarian monster, and of that we must say that its heart is in the right place but the brain is wanting. Its heart, its "natural sentiment," does tell it that its substance is one with the substance of its fellows; that in itself and by itself it is not itself at all, and has no validity except as a violent and futile attempt at abstraction. And yet if we deny that a universal can be more than "an idea," if we are sure that the merely in- dividual and the real are one and the same, and in particular that the self is exclusive of other selves, and is in this sense a mere individual; and if further, for morality at all events, we cannot ^^ It is monstrous to argue thus: "Because (1) on psychological grounds it is certain that we can desire nothing but our own private pleasure; because (2) on some other grounds something else (whatever it may be), something not my feeling of pleasure, something other than my private self, is desired and desirable; therefore (3) this something else which is desired and desir- able is the pleasure of others, since by (1), only pleasure can be desired." If we argue in this way, we may well go a little further to "(4) and therefore we can and do desire something not our ovm private pleasure, and therefore (1) is false, and therefore the whole argument disappears since it is upon (1) that the whole rests." I am ashamed to have to examine such reasoning but it is necessary to do so since it is common enough. Is it not palpable at first sight that (1) and (2) are absolutely incompatible, that each contradicts the other flatly? You must choose between them, and, whichever you choose, the proof of Utili- tarianism goes, because that springs from the unnatural conjunction of both. The only escape that I can see is to say in (2) that something is desirable though not desired, and write "not desired but desirable" for "desired and desirable." But not only is this perhaps altogether unmeaning, but also the conclusion now disappears; you can get nothing from the premises. Because A is desired and B is desirable, it does not follow, I suppose, that a hash of A and B is desired and desirable. 56 Ethical Studies do without something that is universal, something which is wider and stronger than this or that self — then here, as in all other spheres, we are face to face with the problem, How out of mere individuals (particulars), which are fixed as such, can you get a universal? And the problem put in this way is insoluble. The self can desire in the end, as we too think, nothing but itself, and if the self it is to realize is an atom, a unit which repels other units, and can have nothing in itself but what is exclusively its, its feeling, its pleasure and pain — then it is certain that it can stand to others, with their pleasures and pains, only in an external relation; and since it is the end, the others must be the means, and nothing but the means. On such a basis morality is impos- sible; and yet morality does exist. But if the head could follow the heart, not with a wretched compromise but altogether; if the self to be realized is not exclusive of other selves, but on the contrary is determined, characterized, made what it is by relation to others; if my self which I aim at is the realization in me of a moral world which is a system of selves, an organism in which I am a member, and in whose life I live — then I cannot aim at my own well-being without aiming at that of others. The others are not mere means to me, but are involved in my essence; and this essence of myself, which is not only mine but embraces and stands above both me and this man and the other man, is superior to and gives a law to us all, in a higher sense than the organism as a whole gives a law to the members. And this concrete and real universal makes the morality, which does exist, possible in theory as well as real in fact. It is this which modern Utilitarianism is blindly groping after, but it will not find it till it gives up the Hedonism of its end and the basis of its psychology which stands upon uncriticized, violent, and unreal metaphysical ab- stractions. So much in passing, and here we might well end. We have dwelt too long on the efforts of Hedonism to compromise with morality, but we are forced to notice one last attempt. This con- sists in distinguishing pleasures, according to their quality,^' into ^' There is a point which might be raised here, and which is of considerable importance. It is this. Are pleasures, as pleasures, distinguishable by any- thing else than quantity? The pleasure, as such, is not the whole pleasant Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 57 higher and lower. The former are superior, the latter are inferior ; and hence, in preferring the higher pleasures, we are true to Hedonism and yet are at one with the moral consciousness. We must briefly examine this doctrine. It has two forms. One of these takes quality simply as quality; the other takes quality in relation to quantity, and looks on it as the index or result of quantity. The latter, we shall find, keeps true to the principle of the greatest surplus of pleasure, but it says nothing new. The former leaves the principle unawares and moves unknowingly to other ground, but can get no standing- place for morality. Let us first discuss the latter; but, before we begin, we must call attention to the phrases "higher" and "lower." Higher and lower (forgive me, dear reader) are "relative" — they are comparatives and they hence mean more or less of some- thing. Higher means nearer some top, or it means nothing. Lower means nearer some bottom, or it means nothing. This being established, when we talk of "higher" and "lower" pleasure, we ought to know what our top and our bottom are, or else we risk talking nonf-^nse. Next let me observe (and forgive me, if you can, reader) that top and bottom, as a rule, are "relative," and depend on the way in which you look at the matter. H the top is the "end," you may put the end anywhere — benevolence is (morally) higher than feeling, not the whole of what is felt. Then we have to ask, Does this "what is felt," which qualifies the pleasure, and makes it of one sort and not of another, make part of the mere pleasure itself, as pleasure? Or have we to say. Pleasure is itself always one and the same, and diflFers only in degree; sorts of pleasures are degrees of the same pleasure in reference to sorts of other feelings, which, as such, are not pleasures as such? Or more briefly. Has pleasure any content in itself? If not, then it has no qualitative dis- tinctness in itself, but only by its reference to that which it goes with. Is not pleasure, as such, the abstraction of one element of a whole psychical state from that state; and when so abstracted, are there differences of kind in it, or only of degree? Not wishing to give a positive opinion on this point, I have not introduced it into the text as affecting the argument. But the thoughtful reader will at once perceive its bearing. Hedonism, when it ceases to aim at pleasure as such and nothing but pleasure, is false to its principle and becomes incoherent. But if pleasure, as such, is not qualita- tively distinguishable, then we must have regard to nothing but quantity. 58 Ethical Studies selfishness, murder is higher (as a crime) than larceny. You may speak of the height of goodness, badness, pleasure, pain, beauty, and ugliness. And so, when a man talks to us of "higher" and "lower," he says nothing to us at all till we know what end or summit he has in his mind. Again, higher and lower, as comparative terms, refer to degree. What is higher has a greater degree (or it has a greater number of degrees) of something definite; what is lower has a less degree or number of degrees. Their quality, as higher and lower, is re- ferable to quantity.^^ So that apart from quantity, apart from de- gree, there is no comparison, no estimation, no higher and lower at all. The result of these perhaps trivial considerations is that if we are confined to mere quality, the words higher and lower have no meaning. If of two pleasures I cannot say one is higher than the other in degree (as intenser), or as the result or producer of degree (as accompaniment of higher function, or as connected with approximation to some end), then the words higher and lower cannot be applied to them. The sphere of mere quality is the world of immediate perception ; and here we may say A or we may say B, but we cannot make comparisons between A and B without leaving our sphere. I may take this and not that, I may choose that and not the other, but if, because of this and on the mere strength of this I call one higher and one lower, I am not simply arbitrary and perhaps wrong in my opinion, but I am talking sheer and absolute nonsense. To proceed then with one of our two views, (1) the theory which takes quality either as = intensive quantity, or as a means to quantity in general. The "higher pleasure" is here the pleasure which contains in itself most degrees of pleasure, or which con- tributes on the whole to the existence of a larger number of de- grees of pleasure. Here the principle of the greatest amount of ^'' Speaking roughly and inaccurately, we may say they are of this quality, as containing more or fewer degrees of somewhat, or as the result of more or fewer degrees, or (what comes to the same thing) as producing a qualitative result which is referred to more or fewer degrees; e.g., a certain warmth is higher because containing more degrees of objective heat; a piece of work is Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 59 pleasure is adhered to; that is the top, and what approaches to it or contributes to it is nearer the top. But since the moral "higher" is here, as we see, the more pleasurable or the means to the more pleasurable, we come in the end to the amount, the quantity of pleasure without distinction of kind or quality; and having al- ready seen that such an end is not a moral end, we get nothing from the phrases "higher" and "lower" unless it be confusion. (2) The second view is that which distinguishes pleasures by their mere quality. The "higher" pleasure here is not the more intense pleasure; it is not the pleasure connected with the maximum of pleasure on the whole without distinction of kind. It is the preferable kind of pleasure (Mill, UtiL, p. 12). The first point to be noticed is that our theory gives up and abandons the greatest amount of pleasure principle. If you are to prefer a higher pleasure to a lower without reference to quantity — then there is an end altogether of the principle which puts the measure in the surplus of pleasure to the whole sentient creation. It is no use saying all pleasures are ends, only some are more ends. It is no use talking of "estimation" and "comparison" (Mill, pp. 12, 17). You have no standard to estimate by, no measure to make comparisons with. Given a certain small quantity of higher pleasure in collision with a certain large quantity of lower, how can you decide between them? To work the sum you must reduce the data to the same denomination. You must go to quantity or nothing; you decline to go to quantity and hence you cannot get any result. But if you refuse to work the sum, you abandon the greatest amount of pleasure principle. There is no harm in doing that; but what else have we to go to? The higher pleasures? And what are the higher pleasures? We find higher pleasure means nothing but the pleasure which those who have experienced both it and others do as a fact choose in preference. Higher then, as we saw above, has no meaning at all unless we go to something outside pleasure, for we may not go to quantity of pleasure. But, if we go outside pleasure, not only higher if it is the result of more skill; and A's skill stands higher than B's, if A produces a result which B cannot produce, and if the result must be referred to the amount of skill in the performer. 60 Ethical Studies have we given up the greatest amount theory but we have thrown over Hedonism altogether/* Let us drop the word higher then, as we must. The end is pleasures in order, as they are preferred by men who know them. The objection which at once arises (p. 14) is, Is there not any difference of opinion? Do not different men, and does not even the same man at different times, prefer different pleasures? What is the answer? It is not very intelligible, and is too long to quote (pp. 14, 15). What it comes to would appear, however, to be either Yes or No. Let us consider these alternatives one at a time. (1) If we say "Yes, not only do different men prefer different pleasures but so does the same man at different times," then what basis have we left for a moral system? Merely this. Most men at most times do prefer one sort of pleasure to another; and from this we have to show that I ought to prefer one sort of pleasure to others at all times. We need not ask how the transition is to be made from what most men do to what I am to do. I think it can be made on no view of human nature, and I am quite sure it can- not be made on Mill's view. Supposing then that in Mill's mouth moral obligation had a meaning, yet there is no reason why it should attach itself to the average pleasures of the average man. (2) And if we say No, if having accepted the Platonic doctrine that the judge of pleasures is he who knows them all, we go further and assert with Socrates that no man is willingly evil, that you cannot prefer bad to good, that, if you take the bad, it is because you never have known or now do not know the good, we ^® Mill is unaware that he has done so because of the various senses in which he uses the word happiness. Happiness is (pp. 8, 10) simply identified with pleasure. Then (13, 14) appears the doctrine that happiness may exist without contentment, and (I suppose) contentment without happiness. We hear (13) that the "sense of dignity" is "part" of happiness, and (19) we see happiness means a desirable kind of life. It is a "concrete whole*' with "parts" (55). It has "ingredients" (53) and appears to be a mere "aggre- gate" or "collective something." Instead of pleasure it has plainly come to mean something like the life we prefer, and hence greatest happiness will stand for the widest and intensest realization of such an ideal. This is to leave Hedonism altogether. [My references throughout are to Utilitarianism, 1st ed., the only one I have at hand.] Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 61 then I think are in good company, but in no better case. For an opponent will hold to the fact that he does knowingly prefer what is called bad to good, and will hence, by our argument, conclude first that bad is really good, and next that nothing can be either good or bad, since bad to one man is good to another. And if we, on the other hand, persist that the fact is impossible (I do not know how we are to prove it so), and that no one ever did or could choose what we call bad, when he had in his mind what we call good, then we identify immorality with ignorance and moral obligation disappears. For every man not only does, but must do, the best on every occasion so far as he knows it; his knowl- edge is an accident which has nothing to do with his will; he must act up to the ought, so far as he has an ought, and he cannot do what he thinks is wrong. To proceed — the basis of our moral theory is now. There is a scale of pleasures; some persons know all, and others only some; but you necessarily choose the pleasures you know according to the scale. I, e. g., know the alphabet of pleasures, always or some- times, up to M. "Immoral man to choose M when you should have chosen P or R or even X." But I do not know what they are. "And therefore you are immoral for I and a good many other people do." But let us drop the matter here; on such a theory, the reader will assent, moral obligation is unmeaning.^* ^® At the risk of hypercriticism I will make one or two further remarks on Mill's view. According to it, pleasures must stand in a kind of order of merit, represented, let us say, by the letters of the alphabet. All pleasures, because pleasures, are good in themselves. A pleasure is immoral only when taken where a higher was possible, now or as a consequence. Then every pleasure is moral because it has a supposable pleasure below it; every pleasure is immoral because there is always a supposable pleasure above it. No man is moral because his knowledge is limited and he therefore cannot always take the highest conceivable pleasure; but if so, then all men are equally moral for they all take the highest pleasure they know. Or, passing by this, let us suppose the pleasures divided into two classes — higher and lower. If the lower are to be considered at all, then, as we have said, in the event of a collision the problem is insoluble because what is not of the same denomination cannot be compared. Let us suppose then that the lower are not to be considered and we are left with the higher. Here the same prob- lem breaks out. For these pleasures are no system; if you make the idea 62 Ethical Studies On either supposition, then, these preferable pleasures found no "ought" in the moral sense — you have them or you have them not, you like them or you do not like them, you know them or you do not know them, and there is an end of it. If A, B, and C call D immoral, D may return the epithet, and if he likes to say "ignorance is morality" or to make any other assertion whatever, he can do it, as it appears to me, on precisely the same ground as A, B, and G have for their assertions, viz., no ground at all but likes and dislikes. And here I think we might leave the matter; but, having gone so far, we may as well go a little further. Not only has moral obligation nothing in Mr. Mill's theory to which it can attach itself save the likes or dislikes of one or more individuals, but in the end it is itself nothing more than a similar feeling. "The ultimate sanction of all morality" is "a subjective feeling in our minds" (p. 41), and the "moral faculty" is "susceptible by a sufficient use of the external sanctions, and of the force of early impressions of being cultivated in almost any direction; so of a system your end, and regulate the pleasures by that, you have deserted Hedonism, The pleasures are no system and they are not all of equal value. Hence, as above, they cannot be calculated quantitatively. In the event of collisions then (such as must take place) between e.g. the pleasures of philosophy, pleasures of natural science, pleasures of virtue, pleasures of love, pleasures of the table, pleasures of the "theopathic affections," pleasures of fine art, pleasures of history, etc., you have again a problem which cannot be solved except by the caprice of the individual who will prefer for himself and others what he likes best. Another point of interest is that the theory which begins with the most intense democracy, wide enough to take in all life that feels pleasure and pain, ends in a no less intense Platonic aristocracy. The higher pleasure is to be preferred to any amount of the lower, and I suppose is to constitute the moral standard. But clearly the beasts are incapable of refined pleasures; the vulgar are better, but still very low; the only man who knows the highest pleasure is the philosopher. He is moral, the universe below is immoral in increasing degree. And, since no amount of lower can weigh against higher, and, since the highest pleasures (and only the philosopher can judge what they are, for only he knows all) are realizable only in the few, therefore we must live for the few, and not for the many. And I suppose the same argument might be used by the artist, or well-nigh anyone else. But it is not worth while to pursue the matter further. Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake 63 that there is hardly anything so absurd or so mischievous that it may not, by means of these influences, be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience" (p. 44) . The feeling of obligation then, we see, does not refer itself essentially to anything in particular. And further, "this sanction has no binding efficacy on those who do not possess the feelings it appeals to" (p. 42). "The sanction, so far as it is disinterested, is always in the mind itself, and the notion, therefore, of the transcendental moralists must be that this sanction will not exist in the mind, unless it is believed to have its roots out of the mind, and that, if a person is able to say to himself. This which is restraining me and which is called my conscience is only a feeling in my own mind, he may possibly draw the conclusion that when the feeling ceases the obligation ceases, and that, if he find the feeling inconvenient, he may disregard it and endeavor to get rid of it" (pp. 42, 43). This is a serious matter and I should say that any theory which maintains that a man may get rid of his sense of moral obligation if he can, and that, if he does so, the moral obligation is gone, is as grossly immoral a theory as ever was published. Does Mr. Mill repudiate the doctrine? Not at all; he evidently accepts it, though he prefers not to say so. The passage goes on : "But is this danger confined to the Utilitarian morality?" etc. Now I am ashamed of repeating it so often but I must entreat the reader not to have dust thrown in his eyes in this way, and not to be distracted by "transcendental moralis" or any other bugbears. The question is. Is theory A true, or are we obliged to say that either theory A is false or the facts are a lie? The question is not. Have theories B and C the same fault as A? When we have done with A we will then, if we choose, go to B and C; and if they turn out all false that does not prove one true. These pleader's devices are in place in a law court, but philosophy does not recognize them. If then all that the moral "ought" means is that I happen to have a feeling which I need not have, and that this feeling attaches itself now to one set of pleasures and now to another set according to accident or my liking, would it not be better alto- gether to have done with the word, and, as some have done, openly to reject it and give it up since already we have given up 64 Ethical Studies all that it stands for? But if we give up the word then we have confessed that, as a theory of morals, Hedonism is bankrupt and we left with nothing but our "natural sentiment." Hedonism is bankrupt. With weariness we have pursued it, so far as was necessary, through its various shapes — from the selfish doctrine of the individual to the self-sacrificing spirit of modern Utilitarianism. We have seen that in every form it gives an end which is illusory and impalpable. We have seen that its efforts to compromise with the moral consciousness are useless; that in no shape will it give us a creed that holds water, and that will justify to the inquiring mind those moral beliefs which it is not prepared for the sake of any theory to relinquish. Whatever we may think of those who embrace the doctrine, whatever may be its practical results, yet, theoretically considered, we have seen, I trust, that it is immoral and false, and are ready to endorse the saying, 'H8ov^ TcAos, 7r6pvT]p6vLfiop6vLixoi, persons with a will to do right, and not full of reflections and theories. If they fail you, you must judge for yourself, but practically they seldom do fail you. Their private peculiarities neutralize each other, and the result is an intuition which does not belong merely to this or that man or collection of men. "Conscience" is the antipodes of this. It wants you to have no law but yourself, and to be better than the world. But this tells you that, if you could be as good as your '^ One of these would be as to how progress in morality is made. "I may remark on this (after Erdmann, and I suppose Plato) that col- lisions of duties are avoided mostly by each man keeping to his own immediate duties, and not trying to see from the point of view of other stations than his own. 134 Ethical Studies world, you would be better than most likely you are, and that to wish to be better than the world is to be already on the threshold of immorality. This perhaps "is a hard saying," but it is least hard to those who know life best; it is intolerable to those mainly who, from inex- perience or preconceived theories, cannot see the world as it is. Explained it may be by saying that enthusiasm for good dies away — the ideal fades: Dem Herrlichsten, was auch der Geist empfangen, Drangt immer f remd und f remder Stoff sich an ; but better perhaps if we say that those who have seen most of the world (not one side of it) — old people of no one-sided profession nor of immoral life — know most also how much good there is in it. They are tolerant of new theories and youthful opinions that everything would be better upside down because they know that this also is as it should be, and that the world gets good even from these. They are intolerant only of those who are old enough, and should be wise enough, to know better than that they know better than the world; for in such people they cannot help seeing the self-conceit which is pardonable only in youth. Let us be clear. What is that wish to be better, and to make the world better, which is on the threshold of immorality? What is the "world" in this sense? It is the morality already existing ready to hand in laws, institutions, social usages, moral opinions and feelings. This is the element in which the young are brought up. It has given moral content to themselves and it is the only source of such content. It is not wrong, it is a duty, to take the best that there is, and to live up to the best. It is not wrong, it is a duty, standing on the basis of the existing, and in harmony with its general spirit, to try and make not only oneself but also the world better, or rather, and in preference, one's own world better. But it is another thing, starting from oneself, from ideals in one's head, to set oneself and them against the moral world. The moral world with its social institutions, etc., is a fact; it is real: our "ideals" are not real. "But we will make them real." My Station And Its Duties 135 We should consider what we are, and what the world is. We should learn to see the great moral fact in the world, and to reflect on the likelihood of our private "ideal" being anything more than an abstraction, which, because an abstraction, is all the better fitted for our heads, and all the worse fitted for actual existence. We should consider whether the encouraging oneself in having opinions of one's own, in the sense of thinking differently from the world on moral subjects, be not, in any person other than a heaven-born prophet, sheer self-conceit. And though the disease may spend itself in the harmless and even entertaining sillinesses by which we are advised to assert our social "individuality," yet still the having theories of one's own in the face of the world is not far from having practice in the same direction; and if the latter is (as it often must be) immorality, the former has certainly but stopped at the threshold. But the moral organism is strong against both. The person anxious to throw off the yoke of custom and develop his "indi- viduality" in startling directions, passes as a rule into the common Philistine, and learns that Philistinism is after all a good thing. And the licentious young man, anxious for pleasure at any price, who, without troubling himself about "principles," does put into practice the principles of the former person, finds after all that the self within him can be satisfied only with that from whence it came. And some fine morning the dream is gone, the enchanted bower is a hideous phantasm, and the despised and common reality has become the ideal. We have thus seen the community to be the real moral idea, to be stronger than the theories and the practice of its members against it, and to give us self-realization. And this is indeed limitation; it bids us say farewell to visions of superhuman morality, to ideal societies, and to practical "ideals" generally. But perhaps the unlimited is not the perfect nor the true ideal. And, leaving "ideals" out of sight, it is quite clear that if any- body wants to realize himself as a perfect man without trying to be a perfect member of his country and all his smaller com- munities, he makes what all sane persons would admit to be a great mistake. There is no more fatal enemy than theories 136 Ethical Studies which are not also facts; and when people inveigh against the vulgar antithesis of the two, they themselves should accept their own doctrine, and give up the harboring of theories of what should be and is not. Until they do that, the vulgar are in the right; for a theory of that which (only) is to be, is a theory of that which in fact is not, and that I suppose is only a theory. There is nothing better than my station and its duties, nor any- thing higher or more truly beautiful. It holds and will hold its own against the worship of the "individual," whatever form that may take. It is strong against frantic theories and vehement passions, and in the end it triumphs over the fact and can smile at the literature, even of sentimentalism, however fulsome in its impulsive setting out, or sour in its disappointed end. It laughs at its frenzied apotheosis of the yet unsatisfied passion it calls love ; and at that embitterment too which has lost its illusions, and yet cannot let them go — with its kindness for the genius too clever in general to do anything in particular, and its adoration of star- gazing virgins with souls above their spheres, whose wish to be something in the world takes the form of wanting to do something with it, and who in the end do badly what they might have done in the beginning well; and, worse than all, its cynical contempt for what deserves only pity, sacrifice of a life for work to the best of one's lights, a sacrifice despised not simply because it has failed, but because it is stupid, and uninteresting, and altogether unsentimental. And all these books (ah! how many) it puts into the one scale, and with them the writers of them; and into the other scale it puts three such lines as these : "One place performs like any other place The proper service every place on earth Was framed to furnish man with" KOKKv, fieOelre' Kal iroXv ye KaTwripo) • Xptl TO TOvSe, Have we still to ask, \ f »»\ V .15 KOL TL irOT eaTL TaiTtOVf ^"Arist. Frogs, 1384. Dionysos — Cuckoo! Let go the scales; Aeschylos' My Station And Its Duties 137 The theory which we have just exhibited (more or less in our own way) , and over which perhaps we have heated ourselves a little, seems to us a great advance on anything we have had before, and indeed in the main to be satisfactory. It satisfies us because in it our wills attain their realization; the content of the will is a whole, is systematic; and it is the same whole on both sides. On the outside and -inside alike we have the same universal will in union with the particular personality; and in the identity of inside and outside in one single process we have reached the point where the "is to be," with all its contradictions, disappears, or remains but as a moment in a higher "is." Nonetheless, however, must we consider this satisfaction neither ultimate, nor all-inclusive, nor anything but precarious. If put forth as that beyond which we do not need to go, as the end in itself, it is open to very serious objections, some of which we must now develop. The point upon which "my station and its duties" prided itself most, was that it had got rid of the opposition of "ought" and "is" in both its forms; viz., the opposition of the outer world to the "ought" in me, and the opposition of my particular self to the "ought" in general. We shall have to see that it has not succeeded in doing either, or at least not completely. ( 1 ) Within the sphere of my station and its duties the opposition is not vanquished; for: (a) It is impossible to maintain the doctrine of what may be called "justification by sight." The self cannot be so seen to be identified with the moral whole that the bad self disappears, (i) In the moral man the consciousness of that unity cannot be present always, but only when he is fully engaged in satisfac- tory work. Then, I think, it is present; but when he is not so engaged, and the bad self shows itself, he can scarcely be self- contented, or, if he is so, scarcely because he sees that the bad self is unreal. He can only forget his faults when he is too busy to think of them; and he can hardly be so always. And he can not always see that his faults do not matter to the moral order of side goes down, oh, much much the lowest, Euripides — Why, what ever is the reason? 138 Ethical Studies things — when it comes to that he can only trust. Further, (ii) the more or less immoral man who, because of past offenses, is now unable to perform his due function, or to perform it duly, cannot always in his work gain once more the self-content he has lost because that very work tells him of what should have been, and now is not and will not be, and the habits he has formed perhaps drag him still into the faults that made them. We cannot, without taking a low point of view, ask that this man's life, morally considered, should be more than a struggle; and it would be the most untrue Pharisaism or indifferentism to call him immoral because he struggles, and so far as he struggles. Here justification by sight is out of the question. (b) Again, the moral man need not find himself realized in the world, (i) It is necessary to remark that the community in which he is a member may be in a confused or rotten condition, so that in it right and might do not always go together. And (ii) the very best community can only insure that correspondence in the gross; it cannot do so in every single detail, (iii) There are afflictions for which no moral organism has balm or physician, though it has alleviation; and these can mar the life of any man. (iv) The member may have to sacrifice himself for the com- munity. In none of these cases can he see his realization; and here again the contradiction breaks out, and we must wrap ourselves in a virtue which is our own and not the world's, or seek a higher doctrine by which, through faith and through faith alone, self-suppression issues in a higher self-realization. (2) Within the sphere of my station and its duties we see the contradiction is but partially solved, and the second objection is also very serious. You cannot confine a man to his station and its duties. Whether in another sense that formula would be all- embracing is a further question, but in the sense in which we took it, function in a "visible" community, it certainly is not so. And we must remark here in passing that, if we accept (as I think we must) the fact that the essence of a man involves identity with others, the question what the final reality of that identity is, is still left unanswered. We should still have to ask what is the higher whole in which the individual is a function, and in which My Station And Its Duties 139 the relative wholes subsist, and to inquire whether that com- munity is, or can be, a visible community at all. Passing by this, however, let us develop our objection. A man cannot take his morality simply from the moral world he is in, for many reasons, (a) That moral world, being in a state of historical development, is not and cannot be self -consistent; and the man must thus stand before and above inconsistencies and reflect on them. This must lead to the knowledge that the world is not altogether as it should be, and to a process of trying to make it better. With this cooperates (b) what may be called cosmopolitan morality. Men nowadays know to some extent what is thought right and wrong in other communities now, and what has been thought at other times; and this leads to a notion of goodness not of any particular time and country. For numbers of persons no doubt this is unnecessary; but it is necessary for others, and they have the moral ideal (with the psychological origin of which we are not concerned) of a good man who is not good as member of this or that community, but who realizes himself in whatever community he finds himself. This, however, must mean also that he is not perfectly realized in any particular station. (3) We have seen that the moral man can to a certain extent distinguish his moral essence from his particular function; and now a third objection at once follows, that the content of the ideal self does not fall wholly within any community, is in short not merely the ideal of a perfect social being. The making myself better does not always directly involve relation to others. The production of truth and beauty (together with what is called "culture") may be recognized as a duty; and it will be very hard to reduce it in all cases to a duty of any station that I can see. If we like to say that these duties to myself are duties to humanity, that perhaps is true; but we must remember that humanity is not a visible community. If you mean by it only past, present, and future human beings, then you cannot show that in all cases my culture is of use (directly or indirectly) to anyone but myself. Unless you are prepared to restrict science and fine art to what is useful, i. e., to common arts and "accomplishments," you cannot hope to "verify" such an assertion. You are in the region of belief, 140 Ethical Studies not knowledge ; and this equally whether your belief is true or false. We must say then that, in aiming at truth and beauty, we are try- ing to realize ourself not as a member of any visible community. And, finally, against this ideal self the particular person remains and must remain imperfect. The ideal self is not fully realized in us, in any way that we can see. We are aware of a ceaseless pro- cess, it is well if we can add progress, in which the false private self is constantly subdued but never disappears. And it never can disappear — we are never realized. The contradiction remains; and not to feel it demands something lower or something higher than a moral point of view. Starting from these objections, our next Essay must try to make more clear what is involved in them, and to raise in a sharper form the difficulties as to the nature of morality. And our Concluding Remarks will again take up the same thread, after we have in some measure investigated in Essay VII the difficult problems of the bad self and selfishness. NOTE Rights and Duties To handle this subject properly, more space would be wanted than I have at command. But I will make some remarks shortly and in outline. A great to-do has been made about the ambiguity of the word "right" ; as I think, needlessly. Right is the rule, and what is con- formable to the rule, whether that rule be physical or mental ; e. g., a right line, a "right English bull-dog" (Swift), a right conclusion, a right action. Right is, generally, the expression of the universal. It is the emphasis of the universal side in the relation of particular and universal. It implies particulars, and therefore possibility of dis- crepancy between them and the universal. Hence right means law; which law may be carried out or merely stated. "Is it right to do this?" means "is the universal realized in this?" "Have I a right?" means "am I in this the expression of law?" My Station And Its Duties 141 In the moral sphere, with which alone we are concerned, right means always the relation of the universal to the particular will. The emphasis is on the universal. Possibility of discrepancy with a conscious subject makes law here command. Command is the simple proposal of an action (or abstinence) to me by another will, as the content of that will. Or, from the side of the commander, it is the willing by me of some state of another will, such willing being presented by me as a fact to that will. Threat is not of the essence of command ; command need not imply the holding forth or the anticipation of consequences. To have rights is not merely to be the object with respect to which commands (positive or prohibitory) are addressed to others. If that were so, inanimate matter would have rights; e. g., the very dirt in the road would "have a right" to be taken up or let lie — and this is barbarous. To have rights is to be (or to be presumed to be) capable of realizing the universal command consciously as such.^ This answers the question. Has a beast rights? He is the object of duties, not the subject of rights. Right is the universal in its relation to a will capable of recognizing it as such, whether it remain mere command or is also carried out in act. Wherever in the moral world you have law you have also right and rights. These may be real or ideal. The first are the will of the state or society, the second the will of the ideal-social or nonsocial ideal. {Vide Essay VI.) It is in order to secure the existence of right in the acts of par- ticular wills that compulsion is used. But compulsion is not necessary to the general and abstract definition of right, and it cannot be immediately deduced from it. ^ "I have rights against others," or "I have a right to this or that from others," means, (1) it is right, it is the expression of the universal that they should do this or that in reference to me: I am the object of their duty. But this by itself does not give me "rights." To "have a right" to anything from another, I must (2) be a subject which knows the universal as such, both (a) in its immediate relation to my will, in its expression through my acts; and (b) also here in its expression through the acts of others, which acts may concern me. When my will as the universal, and the universal as my will, calls for these acts, then I "have a right" to them in the proper sense, but not otherwise. 142 Ethical Studies What is duty? It is simply the other side of right. It is the same relation, viewed from the other pole or moment. It is the relation of the particular to the universal, with the emphasis on the particular. It is my will in its affirmative relation to the objective will. Right is the universal, existing for thought alone or also carried out. Duty is my will, either merely thought of as realizing this universal, or actually also doing so. "This is my duty" means "in this I identify, or am thought of as identifying, myself with right." Duty, like right, implies possible discordance of particular and universal. Like right, too, it implies more than this. It implies the consciousness (or presumed capacity for consciousness) of the relation of my will to the universal as the right. Hence a beast has no duties in the proper sense. If he has, then he has also rights. Right is the universal will implying particular will. It is the objective side implying a subjective side, i. e., duty. Duty is the particular will implying a universal will. It is the subjective side implying an objective side, i. e., right. But the two sides are insepara|?le. No right without duty; no duty without right and rights. (To this we shall return.) Right and duty are sides of a single whole. This whole is the good. Rights and duties imply the identity, and nonidentity, of the particular and universal wills. Right may remain a mere command, duty a mere "ought to be," the nonagreement of the particular and universal. They are both abstractions. They are both, if fixed and isolated one from the other, self-contradictions. Each by itself is a mere "is to be," each a willed idea, which, so long as apart from the other, remains a mere, i. e., a no^willed, idea. Each is a single side of one and the same relation, fixed apart from the other side. In the good the sides come together, and in the whole first cease to be abstractions and gain real existence. The right is carried out in duty. The duty realizes itself in the right. But in the good rights and duties as such disappear. There is no more mere right or mere duty, no more particular and universal as such, no external relation of the two. They are now sides and My Station And Its Duties 143 elements in one whole ; and, if they appear, it is only as, within the movement and life of the whole, here one element and there another has its relative emphasis. But outside the whole their reality fades into "mere idea," into legend and fable. Rights and duties do not exist outside the moral world; and that world does not exist where there is not a sphere of inner morality, however immediate, the consciousness, however vague, of the relation of the private will to the universal, whether that universal be presented as outer (in the shape of tribal custom or of some individual) or again as inner. Where there is no morality there is no right ; where there is no right there are no rights. Just so, where there are no rights there is no right, and where no right there no morality. Inner morality without an objective right and wrong is a self-delusion. Right and rights outside morality are a mere fiction. It is here that every partial theory of morals and politics is wrecked and seen to be worthless. False theories of right either (1) fail to get to any objective universal except by some fond invention (of contract), which, besides being an invention, pre- supposes what it is to create. (A contract outside the sphere of right and morality is nonsense.) Or (2) they take an objective universal (as positive law, will of the monarch, or what seems most convenient to the majority) ; and here they fail because their right is mere force, and is not moral, not right at all; and hence they cannot show that I am in the right to obey it, or in the wrong to disobey it, but merely that, if I do not obey it, it may (or may not) be inconvenient for me. So again in morals they either (1) posit a universal, such as the will of the Deity or of other human beings; and this fails because in it I do not affirm my self; or else (2) there is nothing anywhere objective and universal at all; and here I affirm nothing hut myself. In either case there is no duty and no morality. "But rights and duties," we shall be told, "collide." They collide only as rights do with rights or duties with duties. Rights and duties of one sphere collide with those of another sphere, and again within each sphere they collide in different persons, and again in one and the same person. But that right as such can 144 Ethical Studies collide with duty as such is impossible. There is no right which is not a duty, no duty which is not a right. In either case right would cease to be right, and duty duty. This will be denied. It will be said, (1) there are duties with- out rights; (2) rights without duties. As to the first (1) we ^ say, If we have not a right to do anything, it is not right for us. If it is not right for us, then it is not our duty. It is quite true that moral duty may not be legal right, nor legal duty moral right, but this is not to the point. As to the second (2), it seems harder to see that where I have no duties I have no rights. In the spheres of the state, of society, of ideal morality, I have a right to do this and not that, that and not the other. But can it be said that all these things that I have a right to do are my duties? Is not that nonsense? No doubt there is much truth in this. It is almost as bad to have nothing but duties as it is to have no duties at all. For free individual self- development we must have both elements. Where the universal is all there is ossification; where the particular is all there is dissolution; in neither case life. Is it true then that there are rights where there are no duties? No. In a sense, rights are wider than duties: but what does this mean? Does it mean there are rights outside the moral sphere? Certainly not. We shall see (Essay VI) that there is no limit to the moral sphere; and if there were a limit, then outside that rights would cease to be rights. "More rights than duties" then must be true, if at all, within the moral sphere. Does it hold there that there are more rights than duties ? It is not a very hard puzzle. To make it easier let us double it, and say "there are more duties than rights." A man, for instance, has a certain indivisible sum to spend in charity. He has a duty to A, B, and C, but not a right to more than one because it is wrong if he gives more than his indivisible limited sum. Hence there are more duties than rights. All that it comes to is that, when you look on duties as possible, they are wider than what, when actually done, is right and actual duty. Just so possible rights are wider than what is actually duty and actually right. The reason why this is noticed on the side of rights, and not My Station And Its Duties 145 on the side of duty, is very simple. We saw above that in right the emphasis is on the universal side. Now every act is a determined this or that act, and what makes it a this or that act is the particularization. What I have a right to do thus depends on what my duty is; for duty, we saw, emphasized the particular side. Now, where there are no indifferents and no choice between them, rights are never wider than duties. It is where indifferents come in (cf. Essay VI), that possibility is wider than actuality. And because right emphasizes the side common to all the indifferents, i. e., the undetermined side, it is therefore wider than duty, which emphasizes the particular side, and hence is narrower. Thus, where the choice of my particular will comes in, that has rights and must be respected. But it has rights only because the sphere of its exercise, and therefore what it does therein, is duty. And it must be respected by others only so far as it thus expresses the universal will. If it has not right on its side, it has no rights whatever. There is indeed a sphere where rights seem in collision with right. Wherever you have law you have this, since it comes from the nature of law. Thus I am yw^fified in returning evil for evil; I have a right to do it, even where it is not right but wrong to do it. The same thing is found in the spheres of state law, social law, and mere moral law alike. This does not show that in these cases there is no moral universal; it shows that we are keeping to nothing but the universal. We have here the distinc- tion of justice and equity. A merely just^ act may (we all know) be most unjust. The universal as law must be the same for all: it cannot be specified to meet every particular case. Hence, in keeping to this unspecified universal, I have "right" on my side: but again, failing to specify it in my case, I do what is not right for me to do. I fail in duty, do not do, and am not, right. The sphere of mere private right in the state cannot exist out ^ What is justice? I have no space to develop or illustrate, but will set down what seems to be the fact. The just does not = right; injustice does not z=. wrong. Justice does not ■=. giving to each deserts: "nothing but justice" may be less or more than my deserts. Justice is not mere conform- ing to law; injustice is not mere acting against law; e. g., murder is not 146 Ethical Studies of the moral whole. It is, for the sake of the development of the whole, created and kept up in the whole, but merely at the pleasure of the whole. Just so in morals there is a sphere of private liking, the sphere of indifferents, but this exists only because it ought to exist, only because duty is realized in its existence, though not by its particulars as particulars, i. e., as this one against that one. The sphere of private right has rights only so long as it is right and is duty. It exists merely on sufferance; and the moment the right of the whole demands its suppression it has no rights. Public right everywhere overrides it in practice, if not in theory. This is the justification of such things as forcible expropriation, conscription, etc. The only proper way of regard- ing them is to say. In developing my property, etc., as this or that man, I am doing my duty to the state, for the state lives in its individuals : and I do my duty again in another way by giving up to the use of the state my property and person, for the individual lives in the state. What other view will justify the facts of political life? To repeat then: Right is the assertion of the universal will in relation to the particular will. Duty is the assertion of the particular will in the afiBrmation of the universal. Good is the identity, not the mere relation, of both. Right may be real, may actually exist; or be only ideal, merely thought of. So may duty. Rights and duties are elements in the good; they must go together. The universal cannot be affirmed except in the partic- ular, the particular only affirms itself in the universal; but they should be suppressed in the good as anything more than elements, which reciprocally supplement each other, and should be regarded as two sides to one whole. It is not moral to stand on one's called "unjust." Justice and injustice mean this, but they imply something more. Injustice is, while you explicitly or implicity profess to go on a rule, the not going merely on the rule, but the making exceptions in favor of persons. Justice is the really going by nothing but one's ostensible rule in assigning advantage and disadvantage to persons. What the rule is, is another matter. The rule may be the morally right. This is ideal justice. All lower sorts of law furnish each its own lower justice and injustice. My Station And Its Duties 147 rights with the right; i. e., right should not be mere right: nor moral to make a duty of all one's duties; i. e., duty should not be mere duty. We maintain the following theses. (1) It is false that you can have rights without duties. (2) It is false that you can have duties without rights. (3) It is false that right is merely negative.* (4) It is false that duty depends on possible compulsion, and a mere mistake that command always implies a threat; and (5) It is absolutely false that rights or duties can exist outside the moral world. ' Schopenhauer has developed this view with great clearness. He goes so far as to make wrong the original positive conception, right the mere negation of it. CONCLUDING REMARKS THE position we are now in can be put very shortly. Morality is an endless process and therefore a self-contradiction and, being such, it does not remain standing in itself, but feels the impulse to transcend its existing reality. It is a self-contradiction in this way: it is a demand for what cannot be. Nothing is good but the good will; nothing is to be real but the good; and yet the reality is not wholly good. Neither in me, nor in the world, is what ought to be what is, and what is what ought to be; and the claim remains in the end a mere claim. The reason of the contradiction is the fact that man is a con- tradiction. But man is more; he feels or knows himself as such, and this makes a vital difference; for to feel a contradiction is ipso facto to be above it. Otherwise, how would it be possible to feel it? A felt contradiction which does not imply, beside its two poles, a unity which includes and is above them, will, the more it is reflected on, the more be seen to be altogether un- meaning. Unless man was and divined himself to be a whole, he 148 Ethical Studies could not feel the eontradiction, still less feel pain in it, and reject it as foreign to his real nature. So we see that the moral point of view, which leaves man in a sphere with which he is not satisfied, cannot be final. This or that human being, this or that passing stage of culture, may remain in this region of weariness, of false self-approval and no less false self -contempt ; but for the race, as a whole, this is im- posssible. It has not done it; and, while man is man, it certainly never will do it. And here we should close these Essays, since here we go beyond morality. But, that we may make the foregoing plainer, we are tempted to say something more, however fragmentary, however much in the form of an appendix.^ Reflection on morality leads us beyond it. It leads us, in short, to see the necessity of a religious point of view. It cer- tainly does not tell us that morality comes first in the world and then religion. What it tells us is that morality is imperfect, and imperfect in such a way as implies a higher, which is religion. Morality issues in religion; and at this word "religion" the ordinary reader is upon us with cries and questions, and with all the problems of the day — God, and personal God, immortality of the soul, the conflict of revelation and science, and who knows what beside? He must not expect any answer to these questions here; we are writing a mere appendix; and in that our object is to show that religion, as a matter of fact, does give us what morality does not give; and our method is simply, so far as our purpose requires, to point to the facts of the religious conscious- ness without drawing conclusions to the right or left, without trying to go much below the surface, or doing anything beyond what is wanted in this connection with morality. We purpose to say nothing about the ultimate truth of religion — nothing again about its origin in the world, or in the individual. We are to take the religious consciousness as an existing fact, and to take it as we find it now in the modern Christian mind, whether that mind recognizes it or whether it does not. And ^ Throughout the sequel I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Vatke's book, Die menschliche Freiheit, 1841. Concluding Remarks 149 lastly, space compels us to do no more than dogmatically assert what seems to us to be true in respect of it. That there is some connection between true religion and morality everyone we need consider sees. A man who is "religious" and does not act morally, is an impostor, or his religion is a false one. This does not hold good elsewhere. A philosopher may be a good philosopher, and yet, taking him as a whole, may be im- moral; and the same thing is true of an artist, or even of a theologian. They may all be good, and yet not good men; but no one who knew what true religion was would call a man, who on the whole was immoral, a religious man. For religion is not the mere knowing or contemplating of any object, however high. It is not mere philosophy nor art because it is not mere seeing, no mere theoretic activity, considered as such or merely from its theoretical side. The religious consciousness tells us that a man is not religious, or more religious, because the matter of his theoretic activity is religious; just as the moral consciousness told us that a man was not moral, or more moral, simply because he was a moral philosopher. Religion is essentially a doing, and a doing which is moral. It implies a realizing, and a realizing of the good self. Are we to say then that morality is religion? Most certainly not. In morality the ideal is not: it forever remains a "to be." The reality in us or the world is partial and inadequate; and no one could say that it answers to the ideal, that, morally con- sidered, both we and the world are all we ought to be, and ought to be just what we are. We have at furthest the belief in an ideal which in its pure completeness is never real; which, as an ideal, is a mere "should be." And the question is. Will that do for religion? No knower of religion, who was not led away by a theory, would answer Yes. Nor does it help us to say that religion is "morality touched by emotion"; for loose phrases of this sort may suggest to the reader what he knows already with- out their help, but, properly speaking, they say nothing. All morality is, in one sense or another, "touched by emotion." Most emotions, high or low, can go with and "touch" morality; and the moment we leave our phrase-making, and begin to reflect, we 150 Ethical Studies see all that is meant is that morality "touched" by religious emo- tion is religious; and so, as answer to the question What is religion? all that we have said is "It is religion when with morality you have — religion." I do not think we learn a very great deal from this/ Religion is more than morality. In the religious consciousness we find the belief, however vague and indistinct, in an object, a not-myself; an object, further, which is real. An ideal which is not real, which is only in our heads, cannot be the object of religion; and in particular the ideal self, as the "is to be" which is real only so far as we put it forth by our wills, and which, as an ideal, we cannot put forth, is not a real object, and so not the object for religion. Hence, because it is unreal, the ideal of personal morality is not enough for religion. And we have seen before that the ideal is not realized in the objective world of the state; so that, apart from other objections, here again we cannot find the religious object. For the religious consciousness that object is real; and it is not to be found in the mere moral sphere. But here once more "culture" has come to our aid, and has shown us how here, as everywhere, the study of polite literature, which makes for meekness, makes needless also all further educa- tion; and we felt already as if the clouds that metaphysic had wrapped about the matter were dissolving in the light of a fresh and sweet intelligence. And, as we turned toward the dawn, we sighed over poor Hegel, who had read neither Goethe nor Homer, nor the Old and New Testaments, nor any of the literature which has gone to form "culture," but, knowing no facts, and reading no books, nor ever asking himself "such a tyro's question as what " Compare (Mill, Dissertations, I, 70-1) the definition of poetry as "man's thoughts tinged by his feelings"; where the whole matter again is, what feelings? Anything in the way of shallow reflection on the psychological form, anything rather than the effort to grasp the content. All that Mill saw wanting in this "definition" was that it missed "the poet's utter uncon- sciousness of a listener." However, to make sure of hitting the mark, he, 80 to speak, set it down as hit beforehand, and in his own "definition" of poetry introduced "the poet's mind." This is much as if we were to say, "Religion is the sort of thing you have in a religious man." Concluding Remarks 151 being really was,'" sat spinning out of his head those foolish logo- machies, which impose on no person of refinement. Well, culture has told us what God was for the Jews; and we learn that "I am that I am" means much the same as "I blow and grow, that I do," or "I shall breathe, that I shall"; and this, if surprising, was at all events definite, not to say tangible. How- ever, to those of us who do not think that Christianity is called upon to wrap itself any longer in "Hebrew old clothes," all this is entirely a matter for the historian. But when "culture" went on to tell us what God is for science, we heard words we did not understand about "streams," and "tendencies," and "the Eternal"; and, had it been anyone else that we were reading, we should have said that, in some literary excursion, they had picked up a metaphysical theory, now out of date, and putting it in phrases the meaning of which they had never asked themselves, had then served it up to the public as the last result of speculation, or of that "flexible common sense" which is so much better. And as this in the case of "culture" and "criticism" was of course not possible, we concluded that for us once again the light had shone in darkness. But the "stream" and the "tendency" having served their turn, like last week's placards, now fall into the background, and we learn at last* that "the Eternal" is not eternal at all, unless we give that name to whatever a generation sees happen, and believes both has happened and will happen — just as the habit of washing ourselves might be termed "the Eternal not ourselves that makes for cleanliness," or "Early to bed and early to rise" the "Eternal not ourselves that makes for longevity," and so on — that "the Eternal," in short, is nothing in the world but a piece of literary clap-trap. The consequence is that all we are left with is the assertion that "righteousness" is "salvation" or "wel- fare," and that there is a "law" and a "Power" which has some- thing to do with this fact ; and here again we must not be ashamed to say that we fail to understand what any one of these phrases mean, and suspect ourselves once more to be on the scent of clap-trap. ' Contemporary Review, XXIV, 988. *Ibid, p. 995. 152 Ethical Studies If what is meant be this, that what is ordinarily called virtue does always lead to and go with what is ordinarily called happi- ness, then so far is this from being "verifiable"^ in everyday experience, that its opposite is so; it is not a fact, either that to be virtuous is always to be happy or that happiness must always come from virtue. Everybody knows this, Mr. Arnold "must know this, and yet he gives it, because it suits his purpose, or be- cause the public, or a large body of the public, desire it; and this is clap-trap."* It is not a fact that to be virtuous is always, and for that reason, to be happy; and, even were it so, yet such a fact cannot be the object of the religious consciousness. The reality, which answers to the phrases of culture, is, we suppose, the real existence of the phrases as such in books or in our heads; or again a number of events in time, past, present, and future {i. e., conjunctions of virtue and happiness) . We have an abstract term to stand for the abstraction of this or that quality; or again we have a series or collection of particular occurrences. When the literary varnish is removed, is there anything more?^ But the object of the religious consciousness must be a great deal more. It must be what is real, not only in the heads of this person or set of persons, nor again as this or that finite something or set of somethings. It is in short ° We hear the word "verifiable" from Mr. Arnold pretty often. What is to verify? Has Mr. Arnold put "such a tyro's question" to himself? If to verify means to find in outward experience, then the object of true religion cannot be found as this or that outward thing or quality, and so cannot be verified. It is of its essence that in this sense it should be unverifiable. ^Op. cit., p. 804. ^ "Is there a God?" asks the reader. "Oh yes," replies Mr. Arnold, "and I can verify him in experience." "And what is he then?" cries the reader. "Be virtuous, and as a rule you will be happy," is the answer. "Well, and God?" "That is God"; says Mr. Arnold, "There is no deception, and what more do you want?" I suppose we do want a good deal more. Most of us, certainly the public which Mr. Arnold addresses, want something they can worship; and they will not find that in an hypostasized copy-book heading, which is not much more adorable than "Honesty is the best policy," or "Handsome is that handsome does," or various other edifying maxims which have not yet come to an apotheosis. Concluding Remarks 153 very different from either those thin abstractions or coarse "verifi- able" facts, between which and over which there is for our "cul- ture" no higher third sphere, save that of the literary groping which is helpless as soon as it ceases to be blind. But let us turn from this trifling, on which we are sorry to have been forced to say even one word; let us go back to the religious consciousness. Religion, we have seen, must have an object; and that object is neither an abstract idea in the head, nor one particular thing or quality, nor any collection of such things or qualities, nor any phrase which stands for one of them or a collection of them. In short, it is nothing finite. It cannot be a thing or person in the world; it cannot exist in the world, as a part of it, or as this or that course of events in time; it cannot be the "All," the sum of things or persons — since, if one is not divine, no putting of ones together will beget divinity. All this it is not. Its positive character is that it is real; and further, on examining what we find in the religious consciousness," we discover that it is the ideal self considered as realized and real. The ideal self, which in morality is to be, is here the real ideal which truly is. For morals the ideal self was an "ought," an "is to be" that is not; the object of religion is that same ideal self, but here it no longer only ought to be, but also is. This is the nature of the religious object, though the manner of apprehending it may differ widely, may be anything from the vaguest instinct to the most thoughtful reflection. With religion we may here compare science and art. The artist and poet, however obscurely, do feel and believe that beauty, where it is not seen, yet somehow and somewhere is and is real; though not as a mere idea in people's heads, nor yet as anything in the visible world. And science, however dimly, starts from and rests upon the preconception that, even against appearances, reason not only ought to be, but really is. Is then religion a mere mode of theoretic creation and con- templation, like art and science? Is it a lower form or stage of * The reader must carefully distinguish what is for (or before) the religious consciousness, and what is only in it, and for us as we investigate it. 154 Ethical Studies philosophy, or another sort of art, or some kind of compound mixture? It is none of these, and between it and them there is a vital difference. In the very essence of the religious consciousness we find the relation of our will to the real ideal self. We find ourselves, as this or that will, against the object as the real ideal will, which is not ourselves, and which stands to us in such a way that, though real, it is to be realized, because it is all and the whole reality. A statement, no doubt, which may stagger us ; but the statement, we maintain, of a simple fact of the religious consciousness. If anyone likes to call it a delusion, that makes no difference; unless, as some people seem to think, you can get rid of facts by applying phrases to them. And, however surprising the fact may be to the reader, it certainly ought not to be new to him. We find the same difficulty, that the real is to be realized, both in art and science. The self dimly feels, or forefeels, itself as full of truth and beauty, and unconsciously sets that fullness before it as an object, a not-itself which is against itself as this or that man. And so the self goes on to realize what it obscurely foreknows as real; it realizes it, although, and because, it is aware of it as real. And in this, so far, art, philosophy, and religion are the same. But, as we saw, they are also different. In art and science the will of the man who realizes is not of the essence. The essence of the matter is that a certain result should be produced, that, of the unseen object which is divined to be real, a part at least should become visible, that in short, however it comes about, some element of the real should be seen to be realized. Here the end is the sight of the object, as such, and the will which procures that sight is not taken into account. No doubt it would be a great mistake to forget that art and science involve will, and the will of particular persons, and that it is this will which realizes the object; and that hence, since the object of science and art is at least partly identical with the object of religion, both science and art may so far be said to imply religion, since they imply the relation of the particular will to the real ideal. For suppose that Concluding Remarks 155 the human-divine life is one process, and suppose again that art and science and religion are distinguishable elements or aspects of this one whole process. Then, if this is so, neither art nor science nor religion can exist as a thing by itself, and the two former will necessarily imply the latter. But on the other hand, though we may not divide, yet we have to distinguish; and when by an abstraction we consider one side, e. g., the side of science or that of art, by itself, and take them as mere theoretic activities, then we must say that in this character neither of them is religion ; and they are not religion because the will of this or that man, over against the real ideal as will, is not an element in the scientific or artistic process as such. The real ideal of science and art is not will, and the relation of my will to it falls outside them; and we must say, and we think that the reader will agree, that, so soon as the philosopher or artist is conscious of his will in relation to the real ideal, as a will which has demands on him, he ceases to be a mere philosopher or artist as such (which after all no human being is), and becomes also religious or irreligious. To proceed, we find in the religious consciousness the ideal self as the complete reality and we have, beside, its claim upon us. Both elements, and their relation, are given in one and the same consciousness. We are given as this will, which, because this will, is to realize the real ideal; the real ideal is given as the will which is wholly real, and therefore to be realized in us. Now nothing is easier than for a one-sided reflection to rush in with a cry for clearness and consistency, and to apply its favorite "either — or." "// real, how realize? // realize, then not real." We, however, must not allow ourselves to give way to the desire for drawing conclusions, but have to observe the farts; and we see that the religious consciousness refuses the dilemma. It holds to both one and the other, and to one because of the other, and pronounces such reflections irreligious. In the moral consciousness we found two poles, myself and the ideal self. The latter claimed to be real, and to have all as its reality; but, for the moral consciousness, it was not thus real either in the world or in us, and the evil in us and the world was as real. In religion we find once more two poles, myself and the 156 Ethical Studies ideal self. But here the latter not only claims to be, but also is real and all reality; and yet (at this stage*) it is not realized either in the world or in me. It is not one pole, however, that in religion is different, but both: for morality the world and the self remained both nonmoral and immoral, yet each was real; for religion the world is alienated from God, and the self is sunk in sin; and that means that, against the whole reality, they are felt or known as what is not and is contrary to the all and the only real, and yet as things that exist. In sin the self feels itself in contradiction with all that truly is. It is the unreal, that, knowing itself to be so, contradicts itself as the real; it is the real, which, feeling itself to be so, contradicts itself as the unreal, and in the pain of its intolerable discord can find no word so strong, no image so glaring as to portray its torment. For it really is itself, against which, in sin, it feels itself. We cannot stay to develop this doctrine, and must content ourselves with pointing out that the opposite is utterly incomprehensible. The two poles are what they are, because they are against each other in consciousness. In them the self feels itself divided against itself; and, unless they both fall within one subject, how is this possible? We have not the felt struggle of ourself against a perceived or thought external object; we have the felt struggle in us of two wills, with both of which we feel ourselves identified. And this relation of the divine and human will in one subject is a psychological impossibility, unless they are the wills of one subject. Remove that condition, and the phenomena in their specific character instantly disappear. You cannot understand the recognition of and desire for the divine will; nor the con- sciousness of sin and rebellion, with the need for grace on the one hand and its supply on the other; you turn every fact of religion into unmeaning nonsense, and you pluck up by the root and utterly destroy all possibility of the Atonement, when you " The thoughtful reader may at once object that here we have an incom- plete account of religion. That is quite true, and we purposely delay the consideration of religion as a whole. Here we are insisting on certain elements of the religious consciousness, in order to see that they are no more than elements, which call for comprehension in something higher. Concluding Remarks 157 deny that the religious consciousness implies that God and man are identical in a subject/** '°0n this whole matter, and not specially with reference to religion, it is worth while to consider the position of our philosophy. People find a subject and object correlated in consciousness; and, having got this in the mind, they at once project it outside the mind, and talk as if two independent realities knocked themselves together, and so produced the unity that appre- hends them; while, all the time, to go out of that unity is for us literally to go out of our minds. And when the monstrous nature of their position dawns on some few, and they begin to see that without some higher unity this "correlation" is pure nonsense, then answermg to that felt need, they invent a third reality, which is neither subject nor object but the "Unknow- able" or the Thing-in-itself (there is no difference) , But here, since the two correlates are still left together with, and yet are not, the Unknowable, the question arises. How does this latter stand to them? and the result is that the Unknowable becomes the subject of predicates (see Mr. Spencer's First Principles) , and it becomes impossible for any one who cares for consistency to go on calling it the Unknowable. So it is necessary to go a step further, and giving up our third, which is not the correlates, to recognize an Identity of subject and object, still however persisting in the statement that this identity is not mind. But here again, as with the Unknowable, and as before with the two correlated realities, it is forgotten that, when mind is made only a part of the whole, there is a question which must be answered; "If so, how can the whole be known, and for the mind? If about any matter we know nothing whatever, can we say anything about it? Can we even say that it is? And, if it is not in consciousness, how can we know it? And if it is in and for the mind, how can it be a whole which is not mind, and in which the mind is only a part or element? If the ultimate unity were not self or mind, we could not know that it was not mind: that would mean going out of our minds. And, conversely, if we know it, it cannot be not mind. All, in short, we can know (the psychological form is another question) is the self and elements in the self. To know a not-self is to transcend and leave one's mind. If we know the whole it can only be because the whole knows itself in us, because the whole is self or mind, which is and knows, knows and is, the identity and correlation of subject and object." There is nothing in the above which has not been before the world for years, and it is time that it should be admitted or refuted. I think it will not be much longer disregarded. Much against its will English thought has been forced from the correlation as far as the identity; and, if it means to hold to the doctrine of "relativity of knowledge," it must go on to mind or self in some sense of the word, as this identity of inner and outer. Perhaps not that; but if not that, then I think we must begin on a fresh basis, or else 158 Ethical Studies For it is the atonement, the reconciliation (call it what you please, and bring it before your mind in the way most easy to you) , to which we must come, if we mean to follow the facts of the religious consciousness. Here, as everywhere, the felt contradic- tion implies, and is only possible through, a unity above the discord — ^take that away, and the discord goes. The antithesis of the sinful and divine will is implicitly their union; and that union, in the subject, requires only to be made explicit, for the subject, by thought and will. But for the subject it is not yet explicit; and it is only we who reflect upon the religious consciousness, that see the matter thus. That consciousness as such has not the insight that the divine will is the will of its own true and inmost self: I may know that, as a fact, in God there is the unity of the two natures; but for me God is (here at least) only not my self; the divine is an object between which and me there is a chasm; my inner self may desire it, but can only desire it as an other and a beyond. True that the object is already the identity of God and man, but man does not include me: that object is not in me, it is only for me; it remains an object, and I remain outside. And for the religious consciousness the prob- lem is. How can I be reconciled with this will which is not mine? And the answer is that in the object the reconciliation of the divine and human is real; the principle is there already; and in its reality, the reality of the reconciliation of the human as such, is ideally contained my reconciliation. Yes, mine is there if only I can take hold of it, if only I can make it my own; but how with the sin that adheres to me can this ever be? How can the human-divine ideal ever be my will? The answer is. Your will it never can be as the will of your private self, so that your private self should become wholly good. To that self you must die, and by faith be made one with the ideal. You must resolve to give up your will, as the mere will of this or that man, and you must put your whole self, your give up the attempt to have any theory of first principles. But if we do (as perhaps we may do) the latter, then let me conclude this note by observing that amongst the other doctrines which must go is the doctrine of Relativity. Concluding Remarks 159 entire will, into the will of the divine. That must be your one self, as it is your true self; that you must hold to both with thought and will, and all other you must renounce; you must both refuse to recognize it as yours, and practically with your whole self deny it. You must believe that you too really are one with the divine, and must act as if you believed it. In short, you must be justified not by works but solely by faith. This doctrine, which Protestantism, to its eternal glory, has made its own and sealed with its blood, is the very center of Christianity; and, where you have not this in one form or another, there Chris- tianity is nothing but a name. In mere morality this faith is impossible. There you have not a real unity of the divine and human with which to identify yourself; and there again the self, which is outside the ideal, is not known as unreal, and cannot be, since the ideal is not all reality. But what is faith? It is perhaps not an easy question to answer, but in some sort it must be answered; and to neglect it as worthless or stand aloof from it as a mystery, are both wrong positions. It is easy to say what faith is not. It is not mere belief, the simple holding for true or fact; it is no mere theoretic act of judgment.^^ Everyone knows you may have this, and yet not have faith. Faith does imply belief, but more than this, it implies also will. If my will is not identified with that which I hold for fact, I have not faith in it. Faith is both the belief in the reality of an object, and the will that that object be real, and where either of these elements fails, there is no faith. But even this is not all. When Mr. Bain, for instance, (p. 526) says, "The infant who has found the way to the mother's breast for food, and to her side for warmth, has made progress in the power of faith," we are struck at once by an incongruity. That the child who is most forward in a matter of this sort, is most likely in after life to have what " I use belief in the ordinary sense. Of course our account of the matter is wrong if all belief is practical. This Mr. Bain {Emotions, 2nd ed., p. 524 and ff.) tries to show, as it seems to us, at the expense of facts, and with not sufficient success to warrant our entering on the matter. 160 Ethical Studies we call faith, we see no reason to believe; that he has it already, we see is an absurdity. And we found above (p. 119) that, even in "My Station and its Duties," we could not properly speak of faith because there was there what might be called sight. What does this point to? Does it mean that faith implies un- certainty, or defective knowledge; and that this is the reason why, wnere you see, you cannot have faith? No, this we think is a mistaken view, and the facts confute it. Certainly you may have faith without feeling sure of the fact; but, generally speaking, a doubt about the fact weakens faith. Nor is it the case that theoretic certainty excludes faith. If it were so, the raising of belief with doubt to belief without doubt would ipso facto destroy faith; and this is not so. We cannot maintain that, when mere belief is raised to specu- lative certainty, the necessity for faith disappears; or further, that faith is here impossible. We must try to show the cause of the error. What can be said in its favor is this, that sight does exclude faith; and hence faith is not imagined to exist in the Paradise after death, nor, I suppose, in ecstatic vision during life. This is all consistent; but what it points to is the fact that faith is incompatible, not with such and such a degree, but with such and such a kind of knowledge. Faith is incompatible with common immediate sensuous knowing, or with a higher knowledge of the same simple direct nature; and, because our knowledge of the highest is, in religion, not thus immediate, therefore we are said to have only faith; and faith is, by a confusion, supposed to exclude, not one kind of certainty, but all kinds. Whence the above mistake, which, however, has a truth in it. Why is it then that faith is incompatible with sensuous knowl- edge? It is because, in religious language, faith is a rise beyond "this world," and a rise in which I stay here. What does this mean? Does it mean that the object must not be a part of the visible world? It means this, and more; faith implies the rise in thought, but not that only; it implies also the rise of the will to the object, which is not seen but thought. And this presupposes the practical separation for me of myself and the object. In the mere theoretic rise I do not think of myself, but only of the Concluding Remarks 161 object: in faith I must also have myself before me; I must perceive the chasm between myself, as this or that unreal part of the unreal finite world, and at the same time must perceive the ideal-real object, which is all reality, and my true reality. And it is this presupposed consciousness of absolute separation (which, in terms of space or time, we express by "this world" and the "other world") which is necessary for faith, and which survives therein as a suppressed element. Hence, where this is not, faith cannot be. Faith then is the recognition of my true self in the religious object, and the identification of myself with that both by judg- ment and will; the determination to negate the self opposed to the object by making the whole self one with what it really is. It is, in a word, of the heart.^^ It is the belief that only the ideal is real, and the will to realize therefore nothing but the ideal, the theoretical and practical assertion that only as ideal is the self real. Justification by faith means that having thus identified myself with the object, I feel myself in that identification to be already one with it, and to enjoy the bliss of being, all falsehood overcome, what I truly am. By my claim to be one with the ideal, which comprehends me too, and by assertion of the nonreality of all that is opposed to it, the evil in the world and the evil incarnate in me through past bad acts, all this falls into the unreal: I being one with the ideal, this is not mine, and so imputation of offenses goes with the change of self, and applies not now to my true self, but to the unreal, which I repudiate and hand over to destruction." ^^ "True faith is no mere thought nor admission of the truth of a history." "The true Christian is not the man who knows history." "Christianity should know that faith is not merely a history or science. To have faith is nought else than for a man to make his will one with God's, and take up God's word and might in his will, so that twain, God's will and man's will, turn to one being and substance. Thereupon in the man Christ, in his passion, his dying, his death, and uprising, in his own humanity, is reckoned for righteousness, so that the man becomes Christ, that is after the spiritual man. ... He who teaches and wills otherwise is yet in the whoredom of Babylon." — J. Bohme. ^' Here again the vehement expression of mysticism, "When reason tells 162 Ethical Studies In one way faith is of course only ideal, for the bad self does not cease. Yet religion is here very different from morality. Recalling to the reader what we said as to the meaning of "evolution" or "progress" (p. 126), we say here that morality is an evolution or progress. The end, which is involved in these, is becoming realized in the evolution or progress, and therefore is not yet real; and so in morality we have the end presented as what claims to be real, together with the process of its realization, and that means its nonreality. Here we are not what we are, and must welcome a progress ; though that means a contradiction, which again we know we are not. But for religious faith the end of the evolution is presented as that which, despite the fact of the evolution, is already evolved; or rather which stands above the element of event, contradiction, and finitude. Despite what seems, we feel that we are more than a progress or evolution, in fact not that at all, but now fully real; and this full reality of ourselves we present to ourselves as an object, and by recognizing, both by judgment and will, in that object our real self, we anticipate, or rather rise above the sphere of, progress. Ourselves being one with that object, we say we are a whole, and harmonious now. So far as we are not so, we are mere appearance; and by the standing will to negate that seeming self, we are one with the true and real self. For this point of view and in this sphere (not outside it) imputation ceases, though the bad self is still a fact; and in this sense faith remains only ideal. But that it is in any other sense merely ideal is a vulgar and gross error which, so far as it rests on St. Paul, rests on an entire misunderstanding of him. In faith we do not rise by the intellect to an idea, and leave our will somewhere else behind us. Where there is no will to realize the object, there is no faith; and where there are no works, there is no will. If works cease, will has ceased; if will has ceased, faith has ceased. Faith is not the thee, 'Thou art outside God,' then answer thou, 'No, I am in God, I am in heaven, in it, in him, and for eternity will never leave him. The devil may keep my sins, and the world my flesh; I live in God's will, his life shall be my life, his will my will; I will be dead in my reason that he may live in me, and all my deeds shall be his deeds.' " Concluding Remarks 163 desperate leap of a moment; in true religion there is no one washing which makes clean. In Pauline language, that "I have died," have in idea and by will anticipated the end, proves itself a teality only by the fact that "I die daily," do perpetually in my particular acts will the realization of the end which is antic- ipated. Nor does faith mean simply works; it means the works of faith ; it means that the ideal, however incompletely, is realized. But, on the other hand, because the ideal is not realized com- pletely and truly as the ideal, therefore I am not justified by the works, which issue from faith, as works; since they remain im- perfect. I am justified solely and entirely by the ideal identifica- tion; the existence of which in me is on the other hand indicated and guaranteed by works, and in its very essence implies them. What we have now to do is to ask. What is the object with which the self is made one by faith? For our answer to this question we must go to the facts of the Christian consciousness. But the reader must remember that we shall touch these facts solely so far as is necessary to bring out the connection between religion and morality. We are to keep to a minimum, and the reader must not conclude that we repudiate whatever we say nothing about. The object, which by faith the self appropriates, is in Christian- ity nothing alien from and outside the world, not an abstract divine which excludes the human; but it is the inseparable unity of human^* and divine. It is the ideal which, as will, afl&rms itself in and by will; it is will which is one with the ideal. And this whole object, while presented in a finite individual form, is not yet truly presented. It is known, in its truth, not until it is appre- hended as an organic human-divine totality; as one body with diverse members, as one self which, in many selves, realizes, wills, and loves itself, as they do themselves in it. And for faith this object is the real, and the only real. What seems to oppose it is, if fact, not reality: and this seeming fact ** By the term "human" we understand all rational finite mind. Whether that exists or not outside our planet is not a matter which concerns us, though it does touch very nearly certain forms of Christian belief. 164 Ethical Studies has two forms: one the imperfection and evil in the heart, the inner self; and the other the imperfection and evil in the world of which my external self is a part. In both these spheres, the inner and outer, the object of religion is real; and the object has two corresponding sides, the inner and personal, and the external side; which two sides are sides of a single whole. Faith involves the belief (1) that the course of the external world, despite appearances, is the realization of the ideal will; (2) that on the inner side the human and divine are one: or the belief (1) that the world is the realization of humanity as a divine organic whole ;^^ and (2) that with that whole the inner wills of particular persons are identified. Faith must hold that, in biblical language, there is "a kingdom of God," that there is an organism which realizes itself in its members, and also in those members, on the subjective side, wills and is conscious of itself, as they will and are conscious of themselves in it. If the reader will refer back to "My Station and its Duties" (p. 113) , he will see that what we had there in the relative totality of the political organism, we have here once more, though with a difference. That difference is that (1) what there was finite (one amongst and against others) is here infinite (a whole in itself), and what there was in a manner visible is here invisible; (2) the relation of the particular subject to the whole was there immediate unity by unreflecting habituation and direct perception; here it involves the thought which rises above the given, and the con- sciousness of a presupposed and suppressed estrangement. Here, as in the world of my station, we have the objective side, the many aflSrmations of the one will, the one body, the real ideal humanity, which in all its members is the same, although in every one it is different; and which is completely realized not in any one this or that, nor in any mere "collective unity" of such particulars, but only in the whole as a whole. And we have the subjective personal side, where the one will of the whole is, ^^ I need not say that here are very great diflBculties. Apart from others, the relation of the physical world to the divine will is a well-known problem. But we have nothing to do with the (possible or impossible) solution of these questions. We have to keep to what is contained in the religious consciousness, and that we take to be as above. Concluding Remarks 165 in its unity with the conscious members, self-conscious, and wills itself as the personal identity of the universal and particular will." Such is the object, the fore-realized divine ideal; and by faith the particular man has to make that his, to identify himself therewith, behold and feel himself therewith identified, and in his own self-consciousness have the witness of it. And this, as we explained, is done by the dying to the private self as such, by the bestowal of it on the object, and by the living in the self which is ^^ By faith, and so far as faith holds, the ideal as the self, and the self as the ideal, is all that is real; and so, on the external side of my works I regard myself as, with others, the member or function of the divine whole. What falls outside, however much a fact, is still unreal. Again, on the inside, through faith I, as the mere this me, no longer am; but only I as the self-conscious personal will of the divine, the spirit of the whole, which, as that spirit, knows itself in me. On both sides, though the form is not swallowed up nor lost, yet the mere particular content of the self has for faith disappeared. But there is a difference on the two sides, which was also there in "My Station," but the losing sight of which was there not likely to lead to con- fusion; while here a confusion on this head may happen, and is a serious matter. To explain — on the inside the particular self knows and feels itself now immediately one with the universal, which is the will of all selves; but on the outside, its realization in works, it is only one member of the whole, one function or set of functions which is not, and which falls outside of, other sides or sets of functions. So long as it remains on the inside, the self is not apart from other selves; it is when it comes out to act that it is forced to distinguish itself. It is quite true that, when we act, on the inside also the whole will is for each person diverse; for it is not a universal which remains inert. It is presented in a specialized form as what is a relative "to be done" in such and such a case, which, if reflected on, is seen to be not other cases — but on the inner side this reflection, and hence this discrimination, does not exist. The member feels and knows itself, not as this member distinct from that member, but (since for faith the bad self is not) immediately one with the will of the entire organism. On the outside, on the other hand, the knowl- edge of its distinctness is forced upon it. There its realization is indeed the affirmation of the will of the whole, but the entire whole is not there; some of it is elsewhere, and, as a whole, it is realized only in the whole, which this or that man is not. In its works the self-conscious function finds that it is not other functions; it remains finite, and aU possibility of the confounding the merely human with the divine is excluded. 166 Ethical Studies one with the divine ideal that is felt and known as the only real self, and now too as my self. To our previous remarks on this head we have nothing to add, and must proceed to discuss more closely the relation of religion to morality. These, as we saw, are to a certain extent the same; and the question at once arises. Has the divine will of the religious con- sciousness any other content than the moral ideal? We answer, Certainly not. Religion is practical; it means doing something which is a duty. Apart from duties, there is no duty; and as all moral duties are also religious, so all religious duties are also moral.^^ In order to be, religion must do. Its practice is the realization of the ideal in me and in the world. Separate religion from the real world, and you will find it has nothing left it to do ; it becomes a form, and so ceases. The practical content which religion carries out comes from the state, society, art, and science. But the whole of this sphere is the world of morality, and all our duties there are moral duties. And if this is so, then this religious duty may collide with that religious duty, just as one moral duty may be contrary to another; but that religion, as such, should be in collision with morality, as such, is out of the question. So far religion and morality are the same; though, as we have seen, they are also different. The main difference is that what in morality only is to be, in religion somehow and somewhere really is, and what we are to do is done. Whether it is thought of as what is done now, or what will be done hereafter, makes in this respect no practical difference. They are different ways of look- ing at the same thing; and, whether present or future, the reality is equally certain. The importance for practice of this religious point of view is that what is to be done is approached, not with the knowledge of a doubtful success, but with the forefelt cer- tainty of already accomplished victory. Morality, the process of realization, thus survives within reli- gion. It is only as mere morality that it vanishes; as an element it remains and is stimulated. Not only is strength increased by ^' Religion in the sense of the cultus, etc., will be considered lower down. Concluding Remarks 167 assurance of success, but in addition the importance of success is magnified. The individual life for religion is one with the divine; it possesses infinite worth, a value no terms can express. And the bad gains a corresponding intensity of badness. It is infinitely evil, so that, for the religious consciousness, different amounts of badness are not measurable. All men are equally, because utterly, sinful. But this extreme of evil is therefore the more easy to subdue. It is not a reality against a mere ideal, but a mere fact which is contrary to the whole reality, an unutterable contradiction. Other incentives to good also come in. For the religious consciousness evil is an offense against what we love, and what loves us, not against something not real, which no one can well love. This makes evil worse, and more painful, and increases accordingly the power of good. All external control disappears, and in its place is gratitude to that which has conquered, confi- dence in it, and inability to be false to it.^^ It is the same objective will, which in "My Station" we see accomplished, in ideal morality know should be accomplished, and in religion by faith believe accomplished, which reflects itself into itself on the subjective side; and thence reasserts itself explicitly as the real identity of the human and divine will. And so the content of religion and morality is the same, though the spirit in which it is done is widely different. But all this, we may be told, though true to a certain extent, is one-sided; there is religion beyond all this. And this objection must be attended to. We have never lost sight of the fact it rests upon, although we may have seemed to do so. That fact is what some would call religion proper, the creed, the public cultus, and the sphere of private devotion. These We must now consider, but no further than we are obliged, i. e., so far as the question is touched, ^® We had this, too, in "My Station and its Duties." Let me remark that, if humanity is a collection, active gratitude to it is impossible, without the most childish self-delusion. Unless there is a real identity in men, the "Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these" becomes an absurdity. And I have never heard of anyone who, owing a debt to one man, thought he could pay it by giving to another man who was like the first, no matter how like. 168 Ethical Studies Has religious duty another content than the moral content? Put in this way, the question is on our view of morality absurd. If anything ought to be done, then it must be a moral duty; and the notion of religious duty, as such, outside of and capable of colliding with moral duty as such, is preposterous nonsense. If it is a religious duty to be "religious," then it is also a moral duty to be religious; precisely as, if it is a moral duty to be moral, it is also a religious duty to be moral. A better way to put the question is, Does passing from the mere moral sphere into the religious introduce a new order of duties, to take in which morality has now to be extended? That, however, is again an improper question, since, if it is right to be thus "re- ligious," we have no business previously to narrow morality, i. e., to exclude religiousness from the ideal which morality is to realize. It seems quite plain that the sphere of morality is the sphere of practice, and the sphere of practice is the sphere of morality. There is no escaping this conclusion; and then, so far as religion is practical, the worlds of morality and religion must coincide. What is really at issue is this. Is religion altogether practical? Is, that is to say, the theoretical element of it coordinate with or subordinate to the practical element? Does religion, like art and science, include a theoretical sphere, which in respect of its pro- duction in and by the subject is practice, but, in itself and as produced, is not so ? And next, if there is such a region, how does it stand to practice? Is it subsidiary to that, or is it an end in itself, when not brought under the practical end? And then further, how in respect of such a region is morality situated? Instead of trying to give direct answers, the best way to clear the matter will be to begin with the extreme of a one-sided view: and, first, there is an opinion which may be said simply to identify religion with orthodoxy, with the holding for true what is true. No doubt right doctrine is a very important matter, but does that make it religion? Put it to the religious consciousness, and the answer is. No. It is the belief "with the heart" that is wanted; and where that is not, religion is not. Else even the very devils would be religious; for they, as we are told, go further even than is required of them, and add to orthodoxy the fear of God. Concluding Remarks 169 So, in morality, a man must know what is right; but no one is moral simply because he has that knowledge. In both cases you cannot do, without knowing what you are to do; but mere know- ing, apart from doing, is neither religion nor morality. The next modification of this one-sided opinion is the view, which is all too popular, and says, "No doubt it is true that to know is not enough; action ought to follow; but, for all that, it is religon when I say my prayers, or meditate, or go to church, and that whether it goes any further, and whether anything comes of it, or not." By denying such a doctrine we ought not to give ofEense to Christians. Whether we shall give offense or not is another matter. We are sorry if it is so; but nevertheless we deny the assertion and we think that on our side we have the religious consciousness^* and the New Testament. There we do not have the love of God and man put side by side, as things which exist or can exist apart, but, where the latter fails, there fails also the former, and with it, I suppose, religion. There we are told that "pure religion" means duty to the afflicted, and the "world," by which we are not to be spotted, is hardly all spheres outside our devotions, not every region where the authority of the clergyman ceases. We maintain that neither church-going, meditation, nor prayer, except so far as it reacts on practice and subserves that, is religious at all. Aesthetic or speculative contemplation it may be; it may be a production of the feeling which results from the satisfied religious will; but religious it is not, except so far as it means will to do: and it is not that will, except so far as it manifests itself in religious-moral acts, external or internal — acts, that is, which realize the social, ideal-social, or ideal self, or again which are means to such realization. It is the same with morality. I may retire into my conscience, ■^njoy there the happiness of virtue, edify myself with, and find '' leasure in, the contemplation of it in myself or others; but that by ."'self is surely not moral. It may be a good thing to do this, but, •rso, it is a good only so far as it strengthens the will for good, .'I ant happy to say that "religieux" has no English equivalent. \ 170 Ethical Studies and so issues in practice. If it go beyond that, it is at best harm- less; but it may be, and more often is, pernicious and positively immoral. To dwell on the satisfaction which comes from right doing need not be wrong, but it is very dangerous, it is a most slippery positon; for the moment it leads us to enjoyment which does not arise from function, or does not react to stimulate func- tion, then, from that moment, it is bad and goes to corrupt. If a man were to please himself with thoughts of virtue, and then go out, neglect the virtue, and fall into the vice, would that be morality? But if a man does the same by religion, there are people who call it "religious." The true doctrine is that devotional exercises, and sacraments, and church-goings, not only should not and ought not to go by themselves, but that by themselves they simply are not religious at all. They are the isolating a sphere of religion which, so isolated, loses the character of religion and is often even positively sinful, a hollow mockery of the divine, which takes the enjoyment without giving the activity and degenerates into what may be well enough as aesthetic or contemplative, but, for all that, is both irreligious and immoral. By themselves, when religiously considered, these things are not ends at all; they are so only when they are means to faith, and so to will, and so to practice in the world. But how is it that such one-sided views, such gross mistakes, are possible? This is not very hard to understand. And in the first place (1) both in the moral and religious will is implied knowl- edge, and it obviously matters for practice what a man does know. Hence correct views are wanted; and this, which so far is true, is then twisted into making religion consist in the having right opinions, or in orthodoxy. But as we have seen, the presence of the religious object for the theoretical consciousness, in any form, is not religion. (2) The second mistake is more common. In morality what we know we feel or see, and cannot doubt. There is nothing to believe against appearances. We have a claim and the con- sciousness that this is satisfied or unsatisfied, but nothing beyon ourselves to hold for true; except so far as in the social object ^ is before our eyes. But in religion, despite of appearances, j^q Concluding Remarks 171 have to believe that something is real. We must have an inward assurance that the reality is above the facts; and we must carry that out against facts in which we cannot see the inward reality, and seem to see what is contrary thereto. It is by faith in our reconcilement with the invisible one reality that we are justified. That inward assurance, the self-consciousness that we are one with the divine, and one with others because one with the divine, naturally does not exist without expressing itself. And moreover it is right that it should express itself because that expression reacts most powerfully upon the self-consciousness, to intensify it, and so strengthen the conviction and will in which faith consists. It is right that the certainty of identity with the divine, and with others in the divine, should be brought home by the foretasted pleasure of unalloyed union; and that in short is the rationale of the cultus. The cultus is a means to the strengthening of faith, and is an end in itself by subserving that end. As anything more and beyond it is not an end; it may be harmless, and again it may be the destruction of true religion. And the religious community entails signs of communion, and these, as the cultus generally, entail ministers; and it is generally found more convenient to have certain persons set apart, just as again the state generally finds it convenient to support and regulate one or more religious communities.^" These ministers, however appointed, are a means to a means to the end; and here we have the rationale of the clerical office. You can have true religion without sacraments or public wor- *** Religious communities may be called "churches"; but churches in this sense must not be confounded with the Church proper. That is the whole body of Christ, and whether it is limited or not depends on the answer to the question whether the spirit of Christ is limited; whether it is visible or not, is answered with that answer; as also the questions whether it can be divided, reunited, and so forth, A true view of the Church is of the last importance. From that view, in our opinion, it follows that in the one Church proper there is no hierarchy, no spiritual superior, and can be none, because the spirit of Christianity excludes such things. Wherever there are -ecclesiastical superiors (as it is convenient that there should be), there )5o facto you have a finite religious body, which, as a consequence, cannot ^ nor represent the Church proper. 172 Ethical Studies ship, and again both without clergymen; just as you can have clergymen and sacraments without true religion. And if a part of the clergy think that they stand in a more intimate relation with the divine Spirit than the rest of the community do, then they both go against the first principles of Christianity, and moreover any- one who does not shut his eyes can see that the facts of life confute them. What Christianity, if we mistake not, tells them is that their gifts and functions being not those of others, they have the one spirit in another way from others; but when they want to go from an "other" to a "higher," then we must tell them that there are steps wanted to reach that conclusion, and such steps as Christianity cannot admit. The sum of the matter is this. Practical faith is the end, and what helps that is good because that is good; and where a religi- ous ordinance does not help that, there it is not good. And often it may do worse than not help, and then it is positively hurtful. So with religious exercises, and what too exclusively is called personal piety. They are religious if they are the simple expres- sion of, or helps to, religion; and if not, then they are not religious, and perhaps even irreligious. Religion issues in the practical realizing of the reconcilement; and where there is no such realization, there is no faith, and no religion. Neither against the clergy, nor the sacraments, nor private devotion am I saying one word, and the reader who so under- stands me altogether misunderstands me. For a large number of our clergy I have a sincere personal respect, and there is scarcely any office which in my eyes is higher than that of the minister. And I recognize fully the general necessity both for private devotion and public worship. It is the abuse, and the excess of them, against which we have to protest. Whatever is the expression of the religious spirit which carries itself out in the world is religious and good, unless it goes to excess, and the excess is measured by the failure to strengthen or the weakening of the will. Just so any institution, observance, or discipline (it matters not what) which strengthens the religious will is good, provided it does so strengthen it as a whole, and is not in other ways contrary to religion and morality. The same holds good ir Concluding Remarks 173 the moral sphere; there we may have ascetic exercises which strengthen the will, and are therefore, and so far as they do that, good; but not good, or even bad, when they go beyond. But as to what in detail is legitimate or not, all this is matter of particular fact, with which we have nothing to do. To repeat, public and private exercises are religious and good as the simple voice of, or as means to the strengthening of, the religious will. That will consists in the faith that overcomes the world, by turning it into the Christian world which for faith it is. The inner sphere of religion, which brings home to itself its assurance and its bliss, is only the inner sphere, and by itself is not religion. By itself it is not even the inner, for it is so only when it is the inner of the outer ; and that outer, where faith fails, is not, and with it goes the inner as such. A sensuous or semi- sensuous gloating over the pleasures of the anticipated result is, in morals as in religion, when considered in reference to the will, a mere debauchery. Here as there it is the Hedonism which kills practice; and considered as Oeuipia, it belongs to art or science, not religion at all. Furthermore, sensitiveness or inten- sity of the religious consciousness is no more religion than that of the moral consciousness is morality; nor again is a right per- ception in these matters any more than a right perception. It is religion only when the divine will, of which for faith the world is the realization, reflects itself in us ; and, with the personal energy of our own and its self-consciousness, carries out both its and our will into the world, which is its own and ours, and gives us, in the feeling which results from function, that inner assurance of identity which precedes and accompanies the action of our will. And thus for religion and morality the content of the will is the same, though the knowledge and the spirit are widely different. If this is so, then our Essays have, in a way too imperfect, yet brought us to the end, where morality is removed and survives in its fulfillment. In our journey we have not seen much, and much that we have seen was perhaps little worth the effort, or might have been had without it. Be that as it may, the hunt after pleasure in any shape has proved itself a delusion, and the form of duty a snare, and the finite realization of "my station" was 174 Ethical Studies truth indeed, and a happiness that called to us to stay, but was too narrow to satisfy wholly the spirit's hunger; and ideal moral- ity brought the sickening sense of inevitable failure. Here where we are landed at last, the process is at an end, though the best activity here first begins. Here our morality is consummated in oneness with God, and everywhere we find that "immortal Love," which builds itself forever on contradiction, but in which the contradiction is eternally resolved. Hie nullus labor est, ruborque nuUus; Hoc juvit, juvat, et diu juvabit; Hoc non deficit, incipitque semper. gsoia # Date Due Due Returned Due Returned MAY - 8 '67 JI W13TB7 1 ? £ m MAR 15 '68 ^'=-m m ' ^" mti^i -rr JleL2_2LM: ■i-Ua^ /7o Ethical studies: selected essa mem 170B8ne2C2 3 lEb2 03550 37fl7 / I KEEP CARD IN POCKET ResLib IT IS IMPORTANT THAT CARD BE KEPT IN POCKET