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 CONSCIENCE
AN ESSAY TOWARDS A NEW ANALYSIS, DEDUCTION,’
AND DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIENCE,
ya]
RG

CONSCIENO ED
AN ESSAY
TOWARDS A

NEW ANALYSIS, DEDUCTION, AND DEVELOPMENT

OF CONSCIENCE.

BY

Rev. J. D. ROBERTSON, M.A., D.Sc.

VOL. I.

NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. Lro.
1894.
 Theology Li brary

CHOOL OF TH ECOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
California

The rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reserved.

 DEDICATED

MER. cE
AND

TO THE MEMORY OF
EMR.
 PREFACE.

It might have been better to let the following essay intro-

duce and explain itself, were it not that some personal
acknowledgments are due. I therefore take the opportunity
of saying a word or two by way of general preface.
About twelve years ago—after much anxious thought
and investigation—I was convinced that the key to some
of the most troublesome problems of the present day,
both in theology and ethics, was to be found in conscience,
—if anywhere. Accordingly I resolved to enter upon a
prolonged consideration of its nature, origin, and develop-
ment. I was then completing three sessions of university
study in France and Germany, having previously graduated
in the faculty of arts in Edinburgh. About that time, five
Elective Fellowships for original research were instituted in
connection with Edinburgh University, and I was fortunate
enough to secure one of them. Opportunities of special
study were thus provided which might not otherwise have
been available, and, after this long interval, I gladly
acknowledge the incalculable benefits I derived from work
upon this foundation. My most sincere thanks are there-
fore tendered to the anonymous Founder of these Fellow-
ships, as well as to the gentlemen through whose goodwill
the appointment fell to me in the department of the mental
and moral sciences.
In the kind of work here undertaken, a high value
attaches to the method followed. It is chiefly therein that
any notable advance in insight or comprehension must show
itself. Since it is only the analysis that is presented to the
reader in this volume, it is premature to make any claim
to attention on this general ground. But it must be evident
vi PTE CLE.

that there is much advantage gained by beginning with an

analysis of the nature and activities of conscience before
discussing the question of its origin, derivation, authority,
and development. I hope to publish the succeeding volume
without undue delay.
The distinction of the constitution of the activities of
conscience into Formal and Material was first strongly
recommended to me by Mr Darwin’s hostile reference to it
in a note appended to his chapter on the moral sense.*
Moral sense and sense of duty as names for the two leading
forms of activities of conscience occurred to me whilst
reading Newman’s “Grammar of Assent,” although his use
of the words has little or nothing in common with that
here adopted.
When first taken in hand this essay was regarded as a
kind of Apologia pro religione med, but long ere the rudest
draft of it was completed, it had ceased to have any interest
of that sort attaching to it. If afterwards, in the intervals
of more strictly professional duties and studies, it has been
wrought out for its own sake, the spirit animating the worker
has not been less earnestly religious, though more dis-
interested.
Aisa Bes

Nort Berwics, February 1894.

bf ‘* Descent of Man,” part I., chap. iv., note 25, page 111, second edition,
83.
 PAE
THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE

WHAT ARE THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE ?

. On the alleged barrenness of Ethical Inquiry :—

As (a) unfruitful for Science,
(b) unprofitable for Practice
. On the title Conscience, (a) as ambiguous, (5) asjuneeaton,
. A Provisional Definition of Conscience ; the hake of the
Moral Law in our Sensibilities
. The Qualities by which Sensibilities ae be Oeesac
(i.) The lowest order of sensibilities of relation apprehending
the secondary qualities of objects is higher and wider
than sub-conscious sentiency, but lower in rank and °
narrower in range than those through which the
primary qualities and relations are known.
(ii.) Still the moral sensibilities are relatively higher and
wider than the foregoing, for they are more Gomplex,
applying to actions and motives rather than to things.
(iii.) This is true of moral sensibility simply as such, but
particular and acquired sensibilities cannot be either
so uniform or so universal as the highest and widest
sensibilities of natural qualities and relations.
(iv.) The sensibilities to moral qualities and relations are also
consummated more palpably in feeling
. Moral Sensibilities consist of Moral Bispoptibilities an
Moral Impulses ‘ 12
. The Objects of these Guanepeibilities ond Tmpulses are Pamons
their Conduct and Motives 13
. Their Products are Moral Emotions aa deriinenia and thees
“TI

with the underlying Noneeeye make up the Activities of

Conscience F 14

CHAPTER II.
WHAT IS THE LEADING CHARACTERISTIC OF AN ACTIVITY
OF CONSCIENCE ?

. Three things characterise Activities of Conscience : which of

the three is the most prominent ? 15
Vill CONTENTS.

PAGE

9. Is the Cognition more prominent than the Sensibility :—

not (a) in the conscientious . . : 5 16
nor (b) in the unconscientious . 4 18
and not (c) in those who may be described as ae inter-
mediate . 19
10. If Sensibility, whether iis it oe Moral Snasspibility or ihe
Moral Impulse ? ‘ 21
(a) The Moral Sarceoebiliey:is dsnneaicuaele asies
no direct claim upon the Willing, and as such it is not
the more prominent . 22
11. The Moral Impulse and Judgment a Oukaation as imme-
diately claiming to control the Willing is the leading char-
acteristic of Activities of Conscience . - “ 24

CHAPTER III.
How ARE WE TO NAME AND CLASSIFY ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE?
12. (i.) The Moral Susceptibilities and the Emotional Judgments
active in them are named the Moral Sense. The Moral
Impulses, together with the Judgments and Sentiments of
Obligation are named the Sense of Duty . R 2 25
(ii.) Minuter Divisions within the Moral Sense :—
(a) The emotional judgments that are simply decla-
ratory of right and wrong.
(6) Those that are also judicial . 26
(iii.) Emotional Judgments in regard to the eondust of t)ee
though legitimate and valid within limits, are of
secondary importance : 2 ; : : 27
13. The Sense of Duty consists—
(a) Of premonitory impulses, and
(b) Prescriptive judgments and sentiments of obligation . 28
14, After the act these flow back again into the Judicial Activities,
and lend to Moral Condemnation part of its peculiar sting,
and to Remorse its characteristic bitterness. . 29
15, Activities of self-approbation and reprobation of others ; 30
16. While divisible in these ways the Activity of Conscience is
ultimately one and indivisible : ; : . 31

CHAPTER IV.
Tur Mora SENSE AND SENSE OF DutTy—THEIR INVARIABLE
ATTRIBUTES AND UNIVERSAL ASPECTS.

(4) 17. The new meaning put into the terms Moral Sense and Sense
of Duty 4 33
18. Both names are necessary in Grier to ames distinctly and
adequately the ake of the Activities ay BN gs
stand for . : 5 34
 CONTENTS.

PAGE

19. New and old use of the phrase ‘‘ Sense of Duty ” ; 35

20. The Activities designated Moral Sense—their invariable
attributes.
(i.) Moral Sense always implies some perception of moral
quality and some susceptibility to emotion in connec-
tion with it.
(ii.) The judging of a right and a wrong in action, and the
emotional accompaniment are invariable attributes,
though the particular things judged right and wrong
vary, and the particular emotions are different more or
less in kind or degree or both 36
21. Attributes that are similarly invariable in the Sense a Daty,
viz., some perception of Moral Obligation in Willing as well as
some force of sensibility in connection with it, though the
particular obligations felt are variable, as well as the intensity
and frequency with which they are felt : 37
22. Moral Sense and Sense of Duty belong to each other, ae Hey
do not always run side by side, in so far as the kind and
degree of their effectiveness is concerned 38
(B) 23, The Universal Aspects of the Moral Sense and Sense ofDuty.
(a) Involuntariness or spontaneity of wae activity upon
occasion.
(6) The immediateness of their Fea NE
(c) Their intuitive self-certainty 39
24, The Activities of Moral Sense and Sense of Dutypoearean all
Willing that is free or self-determined 41

CHAPTER V.
Tue Morat Sensk AND SENSE OF Duty—THEIR VARIABLE
ATTRIBUTES AND PARTICULAR ASPECTS.

(A) 25. Moral Sense and Sense of Duty—their variable attributes.

(i.) The elements in which the attributes vary :—
(a) Perceptive power in the moral sense.
(6) Tenderness of moral susceptibility and objective
truth of particular judgment - 44
(ii.) Variable attributes in the Sense of Duty.
(a) The ethical. height and comprehensiveness of the
preceptive judgment and associated sensibilities 46
(B) 26. The particular aspects of Moral Sense and Sense of Duty.
(a) Quickness and keenness of the emotional judgments
in the Moral Sense—when tender.
(b) And in the Sense of Duty—analogous changes
27. Special rapidity, force and durability of the judicial dear
and the indelibility of their effects o
28. Particular Aspects of activities of conscience in relation e others
29. Many minor features cannot be dealt with in this analysis
 CONTENTS.

PA Tepe

CONSTITUTION OF THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE.

CHAPTER I.
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CONSTITUTION OF ACTIVITIES OF
CONSCIENCE ?
PAGE

1. The difficulty of the present problem and the utility ofasolution 57

2, Explanation of the title chosen for the Second Part. ; 58
3. ‘‘Constitution” and thefasoues provisional definition of the
activities : 59
4, Moral constitution or consciousness is ihe equivalent tothe sum
of moral conceptions by means of which moral differences are
apprehended and moral demands imposed upon the will.
(i.) The connection of moral conceptions
(a) with moral sense, and
(6) with the sense of duty.
(ii.) Their function is that of standard in the moral sense and
motive in the sense of duty. ; 60
5, But moral sense and sense of duty require a double cousiention
as possessing double attributes and aspects. : 2 61
(i.) Their formal constitution.
(ii.) Their material constitution.
(iii.) The former is the immediate Problem of Section A. 62

SECTION A.
THE FORMAL CONSTITUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE
AND SENSE OF DUTY.

CHAPTER I.

Tue INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM.

6. Standard in the moral sense and motive in the sense of duty

are the equivalent of law or constitution 3 64
7. The instinctively selfish nature has been maintained 6 be the
ultimate or formal standard and motive : : : 64
8. Historical support of this theory P é ; 65
9. The contentions of Hobbes, v. Kirchmann, oe Bain . 5 66
 CONTENTS. xi

PAGE

10. The various kinds of pleasure and pain which occur as sanctions
in conscience are said to be all reducible to one.
an The position of Epicurus and others : 67
12. The underlying conception of human nature as s prestipposed in
this constitution of conscience 68
13. This theory is rightly named the petinctively selfish iheory.or
or
Individualistic Hedonism.
14, The two points upon which the argument turns 69
15. The setting up of moral diterentes and demands is not made
more explicable by referring to children and primitive men.
16. Punishment does not constitute conscience, but presupposes it
in the child if morally effective 70
is In primitive communes restrictions upon penoua eocdont mut
exist, but do they rest ultimately upon the instinctively
selfish nature of those who observe them? 71
18. The negative argued . : : 72
19. Pumishaent by rulers has a much more Siento feos fish
the constitution of a right and a wrong, or of moral obligation 73
20. In men the ultimate standard and motive must be found in
another part of our nature than that which is Segoe!
selfish . : 73
21, Men otherwise Cones pee ai be the men we know
ourselves to be.
22. In the instances referred to, the obedience is ees) servile and
blind : 74
23. It may be taken as an axiom in fecal that no paee can be
wielded over others entirely in a private and selfish interest,
but must rest in the last resort upon some community of
nature and interest between ruler and ruled é 75
24, If this true of lower, it is still more 2S true oft igher
societies : : 3 17
25. One more test applied—
(i.) Activities prior to the bodily pleasure and pain that
follows their satisfaction or frustration, as for example
in the self-conservative instincts.
(ii.) and the susceptibilities and impulses associated with
the distinctively rational nature.
(iii.) A social instinct is also present in men ; 79

CHAPTER II.
Tue INSTINCTIVELY SoctAL THEORY OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM.

26. Within Buddhism and Christendom the instinctively social

nature has been held to be that which formally constitutes
activities of conscience > - : . 80
27. The leading Socialistic Hedonea 80
28. A brief statement of this theory : 81
xii CONTENTS.
PAGE

29. Its presuppositions are scientific rather than metaphysical 81

30. It is the direct contradictory of the instinctively selfish theory
and has some evident superiorities positive and negative 82
31. But the change from the selfish to socialistic Hedonism does not
obviate difficulties inherent in the conception of a conscience
constituted by instinct 83
32. Fuller statement of the theory prior to pecans =
(a) Moral sense. (b) Sense of duty 84
(c) Self-condemnation and remorse, and
(d) Fears before punishment ‘ 85
33. The sacrifice of the individual to his society consequent upon
this theory 86
(A) 34. The first test question is:
ors it peovide a eund of the
requisite universality in the moral sense to correspond with
the universal attributes of the activities ? 87
35. What does universality imply as a requirement in this connec-
tion ? Sameness in the standards, and Kote tees in so far
as all persons judged are alike : 88
36. The social instinct unites separate intlividuale in a common
interest by ties of blood, especially in the narrower relation-
ships, but it may also have a wider sphere of influence 89
37. Socialistic Hedonists illegitimately ascribe to it that which
is the work of the common reason : 90
38. Moreover it has a different standard for Pipes and aliens : oF
39. Sympathies necessarily fail in impartiality 93
(B) 40. Does social instinct provide an unconditioned see in the
sense of duty?. 94
41. If blood-relationship be not fe as Hesical ace none
then the motive of obligation which is contingent upon it is
conditional 96
42. Motives of unconditional lee ati ve been operataee
in the sense of duty of those who change moral rules from age
toage . 97
43, There is a right and a poe aor ai beyond the oe of
the community 99
44, Sense of duty has a motive of personalas Beeae fon octal
obligation 100
45, Therefore the social ieee as metre or iyo does at
meet the requirement of tmeonditionedness 101

CHAPTER III.

Tue DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY, OR HUMANISTIC

EUDAEMONISM.
46. The passage from instincts and Hedonism to reason and Budae-
monism ; : 102
47. Historical support for fae Shige eonsuituned of conscience. 103
 CONTENTS. Xili

PAGE
48. The preliminary statement of main principle of the present
theory shows that the change in the aa standpoint
is revolutionary 104
49. If reason is to be adopted as Ae in conscience, it must have
capacities and powers other than it possesses under Hedon-
ism, and it must also be essentially active and relatively
independent 105
50. There will be collateral fierucdons in pen eilinies as a their
quality or kind 106
. 51. The rational conception of the: good, and its dorelative sen-
sibilities, are traceable in the moral sense and sense of duty . 108
52. The presuppositions of this theory are the existence of a double
nature in man :—a rational or higher as well as instinctive or
lower self. Definition of the two selves 109
53. Does the objectifying consciousness which goes with fe higher
self provide for universality in the standard, and suscep-
tibility and unconditionedness in the motive and impulse 110
54. What does universality in the former,imply?
(i.) Omnipresent activity of the moral sense in men 111
(ii.) Impartiality in judgment and sensibility < 112
(iii.) Both of these are provided for with the mac self ag
law 113
(iv.) Unconditioned otives and impulses are hie eee 114
55, No other than a formal explanation of the nature of the good
in conscience is possible at this stage ‘ 115
56. Humanistic Eudaemonism as the end of the law in conscience . 116

SECTION B.
MATERIAL CONSTITUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE AND
SENSE OF DUTY.

CHAPTER I.
DISTINCTION OF THE MATERIAL FROM THE FoRMAL CONSTITUTION OF
CoNSCIENCE.
57. Distinction between the constitution as formal and material.
(i.) The conception of the good and the sensibility to it are
the formal constitution 119
(ii.) The material is always something additional to the
formal constitution, viz.:—some conceptions and sensi-
bilities which are additions in kind to the original
constitution . : : ° 120
xiv CONTENTS.
PAGE

(iii.) These bring with them into conscience some increase of

purity and insight in the perceptive judgment, and
of tenderness and objective truth in the susceptibility,
together with corresponding changes in the sense of
duty 122

58. In contrast with the formal the material is an acquired con-

stitution 123
59. There is a parallel berrecn oe distinction in
4 the Comeneee
and the previous division of the activities . 124
60. Finally, the formal necessarily passes into a material bonne
tion 125

CHAPTER II.
A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND THE OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT
RATIONALISM.
61. The rejection of any and-every material constitution 127
62. Historical support. Immanuel Kant 128
63. Statement of the views of Kant in so far as rolevsind to the
Inquiry 130
64. The moral sense—its destivation) eabdimn of the Karsan
position 131
65. The sense of duty—its onstination acoeediig to Fant: Is i
sufficient? Has it within itself the variety of moral impulse
and strength of moral sentiment technically necessary ? 133
66. The concrete conditions under which conscience is active in
each must be taken account of in ee the above
question 134
. Impulses and sentiments Fach may ce in Se of nal
with the sense of duty in the older and narrower meaning of
the term 135
68. If their assistance mies be rejected, then
t the sense dae
will be somewhat helpless 136
69. Effects of Kant’s excessive formalism in some of the alee os
practice : . . . 137
70. Do the requirements of Tiutversality and Unconditionedness
make a material constitution inadmissible ? 138
les Differences of nature and relation which are inherent must be
recognised and allowed for in requiring uniformity of obliga-
tion . . . 139
72, Differences of polation cantemparary: and hitoneal also empha:
sise the necessity for resins and changing material con-
stitutions 5 . 5 141
73. The rule limiting the inte in the gates of the formal
constitution and the extent of our agreement or disagreement
with Kant’s positions . 142
 CONTENTS. XV

PAGE
CHAPTER III. \
MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS AS THEY HAVE BEEN; OR, Pro-
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS AND QUASI-INSTINCTIVE SENSIBILI-
TIES.
74. The relative absence of purity and rectitude in the consciences
of primitive men needs explanation now : 143
75. To do this, material constitutions as they have been anast Be
more fully analysed. ; 144
76. Results of anthropological research as to earliest material con-
stitutions :—
are (a) that they have been low and limited.
(6) that they have undergone development . : oes
77. Meaning of terms ‘‘ pro-ethical” and ‘‘ quasi-instinctive” . 146
78. Consciences of primitive men and children are characterised
by all the marks of undevelopedness; hence practices
sanctioned and enforced which are contrary to our standards
and susceptibilities or motives and impulses . : 147
79. The key to all these inferior and immature material constitu.
tions is to be found in the application of the conception of
development . : : é : : - 148

CHAPTER IV.
‘\

MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS AS THEY SHOULD BE, OR, CONSCIENCE

AND First PRINCIPLES oF RIGHT AND Duty.
80. The explanation of the shortcomings of primitive and infantile
consciences are applicable in a measure to all in the process of
development . 149
81. The early nndevelopedness of Bicle sole is4 conjoined with &
wardness of development in the lower, but the lower never
overcomes the higher by sheer force alone. 150
82. Slowness of the process of dislodging inferior and iaueee
material constitutions and some of the reasons for this 5 iistil
83. What are the means of transforming the forces of the in-
stinctively selfish and social nature . 152
84. The first of the perfect principles is pote enon acas or the eerie
of the lower to the interests of the higher self, with its pre-
ceding imperfect, evolutionary forms . : 153
85. The second is self-reverence (its counter part) which with the
former revolutionises the indirect influence of the instinctively
selfish nature . : 154
86. Social righteousness and social fis are arose which ebuaitornee
and transform the influence of the instinctively social nature 155
87. These four first principles offer an ideal material constitution
for conscience . 156
88. They are first in the order a od or comprehenstveniess
though last in the order of development é : - 156
xvi CONTENTS.
PAGE

CHAPTER V.
OR DYNAMIC
Tar Unrry oF MATERIAL AND FoRMAL CONSTITUTIONS,
SPIRITUALISM.

89. The concluding problem of this analysis is the question how

material constitutions, so anomalous and so little developed,
co-exist in unity with an ever-abiding formal constitution 159
90. Upon the multiform character of the material eonstitution
and
the variability of the activities there is based an argument
for the nullity or abortiveness of the so-called Formal
constitution : 4 : - 2 é 159
Mile For an effective reply it is not necessary to dispute the results
of anthropological research, but we must ask what are the
inculpatory standards and susceptibilities in the moral sense 160
92. And motives and impulses in the sense of duty 5 : 162
93. Material constitutions in conscience have led to the habitual
sanction in the moral sense of shocking excesses of appetite,
and in the sense of duty, there have been motives and im-
pulses which ran counter to the rights of innocent persons 164
94. Intuitionalism, pure and simple, is unable to resolve the
difficulties raised, but dynamic spiritualism (which is an
application of the development theory to conscience) succeeds
—Definition of it . : : : ; : 164
95. It makes easily conceivable, unity in variety and continuity in
difference ‘ : : : f : : 166
96. But moral differences of development appear insignificant by
comparison with the diversities and perversities cited above 168
97. Formal conceptions and sensibilities protested against the
originals of these : 3 : : : : 169
98. If so, how did conscience come to authorise the practices which
it at first condemned . : : : ; : 171
09: The primitive man’s conscience is active under two dominating
natural conditions : : 5 : ; > 172
100. But the best proof of the presence and activity of an ultimate
perceptive capacity and preceptive power is to be found in the
fact that the changes in the constitution have fallen out in
the direction of a progressive assimilation of the material to
the Formal constitution 174
 PAn Ish

THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT ARE THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE 2

Ir is often needful, and sometimes important, that a few

persons in each generation should consider the moral
nature of man from the fresh standpoint which their own age
supplies. Doubt is freely cast upon the fruitfulness of such
inquiry. In our time the doubt has become so extravagant
in its expression that only the doing of that which it de-
clares beforehand to be impossible can in any measure meet
its demands. Results are not to be expected of such an1. onthe
order of conclusiveness that they lay for ever to rest the bare ounce
possibility of doubt as to the worth of ethical inquiry. But ay.
if experience has been the mother of many children in the
past, the paternity of reason being acknowledged, then it is
surely too much to assume that the latest experience cannot
possibly yield any tangible teaching in this sphere also.
Better it is to believe that none who lives the moral life ¢As™.
need despair of coming to know the doctrine—-each in his Since.
degree. To express this knowledge with the accuracy and
fulness necessary to its becoming a permanent contribution
to original thought upon this subject, is entirely another
matter. It is a task for which few have any inclination,
and still fewer any aptitude. Success in it as a scientific
investigation implies a special combination of gifts and
acquirements. A competent scholar may not be capable as
A
 2 NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

a thinker, and a scholarly and thoughtful writer, with ex-

ceptional ease in literary expression, may nevertheless fail
in speculative insight or power of sustained and systematic
thought. So that we cannot be far wrong if we infer that
high mental ability as well as wide moral culture is requisite
if a worker is to produce fruit for all time, even from learned
labours in the field of ethical science.
On these grounds frequent failure to cultivate morals
productively may be admitted, while the inherent and in-
evitable barrenness of the subject itself is denied. Nay, we
may go farther, and say that total scepticis m as to the
possibility of any real knowledg e in this sphere is a mental
attitude of all others the most unreasonable. or surely it
would be the most fatal of man’s many imbecilit ies that he
should lack the power to apprehen d and understa nd the
ultimate principles and laws of that life which it is of vital
concern that he should live.
But if ethical inquiry should be admitted, within certain
limitations, to be fruitful for science, there are others who
renew against it the reproach of barrenness, on the ground
6, As unpro-
fitable for
that it is unprofitable for practice. As might be expected,
practice.
the holders of this opinion are generally found among
the adherents of a somewhat rigid intellectual orthodoxy.
With their own circle of ethical beliefs complete and intact
they resent or undervalue an investigation that does not
promise results susceptible of immediate application to the
regulation of life.
This is by no means so revolutionary a position as the
former, if both in part spring from a common root in in-
tellectual impatience. But the latter starts only the com-
paratively subordinate question, whether the methods of
speculative and positive science can be united profitably.
May not the interests of practice be conserved and furthered
by a treatment of scientific problems to a large extent
separate and independent? Nay, it may be plausibly argued
that the difference in the subject-matter and in the ends of
each necessitates this. For theoretic inquiries—such as
 LHE ACTIVITIES OF, CONSCIENCE. 3

the one here entered upon—have no direct or visible bearing

upon the interests that are of most anxious practical moment
to the mass of men. Necessities of a scientific or specula-
tive order press but rarely upon the immediate conduct of
life. While they take their rise in a deep-going interroga-
tion as to the essential nature of conscience, they must pass
lightly over the state of its activities in any one man or
group of men. The best theory is but remotely connected
with the influences which are effective and controlling with
ordinary people. “ What relation,” it may be asked, “ what
possible relation can the most scientific opinion in morals
have with the practical problem whether this average person
shall begin to be good or that other continue to be dutiful 2”
No mistrust of our procedure need arise from this cause, for
the particular relations that do sometimes exist between
them come up for settlement at a later stage in their proper
place, and with the associations that belong to them. Mean-
while we dismiss the charge of unprofitablenesss, and rest in
the faith that no genuine service to science can fail in the
end to be of proportional value within the sphere of practice.
One more preliminary objection requires to be dealt with,
and its discussion enables us to give a definite answer to
the query which stands at the head of this opening chapter.
If it be conceded that the task we are taking up need be 2. on the
A C ° title “ Con-
neither fruitless nor unprofitable, it may yet be averred, science.”
with some show of reason, that it is hopeless in view of the
title ‘conscience’ which we have adopted. Some would
say at once that it is impossible to conduct any inquiry to
a successful issue which has for its subject data designated
by a term so ambiguous and misleading.
The ambiguity of the word conscience is not to be denied. See
In the mouths of many it stands for different and apparently
conflicting meanings. But in this respect it is not alone in
the vocabulary of moral science. or the words ‘ good’
and ‘bad, ‘right’ and ‘wrong, ‘duty’ and ‘pleasure,’
all share to some extent in the vagueness that comes with
universal currency in the language of the world. They or
4 NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

their equivalents are part of the mother-tongue of every

man, whatever be his land or language. And such a
career in the thoughts and feeling s of men is not gained
and kept for them, withou t some loss of precisi on in
their content. So that if Rothe and others set aside “con-
science’ because of ambiguity, and substit ute less familia r
synonyms, the same treatment must be extend ed to the
other moral terms in common use. The supreme difficulty
of doing this consistently ought to induce thinkers to
hesitate before they banish the term ‘ conscie nce’ from the
nomenclature of morals.
On the other hand there are several considerations that
might be urged in favour of retaining the scientific use of
this term of common life. But these considerations scarcely
require to be adduced at length. It may suffice to allude
in passing to them. There is, for example, the universally
admitted fact that as a popular expression ‘ conscience’ is
sufficiently intelligible before as well as after special
education. So that if its meaning be vague, the facts of
inner experience it stands for in each charge it with
a plentiful if not a very precise and uniform content.
Moreover, when these minor variations in its signification
are removed or diminished to the vanishing point by exact
definition and subsequent use in consistency therewith, then
the last shred of this argument against its usage in science
disappears. In a serious effort like the present, which
proceeds by analysis after starting with the minimum of
presupposition, what room is there left for ambiguity? The
phenomena of the moral consciousness are enumerated,
classified, and described, and their causes in our human
nature are afterwards discussed. So that each stage in the
progress is noted and emphasised until we have gathered
together all the elements that go to a full definition.
While on the way to this, the term conscience always bears
just as much meaning as has been put into it by previous
explanation, and thus the reader as well as the writer should
be adequately protected against that confusion in the
 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE. 5

apprehension and entanglement in the reasoning which are

the chief dangers attending the adoption of ambiguous
terms. When complete immunity from these has been
provided for, then the popularity of the word ‘ conscience :
adds to rather than detracts from its value for science.
A far more radical objection to its scientific use is ad-
vanced by a few powerful contemporary writers in our sb. As mis-
own country as well as in France and Germany. They eae:
brand it as essentially misleadin g. For they have accus-
tomed themselves to regard the word ‘conscience’ as the
watchword of beliefs now dying or dead, and which had
their birth only in ignorance and their life in illusion.
Indeed, the unguarded language of this class of thinkers
tends to fling around all moral subjects an atmosphere of
boundless suspicion and bottomless distrust.
But the objections from this quarter require to be stated
more specifically. By help of the conglomerate science of
anthropology it is hoped to carry the inductive methods of
natural science into regions that were hitherto universally
assigned to theology and metaphysic. And in harmony
with this spirit of research the advocates of these views
claim to put forth not mere philosophic opinions, but the
undoubted facts of the case. They think to settle the
question of “ conscience or no conscience” offhand by appeals
to the beliefs and practices of members of primitive com-
munes. The whole content of barbaric culture is ransacked,
and generalisations are presented as the result which read
like an indictment of the moral nature of numerous hordes
a
of human beings.- ‘Conscience’ they pronounce to be
rudest
capacity and a power not yet in existence in the
men. From which it would naturally be inferred that its
human,
activities have no original place within our nature as
and that, therefore, a word which implies, and has long em-
d with
bodied, an opposite conviction should now be dispense
in the interests of new truth.
Now, it is one thing to hold, as we do, that there have
senti-
been great changes in the content of standards and
 6 NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

ments in particular consciences, it is another, and quite a

different position, to maintain that there have been beings
completely human and sane in whom conscience was totally
inactive. To emphasise our opposition to, and disbelief in
this latter view, we deliberately retain the term ‘ conscience’
in its place of honour and authority in a treatise claiming
to be scientific. But we greatly desire to avoid any appear-
ance of arbitrariness, and we wish to conciliate those who
are sincere and consequent in their appeals to experience.
We therefore hasten to produce a definition-of the word
which we have preferred. It can be only provisional at the
outset, but it may serve to put us in the way of securing
one fuller and more exact.
Ne Let us accordingly define it as the activity of the moral
nition of law in our sensibilities. There can, we think, be no reason-
able difference of opinion as to the existence in all men as
men of some sensibility to a moral as well as to other differ-
ences in action. That, at all events, is our presupposition.
For if this were non-existent in any case, there surely would
be the best ground for questioning either the complete
sanity or the complete humanity of the beings in question.
But in reality, when all misunderstanding as to the use of
language is absent, there is, as Hume says, none so scep-
tical as to deny to any man sensibility to some moral dis-
tinction in action. More it is not necessary from our
standpoint to assume, but less leaves us no phenomena to
analyse.
- The world-old difficulties and disputations range round
the nature of the moral law active in these sensibilities.
This is the specially philosophic problem upon the answer
to which must depend the meaning which can be attached
with scientific warrant to the term moral. This knotty
question we reserve for discussion in the latter half of this
analysis. Meanwhile, we devote this and the four suc-
ceeding chapters to the simpler explication and elucidation
of the phenomena of conscience.
By the phenomena of conscience we mean all those sen-
 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE. 7

sibilities in which the moral law manifests itself. What are

these ?
The answer to such a question can only be given here in 4. ow morai
the baldest outline. It may nevertheless be clearly stated. aa iT
Any and every sensibility is some modification, psychic or
organic, which responds to an excitation. The sensibilities
are various though broadly distinguishable into conscious
and unconscious. The latter is not sensibility proper, but
may be termed sentiency or sensitivity; the former is also
known as sensibility of relation. The stages of sentiency
in the lower and higher ranges of animal life are easily as-
certainable; but it is with distinctively human or conscious
sensibility that we have to do, and with any other only in
relation to it. ;
Even the sensibilities of human creatures are by no means 5. The quali-
all alike. If we considered them minutely they would be sonsipaities
found to differ in many respects; but the characteristics by cneited:
which we are to classify them in a preliminary way are
mainly two: the complexity of their composition, and the
objective validity of their data. The former gives us their
rank as high or low in the order of sensibility; the latter
their range as containing perceptions of a local and relative,
or of a more universal and absolute kind. The one test was
recognised and applied very long ago by Aristotle with solid
and enduring results; the other is more in harmony with the
spirit and method of current psycholog y. Here it is designed
to use both.
It is with the sensibilities of relation that we have to
concern ourselves, but we may—with advantage at this
point—show wherein they differ from the others. Let us,
stage of sentien cy which
for this purpose, single out that
From abstrac t reasoni ng upon cer-
comes nearest to them.
and modific ations
tain facts we know that molecular changes
To
are continually taking place in our nervous system,
and ours among the
them every living organism is sensitive,
cannot be-
rest. Still we are not sensible of them, and we
dura-
come so until they occupy that greatness in space or
 8 NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

tion in time necessary to make them units of impression for

us. Then they emerge from the womb of the unconscious
and become sensations proper.
6.Thelowest |Sensations proper are yielded by the lowest order of con-
sibilities of SCious sensibility.
order of sen-
In them we have passed, as it were, the
relation ap-
prehending Zero point, The sensibility which yields these is higher,
arysaaies BAsMUch as it is more complex. Psychic elements have
ofoviects. entered where before there were only organic modifications.
The simple and compound changes of reflex action have been
left behind, and through the emergence of consciousness a
sensibility of relation has arisen. Though of a relatively
low order it is not only higher than the previous state of
sentiency, it is wider in range. It has a reality in both
the relations of time and space whatever else may still be
wanting to it.
7. Ishigher For example, the modification of consciousness which is
inna. implied in seeing a patch of green colour is higher than the
sentieney. Yesponse to excitation which has only a sub-conscious real-
ity. Similarly the taste felt or the sound heard may be
very elementary sensations, but they disclose and exhibit
changes which would otherwise be veiled within the deep
shadow of the unconscious. The dumb vibration of sensi-
bility becomes vocal in the sound, the unfelt irritation of
the nervous fibres and cellules of the tongue blossoms into
a taste. Both of these are psychic experiences, however
rudimentary.
Similarly the most limited sensibility is wider than mere
sentiency. There is a kind and degree of objective validity
apprehended in the crudest sensations. With consciousness
there comes up an affirmation of existence, however momen-
tary, and of position in space, however indeterminate. Hence
it is that the colour seen must be true for the eye which
sees it, even if not seen or seen differently by others. It
exists and has a subjective reality at least. Moreover,
some relation of outness is invariably found in the feeblest
and most fugitive sensation, if it be a sensation proper.
But after these undoubtedly superior characteristics have
 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE. 9

been noted, it remains to be said that this order of sensibility s. but tower
is relatively low in rank and narrow in range. Rank is narrowerin
. . ° . od nk and

determined by complexity, and sensations are the . simplest those

* . . . \ th

elements of our conscious experience. The relations they whichthe

A . through

contain are present potentially rather than actually. A htesandre

certain real existence is given in them, but the figure, ieee
size, or any other relation of the object apprehended is
missed. For example, in a visual sensation a blur of colour
may be visible when it is not seen as belonging to a coloured
object existing in clearly defined space relations. The dis-
turbance in the air which transmits a sound may affect the
ear while it remains in large measure an unconnected and
unrelated experience.
In respect of range in its data the limitations of this
order of sensibility are equally conspicuous. A certain
sameness in the mechanism of the special organs of
peripheral sensibility has been proved to exist by Wundt
and others. Notwithstanding this, it is a fact of ex-
perience that each organ is susceptible only to its own
stimuli. The particular exciting cause of a visual sensation
would appeal in vain to any other organ than that of vision.
And s0, too, of the tastes and sounds; it would be impos-
sible to get sensations of sound distinguished by the eye, or
colours perceived by the touch. Each sensation is subjec-
tively true for the sense that has it. So far it is indubit-
ably real, but there are many and great possibilities of decep-
tion outside these particular limits. Any seat of sensibility
gives rise to a sensation when excited by appropriate stimuli,
but the range is narrow within which objective reality may
with certainty be asserted of the exciting cause. General
and wide-reachin g affirmations cannot be made singly upon
the basis of an experience so transitory and subjective. For
even if the exciting cause remains the same, the sensation
may be different to different men and to the same man at
different times.
These sensibilities, however, do not exhaust those which
belong to human nature. Tn men, as men, there are other
10 NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

orders of sensibility through which they have perceptions so

high in rank and wide in range that in both of these respects
they are relatively perfect.
In the first place they are high in rank because there is
in them a greater fulness and complexity of relation. The
highest relations are now present, and the primary are
apprehended as well as the secondary qualities of objects.
To accomplish this there is necessary something more than
organic and psychic changes in response to excitations. A
sut generis and spontaneous activity of consciousness, working
in and through sensibility, has transformed the raw material
of sense impressions into a world of objects mutually deter-
mining and determined. The nebulous sensations have been
unified, and, as it were, crystallised into things. Not one or
two, but all the great relations are perceived, and unity as
well as existence, shape and figure as well as position, can
be predicated of each thing. Moreover, the inter-relations,
which are the warp and woof of all the special sciences of
nature, are also apprehended through the same order of
sensibilities. Indeed, so complex is this species of the sen-
sibility of relation, that the sensational side is lost in the
relational, which is everything.
In like manner the qualities and relations perceived have
the widest possible range within their sphere. They can be
affirmed of all objects in nature whatsoever. ‘They are not
apprehended through one or more of the special senses; they
are the common possession of all. They are not peculiar to
one man or to individuals; they are known to all men as
men, and they do not change with change of time or circum-
stance or subjective state. All things are seen as having a
certain substantial existence, size and shape, and as placed
one outside the other, and yet going to form the whole of
the duly ordinated and co-ordinated world of our experience.
Such fundamental qualities and constitutive relations are
the universal substrate of all knowledge.
High as this order of sensibility is, the moral is higher,
It is more complex. For in addition to the natural qualities
 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE. II

and relations of things, the moral qualities and relations of ». sti the
. . rs . : . 1 i-
persons enter into its composition. To these it has its special titities are
: a e se 4 relativel:
relation distinguishing them as good or bad. The objects to higher ana
. °y 7848 . : ider th:
which the moral sensibilities apply are actions, not things— these, for
: : -_ they ar
the conduct of men in so far as it can be traced to their morecom-
. a . plex, apply-
choice, and not the changes of nature which follow an inert ingtoactions
: : : and motives
mathematical necessity. Of course moral action when seen rather than
through the senses—when it has taken its place in nature— gs
is also determined in every way as a part of it. That, how-
ever, is not all. It has an added determination when seen
or known to be the fruit of the free (that is, self-determined)
willing of persons, and it is this additional quality or relation
to which the moral sensibility is specially sensitive. As
apprehending new relations or qualities it can claim to be
still more complex than the preceding order of sensibility.
It is also wider, because it extends to all self-conscious
beings and their activity. If agents equally, or more than
equally rational with men exist anywhere in the universe,
the extra-quality, or relation of moral goodness or badness,
applies to their conduct also. As having a sphere and
objects which rise above, and are additional to nature as
merely organic and inorganic, the moral sensibility is wider
than any of those mentioned already.
But if that be admitted a limitation must be appended.. true10. This is
of moral
Besides the sensibility to a right and a wrong there are in sensibitity as
each particular person acquired sensibilities which have been perticalan
built up upon this fundamental quality or relation, With moral sensi-
difference of time and circumstance these subordinate, but notbeeither
still relatively true and valid forms of the moral sensibility so universal
may be different. The quality of action as right or wrong highest and
is universal as men and rational agents are, the special BL
lities ana
moral sensibilities which respond to special classifications of relations.
:
actions as right and wrong, may change as these change.
:

Though the cardinal distinction runs through all action

because going with human sensibility as such, the minor dis-
tinctions growing up around it in particular societies cannot
have the same uniform and universal ramification. A sensi-
 12 NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

bility to right and wrong has the width above claimed for it,
but particular moral sensibilities to particular right and
wrong things must change as these do. This is necessary in
order that these may be objectively valid and true in the
various circumstances and relations in which human action
takes its rise.
i. thesen. Moral sensibility of all kinds has another peculiarity
t«. which seems to detach it from the purer sensibility in and
sibilities
ties ane cco through which the primary qualities or constitutive relations
consum= ve of nature are known. These latter were apprehended with
consum-

foe, ™ only the minimum of sensational disturbance. Excitation

and impression we must presuppose, but they are swallowed
up and lost to view in the activity of consciousness which
transfigures and transforms them into the systematic and
well-ordered experience which we term nature. The figure
of a thing, for example, is apprehended without any special
feeling of pain or pleasure in the act. Not so any moral
quality of an act or person. It is consummated in feeling
that is always either pleasurable or painful. If the size or
shape of a stone does not affect us in that way, the right-
ness or wrongness of the action of the man who throws it at
another does excite in us special activities of sensibility.
These respond to the specific moral distinctions in behaviour
or conduct. We do not take in the moral quality of action
by an unemotional and purely. intellectual intuition. It is
attended with pain or pleasure invariably.
Besides the experience of pleasure or pain upon the
perception of right or wrong in action there is some attrac-
tion to the right and repulsion from the latter. That is not
an entirely new and additional movement of moral sensi-
bility. It is only an extension of the other—the pleasure
drawing us to, and the pain driving us away from, an action.
12, Moral To give effect to these different sides of moral sensibility,
pone a ee propose to speak of the former as the moral susceptibility,
meubiities and of the latter as the moral impulse.
ee Moral susceptibility as such is the perception of a moral
distinction in action or motive. It must be consummated
 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE. 13

in pain or pleasure according to the quality of the act as

good or bad, wrong or right. Each has its appropriate
witness and accompaniment in sensibility. We no sooner
_ perceive and do the right than it yields pleasure, while the
wrong brings forth pain and instant wounding of the heart.
This is true of all particular moral susceptibilities however
acquired, and it holds even if the pain or pleasure be either
incipient or exhausted, rising or falling.
Moral impulse as such is also a vital and characteristic
phase of moral sensibility. It is the preceptive power and
authority of the right and the good over the will. Ought
is its peculiar expression of obligation. It is accomplished in
the aversion to evil andwrong in act or motive,and the parallel
attraction to the good and right. These last are the pheno-
mena of the moral impulse which may warn away from, as
well as impel to, action.
The objects of the moral sensibility are actions of persons 18. The ov-
which may or may not come into existence since they are ie:
dependent upon prior volitions. A good action is one See
which ought to be, but may not be done. An evil act is one their conduct
which may, but should not be willed. The preceptive activity ae
of the moral sensibility is, therefore, in complete touch with
this distinction which it enforces in conduct, and it arises
from the very nature of the moral difference established
between act and act or motive and motive.
It is then in these specific forms of sensibility that the
moral law manifests itself. The pleasures and pains which
are the products of the activity of the law in the moral
susceptibility are termed emotions as distinguished from
sensations. This is because they are so complex and so
widely applicable . They contain many relations—many
ideal elements. Besides, they are not connected with special
seats of sensibility , nor with any part whatever of the bodily
framework, although sensations may give rise to and mingle
with moral emotions. ‘This is true of all moral emotions
and sentiments even when they are connected with the
acquired moral susceptibil ities and impulses. As speci-
 14 NEW ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE.

fically moral they have little dependence upon organic

sensibilities.
The aversion or attraction, which is the product of the
law in the moral impulse, is a form of sentiment as dis-
tinguished from a sensational force, It goes with the pre-
ceptive, as opposed to the perceptive side of conscience, and it
carries the law out upon the willing in the moment of choice.
I it does not succeed in swaying the will, it always affects
it. It, too, is specially complex and high, and superior to
all forms of sensibility that may raise themselves up against
it.
The activities of conscience then are equivalent to the
sensibilities in which judgments embodying the moral law
manifest themselves. These judgments are delivered either
14, Their pro- in the moral susceptibilities or in the moral impulses. The
ducts are
moral emo- products of the former are emotional judgments of right and
tions and
moial senti- wrong; the products of the latter are the sentiments and
ments,
judgments of moral obligation.
Moral emotions are the feelings of pain and pleasure
which spring up within us in connection with the per-
ception of moral distinctions in action or choice. When
these same feelings and perceptions begin to operate upon
our willing they become moral sentiments and judgments of
obligation. The emotion of pleasure which accompanies the
perception of the right motive attracts us to it, and strives
15. These, to enforce its mandate upon the will. In like manner the
with the
underlying emotion of pain in the contemplation of what is wrong in
judgments,
make up the motive becomes a feeling repelling us from it in our willing.
activities of
conscience. So that the peculiar phenomena of the moral susceptibility
are emotional judgments of right and wrong; those of the
moral impulse are judgments and sentiments of duty or
obligation. Together these make up the activities of
conscience,
 CHAPTER II.

WHAT IS THE LEADING CHARACTERISTIC OF AN ACTIVITY OF

CONSCIENCE ?

In harmony with the positions advanced in the previous

chapter, the following presents itself as a succinct but
sufficient account of any and every activity of conscience.
When we are about to do something which we may or
may not do we have an emotional consciousness, as
immediate as it is involuntary, that among the motives
which seem to contend within us some are moral and good,
some anti-moral and bad. Moreover, this internal recogni-
tion and judgment have no sooner taken place than the per-
ception and the feeling accompanying it begin to operate as
a precept and a sentiment which claim to sway our willing.
This description of conscience as a phenomenon of our 1. three
inner life brings out three things as characteristic. In the meso”
activity as such there appear first judgment or cognition, Conscience,
second feeling, and then a marked tendency of both to hieasc
effectuate themselves in the willing. If at the basis of the"
whole there is such a spontaneous activity of judgment as is
only possible in a self-conscious being, it is equally true that
this manifests itself in feeling, and in a kind or order of
feeling which moves persistently upon willing. Let this be
granted, then the question emerges which this chapter seeks
to determine. It is this. Which of these three features is
the leading characteristic of the activities as such? Which
of them lends to them their peculiar and distinctive char-
acter, and so furnishes us with an infallible means of
separating their phenomena from different but allied
activities of our human nature ?
 ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE :

er the
The first form this inquiry assumes is wheth
or better, the cognit ive or the sen-
judgment or the feeling,
the more promin ent. Among
sible side of the activity is
or
2.°Is the cog- famous thinkers who take the former view and tend more
or merge it in activit ies of
less to identify conscience with
nition more
prominent
Fichte, and
the cognitive kind, there are Socrates, Spinoza,
than the sen-
sibility ?
Hegel. These are masters of those who think, and their
deliberate opinions deserve and reward examination. But
y if at all into the
here we do not require to enter largel
We confin e oursel ves
peculiarities of their several theories.
to the statement that they all so exalt the relation of con-
the
science to knowledge that it takes the leading place in
activities. We are using the names as little more than
symbols, because a scholar’s resumé of the exact position and
arguments of these philosophers does not fall within the
scope of a work like the present.
To meet their affirmation and test its truth for moral
psychology we have no other resource than to consult
experience. But whose experience, and by what canons
are we to separate that which is genuine and true from
that which is illusive and fictitious? This is an all but
hopeless problem unless we restrict ourselves carefully to
the one point under discussion. If we can do so consistently,
then even the vast and limitless field of human experience
may be so brought within range of our vision that it shall
yield conclusions upon this subject both definite and verifi-
able, accurate and comprehensive.
But what is the method to be pursued in this particular
case, which shall unite clearness of view with universality
of reference? Let us suppose that we can divide all the
members of any given community into three classes. It
matters not whether they be pagan or christian, eastern or
western, ancient or contemporary. For our purpose these
differences are not of such a kind that they vitiate the truth
of the results.
The first class we may describe as ‘the conscientious.’
They are those persons who—in the language we have
 THEIR LEADING CHARACTERISTIC. 17

adopted—are specially tender in their moral susceptibilities,

and whose moral emotions are therefore both full and fre-
quent. In like manner their moral impulses are stronger,
and the resulting sentiments of obligation have more force
over their willing than is the case with the majority of
their fellow-men living under the same social system. The
second class we may by comparison denominate ‘the un-
conscientious ’"—for they are relatively at an opposite pole in
conscientiousness, or as to the state of the activities of con-
science within them. In them the moral susceptibilities are
comparatively blunted, and the moral emotions are fewer and
feebler than in the bulk of their fellow-citizens or co-
religionists. As might be expected their moral impulses
are even weaker in proportion, and the sentiments springing
from them exert less decisive power over their wills than is
common among their neighbours. Between these two classes
there are the great body of the community who may be fitly
spoken of as occupying intermediate ground. If not marked-
ly ‘conscientious, neither are they notoriously ‘ unconscien-
tious’ according to the prevalent standards.
Now though it would be fatuous and foolish to attempt
an actual classification of individuals upon these lines, there
is nothing theoretically impossible in an hypothetical descrip-
tion of any society according to the liveliness or the dulness
of the moral susceptibilities and impulses of its members.
The practical difficulty is of an insuperable kind, because it
arises from the impossibility of entering into and gauging
with infallible certainty the inner moral life of others. Such
a clairvoyant power of looking through and through a human
soul is not among the gifts of science. Moreover, even when
that inner life has externalised itself in literature, in social
institutions and striking individual actions, the results are
still incapable of being very exactly estimated. To the
Supreme Mind the inward and unseen must be as visible as
the outward, but our procedure in classification must be
regulated by the common principles of formal logic. For
our thought upon this subject, every member of any
B
 18 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE :

society must be either above or below or at the level of the

existing conscientiousness, and according as he takes his place
in this regard he classifies himself as conscientious, uncon-
scientious, or intermediate.
If then we hold before our mind’s eye one of the con-
inthe SCientious class, whether is our description of him in regard
3, Not
tous to conscience true, or that other which would set down his
conscientiousness to the fulness of his knowlege upon moral
subjects ? The adjective ‘ conscientious’ is a term of common
life, and applies to the moral practice of any person rather
than to the state of his moral knowledge. A man’s
ideas may be abundant and clear upon ethical subjects, but
that is not cardinal to his being reputed conscientious among
_ his fellow-men. Any one with little intellectual vision of
the differences of moral standards may receive the encomium
on the ground that he is faithful in willing or practice to
the knowledge he possesses. And another with fulness of
information as to the details of conduct in all relations would
be termed ‘ unconscientious’ notwithstanding, if he failed to
give effect to this knowledge in his conduct. Nay, is not this
the very idea wrapped upin the epithet? Is not every man
described as ‘unconscientious’ just because he has in his
conscience a knowledge of which he does not avail himself ?
From his conduct some interested persons are forced to infer
that many things though known are yet morally indifferent
to him which are of grave concern to them and their neigh-
bours, and they stigmatise him accordingly.
Now in these instances is it fulness of moral knowledge
which most prominently characterises the activity? By no
means. No doubt conscience cannot be active without cogni-
tion, because as we saw it is a form of consciousness. But as
soon as ever the fundamental principle is departed from, and
we come to consider the phenomena in each, the intellectual
element recedes. It is with the phenomena or the activities
that we have here to do, and with them only, and we do not
hesitate to say that while the cognitive side of the activity
must be presupposed, it is not that which is the more promi-
 THEIR LEADING CHARACTERISTIC. 19

nent. The particular state of its activities in each depends

far more upon the degree of cultivation in the moral suscepti-
bilities and education in the moral impulses. Not ignorance 4, wor in the
of moral rules and standards of obligation, but insensibility tious”
to their practical influence—that is the point upon which
conscientiousness hinges. Conscience does not work
without some moral knowledge, but the high or the low
condition of its activities is not traceable mainly to this root.
The most unconscientious man knows quite well what is
right and just, and as such obligatory upon him, but from
the absence of the requisite strength and firmness of moral
impulse he does not give effect to this knowledge. His
conscience is many a time silent when it should speak, but
it is not from want of the informing moral ideas within it.
They are there, but overlaid and thwarted by opposing
interests and impulses. If his conscience speaks feebly
when it should speak out strongly, the dulness is not of
mental but of moral origin. And when his selfishness has
been gagged, or his interest brought into line with his con-
science, then you have its deliverances and demands fully
and clearly enunciated. He is fain upon such an occasion
to exact to the full from another that obedience to conscience
which he does not in the least render himself. Such an
attitude springs from defective moral sensibility, not from
imperfect moral knowledge.
And not
Lastly, we can draw similar conclusions with even 3greater in5. those who
freedom as to the numerous class whom we described as may be de-
standing somewhere in the middle between the above beingiter
extremes. The greater number are conscientious in some ;
relations. In reference, for example, to crimes forbidden by
the law of the land or flagrant breaches of social claims
their consciences are normally active in harmony with pre-
valent and accepted authorities. They register shortcomings
and condemn variations from current norms with a prompt-
ness and uniformity that is in the highest degree remarkable.
No matter how specious the form which gross transgressions
assume, these persons say, they ‘see’ them to be wrong as
 20 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE :

vividly as if the condemnation were that moment flashed in

letters of light across the firmament of their souls. And
even when, through some exceptional circumstances or rela-
tions, the particular act may appear difficult to classify
morally, the hesitation arises mainly from difficulty as to the
question under what moral principle it is to be subsumed.
Now that is not the way in which the ordinary under-
standing works. Slowness, hesitancy, and deliberation are
all absent. Precisely those habits of mind. which lend
value to a man’s judgment in an intellectual regard are
out of place in the activities of conscience. The freedom
from bias, the readiness to receive hints from all quarters of
the horizon, may even be a dangerous tamperin g with the
emotion of right and the sentiment of obligation . How
could such openness to impressio n be approved in the face
of a sudden or overpower ing temptatio n to do wrong ?
Deliberat ion may be defeat, and doubt an immoralit y at such
a moment. At all events, it is distinctly immoral in tendency
if not in principle, to parley with all possibilities when
conscience dictates one only as right. The most hide-
bound hold of the one attribute of rightness declared by
the existing moral susceptibility is upon such an occasion
the characteristic feature in the activity of conscience.
6. Therefore We may conclude therefore that while cognitive power
such as goes with self-consciousness is ever present, and
cognition
cannot be
their leading
characteris- moral knowledge is highly desirable, yet the intellectual is
tic.
not the leading characteristic of activities of conscience.
If a man be true to the standards of right acting within
his conscience, he is not condemned as immoral or uncon-
scientious. Defective knowledge may provoke such blame as
is cast—not upon the individual, but upon the society which
has morally educated him. If upon comparison with the
standards of right acting and sentiments of obligation actually
within his conscience he can be acquitted, then he is fully
and freely absolved. No one would dream of charging a
man with immorality because he has not conformed to cer-
tain canons of right acting of which he was demonstrably
 THEIR LEADING CHARACTERISTIC. 21

ignorant. Action according to the existing rules is all any

one can exact from another or from himself. The range of
cognition or logical consistency of ideas is not the leading
characteristic of the activities of conscience.
But if the sensible be the more prominent as opposed to 7, if sensi-
the cognitive side of the activity, we have yet to settle which ther isItthe
trait of the sensibility is the one entitled to be regarded as ceptibility or
leading characteristic. For the moral sensibilities consist, itso
we saw, of judgments in moral susceptibilities and impulses,
the former dealing with the relations of actions as right and
wrong, the latter as obligatory in willing. The emotions
which are the product of the susceptibility arise in conjunc-
tion with the perceived harmony or disharmony of action
with the law within, the sentiments which spring from the
moral impulse bring this law outwards upon the willing.
The schools of thought that place the sensible before the
cognitive side of the activity of conscience differ again among
themselves at this point. Some make the precedence abso-
lute, extending it not merely to the phenomena, but also to
their causes in our nature. This we oppose at a later stage.
But even among those who like ourselves retain a meta-
physical basis of judgment, there are divergent tendencies,
some making the emotional harmony and others the opera-
tive sentiment the leading characteristic. Those who dwell
upon the former gravitate towards an esthetic view of the
activity, whilewe who emphasise the movement upon the
will, thereby earn for our theory a special right.to be called
practical.
Thinkers otherwise so far apart as Shaftesbury, Jonathan
Edwards, Schiller, and Herbart come together in the promi-
nent réle they assign to the wsthetic elements in activities
of conscience, Here again we refrain from entering upon
their special views, and advert only to what they have in
common, as representing the artistic way of looking at the
phenomena of the moral nature.
That there is some measure of truth in convictions advo-
cated by writers so great in intellectual power goes without
 Ze THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE :

saying. Their reasonings turn upon real facts of our moral

experience. The aspects they have seized upon are notably
present, especially in certain persons, and always in a few
8. The moral Felations. The harmony or disharmony of feeling may be
susceptibility
is distin- a comparatively transitory matter, but it is quite real while
guishable as
making no it lasts. Discord and dissonance, as well as peace and
direct claim
upon the harmony, are well-known features of the internal life of
willing.
conscience, as well as of the esthetic nature. Inner per-
turbation arises whenever moral emotions clash with natural
sensations and the higher impulses come into conflict
with the lower inclinations, and it may be renewed and
accentuated if the decision of the will is against the moral,
and in favour of the immoral course of action. The disorder
may die down at once if the willing be according to the
sentiments of conscience, and a reign of peace, if not of
pleasure, sets in.
Again, if we stand outside of our own self-judgments and
consider the play of conscience upon the character and con-
duct of others, we may discern similar artistic elements, and
a reference to some law or ideal of beauty, as well as of
goodness. How often is the moral beauty as well as the
worth of right action commented upon in poetry, or in the
literature of edification! How often is noble or ignoble
applied to conduct, and on a lower plane of life, we have
the epithets ‘beautiful’ or ‘disgusting’ flung out upon
action that specially moves men’s sensibilities! Moreover,
the feeling of moral deformity, as characterising the agent,
is very common, and probably becomes increasingly so with
the advance of general culture.
9. As such
it is not the
Nevertheless, the most liberal admission of these things
more pro-
minent.
does not justify any one in describing the activities of con-
science as of a prevailingly esthetic kind. or, after all, the
moral or practical dominates the artistic elements, and the
ubiquitous movement of moral feeling upon human willing
is decisively against this view.
Even the emotional phase of the activities starts into
being only in presence of willing, or choice between opposing
 THEIR LEADING CHARACTERISTIC. 23

motives. Without some such internal crises they do not

begin to be active, but merely esthetic emotions have no
necessary or invariable relation to human willing, or even to
human nature. For they may be, and indeed are, most
generally awakened apart from all pressing motives of prac-
tice. Ruins rather than railways, a poem rather than a
problem of action elicit these feelings. Time and circum-
stance are subordinate relations in esthetic approval or dis-
approval, while they may be almost everything in moral. No
doubt the madonnas that have achieved immortality must, in
one sense, have been painted from actual models of maiden-
hood, but the knowledge of these facts is not essential to their
appreciation by every one as works of art. Yet condemna-
tion or approbation of any action apart from the particular
circumstances of its origin and occasion is not possible.
Even in the harmony and disharmony that the moral
and esthetic susceptibilities respectively announce, there
are deep going differences. The schism within the soul
which the activity of conscienc e calls forth may be very
deep and peculiarly painful. Nausea is the strongest feel-
ing which we experienc e in presence of a specially ugly
or hideous object, whereas in the other case the self is
up against itself, and the whole inner being may be cleft to
the core. There may be the truest tragic effects within this
circumscribed arena, but the most violent emotions of disgust
and repugnance arising from taste can never pretend to have
such deep and enduring consequen ces within the soul.
The decisive difference however strikes us most when we
come to compare the respective moral and eesthetic impulses,
The latter are comparatively calm and passive, the former
are stringent and necessitating. The sentiment of beauty
invites us to rest within ourselves, and to throw the whole
soul open to its influence in an indulgent way. It asks us
to luxuriate with serenity in its tranquil witcher y, whereas
the sentiment of duty never permits us to rest placidly
within it—-never allows us to sun ourselves in the glow of
the Empyrean whence it descends. There is no wooing call to
 24 THE ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE.

lap ourselves in Elysian harmonies, but rather a summons to

immediate exertion and effort. Asthetic sentiments induce
us to give a regulated indulgence to every natural desire, if
it be consistent with others and capable of receiving forms
of beauty. The moral sentiments on the other hand demand
purity before harmony, and duty before symmetry. The
former make mainly for the rounded ripeness of nature, the
latter press towards the realisation of the infinite demands
of the spirit. Richness and completeness characterise the
ends of the esthetic, abruptness and incompleteness may be
inseparable from those of the moral sentiments.
In view of these differences we need have no hesitation in
10. Themoral Setting down the leading characteristic of the activities of
impul 5 : : ane
immediately CONSCience as practical rather than esthetic. Cognitive and
claiming to
control the esthetic attributes they certainly have, but all that belongs
illing is th
‘ading* to their. peculiar
. :
character is summed up and expressed
.
in
haracteris- el. A ae :
ticofactivi- their invariable movement upon the willing or practice of
Eees uma beings. For though the emotions and sentiments of
conscience vary within certain limits, and are different in
different men and in the same men at different times, there
is never any variation in their volitional direction. This
movement upon willing or practice may therefore reasonably
be spoken of henceforth as their leading characteristic in
comparison with the other activities of our higher nature.
 CHAPTER III

HOW ARE WE TO NAME AND CLASSIFY ACTIVITIES

OF CONSCIENCE?

Towarps the close of the first chapter we saw that the

moral sensibilities fell asunder into moral susceptibilities
and impulses. The products of the activity of judgment
in the moral susceptibility were emotional judgments of
right and wrong, and in the moral impulse, judgments and
sentiments of duty or obligation. The difference between
the two springs from their relation to willing—the former
being only indirectly and mediately related to it, while
the latter stands in a relation both direct and immediate.
So much naming and division in the activities is evident
almost from the outset. Now we must advance some
steps farther in the same direction. We wish first of all
to give a new name to these fundamentally different classes
of activities, and then proceed to divide and name each
again according as it embraces smaller but easily distinguish-
able species or varieties. Technical names and phrases will
deserve our attention and regard because they tend to
preserve the precise features of moral experience. The
two most important will be introduced first.
Under the one great form of the activities of conscience 1. The moral
there are included all the susceptibilities and emotional (lossults
: : emotional
:
judgments of pleasure and pain through which moral juagments
. active in
5. fe 6 S :
distinctions in action are expressed. These emotional them are
judgments and the susceptibilities they imply we propose moral sense;
5 ey ere, 2 . name e

impulses to-
. e mora.

to designate the moral sense.

Sueaihe gether with
The other activities, or, to speak more correctly, the
 26 NAMING AND CLASSIFICATION OF ACTIVITIES.

emotional Other great form of the same activities, we have resolved to

andsen name the sense of duty. According to this new nomen-
obligation clature the sense of duty will consist of all emotional
fe seek judgments and sentiments of duty or obligation, together
= with the moral impulse out of which they issue. We have
thus tried to bring near to each other by their name the
two great forms of activity which are already related in
the closest way by their rise and function.
The reference to willing is one which is fundamental.
A constant movement towards personal practice was shown
in the second chapter to be the leading characteristic of
activities of conscience as such. It also supplies the above-
named central division into moral sense and sense of duty.
For the susceptibilities and emotional judgments which
make up the moral sense bear only an indirect and mediate
relation to willing, while the same judgment working in the
impulses and sentiments of duty moves towards the will
with directness and immediacy. Moreover it is when we
continue to think of the activities in this connection with
2. Minuter the will that we discover lesser distinctions within the
within the emotional judgments and susceptibilities of the moral sense
moral en8° ag well as within the judgments and sentiments of the sense
of duty.
When we begin to break up the two great divisions into
intelligible and necessary sub-divisions we find that under
activities of the moral sense there are included at least two
a, The emo- Subordinate species. Some emotional judgments and suscepti-
tional judg- Dearne, is *
ments that bilities are simply declaratory of right and wrong before the
tears actual willing, others judge the agent and stigmatise his act
of right and ° .
wrong. after it has been committed. The former are mostly simple
revelations or declarations of the moral character of motives
and actions. They may be few or they may be frequent,
but their peculiarity is their simplicity. Coming before the
decision of will, they have an anticipatory character—and
their perceptions and declarations are accomplished without
any great expenditure of feeling. That is to say, the
emotional accompaniments and attestations are neither so
 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY. 27

full nor so pronounced as those in which judgments of con-

science express themselves at or after the moment of decision.
The other species of susceptibilities and emotional judg- 6. Thosethat
ments of the moral sense we shall speak of as judicial, in suneeas
contrast to those that are simply declaratory. The former
activities declared the character of the act or motive and
only by implication judged the agent. These judge the agent
and award to him merit or demerit. They sit in emotional
judgment upon actions and persons during the time of acting,
or immediately thereafter. But they are strictly emotional
judgments and momentary outbursts of feeling, not prolonged
processes of trial and judging. Occurring as they do at or
after the act, and touching the most real self of the agent,
they open up deeper springs of sensibility than the declara-
tory species of activities. When viewed exclusively in their
relation to willing the declaratory judgments are sometimes
named prospective, while the judicial judgments are then
either concomitant or retrospective. That is to say, they
either accompany the decision of the will or they look back
to it as an action past but not forgotten, The deed is done,
but in itself or in some of its more apparent consequences
it is still before consciousness.
When our emotional judgments and susceptibilities are
active in regard to right and wrong as displayed in the con- 3. Emotional
judgments in
duct of others the same =groupinga and delineation are possible. regard to the
conduct of
But we shall not carry it out here even in outline. The truth others
though legi-
“i 3 Pa : c
and significance of these activities must in many instances be timate and
5 - valid within
rated upon a lower scale. They have high value and an incon- limits areof
secondary
testable validity within ascertainable limits, but in regard to importance.
some of their aspects and attributes, their importance is
secondary. There are occasions when they must want that
immediate assurance and infallible perception which go with
emotional judgments upon our own character and conduct.
In themselves and in their rise the emotional judgments of
the moral sense in relation to others are strictly analogous to
those in relation to self, but their subject-matter is not so
accessible, and not so easily characterised. Indeed, many
 28 NAMING AND CLASSIFICATION OF ACTIVITIES.

features which are clearly discernible in self-judgments are

absent, or only obscurely present, in these emotional judg-
ments of others.
The other great divisional group of activities of conscience
which we have named the sense of duty does not admit of
Tle the same unmistakeable subdivisions. They are scarcely so
important from the point of view of analysis, but when we
come afterwards to investigate the authority of conscience
they take the first place. If not numerously represented in
any exhibition of phenomena, they have a Unique position
in respect of their inherent authority. When we look at them
in the light of our classification we see at once that they
can only have their peculiar existence and function before
the decision of the will is taken. Only during moments of
choice is there room for the working of the judgments of obli-
gation. It is then also that the associated phases of sensi-
bility are in place. The impulses of warning, the fears of
punishment by the vindicators of the moral law, the sentiments
of reverence for goodness and right, the sense of being bound
in conscience to realise the good independently of inclina-
tion or a lower self-interest—all these moral feelings are
apropos only before the actual decision of the will. When
the decision of the will is taken, they lose their distinctive
existence and function. Their peculiar raison detre is
5, Consists gone. But they have not entirely disappeared, as we shall see.
of premoni-
coryimpulses Rather have they simply changed their separate form and
and prescrip-
tive judg- purpose and merged themselves in the judicial branch of
ments and : “7 27°
ene the emotional judgments in the moral susceptibility. ;
There are two kinds of activity recognisable within the
sense of duty. There are premonitory impulses and pre-
oe scriptive judgments and sentiments of obligation. As soon
impulses. aS the susceptibilities and emotional ieee of the moral
sense are active declaring the right and wrong, the good
and the evil in a contemplated phon the impulses of the
sense of duty also begin to work within us. They instigate to
the realisation of the good and the right, and the suppression
of the evil and wrong, by holding before the imagination
 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY. 29
o4

punishment as impending upon wrong doing, and happiness as

the reward of well doing. All the emblems and associations of
righteous awe and majesty are passed in parade before the
mind’s eye and they are allowed to have their effect upon the
heart. Fears of retribution are engendered, warning voices
as to future consequences are heard, threats of punishment
divine and human waken up echoes within the soul—and
the whole machinery of a court of judgment as commonly
witnessed is set in motion. It is here that the imagery
of religious beliefs have their special power and work—
though they are never wholly absent at any stage of the
activities in the sense of duty.
Besides the premonitory moral impulses there are », Prescrip-
Ane . . tive judg-
to be noted the prescriptive judgments and sentiments of ments and
personal obligation. They are perfectly articulate, and ual
ave applications of the canons of duty to the individual °°
man in the particular case. Their appeal is less to the lower
fears and more to reverence, less to physical rewards and
punishments, more to moral. They rest upon the inherent
authority and right of the law within conscience as against
any lawless interests or considerations. Appearing as com-
mands or demands they carry their obligation within them-
selves and brook no interference with their authority.
After the resolution has been taken the impulses flow ¢ after the
back again into the susceptibilities, and the prescriptive fiureean”
judgments and sentiments of obligation go to strengthen Fitcia
the emotional judgments which we characterised as “4%
judicial. In thus losing their separate existence they
contribute not a few of the most characteristic elements
to these same judicial activities. Indeed, since the latter
include all the varied phenomena of self-condemnation and
remorse, they are among the most interesting and important
of all activities of conscience. The pains springing from
this source are universally admitted to be the most incisive
and enduring of all those which visit the human heart. As
was to be expected, their echoes in history, in literature,
and in the religious life are absolutely innumerable.
 30 NAMING AND CLASSIFICATION OF ACTIVITIES.

7. Retuming We have next to observe that the peculiar bitterness of

jendtomrat Moral condemnation and the caustic power of remorse are
fiomtenee derived from the accession to them of the emotional
our stn8- judgments as well as the impulses and sentiments of the
sense of duty. It is these supplementary elements which
lead to those varieties which may be spoken of as punitive
or executive as well as judicial. The most virulent self-
condemnation arises from the frustrated judgments and
sentiments of self-obligation. So long as conscience is
active in the premonitory form of the sense of duty, its
activities accentuate the consciousness of moral freedom in
choice. But when the deed is done, moral feeling is
greatly sharpened by the almost palpable sense of help-
lessness which the agent experiences in face of the
accomplished fact. All possibilities are gone, the bondage
to reality has come, but the prior consciousness of freedom
is not forgotten. While it existed it was stimulated as
well as sustained by the sense of duty, when it is past
what was a stimulus to self-obligation is now the poison in
the sting of self-condemnation.
8. Andtore- In the agonies of remorse moral feeling is still more
character embittered. The vision of the evil results may be short-.
ness, sighted, but it is enough to enkindle the judicial activities
of conscience. At such moments we not only condemn our
act and ourselves as the doer of it, we serve ourselves heir
to all the consequences be they few or many which flow from
it. All the high impulses and sentiments of duty, all the
influences of pure religious beliefs, all hopes and wishes of
good near or remote, present or future, are reversed and
transformed by the final act of choice and self-determina-
tion. We feel that we have knowingly chosen evil to be
our good, and this it is which more than anything else
helps. to turn the wine of moral inspiration into the vinegar
of remorse.
9.Recapitu- What results have we now reached as to naming and
classification ? We have seen that conscience is active as
moral sense and sense of duty. The moral sense sub-
 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY. 31

divides itself into activities of a declaratory and judicial

kind. The declaratory are prospective, the judicial may be
either concomitant or retrospective. The other great form
of activities can occur, properly speaking, only before the
act. The premonitory impulses and prescriptive judgments
and sentiments of duty of which it consists could have no
distinctive meaning after it. In their after-history they
unite with the judicial class of activities in the moral sense,
and contribute to it especially that sharpness and lacerating
power which make them capable of being described as
punitive.
We have not made any special remarks upon the 10. activities
activities of the moral sense in self-approbation. The feel- agen em”
ing of having merited anything by good action is but rarely Gfomers.
felt in the breasts of men most entitled to entertain such a
comfortable experience. These emotional judgments of self-
esteem, like the awards of demerit to others, are not so
frequent in the best men, though both are certainly quite legiti-
mate, and they have important uses. The fuller treatment
of them can be taken up more appropriately afterwards.
Within certain limits the moral emotion of self-approbation
may aid a man seeking to live the life of the spirit under
special difficulties and temptations. If never prominent, it
is certainly an exhilarating element in the lives of sincerely
good men. Moreover, emotional judgments ascribing
demerit to others are perhaps inalienable activities of
conscience—though good men’s judgments of bad men seem
to become milder as they who judge become wiser and
better. The exceptions to this are quite intelligible. The
hottest moral indignation and the most unmeasured judg-
ments of demerit are in place when the forms of a good
life are affected and the spirit ignored, when there is a
daily trafficking in the phrases of an extinct or perverted vided 11. Wnite ai-
thus,
piety, and the most common and necessary duties are the activity
of conscience
neglected. The tenderest conscience does well to tear to one
is ultimately
and in-
pieces these pretensions, and award to the pretenders the divisible.
doom they deserve.
32 NAMING AND CLASSIFICATION OF ACTIVITIES.

Finally, in the midst of this multiplicity of psychological

divisions, distinctions, and classifications, we must never
forget that the activity of conscience is ultimately one and
indivisible. Its varying functions and features stand only
relatively apart, and in actual experience they run into
one another by imperceptible gradations. For as soon
as ever the emotional judgments of the moral sense begin
to operate as helps or hindrances to the actual willing, they
pass into sentiments of duty or obligation. Neither
susceptibility nor impulse, neither emotional judgment nor
the judgment and sentiment of obligation occur separately
in reality, though quite separable for thought. The
activity is never arrested at the emotional judgment and
then renewed as a judgment and sentiment of obligation.
Both are simply correlative aspects of the one phenomenon.
They can scarcely be spoken of as stages in the same
manifestation, for they are strictly continuous. Never-
theless, to signalise their difference in feature and function,
a psychological line of cleavage must be drawn and allowed
to remain uneffaced. This is what we have attempted to
do in naming the two essential forms, moral sense and
sense of duty. The sub-divisions are again based upon
slighter differences occurring within each of these, and
taken with the others they are an expansion into something
of the nature of a scheme of naming and classification.
 CHAPTER. LY.

THE MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY——THEIR INVARIABLE

ATTRIBUTES AND UNIVERSAL ASPECTS.

WE have now, definitely adopted the terms moral sense and

sense of duty as names for the two leading forms of the
activities of conscience. According to the views presented
‘in the last chapter, the moral sense consists of our
susceptibilities:and the emotional judgments of right and
wrong given in and through them; the sense a duty
stands for the associated moral ree or sentiments,
together with the judgments of obligation expressed in
them. All the phenomena of. conscience may thus be
classed in a general way. under one or other of these two
heads.
A few words must now be said as to the new meaning
put: into these names before giving a fuller account of the The new
meaning put
inward activities they stand for. The term moral sense into the
terms moral
has been in general use since its incidental introduction by sense apes
More and Shaftesbury, and its more systematic employment
by Hutcheson and his successors. Hitherto it has been
held to be by itself an adequate name for the whole of the
moral sensibilities which we have spoken of as equivalent
to the activities of conscience. It has no doubt been
variously used by various writers, but this all-inclusive
reference has never been disputed or discussed. In the
chapter on naming and classification we tried to inaugurate
an important change. We were not content with limiting
the moral sense to the phenomena as opposed to the law
of conscience, we sought further to restrict it to one half
of the functions and feelings described as within this
CG
 34. MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

sphere. The reasons for this course must be plain to

many, but a brief statement of them may nevertheless
be a necessity in this connection.
Bothnames 10 begin with, we cannot consistently group together
inorderto.. Under one name phases of moral sensibility which are so
tinetlyand Clifferent in feature and function. To throw together in this
i dis- . ° . . .

thephasesofWise emotions and sentiments, susceptibilities and impulses,

cd tel, . . . Pa :

they respec. i8 a psychological blunder which should not be perpetuated

fo. “"" indefinitely. Emotions of uneasiness and compunction are
not lightly to be mixed up with sentiments of fear or re-
vulsion. Moreover, the susceptibilities are comparatively
placid seats of pleasure and pain—carrying their emphasis
within themselves, while the impulses are akin to the
passions of love or hatred, inasmuch as they forcibly attract
towards, or repel from, their objects. If we view them in
this most hurried and superficial way, the two great classes
of activities are seen to present quite distinguishable
features.
In the second place, the work or function of the suscepti-
bilities and emotional judgments can be readily distinguished
from that of the judgments of obligation and the accompany-
ing impulses or sentiments. Both functions are judgments,
but the judgments are different. In the former, right and
wrong, or moral distinctions, are revealed and affirmed; in
the latter, ‘ought’ and ‘ought not,’ or moral demands, are
announced and enforced. Under the emotional judgments
occurring in our moral susceptibilities there are included
activities of discrimination between good and evil, and con-
demnation of the one or approval of the other. Under the
judgments of obligation as they come up with moral impulses
or sentiments, there are found precepts enjoining us to act
or to refrain from acting. They are couched in the impera-
tive mood—and in them the critical and impartial attitude
of the more judicial function has been completely departed
from, and that of strenuous but simple obligation to one
course has taken its place.
Now, we admit that the moral sense is an apt and appro-
 THEIR INVARIABLE ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 35

priate name for one great class of these activities, namely,

those that are perceptive or judicial. But we deny that it
is an equally suitable term for the other. Indeed, it is to
be expected that precisely in proportion to its fitness to
designate the former, it must fail either to cover or suggest
that which is specific in the latter. Besides, if a new phase
of sensibility and a new function of judgment have started
into being with the obligating impulses, why should there
not be a separate name for them? Moreover, this course
has the additional advantage that it will allow the moral
sense to retain a contracted but perfectly articulate and
definite meaning.
There may very well be some who demur to this new use new ana ola
of the old phrase, ‘sense of duty, but it is probably the phrase,
use of the

best use that can be made of it in all the circumstances. ay" ”

In sound, as well as in meaning, it is supplementary to the
moral sense, or rather, the one is the complement of the other.
The word sense is common to both and the prepositional
adjunct ‘of duty’ corresponds to the adjective ‘moral.’
No doubt the phrase has usually a more restricted significa-
tion. Acting from our sense of duty is ordinarily conceived
to imply action from a highly abstract motive—that is, a
motive detached from every consideration of advantage or
expediency. This is what is known as a man doing his duty
for duty’s sake, apart from any concrete end or consequence.
We think it more true to living experience—as well as more
consonant with the terminology adopted—to make action
from the sense of duty comprehend all actions from motives
that have received the sanction of the moral sense. Such
conduct is in the highest degree disinterested, for it must
ipso facto be as free from the taint of selfish interest or
immoral advantage and expediency as is conceivable in the
given case. Thus, whatever in the old meaning of the phrase
is capable of being shown to be strictly in accordance with
the facts of moral life, is not abolished, but taken up and
absorbed in the new.
At the end of this protracted explanation of terms there
 36 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

may be some ready to exclaim, why take all this trouble

about a mere matter of naming. If any one puts this
question here, the answer lies ready to hand. In psycho-
logical investigations such as the present, every genuine
advance is attested either by a better and more accurate use
of old terms, or by the introduc tion of some that are new.
Results of fresh thinking and work in this field can be
secured and made permanent only by the projection of a
more correct and suitable scheme of naming. In mental
and moral studies with an original aim this is simply indis-
pensable. It is not so in the physical sciences, because in
them the objects of research can be seen or handled or
otherwise adequately appreciated by the senses.
Theaetivities
designated
After dealing to this extent with the new meaning and
by the term yge of the terms moral sense and sense of duty, a fuller
inespeafanalytical account of the activities they stand for may
bie attri reasonably be expected—especially in this and the following
chapter, which profess to be written about them.
We have to ask, in the first place, what the invariable
attributes are, and then we shall give some consideration to
the universal aspects they present. Their variable attributes
and particular aspects must be reserved for special treatment
in the immediately succeeding chapter, which is also the
last in the first part of this analysis.
Le bg The existence of a moral sense in any person implies
plies some gome perception of a moral quality or relation in an agent
D
perception of
moralquslity Or his action, as well as some susceptibility to emotion
susceptibility In connection with it. As we have said, both the perception
cornection and the susceptibility vary, but neither the one nor the
other is ever absent, or ever wholly disappears from any
man’s moral sense. A moral difference in acts_is never
entirely unrecognised or lost sight of, and the perception is
always attended with emotion. Moral as well as other
distinctions are constantly made in action, and the dis-
tinguishing consciousness is always manifested in feelings of
pleasure and pain. There are no human beings to whom
murder and manslaughter, or treachery and fidelity, are
 THEIR UNIVERSAL ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 37

absolutely indistinguishable in all circumstances and

relations. When the ground is cleared by placing them in
a proper light and perspective, some actions are perceived
to be wrong and others right, and in connection with the
perception there are pleasureable feelings attached to the
latter, and painful to the former. A right and a wrong in
actions, and a moral sense to see and feel them, are invari-
ably present in men as men. This minimum of perceptive
power, and of moral susceptibility, is one of the invariable
attributes of the moral sense of all beings as distinctively
human and sane.
When this has. been said it is nearly all that can be
affirmed as invariable attributes of every moral sense as
such." This, however, is all that is strictly essential to its The juaging
being and working. The rest falls under development, and Pee
is coincident with culture, social and religious, or scientific arta
and specifically moral. For when we descend (as we shall imentsare
have to da) to examine the particular perceptions and aftipudes
aeeersiohn r ae though the
susceptibilities of the members of different communities, we particular
= is things judged
shall find in them differences many and great. But as right ana
- : wrong vary,
these differences depend mainly upon the degree of moral ana tie par
: ots . ° ticular emo-
purity and, insight in the perceptive power, and of tender- tions are aif-
s ferent more
ness, and truth in the susceptibility, they do not menace the orlessin kind
or degree or
existence of the invariable attributes—which are the vision both.
of aright and a, wrong in action, and some pleasure in the con-
templation.of the former, and painin witnessing the latter.
Nearly all that has been said of the moral sense holds
with equal truth of the sense of duty. But it requires to
be, stated a little differently, in view of that which is
peculiar to the latter,
The existence of a sense of duty (as we have defined it) Attributes
in any human creature involves some perception of moral larlyInvari-
obligation in willing, as well as some force of sensibility in senaeotdnty,
connection with it. A perception of obligation to some aA ene
moral authorities, and an impulse or sentiment enforcing it, tioninwilling
are omnipresent factors in every sense of duty as such. pemnee
Both the one and the other vary, but neither can ever be connection
 38 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

wholly absent in, or vanish from, human consciousness. In

the perception of a right and a wrong there is implied a
simultaneous perception of obligation to the former, and
against the latter. The feeling changes with the nature of
the perception. Instead of susceptibility, there is impulse;
instead of emotion, there is sentiment. Both exert in their
measure a constraining or restraining influence in harmony
with the ruling of the judgment of obligation. As certainly
as a deed is decided to be wrong in the moral sense, some
impulse or sentiment is active backing a judgment of
obligation which demands that it be not realised in action,
and if it be already done, that it be condemned with
emphasis.
The partice- When this has been said, we have said nearly all that
Jar obliga- 3 5 .
tious felt are can be affirmed as invariable attributes of the sense of duty
variable, as
willasthe as such. The particular obligations felt by members of
intensity and
frequency different communities differ in their ethical height and
they are felt. comprehensiveness, as well as in the degree of intensity
with which they are experienced. In particular consciences
the preceptive judgment and sentiment attach themselves to
different acts and different qualities in persons—that is, to
acts and qualities which we should characterise ethically as
lower or higher. But there is always in the sense of duty
these twin attributes, and they are invariably active upon
occasion. Moreover, the same attributes are limited in
their ethical range to a larger or smaller circle of human
beings, though they may and should apply to all men as
men. This difference does not impair the reality of their
existence and activity in each sense of duty, and the rest
is a question of culture and training.
Moralsense Finally, just as the twin aspects of judgment and sensi-
anistuioug bility belong to each essential form of the activities of con-
toeachother» science, the moral sense and sense of duty are invariably
present together in every conscience. The emotional judg-
ment of right and wrong, and the judgment and sentiment
of obligation, belong to each other. They invariably co-exist.
So, likewise, do the susceptibility and impulse, which are
 THEIR INVARIABLE. ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 39

only two sides of: one and the same activity. of. sensibility.
Conscience has always the twin power of judgment and
obligation—perception and precept. The two together make
up every activity. .
But though always
nue s
co-existent, there are often
:
differences but they do
not always
between them within one and the same conscience. They run side-by-
side, in so far
may not run side by side in so far as the kind and degree asthe kina
and degree of
of their effectiveness is concerned.’ The rise and fall in the theireffec-
condition and power.of each may be neither contemporaneous concerned
nor parallel. Nevertheless moral sense and sense of duty
invariably co-exist and co-operate in each activity of every
man’s conscience. .
In conclusion; the universal aspects of activities of con- The univer.
sal aspects of
: 3
sciencein the moral sense and sense of duty must now come the moral
up for treatmentin a somewhat summary manner. Though sensof
far from being unimportant, their importance is chiefly
psychological. They have also a great significance in prac-
tice, a significance which is ultimately traceable to the
essential nature and character of the law that they embody
and apply. Moreover, the technical efficiency of conscience
hangs together in no small measure with the universal
aspects of which we are now to speak.
There is, first, what we may call the involuntariness or
spontaneity of every activity of conscience.
Whenever there is before consciousness any act of willing, ¢.tariness Invelun-
past or prospective, conscience is active upon it—and active spomene
or
without any provable assistance from our choice. All that activity.
is necessary is that two incompatible impulses or opposing
motives should come up together, then one or other of them
is transfixed as evil and wrong, and in every instance we find,
upon examination, that moral sense and sense of duty are
spontaneously active without any other initiative than the
above-mentioned occasioning circumstance. It seems absurd
to expect that there could be anything voluntar y about the
blush of shame or the prick of duty. The scourge of remorse
cannot be wielded by our wills, and the command s of
duty can be said only in a limited sense to be imposed upon
 40 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

us by our: own: selves: They do not start into being at our

wish ; they are not:voluntarily originated.
aS aspect. presented universally by the igen
and feelings of conscience is that which we may term their
(6.) The im- immediateness. By this itis meant that the verdicts and
mediateness
of their demands of conscience are not produced and presented
functioning.
by an ordinary -theoretical exercise of. the understanding.
They are’ instantaneously arrived at: and at once. imposed
upon the will... It.is nevertheless true that their im-
mediacy :is: not..absolute. For when we analyse more
minutely that which takes place, we find.there is and must
ever be an inference. There is a preference shown for the
good over the evil motive,.and: where there is preference
there is.comparison, and where: there is comparison there
are things compared, together with: some consciousness
of the :grounds:;of ‘resemblance and difference : between
them. So it isin’ this ecase.: Before every decision of
will there is a:comparison of the motive or act with a
standard: within :the moral sense, and: a declaration of: its
agreement or disagreement with it... If conformable, it is
said to be right and: good, if otherwise, it is set down as
evil and wrong. But the perception and judgement.of right
is also a perception and judgment of obligation, and .the
demand in the sense of duty follows instantly upon the
deliverance in: the moral sense. Both are eo
expressed in feeling. )
We thus see that though in every activity of conscience
there is implied a process of inference, yet it is carried
through with such extraordinary rapidity that it may be
spoken of as immediate. A beat of the heart, a throb of
recognition, a pulse of injured feeling—these are in them-
selves the vehicles of. a moral distinction or a moral
demand. The reasoning underlying it is syllogistic after a
fashion, but it is of that kind known to medieval moralists
in this very connection as a practical syllogism. The inter-
mediate steps are overleaped as in immediate inference, and
the conclusion is attached at once to the given case.
 THEIR UNIVERSAL ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 41

If we merge into one the involuntary and the immediate (c.) Intuitive
self certainty.
aspects of conscience, we shall arrive at that which is often
spoken of as the intuitive self-certainty of its activities.
When we detach this character from the nature of the law
active within the feeling and judgments, we mean by it
little else than the following universal experience. We
know good from evil with: instantaneousness and certainty
whenever. they. appear. together. in consciousness. The
particular things that are so distinguished and characterised
as good or evil may differ within different civilisations and
religions, but a good and an evil are recognised in conscience
by all men as men. Moreover, we know the good to be
right, and right for us, as well as obligatory upon ourselves
and all similar persons in similar circumstances. Whether,
therefore, in the moral- sense or in the -sense of duty, the
activities of conscience consist of immediate: and involuntary
judgments conveyed in feelings which carry the pledge and
guarantee of their certainty and truth within themselves
in all circumstances and upon all occasions.
If they are involuntary in their rise, immediate as well
as’ infallible in their’ activity, they. must come. up in
connection with all willing—that is free or self-determined. a moral activities

When there is choice and decision, however rapid, there ne and

sense of duty,

is conscience—when these are altogether’ absent there 1s accompany

willing
none. If an action is really reflex—the immediate result that is free
self-
of an immediate stimulus, with no ghost of an idea determined:

coming between—no activity is perceptible It is instine-

tive, and to an instinctive act conscience has simply no
relation whatever. There has been no choice in presence of
conflicting motives, and no preference possible, so that the
pre-requisites of its activity are absent. Other examples
of its inapplicability are such as the following. In
conduct that is purely routine where no new decision -of
will crops up, or in intellectual exercises where practical
distinctions and demands may be for the moment in
abeyance, then the moral sense and sense of duty may be
inactive? But, on the other hand, they are not prevented
42 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY.

from functioning by the quick succession of our choices and

self-determinations. These may recur with a frequency
that is phenomenal, but so long as the subject of them
remains within the bounds of rationality, actions are
criticised, and may be regulated by the activities of
conscience. We can conclude, therefore, that emotional
judgments of the moral sense, and judgments and senti-
ments or impulses of the sense of duty, accompany all
genuine willing of all men.
 GHAPTER. -V.

THE MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY—THEIR VARIABLE

ATTRIBUTES AND PARTICULAR ASPECTS.

Bestpes the invariable attributes and universal aspects of

conscience, there are attributes that are variable and
aspects that are particular. An immediate and involuntary
activity of judgment in feeling, distinguishing between a
right and a wrong in conduct, is a uniform and permanent
attribute of every moral sense as such. Similarly there is
conjoined with this a judgment and impulse or sentiment
of obligation to that which is perceived to be right, and
away from that which is wrong. These attributes may be
said to be alike unchanging and unchangeab le, because
they go with humanity as such. They are an ever-present
and ever-abiding activity in each person in connection with
any and all of his definite acts of willing or choice.
But while the functioning, as such, is invariable and
unchanging in its pointing to a right and a wrong, and tO and Moral sense
sense of

what ought and ought not be done—th ere are other attribute s duty—their
rising out of and founded upon these which are certainly seerbaiee
variable. In the moral sense there is a perceptive power
and judgment and a susceptibility which is a fountain of
emotion. Both of these vary. In the sense of duty there
is a perception and judgment of obligation, and an attendant
force of sensibility. Both of these vary. So that while
the former are always concerned with a right and a wrong,
and the latter with what ought or ought not to be done, they
differ as they are active in particular persons and in relation
to particular things.
Let us first look at the moral sense. In it the differences
 44 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

Theelements turn upon the degree of moral purity and insight in the per-
ieroner ceptive power or judgment, and upon the degree and kind
oe of tenderness and truth in the kindred guscapelalnes
(1.) Percep- In regard to the first of these variable attributes, we soon
the moral discover that in actual life the perceptive power in the moral
er sense may vary upon occasion from bare sight of a right and
a wrong up to an insight into good and evil, which is re-
markable. In childhood, or in a low social ‘state, there may
be a minimum of perceptive activity ; in persons of mature
moral life and experience, there may be a maximum. ‘These
differences range from sight to insight—from the mere vision
of a moral difference to an acuteness and facility in finding
distinctions which amounts to something very like moral
genius. Notwithstanding the most notable rise in these
respects, the moral sense of any man remains fundamentally
one and the same throughout. ‘There is always an activity
dividing a right from a wrong. Upon what, then, does the
difference hinge ?
If the differences be connected with changes in the general
culture, social and religious, they will coincide with the parti-
cular classification of actions as right and wrong which is
adopted in the particular community. If, on the other hand,
they are associated with personal moral culture and changes
in growth or decay of inward character, they depend upon
subjective fidelity to. distinctions already acknowledged and
accepted. The latter condition may be spoken of as sub-
jective, the former, as objective, purity. When subjective
purity is united with.a pure and high objective classification
of actions, you have the highest degree.of moral purity and
insight in the perceptive power.
These conditions of culture in the functioning of the per-
(2) The |, ceptive judgment. reflect themselves fullyin the associated
wopubiite, susceptibility. - Its objective truth is its correspondence to
outward fact. and. circumstance.. The truth in external
relations, of the emotional moral judgments corresponds to
the' degree of objective truth in the classifications of right
and wrong accepted in the perceptive judgment. When the
 THEIR VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 45

division of actions within the moral sense is markedly im-

perfect, either by excess or defect, the emotional judgments
give expression to the imperfection. When it errs by
excess, they are fanatically active in relations that do not
properly come within their province. When, on the other
hand, it errs by defect, the same susceptibilities are com-
paratively inactive in relations where they should be ener-
getic and incisive. That is, they are either excessive in
view of the occasioning causes, or limited in view of the
complete circle of right and wrong in personal conduct.
The responsibility for such faults and failures may rest, not
with the individual, but with the community that has given
him his moral education. They are certainly responsible in
so far as the classification of acts as right and wrong is
primarily theirs, not his.
Tenderness in the moral susceptibility consists in special Cries
openness to moral impression, and sensitiveness to moral fs ote
distinctions generally. Its absence denotes callousness or
hardness in these regards. When the emotional suscepti-
bility is blunt, the emotional judgments are few. When,
again, it is too tender or over-excitable, they are too
frequent. In such instances they may recur so often that
the person is said to make a business of having ‘a bad
conscience. If a dull moral sense is said to sleep, a
hyper-acute susceptibility like this might be said to bleed
upon all occasions. Tenderness is the true predicate of a
moral sense, as holding the mean between these (two)
extremes.
If truth in external relations depended chiefly upon tena
objective purity in the classification of actions by a set outhye
community as right and wrong, tenderness requires
exclusively what we have called subjective purity. There
may be a want of correspondence to reality when there is
perfect subjective fidelity to the canons of right acting
already within the moral sense, and vice versa.
But tenderness may not only err through excess or
defect, it may also be limited or disproportioned. When
 46 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

personal interests or inveterate habits—having the force of

instincts—interfere with impartiality, then we have either
one-sidedness or partial insensibility. Trade monopolies
that are indefensible, and a political partisan ship that is
blind, are calculated, as well as gross sensuali ty in personal
conduct, to interfere with the life and growth of the
susceptibilities and emotional judgmen ts that censure and
condemn the associated forms of evil and wrong. In these re-
lations the moral sense of such persons must fail to repro-
duce the current moral feeling upon the matters in question.
Much of the mapping and characterisation of the moral
Variable
attributes in
sense holds with regard to the sense of duty. Some
the sense
duty.
of qualifications and modifications in statement must be made
in view of that which is peculiar to the latter.
In every sense of duty as such, there are judgments and
impulses or sentiments of obligation. These are invariably
active upon occasion, but when we enter into a more
concrete consideration of them we see that particular
obligations imposed and felt differ both as to their ethical
height and comprehensiveness, as well as in the strength
and purity of the accompanying sensibility.
The first differences affect the preceptive judgment. It
is active in harmony with the classification of actions as
(1.) Differ-
ences as to
more or less obligatory in the community of which the
ethical person is a member. According as these classifications are
height of
the precep-
tive judg-
higher or lower in relation to some objective code, the
ment, activities of the preceptive judgment in the sense of duty
will vary as to their ethical height. But the obligating
judgment is essentially one and the same throughout,—
from that active in a man passing up from childhood to
manhood, or that in the sense of duty of members of the
race passing up from primitive savage life to the highest
societies of Christendom.
(2.) Differ-
ences as to
The next conspicuous difference in the activities of the
the compre- preceptive judgment has relation to its comprehensiveness.
hensiveness
of the pre-
ceptive
In childhood, and in the smallest groupings of men, we may
judgment. consider the range of its obligation to be most contracted.
 THEIR PARTICULAR ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 47

It fails to recognise the rights to equal treatment of any

outside a limited circle of persons. When most inclusive,it
encircles potentially every member of the human race, of
whatever colour or speech, climate or religion. . Notwith-
standing this extraordinary variability in the range of the
preceptive judgment of obligation—its activity is: essentially
one and the same at all ranges. The circles of obligation
are concentric to this extent, that in every man there is
active a judgment of obligation making some demands upon
his conscience in relation to other human beings than him-
self. This is the minimum of range—but there is no breach
of continuity in its activity throughout a whole life begin-
ning in childhood and culminating in the most mature moral
manhood.
The area of human life within which any particular
person’s sense of duty recognises obligations of a moral kind
towards others, depends upon the teaching of the community
which has morally educated him. The individual, as such,
is not, therefore, directly responsible if it be circumscribed
in comparison with the conscience of one otherwise trained.
It is a shortcoming, but it is not chargeable to him. If he
is faithful to the standards of obligation at any time within
his sense of duty, more is not demanded, but nothing less can
be either asked or accepted.
As to the ethical height of the obligations prevailing hee
within any man’s sense of duty, that hangs together more pestis
closely with changes of inward character, re of social ee el
culture—though both are operative. lee
Again, we find the variability of the preceptive judgment (.) asto’
of obligation reflecting itself very fully in sensibility. The moralobigI
impulses or sentiments of duty are active only in connection -
with persons already perceived to fall within the circle of
obligation. They are, therefore, narrow or wide, as the
judgment is. In children and savages, or in persons in a
low social and religious condition, the impulses or sentiments
of obligation may come up only in relation to those who are
believed to be of kindred blood. Beyond them their sense
 48 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

of duty does not travel. From the outside of that: charmed

circle it brings no burdens to lay upon their shoulders or
their hearts. From a man whose moral impulses are active
in relation to those who’are believed to be bone of his bone
and flesh of his flesh, to one who recognise s obligations to
generations’ yet unborn, the interval is certainly great.
Nevertheless. the sense of duty active in each is’ funda-
mentally one and the same.
(2) As to In ethical height the impulses and sentiments in the sense
In children, and.persons of the
height of : : :
feral obligw of duty are‘ also variable.
lowest moral culture, they run largely along the lines’ of
the sensitive nature, and they are more frequently of the
restraining kind. Fear of punishment by parents. or rulers,
civil or religious, acts often as a deterrent in the sense of duty.
There are also fears of the punishment which follows trans-
gression of natural law, and no doubt many of the forces
operative through conscience in the young and the morally
immature are of the same order. But there are also im-
pulses of affection and sympathy. Filial love is at work in
children, and tribal sympathy in savages, as well as the more
selfish impulses. These are the germs of the civic spirit of
duty in the members of more civilised communities.
The highest and the most pure impulses and sentiments
in the sense of duty are usually those associated with the
accepted forms of religious control. Sentiments of awe and
reverence towards the Supreme Being are also the most
effective in inducing obedience to the dictates of ordinary
duty in all ordinary minds. In every age and in every
land the obligating impulses of conscience are knit together
with this part of the social framework as they are with no
other.
There are probably only a few impulses in a few minds
that are purer than these. All genuine feelings of duty
have relation to real interests of men as men, and if this is
not discernible, it is possible that they are not bond fide im-
pulses in the sense of duty at all.
Finally, just as tenderness was the true predicate of every
 THEIR VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 49

moral sense, so the strength of the impulses and sentiments G) ae

in the sense of duty is ‘the great desideratum. If, in their’
activity, they ranged round he whole horizon of human
obligation, the want of power would be none the less
deplored. Better that they should be narrow and strong,
than wide and weak. Better that they should have force
and energy within a comparatively circumscribed sphere,
than that they should dissipate themselves in the most
unlimited arena of obligation. Mere force of sensibility,
without the authority of the law within it, would count for
little, but with it there is a most important aid given
thereby to the realisation of a good life.
The particular aspects of conscience now require to be the par-
dealt with before we bring this first part of the analysis to coe of
Bilbo Whese ara those concomedewitit the rapidity of the °™"""*
anticipatory and declaratory activities in relation to our-
selves, and all activities of conscience in relation to others.
The suddenness, also, of the judicial activities, and their
force, as well as the durability of remorse—these are not
uniform and universal, or invariable. They depend upon
the relation existing at any moment and in any given case
between the tenderness in the moral sense and the strength
in the sense of duty of the person judging, and enormity in
the act judged.
If the moral sense be tender, the emotional judgments guickness
declaratory of right and wrong are quick and keen. They ness
inthe
are then not content with turning their searching light wpon jragments of
that which we are doing; they torment us as to what we sensewnen
may do. If the lower self hankers for a moment after a “""”
forbidden indulgence, the moral sense makes us quiver
with an anticipatory pain. Eagerness is the particular
aspect of activity in such instances. Immediately upon
the rise of an impure thought or evil imagination, there
comes up a rippling feeling of acute self-reproach. The
tiniest cloudlet of a possible iniquity may interfere with
the reigning sunshine of the soul.
On the other hand, in persons whose moral sense is not
D
 50 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

Comparative tender but callous, it requires the serious contemplation of

tardiness
ewe ee palpably immoral act to excite any similar activities of
iscallous. @ declaratory kind. Certainly, deeds of the darkest hue
are furnished (as Richter quaintly phrases it) “with teeth
in their birth.” But usually such a moral sense does not
prejudge the deed; it follows it in condemnation: or at
most comes to expression along with the actual doing
of it. ;
When the sense of duty is strong and high, it presents
The sense of analogous aspects in all particular
duty presents 3
relations.
5
Impulses
aspects that Of love to God or to mankind—sentiments of awe,
om reverence, and gratitude, operate frequently and powerfully
within it. They work in union with the tender moral
sense, and contribute greatly to its quick and penetrating
character. If they often appear in the guise of a lofty
appeal to the will, or a gentle monition, they may also
assume in men morally the highest an authoritative
attitude, and raise themselves in defiance of all the lower
considerations that oppose them. When the sense of duty
is not so high, fear of penalties, divine or human, is the
ruling impulse out of which the actually obligating
sentiments arise.
By far the most striking of the particular aspects of
Rapiaity, conscience are manifest in activities of the judicial kind.
durability of The rapidity, force, and durability of the effects are
activities. sometimes conspicuous. They also vary according to
tenderness in the moral sense, and enormity in the act.
This is specially evident as to the suddenness and
momentum with which conscience plants its sting. When
a tender conscience and great culpability meet, the retri-
bution of an outraged moral sense swoops down upon the
heart like an avenging harpy, and sits there gnawing night
and day. Swiftness, power, and persistency characterise
such an activity. In the midst of the blinding force of
appetite, or the stormy impulses of ferocity, the animal
nature may be cowed by conscience at the very moment
when the latter seems most prostrate before it.
 THEIR PARTICULAR ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 51

But in the moral sense of the most of men the judicial

activities are not concomitant as these are. They are more
or less retrospective. The whirlwind of lust must have
passed, the passion must be exhausted, the attendant
excitement must have subsided before the revulsion of
feeling sets in with its full force. But, then, such is its
vehemence, that it may suffuse the whole soul of a
reprobate with shame and opprobrium before itself. So
that if the evil-doer’s dark deed has no birth-throes, it has
its resurrection agonies. In women and some men, such
paroxysms of remorse have been known to supervene that
the life has been rent asunder by the anguish of a
despairing penitence.
We do not say that such volcanic outbursts of moral feel-
ing are always a test of the tenderness of the moral sense,
or the strength and height of the sense of duty in any person.
In children and the uncultivated the emotions and impulses
in general have a rude strength and a volume that they
have not relatively in the more mature and disciplined.
Moreover, as Mr Spencer says, they come up in gushes.
Probably in these forms they may be more effective in the
inner life of many, but they are not necessarily indications
of the existence of a conscience that is at once pure and
high. When they have less quantitative force, but more
fineness, incisiveness, and poignancy, they may leave behind
them effects in character and conduct that are deeper and
more permanent.
When the judicial activities recur so often in any moral jy seupnity
sense in relation to some past evil deed that the trace they ° fects.
leave in heart and memory is virtually indelible, they may
be said to have acquired a peculiar punitive character.
This trait is not often found in persons of shallow culture
in the moral sense, or relatively low obligating impulses in
the sense of duty. Nevertheless this aspect is perhaps
never entirely absent in specially gross moral transgressions.
In the members of primitive communes, conscience scourges
52 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY:

savagely the man who is guilty of some heavy violation of

their tribal morality. The remorse is awakened by ruder
religious beliefs and accentuated by fears of bodily punish-
ment, but it is probably more violent and lacerating than
the analogous experience in a member of modern Christen-
dom. At all events, we have abundant evidence from the
general literature and life of the Greeks that the punitive
conscience was a familiar enough phenomenon within culti-
vated paganism. The anguish following, for example, an act
of matricide was vividly portrayed in art by a brood of
vipers settling on the head of the sacrilegious offender, in
whose shameless face their fangs were buried. These were
the visitations of the furies who are the embodiments of a
remorse that is punitive rather than judicial. Moreover,
so widespread was the moral feeling out of which this repre-
sentation arose, that the orators appealing to the widest and
least cultivated portion of the public were wont to invoke
against their enemies the aid of these delegated ministers of
the gods. In our own literature, Shakespeare’s description
of the anguish of Richard III. is a full and powerful picture
of the punitive activities of conscience. The terrible dis-
quietude, the frightful phantoms of the imagination thrown
in upon Richard by a prostituted moral sense are so accu-
rately delineated that they might be transferred to pages
setting forth the varying aspects of particular consciences in
the face of a crime perpetrated but not forgotten. But for
a complete and adequate representation on a great scale in
literature of the punitive activities, we should require to
resort to Dante’s masterpiece.
The purer the moral sense and the higher the sense of
duty, the less heinous need the violation be which evokes
these punitive activities. Traces of comparatively venial
misdeeds have been transformed into springs of penal pain
for men who had lived largely in the life of conscience.
Their misery wells up ever and anon from these old foun-
tains like blood from a half-healed wound. Of such an one
the poet’s description is true :—
 THEIR VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES AND ASPECTS. 53

“The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head,
The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet ;
But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,
Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may
meet.

The particular aspects of activities of conscience in rela- Partiewar

tion to others cannot be set forth here except in points aenivities of
where they differ from our emotional self-judgments and histen
impulses or sentiments of self-obligation. In illustration “"™
of them the following facts may be presented :—
Let there be found together a tender moral sense in the
person judging, and magnanimous goodness in the act
judged. The result is a special salience and spontaneity
in the ensuing activities of his conscience. His emotional
judgments of approbation are urgent and full. So forward
are they that they find expression naturally in ejaculatory
outbursts rather than in the common way by trickling
through subject and copula to the object. The feelings of
such a conscience in such circumstances have a volume and
a glow akin to those of a poetic nature unexpectedly brought
into the presence of a towering mountain or a mighty stretch
of sunlit water.
The vagueness and the want of certainty which we spoke
of as clinging to these ebullitions of conscience in relation to
others, not unfrequently help to paralyse their legitimate
influence over our own wills, and prevent the impressions
they leave upon our hearts and memories from becoming
deep and enduring. Perhaps we find it difficult to free our
minds from some lurking suspicion in regard to the motive
of the agent. We surmise that after all there may be some
alloy of vanity or selfishness. The elevation of the action is
questioned, and the figure of the agent is dwarfed in our
imagination by these questionings and doubts. With the
sharpening of the intellect the corrosion of cynicism tends
to set into even the emotional judgments, our ideal charac-
ters get fewer and fewer, and the flaws in the noblest con-
duct become only too visible.
When a tender moral sense and a high and strong sense
 54 MORAL SENSE AND SENSE OF DUTY.

of duty meet with gross immoralities in action, the same

energy expends itself in disapprobation. We repudiate the
act with indignation and mete out punishment to the offender
in proportion to the greatness and guilt of his offence. In
this instance, too, the perception of evil in act is vivid as
that of redness in shed blood or blackness in pitch. The
way in which a truly compassionate woman can take plea-
sure in the punishment of a criminal or a less culpable
transgressor is highly suggestive in this connection. If a
slanderer or a breaker of one of the ten commandments be
caught in the act, she does not flinch at witnessing the
infliction of pain, for the activities of her outraged conscience
are powerful enough to counteract the outflow of pity which
the compassionate experience at sight of a human being
suffering extreme distress.
Many
features
We cannot now expatiate upon the indefinitely numerous
cannot be
dealt with in
and varied aspects of conscience. To do this would require
this analysis.
a volume dealing with the natural history of the moral
feelings and describing all the influences that mingle with
them and give them their passing tone or colour. Such an
undertaking is quite away from our present purpose in this
lean and somewhat skeleton-like analysis of the activities.
If we dilated, for example, upon the horror that mixes with
our reprobation of murder, or the contempt that acidulates
our condemnation of meanness, we should be launching upon
an almost illimitable field. Here the particular aspects of
the activities noticed do not require us to enter minutely
into a description of their ever-changing ingredients. This
is the only allusion that can be made to thése before we
now enter upon the second and more important part of this
analysis, which discusses the constitution of activities of
conscience.
 PART II.

CONSTITUTION OF THE ACTIVITIES OF

CONSCIENCE.
 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CONSTITUTION OF ACTIVITIES OF
CONSCIENCE?

In the first chapter of this analysis we defined conscience Recpitula-

as the activity of the moral law in our sensibilities, and to
the elucidation of these sensibilities the four chapters that
followed were devoted. In them we tried to separate the
moral from other sensibilities of a lower order, and there-
after to note and name, divide and classify them accord-
ing to distinctions that emerged within themselves. As a
result, moral sensibility was broken up into a susceptibility
and animpulse. In the susceptibility there occur emotional
judgments of right and wrong; in the impulse, judgments
and sentiments of personal obligation. These two sets of
experience are connected in the closest possible way, and
both have a constant reference to willing or choice. The
former we named the moral sense; the latter, the sense of
duty. In bringing to a conclusion the first part, we gave a
brief analytical account of the attributes and aspects which
they severally present as activities of conscience.
If five chapters have been devoted to an analysis of the Thedificulty
moral sensibilities, more than five must be given to the proba a
slenderest exhibition of the law active in them. But this is 4 solution.
by no means an easy task. Nay, it brings us face to face
with one of the problems of first magnitude within the
sphere of thought. As such, it might well tax the strength
and subtlety of the best intellect in any generation. Here,
however, we do not profess to deal with it fully and finally.
A working solution shall be sufficient if it can be arrived at.
 58 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CONSTITUTION

But this in itself will be no little advantage to many. For

some clear light, some definite conviction upon this ques-
tion, is a necessity of the first moment at the present time.
As of old, that ever-present sphinx human nature, keeps
putting the riddle of right and duty to thoughtful men, and
sometimes an answer must be given upon pain of intellectual
or moral death by inanition. If therefore, this essay helps
to make deeper and better thinking more common upon its
subject, it cannot fail to be of some solid value. A final
solution may be one of those good things that lie in the far
future towards which solitary thinkers in the swiftly suc-
ceeding generations are working. If this effort does not
make any great contribution to that desirable consummation
it may still claim attention upon humbler grounds. For
example, we may cherish the hope that by the superiority
of its method and the simplicity of its language it will open
up discussion of the problem to a larger number of inquiring
minds.
Explanation
of the title
Perhaps we might be expected to make plain from the
chosen for
the Second
title of this part that we are to be occupied with the
Part. question as to the nature of the law in conscience. At
first sight such an expectation appears to be disappointed,
but the disappointment is only in appearance. In reality
‘law’ and ‘constitution’ are used as synonymous, and
therefore although we have not said so in as many words,
the heading chosen really sets forth this as the object of the
remaining chapters. Moreover, the term constitution is
preferable to law in this connection, because the latter
includes in its meaning a reference to the authority of con-
science—a subject which comes up for adequate treatment
only in a later part.
Whatmean-
ing can we
Granting the expediency of this choice of important
attach to con- terms, the special subject of this chapter now requires to be
stitution in
connection
with the
grappled with. We must ask and endeavour to answer as
activities of
conscience.
best we may the question as to the precise meaning we are
prepared to attach to the word constitution in connection
 OF ACTIVITIES
OF CONSCIENCE ? 59

with the activities of conscience. To do this it is not

necessary to suppose that we are already acquainted with
the ultimate nature of right and wrong or of moral obliga-
tion. That is to be the matter of subsequent investigation.
What we are now occupied with is something that is more
or less independent of the particular answer given to that
question. No technical explanation of the constitution of
conscience can be affected by conclusions as to the ultimate
nature of the law within it. But that is all that we are
at present attempting to give. If, therefore, it be true
to the facts of psychology and the best reflection upon
them, it cannot be proved untrue by any other available.
test.
In searching for this technical explanation of a comn- ‘tion”Constitn-
. : aire and the
:
spicuou s term we must begin with the definiti on already provisional
given of the phenomena of moral feeling to which the con- thoactivities
stitution is related somewhat as the cause is to the effect.
The activities of conscience were provisionally defined in
the opening chapter, and the definition was extended and
filled in by the analytical description of them that followed.
An analogous method of procedure must be pursued in this
Part.
The activities of conscience were said to be equivalent to
the sensibilities in which the moral law is active. If we
take law and constitution as convertible terms, this definition
reads ;—‘the activities of conscience are equivalent to the
sensibilities in which the moral constitution is active.’
Leaving the meaning of the adjective moral to be after-
wards determined, can we again substitute a more familiar
term for constitution in this connection? Such an equivalent
can be found in the phrase moral consciousness. By sub-
stituting it no cardinal element in the connotatio n of the
other is dropped out of sight. If we repeat the definition
and paraphrase it in the light of this rubric, it should then
read, ‘the activities of conscience are the sensibilities in
which the moral consciousness is active.’
 60 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CONSTITUTION

Moral con. Now we know what we mean when we speak of the

nation moral consciousness of any one.
tit °
It refers to the sum of
equivalent to ideas or conceptions by means of which moral differences
sciousness—

ceptions are apprehended, and moral demands imposed upon the will.
Let us then bring these into connection with the two
leading forms of activities and we shall see more exactly
what is implied by them.
Their con- The moral sense is that susceptibility in our nature which
nection with . i . : 7
moral sense. ig the seat of emotional judgments as to moral differences in
motive and action. Judging is thus its great function ;but
the particular judgments as such do not constitute right and
wrong—they only declare or emphasise it. No doubt the
reality, vitality, and seriousness of the moral distinction is
made known to us in a variety of ways through our suscepti-
bilities and emotional judgments, but the distinction itself
is to some extent independent. The moral difference they
express is found in the very nature of our conceptions of
human action. These conceptions are the spring and
source of our emotional judgments of conscience, and they
are the conceptions spoken of as equivalent to our moral
consciousness. For it is by means of them that moral
differences can be apprehended and expressed.
Their con In like manner when we come to consider the sense
prenease ct of duty, something strictly analogous falls to be said. It
is an impulse in our nature which is the seat of active
judgments and sentiments of obligation. But the par-
ticular judgments and sentiments as such do not constitute
the obligation—they only give expression and effect to it in
relation to the will. In reality they rest upon and rise
out of the conceptions of obligation in possession of the
particular sense of duty. These are the source of the
authority and power they exert over willing.
Thetr func-
tion is that of
The conceptions which thus work in and through
sauenbeg activities of conscience, fulfil the function of standards in
senseand | the moral sense and motives in the sense of duty.
* .
8e; d
In the
ere of one case they endow the judgments and sentiments of
 OF ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE ? 61

obligation with the power and authority they wield; in the

other they supply the norms of right and wrong, by means
of which the emotional judgments of the moral sense are
made. Thus standard and motive, when taken together,
become the equivalent of the conceptions, or consciousness,
or constitution, or law active in conscience. If, there-
fore, we can ascertain what the standards and motives are,
we shall know what the law is.
But further, the activities of conscience in the moral But more
. a
sense and sense of duty were seen to offer for our analysis sense of
. : : d i
a double set of attributes and aspects. This must arise a donlo ecne
from the fact that they have in reality a double constitu- possessing’
tion. There were, for example, attributes which were in- false aa
variable, and aspects which were universal. As the ground eee
of these, we must presuppose a constitution which is in-
variable and universal. There were also attributes which
were variable, and aspects which were particular. At the
root of these there must be a constitution which is variable
and particular.
Translating this into the alternative terms we have been tnetr forma
employing, we reach the conclusion that there must be con- eseare |
ceptions or standards and motives in conscience which are
invariable and universal, as well as others which are vari-
able and particular. There must be some consciousness or
conception of a right and a wrong, and of an associated
personal obligation, which is invariably present in any and
every activity of conscience. This is the minimum of pre-
supposition, the sine gua non of all judging and obligating
through the moral feelings or sensibilities. When we bring
this into direct relation with the moral sense and sense of
duty, we may say that there is always in the former some
standard of a right and a wrong, and in the latter some
motive of personal obligation in connection with it. This
as ultimate is what we term the formal constitution of the
moral sense and sense of duty.
But besides this, there must be some consciousness of
 62 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE CONSTITUTION

Their particular right and wrong things—some conceptions as to

‘itktin. what in particular is right and wrong, and an associated
consciousness of personal obligation. These need not be and
are not present in every conscience, because they are de-
pendent to some extent upon personal moral culture and
social circumstances and relations. When we bring these
conceptions or this added consciousness into close connection
with the moral sense and sense of duty, we arrive at the
following statement. In the moral sense there is not only
a standard of a right and a wrong, there are also par-
ticular standards of right and wrong corresponding to the
particular condition s and relations of life. Similarly in the
sense of duty there are various particular motives of moral
obligation according to the personal culture, and social or
historical relations of men. These additiona l standards and
motives, as variable and proximate, rather than ultimate, we
propose to speak of as the material constitution of the moral
sense and sense of duty. They come up for discussion in
the second section of this part.
Formeristhe The immediate problem of the first section (section A) is
proplem of the formal constitution or ultimate standard and motive of
activities of conscience. As the deeper and more difficult
question, a great variety of answers have been given to it. For
our present purpose, these may be grouped according to the
part of our nature upon which they rest for their ultimate
standard and motive. If they repose upon our instinctively
selfish nature they are included in the first group, if upon
our instinctively social nature they fall within the second
group, and the third consists of those founded upon our dis-
tinctively rational or self-conscious nature. The first two
groups make the law identical ultimately with instincts sel-
fish or social, the third identifies it with our distinctively
rational or active and self-conscious nature. The sensibili-
ties in and through which the law manifests itself are
common to all.
For purposes of research into the formal constitution of
 OF ACTIVITIES OF CONSCIENCE ? 63

conscience this triple division practically exhausts the pos-

sibilities of our human nature, and thus when we have
successively excluded one or other of the competing consti-
tutions of conscience we can fall back upon the third, if it
can be proved to be competent to fulfil all the functions of
the law in conscience.
 SECTION A.

THE FORMAL CONSTITUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE

AND SENSE OF DUTY.

CHAPTER I.

THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY, OR INDIVIDUALISTIC

HEDONISM.

Standarain WITH all manner of divergent views as to what the. moral

: :
the moral
senseand law essentially is, there would be general agreement in call-
motivein the . . °
senseof ing by that name whatever . standard and. motive constitute
A
For it must be evident
duty arethe . Cuficric
equivalent of in us the activities of conscience. :
law or con- . :
stitution. that it cannot ultimately be because conscience approves or
disapproves that there is a standard and motive within it.
On the contrary, conscience is because they are. In the last
resort, no judging and obligating activity can be supposed to
constitute itself. It must bring with it the standard by
which it judges, and the motive by which it obligates.
Law or constitution in this use of it is the standard and
motive of which conscience is ultimately the manifestation
in sensibility.
Thainstine, Many notable thinkers in modern Christendom, as well as
natureis within cultivated paganism, have advocated the theory that
motive of ultimately conscience is an activity of our instinctively sel-
ultimatey. fish nature. The standard and the motive in it are self-
preservation. Bodily pleasure and pain are active in the
moral sense, and fears, or hopes and desires in connection
with it, are the consciousness or constitution which is the last
ground of activities of the sense of duty within each of us.
 THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY. 65

This view of the law has been maintained by writers so Historical

powerful and well-known as Hobbes, Helvetius, Bentham, ie nien
and Bain among the moderns; and by Aristippus, Epicurus,
and many others among the ancients. Most of these have
conjoined with this instinctively selfish constitution the co-
operation of social and quasi-rational instincts. But this has
been in subsidiary or secondary relations. These and other
differences make themselves evident in the very process of
expounding what is common to the several theories. But
they must all be set aside in this rapid analysis. For we
propose to occupy ourselves not with any points of philoso-
phical scholarship, but with the ultimate constitution of the
activities of conscience within each of us. Nevertheless the
very mention of these names suffices to show that we are
to discuss in principle what is known as Individualistic
Hedonism. We do not, however, complicate the issue with
direct examination of that which the evolution theory may
effectively contribute. That awaits treatment more fitly in
the deduction where the questions of the origin, derivation,
and authority of conscience come up for consideration.
The writers we have named would all agree in the tenet, A statement
that given some kind of political Biadship or rule of the™
strongest, the various moral distinctions could be made by
ea Basing the standard of moral difference upon
the instinctively selfish nature of each, the power to punish
placed in the hands of the community could create moral
as well as other differences in action. By hypothesis, all
distinctions of this kind are made by the bodily pleasure
or pain which accrues to the agent from ways of acting.
Fear of these pains and hope of these pleasures are the
motives in the sense of duty, and the standard of right and
wrong is the will of rulers.
The position of Hobbes is succinctly put in his own the conten-
formula, “ Where no common power is there is no law, and Hobbes.
where there is no law there is no transgression.” The law
of the land is the law of conscience; if the land is without
a law, the man is without a conscience. Where lawlessness
E
 66 THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY,

and anarchy are, conscience is not active. When social

order and political law have been created by some despot,
then also right and wrong come into being. Before that
they did not exist, and the distinction between justice and
injustice was not known or felt, except as that between
strength and weakness.
These doctrines were part of Hobbes’s whole system of
thought. For him men were essentially natural egoists,
moved only by selfish fears and pliable only before pain.
He ignored the working of social and distinctively rational
interests and ends, and had regard in consequence only to
material interests and material peace. This was the result
of his wholly external view of individual men, and his
mechanical view of society.
anav.Kiren- Still these opinions are far from being the eccentric
ramnand musings of an antiquated thinker, ‘ intoxicated with the
thin sour wine of a remorseless logic.’ Kirchmann, a
German jurist and editor of the ‘De Cive’ of Hobbes, says
to the same effect:—‘“The moral is for man the uncon-
ditioned, which it is, not because its commands have a good
ground, but because they are imposed by authority. Positive
enactment is the only, as it is the last basis of the moral
as well as of the legal.” And finally, to the same purpose
Dr Bain defines a moral act as “an act prescribed by the
social authority, and made obligatory on every citizen.”
The ultimate standard of rightness in the moral sense, is
therefore bodily pleasure and pain. Actions which, in the
conception of the individual, bring pleasure to him, are right
and obligatory ; those which are similarly conceived to cause
him pain, are wrong and forbidden. Moral as well as state-
made law supports itself in the last resort by man’s in-
stinct of self-preservation to the exclusion of his social or
rational nature.
The various Obviously upon this theory as upon every other, it must
pleasure and be admitted that there are various kinds of pleasure and
fons aresaid pain which serve as sanctions in conscience for particular
to be all re- :
dueible to courses of conduct. There are the unquestionably physical
one.
 OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM. 67

pains such as those we incur by any breach of the laws

of health, and there are those which rulers administer
as punishment for the infringement of state-made law.
Higher, because still more complex, there are those pains
with which society visits its members for known acts, such
as those springing from cowardice or lewdness; and few
care to deny the reality of pains of a yet higher order—the
activities of—what Dr Bain calls somewhat misleadingly—
“the self-formed or independent conscience.” There is for
example a compunction felt by some when they sacrifice
clear convictions of right from fear of physical discomfort
or the ill-opinion of neighbours.
The most thorough-going members of this school take all tne position
pleasures and pains as of a piece—as ultimately homogeneous eae
and commensurate. Rightly so, we think, when the
possible origin of any of them in activities of the dis-
tinctively rational nature is consistently ignored. If the
self-conscious nature of man is not recognised as a
sui generis ground and spontaneous source of moral
sensibility in connection with willing or choice, then
Hedonism, individual or social, has no alternative. It
must class together all pains and pleasures. No doubt
some vaguely incline towards John Stuart Mill’s point of
view when he introduces a qualitative as well as a quantita-
tive distinction into the pleasures and pains that serve as
sanctions in conscience. But Aristippus, Epicurus, Hobbes,
and Helvetius obey their logical instincts rather than the
mild constraints of living experience when they stoutly
assert that the more or less of agreeable bodily feeling
resulting from action is the only possible determinant
of its moral character. Epicurus says :*—“it must be
that the end for all creatures is pleasure (jv 4dov4r),
for no sooner are they born than already by nature and
independently of reason they please themselves in in-
dulgence, they revolt against pain.” Opposing nature to
reason, he further argues that “nature alone ought to judge
* Diog. Laért., x. 129, 137.
 68 THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY,

of that which is conformable or contrary to nature.” Con-

sistently enough with these declarations, he admits that at
a later stage of life man ought to do reflectively that
which animals do instinctively, learning from these natural
instincts how to conduct their reason.
Helvetius maintains that the distinction we make between
actions as good or bad hinges upon our instinctive tendency
to eschew that which gives us pain, and seek that which
brings us pleasure. And, finally, Bentham makes the highest
pain—commonly regarded as a strictly moral sanction—ainter-
changeable with what he calls the ‘ popular’ sanction.
The underly- This has the merit of being the only rigidly logical state-
ing concep-
tion of hu- ment of the main doctrine of Individualistic Hedonism.
man nature
as related to It presupposes a metaphysic as other moral theories do, and
constitution
ofconscience, in some instances this is no doubt good of its kind, but the
kind is bad. If we may venture to utter in a sentence
its underlying conception of human nature, in so far as
that is related to conscience—it is that the human in-
dividual is a sense-and not a reason- constituted creature.
Reason is looked at as a kind of parasite in human nature,
rather than as its guiding principle and self-determining
power. Reason working in sensibility is not regarded as
actively constituting the primary qualities and relations of
objects in nature, and the moral qualities and relations of
acts and motives in human life. To quote and adapt Mr
Green, we see that “in their view the quality of the act
which excites pleasure or pain ” in the moral sense, and fear
or desire in the sense of duty, “is not anything in the concep-
tion of which an originative function of reason is implied.”
They fail to recognise any such ultimate distinction in sensi-
bility as that involved in its connection with a rational or
self-conscious being, and the opposite. The chief postulates
they demand are the existence in men of sense-organs and
sense-experiences, with images as the pale copies of sense
impressions, revivable upon occasion as they may be conceived
to be in the animal mind. Such mental functions as those
of mechanical memory, passive judgment, comparison of
 OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM. 69

facts with facts and inference from particulars to particulars,

are all they deem it desirable upon scientific grounds to
attribute ultimately to human beings as such. With this
original, if meagre, rational outfit, and the instinctive but
fecund fear of physical pain, they proceed to construct a
theory of the formal constitution of all the higher activities
of men, including those of conscience. The position taken
up in relation to the latter is that ultimately the ground of
the distinctions made by the emotional judgments of the
moral sense is our instinctively selfish nature, and that the
ultimate impulses in the sense of duty are fear of pain and
desire of pleasure. .
We think it is rightly named the instinctively selfish The theory
theory, because its fundamental determinations are those of named.»
the natural, not the rational, self, and they turn upon organic
and psychic changes and movements without any distinctive-
ly rational act of consciousness coming between. Moreover,
it is correctly termed Individualistic Hedonism, inasmuch
as the sensible pleasure of the individual is the ultimate end,
the absolute and final good which is never anything but an
end in itself.
The two points upon which our argument must now turn, The twe
are the conceivability of such a law yielding the requisite mee
kind of standard in the moral sense and motive in the sense ie”
of duty. Does the difference between the effects produced
upon our organic susceptibilites by various actions supply
an ultimate standard of rightness and wrongness in the
moral sense? If it succeeds in this, it may also be credited
with the power of furnishing the ultimate motive of moral
obligation in the sense of duty. The two stand or fall
together, though the reasoning may run now upon the one
and anon upon the other. If this be the nature of the law
in conscience, it may appear difficult to many to see what
specific meaning can be attached to the term moral, and
what sphere can remain for the science of morals, unless
it be included, as has been proposed, in an appendix to
principles of state legislation.
 70 THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY,

The setting The setting up of a moral as opposed to other differences in

aaerences| action, and the announcement of the existence of a specifi-
and demands E °
a cally moral motive, must appear an utterly insoluble problem
ute yee 0m the basis of Individualistic Hedonism. This initial
eniMieen at difficulty may be abated, but it is not obviated by relegating
men. the discussion to analysis of the forms which conscience
assumes in the mind of a child, or a member of the earliest
known human societies.
Punishment Let us suppose a child under perfect tutors and guardians,
stifutecon- OT under adequate parental control, does its corporal punish-
science;
presupposes ment for an offence make it feel guilty when actually inno-
it—in child,
at
morally Cent? It should if there be ultimately no other standard
within its moral sense than susceptibility to bodily pain.
But it is not so. There is rather the hottest resentment and
indignation on account of the punishment, showing that
there is another standard of right and wrong than this. No
doubt punishment and reward by the rightful authorities
have an important place and power, as we shall see, in the
education of a child’s conscience, but they do not constitute
it formally. It is only the child’s implicit or explicit accept-
ance of the punishment as just which makes it a means of
moral improvement, and a barrier in its mind against
renewed transgression. This it is which converts a series of
painful organic sensations into moral sanctions. This feel-
ing is the alembic which makes chastisement for the body a
medicine for the mind. But these feelings are there already,
and the punishment, instead of ultimately constituting the
activity of conscience, presupposes conscience, and rests upon
it for its efficacy and moral endorsement.
If we revert to activities of conscience, such as they must
be conceived to be in the minds of primitive men, we are
met with the same difficulty.
In primitive No doubt if we assume a more or less regularly organised
restrictions society to begin with—whether a patriarchal family group
communes . . . . .

upon person- Gia ia é °

alfreedom OF a primitive commune of the ordinary type—and if we
must exist.
further take men as we always find them within : .
the his-
.

torical period, some bodily pain or pleasure, and some fear

 OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM. 71

or desire in relation to it may be capable of being assigned

as warrant and motive for any and every act. As seen at
all events from the outside, it may appear possible to con-
nect it as effect with some visible and active operating cause
in the man’s condition and circumstances or relations as one
under authority. It is contended with truth that some re-
strictions over individual liberty are necessary before human
beings can live together in any form of society. Some
actions must be forbidden and others commanded, and re-
wards and punishments annexed. So that there is always,
as it were, material in social enactments to account for the
rudimentary activities of conscience in primitive men.
But the question is not that but this other. Do these But do they
laws and rules of the governi ng body repose ultimat ely upon raabaly upon
the instinctively selfish nature of those who conform to them ?tively selfish
in the last resort simply by cere
Do they support themselves
the physical susceptibilities to pain and similar impulse s ae
before it? Are these the only inner motives and warrant s
for subjection to those laws in the minds of the persons who
obey them? We think not, and the following are some of
our reasons for so thinking.
No doubt in the moral infancy of the race as in the
i-
childhood of the individual, the standards and suscept
nts of right and
bilities, out of which the emotional judgme
they
wrong proceed, have fewer rational constituents than
of culture . That
come to have at later and higher stages
been
is freely admitted as a part of the doctrine we have
trying to teach throughout. And the same princip le applies
nts and
to the motives and impulses out of which judgme
But the ultimate
sentiments of moral obligation issue.
is not affected
nature of the standard and motive in each
dispute at
by this fact, and that is the only point in
present.
can be hsHears
If we still argue upon the supposition that there
or—social
set up by some tyrant—be he priest or warri
laws, which in no sense derive their
norms and communal
us nature
authority and power from the rational or self-conscio
 72 THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY,

of man, the institution by government of the distinction and

demand we call moral, is as inconceivable as ever. For if
the only recognised superiority of the rulers be their power
to punish, it can never be the source of a standard in the
moral sense, or motive in the sense of duty. Fear of the
pain inflicted by non-moral authorities can never be the
fountain of any moral obligation in those subject to them.
It may be said that such a failure, however, arises not
from any inherent defect and intrinsic incompetency, but
from accidental circumstances and associations. These are
specially connected with the faulty and fickle administra-
tion of communal punishment among primitive men. An-
thropologists of every degree of ability must have noted
how partial and personal is the distribution of pleasures
and pains in such societies. To say that it is glaringly
arbitrary, incomplete and irregular, is a strong statement—
but it is more, it is often carried out in a purely selfish and
vindictive spirit, regardless of moral interests and con-
siderations as we conceive them. These defects are enough
to brand the will of such rulers as unfit to be the law of
any conscience. But there have been and are great civilisa-
tions where personal initiative in punishment is almost
wholly eliminated, and the state presides as a kind of
distributive providence in awarding pains and pleasures to
its subjects in connection with their conduct. Peru and
Mexico are believed to have been anciently of this type,
but China is a notable example at the present day. In
that country the individual is sacrificed so systematically to
the interests of the executive, that it seems to make con-
ceivable even the founding of moral distinctions and demands
by it. Perhaps, too, we can think of such a scheme of
recompence and retribution being erected, as might bind
each individual by a sensible tie to his society. Bentham’s
Chinese system of legislation does not make it conceivable ;
but given a preternaturally powerful intellect at the centre
of affairs, and a civil and moral espionage by persons
specially trained and naturally apt, such a species of
 OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM. 73

mechanical conformity might be secured. This may be

sanguine—insanely sanguine—in practical politics, and
supremely dangerous to boot, but upon paper there is
nothing to hinder its feasibility.
But can we then infer that the emotional judgments of
right and wrong, and the inner motive for subjection to this
highly elaborated law without—can we conceive that these
are active with only the standards and motives of the
instinctively selfish nature to constitute them ?
Punishment has an important relation to the act, but Punishment
ns by rulers has
A
surely not one of this fundamental and far-reachin g « much more
character. The actual imputation of a wrong or evil act don han 6
to self no doubt often coincides with the infliction of bodily of aright
punishment, but it does not spring from this as its ultimate or moral
source and cause. Its function is real enough, but quite pain
limited. It secures that an act be recognised by us as the
fruit of our own willing when we are perhaps in no haste to
adopt the sole responsibility for its origin and consequences.
Punishment from without is a sharp reminder often neces-
sary to stimulate the attention or animate the memory.
Such aid must be acknowledged, but its efficacy arises not mmen,
from brute pain, but from our human acceptance of it as in motive standard and
mus

a deep sense self-pun ishment. The judgmen‘ t registeri ng be found in

fs SG another part
and embodying this . acceptance is the genuine activity
5 5
of ofournature
an
which is in-
ny a

conscience.
:
An animal may be governed through his in-
‘ . stinctively

stinctively selfish nature and the pleasure or pain associated selfish.

. «

with it, but a man cannot. His social condition may be low
and his culture meagre, but he must see a higher good of his
own, or of some one dear to him, served by the punitive
force which checks and chastises his remissness. This per-
ception, and the emotion in which it takes place, is the real
activity of moral sense and not the apprehe nsion of external
punishment, as such. Because every human being has some
its
higher source of sensibility—some sensibility which has
seat in the self-conscious nature and a standar d and motive
therein—the rule of one only physically superior cannot
ultimately constitute his conscience. It pre-supposes it.
 74 LHE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY,

Men other- If there could be man-like creatures in whose minds

wise consti-
tuted would there was not the most elementary recognition of the moral
not be the
men we right of social powers to punish, they would not be either in
know our-
selves to be. germ or in potency the men we know ourselves to be. If
their acquiescence in common punishment were that of the
-animal—the passive following after what was ordained as
right to save the skin—there is no particle of moral feeling
in such conduct. Any human being who can be conceived
as living so completely under the law of the lash, is as much
beyond the confines of moral responsibility as an imbecile
confined in Bedlam. Nay, we might even go the length of
saying that he is as little a moral being as an intelligent lion
in a menagerie. At least, no moral predicates can be ap-
plied to actions done under such a reign of physical terror.
Both the imprisoned lion and the lunatic may be trained to
habitual ways of acting serviceably to their keepers. Their
hopes and fears can be wrought upon by such means as
meat for the belly and a rod for the back. They can be
induced to do special acts (when thus appealed to) contrary
to their natural grain, but in the few selfishly sensitive dif-
ferences which physical susceptibilities and impulses provide
for, what is there at all akin to the ethical distinctions and
demands defined by conscience ?
In these
instances the
In the instances we have touched upon the obedience
obedience is
servile and
is instinctive and servile, brought about by a blind fear. It is
blind. not even obedience for its own sake. The lion-tamer cannot
easily change the natural dispositions of the lion by means
of his whip, and the will of a man who has lost his reason
(if he can then be said to have a will) no keeper can make
permanently captive. For if the being be forced to repeat
an action a thousand times through brute fear, it still remains
something done against his natural inclination. The law
of exercise may make it become an organic habit, but any-
thing higher—any moral habitude—cannot be induced by
physical force. Remove the fear from before the eyes, and
the action falls to its native level, as naturally as the foam-
ing billow falls with the fall of the wind. Any such
 OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM. 75

temporary conformity is of the most flimsy kind, never

getting deeper than the nerves and muscles. But no other
kind of obedience can be exacted by that which foreigners
term ‘the Englishman’s right of fist. Great has been the
power of the fist in human history, but its influence has
not been of the inreaching kind, which can knead moral
feeling into the nature of a being who is by hypothesis
endowed with a nature that is in its essence instinctive
rather than rational.
powercan
But the assumption we have been proceeding upon is iN. No
We cannot conceive that central authori - oer others
reality baseless.
wield so grindin gly pace
ties—political or patriarchal—could ever
cot
despotic an influence over other persons entirely in their
own private and selfish interests. Even in that most
moderate realisation of the moral capacities and powers,
which is implied in the obedience to common norms and
of
authoritative traditions among the earliest groupings
primitive men, or among children in family societie s, there
is at work a primordial conscience criticising and em-
phasising the rules imposed by these forms of control.
-
Before the most elementary arrangements for the common
inner life
weal can find that currency and cogency in the
to in-
of those subject to them which makes them limits
in them a
subordinate passions and desires, there must be
duty, as
moral sense issuing in the impulses of the sense of
l nature.
well as other activities of a distinctively rationa
ation
Without such points of contact and centres of co-oper
be as
in each, the commands of any central power would
d to
little intelligible to, or influential with, those expecte
enforced in
obey them, as if they had been proclaimed and
an unknown tongue.
the most A
It may be accepted as universally true, that
remain, un- community|
abject of human creatures cannot be, or long
conscious tools in the hands of others. Power of the most interest be-
nce it com- and ruled.
tyrannical kind is still indebted—for any influe
community
tinuously exerts over subject wills—to the real
betwe en ruler and ruled. Pre-
of moral nature and interest
76 THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY,

dominance, resulting simply from crushing energy or superior

cunning, could not wield the governing and directive force
it does unless it were not only associated with, but in reality
based upon, the internal activities of a conscience in each of
the governed. It is these which, as moral sense and sense
of duty, actively appropriate the forms of life and the laws
emanating from those in power, as furthering a good
personal as well as communal. Upon such immanent, if
inchoate, normative perceptions and sanctions, the primitive
man, like his most civilised descendant, must fall back for
the ultimate meaning and authority of political restraints
upon the naive gratification of his desires.
The groupings of action by such a conscience are like the
men themselves, rude and primitive. Many acts find a
place in their categories of right action which are absent
from ours, and vice versd ; and the particular obligations of a
moral kind, enforced by their sense of duty, are equally
diverse in range and level from those present in ours. But
they and we are at one in the ultimate principle of their
nature which divides actions into right and wrong and
makes moral demands upon the will. The differences of
culture are practically all important, but theoretically they
are not vital to the question of formal or ultimate
constitution,
In reference, then, to the rudimentary consciences of
children or primitive men, the instinctively selfish nature is
incapable of serving as the law within them. And we may
conclude that though unmitigated political despotism has in
one form or another constantly characterised some of the
many less developed human societies, and fears responsive
to its enactments have continually functioned within those
under its heel, yet the bodily pains accruing from disobed-
ience do not form the ultimate standard in the moral sense
or motive in the sense of duty. The maxim of a modern
Anglo-German school of thought is applicable in this
instance. If the laws of a tyrant in their source do not
imply and recognise in some degree the moral nature already
 OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM. OB

active in each, they can be no final authority to any, and if

an authority to any, then, ipso facto, the commands are not
imposed wholly from without.
What shall we say ofG the ultimate constitutio n of the 1 thistrucot
a lower, it is
eit aque A
activities of conscience in the members of cultivated pagan stilt more
societies, or of the great and high civilisations east and ene ot
west which rest upon ethical religions? Does not the societies
manifoldness of the motives in the sense of duty, their
range and elevation as well as the refined distinctions in the
moral sense, foredoom any attempt to explain them by this
instinctively selfish theory? If it fails to account for the
phenomena peculiar even to the simplest consciences, how
much more inadequate is it in view of the higher? Or
rather, how much more apparent and overwhelming are the
evidences of its inadequacy in men whose moral standard and
motives are incomparably higher and wider? The question
answers itself.
Before quitting the solution offered by more
Individualistic one applied.
; oe -,,- test
Hedonism, we may select one more test of its validity
6 within
its favourite battle-ground—human nature without culture.
We may ask, is it psychologically conceivable that the
ultimate moral motive to the willing of any human being
could have the phenomenal simplicity and sameness sup-
posed to belong to it in Individualistic Hedonism? Is it
possible that the long chain of man’s obligations could hang
by these two links—desire of selfish pleasure and fear of
physical pain ?
In harmony with this theory let it be supposed that any activities
oatlyples-
man can be essentially a sensitive being like Condillac’s
animated statue, with what we may call the mind of a Sen Py
domesticated dog, able to combine impressions in many ways, tector,
and store up the images of them as lessons of his experience. oo
Let it also be supposed that such a sense-constituted being—
a
moved ultimately only by sensuous objects—is capable of
motive in his sense of duty be
kind of morality, could the
e
from the first and uniformly selfish pleasure and avoidanc
Is the life even of such a man ultimat ely so
of pain.
 78 THE INSTINCTIVELY SELFISH THEORY,

monotonous in its moral iuspiration? Can it be conceived

as so fixedly ruled in its great determinations by one order
of stimuli, and these acting from a centre which is by
hypothesis unassociated with the activities of a distinctively
rational nature ?
Asforexam- §Among English thinkers Butler emphasised a truth which
le, in the ¥ < 3
self-con- had echoed down from Plato and Aristotle. He insisted
instincts that in man, in virtue of his self-conservative instincts, there _
are impulses which are entirely neutral in a moral regard.
They are tendencies or functions which are spontaneously
active, and they would be totally natural in any creature
lower than human; and though they have an exclusive
reference to the well-being and safety of the organism, yet it
would be a misnomer to speak of them as selfish. For
as nakedly natural they never become in us motives to
distinctively human action. As native and reflex activities
they are directed to definite objects before there can arise
the pleasure which follows from their satisfaction. Pleasure
and pain are therefore posterior to certain activities of an
instinctive kind. They are not the immediate and direct
object of them, but effects that are in a sense incidental to
them. That is, they are attached to the realisation or frus-
tration of ends or objects that exist antecedently to them-
selves. Theoretically, therefore, it is inconceivable that
natural pleasure or absence of pain can have been the sole
motivation of action from the first, even in a quasi-rational
human being. For the activities of the instinctive kind,
whose end is animal self-preservation, must be already in
existence before their retinue of pains and pleasures can
become ends in themselves.
Isitnottrue
also of the
Substitute for this imaginary man the men of our ex-
susceptibili-
tiesAe
perience. They have original rational impulses and ten-
and im- . : :
pulses asso- dencies towards unity and harmony of ideas, feelings, and
pe Sine: actions. May not these be spontaneously active and
rational directed to definite ends, prior to the pleasure which results
from their satisfaction or the pain which arises from their
frustration ? May not reason be active in the moral feelings
 OR INDIVIDUALISTIC HEDONISM. 9

seeking to harmonise actions with its law? May not this

activity be anterior to the bodily pleasure or pain which
are the consequences of acting?
Furthermore, there have been recent researches into the Asocial in-
earliest life of human beings in society which have helped present in
to make the opposite instinct of man’s nature prominent as ee
inspiring or directing and restraining his action. The ex-
hibition of the great part the social impulses have played,
makes it impossible to conceive that any sensitive being
could be of so unnatural and perverse an original disposi-
tion, so absolutely self-enclosed and self-sufficient, that even
at the moment of his coming into contact with an equal in
his community, he should feel no kind and no degree of
affinity with him—no feeling of sympathy as a natural
instinct, and show no trace of the capacity for it. Since
that is totally opposed to a multitude of observed facts and
known laws, both of animal and human nature, we may
instance the existence of this natural social impulse in
manas adverse to the universality and conclusiveness of the
instinctively selfish theory. May we not infer that when
such a being as man had begun to connect particular
pleasures with the satisfaction of his natural impulses, he
would give those which are social their turn in indulgence
intermittently with those instinctively selfish? Pleasure
attendant upon individual gratification can never exhaust
all the motives in his sense of duty at any stage. Are not
the bonds of blood in the family and clan as instant and
powerful (at some moments) as those subserving self-pre-
servation. Would not these intertwine naturally altruistic
motives with those which lead back at last by finer or
coarser fibres, to the selfish fear of natural pain, which is
begotten of immoral self-love.
 CHAPTER Ib

THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY, OR SOCIALISTIC

HEDONISM.

Within Bua. WITHIN Buddhism and Christendom so high an estimate of

dhi d * é a “
Christendom the function of the social instinct has come to be enter-
the instinc- . . . yas . °
tively social tained that its working within us is considered by many to
nature has . . . . .
been held to be the ultimate law in conscience. As formally constituting
bethat which . te eyne . . Pe :
formally con- itS activities most thinkers tend to couple with this instinct
tivities of an auxiliary functioning of the passively rational nature in
some" secondary relations. The kind and measure of reason which
this implies was explained in the earlier half of the previous
chapter while dealing with the mental correlates of the
instinctively selfish theory. The same powers of mechanical
memory, passive judgment, comparison, and inference from
particulars to particulars must be pre-supposed as auxiliaries
when the social instinct is declared to be the ground of the
activity of conscience. Without this amount of aid from the
possession of quasi-rational faculties no theory of conscience
could even be stated clearly or coherently. To rest its
activity upon an instinct without co-operation from our
reasoning powers would be a transparent impossibility.
Nevertheless the work of reason as conceived in these
theories is strictly ancillary and subordinate. It is in-
stinct and not reason that is regarded as supplying the
final standard and susceptibility in the moral sense, and
the corresponding motive and impulse in the sense of
duty.
The leading Among the more distinguished members of the school of
Hedonists. thought which adopts Socialistic Hedonism as the law in
conscience there are British moralists like Shaftesbury,
 SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 81

Hutchison, Hume, and Adam Smith. Besides these

thinkers of an older date, there are many other philosophical
writers of our own generation. Under the influence of the
working conception s of natural science, modern exponents
adopt some of the data of Sociology and the formule of
Biology, and try with these to build up the old conclusions
upon a broader basis of fact and generalisat ion. Though
these thinkers fail in acuteness as compared’ with Hume,
they gain in fulness and width of information . As re-
presentative of this mode of treatment the names of Mr
Leslie Stephen and the late Professor Clifford come up
readily to any of their countrymen writing upon ethics.
In spite of the undoubted ability of both, and the insight
(amounting to genius) of the latter, the Socialistic theory
of the constitution of conscience has received its most
masterly expression in the works of the continental
thinkers, Arthur Schopenhauer and Auguste Comte. In-
deed their expositions contain nearly all that is perman-
ently valuable in the content of current thought upon
this subject.
prief state-
sense of 4
Briefly stated this theory makes moral sense and
instinc t. .The mani- eee ea
duty the reflex activities of the social
es and
festations of this instinct occur in the susceptibiliti
hy, togeth er with
emotional judgments of natural sympat
and judgme nts of
the accompanying impulses or sentiments
The former attest what is right, the latter
obligation.
enforc e what is dutiful in view of this attestation.
such an jts presup-
It is evident that the special pre-suppositions of
of the meta- Lehn
ethical theory are of the scientific rather than
physical order. One of the central assumptions upon which Tetapnysi-
and beyond bas
it proceeds is that man is a social being before
be found in
aught else. The proof of this is supposed to
as by long
the fact that by birth in the family as well
therefore
descent he is a member of a social species, and
swayed by its wider instincts and interests. Of these con-
science is the organ. Moreover, since each of us is originally
we can feel
and indissolubly united by nature with others,
F
 82 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

their pleasures and pains almost as keenly as our own. If

this be so, and if every individual is essentially a part of
some social organism, the theory is that the production of
pleasure or pain to others must be the final standard
by which each tests and tries his actions. If, separated
from every body politic, a man loses his humanity and
becomes like a limb severed from the body of which it was
a leg or arm, then it is just conceivable that the actual
measure of the goodness or badness of the actions of each
may be the amount of sensible pleasure accruing thereby
to all.
It is the It remains to be seen whether this instinctively social
direct con-
tradictory of theory is true and harmonious with facts of our inward and
the instinc-
tively selfish outward life ;but it is, at all events, the direct contradictory
theory.
of the instinctively selfish theory discussed in the last chapter.
Moreover, the two come into conflict within the same plane,
viz., that of sensible pleasure. The first principle of Indi-
vidualistic Hedonism is that the bodily pleasure accruing to
the agent from his action is the final standard in the moral
sense and motive in the sense of duty. The first principle
of Socialistic Hedonism is that an action can be accounted
right only on condition that all hope or desire of our own
pleasure is absent in willing it, and that the pleasure of
others is present as the end or actual result of it. If
there be the slightest tincture of selfish feeling in willing
it vitiates the act, and makes it wrong beyond question.
For upon this theory it is a cardinal principle that the
pleasure not of self but of others is the exclusive and
ultimate law in conscience. Other standards are either
nugatory or bad.
And has In reference to these claims of Socialistic Hedonism it
some evident
superiorities, may be granted that our social nature affords a basis prefer-
positive and
negative, able to mere selfishness. -Its susceptibilities and impulses
and standards and motives at their very crudest are not so
hopelessly and irrevocably opposed to popular notions of
the ultimate nature of right and wrong. Moreover, our
instinctive sympathies and antipathies provide a larger
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 83

and healthier range of motive for human action. We

say this while fully conscious of the defects that are inevit-
ably bound up with them as the guides and monitors of
willing.
In addition to these positive superiorities there are certain
negative advantages connected with the change from the
instinctively selfish to the instinctively social theory of con-
science. If we adopt the latter we are not required to resort
to far-fetched explanations of the rise within us of genuine
pleasure from natural sympathy. We are not forced to
mystify ourselves and others in a vain attempt to understand
how, by a certain mental chemistry, selfish fears and desires
_are transmitted into social impulses and motives. For the >
assumption that man is constitutiona lly sympathetic leaves
room for his cherishing feelings of real pleasure in others as
well as in himself. In like manner we are absolved from
the necessity of furnishing explanations of social order that
in the nature of things must be artificial as well as inadequate.
For the recognition of the strength of the bonds of family
life and tribal fellowship helps us to understand how societies
can continue to exist in a state of comparative peace, unity,
and internal order. ‘The instinctively social theory supplies
the biological conditions necessary for the growth and main-
tenance of civil polities.
tne
But it is solely as ané independent theory of the ultimate gut
Lads
rin are now openconcerFined ae
constitution of conscience that. we a ial

her Socialisti
. .
c or Individualistic. Lpreanriets
with Hedonism, whet
* i

os teonce ; jate difficul-

tonnetene
And when we examine it in this regard we cannot see
that the change from the latter to the former enables beer
us to overcome the difficulties inherent in the con- eee
Insbath, ee «
ception of a conscience constituted by instinct.
and
theories sensible pleasure is the standard and motive,
the
an instinctive activity is reputed to be for each person
arbiter of moral good and evil. The only differ-
final
is
ence between the two is that in a Hedonism which
in-
Socialistic, it is the sensible pleasure of those passively
into account, whereas
terested in the result which is taken
 84 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

in Individualistic Hedonism it is the sensible pleasure of the

actual agent. The one theory grounds itself upon the
selfish instinct of bodily preservation and the pleasure
associated with it, the other repudiates this as law in con-
science, and founds upon the instinct ministering to social
preservation, and the pleasure inseparable from obedience to
it. Thus both alike rest upon instincts and sensible plea-
suré, both alike ignore or deny the existence and activity
in man of self-conscious reason, and the pleasure and pain
associated with obedience to its standards and motives of
conduct. When we enter, as we must now do, upon the
criticism of this theory, we may find that this vaunted
absence of metaphysical postulates is a source not of
strength but of weakness.
Fuller state- Before critical discussion of the instinctively social
ment of the
theory prior theory, it may be well to give a fuller statement of its
to criticism.
position and claims in the language we have already
adopted.
(a) Moral According to it the law in the moral sense is our natural
sense.
social susceptibility, and the social standard which that pre-
supposes. This susceptibility manifests itself in sympathy
or an instinctive feeling of identity in pain or pleasure with
some other person or persons. In their pain we suffer, in
their pleasure we share; and this sympathetic suscepti-
bility supplies a standard of a social kind by which we
measure the effect of our actions and estimate their worth.
If they produce pleasure they are right, if they cause pain
they are wrong. The production of pleasure or pain to
others is, therefore, the criterion of rightness or wrong-
ness.
(b) Sense of The operations of the same instinct are quite consistently
duty.
extended to the sense of duty, and figured as law in it.
But instead of the susceptibility it is the social impulse
that is now fastened upon, and the motives of obligation
which it implies. It is alleged, truthfully, that upon wit-
nessing others in pain we experience a certain instinctive
prompting to relieve them. The counterpart of this sym-
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 85

pathetic impulse is not so widely diffused. That is to say,

we have not the same strong desire to add to the pleasure
of others, nor do we so easily share in their exultation.
But the motive of obligation which the natural social im-
pulse implies is unquestionably a frequent and powerful
factor in the willing of all men. The praise of their
fellows is almost everything to some, and it is something to
all. This praise is freely bestowed when we identify our-
selves with them in their joys and sorrows, and seek to
regulate our actions by the desire to add to their pleasures
or diminish their pains. According to the present theory,
when we make this desire the ruling motive in our sense of
duty we are acting as we ought.
If we disobey this instinct asserting itself as the law of Setf-con,
right willing, we are visited with the emotional judgments andremorse.
of self-condemnation and remorse. The rise of these feelings
is explained by aid of the same principle, and consistently
with the theory. We have sympathetic susceptibilities and
impulses knitting us to others; these we disregard in
deliberat ely acting from an anti-social motive. The natural
conseque nce is that we suffer inwardly. We have stifled
the better impulse, we have thwarted the noble desire,
and have preferred our own selfish pleasures to that of
others. No wonder we stand self-condemned, and if the
pains of remorse are specially bitter and enduring, that is to
be expected when we remember that the instinct thus out-
raged is by hypothesis the central strand in our nature as
human.
All the minor varieties of moral feeling and judgment, Fears before
re
whether in the moral sense or sense of duty, are explained rani
in similar terms and by a referenc e to the same instinct ive
principle of sympathy. The fears of children before wrong-
doing, the fears of punishment that deter social or legal
offenders, have also their roots in the social instinct rather
than in the instinct of self-preservation. We do not re-
quire to believe that the sense of duty is coincident with
selfish fear of bodily pain or love of pleasure. The social
 86 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

instinct unites children to their parents by the bonds of

filial affection. When the child is moved by fear it is that
fear of offending which natural love generates and sustains.
Similarly men shrink from the condemnation of their fellows
‘and dread their disapprobation if it be anticipated asa result
of willing. Such fears, filial and social, may be strong
enough to restrain the indulgence of the opposing desires for
selfish gratification.
The sacritee These positions certainly exalt society at the expense of
f the indivi- : ao : .
dualtohis. the individual. For the chief office of conscience appears
eran tbee to be to tell us in all critical moments of willing or choice
this theory. that we are not our own, but that we belong, body and soul,
to our society. It would seem that the true view of our-
selves is that, apart from others, we are ciphers, and that
our neighbours are the only units that can first give us a
value, either in our own eyes or in the sight of the Supreme
Being. The sooner we come to recognise ourselves as the
consecrated slaves of our community, the better it will be for
all concerned. If we can sink every other end or aim in
the pursuit of the one desire to increase the quantitative
pleasure of others we shall best qualify for becoming saints
under the socialistic regime that is to be.
Now we have certainly no disposition to disparage the
worth or the work of the social instinct as such. Our
idiosyncrasy—if we have one—might lead us in a contrary
direction. We have no difficulty in believing—indeed we
have never doubted—that men are naturally social. They
instinctively seek the society of their kind. Their doing
this does not depend upon education, religion, or moral
culture. Man has been from the first a social as well as
a selfish and rational creature. Nevertheless we object to
identifying sociality and morality as we should do if we
accepted the social instinct as ultimately constituting the
activities of conscience.
Our objections cannot all be fully presented in the argu-
ments that follow. We might proceed to argue against it
upon lines similar to those followed in last chapter. The
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 87

changes requiring to be made in statements would be

numerous but not fundamental, because, to a purely philo-
sophic judgment, both theories stand or fall by the same
principle. We prefer, however, to adopt another course, in
the belief that it is likely to be more satisfactory in point
of interest and conclusiveness.
first test
requires to be . answered : is the Theuestion
The first test question that :
: : : :
social instinct provid. e us with an Does it pro-
following: Does the ide a stand-
: .
sense? If it does, a corre- ard of the
ultimate standard in the4 moral ° requisite uni-
‘
be versality in
sponding motive of obligat; ion in the sense of duty will
2 . :
the moral
: sense?
forthcoming at the same time.
the
Now, if there be any characters that are essential to
constitution of activities of conscience,
formal or ultimate
them.
universality and unconditionedness must be among
ies must apply to standa rd and motive
Both of these qualit
the law
alike, since each along with the other represents
But it may be more conven ient if we con-
in conscience.
lly requis ite to the standa rd and
sider universality as specia
motive in consci ence. As matter
unconditionedness to the
other. <A stan-
of fact each of these qualities involves the
also of necess ity uncond itional, as
dard that is universal is
that has the qualit y of uncon-
we shall see, and a motive
ditionedness must also be univer sal.
ate constitu- To corre-
The applicability of such canons to the ultim
nt when we revert aeeee 3
tion of conscience becomes specially evide
of the activities Penn
to the parallel distinction in the attributes
and variable.
as universal and particular or invariable
right or wron g and obliga-
The particular things judged
ments acco mpan ying , were
tory, and the emotions and senti
On the other hand, the universal
variable attributes.
the perception in
attributes of activities of conscience are
with a susceptibility
willing of a moral difference, together
a simul taneo us percep-
to emotion in connection with it, and
sensi bilit y in relation
tion of moral obligation, together with
to it.
only to consider the
In Section A of this part we have
butes, as they alone
constitution of the latter class of attri
are ultimate.
 88 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

To correspond with these twin attributes of the acti-

vities we expect to find in the law both universality and un-
conditionedness, though the latter quality does not come
up so prominently in analysis. The universality is looked
for in the ultimate standard and susceptibility of the moral
sense, the unconditionedness belongs to the corresponding
motive and impulse in the sense of duty. If the social
instinct as law in conscience possesses these requisites, there
is, so far as we yet know, nothing to hinder its acceptance
as formally constituting its activities.
What does What does universality as a requirement in this connec-
universality |. : a ae aie :
implyasa tion imply? It implies that the moral law as to its form
requirement , : f > 6 é
in this eon- is the same for all men in all times and places. As indicating
nection ? ° : “sq: :
the right and the wrong for each in sensibility it must be
capable of applying equally to all menasmen. As ultimate
standard and radical susceptibility in the moral sense ‘it
must be the same for all in so far as all are absolutely alike
in nature and relation.
Samenessin
the standard
But 2 the social instinct from its very nature as a bond of
* ena 3 . :
and suscepti- blood interposes a distinction between kinsmen and aliens,
fara pertribesmen and strangers, even although they are perfectly
arealike. alike in other particulars. Unless, therefore, physical re-
latedness be of the essence of goodness, it is hard to see how
this instinct can figure for a moment as law in conscience.
Let us, however, interpret its claims in the fairest way,
and in the largest reference. In its most obvious aspect, as
compared with the instinct of self-preservation, the social
instinct goes in the direction of generality, if not of univer-
Thesocial
instinettends
sality. For though in a man and part of him, it reaches
ode
to unite beyond him, i and attaches him i to a familyi or some other
dividualsina group of related beings. As doing this, it gives him a
terestbytes Standard and organic susceptibility by which his actions can
be tested and attested apart from the bodily pleasure or
pain accruing to himself from them. From this vital bond
of union with others, emotional judgments and suscepti-
bilities are active, which may conceivably furnish guidance
in all action that relates to kindred and acquaintance.
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 89

Let us take examples from some of the narrower human tis pond of
relationships, stipulating only that that they must be par- pies aed
ticular and definite. Children of the same parentage are knit ment ana
to each other in the earliest portion of their lives by com- eee
munity of blood and by a common home life. These may care
make them have their pleasures and pains largely in com- yee
mon. There comes a time when that ceases, of course, buat ae
the identity in feeling may be, and often is, real enough
while it lasts. The same is true in a greater degree of
parents and children during the period of rearing, when
the latter are dependent upon the former for nurture, pro-
tection, and education. Perhaps the best instance of identity
of feeling is found in the relationship of mother and child.
The instinct of maternity is strong and active, and it makes
a mother’s heart so susceptible to the pains and pleasures of
her offspring, that their pleasure and freedom from pain
is a standard by which most of her actions are measured.
Emotional judgments as to these form the most common
and
comment in her own mind upon her every-day life
conduct. Altruists have their feet upon facts here.
1tmay have
It is probably too rigid an interpretation of the social a wider
kinshi sphere of
p.
instinct that makes us limit its functioning to ties of action
may, throughout
Living together in forms of fellowship, civil or natural,
amount- munities.
with some measure of justification, be regarded as
n the
ing almost to the same thing. The relation betwee
be includ ed; and among the rudest men
sexes would thus
betwee n man and woman counts for some-
natural affection
can
thing as a standard and susceptibility with which actions
. If this be true of the heads of
be compared and judged
reason why all the membe rs of a
families, there is no
not be include d. Sociali ty
smaller community should
ng force,
may then be admitted to be an equalising, unifyi
down, and drawin g together
levelling up as well as
condit ion which prepar es
men into a similarity of social
lity of the judgme nts of
the way for the greater genera
Moreover, under the operat ion of
particular consciences.
of male and female,
the instinct, the one-sided relationships
 90 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

parent and child, weak and strong, tend to become less

unequal.
Though
Socialistic
All Socialistic Hedonists are of opinion that these func-
Hedonists
extend its
tions of the social instinct can be extended into the wider
functions in social relations
such wise
without the instinct losing its character as
that it loses
its character
natural. They speak of the patriarchal household expanding
as a natural
instinct,
into a clan, and the clan becoming a tribe, and the tribe a
gens or group of kindred tribes, and they carry the work-
ing of the social instinct through all these ramifications.
Nay, they assume it to be active beyond all ascertainable
kinships as a kind of social tissue. Indeed, under cover of
this figure, there is included the whole network of relations
springing from a common speech and common beliefs.
They illegi- Such an extension we hold to be founded upon a miscon-
timately as-
cribe to it ception. As an assumption it is totally inadmissible. It
that which is
the work of is the ascription to an instinct of that which is due to the
the common
reason in working of the reason that is common to men as men. No
man.
doubt chiefs and leaders of ability, taking advantage of
racial sympathies and temporary community of interest,
may weld together subordinate groups of tribes into a more
or less homogeneous whole. Through such an enlarged
community or society traditions of kinship by ancestors,
divine or human, may circulate, and play some of the parts
in personal life usually allotted to conscience. But this is
the utmost range of activity that can be attributed by any
stretch of judgment or imagination to the working of the
social instinct as ultimate standard and susceptibility in
the moral sense.
Moreover the Let us now suppose for a moment that the social instinct
social in-
stinct has a as law fulfils the requirement of universality, in so far as the
repellant and
disruptive, as members of this enlarged society are concerned. Let it be
well as an
attractive granted that the emotional judgments of right and wrong,
and unify-
ing, side to based upon this standard and susceptibility, are the same for
its activity.
each as for all within this circle, in so far as all are abso-
lutely alike in nature and relation. How does it stand as
to those who are outside of the body politic? Has not the
social instinct a repellant as well as an attractive side to its
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. gI

activity 2? Does it not divide as well as unite, and if it

engenders sympathy towards those whom it unites, does it
not foster antipathy to those from whom it divides? For,
under the operations of this instinct, each group tends to
round itself off from other groups. ‘The closing up of its
own ranks is the signal for a certain degree of hostility to
all outside of them. And this disposition of antagonism
follows not incidentally but by way of natural result. It is
the reverse side of the gregarious instinct. Under rude
social conditions, and in a mental darkness so deep as that
of savage men, this tribal feeling and local patriotism is one
of the first essentials of any stable society whatever. If the
clusterings of individual families in the savage state are not
to remain disorganised hordes—“ fortuitous concourses of
human atoms”—they must repel elements which they
cannot absorb, and fight for their corporate existence against
all comers.
Now, is it possible to concede that the instinct regulating And it has a
ifferent

action in this interest can be the ultimate standard and Ge tater

tribesmen

susceptibility in the moral sense? Does it not conflict in and aliens.

its very nature with the requirement of universality ? It
adjudges to tribesmen pleasure, to others pain. Actions
having this result are distinguished as right and good, and
are so denominated, the formula being that kinship makes
rightness.
Accordingly we are not surprised to find that when there
is no restraint from an enlightened religion or a high civili-
sation the social instincts easily sanction acts that in other Consequent-
ly it sanc-
circumstances and relations are considered grossly immoral. usually con-
tions acts

stealing, and many forms of deceit be- sidered gross

Assassination, immoralities.
come right if practised against certain groups of human
beings, but criminally wrong if directed against others. Even
cannibalism comes to be considered a highly edifying exercise
if the gruesome meal be made from the slain members of a
hostile tribe. The distinction between right and wrong in
these instances turns not upon the nature or result of the
act, but upon the blood-relationship of the agents.
 92 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

Moreover, the principle of Hedonism is departed from or

inconsistently held. The production of pleasure to another
is the standard of rightness in the one case, the production
of pain is the standard in the other. The difference is due
to the relatedness or non-relatedness to the agent of the
persons who are the objects of his actions. Therefore,
although no other difference between these persons exists,
the presence or absence of the bond of blood changes the
moral character of the act. The murder of an alien may be
meritorious—that is, may not be murder but a perfectly
legitimate exercise of power, the slaughter of a tribesman
must be wrong. Natural relationship creates guilt in the
former case, and condones or disperses it in the latter. Like
charity, it may be held to “cover a multitude of sins.”
But at this point there may be a disposition to object
to the course of argument hitherto followed in this chapter.
Does the Lt may be said that if we leave savage men with their low
stinet over. habits and primitive communities with their never ending
iments, feuds and wars, and look at the working of the social
“henwe instinct in civilised men and women, the same objections do
look atit .
workngin 0b arise,
eee This view appears specially plausible at first sight when
we confine our attention to those within the same general
circle of law, feeling, and opinion. It would seem as if the
social standard and susceptibility in conscience must be the
same for each as for all within this restricted area. Is it
so? Can emotional judgments based upon these apply with
equal impartiality to all? Superficial appearances are decep-
tive in this reference, as a little observation and reflection
soon reveal. For we discover that the same sympathies and
antipathies are at work within as without limited societies,
and they are at work with the same disregard of right
reason. The forms in which the social instinct manifests
itself are more refined, and perhaps the manifestations them-
selves have less of rude force. But it by no means follows
Withinevery that they have disappeared. For every society, large and
society, how- . * ° .
evercivilized, SMall, is broken up into smaller social groups and coteries.
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 93

There are family circles, social strata, and other distinct tnere are
ole 6 < wane “i 5 ti 1
divisions of feeling and opinion. Lach section has its Own sympathies
o 5 5 % 5 . d anti-
sectional sympathies and antipathies irrespective of right pathos ine:
reason, Likes and dislikes, little vanities, and a variety of ngnt reason.
interests introduce partiality and limitation into the emotional
judgments passed upon the actions and characters of one
another. Partiality and favouritism rule in the majority of
minds, and the required universality, which includes im-
partiality, seems as far as ever from being attainable. With
such a standard and susceptibility it must appear hopeless to
attempt to banish these defects. They are of the essence of
the alleged law in the moral sense.
It may, however, still be urged that there are sympathies sympathies
and antipathies of a higher kind which form the standard ae
and susceptibility in the moral sense of members of family tialtty.
groups. ‘The affections that so often regulate the actions of
parents and children have been admitted to be a genuine
outcome of the social instinct. They are no doubt pure
and comparatively disinterested. But if we take them in
their highest form they still leave much to be desired as the
basis of judgment and feeling in the moral sense. Il, for
example, the emotional judgments of right and wrong of any
given mother hinged exclusively upon her maternal instinct
her own children would be generously judged, but at the
same time scant justice might be meted out to the children
of others. This result happens infallibly if their claims
come into competition with those of her own offspring.
The common experiences of practical life teach us that the
tenderest hearts towards some may be as hard if not as cold
as iceballs towards others. And this inequality does not
always depend upon the presence or absence in the persons
tabooed of the qualities commonly called moral. Affection
is by its very nature one-sided. Partiality is of its essence.
How can we then accept it as ultimate standard and suscep-
tibility in the moral sense.
In conclusion, we find that the social instinct does not
supply us with a law that has the requisite universality.
 94 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

Where there is distance the sympathy does not exist, where

there is nearness the impartiality fails, In the latter case
the guilty one is judged weak rather than wicked, blaming is
given up, and a maudlin pity takes its place. In the other
instance, where sympathy is inactive, it may be due to
distance in space or time. But it may also be associated
with a difference in character that tells in favour of good-
ness. A will that is firm and upright does not seek sympathy.
As self-dependent and powerful it demands only even-handed
justice of the most dispassionate kind. Sympathy is more
easily elicited by the condition of persons in trouble, even
when this has arisen through their own misconduct. From
these facts and others we may infer that the grounds upon
which the social instinct picks out its objects are not always
moral, which is to say that this instinct cannot be the
standard and susceptibility we are in search of.
Does the If the social instinct fails to attain universality as standard
steve. and susceptibility, does it succeed any better when it claims
better ixpro-to provide the ultimate motive or impulse in the sense of
titimate duty ? Unconditionedness in the motive is the quality which
rotvefduty? corresponds to universality in the standard, and if a theory
breaks down in reference to the one, it can scarcely be ex-
pected to overcome the difficulties connected with the other.
Let us examine the question for ourselves fully and fairly.
The test is According to Hedonistic psychology a motive is an idea
touditioned. OF feeling, a hope or desire of pleasure or a fear of pain,
een which moves the will. To be a motive of unconditional
ume obligation this feeling must not depend for its power or
motive: authority upon anything really extrinsic to itself. If it
exercises sway over the willing because of some ulterior
advantage or disadvantage likely to follow upon obedience or
disobedience to its behest, then it has not the quality of
unconditionedness. Its obligatoriness is not absolute but
contingent upon the presence of some condition which may
or may not be morally necessary. The imperative of duty
in such a case is conditional and not categorical.
Ullustrations Instances of commands of conscience which are thus con-
ofconditional
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 95
ditional or hypothetical must occur to everyone. Suppose a ana unconai-
lawyer’s sense of duty enjoins him to be just if he wishes to tives. "”
retain his clients, the necessity it lays upon him is not
absolute. It is conceivable that special circumstances might
exist which make the retention of clients a matter of in-
difference. In that case the motive of duty would lose its
point and influence, for if he did not will the end why should
he will the means? If he thought he might become rich
before clients discovered his injustice, this anticipation would
help to dissolve the obligation to act justly towards them
upon all occasions. Analogous motives to dutiful and right
action are suggested in the proverbial sayings—* Honesty is
the best policy,” “ deception does not long deceive.” All such
rules of action belong to the category of prudent maxims
rather than unconditional commands of conscience.
The precept of duty that has the quality of unconditioned-
ness must be capable of being stated in an absolute form,
thus :—‘“ Thou shalt not deal unjustly,” “thou shalt not
deceive,” “thou shalt not steal.” Conscience can then issue
its demands without reasons annexed or conditions attached,
and its authority over willing is not subordinate to anything
which has not previously received the sanction of the moral
sense.
As we have already explained, this is the only legitimate
interpretation of the phrase duty for duty’s sake. Acting
from such a motive does not exclude the purest impulses of
religion or philanthr opy, which lend to conscienc e its highest
and most enduring influence over the actual life of men.
Now does sympathy as natural impulse and motive pro-
vide a basis for such unconditional judgments and sentiments
of obligation? Are its promptings to relieve pain or add to
pleasure of this high character ? Do they possess the quality
of unconditionedness ?
We have seen that sympathy as standard and susceptibility,
in so far as it is instinctive, could not attain to universality.
Tt could not be the same for all men, in so far as all were
alike in nature and relation. It prescribed one way of
 96 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

acting towards one person or group of persons, and a totally

different and opposed course of conduct towards others, and
the ground of the distinction made between them was not in
any way identical with the presence or absence of what are
commonly regarded as moral qualities. The pivot upon
which such a moral sense rested its judgme nt of right and
wrong was found to be blood-r elation ship. If the agent and
the person whose character or action was judged were re-
lated physically the verdict was certain to be favoura ble, if
not, it was as certain to be unfavou rable. What are usually
known as immoralities become secondary to this all-important
question of kinship.
Now, if history teaches anything truly, it is in part a
record of successive extensions of the circle of obligation in
directions which traverse the working of the social instinct
as an instinct. Instead of constantly commanding us to
seek to add to the pleasure of our fellow-citizens and the
pain of all others, conscience has attained to quite contrary
rules of action. The maxims of hatred to an enemy, love to
a friend, have been superseded in the consciences of the best
men, and we have precepts taking their place, which incul-
cate the love of enemies and the treatment of others as we
should wish to be treated ourselves if we were in the same
circumstances. Such universality, including impartiality and
perfect equality, is unattainable with the social instinct as
standard and susceptibility in the moral sense.
If blood-re- If we have discovered that the tie of blood is not: essential :
°
:
not identieal to rightness or wrongness, a motive of duty which eas
lationship be
is con-
ness, then’ tingent upon its presence cannot be held to be unconditional.
with right- F .

the motiveof . “ys

obligation If such a conclusion be deemed premature it is at all events
lingent meen certain that motives of tribal morality are no longer of ab-
which is con- . : : :

tional, solute obligation in the sense of duty of the best modern men.
To those who have as standard in their moral sense the
doctrine that all men are brothers the differences of blood
are of subordinate moment, and they consider themselves
morally bound to relieve the distress or pain or want of
others altogether independently of racial affinities or com-
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 97

munity of blood. Now such an extension of the circle of

moral obligation is, to say the least, very remarkable. Is
the motive of it explicable on the theory that natural
sympathy is the formal constitution of activities of con-
science in the sense of duty?
During the earliest periods of human history communal ofButuncondi-
motives
or tribal standards and ethnic motives have been every- tionalobliga-
: : A tion must
:
where in possession of ae men’s consciences. Along with have been
A operative in
th h
ese there were susceptibilities and impulses of more or the sense of
ste duty of those
less limited range and efficiency. How
as
have they been who change
: : : : moral rules
:
displaced? How have motives of wider application and trom age to
higher obligation come to prevail and be prevalent? a
The inception and announcement of more comprehensive
rules of moral obligation may have been due to those re-
formers who change the moral practice of men from age to
age. But the question returns, how could any conscience
constituted by the social instinct emit new standards of
obligation ? What impulse exists in mere sociality that
can lead such men’s consciences to bring long-existing or
traditional ways of living under judgment for abolition
or amendment? Under what obligation were they to
abandon the old and establish the new? Why should they
appeal from laws that are relatively good and demand that
they be re-cast in the light of a new conception of obliga-
tion 2 From what part of the social nature is this wider naturalsym-
conception to come, and how is a sense of duty in- Lane
spired by social opinion and feeling to rise superior to the ys
trammels of social convention and habit, and claim in its
own right a reform of the current standards of practice?
Motives having the requisite pressure and binding power
must be of unconditional obligation. But what room is
there for such in a conscience that is by hypothesis an
article of social manufacture? If the highest motive of the
sense of duty be the product of the social instinct, how can
it ever run counter to it? If the ultimate standard and
motive of all moral life be found in social approval, how can
any reformer ever detach himself from its influence so far
G
 98 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

as first to extend the circle of obligation, and then find the

motive to impose the new rules upon others as upon him-
self? The yoke he asks them to bear he must himself have
borne. If it cut sorely into his own natural feeling and
gave pain to himself, why should he seek to apply it to
others? The motive urging him to this can be found
neither in the social sanction nor in the social impulse,
which must rather thwart his efforts. The attempt to
enter upon new and untried paths in morality has always
been met with a chorus of social disapproval.
Inthotight In view of the life record of those who have done so we
a may well ask, is a man so consecrated to his community
dispnteHaty after all? Has he not a higher as well as a wider interest
Bis sents! represe nted by what is commonly known as his own moral
thelaw in manhood? May he not, by cleaving to his conscience, work
conse for the good of a larger social whole? He has a personality
of his own. He has his own “soul to save,” even if that
should keep him from conforming in every particular to the
breezes of social feeling.
Have not the best men been in the right against natural
sympathy—against the force that is narrow precisely be-
cause it is instinctive rather than rational? But if the
only good be a civil good—bonu m civile—advo cated in the
social sanction, then a higher type of conscience is inex-
plicable. For this latter judges the conventiona l rules that
have hitherto controlled its decisions, and they are in form
set aside that their inner spirit may be preserved and
receive a larger and purer expression. Whence comes this
purer, this higher interest and end, if not from the rational
self as law in conscience? Persons are not merely citizens
—members of the community —they have a centre of
light and authority within themselves, which is, in many
of its ends and issues, higher than that of any society
conceived as an aggregate of selfless creatures. To sacri-
fice its infinite manifestations, to bury any form of truth
which it has apprehended, to stifle any duty which it calls
upon us to perform—in brief, to enslave the pure con-
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 99
science to a less pure social interest, is selfish rather than
altruistic in the highest sense. Though the pleasure it
seeks is not that of the individual, but that of his society,
it is impure, inasmuch as the spiritual remains in the service
of the material, and the moving energy does not proceed
from the moral sense, and sense of duty.
There is, therefore, a right and a wrong which is not, at Right ana
the mercy of majorities. There is a righteousness which yong toca
is not the creation of social opinion or positive enactment. oe
Justitia ciwilis coram hominibus may require to be revised
and altered in the light of that justitia spiritualis coram Deo.
This latter is the creative righteousness, which has built
up states and established them in history. This is the
righteousness which not only discovers just laws, but
secures obedience to them under adverse strain from with-
out. It bears the strength and consistency of reason
within it, rather than the fickle and passive ballast of
natural sympathy. It is because this form of righteousness
is possible that the vir pius et religiosus has a vita interior
and a bonum spirituale. If the typically good man had
not this inward and personal life to live, if he had no
spiritual selfhood to stand upon, how could he ever struggle
through an Atlantic of obloquy for a good so intangible to
sense 2? Without this he could never have reached, in any
relations, a more spiritual conception of what his own life
should be, and after he had attained that for himself, only
the same motives could have impelled him to seek to improve
the moral practice and the inner dispositions of others.
Certainly, from all who put forth pretensions or claims
to reform existing morality, society may reasonably require
evidence that they have better norms to offer than those
they seek to amend. No man can stand upon the mere
negation of those forms of life in which the moral law
has already externalised itself. No personal preference on
the ground of pleasure or physical ease can justify any one
in removing or neglecting one tittle of the law’s require-
ments. Nay, if the would-be reformers have not been ful-
 100 THE INSTINCTIVELY SOCIAL THEORY,

filling all these, they can have little lasting success in their
attempts to purify the practice of others. Their own
consciences must incarnate the best moral spirit of their
communities before they can evolve new precepts for
applicati on upon a wider scale.
senseof duty But after these safeguards have been provided, the right
‘rnoronal, of criticism is not confined to men with creative moral
Dine e insight and impulse, and to them in social crises. Surely
ae this is one of the inalienabl e prerogati ves which any
member of reformed Christen dom has a right to exercise,
according to recognised methods, in a sphere and within
relations suited to his capacities and opportunities. No
community is omnipotent over against the individual . Like
a giant with a hundred hands it can drum down the puny
person who seeks to tinker its laws in a petty and carping
spirit, as if they were the ‘work of a schoolboy.’ On the
other hand, we are not orientals who fear to breathe against
the ancient ordering of life lest they be condemned for
sacrilege. Custom is strong, but conscience may be stronger.
Its cry is not to be smothered in order that mummified
creations of the past may be preserved from contact with
new life. The laws without must bend to the law within,
when we are sure that the high utterance is a genuine ex-
pression of it. Let us hope that we shall never be creatures
of indiarubber, like those Chinamen who, at the touch of a
bribe or a bastinado, are elastic from the circumference of
their being to its centre in conscience.
Does not this relative freedom of the formed and pure
conscience over against social norms presuppose that impera-
tiveness which can come up only with a content which is
felt to be unconditionally valid for each as for all? Buta
natural instinct can never yield this order of obligation, and
to explain it by such a principle is to explain it away.
Thesocialin- The instinctively social theory or Socialistic Hedonism
stinct as : : . . : :
motiveorim- ends by dissolving all obligation to any action higher than
pulse does . °. A
not mestthe public opinion can command. Action above the level of a
ofuncondl- lower respectability can never flow from such a source. We
lonedness.
 OR SOCIALISTIC HEDONISM. 10!

may make due qualifications for the hyperbolical tempera-

ment of the great authors of change in practical morality,
but if we are to accept at all their most solemn assevera-
tions, the necessity they felt to be laid upon them—to do
as they did, and speak as they spoke—stood out clear and
distinct, not only from the mass of natural sympathy
opposed to it, but also from that which may have been
favourable. If in the latter there was no moral and
spiritual discernment, but only that natural pity which
social persecution elicited, then it was not the sympathy
which had moral power within it. It might be interesting
upon artistic grounds as a flower without fragrance is, but
it is not such sympathy as could ever constitute formally
the activities of conscience in any one. ‘There can ulti-
mately be no necessity attaching to an impulse in a sense
of duty, which is based upon the social instinct.
 CHAPTER 111.

THE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY OR HUMANISTIC

EUDAEMONISM.

In the two preceding chapters the course of argument

brought us to the conclusion that natural instincts as such
do not formally constitute conscience. They cannot supply
the kind of standard needed in the moral sense nor the
order of motive peculiar to the sense of duty; and the sensi-
bilities in which they are active are neither high enough in
rank nor wide enough in range to yield perceptions—least
of all a perception of the moral quality of actions. All in-
stinctive constitutions are subject to inherent and inevitable
disqualifications when they are presented as the final law of
activities of conscience. We have therefore to pass away
from instincts and hedonism altogether if we are to succeed
in our present inquiry.
The passage Lo what other possible constitution can we have recourse ?
stints ond In the chapter introductory to this part of the Analysis
Hedonism to : eae .
Reason and there was formulated a triple division of our nature into
ism. instinctively selfish, instinctively social, and distinctively
rational. These were the only conceivable centres of motive
power and tests of willing. They are all present in human
nature and native to it as no others are. Moreover, each
one of them has been adopted by some influential school of
thought as that capacity or power which supplies the ulti-
mate standard in the moral sense, and motive in the sense
of duty. Two of these hypothetical constitutions have been
examined and rejected, the third remains to be discussed.
Its position is that the law as formal in conscience is our
distinctively rational nature with its correlative sensibilities.
 HUMANISTIC EUDAEMONISM. 103

As supporters of this rational constitution of conscience Historical

many men eminent in thought have to be mentioned. In insrationat
this they have been unanimous while differing from one een
another widely in other respects. Among them there are on a
in
famous moralists like Confucius in the east and Socrates
the west, as well as pure philosophers of the mental calibre
of Aristotle, Spinoza, and Hegel. These men were all greatly
distinguished by strength of intellect and mastery over know-
few
ledge. Indeed, from these points of view there are
ties known to history. But in the
more notable personali
ethics Plato and Kant occupy a place of
special field of
their own. If we pay supreme regard to depth of rational
they
insight into the springs of moral judgment and motive,
hierarch y of the world’s thinkers, In
stand high in the
sounded some of the profound est
them the human mind
abysmal
abysses of its own being, and brought up from these
ons destined to be of perennia l
depths categories and concepti
theory. Moreover , in spite of the
suggestiveness in moral
science, this
intense and widespread absorption in physical
signs of exhaustio n. In our own
school of thought shows no
us writings like those of the
time and country it has given
Green—s o admirabl e in temper
late Professor Thomas Hill
with sure-
and tone, in audacity of speculation combined
footedness of reasoning.
by this distinc-
But what, it may be asked, do we mean
native title :—
tively rational theory with its cumbrous alter
fuller answe r is to be found
Humanistic Eudaemonism? The
er, but a brief preliminary
embodied in the text. of this chapt
statement may be given now. nary
ss in a few words its main position, it Pretimi
Tf we are to expre tat t of
an activity of reason Sa ors
* pe

is that conscience is above all things

. . °

e. Seana ia
willing or choic
in sensibility directed to particular acts of
capacity or power whic h lies at the root of "°°
Accordingly, the
rational: and al-
its manifestations is not instinctive but
is an outcome and
though it expresses itself in sensibility it
With out the speci-
concomitant of our self-conscious life.
which we possess,
ality of rational and sensitive endowment
 104 ZHE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY,

activities of conscience could not come into being, but with

it they are inevitable.
The change This is a sufficiently definite standpoint to assume, and
in the philo-
sophical the assumption of it involves a revolutionary change in the
standpoint is
revolution- metaphysical views hitherto proceeded upon. We say revo-
ary.
lutionary because the changes required by the substitution
of one kind of instinctive constitution for another were as
nothing compared with those which must be made when
instincts and hedonism are abandoned in favour of reason
and eudaemonism. Formerly instinct was the principal, and
reason the subsidiary capacity and power, now these rela-
tions must be reversed. Reason takes the first place, and
instinct as such cannot be allowed any part in the making
of moral distinctions or the formulation of moral demands.
It can have no direct or determining influence in these
activities, because the perceptive capacity and preceptive
power essential to them are not found where the distinct-
ively rational or self-conscious nature is absent, or active
only in secondary relations.
This is certainly an entire change of philosophic stand-
point, involving a relatively new view of reason—its position
in human nature and its function in moral experience. Is
this new conception warranted by facts and refiection upon
them. Can it be made good by argument. Is it logically
necessary in view of the indispensable conditions of know-
ledge and the postulates of moral experience. These are
questions having a wider range and relevancy than we can
permit ourselves to enter upon. They are discussed with
comparative fulness and adequacy in such a work as the
late Professor Green’s “ Prolegomena to Ethics.” What we
have to concern ourselves with is something much narrower
and more manageable. It is with those matters involved
in the statement.of the Distinctively Rational Theory of
Conscience or Humanistic Eudaemonism.
If reason is
to be adopted
In connection therewith one thing requires to be made
as law in
conscience it
clear, and to be accepted as conclusive. It is the principle
must have that if self-conscious reason be adopted as superseding
 OR HUMANISTIC EUDAEMONISM. 105

instinct in formally constituting activities of conscience, then and capacities

powers
capacities and powers must be present in it which were other than it
possessed
either absent or inadmissible under Hedonis m Individu al- under He-
donism.
istic or Socialistic. We must discover what these are before
we inquire whether they qualify reason to play the part of
the law in conscience.
Under the discarded instinctive theories, reason in human The previous
view of
nature was credited with a purely passive existenc e an reason.

dependent functions. In proof of its alleged passivity, we

have only to mention the fact that it was not thought of as
either making or recognising the rightness or obligatoriness
of any given act or motive. That is to say, the formal con-
of
stitution of moral qualities as well as the recognition
them, was ascribed to instinctive feelings or sensatio ns aris-
ing in the mind in connection with willing. Reason was
never active independently of instinct, and when active upon
the initiative of the latter, it was only in a subsidiary cap-
which
acity and in secondary relations. There were cases in
When, for example ,
instinct was evidently incompetent.
excited nearly
two acts were before consciousness which
was
equal amounts of pleasure, reason as a reasoning power
should be
thought of as helping instinct to determine which
Even then the measurements and compari sons
preferred.
instituted were merely to test the pleasures quantitatively
as to their mass or duration. Other differences between
the deci-
them as to quality were consistently ignored, and
s or
sion when arrived at was made the ground of rightnes
of the
obligatoriness in the particular act by the sanction
ways reason
instinct of self or social preservation. In these
servant, instrument, and helpmate of
functioned as the
instinct. It was not thought of as having an essentially
nce.
active existence and work in all moral experie
in the Disti nctiv ely Ratio nal Theory Present con-
On the other hand, ception of its
positions is
or Humanistic Eudaemonism every one of these
essential
activity and

contr avene d. Reaso n is accepted relative in-

deliberately contested and dependence.
nature, and
as having an essentially active existence in human
ions in refer ence to the judgment
relatively independent funct
 106 THE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY,

and control of willing. It is exalted to the first place in

the constitution both of knowledge and morality. At its
lowest degree of potency and culture or within the limits of
sanity and maturity reason is held to make as well as
recognise the rightness and obligatoriness of any given act
or motive. That is to say, the formal constitution of moral
qualities as well as the perception of them is ascribed to its
original and spontaneous activities in connection with all
acts of free or self-determined willing. Instead of waiting
upon instinct or helplessly following its determinations,
reason is able to bring out differences in action on its own
initiative as well as to make demands upon willing in ac-
cordance with them. These capacities or powers are in-
herent in reason, and they are an integral part of its very
essence and life in man. When we are about to will, the
judgment distinguishing a right from a wrong and obligating
us to realise the former is part of our constitution as
rational or self-conscious beings.
But though reason has thus the primacy in activities of
conscience, it is reason as working in and through sensibili-
ties that are native to it. The former fact justifies us in
speaking of this as the Distinctively Rational Theory, but
the latter lends an inalienable meaning to the alternative
title—Humanistic Eudaemonism.
For the assertion of these relatively new properties and its
activities is not more characteristic of this theory than is its
Collateral emphatic distinction of sensibilities from sensibilities on the
distinctions
in sensibili- ground of differences of quality or kind. When they embody
ties as to
their quality a different kind or order of consciousness it is maintained that
or kind.
this fact must be recognised in all affirmations about them.
The quality of feeling or sensibility depends upon these
conditions of its origin. If pleasurable feeling be said to
be the last law in the moral sense and sense of duty, we
have still to ask where it has its rise). From what quarter
of our nature does it come? Has it its seat and source in
our distinctively rational, or in our instinctively selfish
or social nature? If in the former, then it is higher in
 OR HUMANISTIC EUDAEMONISM. 107

rank and wider in range, and is more complex and compre-

hensive in its constitution. So that, apart altogether from
its intensity or duration or mass, it is of a different kind or
quality. But in all judgments and determinations of con-
science the quality of the happiness or pleasure overrules
its quantity whenever or wherever these come into com-
petition. It is just this deliberate recognition of quality
in feeling which differentiates Eudaemonism from Hedonism
in all its forms. The latter was compelled, consistently
with its principles, to limit all distinctions between pleasures
to those of a quantitative kind, ignoring quality altogether.
Eudaemonism enfranchises sensibility by making it an
essential element in conscience, and by extending its range
beyond the individual or his social group to humanity at
large.
If we accept these views of the work of human reason and
sensibility in relation to willing we can easily understand
how the Distinctively Rational Theory or Humanistic
Eudaemonism should be offered as the final solution of the
problem of the law in conscience.
If we go to Kant’s new analysis of consciousness in his
“Critique of Pure Reason,” we find categories or root con-
ceptions which, with the self that gives them their unity,
should have some function in the constitution of the world
of practice as well as in the world of natural knowledge.
Through his separation of Reason as pure from Reason as
practical, and on account of his imperfect enumeration and
articulation of the categories, Kant failed to make clear to
others that the same principle of self-consciousness which
was the key to nature and our knowledge of it had another
expression in conscience.
The theory is that man in virtue of his constitution as a The rational
distinctively rational or self-conscious being is in possession thenp ety
of a category or root conception of the good which does not tivesense
find its realisation in the satisfaction of animal wants and”
impulses, but points ever in willing to objects and interests
distinct from these, as being of a higher or more complex
 108 THE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY,

character and wider range. When this original and native

conception of the good is brought into relation to particular
acts and motives through our judgments and sensibilities,
then conscience is constituted.
Let us trace this conception through the two great forms
of its activity in the moral sense and sense of duty.
Tracedinthe When the distinctively rational consciousness with its im-
ate plicit conception of the good is working in and through our
susceptibilities upon particular acts or motives, it is said to
be active in the moral sense. As soon as there are acts of
moral choice or self-determined willing there spring up
within us spontaneous activities of judgment relating the
conception to these. As the result of thus bringing them
into relation through our susceptibilities, there are emotional
judgments either declaratory or judicial. When the acts or
motives conform to the conception of the good in the moral
sense they are said to be right, when they do not they are
declared to be wrong. Rightness therefore means con-
formity to our conception of the good, wrongness is the
opposite.
eee As regards the moral sense, this rational conception evi-
bility. dently fulfils all the offices of a standard of rightness and
wrongness. By it acts are tested, and either condemned or
approved. The conception and its correlative susceptibilities
together formally constitute the law in the moral sense.
ee If we turn to the other great form of activity in the sense
ce i of duty, the same conception of the good is found to be
present. The judgment of rightness identifies the good with
one motive or act as opposed to another, and this identifi-
cation makes it unconditionally obligatory upon the will.
If the act be still future, we have to accept this motive
as the only good one, and give effect to it accordingly in
willing.
The conception of the good and the correlative impulse
working through the judgment and sentiment of obligation
together constitute the law as formal in the sense of duty.
Now it is one and the same conception and sensibility which
 OR HUMANISTIC EVDAEMONISM. 109

appear as standard and susceptibility in the moral sense,

and as motive and impulse in the sense of duty. The differ-
ence of name is necessitated by the different relation to
willing, but the good as a root conception or category in
conscience includes the rightness of acts past or present as
well as the obligatoriness of those still future.
Self-condemnation and remorse are only special varieties of Self-con-
the same activity. After being thwarted in the sense of duty and remoese,
by contrary willing, the conception and sensibility are active
anew in the moral sense. But this time the edge of the judg-
ment and the pain of the emotion are turned directly against
the agent, and he is made to feel himself responsible for the
act and punishable on account of it. The penalty may be
inward, but it is not therefore less real or bitter.
In the foregoing paragraphs we have a short statement of the presup-
this theory in its main positions, and in the terminology ihethet.
which we have adopted. From this it must be evident that einer &
the presuppositions upon which it rests are consciously Seat
metaphysical rather than professedly scientific. We are yational or
declared to possess a double nature, rational as well as in- molec
stinctive, a higher as well as a lower self. This doctrine of ipworieclaa
two selves is familiar enough in its popular form, but here
it is introduced as a systematic explanation of the law in
conscience, and must therefore be stated with more care and
tested with more rigour.
One of the selves—that commonly spoken of as the Definitionsot
higher—is distinctively rational, the other or lower is nae
natural and even animal. What do each stand for? The
natural or animal self regarded as a unity consists of our
instinctive susceptibilities and impulses together with that
modicum of consciousness and power of particular inference
which go along with them. The rational self, on the other
hand, is made up of our distinctively rational or self-
conscious nature with its special order of sensibilities and
unique power of inference from universals to particulars.
When we now ask if the rational conception of the good Does the ov-
and its correlative sensibility satisfy the tests applicable to Cone
 110 THE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY,

ness which all alleged ultimate constitutions of conscience, we begin to

goes with the
higher self see the value of the distinction which this theory establishes
provide for
universality between the natural and the rational self. For the very
in the stand-
ard and sus- capacities and powers which are put forward as characteristic
ceptibility
and uncon- of the latter are precisely such as seem to provide a basis
ditionedness
in the motive for that universality and unconditionedness sought for in
and impulse ?
vain in connection with the natural self and its instinctive
constitutions.
Judgments and determinations of the natural self were
necessarily of the simplest and most limited order. They
could scarcely be spoken of as judgments at all, for they
hinged upon organic modifications and psychic changes of a
pathological kind, and gave no fixed or definite knowledge
of their immediate objects. On account of these incapa-
cities and limitations all theories of conscience founded upon
them were fatally weak. They had many inherent and
inevitable defects, but want of the requisite universality and
unconditionedness is that by which their inadequacy was
most clearly demonstrated.
If, however, we postulate the presence in man of a
rational as well as a natural self, there is a complete trans-
formation in the character and range of his experience. A
new kind and order of consciousness is introduced. In it
perception predominates over sensation, activity and objec-
tivity over passivity and subjectivity. Moreover, inasmuch
as the conception of the good is just the projection of our
rational self into our practical consciousness, it must share
in the general metaphysical qualities of the reason. So that
when it is held to function as standard in the moral sense
and motive in the sense of duty, the resulting judgments
and perceptions should have the rank and range, the quality
and objectivity of those which formally constitute the pure
consciousness, and are the last basis of our knowledge of
nature. When, however, these objective qualities appear in
activities of conscience they assume a somewhat altered form,
because in them the judgments and perceptions apply to
actions and not to things, to objects which should be but
 OR HUMANISTIC EUDAEMONISM. III

may not be willed, as distinguished from those which are

in existence, whether willed or not. Objectivity, therefore,
as affirmed of the standards and motives which are the law
in conscience means universality in relation to the former
and unconditionedness in the latter. These were precisely
the qualities required in any formal constitution of con-
science.
Let us look at universality in the standard and suscepti- what does
bility to see what it must be held to imply. inthe former
In the first place it points clearly to an omnipresent io ee
an 5 resent ac-
activity of the moral sense in all men, as men upon every Hvity ofthe
occasion of willing. That is to say, according to this theory aba
the rational and sensitive capacity which qualifies us for
recognising and feeling a moral distinction in act or motive
must be a characteristic of mankind universally, and must
be active without fail during moments of choice or willing.
If it could be absent in any man then it would be a par-
ticular standard and susceptibility, and not the ultimate law
in the moral sense which must be present and active in all
men as such.
Is this sweeping demand met by the distinctively
Rational Theory or Humanistic Eudaemonism?
It must be admitted that the satisfaction of this require- rhe theory
ment is made comparatively easy in its case by the high possine
ground it assumes from the first. It postulates the posses-
sion of a higher self by each man as one of the conditions
of his complete humanity. Wherever, therefore, that is
absent there is nothing more to be said. Without a true
rational self there is only an animal consciousness, and moral
qualities are never given in animal sensation. For such a
being, therefore, moral distinctions and demands must be
non-existent. But with the presupposition of a higher self
there is a distinctively rational consciousness in each which
is by its very nature as objective, the common characteristic
of all. If it is distinctive of man as compared with other
creatures, it is the badge of a common humanity as between
man and man, and in both of these respects it is better fitted
 112 THE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY,

than natural instinct to be the basis of the formal univer-

sality and unconditionedness required in the law of con-
science.
{b) Impar- But even if there be a community of rational nature
tiality in
judgment between men as men which makes an omnipresent conscience
conceivable, something more than this is implied in the
and sensi-
bility.

universality of the moral law. It must be the same as to its

form for men in all times and places, and bear equally upon
all in so far as all are essentially alike in nature and relation.
Does the higher self as we have defined it satisfy this
further requirement or this further development and appli-
cation of the old requirement? Is it conceivable that it
might be present in every human being, and operative
through the moral sense and sense of duty upon willing,
while still unfit to be the foundation of that perfect impar-
tiality of judgment which makes the judicial conscience a
possibility in man? Though a higher self in some respects,
might it not be essentially one-sided or capricious and self-
contradictory in its emotional judgments and perceptions?
Like the social self it might apply one standard to kindred
and acquaintance, and a contrary one to foreigners, or be
hopelessly erratic in other particulars. Is it or is it not ?
Does it rise above the limitations and imperfections insepar-
able from instinct, and does it do this in virtue of its con-
stitution and not by accident of circumstance or relation?
It was part of the vital strength of the social instinct that
it should set one society against another, though it helped
to keep the peace between individual members of the same
society. Is the superior impartiality of the higher self
anything more than this? We shall see.
This is also ' In the first place, it implies in the agent a distinctively
provided for
with the rational form of consciousness as well as a special kind of
higher self
as law. sensibility. An objective standpoint is therefore secured for
every human personality. It may be little more than
potentially present, but it is there and may be made good
against all the hindrances of instinct and the perversions
and distortions of passion when the requisite social and per-
 OR HUMANISTIC EUDAEMONISM. 113

sonal conditions are given. By this objectifying conscious-

ness we are put in possession of new standards and motives,
so that willing may be judged and estimated in opposition to
the promptings of instinct. Through the spontaneous and
persistent activity of reason in successive generations of men
the dead weight of custom and tradition may be lifted, the
tyranny of communal opinion may be broken, tribal morality
transcended, and irrational sympathies or antipathies over-
come. For it is of the very essence of reason to look over
larger and larger areas of human experience and aspiration
in proportion as the horizon is extended by personal culture,
accession of mental strength, and diffusion of social progress.
Its spontaneous and ever-recurrent activity in the emotional
judgments and demands of conscience enable these higher
and wider views of duty to be given effect to in willing.
Finally, it must be borne in mind that the reason active
in criticising and controlling our actions is not like an in-
stinct—one capacity and power alongside of another. As
self-consc ious it is supreme whether it uses or abuses natural
instincts, and it is generically different from them in quality
or the complexity of the relations which it apprehends, and
in objectivity or the comprehensiveness and range of its
judgments of obligation. It is through these superiorities
that it is able to correct the aberrations of instinct, and to
be the purest and most perennial fountain of justice in
human nature. Equality of judgment in the last resort
reposes upon that equality of consciousness which is the
minimum rational endowment constitutive of humanity.
But unconditionedness in the motive and impulse of the te meaning
ss
uncon-

sense of duty is as necessary as universality in the standard aitionedne

sense. The one indeed is andimpulse.
and susceptibility of the moral
only another form of the other. They are true correlatives.
By unconditionedness we must be held to mean that the
and
motive or impulse of duty is not dependent for its power
ng really extrins ic to
authority over willing upon anythi
‘That is, its obligatoriness is absolut e inasmu ch as it
itself.
of any conditi on not
is not contingent upon the presence
H
 114. THE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY,

capable of being regarded as an integral part of itself. This

is a stringent test. Can it be met by the formal constitu-
tion of activities of conscience which this theory puts
forward.
With the Relying upon its indispensable presupposition as to the
presence of a
rational self presence and power of a higher self in each, it argues that
in man, un-
conditioned we can never be at the mercy of instincts. We have con-
motives and
impulses are nate capacities and powers which put consciously before us
given.
objects and interests other than those that appeal to the
instinctive nature. We have thereby a common good which
consists in the realisation of higher and wider ends and aims.
The authority of these over the will is not dependent upon
sensible pleasure or the outward occasions of it. There are
pains and pleasures of the higher as well as of the lower
self, and the former, as intrinsically superior in quality,
are felt to be obligatory, whether or not the latter are also
present.
But the pains and pleasures of the rational self find expres-
sion in the emotional judgments and sentiments which are
never absent and never inactive in any one during free
willing. Hence no men have been so entirely the creatures
of instinctive feeling that they were compelled to make it
the guide and rule of their actions. There must have been
little realisation of the higher capacities in the earliest men,
but in willing they need never have been, nay, could never
have been, wholly determined by merely animal wants and
impulses. These—and the hopes and fears connected with
them—could never have led to genuinely free or self-
determined willing, except through the medium of objects
and interests essentially one with those of the rational self.
In this relative independence we come upon the key to the
unconditionedness of motives and impulses of duty under
the Distinctively Rational Theory or Humanistic Eudae-
monism.
To man’s rational self are ultimately referable all the
characteristic phenomena of moral feeling and judgment.
Jt is the presence in us of this higher selfhood which gives
 OR HUMANISTIC EUDAEMONISM. 115

its peculiar quality to all the pleasure or pain we experience

on account of willing. Only the reflex activity of such
a self lends to social condemnation its irremovable sting, or
to unselfish aspiration its irrepressible stimulus. If the
lowest and most limited type of man still feels that bitter-
ness which as barbed we call remorse, it is because—go as
low as he will—he cannot be less than a man, cannot shake
himself free of the haggard consciousness of his rational self-
hood manifest in conscience. Similarly it is the same self
which makes the simple approval of the moral sense possess
upon rare occasions the power of lifting him who earns it—
if only for the millionth part of a moment—into the sphere
of the unconditioned. In that pleasure in which “the soul
passes into a higher perfection,” he receives the foretaste of
an all-expansive and unalloyed felicity.
But at : the . end of all this reasoning and exploration: it based objection
upon
may be said with some measure of truth that we have given the formal-
O . : ity of the
only a technical and academic solution of the problem of expianation
: : of the ulti-
the law in
:
conscience. The real and full nature of “right” mate nature
and “wrong,” and “ought” and “ought not,’ remains as Cae
mysterious as ever. We have only interpreted them in
terms of the rational self. The good being the satisfaction
of the higher self, that which furthers it is right and obli-
gatory, and that which hinders it is wrong and forbidden.
Can we reduce these still more and explain them in terms
of pleasure or perfection, utility or happiness ?
Before attempting to return an answer we must recall to no otner
the reader’s remembrance the fact that it is the formal con- ins aie!
stitution of the activities which we have been toiling to ci bo
reach, and it is this only that we profess to have found.
According to our view it is the Distinctively Rational nature
of man which is the ultimate constitution and Humanistic
Eudaemonism which is the final end of these activities.
This is the answer from the standpoint of analysis.
We tried in this chapter to make clear what we mean by
speaking of moral good as a good of reason rather than of
sense, but when we ask what it is in itself we are at a loss
 16 THE DISTINCTIVELY RATIONAL THEORY,

for a full answer. It is one of our connate conceptions, and

although it may be distinguished analytically from others
such as the conception of the beautiful, it cannot be reduced
to elements more simple than itself. That is to say, as
to its form it is unanalysable, and is capable of being
adequately described only in convertible terms.
Explanation A word or two of explanation must be given as to
‘sti Eudee- Humanistic Eudaemonism which has been accepted as the
pont a? final end of the activities of Conscience.
tovscinee, It can be taken to mean Human Blessedness or the
higher happiness and wellbeing of mankind. The adjective
humanistic has been used to bring out four things—first,
that the kind of happiness which is the end of good willing
must be such as can be shared by all men as men, though not
by any creatures lower in the scale of rational endowment ;
secondly, it must be capable of being enjoyed by all without
detriment to any; thirdly, entrance into and continuance in
it as a state or condition of being must be coincident with a
rise in the purity and tenderness of moral sense as well as in
the height, range and strength of the sense of duty ; fourthly,
as a happiness of reason it must be capable of indefinite
increase when these conditions are attained.
Thelawin The law in conscience is thus man’s true and proper
aes rae being as rational appearing in judgments and sensibility as
peng ass a potentially universal standard and actually unconditioned
ca motive for his free or self-determined activity. The univer-
sality which it yields contains the elements of true indi-
viduality, and the unconditional necessity of which it is the
exponent, is consistent with and implied in the truest
freedom. What is commanded by it must be done in virtue
of its end, and in spite of opposing inclination or desire.
We find ever in the best literature as well as in common
speech judgments by persons expressing pleasure or dis-
pleasure with their own character or conduct according to
its moral quality as good or bad in itself as well as in re-
lation to some more ultimate good. This is the law work-
ing in the moral sense. With its decision there is incorpor-
 OR HUMANISTIC EUDAEMONISM. wy,

ated a sense of personal obligation to the right and good,

together with a parallel repulsion from the evil and wrong.
And these two great and ultimate forms of moral experience
are said to be those activities of our higher human nature
known as conscience.
 SHCTION B.

MATERIAL CONSTITUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE

AND SENSE OF DUTY.

CHAPTER I.

DISTINCTION OF THE MATERIAL FROM THE FORMAL

CONSTITUTION OF CONSCIENCE.

In so far as the analysis is concerned, a solution has been

found of the principal problem connected with the activities
of conscience. They are discovered to be due to our
possession of a distinctively rational or self-conscious
nature. Not by animal instincts of self-preservation, or
of social sympathy, but through the presence in each of
us of a rational self, we are face to face during moments
of willing with an emotional judgment of rightness or
wrongness, and a motive and impulse of moral obligation.
With a self, as complex and comprehensive as that of the
most elementary man, there is given the conception of a
good higher than sense, as well as some sensibility to it.
These provide in every moral sense an ultimate standard
and susceptibility, and in every sense of duty an uncon-
ditional motive and impulse.
A distinction now requires to be established between
conatibaiion the constitution as formal and material.
We have already—in a previous chapter—tried to lay
bare that in us which constitutes conscience, formally or
ultimately. It is the presence in man of a rational as
well as an animal self. As part of its essential constitu-
 CONSTITUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 119

tion, human reason or the rational self has a root concep- The concep-
tion of the
tion or category of the good for man. ‘This it brings into good

competition with every other kind of good, coming before

the mind in willing. And since the good, as conceived by
reason, is in quality generically the highest, in range un-
limited, and in obligation unconditional, it ought to be
realised in preference to all lower ~goods of the animal
nature. Moreover, an act recognised as furthering the
realisation of this highest good must be pronounced right
beyond question, and one which ought to be done
absolutely.
We also took account of the special order of sensibility, sensibility to
and the

concep tion
accompanying and vivifying all activities of the
it are the

the good,
of the good in us. There is a susceptibility to
s re-
and an impulse to realise it, which are the vehicle
functi ons of
spectively of the judging and obligating
Coincident with the
reason as practical in conscience.
judgment of rightn ess or wrongn ess there is an emotion
takes its
which emphasises and illustrates it, and also
is, besides,
character as pleasant or painful from it. There
judgment of
a sentiment confirming and enforcing the
obligation. Finally, it must be repeated that these vary-
of the law as
ing sensibilities are the necessary correlative
on of the
rational, and together with it. the presuppositi
and sense of
existence within any man of a moral sense
duty. .
between formal formal
It is at this point that the distinction
con-
stitution
conception and
and material begins to be seen. When the
of, figure as the univer sal standard
sensibility just spoken
nt of rightness
and susceptibility by means of which a judgme
said thereby to
or wrongness is pronounced, they may be
again they appear
formally constitute the moral sense, When
uncond itiona l and unchanging
as a motive and impulse of
or ultima te constitution of
obligation, they are the formal
does the materi al differ from
the sense of duty. Wherein
this formal constitution of conscience ?
the formal con-
The material differentiates itself from
 120 DISTINCTION OF THE MATERIAL FROM

stitution in several ways which cannot now be entered upon.

It will be better to present the chief differences between
the two under general heads rather than in the form of
detailed description and minute registration.
One leading distinction deserves to be noted at the outset.
The material The material is in every case something additional to the
is always
something formal constitution.
additional to
the formal A conception of the good for man as man and some
constitution ;
sensibility to the same are sufficient to set up an activity of
conscience upon every occasion of free or self-determined
willing. But as soon as the activity has thus begun, as
soon as it proceeds from its first principle to these particular
applications, conceptions and sensibilities additional to the
formal constitution are acquired. The formal supplied an
ultimate standard and motive of good for a man as such
together with an appropriate order of sensibility, but the
more the man becomes individualised, the more must the
formal conception and sensibility materialise themselves in
particular directions. So that in addition to the original
conception of human good implicitly present in conscience,
there are added conceptions of the special good for man as
a member of a civil and religious society or as a being liable
to fail in courage or considerateness, honour or honesty,
humility or self-restraint, &c., &e. These particular goods
need to be added to the vague and formal conception of
good in view of marked tendencies in average human
nature to cowardice or cruelty, meanness or dishonesty, pride
or self-indulgence, &c., &c.
viz., some These added conceptions and sensibility take their place
conceptions
and sensi- within conscience under the form of particular standards
Dilities.
and susceptibilities, and motives and impulses. Within
the capacity distinguishing between a right and a wrong,
particular standards of right and wrong in the varied
relations of life come to be formed, and within the bare
susceptibilities to rightness or wrongness particular sus-
ceptibilities to particular right and wrong things are
awakened and developed. The result is the material con-
 THE FORMAL CONSTITUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 121

stitution of the moral sense in any given moral agent. In

like manner within the preceptive power pointing to an
“ought” and an “ought not” in willing, there are formed
particular motives of moral obligation corresponding to the
particular needs of the individual. And lastly, within the
original moral impulse particular impulses are generated
which work in harmony with the special position and
responsibilities of the agent.
In the next place we have to remark that the material which are
additions in
additions to the formal constitution are additions in kind or : kind to the
10)riginal

of a piece with the original. To reason particular rational onstitution.Cc

elements are added, and to sensibility more sensibility of

the same kind. The one conception of good becomes
broken up into two or more conceptions of particular good,
but each of these sub-divisions is of a piece with the original.
The same is true of the sensibility. When we come to
consider standards and susceptibilities or motives and
impulses the like holds good. The right for man as man
cannot be wrong for him as a citizen. What he ought to
do as a moral being cannot be wrong for him as a religious
being. The perception of rightness only needs to be opened
up and filled in to include all right things in harmony with
each man’s conditions of life inward and outward. Similarly
the judgment of oughtness cannot be contradicted but ful-
filled and realised by particular commands or prohibitions.
There can be no inherent and essential opposition between
formal and material good. ‘The latter should be, and in the
last resort must be, the development of the former under
the concrete conditions of actual life.
This harmony between the formal conception of and
of
sensibility to human good and the material conceptions
particular good things and sensibil ities to the same may
not be always apparent, but it must be capable of being
discovered. Implicitly present always, it should be possible
to make it explicitly manifest sometimes. Latent as the
connection may be, it should become patent upon investi-
gation. Though between that which makes ‘conscience a
 122 DISTINCTION OF THE MATERIAL FROM

possibility in any man and that which makes it effective

in each, there may be much variety, change, and develop-
ment, yet there cannot be a standing and insuperable
contradiction.
These bring A third observation follows from that last made. The
intocon- material should not only be a numerical addition to the
inerease of formal constitution in standard and susceptibility, motive
purity and F 5 . ‘ . :
sndlghtin and impulse ; it must also bring with it some increase of
tive judg- purity and insight in the perceptive judgment, and some
caedeees tenderness and objective truth in the_ susceptibility.
en the, Similarly to the sense of duty it should give a corres-
bility to. ponding height and a certain widening of its range or
gether with 5 A, A .
correspond- Comprehensiveness. The degree in which the material
inthesense Constitution will effect this depends of course upon the
“ent ethical worth of the particular standards and susceptibili-
ties or motives and impulses in possession of the conscience
of any given man at any time. In proportion as these are
of absolute ethical worth, they exalt and purify the
activities. Where they fail in this respect there will be
a proportionate deficiency in the purity and insight of the
perceptive judgment and in the tenderness and objective
truth of the susceptibility as well as lowness and limita-
tion in the obligating function.
In view of these facts the importance of the material
constitution can scarcely be over-estimated. Though the
formal capacity and power may be said in a true sense to
be unchanging and unchangeable, its material content of
judgment and obligation and susceptibility and impulse
should be ever changing and enlarging in an upward
direction—improving, that is to say, in quality and range,
A man’s conscience as to its material constitution is always
becoming either better or worse. Under right conditions
and with subjective fidelity to known right and duty, the
moral sense becomes more pure and penetrating, more
sensitive to the finer shades of moral difference, and more
truthful in external relations, and the sense of duty should
be likewise growing higher and stronger, more just and
generous to others, more exacting to self.
 THE FORMAL CONSTITUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 123

Another great distinction between the material and

formal constitution remains to be mentioned. It is partly
involved in the foregoing, but requires to be stated in
different and more apposite terms.
As contrasted with the formal the material may be Therefore in
said to be an acquired constitution. When we postulated egret
a formal constitution we simply stipulated for conscience Leyree
as much rational and sensitive capacity as is necessary to Aibatens. |
make it a source of self-judgment and self-obligation.
This given, all the rest follows under the influence and
guidance of social and religious factors. Now this pre-
requisite is precisely that which is supplied by self-
consciousness, or the quality in a human subject of
becoming more or less consciously an object to self.
Self-consciousness is thus the lowermost limit of rational
endowment which makes it possible for any human
creature to possess a moral sense and sense of duty.
We have pre-supposed this kind and measure of ration-
ality as necessary to humanity, but with it there is also
given those universal and unchanging conceptions which
ultimately capacitate the human understanding for its work
in knowledge and morality. Among these again there is one
which is the specific root of conscience. It is the concep-
tion of a good for man as man which carries with it an
appropriate order of sensibility enforcing and sanctionin g
its determinat ions and deliveranc es.
With this all-important exception the remaining elements
of any conscience are acquired not original. At the outset
of its activities it must be void of any particular content.
There can be no material conceptions and sensibilities
within it. In the moral sense there will be as yet no
standards of what is right and wrong in the special relations
of life, and no acquired susceptibility to such distinctions.
There can be only the bare perception of moral quality and
susceptibility to emotion in connection with it. In the
sense of duty there can be no varied motives and developed
impulses in harmony with the manifold obligations of social
 124 DISTINCTION OF THE MATERIAL FROM

and religious authorities. There will be simply a perception

of moral obligation and some impulse of duty in harmony
with it.
But as materially constituted a conscience must acquire
all that conerete filling in of standard and susceptibility,
motive and impulse, which is necessary to capacitate it for
its work of judging and obligating in the concrete relations
of life. In the moral sense there will be not only a per-
ception of a right and a wrong, but also particular standards
of right and wrong things in harmony with the position and
social relations of the agent. The same is true of the
element of sensibility. There must be not only a suscepti-
bility to rightness and wrongness, but also particular
susceptibilities to right and wrong things. In the sense of
duty there will be many particular motives drawn proxi-
mately from the accepted social and religious authorities. In
like manner the moral impulse to an “ought” and an
“ought not” will be multiplied into acquired moral impulses
as special and varied and numerous as are the every-day
(practical) relations of the agent.
Now of all this material constitution it must be said that
it is gained in experience, though not from it. It is acquired
in the inter-action between the rational self, and willing
under the inspiration of the original and native conception
of the good, and largely through the training and education
of social and religious institutions. This aspect of the
material constitution requires only to be mentioned in
analysis. It will be the subject of the second part of the
next volume, in which the problems connected with the
development or education of conscience come up for special
treatment.
The parallel Before concluding it may be well to indicate briefly the
between this
distinction parallelism that naturally exists between this distinction in
stitution and the constitution and the division previously made in the
the previous
division of activities.
Cbivities,
At the root of the ever-present and ever-abiding activity
of conscience upon the will there is that capacity or power
 THE FORMAL CONSTITUTION OF CONSCIENCE. 125

which is ultimate and original in man. It draws its fitness

both for judgment and obligation from the conception of the
good which is inherent in it. This conception as purely
formal is the basis of the universal and invariable attributes
in the activities. It is never acquired, and it is not lost so
long as the person remains completely human and sane.
As soon, however, as this highly generalised and quite
indeterminate form of the constitution is departed from,
through its coming to have a strict and determinate relation
to a precise context of circumstances inward and outward,
then to that extent there will be additions and acquisitions.
Hence the attributes with which this material constitution
endows any conscience are so far of necessity variable and
particular. For with materialisation of the constitution
there must ever go a certain kind and degree of particularism
and variability in the activities.
Finally, while we have been compelled to break the Finatty the
_ constitution of every particular conscience into two halves sarilypasses
—the one formal, the other material—this distinctionmale m
must not be carried too far. It would be absurd to stiffen °™™""™
it into a rigid and immovable difference in essence.
The two halves do not exist as separate and easily dis-
tinguishable parts within any conscience. At the moment
of its activity the two have melted into the one law,
animating the moral sense and sense of duty. The differ-
ences between them are important, and they need to be
borne ever in mind if we are to have any satisfactory and
coherent theory of the nature of the law in conscience.
But, after all, they are historical and psychological rather
than absolute.
The best proof of this is to be found in the fact that
the formal necessarily and imperceptibly passes into the
material, and thereafter they remain for ever united like
soul and body. So that, however real and valid and
intelligible for reflection their diverse characteristics are,
the diversity is, in practice, lost in the prevailing unity.
If it is no easy task for the ordinary observer to trace
126 CONSTITUTION OF CONSCIENCE.

exactly where the mountain comes to an end and the

valleys begin, so is it equally difficult for the plain man to
distinguish analytically elements in the constitution of his
conscience that can be said to be formal in contradistinction
to those that are material.
 CHAPTER IL.

A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND THE OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT

RATIONALISM.

AFTER accepting reason or the rational self as formally rherejection

constituting the activities of conscience, we find thinkers eel
who agree in this, but deny that there can be any material Reba
constitution upon that basis. They affirm that the moral
sense and sense of duty do not need and cannot take up
into themselves particular standards and motives. or
susceptibilities and impulses additional to those originally
and ultimately constituting them. Their contention is
that empirical conceptions of good and acquired sensi-
bilities to particular good things cannot function from
within any conscience as a legitimate embodiment of the
moral law.
This position differs from our own in many points of
living interest and practical importance. In Part I. we
offered an analysis of the phenomena of moral feeling and
judgment which showed the presence in these of changing
and particular as well as permanent and universal attributes.
It is the existence of changing constituents in conscience
parallel to these variations in the activities that appear to
be denied by the objectors to a material constitution. The
ground of their denial is twofold) They first of all
maintain in general that sensibility can have no part in
the discriminating function of the moral sense, or the
determining influence of the sense of duty, and in the
second place that the activities of these are sufficiently
constituted by that formal conception of the good which
we have found to be invariably present with human self-
consciousness.
 128 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND

The tendency which gives birth to such objections to a

material constitution is visible more or less in every
Historical intellectualist school of moralists. Without going back to
Greece or over to Germany we find it partially exemplified
support.

in the. rationalism of Cudworth, and the intellectualism of

Price. But in these Englishmen it is not pronounced.
There is still some attempt to hold the balance between
reason and sensibility. The one is not swallowed up in
the other as it is in Kant. Even in the Scotch “Common
Sense” School. the two elements are held together in
living unity, though the inner connections between them
are not made very explicit or consistent. In the “incom-
parable” Cousin of the French School we have a disciple of
Kant who does more than echo in eloquent reverberations
the thought of his master. In his thinking, sensibility
holds the place it does in Reid. The late Dr Whewell of
England, and Dr Calderwood, Professor of Moral Philo-
sophy in the University of Edinburgh, have affinities with
Kantian doctrine, though in quite different ways, and in
a degree that does not in the least menace their mental
independence.
After all, the doctrine of the non-material constitution
of conscience is represented chiefly by one great thinker,
but he is illustrious among the most illustrious of all time.
Jmmanuel
Kant.
We refer to Immanuel Kant. By brilliant speculative
ability and superlative gifts of patience and perseverance,
his ethical thinking surpasses in strength and general
interest that of all others—not excluding even that of
Plato and Aristotle. He is nothing if not strenuous, and
the doughty and earnest way in which he upholds his
fundamental convictions is beyond all praise in a writer
of his calibre and upon these difficult subjects. In him
the greatest depth of inspiration and the highest subtlety
of insight appear to meet and blend harmoniously. It
ought to be recognised (as it has not been in England)
that his oracular utterances about the categorical im-
perative may be so interpreted as to chime in with some
 OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT RATIONALISM. 129

aspects of a specifically Christian theory of duty. His

reasonings and perceptions deal for the most part with
highly rarified moral impulses, and the good life as a whole
tends in his pages to be too much enshrined in a mystic
elevation. But when this has been admitted, it remains
to be said that he has vindicated the reality of moral
standards and the power of moral motives with a mastery
of argument and expression altogether unprecedented.
There is the note of genius in all his best work. If the
emotions of the moral sense and the sentiments of the
sense of duty are too jealously isolated from others, yet
who has distinguished with such magnificence of mental
ability conduct springing out of reverence for the moral
law from actions motived by the common desires for health
or wealth, fortune or fame? In this connection we may
justly say that to Kant more than to any other is due the
incontestable dignity and respect which the moral law has
enjoyed in the freest thought of succeeding thinkers.
Notwithstanding these ample acknowledgments and
unstinted expressions of admiration, we have to make
serious deductions from the abiding worth of Kant’s work
in Ethics. There is first his narrow and lean construction
of the function of reason as practical in conscience. This
is an error of judgment which, though easily forgiven,
cannot be lightly forgotten. Worse than this is his
deliberate divorce of sensibility from reason. To tear the
one from the other is to injure both. It raises the latter
to an abstract and empty elevation, while it lowers the
former to a plane of life at which it is apt to be lost
amid the crowd of animal susceptibilities and impulses.
Some may think that this philosopher who sins so
grievously against the natural man is in his heresy more
noble than others in their orthodoxy. In his laudable
desire to make the law invulnerable against the attacks
of Hedonism, he evacuates it of all material constitution
of conceptions and sensibilities, and in order to ground
it upon eternal foundations, he eliminates all possible
I
 130 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND

experiential and sensible elements which he alleged

would leave it a prey to chance and change. Alas that
in so doing he should cut off the connect ion with the
concrete realities of life and imperil the penetra tiveness
of the moral sense and the power of the sense of duty.
It is only a truncated conscience that he can offer us.
Nevertheless, like all great men he brings the antidote
to his own bane, the corrective to his own noxious limita-
tions. The sincere man looking with open vision and
throbbing heart upon the sins, the sorrows, and the wrongs
of humanity, is too much sometimes for the severe and
rigid thinker, with his inheritance of scholastic forms and
metaphysical subtleties. And so with some sacrifice of
logical consistency he retains humanity as end alongside
of a purely formal conception of the law or constitution of
conscience. Again, although he honestly thinks that to
secure purity in the distinguishing moral consciousness
and universality in its obligations he must exclude all
contact of the practical reason with sensibility, yet he
finds feeling coming in upon him again from what appears
to be a different region of our nature. His peculiar
doctrine of reverence is a partial resuscitation of the
sensibilities that he had attempted to scotch in his attack
upon Hedonism. So that on many grounds an examina-
tion of Kant’s positions, both careful and impartial, requires
to be entered upon before we give what we consider to be
the ‘true and necessary material constitution of the moral
sense and sense of duty.
statement ot ©Before doing this, however, the views of Kant must be
the views of . . . .
Kant inso more definitely explained in the terminology which we have
vantbothe adopted. According to our use of the terms, moral sense
and sense of duty have quite other meanings than those
assigned them by him. In some points our connotation is
different from that of all others as befits what purports to
be on the face of it a new analysis of conscience. We have
enlarged the scope of both phrases and made them the
vehicles of our own special view of the activities. This
 OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT RATIONALISM. 131

fact must be borne in mind during the criticism of Kant’s

positions and the endeavour to construct a truer theory to
supersede them. We must again interpolate the remark
that nothing like an account of his ethical theory is to be
attempted. That can be found in any good history of ethics or
general philosophy. We deal with his doctrines only in so
far as the criticism of them contributes to the central
purpose of this analysis.
In the phraseology of Kant the formal constitution of The mora
what we have called the moral sense will be the simple and constitution.
primary consciousness of the law as dividing action or
motive into right and wrong. The susceptibility which we
make the correlative of this consciousness is partially pro-
vided for in his peculiar doctrine of reverence previously
alluded to. This is “an active emotion,” and it is “ generated
in the mind by an idea (or conception) of reason.” It is not
“passive,” and it is not “received from without.” By these
descriptions he seeks to set it apart from every other kind
of sensibility. It is an order of feeling virtually on a level
—if not in effect identical—with that susceptibility to a
right and a wrong which we hold to be an integral part of
the moral sense of every man as a man.
Now, are we prepared to accept this as a sufficient con-
stitution of the moral sense, and are all empirical standards
of right and wrong and acquired susceptibilities in harmony
with them either pernicious as affecting its purity and the
validity of its judgments, or superfluous because of its native
tenderness and truth? If we answer these questions in the
affirmative then Kant is right, if not he is to this extent at
least in error.
Divest the emotional judgment in the moral sense of the criticiemof
2 ee the Kantian
resources, drawn from a living body of standards and position.
susceptibilities, does it still retain its perceptive power,
tenderness and objective truth? How can it? With onlya
formal standard of rightness and wrongness and a residuum
of susceptibility by which to measure deeds and motives
it must lose its diverse powers of perception, its variety of
132 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND

susceptibility both for attestation and remorse, while at the

same time it is thrown out of living touch with fact and
circumstance. How then can it be effective in the particular
relation in which all concrete moral action takes its rise?
Where is its incisiven ess? It has been robbed of its sting,
and “its gall of bitternes s.” Without feeling there can be no
fulness of remorse, no pungency of regret, and without these
no repentanc e, and without repentan ce no new moral life.
In other words, by stripping the law in the moral sense of
its living body of standard and susceptib ility, its life and
activity have been visibly crippled, and even threatened with
destruction. For it is only a spectral existence that such a
disembodied moral sense can lead in the heart of any man
living among his fellows. In such an event there may be
peace within, but it is a ghostly calm, and purity without,
but itis that of a wilderness, not that of a world.
We see that Kant’s sleepless suspicions of sensibility and
expediency have led him too farin an opposite direction. To
save the moral sense from degenerating into a refinement
of selfishness or sociality he would fain dissociate all pleasure
and pain from its activities. This is as impossible in theory
as it is impracticable in fact. The disfranchisement of all
sensibility and the denunciation of all contact with or co-
operation of & posteriori considerations and interests are
fatal to its life.
Nay, how could emotional judgments upon ordinary
human conduct be expressed without any subtle flavour of
liking or disliking creeping in. An affirmation of goodness or
badness in an act is held also to incorporate the person's
own approval or disapproval. To say that the agent
judged is mean or meritorious is still further to involve
subjective feeling in the judgment. The only way to
avoid this will be to have recourse to purely analytical
propositions like the following :—“rightness is conformity
to a universal law” and “conformity to a universal law is
right,” “this act is legal,” “that other is illegal,” &c., &.
Particular acts of theft could not be stigmatised as wrong
 OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT RATIONALISM. 133

even by the sufferer from them, surely the most ludicrous

and ageravating of all inhibitions. Similarly acts of bene-
volence could not be properly appraised, even by the
beneficiaries. Their tongues are tied, and the hottest
feelings of their hearts can only find expression in abstract
terms, and identical propositions. Surely this is a reductio
ad absurdum of the contentions of abstract rationalism
which in its effort to lift moral distinctions above the
variations of experience introduces by intellectual somer-
sault a relativism so pronounced that the judgments have
no real relation to any one or anything.
Besides the impossibility of having upon Kant’s terms a rhe sense of
. 5 : . duty—its
sufficient constitution of the moral sense, there is an constitution
analogous failure to secure the necessary relevancy and aaa Ned
momentum of the law in the sense of duty. According to
Kant the sense of duty will be adequately constituted by
the simple and primary consciousness of a law of uniform
and unconditional obligation, together with a feeling of the
necessity for the immediate and unreserved subordination of
the will to it. That is true so far as it goes. There are
all the elements which we have already marked out as
necessary formally to constitute the sense of duty.
Can such a bare and meagre constitution of motive and
impulse capacitate the sense of duty for its ever-recurring 1s it sua-
work of regulating and rectifying all willing? We do not fi
deny the undoubted validity of its claim of right, but has
it practical ability? We do not question the amplitude and
weight of its authority, but has it within itself or at its
disposal that variety of impulse and strength of sentiment
which are technically necessary to control the will? There
is no limit to its range of unconditional obligation, but has
it that pointed and particular reference together with that
preceptive power of the inreaching and influential kind
which fit it to govern the will under all stress and strain of
temptation from within and without?
How can it. The law is to have Has it within
no support whatever itself
. . : the
from empirical motives or sensible impulses other than variety of
Shas
 134 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND

moral im- the reason-generated sentiment of reverence. This is one

pulse and
strength of of the primary postulates of abstract rationalism. Now,
moral senti-
ment techni- does experience show that reason, though ultimately con-
cally neces-
sary ? stitutive of our conscience, is yet sufficiently powerful in
its practical opposition to the wrongful indulgence of
appetites and desires? Do men in general sacrifice even
a pet preference because of considerations of an abstract
kind apart from every concrete end in which it can be
represented, and in which they have an interest. Are
‘violent passions checked or controlled by such abstract
demands as those associated with duty for duty’s
sake, and that even at the moment when they tend to
hurry us into evil courses? Calm and high appeals of
reason, unaided by the ends of real life, are too weak to be
effective in the midst of turbulent impulses to headlong
indulgence. To be practically powerful, they must find
auxiliaries within our nature and inducements outside of
it in the social environment. The law must not remain in
the blue air if it is to make headway against either grossly
carnal or highly cultivated egoistic tendencies. It must be
able to work through fears and hopes of the higher kind.
It must enlist in its service the affections, religious and
social. The lions of appetite and passion can only be
chained by these means in ordinary men. It is true
that the atmosphere of idealism—of what ought to be—
must for ever surround the impulses and sentiments of
duty, but to pitch their average preceptive activities
too high amounts in practice to a sublimation of them
into empty unrealities.
The concrete This general strain of reasoning receives ample support
conditions
under which when we consider more closely the concrete conditions
conscience is
active in under which conscience is active in each person. The most
each must
be taken cursory view of man’s nature as a moral being and a member
account of in
answering of society makes it plain that virtually the individual is (as
the above
question. it were) the spiritual centre and living unity of a bundle of
tendencies, high and low. We may rate his power of self-
determination and self-legislation as high as possible, but
 OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT RATIONALISM. 135

the insubordinate and eruptive activities remain to be dealt

with. We know that each man from his creaturely nature
is moved, especially at certain stages in the evolution of his
organic life, by bodily passions and instincts requiring to
be regulated and purified through conscience before they
can be legitimately indulged. Moreover, as born in and
descended from a social race, he is impelled by desires for
praise, for external honour, for power and property, each of
which must secure the sanction of conscience before it can
be lawfully given effect to in practice. Even when we
regard man as an intellectual being, seeking consistency in
his knowledge and some understanding of his relation to
reality, both natural and historical, that department of
his self-activity requires also the judging and directive sur-
veillance of conscience.
Now, if pure reason, as practical and the sole law in sentiments tmpulsesand
conscience, has to stand outside of all these impulses, the which may
task of judging and governing them is beyond its power. ee
If, for example, there were no rational and moral as well as senseofduty
irrational and immoral gratifications of the appetites, then PER
ters.
must they be for ever lawless and erratic, The instinct of
self-preservation has a right as well as a wrong indulge nce.
Fear of pain may not be always selfish, for-its moral character
varies. It may be adopted as an instrumental impulse in
the sense of duty. So is it likewise with the propensions
subserving self-propagation. Honour (also a social impulse)
is higher and better than the appetites, and therefore may
appear as a moral impulse over against their indulgence.
to
Again, there is love of a good reputation for fidelity
The latter is a self-respecting impulse in the
engagements.
sense of duty, and it might conceivably work in counter-
action of many lower desires. The moral quality of the
er of
love of praise is determined largely by the charact
those from whom approval is expected. As a desire for
society,
respectability or a fear of incurring odium in general
the most common and powerfu lly opera-
it is certainly one of
of duty. When oppose d to some
tive sentiments in the sense
 136 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND

motive more worthy, it might, however, appear as immoral.

The excessive desire of social approval is apt to generate
cringing, or to feed vanity and undermine a manly independ-
ence of action and opinion. In all such instances it would
be rightly condemned. The desire for power and property
are often strong in the strongest minds, and they have
moral as well as immoral functions to fulfil in the economy
of human nature and life. The high use as well as the
abuse of the intellectual impulse towards unity and con-
sistency in our ideas is also too obvious to need to be
dwelt upon.
Tf their
assistance
How helpless must the sense of duty be in any human
must be re-
jected, then
creature if it cannot take up into itself and use these im-
the sense of
duty must be
pulses in their higher applications? What chance could
somewhat
helpless.
its commands and prohibitions have of securing a career
within any person’s life? To hold aloof from an alliance
with, or an activity through these, would be resting the huge
pyramid of human obligations upon its point and not upon
its base. Ifthe sense of duty could never fight the lower
inclinations and desires through and by means of the higher
affections and impulses, how could conscience possibly come
to its own in man? If it had no other leverage in our
nature than its formal function, how is it to effectuate
itself in willing against the unruly nature? Unless it
had found some allies in our higher sensibilities, the reign
of pure reason as practical in the moral law must ever
have remained most shadowy and ineffectual.
Kant's
formalism is
For what is implied in this excessive formalism of Kant ?
excessive. Is it not that the categorical imperative should command
and that we should. obey ? Obedience is the first and sole
requirement in reference to the sense of duty. But
deprived of all the ordinary motives that lead to obedience
in men and women, how is it to make good its command
in the actual moment of willing? The sentiment of
reverence before the law is too feeble by itself. If it
cannot be re-inforced upon occasion by the fear of a
righteous God or the love of goodness in any man, it
 OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT RATIONALISM. — 137

will be a pulseless sting with little motive force in it.

Bereft of all support from the impulses which are the
strongest and most constantly operative in the hearts of
men and women seeking to live the good life, the sense
of duty must languish. If the law is to draw its strength
and power over the will exclusively from a formal or
ultimate source, then farewell to morality among men,
it will be found only among angels. Such terrible
rigorism might well provoke the gentle satire of Schiller
for it stultifies itself. Striving after a superhuma n per-
fection, it fails to meet and satisfy human want and
weakness.
After this argument it may seem superfluous to add its effectsin
that if only the naked form of the law could function in seal :
particular consciences, then the greater, if not also they
better part of the whole human race would be consigned
to the limbo of immorality, which is another expression for
Kant’s pit of heteronomy.
Seeing that acting from sensibility is not alone the
peculiar privilege of the fair sex, but of many men in the
majority of instances, the acceptance of such a sweeping
criterion upsets all commonly accepted notions. The
impulses of gratitude to some real and living being, and
the actions springing from the love of God or of humanity,
are surely not to be tabooed because they have concrete
ends and objects to realise. Who have more of the higher
human nature than other men? Is it not the race of
poets and prophets and saints, and do they not act habitually
from such impulses? Moreover, all men within the
spheres of the family or the religious life may and ought
to allow themselves to be led to dutiful actions by deter-
minate affections. Towards children we are parental,
towards the Supreme Being we are reverential. If “the
light that leads astray is light from heaven,” men’s
passions must ever be badly shepherded by their con-
sciences. If acts that have actually existing ends, and
wrong in
spring from motives of the above order, are
 138 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND

principle, then the system of morality which results must

be fit only for a race of celibates and cynics.
But do the But at this point there may be a disposition to revert
requirements
of univer. to earlier admissions. We may be reminded of our own
lit d . . oe
nncondition- Statement that universality and unconditionedness are of
ammeral the essence of the law in conscience. If these can
fnaamss be secured only through such formalism—only through
ore the law in conscience being empty of particular conceptions
and sensibilities, then the abstractly rational theory must
be accepted as true in science, however impotent and
harsh it may appear in practice. The only way of escape
from such a dilemma is to discover and defend a kind of
universality and unconditionedness which may harmonise
with the material constitution of the law in conscience.
Differences Now certainly to be universally and unconditionally
padres valid, the law must, as Kant insists, bear equally upon all.
inherent’ But what does that involve? It can be the same for each
recognised, as for all only in so far as all are essentially similar in
nature and relation. If there are personal and social
differences among men, then the law, in order to be ab-
solutely just and impartial, must be flexible, at least to
the extent of recognising differences that are essential to
and inherent in individual human nature and life as such.
In short, we must acknowledge that, in order to secure
true equality of obligation, some inequality of obligations
may hold good. To exact strict conformity with a law,
cast-iron in its inflexibility, would be as inappropriate as
it is inapplicable to living beings that are not wholly
under the fixed and rigid influence of physical necessity.
Such a mechanical conformity is exigible only from
machines, animate and inanimate, and not from men.
Only a creature moving monotonously within a beaten
round of duty, like a mill-horse, could be subject to such
a law.
Individual men are in many important respects different
in nature and situation. The essential unity of our species
is not menaced by the mental and moral inequalities exist-
 OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT RATIONALISM. 139

ing among men, but it must modify our view of the law in
their consciences. With a common nature, the whole of
which exists in every man, there are by no means inap-
preciable variations in the proportion in which its qualities
and endowments are distributed in each. For example,
though human nature is one, the difference of sex comes as
near as anything can well be to a radical difference.
Varieties of temperament are real enough, though far less
noticeable and important in a moral regard. Racial
characteristics might be added without slipping into the
bog of particul arism, and without merging them in the
ly alluded to. Whilst we retain the
differences previous
real universals, we may admit the existenc e of other pecu-
though
liarities of natural endowment, aptitude, and culture,
they have a limited bearing and perfectly determinate rela-
tions to the moral law as materially constituted.
irrespective ofFf such actual and allowed
Now to subject all persons, for in requir-
2
of a natural
é
kind, to a law which demanded ing unifor-
differences
the Obligation.:
precisely the same duties from each, would be to crush
weak in favour of the strong. The injustice of that need
not be commented upon. It would mutilate much of what,
fruitful
though special, is yet among the best and most
It is also quite contrar y to what
features of humanity.
should be realised . Our
particular consciences declare
with individ ual diversit ies. It
nature has to be unfolded
tations , shadin g off into
is rich enough for varied manifes
Whereas,
infinitely imperceptible degrees of difference.
by crushin g men into a
no end, moral or natural, is served
The resulti ng produc t is artifici al and
dread uniformity.
The moralis ing and
unnatural, without being moral.
to apply the law to
spiritualising institutions which exist
making men what they
life are cer ainly, in part, moulds for
by manufacture,
should be. Yet they proceed, not surely
by education and
and not mainly by instruction, but rather
They are meant to help men by
a process of training.
of moral freedom ,
putting them more fully into possession
have.
and not to destroy the little they may already
 140 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION AND

Differenees There are again other differences than those of indi-

of relation
contempor- viduality. There are varieties of station and circumstance
ary and
historical which we may generalise as difference of relation, contem-
porary and historical. ;
Among living members of the same community, whose
position and functions vary, there are corresponding differen-
tial duties. These change with the changed circumstances
of the same person, or with differences in the social standing
and social responsibilities of different persons. Particular
and determinate duties arise for men according to their
particular and determinate relations. The duties incumbent
upon a son are different from those imposed upon the same
person when he is himself placed in the new relations of a
father. But his paternal duties cannot be determined
beforehand in an exhaustive way. That is manifest from
the fact that not every man is a husband and not every
husband is a father. Indeterminate duty as a conception
is uniform and invariable, but appearing as law within in
response to circumstances and demands from without, some
varieties in the rule it imposes and the motive through
which it works is a necessary assumption.
Unless the law as formal is a fixed demand and totally
indifferent to the particular actions it enjoins or inhibits, it
must widen and shrink within certain definitely assignable
limits. Fora man’s states and dispositions, his self-activities
and responsibilities are continually growing or diminishing.
Fluctuation, movement, and change are universal charac-
teristics of all life, and human life in particular. Sometimes
we are sick, sometimes in health, sometimes sanguine and
rich with troops of friends, at other times dispirited and
poor and solitary. At one time we are happy in the love,
the protection, or the support of others, at another time we
are bereft of all things and persons, and relieved even from
the pleasing necessity of caring for others.
In a somewhat wider sphere the inter-relations between
men are proportionally more complex and varied. Some
are employers, the many are employed. The employer has
 OBJECTIONS OF ABSTRACT RATIONALISM. i41

an employer’s responsibilities in relation to his workmen,

and the employé must fulfil the obligations which are im-
posed upon him by the receipt of material support. So it
is throughout the hierarchy of social relations, the posts in
which are more or less fixed, though the persons filling them
are ever changing. The circle of duties must contract or
expand as the immediate relations and practical responsi-
bilities do. Speciality of position and function everywhere
and always carries with it speciality of obligation.
When the area of our vision is extended in space and also empha-
time the necessity for a particular material constitution of de
the law of conscience becomes overwhelmingly apparent. oe
Whether we look abroad upon the races scattered up ee
and down over the zones of the earth’s surface, or back-
wards in time to the ‘successive epochs in the advance of
mankind or individual men, the need for and the reality of
a material constitution are clearly seen. The one moral
law must multiply itself into many particul ar laws, and
these are perceived to hang together with the actual differ-
ences of relation—conte mporary and _histori cal—peculiar
to the agent.
Theme
Nevertheless universality and unconditionedness can
midst of these differences of mature materia lin
be found in the the interests
phat etheist
and relation, and the rule for its discovery is
special in the motive or im-
already stated. Everything
be concei ved as becomi ng
pulse of duty which cannot
circumstances and conditions inward and |
universal—when
ular
outward are similar—must be finally rejected. Partic
are in the most inti-
material constitutions of conscience
nces indivi dual and
mate and constant relation with differe
no means synon ymous
social, but this relatednesss is by
tory
with the relativity of the right or of the morally obliga
moral sense is as
as such. Each emotional judgment of the
sal judgme nt of
valid for the agent as the formal and univer
It must be follow ed both for its
rightness or wrongness.
it is a means to the realisation of
own sake, and because
the highest good, which is the ultimate end of the law.
 142 A MATERIAL CONSTITUTION.

Similarly each particular judgment or sentiment of obliga-

tion has all the imperativeness of the moral law behind
it. So long as it is a part of the definite material
constitution of the sense of duty it cannot be set aside.
When it is disauthorised it must be on grounds which are
directly deducible from that root-conception of the good,
which is the basis of the activities of conscience itself,
whether as formally or materially constituted.
The extent From the above contentions it will be evident that we
of our agree-
ment and think the excessive formalism of Kant must be mitigated.
disagree-
ment with We do not regard it as essential to his doctrine. It is the
Kant’s
positions. forbidding shadow of which his new and fruitful conception
of the transcendent worth of the moral law is the sub-
stance. We appeal from Kant, the abstract rationalist,
to the same thinker when he proclaims humanity as the
end of the law in conscience, and we say that the whole
range of true human nature and life must in principle
be represented within its material constitution. Whatever
is essential to man and inherent in the good life for him,
will also be implicitly present as standard and susceptibility
in his moral sense, or motive and impulse in his sense of
duty. Kant was justified in maintaining that the law is a
form of consciousness universal and unconditional as
opposed to the instinctive parts of man’s nature that are
particular or limited, but not when he declares that the
latter, even though changed and transformed, cannot be
represented within conscience.
 CHA
Dal ta sidI

MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS AS THEY HAVE BEEN, OR PRO-ETHICAL

CONCEPTIONS AND QUASI-INSTINCTIVE SENSIBILITIES.

In last chapter we were occupied with a defence of

material constitutions. They were shown to be an integral
and authoritative part of the law in every conscience. The
moral sense and sense of duty in each need support from
the standards and susceptibilities, motives and impulses,
common to all. From these, individual consciences draw
that equipment of changing conceptions and particular
sensibilities which specially fit them for functioning within
the varied and manifold relations of every-day life. With-
out this local and temporary content the moral sense of any
member of society—contemporary “or historical—must_ fail
in perceptive power and tenderness and the sense of duty in
the variety and cogency of its motives and impulses.
Material constitut ions are necessary o then to the full rne retative
5 6 A absence of
: and purity and
of conscience 1 any given circumstances
efficiency : rectitude in
kinds of changing and par- thes eonscien-
: : :
relations. Moreover, with all
ticular constitutions subjective purity in the moral sense, tive men
: : . : of primi-
C ° °

and rectitude in the sense of duty, are admitted to be Pana

within reach of every man as a man. There is therefore eo
of
the more need for explaining now the relative absence
rightne ss in the conscie nces of all
objective purity and
members of primitive and pagan societies. While the ethical
and
content has always had a certain historical justification
undoubted validity and obligat oriness for the particu lar
conscience, there is all the more reason why we should
 144 MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS

seek to account for striking differences in its level and

range. If we compare the activities of the moral sense
and sense of duty in successive generations of men, or in
the same man during earlier and later periods of his life,
we are compelled to seek some explanation of their
differences.
To do this Tn order to arrive at this, material constitutions must be
constitutions a little more fully analysed.
material
The conceptions of good (with
as they have
been must the correlative sensibilities) which have been actually in
be more fully
analysed. possession of conscience under different social and religious
systems must be subjected to closer scrutiny, and thereafter
we may be able to supply the key to their defectiveness in
purity and rightness as measured by standards and motives
of absolute worth and unconditional obligation.
Quite recently, under the influence of the prevailing ideas
of Evolution as applied to human societies, anthropologists
have been revealing to us whole strata of moral practices
and habits well-nigh unknown among living societies.
The workers in this field have been endeavouring to do
in a thoroughly systematic and exhaustive way what others
before them had tried to accomplish by casual and discon-
nected efforts. In their search for vanished customs and
modes of living, they have cross-examined representatives
of races in every stage of moral and social development;
they have ransacked records, raked up dust-heaps in caves,
and the remains of tumuli. of primitive man. By these
unremitting labours the traditional horizons of history
have been appreciably widened, data bearing upon the col-
lective morality of the earliest groupings of human beings
have been recovered from oblivion, and important fragments
of widely accepted codes of conduct have been preserved for
posterity. Yet the very magnitude or multiplicity of these
results has made it difficult to fathom their final signifi-
cance for any of the great problems of moral philosophy.
In so far as anthropological experts give any opinion, men
so distinguished as Waitz, Tylor, and de Quatrefages, may
be ranked upon one side, while equally representative leaders
 AS THEY HAVE BEEN. 145

of the school of Biichner or Lubbock or Letourneau are

opposed to them. Mr Herbert Spencer is far more than an
anthropologist. But upon the question engaging our atten-
tion he can certainly be classed as a specialist of the
highest authority. By dint of an encyclopedic mastery of
facts and by an absolutely unrivalled power of suggestive
generalisation, he has conquered for himself a unique
position on this subject. If his magnificent abilities had
been aided by a fuller and better knowledge of the results
of the best German thought upon the native capacities and
powers of human reason, his speculative vision would have
been broadened, deepened, and transfigured, and he might
have remained for a long time the Aristotle of the modern
world.
Now what is the last word of Anthropological research Results of
about the material constitutions that have been in posses- le
sion of conscience? We do not admit all its claims to caries
decide the question. It is too heterogeneous. Its bound- eee
aries are too carelessly delineated. It trespasses too much Parole.
upon the spheres of archzology , sociology, and compara- Timited; @)
tive religion. In consequenc e of these deficiencies , un- have under-
sifted statements and overdrawn conclusions are hidden Scie
away among data better attested; and among inferences
more in the line and within the limits of logical sequence.
But when all these elements of uncertainty have been
specified and allowed for, there still remains in our judg-
ment enough evidence to establish certain of its propositions
in regard to the material constitution of conscience. These
are, that in primitive men and children the standards and
motives of good in the moral sense and sense of duty are
relatively low and limited, and the moral susceptibili ties
and impulses are likewise few and rude in comparison with
our own; and, secondly, that there is a certain evolution
within the material constitution of conscience in successive
generations of men and in the same person during the pro-
gress of life from infancy to adult manhood or womanhood.
Our immediate explanation of these two related facts is
K
 146 MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS

hinted at in the alternative title of this chapter, which

speaks of conscience as materially constituted in certain
Meaning of stages of its life and growth by pro-ethical conceptions and
quasi-instinctive sensibilities. The meaning of these two new-
terms ‘ pro-
ethical’ and
fangled terms is suggested by their construction. Pro-ethical
* quasi-
instinctive.’

conceptions of good are those drawn from the natural or

social or religious sphere, rather than from that more purely
moral. Our nature has these four sides, and all the varied
interests appropriate to them. Though allied, the moral and
religious and social and natural capacities are specifically
distinct. So long, however, as all are alike undeveloped the
distinctiveness of each does not markedly show itself, and
conceptions of good really borrowed from the one can serve
partially in place of those from the.other. Hence, for a long
time religious or social or natural differences work in the
moral sense and sense of duty simultaneously with those more
properly moral ; and when classifications of particular things
—as right or wrong, and obligatory or non-obligatory—
come to be made by any society, all these differences assert
themselves in the result. The code of conduct is framed
according to the conceptions of good appropriate to all
the spheres. In short, the moral has not yet been
decisively distinguished from other forms of good of a
natural or social or religious kind. In like manner, ‘ quasi-
instinctive, as applied to the moral sensibilities, implies
that though the instinctive nature in its leading manifesta-
tions is neither capable of making a moral distinction in
action, nor of formulating a moral demand in willing—yet
indirectly it is visible within the moral sense and sense of
duty as the unconscious egoism of individuals and societies
as well as in other subsidiary ways and secondary relations.
Consciences Accordingly, in a child or in a primitive. man, upon our
and primitive theory, the particular conceptions of good and related sensi-
of children

men are
character- bilities will be characterised by the recognised notes of imma-
ised by all
the marks turity or undevelopedness. They will be extremely simple,
velopedness. indefinite, and incoherent. The good in which the higher
of unde-

or rational self seeks satisfaction will be elementary, if not

 AS THEY HAVE BEEN. 147

mean and paltry, or rude and sensuous. The interests and

occupations of children and primitive men have not the com-
plexity they come to have for the former in mature years,
and for the latter after culture. The moral sensibilities
are likewise less refined and subtle than they afterwards
become. Moreover, religious, natural, and social demands
mingle with and sometimes appear to dominate those that
are properly moral. Difference of creed or natural and
social condition determines largely the number and kind or
class of persons who are held to have moral rights and
claims equal to those of the agents themselves. And even
in reference to all brought by common belief or blood
within the area of the circle of moral obligation, the im-
pulses that are operative are neither numerically so great,
nor ethically so high, as they afterwards come to be. Most
frequently they run along the lines of the sensitive nature.
Fear of punishment by social or religious authorities for
neglect of recognised tribal duties is a powerfully operative
influence. Hope of reward may likewise be present, stimu-
lating to obedience.
With such an undeveloped material constitution, it may Hence prac-
be expected that many moral practices will be sanctioned tioned and
as right and dutiful, which our moral judgment strongly wien
condemns. ‘That is precisely what Anthropology has shown, ae
with quite a superfluity of illustration. It tells of the wide ae
and complacent endorsemen t and approval of such horrible neal
customs as cannibalism, the sacrifice of female infants, the etree:
abandonment of aged or sick relatives, the systematic degra-
dation of women: into beasts of burden or instruments of
appetite, and, finally, of the world-wide and inveterate pre-
valence of slavery. Moreover, it is maintained that these
undoubted exhibitions of a qualified animality, barbarity, and
servility, not only took place on a colossal scale, but that
they were part of the routine life of all societies at certain
stages of social and personal development. That is, they
were elements in, and characteristic of, the material consti-
tution of conscience in the members of an indefinite number
of primitive and civilised pagan communities.
 148 MATERIAL AS THEYHAVE BEEN.
CONSTITUTIONS

The key to In our view, the key to all : such apparent. abnormalities
all these | and anomalies is to be found in the conception of develop-
all these : .

immature ment, The rational or higher self in all such persons is

io ecane relatively undevelop ed. They are men in virtue of their
the rational consciousness of a right and a wrong, and of moral
in the appli- . ° i
cationof
of develop. Obligation in willing, and some susceptibility and impulse in
aa connection therewith ; but their knowledge of what in par-
ticular should be accounted right and obligatory, as a means
to the realisation of the highest good, is lamentably defective
and immature. There is the simple and indefinite emotional
and impulsive consciousness of a right and an ought, but
no adequately definite and distinct knowledge and classifi-
cation of things or dispositions absolutely right and obliga-
tory. Such codes as exist for the guidance of conduct are
dictated and determined by religious and social or natural
-——much more than by moral—wants. The ultimate or
formal moral capacities and powers are relatively unde-
veloped, and the highest and widest principles of right and
duty are not yet either known or obeyed.
But the instincts of self and social preservation are full-
fledged, though the higher self is not. And when the lower
and higher natures come into conflict or competition in
willing, it is readily comprehensible that the stronger should
commonly, and for a long time, prevail. Formally the
higher or rational self is ever supremely authoritative within
the soul, but without the right aids in itself or in society,
how is it to make good its dictates and demands in practical
life? The helps necessary to make the material constitu-
tion of conscience what it should be must form the subject
of the next chapter.
 CHAPTER LY.

MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS AS THEY SHOULD BE, OR CONSCIENCE

AND FIRST PRINCIPLES OF RIGHT AND DUTY.

Ir we look at conscience in the child or in primitive man,

we must admit that its material constitution is both rudi-
mentary and elementary, and its activities infantile and
crude. The particular and changing conceptions of good
within it are pro-ethical, rather than purely ethical, and the
corresponding sensibilities are quasi-instinctive, rather than
distinctively rational. Moreover, at this stage of develop-
ment they are not so numerou s as they afterwards become.
of
Need we wonder, therefore, that the emotional judgments
right and wrong are comparatively few and simple, and that
are
the judgments and sentiments -of moral obligation
relatively low in their motive, as well as limited in their
application.
The ex.
So far we have been dealing with the material constitu- planation of
ped conscie nces and their inferio rities the shorts
tions of the least develo comings0
The explan ation of their shortc omings primitive and
and immaturities. infantile
in a measur e to those of all materia l conseienc es
may also be applicable are applic-
pre- able in a
constitutions in the process of development. No doubt, measure to
lities an in the
cisely in proportion as the conceptions and sensibi
as more NeveeD- :
develop, they become more purely ethical, as well
the inevita ble result. that ”””
numerous and adequate, with
ation disappe ar. So that
the imperfections needing explan
there has been a com-
we have then a conscience in which
in the
parative increase in the number, an enlargement
quality of the activit ies.
range, and an improvement in the
Can this process go on indefinitely until we have—
 150 MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS

Can develop: What we may term—an ideal material constitution, with a

t 3
male have practically perfect moral sense and sense of duty? That
° : . : °
perfectmoral iS an interesting question which we cannot fully determine
tically .

seseof until we have grappled more closely and thoroughly with the
pail past and present condition of the material constitutions, as
well as with the processes and principles by which bad
elements in it become good, and the good better, and the
better finally issue in the best.
Throughout long ages of human history.conscience has
been little developed, even in comparison with the level
and range of its activities in the best men of our time.
Early unde-
velopedness
Tt ig needless to enumerate again the notorious evidences of
ofhigher this in every sphere of human effort and experience—all
self—con-
joined with the more that we are led to expect this backwardness by the
forwardness
a ibe view of its original constitution which we hold, and have
lower. endeavoured to present. Moreover, this undevelopedness in
its material constitution and activities has always existed side
by side with a frequently distressing and distracting forward-
ness of development in the lower nature. This conjunction
in one personality of a fully developed lower with a partially
developed higher self, has led, as might be expected, to the
above-mentioned untoward and anomalous developments,
The lower It is true that the formal judging capacity and obligating
came the power of conscience have never been entirely effaced or
higher by fs
sheer force utterly subverted in any man completely human and sane.
A moral standard and susceptibility, and an activity divid-
ing between a right and a wrong in willing, have always
characterised the moral sense, and an obligating motive and
impulse have similarly been at work in the sense of duty.
Therefore, we may be certain that no raw animal instincts
or froward natural dispositions could have established them-
selves within conscience —the citadel of human personality
—unless there had been previously on its part a betrayal
of rights and obligations. Nay, there must have been co-
operation between conscience and the instincts to this extent,
that neither the bribing nor the betrayal has been primarily
attributable to the pressure or persistence of animal desires.
 AS THEY SHOULD BE. I51

In this particular connection, we may make bold to assert

that the innermost secret, both of sin and salvation, is to
be found in the distinctively rational nature of our selfhood,
which makes it possible for us to be morally free and
responsible, even in the presence of something very like
physical fatalism. Though the marks of the beast are on
man’s forehead from his birth, in his conscience there is a
distinguishing and obligating consciousness which is the
sign-manual of a higher origin and a nobler vocation. And
though wounding and weakening, drugging and demoralisa-
tion, have entered into the seat and source of the higher life
itself, there also can the healing and redemption come.
But the process. of dislodging and disinheriting inferior siowness fof
ey *4e, 8
.
s of good,; and immatu re suscept ibiliti es Prodeing
aisleduing |
standards : and motive
:
; They have become immature
and impulses, is : a slow and difficult one.: Cn terial

rooted in hereditary as well as acquire

°
d
:
disposi tions and. constitu.
tions, and

habits, and been propagated and protected by the intellect, some of the
while the positive principles of right and duty which should emia
-
be the most perfect instruments for expelling and disestab
lishing them have not yet been sufficiently develope d. The
the
natural man is averse to reflection, and in a high degree
slave of tradition and routine ; consequently, these imper-
and
fectly developed principles have long proved impotent
barren. For, while the lower and limiting material consti-
tution is full-orbed and extremely pronounced, the higher
even
principles still exist only in incipient and inchoate and
Long latent, they
unrecognisable forms within conscience.
and in-
do not become active and powerful until outward
growth and
ward conditions are more favourable for their
development.
must be that: which secures the inChief help
Chief among these helps . trans-
: :
ed indirectly upon forminginto
the lower
transformation of the influences exert
p :
sh and the higher.
material constitution by the instinctively selfi
ities must not
instinctively social nature. These lower activ
must be changed,
only be held in check or neutralised, they
, but by the
not by processes of rooting out or mutilation
of the natural into the rational,
successive transmutation
 152 MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS

the rational into the moral, and the moral into the spiritual.
All these phases must be passed through before this dele-
terious influence can be radically revolutionised, and its
weight and momentum transferred to the side of right and
duty, and finally added to that of the standards and sus-
ceptibilities, motives and impulses, that make for the good
life. Other collateral changes must accompany this great
and fundamental transformation.
What are So that the problem of all others for this chapter is the
the means
for trans- discovery of the means for securing most effectively this
forming the
forces of the highly desirable end—the transformation of the forces of the
instinctively
selfish and instinctively selfish and social nature into allies and auxiliaries
social
nature. of conscience. Where are such means to be found?
Kant professed to derive his deduction of the categories
from a study of the fundamental forms of logical judgment.
He believed that they were the ways in which men had
ever reasoned, in proportion as they reasoned correctly. He
thought, therefore, these logical forms supplied him with valu-
able clues to the ultimate nature or constitution of the human
understanding, Similarly, moralists may find in the typical
They are to forms and laws of the good life—according to which men have
be found in
certain first ever lived in proportion as they lived well—some pregnant
principles
underlying hints as to the transforming ideals and principles we are in
the typical
forms of the search of. No doubt, in accordance with our conviction that
good life.
the material constitution has been developed, these standards
and laws, motives and forces, of the good life have also under-
gone continuous and important development. . They could
not have been wholly the same in the consciences of men
living under widely diverse social and religious systems,
but there has been a sameness underlying the difference, a
unity in the multiplicity, and a certain continuity of principle
through all changes of practice. So that as growing and de-
veloping forms of the good life they have survived the most
extraordinary revolutions in human culture, and the wreck
of successive civilisations. They have sunk only to emerge
in purer expression, gone down only to come up again more
buoyant than ever, and so they have truly led a perennial
and superorganic life, neither as bodiless souls nor as soulless
 AS THEY SHOULD BE. 153

bodies, but as living moral and spiritual organisms within the

consciences of men during all the changing generations ; or,
to alter the figure, we have in the principles of moral know-
ledge and practice, that are wrapped up in the typical forms
of the good life, fountains of renewal and regeneration for all
consciences. What, then, are they? We shall only glance
at them in passing, and try to indicate very curtly some of
the lower forms in which they have functioned before they
reached what we believe to be their final developments.
To the primitive man, engaged in endless feuds with his in-
zarlier
neighbours of another tribe, it will be through the principle Lee the
of courage that he can best subdue in himself the paralysing Sine wat :
and demoralising influence of the instinct of self-preserva- fe saerios
tion. The safety and welfare of the tribe of which he is a tenes
member must count for much with him, and he will fear- Te ail
lessly encounter pain to secure it. Evil threatens him in
the most formidable way through the destruction of his
community. For the citizen of a cultivated pagan state
other dangers and evils were more real and menacing.
There was, for example, the loss of health and social repute
through excessive indulgence of appetite in any of its protean
forms. The ruinous thing was yielding to lower impulses,
when the higher should be felt and followed. This made him
exalt the principle of self-restraint or self-control to a first
place. On a still higher plane of moral attainment it
became temperance, or the regulated gratification of appeti-
tive desires. To the Christian, or the members of an ethic-
ally pure and developed religious community, these principles
g
of suppression, or prudent regulation of the desires springin
all
from the instinctively selfish nature, are not enough in
circumstances and conditio ns. They have reached a con-
duty.
sciousness of higher and fuller principles of right and
of these they seek not mainly to
In the light and strength
the self-pre servativ e standard s
neutralise, they must moralise
motives and impulses , and when this
and susceptibilities and
moralisation has reached its highest and most perfect expres-
been
sion, the material constitution may be said to have
 154 MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS

spiritualised. The lower self has been lost that it may be

found in the higher. There has been a dying unto self that
there may be a freer and fuller living unto righteousness.
This is the principle of self-sacrifice. It includes and. trans-
cends antecedent and imperfect principles. For it wars
against and conquers all forms of egoism, as well as the
lower tendencies of individualistic hedonism. In it we
have come, as we shall see, upon one of the first principles
of right and duty.
But self-sacrifice, though an ultimate principle, is negative
Self-rever- in form, and requires self-reverence as its positive counter-
ence and its
earlier evo- part. The lower has to be sacrificed, not wantonly or
lutionary
forms. regardlessly, but solely out of reverence for the higher
self. Hence, self-reverence is a principle of perpetual
significance for the development of conscience.
It too has had an evolutionary history, passing up through
the prudence of the selfish man, the stoic apotheosis of
individuality, and the Platonic worship of wisdom, to the
purely ethical form. It is at the opposite pole from the
overweening self-esteem or overcharged self-consciousness of
the natural man, which is simply a form of self-idolatry.
In Kant’s demand that we treat the humanity in ourselves
and others ever as end, and never as means—and in Hegel’s
central precept that we should be ourselves persons, and
respect others as persons—we have kindred expressions of
this principle.
These two Supposing that the indirect influences proceeding from
principles
revolutionise the instinctively selfish nature, have been, or are in process
the indirect
influence of of being changed and transferred to the side of right and
the instinc-
tively selfish duty by the two principles of self-sacrifice and self-reverence,
nature.
what of the similarly distorting and dwarfing effects of the
social instinct ? By what principles are they to be overcome
and revolutionised ?
Probably the most dishonest and unrighteous man that
ever lived has made exceptions to his prevailing dis-
positions in dealing with some persons bound to him by
strong ties of blood or affection or interest. He has been
 AS THEY SHOULD BE. 155

honest and righteous towards them, It is often said Soctalright-

honesty exists among thieves towards thieves of their own Saal tore
gang; and the most hardened transgressor will hardly prey whichcoun
freely upon his own progeny, although this also is not sii:
unknown. But there can be no doubt that conscience often cae
works towards men outside our class or community or socialnatare.
church or nation in one way, and in another and different,
if not, opposite way towards those within the same social or
religious or political pale with ourselves. It is less ready to
recognise the rights or the moral claims of the former, while
it may be keenly alive to those of the latter. This warping
and limiting influence is traceable to the social instinct.
Of course it is far more noticeable and more markedly
injurious and baneful in its effects upon the less developed
consciences. In them it stunts and deforms the standards
and motives of justice towards the weaker or the poorer or
the less instruct ed members of society. It has hindered
conscience in primitiv e men from crossing the purely natural
boundary line of sex. Women have been degraded with-
out protest from it, and denied equal rights to the fruits of
their labour. They are still everywhere kept out of careers
which they are fitted to follow, as well as branded with a
mark of special reprobat ion for offences in which they are
often less guilty than their partners in the wrong. Similarly,
men captured in war, or their descendants, have been robbed
of ordinary human rights, and subjected to treatment akin
to that meted out to brute beasts. So that natural and
non-moral distinctions between men and women, and men
and men, have penetrated very deeply into the material con-
stitution of conscience, and dragged it down to their own
level, defiling it at the same time.
of
What principle can liberate the moral sense and sense
this thrald om? Nothin g but
duty from such fetters and
us to
the principle of social righteousness, which requires
all other human beings,
recognise the equal moral rights of
us or
without any reference to natural or social or religio
political differences.
 156 MATERIAL CONSTITUTIONS

But social righteousness is, after all, a somewhat negative

principle. It requires as its positive counterpart social
love. In this the most powerful motive will be found con-
straining us vigorously to give to each one his due. For,
what is social love? It is the taking of others into the
sphere of our personality by natural and moral and spiritual
sympathy, and thinking, feeling and acting towards them as
we should wish that they should do to us were we in their
position. Confucius has described it very pithily as that
“rational and constant affection which makes us sacrifice
ourselves to the human race as if we were united with it,
so as to form one individuality, partaking equally in its
adversity and prosperity.”
oo Now, these are the four first principles of right and duty
ciples offer Which we venture to offer, as affording an ideal material con-
Mm idea.
material eon- stitution to conscience. They are the highest typical forms of
stitution for :
conscience. the good life, and as pure ethically
“
as the formal conception of
the good itself with its associated sensibility. Besides their
fitness to be absolute ends in themselves, they are also
(whether taken conjointly or in pairs), the best and most
direct ways of realising the highest good, which is human
perfection, with its correlative blessedness.
This material equipment of moral standard and suscepti-
bility, moral motive and impulse, will also have some special
reference and relevance to the context of circumstances, in-
ward and outward, in the midst of which any moral agent
finds himself. There is in it enough of complexity and
adaptability to secure this without any sacrifice of absolute
purity and unconditional obligatoriness. The perceptions
and decisions of the moral sense, as well as the demands and
prescriptions of the sense of duty issuing out of such a
material constitution, will be of worth and validity, not only
They are C .
frst in the for the particular persons who experience them, but for all
worthanad men in all times and places.
sense, These, then, are the first principles of right and duty
inthe order Which materially constitute conscience, and make it all it
ment.” has within it the possibilities of being, and all it should be.
 AS THEY SHOULD BE. 157

They are last in the order of development, but first in the

scale of worth and comprehensiveness. Though implicit
both logically and vitally in the formal conception of the
good with its correlative sensibility, they are yet long in
reaching their full and final expression within conscience.
In our view, as self-sacrifice and self-reverence, social
righteousness, and social love, they bear all the marks of
completed evolution. Therefore, as a perfect material con-
stitution they are adequate, both in complexity and range
and purity and power, to all that can be required of them in
the varied and manifold relations of man as a member of
society, and as a being liable to fail in the apprehension or
discharge of the obligations which are imposed upon him.
 CHAPTER V.

THE UNITY OF MATERIAL AND FORMAL” CONSTITUTIONS,

OR DYNAMIC SPIRITUALISM.

In the third chapter of this Section we described in outline

the pro-ethical conceptions and quasi- instinctive sensi-
bilities by which conscience is materially constituted when
immature. With such a content of standard and suscepti-
bility the moral sense is relatively low in the ethical level of
its judgments, and deficient both in the quality and quantity
of its feeling for moral distinctions, while the sense of duty
is correspondingly circumscribed in the range of its activities
and heterogeneous in the composition of its motives and
impulses. These are unmistakable symptoms of that un-
developedness through which actions—morally reprehensible
and repulsive to us—come to be approved by the consciences
of primitive men and children.
The conclud- We have one more task to undertake, and one more
ing problem
of this analy- problem to solve, before concluding this analysis. We have
sis is the
question as to show how a formal constitution can co-exist with material
to how these
anomalous constitutions so anomalous and so little developed. We must
and unde-
veloped try to explain how it is that an ever-abiding activity divides
material
constitution right from wrong, and obligatory from non-obligatory, while
could exist
in unity with the particular acts so classified are often quite different from
an ever-
abiding those placed under similar categories by our consciences.
Formal Con-
stitution. We shall further endeavour to make clear how a judgment
and sensibility—unfailing in their ability to discern and
decree the good—can continue to be active during the
existence of successive material constitutions which contain
much that is to us evil and bad. Finally, in regard to
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 159

moral codes descending from comparatively rude and bar-

barous ages, we must admit that many of the requirements
and declarations embody genuine dicta of conscience. When
we bring these into comparison with the deliverances and
demands of the same faculty in us we are surprised by the
differences and contrarieties. How may these inconsistent
and seemingly contradictory utterances be reconciled with
one another? Have they real albeit concealed affinities ? Is
there a unity underlying all the differences between them ?
Are there living strands of unity and continuity between all
past and all present consciences ? If so, are they included in
the conception of the good and sensibility to the same which
we have been able to assign as their formal constitution?
Even after this enquiry has been answered in the affirma-
tive we have still to ask if these diversities of manifestation
could have developed in the course of ages into something
like self-contradictions, or if differences, merely historical
and circumstantial, could by any possibility have grown into
inveterate oppositions of a moral kind.
These are some of the questions suggested by the multi- The multi-
form char-
form character of the constitution of conscience and the acter of the
variability of its activities in persons-widely separated as to consiation
time or place. Moreover there can be no doubt that most variability
of these difficulties are grounded upon real and not imaginary tivitiesare
differences. Of this we have ample evidence. There are
histories of moral ideas and sentiments that illustrate the
changes from age to age and from people to people. Mr
Herbert Spencer, in his Tables of Descriptive Sociology,
marks off columns in which these are meant to be duly
chronicled. The voluminous works upon anthropology by
German scholars like Gerland or Bastian, and the polyglot
records of travel and residence among savage races all afford
confirmation of the manifoldness of moral judgment and
sensibility among the varied races of mankind. M. Ch.
Letourneau in his “ L’Evolution de la Morale ” founds upon
this quite explicitly, and in his exposition treats separately
and successively of such subjects as “La Morale Bestiale,”
 160 THE -ONITY OF

“La Morale Sauvage,” “La Morale Barbare,” &c., &c. Being

a nineteenth century biologist and French savant, he deliber-
ately ignores the metaphysical presuppositions and theological
beliefs which he no doubt regards as the swaddling bands of
less developed minds,
Upon these Reasonings hostile to a F ormal Constitution of conscience
have been have been based upon these varied data. In so far as these
mensfor inferences have had historical rather than philosophical
acentivansen’ premises, they rest upon prior conclusions as to ascertained
of the so- wes ac
called| varieties and alleged contradictions of the moral sense and
stitution. sense of duty. The frequency with which such variations
have occurred, their apparent permanence or persistence, and
the wide areas of human life and history over which they
have prevailed, these have been the main arguments for
rejecting the reality of any formal constitution in such con-
sciences. With such a protean material constitution it is
maintained that a formal constitution could not exist. This
may be described as an argument from the non-moral or
multitudinous character of imperfect material constitutions
to the nullity or abortiveness of the so-called formal con-
stitution, It has always had great weight with minds of a
sceptical and non-speculative cast, and deserves attention on
that account as well as for its own sake.
To answer To destroy any cogency which this species of argument
wilnorbe, may have, we do not need first of all to invalidate the
sitine. various forms of evidence which have been advanced in its
anthropo- support. We might point out—as M. Janet has done—the
recareh, inconsistencies and manifest inadequacies of most narratives
of travel where sacred beliefs or traditionally venerated
practices have to be described and explained, or we might
take to pieces some of the dried skeletons of ancient civilisa-
tions which learned sociologists have put together, and
from which they have deduced revolutionary inferences
as to the moral ideas and sentiments current among the
living populations that have left traces behind them. But
none of these slightly controversial lines of procedure need
be taken. We think we may be able to vindicate the
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 161

reality and efficacy of the formal constitution without

recourse to these methods. For we have to establish, if
possible, a fundamental unity and self-identity in the con-
stitution and activities in spite of all admitted diversity in
their content and capability. To do this we do not need to
disturb the vast accumulations of sociological or anthropo-
logical experts. They may be allowed to stand for what
they are worth. What we have to do is to trace if we
can the conception of the good and the sensibility to the
same in and through all the tangle of low habit and
debasing usage which has been thrown up after most
laborious explorations.
To do this completely the vision of the lynx and the toWe askhavewhat now

instinct of the sleuth-hound would be required as well as inculpatory are the

the more ordinary qualities of the psychological thinker. and standards

suscepti-
But in this analysis the baldest outlines are all that can be the moralin pilities

given, and these will be traced by means of the methods we sense ;

have previously followed. We must begin by asking what
in particular are those standards and susceptibilities which
have debased the activities of the moral sense.
About these there can be little dubiety. When we find
the moral sense sanctioning cannibalism and bestial indul-
gence of sexual appetite we cannot but feel that the
material constitutions which led to these approvals must have
done much to brutalise the moral judgment, and sensualise
the moral susceptibility.
Yet in extenuation of the former horrible practice some
things have to be said. In pre-industrial ages and in com-
munities otherwise totally uncivilised the extremes of
hunger and thirst must have been experienced with a fre-
quency and painfulness now rarely conceivable. Such
social conditions were certainly unfavourable to self-restraint
in eating or drinking when opportunities of any kind were
offered for unrestrained indulgence. It would be too
sanguine to expect elevated rules of abstinence or temper-
ance among persons in their state, especially at such times.
And so the gruesome cannibal feast after victory has imparted
L
 162 THE UNITY OF

to it by these circumstances a certain kind of frightful

reasonableness and conceivability.
Besides the instinctive appetites connected with self-
preservation, there are those which subserve self-propaga-
tion and the rearing of offspring. So that we naturally look
in the moral sense for norms and feelings which regulate the
relation of the sexes in a moral interest and regard. Here
again standards of continence are often conspicuous by their
absence. Where the union of the sexes was long natural
rather than civil, and certain acts of excessive sexual indul-
gence were held to be symbols of divine worship, are we
surprised that temperance was not insisted upon or held up
as right, in a way that we might otherwise expect it to be.
These are some of the inculpatory standards and suscepti-
bilities in the moral sense. In the minds of many they
cast doubt upon the reality of the metaphysical capacity in
conscience to distinguish between a right and a wrong
because they appear to subvert the very notion of the good
as law in the moral sense. Certainly they are calculated to
make thoughtful people ask in an impulsive way what is the
worth of a Formal Constitution which does not preserve the
moral sense from shielding with its approval such
enormities.
or motives With respect to the sense of duty there are certain require-
and impulses
in the sense ments in regard to the rights of others which lie at the roots
of duty.
of its activities. Yet they do not appear to have been
powerfully operative as motives and impulses in the con-
sciences of primitive men.
The first of these imperatives in the sense of duty is that
we should respect the right of others to life. This right is
disregarded in war between two neighbouring peoples through
the action of certain passions and interests which we can
readily understand and appreciate. But where such motives
and impulses are not brought into play, as in the abandon-
ment of female infants and aged and sick relatives, the
action seems utterly indefensible. When taken together
with scalping, a practice of savage warfare, it betokens an
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 163

inhumanity of disposition and callousness of sensibility

which shock us.
Yet there can be no doubt that the motives and impulses
to such acts have been widely operative in men’s sense of
duty—solve the difficulty as we may. The destruction of
female infants has often been palliated if not excused on the
ground that it was necessary in order to check the growth
of population beyond the means of subsistence. But even
after all has been said in support of this view, and due
weight has been attached to it as a mitigating consideration,
it remains true that this was an extremely cruel and heart-
less rule of conduct as compared with the moral impulses
that are expected to sway our consciences in analogous cir-
cumstances. Religious and even humane reasons have been
put forward as abating the harshness and culpability of
abandoning the sick and aged. To persons with our moral
feelings this is an explanation which does not really explain.
Next to the recognition of the right to live, and the con-
sequent duty of preserving human life from wanton attacks
or reckless disregard, we should expect the following require-
ment to be an indispensable part of the equipment of every
sense of duty, viz. the right of others to the use of their
own powers so long as that right is exercised in ways that
do not interfere with other rights of equal importance.
Yet we know that in innumerable societies there have
been usages and enactments directly antagonistic to the
enjoyment of these qualified rights. Property in slaves has
been legal at some time or other in every land. Such slaves
have usually been prisoners captured in war or their descen-
dants. But women have also been degraded in this as well
as in other ways. They have been widely used either as
instruments of lust or as beasts of burden by men who might
be described as their owners rather than their husbands.
The right to live implies the right to the use of our
powers that we may acquire the means of living, and this
latter right naturally carries with it a right to the fruits
of their exercise. But, as is well known, this right has been
 164 THE UNITY OF

either systematically ignored or deliberately violated in all

the less developed societies.
Material Such an indictment of the primitive man’s conscience in
Constitu- ‘i . cas .
tinsin. the two leading forms of its activity appears serious and
conscience , :
have fo sufficiently
leditua condemnatory. But the worst remains to be
e < js S :
sanction in gaid. If the material constitutions that led to the sanction
Faas
the moral é
gene of and support of such practices had been rare or sporadic in
shocking ex- . z j a. te
cessesof their appearance, then their theoretical significance for the
appetite, an
in constitution of the moral sense and sense of. duty would not
ths Rousethere
of duty
have been be great. For we could have no difficulty in persuading
ourselves that a formal constitution existed side by side with
motives and
impulses
When, however, we are satisfied that they were not
which ra
counter them.
to0
e rights
innocent in- exceptional phenomena of the moral consciousness, but com-
mon elements in all consciences at certain stages of social
viduals to
life,tothe
free exercise
oftheir and religious development, we are forced to ask what can be
powers, an
theriené to the real worth of a formal constitution which patronises and
oftheir protects such a content. Can susceptibilities approve and
impulses instigate to blood-thirsty, carnal and predatory
acts, and still retain their full right to be designated moral?
Have not such consciences forfeited any peculiar capacity
to apprehend or power to enforce a moral distinction that
they may once have possessed ? Must they not of necessity
be set down as utterly devoid of any ultimate knowledge
of or feeling for a moral difference in action?
Intuitional- To these and similar questions intuitionalism, pure and
ism cannot
resolve the
oe Sj
simple, can return no H
satisfac tory; answer. Consequently,
diffeulties many sincere and upright minds, nurtured in its principles, are
arising from
eeaceiiee helplessly as well as painfully embarrassed when brought face
facts. to face with these difficulties. In the contemplation of them
they feel as if the very sanctuary of the moral life had been
invaded, its ever-burning light extinguished, and its tables
of holy commandment removed. Or, to change the figure,
the presence in conscience of material constitutions that are
in any sense pro-ethical and quasi-instinctive, seems like a
poisoning of the moral law in its very sources, and a process
that leads to the corrupting and mortifying of the life and
truth which have the purity of these for their presuppositions.
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 165

We need hardly say that in our judgment it is utterly

unwarranted to take this pessimistic view of the effects of
undevelopedness and abnormality upon the authority and
integrity of conscience. It is a conclusion which is without
foundation in the facts of its life, and it is also out of harmony
with the conditions, inward and outward, under which it has
worked and must ever work. With our more comprehensive
and complex theory of its constitution we are compelled to
hold a larger and (we think) a more adequate view. We
distinguish between elements in the constitution and activi-
ties that are formal or ultimate, and others that are material
and derived—thus involving the introduction of the prin-
ciple of development. But with the conception of develop-
ment change and variation come in as a part of all healthy
life and growth in conscience.
So that with us development (technically named Dynamic
Spiritualism) is the solution of the historical and anthropo-
logical difficulties as well as the secret of that oneness of
formal and material constitution which is taken for granted
in the heading of this chapter.
The term Dynamic Spiritualism connotes ideas which are Dynamic
especially true of the development theory when applied to loan
conscience, and these are precisely the elements which make sain
it harmonise better with our fuller knowledge of facts and
processes than the older Intuitionalism. In relation to the
constitution and activities of conscience, Dynamic Spiritualism
emphasises four things, all of which are important for their
comprehension and right appreciation . First, they are by it Itsdefnt-
declared to be in their nature essentially spiritual, that 1s,
they are ultimately made up of metaphysica l as opposed to
physical or rational as distinguished from non-rational con-
stituents. Second, notwithstanding this high origin and
‘composition, it is admitted that they require material or con-
crete support from social and religious authorities if they are
to be and to continue adequate to their functions. Third, in
respect to particular standards and feelings of right and
wrong in the moral sense and judgments and feelings of
 166 THE ONITL YOR

obligation in the sense of duty, it is acknowledged that they

are dependent upon the education and training which the
individual receives from his life in the community, and
especially from the activity and influence of the agencies,
social and religious, which are specially appropriated to these
purposes. Fourth, the relative perfection or imperfection of
the material constitution and activities will be strictly pro-
portionate—other things being equal—to the moral elevation,
range, and general efficiency of these same social and reli-
gious agencies and institutions as measured by standards the
most objective and absolute.
It may be said that this is too drastic a reduction of the
independence and vitality of the material elements in the
constitution and activities. But there is in reality no
logical standing ground between this and the obsolete theory
that conscience exists in each man at birth as a ready-made
full-orbed moral faculty, with stereotyped aptitudes and
abilities, and with its activities independent of social guid-
ance and religious education, as well as incapable of develop-
ment in any other particular. It must have been long ago
observed that such a conscience would be of the nature of a
psychological monstrosity.
Distinction
of Dynamic ,
As distinct from intuitionalism,k dynamic
f 3
spiritualism
‘ ‘
takes
Spiritualism its stand upon the formal constitution as involving in refer-
tionailsm. ence to all free willing, connate capacity or power of moral
distinction and demand in virtue of that conception of the
good and sensibility to the same which are inherent in the
nature of man as a distinctively rational or self-conscious
being. It is in the formal, as distinct from the material
constitution, that it seeks to lodge the initiative and spon-
taneity of the activities, and the universality and uncon-
ditionedness of the law. By these distinctions and limita-
tions which have their roots in our mental nature and
moral experience, the unique dignity, truth and authority of
conscience in the personal life are for ever safeguarded.
Without them nothing would be really gained, and everything
might be lost.
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 167

With dynamic spiritualism we are prepared for every Dynamic Spiritualism

variety of material constitution short of ultimate immorality makes ceivable
con-

or sheer self-contradictoriness. In those constituti ons that are unity in

variety and
relatively the lowest and most limited, the particular concep- continuity
difference;
in

tions of good that go to make it up will be largely pro-

ethical, and the sensibilities quasi-instinctive ; whereas in the
highest and relatively perfect forms we shall come upon con-
crete or material realisations of the good which are also formal
or ultimate. Between these two the variations in purity
and rectitude and tenderness and strength (as measured by
objective standards) must be almost infinite. There will be
degrees of difference in complexity and comprehensiveness of
the constitution as well as in the ethical level and effective-
ness of the activities. There will be differences of breadth
and strength and range in the preceptive power as well as of
insight, responsiveness and penetrativeness in the perceptive
capacity. In these and many other respects there may
therefore be the most extraordinary diversity of attainment
and culture along with an absolutely prevailing unity of
end and activity. For as soon as the law of growth has
been clearly apprehended, it becomes evident that the progress
may be at different stages along all these lines of develop-
ment. Difference and change are therefore inevitable, but
inasmuch as there is a formal as well as a material constitu-
all
tion there will be an order reigning and governing
and
variations in the interests of an ultimate unity of end
activity.
uity both
The best illustration of this unity in variety and contin
of
which are
individual. the moral in
in difference may-be found in the lifetime of any
illustrated

of right lifeowth
In the opening years there are emotional judgments
and
of
and senti- idual. indi-
and wrong in the moral sense, and judgments
every

of these are”
ments of obligation in the sense of duty. Both
of willin g very much as at a later
active in relation to acts
But the young of both sexes live in world s of their
period.
and occup ation s which engag e their
own. The amusements
satisf action are differ ent in many
attention and afford them
intere sts and emplo yment s of
important respects from the
 168 THE UNITY OF

mature life. In harmony with these changes of social en-

vironment and vocation their estimates of good for them-
selves and others change. They undergo proportionate
variations and adaptations. So also do their feelings for the
same. From being childish they become at least manly
or womanly. In other words their standards of good and
susceptibilities to the same vary in number, height, and com-
plexity, while their motives and impulses of moral obligation
enlarge with their minds, multiply with their interests, and
deepen with their attainments. There is so-far a parallelism
between the development of the race and that of the
individual.
But it is But it may be said with some measure of truth that these
evident that
the diver- normal differences of development are nothing as compared
sities and
perversities with the diversities and perversities we have cited. The
cited are
more and former are to be expected, the latter are not. In the nature of
other than
these moral things there cannot be in the moral standards and motives of
differences
of develop- obligation historically viewed, the uniformity and invariability
ment.
which belong to abstract relations. Where the activities relate
to life, and seek to govern individual willing, they must
have some of the variety and change which belong to
these. But this is something quite different from that with
which we have to deal. For the consciences which approved
of the horrid practices singled out by us had apparently little
or nothing in common with our own. Their utterances
appear not only in startling contrast to those of our moral
sense and sense of duty, they run up into what seems point
blank contradictions. If so, surely no difference of mere
development can derive the two conflicting sets of judgments
and feelings from one and the same moral law active in
conscience,
They are the We have reached the crucial difficulty of every construc-
crucial diffi-
culties of tive theory. Can ours surmount it by the aid of its superior
every con-
structive principles and closer adherence to the inner as well as the
theory.
outer realities of moral life,
We shall begin with the more bet: aspects of the pro-
blem. In reference to these there is undoubtedly this to be
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 169

said. Some have concentrated their attention so exclusively these ano-

. Ji
upon these anomalies, that they have lost all consciousness
:
Sree
ties have
of the reigning unities of right and duty. It is frivolous to never been
suppose for a moment that the standards and motives, sus- ey oneal
ceptibilities and impulses covering these (to us) abnormal a
practices, could ever have been the whole material constitu-
tion of any conscience. Along with them in the lowest
men there were norms and precepts, emotions and senti-
ments, enforcing loyal co-operation with fellow-tribesmen,
and mutual helpfulness in communal concerns. Some
personal moral ideas and social ordinances of the same kind
are as much postulates for the existence of any truly human
society as the natural laws of substance and causality are
for the being of the coherent world of outward nature.
But it will at once be said, if there were these for- and they
. : -existed
mal conceptions and sensibilities ‘in the consciences of swith formal
: *y oye,
ti
primitive men, ° how . do they not dagive clearer and fuller
iets anasensi-
. piliti hich
evidence of their existence and activity? If they co-existed pelea
.

with such a highly anomalous content, why did they not gale
actively condemn its manifestations in willing instead of
shielding and sanctioning them?
In all probability this is precisely what conscience did in
the first perpetrators of these horrors. It would register
its protest against them. Some feeling of uneasiness and
a-
unsettlement would be experienced after the first perpetr
There would be an emotional judgme nt
tion of such deeds.
of disapprobati on in the moral sense, and an inhibitory
later
judgment and impulse in the sense of duty. Like
might be overbo rne or disrega rded until,
activities these
tempta-
through some combination of evil within and special
tion without, the act ceased to be common.
but if
Of course it can never be made out historically,
be under taken and carrie d throug h,
such an enquiry could
the origin of such a homici dal and
it would be found that
ted with a
disgusting practice as cannibalism was connec
. Neithe r of these calamities
conjunction of war and famine
al ages and among savage
was uncommon in pre-industri
 170 THE UNITY OF

peoples, but the two coming together probably gave rise to

the first act of cannibalism. On such an occasion the eat-
ing of the body of a slaughtered enemy would still the
ravenous pangs of hunger and at the same time celebrate
the completeness of the victory over foes. Do we wonder if
some primitive man succumbed to the double temptation?
Possibly it would be during the excitement of battle that
the suggestion would come, and in spite of a certain protes-
tation from the moral sense, it would be indulged. Begin-
ning in an outbreak of appetite—intensified and perverted
by the desire for revenge—the first act of cannibalism
would be perpetrated in opposition to conscience and not at
its instigation. The moral impulse and motive would be
overborne by the temptation to satisfy two clamorous crav-
ings that were disproportionately strong in men whose
higher selves were as yet but little realised.
Scalping is a horror scarcely less revolting, for which the
blinding force of hunger cannot be pleaded. It too would
take its rise as a tribal custom during some intertribal feud.
We can readily conceive some ferocious chief, under a
mighty access of passion, signalising his triumph over a
fallen foe by scalping him. It is preposterous to suppose
that for such initial acts the approbation of conscience was
sought before they were committed. It is only a little less
absurd to suppose that they found it, and that the sanction
thus obtained was put forward by the first authors of these
wild deeds in justification of their conduct. Such supposi-
tions would be anachronisms in any history of the growth
or development of conscience. ,
The only The only logical and real alternative to our explanation
alternative
tothisview is one that is quite untenable. When baldly stated it is
the theory that these and other brutalities were natural to
the earliest human beings, and that when the first men came
to themselves they felt motives and impulses originating in
their self-conscious nature, which goaded them upon certain
occasions to make a meal of their own species, murder their
female infants, and maltreat their women and weaker men.
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 171

This hypothesis of an era of unrelieved animality—if to call

it such be not a slur upon animals—is as gratuitous as it is
inconceivable. For whatever may have been the origin of the
human organism, we are (as the result of this analysis) com-
pelled to believe that with the dawn of that self-conscious-
ness which is the presupposition of our humanity, there was
the synchronous rise of activities of the moral sense and sense
of duty. The latter spring from the presence in the rational
or self-conscious nature of the conception of the good, and
sensibility to the same. The fuller discussion of this can
be better conducted in the second volume, where the origin
and derivation of conscience come up for special treatment
according to our method.
If the originals of these and other malpractices had their re rst con-
rise in opposition to attestations and remonstrances of con- dathey
tobe
science, then no more requires to be said as to the existence come
of the Formal Constitution in this connection. But at this rege
point it will naturall y be asked—i f the foregoin g conclusions eg
be true, how did these and kindred acts come to change
their original character and find in conscience authorisation
instead of condemnation?
with-
Many obvious reasons can be offered in explanation
origin
out launching out upon the vast question of the
said at a
of evil, and without anticipating what must be
as the
later stage. Not to dwell upon such minor points
themselves
influence of example and the like, which suggest
conviction that
to the least reflective, we must reiterate our
with-
none of these would have sufficed to effect the change
of the two domina ting condit ions to which
out the presence
al con-
we have already alluded in the chapter upon materi
tions and
stitutions as they have been or pro-ethical concep
quasi-instinctive sensibilities.
must be the two
In the light of what we then saw our contention
of the natural ditions which
that the conception of good in the conscience
of a higher kind oe
man is simple and crude. With few desires
ted to Be
for himself, his moral sense can scarcely be expec not
Moreover,
cherish higher estimates of good for others.
 172 THE UNITY OF

only are his wants of a higher kind few and simple, his
opportunities for gratifying these are equally scanty. His
social condition is primitive, if not barbarous, his culture is
at a minimum, his religion is largely non-moral and childishly
superstitious, his material resources and accumulated know-
ledge are also most meagre. Can we wonder that the
coarsest habits should take hold upon him, and that the
most abominable practices should be so transformed in his
blinded and darkened judgment that they become part of
the common good of whole communities or~peoples.
Of even greater influence than this want of insight into
the true good and susceptibility to it would be the extremely
limited range of his judgment and impulse of moral obliga-
tion. Towards members of his own family or commune he
might be dutiful enough. For he would recognise that
adult males in it had rights similar to those he claimed for
himself. This would be about the extent to which the
light of his conscience, as formally constituted, would carry
him. Hence, to all outside of the above circle, he would
think it right to conduct himself differently. For his sense
of duty, at that stage of its development, would run pretty
fixedly on instinctively social lines. Above these it could
rise only slowly and under the influence of extended concep-
tions of personal obligation, and the formation of new ties,
religious and social.
Primitive
men are In fine, the primitive man is like an adult baby. Mor-
adult babies
—morally ally a child, physically he is a man. In his infantile con-
infants,
though
science there is a constitution, though as yet it is formal or
physically
men. unrealised. Its perceptive power is at a minimum, though
perfectly adequate to the vision of a right and a wrong for
him. The moral susceptibility is likewise at the beginning
of its life and activity. Similarly, the preceptive judgment
is so contracted that it fails to recognise the rights of any
outside a limited circle, and his moral impulses are equally
crude and curtailed. It is in these and other respects that
the primitive man may be said to be morally like a child.
Physically, however, he is a man—full-grown and
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 173

vigorous. The animal instincts of self-preservation and

social sympathy are present in rude strength, and the
susceptibilities and impulses springing from them are
intensified and magnified by the self-consciousness that
checks their operation within personal life as mere instincts.
Now with his baby conscience and developed organic
nature we have the main conditions supplied for the long
continuance and wide prevalence of the savage material con-
stitutions that occasion perplexity to some of us.
If it should still be asked why the underlying unity of perfect Also the
prin-
formal and material constitutions has been so slow in assert- ciples of the
material
ing itself by changes and improvements in the latter, a full constitution
were long
answer is scarcely possible within the limits which we have in being
discovered.
assigned ourselves. Nor would it be altogether appropriate
to the purpose we have at present in hand, viz.: the analysis
of conscience. Let it suffice that we point to the four first
principles of right and duty which give conscience a rela-
tively perfect material constitution. How slowly did the
principles of self-sacrifice and self-reverence, social righteous-
ness and social love evolve. How many ages passed before
they were even discovered to be necessary to the health and
vitality of every conscience, and how imperfectly have the
institutions and agencies wrought which should give currency
and conquering force to them.
Moreover, we have always to remember that anomalous Other con-
siderations.
material constitutions, like all parasitical growths, die hard.
There is a kind of solidarity in evil as well as in good,
though it is a dwindling one. Against inferior standards
and motives in conscience, superior make slow headway.
With the incubus of social and religious institutions that
have become the foster-mothers of antiquated and outworn
ideals, the new and better material constitution is seriously
handicapped in its struggle for supremacy. Threatened
norms live long, and superseded codes of conduct survive
after many movements of reform. Moreover, we know how
averse primitive men are to reflection and comparison, how
opposed all their habits are to independent mental exercises.
 174 THE UNITY OF

It is these things that make them what they are—hidebound

slaves to traditional authorities, and they also help us to
understand a little the tardiness with which the higher
thrust out and overcome the lower standards of right and
motives of obligation.
Thepresence But the best proof of the presence and activity of an
and activity
of an ulti- ultimate perceptive capacity and preceptive power is to be
mate percep-
tive capacity found in the fact that the changes in the content have fallen
and precep-
tive power out in the direction of a progressive assimilation of the
are proved
by the ever- material to the formal constitution. The moral standards
growing
assimilation have become purer, and the moral susceptibilities more
of the
material to numerous and responsive, while the circle of moral obliga-
the Formal
Constitution .tion has tended to become more and more comprehensive,
and the impulses of duty more frequent and strong.
Some may still say that the rate of progress is so slow
that it is scarcely perceptible. In regard to this, it must
ever be borne in mind that, though conscience is the highest
activity in us, it is never the whole of any man. Nowhere
have men been mere “walking consciences.” Its deliver-
ances and demands when they rise above the common level
have to be realised with difficulty and against opposing forces
within and without. Moreover, though its activities are
potent they are never omnipotent. They are always liable to
defeat, and as moral and spiritual they cannot be expected
to conquer by sheer mass or quantitative force.
And if the standards and susceptibilities were long low
and elementary in the moral sense, are we not likely to be
regarded by those who come after us as acting according to
estimates of good that are by comparison with their more
perfect ideals singularly imperfect and inferior. Similarly
the motives and impulses which have a chief place in our
sense of duty are likely to appear to our more enlightened
descendants absurdly narrow and contracted. It is a position
analogous to theirs that we occupy in regard to the chief
problem of this chapter.
When we look back from the heights of our comparatively
exalted and all-embracing conceptions of right and duty, »
 MATERIAL AND FORMAL CONSTITUTIONS. 175

with their correlative sensibilities, we are apt to see things

from an inverted standpoint. We turn all activities of
conscience upside down, and then wonder that its contents
should appear so awry. Judging from our centre and our
norms there are all manner of eccentricities and abnormali-
ties. But let us try to draw the circle of rights and duties
as nearly as possible from the centre and norms of those whom
we are criticising, and then we shall see the eccentricities
and abnormalities slowly disappear—falling into relations
harmonious with the whole context of circumstances and
conditions inward and outward. In reality the judgments
of a right and a wrong are universal and relatively invaria-
ble, and the circles of obligation are uniformly concentric
and unconditional, it is only the particular classifications of
right and wrong things within communities and the parti-
cular circumferences of the circle of our duties which vary.
4

THEOLOGY LIBRARY
CLAREMONT, CALIF.
SY am So) Ea f
 ao
Pe

td

we)
ie a c/a
< ae
 .
Robertson, Joseph Drummond
e; an ess ay tow ards a new analysis,
Conscienc
nt of conscience.
deduction, and developme
conscience. London,
Vol.1I: New analysis of
Trench, Triibner, 1894.
Kegan Paul,
175p- hem.
xvi 9

No more published?

1. Conscience. i. Title.

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