ETHICS, OR MORAL PHILOSO

PHY, is often defined as the study, or the science, of conduct character. But we can study and character in several ways. may ask what takes place ‘in a mind,’ as we say, when he acts or to act, when he succumbs to or temptation, when he forms habits, so on. We may trace the development of individual conduct from the stage of infancy to the relatively life of an adult. To these psychological researches we may add the logical, and trace the development moral conduct and social order race from the wild life of savagery comparatively reasonable morality civilized peoples. But these studies, though they occupy a part of treatises on ethics, are but introductory to the ethical proper. When we have ascertained psychological conditions of conduct have noted what kinds of conduct in history been regarded as good bad, there remain questions such How far are actual moral justifiable? What ought we to as morally good or bad, right or What is the moral ideal? What welfare? Thus ethics is concerned, so much with character and directly as with moral judgments them, which it seeks to understand test and clarify. Upon what do we pronounce judgments? Some moralists have tained that the goodne or badne conduct depends wholly on the which prompts it. Others (e.g., have argued that the morality act depends only on its and not at all on its motive. parties to this controversy make artificial separation of agent from An act may be beneficial or but can have no moral value save indication of an agent’s intention character. But, again, the motive should not be judged any reference to the consequences conduct. The true object of judgment is either the general of the agent or his acts as revelations character, and such acts we House wholes, considering both the agent’s Adler motive and his actual intention, and drastic also such consequences, as he ought Since reasonably to have foreseen. spread The first movement of reflection upon but established maxims of conduct is usually estabsimple revolt. Traditional principles Geneva are termed unreasonable, conventional, Con finally fictitious and false. All men, it i: being argued, are really selfish, and the high sounding maxims under which they veil their selfishne represent nothing but the prudence of thieves afraid to attack on¢ systematic another. This doctrine of selfishnes: or of (Egoism) is often expre ed —e.g.,by the conduct Cyrenaics and Epicureans, and it i We modern times by Hobbes—in the form man’s of Psychological Hedonism, that a mar wills can have no other motive than his owt resists pleasure. and The ordinary honest man replies t this selfish doctrine that he know imitative perfectly well what is right and wrongs rational without any argumentation. This reply formulated as a theory, is known a of and Hutches on argued against Hobbe in the that we have in ‘moral sense’ a facult; to the which disinterestedly approves or dis of approves conduct as right or wrong i positive itself, just as the aesthetic sense approve beauty and disapproves ugline . (2 great really Butler, and more recently Martineav problems speaks rather of Conscience, a principl the which in the system of human natur and ‘plainly bears upon it the marks ¢ have authority over all the rest,’ so that cor and scient i ous, not selfish, conduct is trul following the law of our nature. (3 as, judgments Earlier writers such as Cudworth an regard Clarke, also insisted on the immediat wrong? and disinterested character of moré is true intentions, but regarded them as du not not to a special moral faculty but to th conduct activity of Reason, which apprehend upon moral truths in the same way as it ‘doe and mathematical truths. (4) Kant als relates the moral law to reason—viz., t moral ‘practical reason’ or rational will—an main argues that since the law must hol of alike for all rational beings, our pu poses ought to be such that we can wi motive Mill) them, not for ourselves only, but % of an universal maxims—for all men. consequences Appealing to the internal law, Intu Both tionism is an advance upon dogmat an reference to external commands « act. customs. But as a final theory it injurious, defective. The verdicts of conscienc as an though now rapidly and unreflective and pronounced, usually represent the mor agent’s standards of our society, and i ue fro: past reflection of ourselves or other without Moreover, when laws or duties seem ' of his moral conflict, decision on the right course | character pursue is not immediate, but_often 1 of volves laborious reflection, Lastly, judge as we can give no account of our mor f i valuations, we cannot convince one who di ents; all equally conscientious conduct will be equally laudable, however foolish or barbarous it may be. _If we are to show that our duties are constituents of an intelligible idea, we must start, as the Greeks started, from a consideration of the question: What is the true welfare of a rational human being? An apparently simple answer to this question is. Pleasure. A thoroughgoing egoistic aedonism, such as the the moment, whencesoever they arise. But, since such extravagant pleasure seeking defeats its own end, the more practical, though le consistent, hedonism of the Epicureans looks beyond the moment and chooses among pleasures, preferring calm to violent intensity. Social hedonism (or Utilitarianism), on the other hand, whilst agreeing that welfare or happine consists in pleasures, finds the end of action in the happine of the greatest number, and not of the agent alone. Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism, pointed out that fear of the punishment or ‘sanctions’ imposed by God, nature, public opinion, and law acts as a restraining force upon self-indulgence. But on this showing the most praiseworthy man would be he who com- -bines succe ful selfishne with skilful _ evasion of the penalties. J. S. Mill added to the list of sanctions the internal or moral sanction of conscience; but this eannot furnish a bridge from natural selfishne to altruism, because unle we already approved unselfish action, we should not feel remorse for selfishne , nor do we gain the pleasures of a satisfied conscience if our aim is nothing higher than simply to gain them. The fact is that a consistent hedonism must be selfish; Utilitarianisn as an_ ethical theory is inconsequent though well- “meaning. Mill was practically abandoning hedonism when he maintained that pleasures differ qualitatively in value. Herbert Spencer’s attempt to re-establish hedonism upon the doctrine of evolution really succeeded, not in its purpose, but in showing that function is more imp or-. tant than feeling. | Whilst consistent hedonism regards all _ pleasures as good alike, those schools of - thought which may be roughly cla ed _ together as ascetic tend to regard pleasure as not a good at all, or even as positively an evil. Virtue, they say, is the only good, but they represent virtue as consisting e entially in the suppre ion of desire. They exaggerate the truth that self-restraint is nece ary to all good living for men into the doctrine _ that the excision of pa ion and desire _ is the ideal of conduct. But regulation ‘ _is a very different thing from excision. The reasonable man is not really one who lacks desires, but simply one whose desires are reasonably ordered and directed. The examples of the Cynics and of the early anchorites of Eastern Christianity (on whom see Lecky, History of European Morals, )show how intimately the highest exercises of human nature are inbound with its most primitive impulses; for in attempting to cut out desire and pa ion they had to abandon society and civilization and human love for a life of isolation too often genuinely sordid but not often genuinely humble. The attitude of the Stoics was more dignified, and in its way even heroic; but theirs too is the negative morality of ‘natures over-proud,’ who regard the ordinary joys and sorrows of our life as at best ‘indifferent,’ and think that if one likes to do a thing, doing it is very likely wrong, and is certainly morally worthle . In Kant also is to be found a similar opposition of duty to inclination. Ina purely reasonable being, indeed, such. as God, reason and will would coincide; we cannot conceive of a moral struggle in God. But we have also a sensuous nature, and like to do much which we ought not to do; therefore the moral law appears to us in the form of an imperative of duty, which claims obedience, not as a means to happine or anything else, but absolutely or, as Kant says, categorically. But Kant makes this rift in human nature radical; the only moral motive is reverence for the moral law; conduct has moral value only when it springs from sense of duty, none when it springs from inclination; and instead of pointing to a higher stage when desire and duty shall be reconciled, Kant rather aruges that the fiercer the struggle the greater is the merit of right action. So far Kant leaves the moral law empty and formal; nor does he help matters much by the doctrine that we can test the rightne of our proposed conduct by asking whether we could wish every one to act in the same way. This is a useful warning against making exceptions in our own case, but pre ed further is hardly true. In Plato and Aristotle, and again in modern Idealism, is found a broader conception of welfare as the systematic, harmonious, and comprehensive realization of capacity, or, in more simple language, as ‘making the most of oneself.’ Welfare cannot indeed be described in detail, just because it is an ideal never completely attained, and even to mention its main constituents separately obscures their vital interconnection in actual experience. But it does not, as asceticism holds, exclude pleasures or — man’s error lies not in thinking pleasures good, but in neglecting more specifically human goods such the acquirement and advancement knowledge, the appreciation and tion of beauty, the reception and cation of friendship and love, the ship of God and enjoyment of peace. Moral virtue aims at the ment of these goods for oneself others. Not for oneself only, for good of man as a social being must social good. Making the most of self does not mean hurting one’s bour, and it is an error to oppose and others as if the unselfish really through seeking the good of others the selfish attained real good at the of others. Selfishne , even when sensual, is always narrow, and its stage, as Plato shows is his sketch