An Introduction to Ethics, for Training Colleges/Chapter 8
PART II.
THE REALISATION OF CHARACTER IN VOCATION.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHARACTER AND CONDUCT.
§1. The Growth of Character. In Part I. we traced the development of character, and examined in detail the various elements which go to constitute it. We found that the ultimate groundwork of character is provided by heredity, but that this groundwork would remain simply a formless aggregate of blind tendencies and empty capacities, if the environment were not allowed to influence it. We considered the influence of the physical and social environment on the development of the early life of the child, and showed how the rudimentary instincts with which. the child starts are modified and developed to form the basis of the great institutions of the moral life. Then, along two main lines, we traced the development of character out of the purely instinctive tendencies of human life. We showed that impulses, which may be regarded as instincts in their active or executive aspect, may be controlled and developed into desires, which are relatively permanent and pervasive. Again, emotions, which in their origin appear at the instinctive level of life, may be organised into systematic sentiments, which colour the whole moral life. But comprehensive as these desires and sentiments are, they may yet lead to conflict and disharmony in the moral life, unless they are unified in a permanent and self-conscious personality. Only then do we reach the level of formed character, for character is the moral self. We then considered the self or character in relation to practical life, first as willing its actions, and second as judging its own and other people's thoughts and actions. Will and conscience, we saw, are necessarily involved in character. Character is the moral self as a whole, as comprehending and organising, with the help of habit, all the processes that take place within it, and as co-ordinating and harmonising all the actions in which it expresses itself.
§2. The Relation of Character to Conduct. So far we have been concerned with the self and its processes rather than with the actions in which it manifests its activity, with its capacities and tendencies rather than with the actual behaviour in which they are realised. In a word, we have been studying the character of the self rather than its conduct. We must now ask, How is character related to conduct? The relation is a double one.
On the one hand, character determines conduct. Conduct consists of human actions, and these are always regarded as the expressions of the character of the man whose actions they are. A man's actions are determined by his character, so that if his character be good his actions will also be good, and if his character be evil his actions will also be evil.[1] His conduct flows from his character, and is an index to it. In ordinary life we always assume—and we are perfectly right to do so—that a man's conduct reveals his character. In practice all our estimates of people's characters are based on what we know of their conduct. If we did not assume that conduct is determined by character, we could pass no moral judgments on the characters of others. We believe that if we could have a complete record of a man's conduct in every department of life and at every stage in life—through childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, as son, brother, husband, and father, as an inferior, superior, and equal, in friendship and enmity, at work and play, in prosperity and adversity, as a citizen of a State and a member of a Church—we should have a complete expression of his character. We assume that all his actions have been produced by his character.
On the other hand, conduct determines character. As we have seen, character is not something absolutely fixed. Character is a growing system; it is in constant process of growth; and its development is influenced by the kind of actions it habitually performs. Every one of a self's actions has some effect, however infinitesimal, on the formation of its character. Aristotle constantly insists that a man acquires a good or bad character by the habitual repetition of good or bad actions. Training and habituation in the performance of actual good actions are necessary for the production of a good character. We start simply with capacities. Now, the capacity for being good is the same thing as the capacity for being bad. Every child is born with an infinite capacity for good or evil, and it depends on training and habituation in which of the two ways the capacities will become realised as character. "It is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate, and by doing brave deeds that we become brave."[2] In this sense, conduct determines character.
§ 3. The Meaning of Conduct. It follows from the close connection of character and conduct that there is a certain constancy and consistency in conduct. The educated man's conduct does not consist of isolated actions occurring at haphazard with no bond of unity or tie of purpose. His conduct displays a certain uniformity; it is his conduct and he acknowledges it and stands by it. We may define conduct as self-conscious behaviour, or as the system of a man's voluntary actions. What precisely this definition implies will become clear if we distinguish conduct from actions in general and from behaviour in general.
(1) Conduct consists in actions. But not all actions constitute conduct. We speak of the action of a motor-car or a sewing-machine or a type-writer. But we should not dream of talking of their conduct. Mechanical action is not conduct. Nor is all human action conduct. Certain human actions, e.g. reflex actions, are really mechanical. They take place naturally and necessarily in response to a particular external stimulus, in just as mechanical a way as the type-writer prints a letter when the key is depressed. Conduct consists only in voluntary human actions.
(2) Conduct is behaviour. But not all behaviour is conduct. We speak of the behaviour of the lower animals. The physiologist studies the behaviour of the frogs on which he experiments. But we do not ascribe conduct to the lower animals. Conduct is self-conscious behaviour. Conduct involves self-consciousness; and no animal is self-conscious. Self-consciousness implies the capacity to represent to oneself some end or aim, and to will the course of action necessary to attain that end. The self-conscious person is able to propose to himself, as an aim to be achieved by himself, something which he regards as worth while, and to plan and carry through the line of action by which the end will be realised.
§ 4. The Implications of Conduct: Freedom, Responsibility, Obligation, and Value. Some important consequences follow from this conception of conduct.
(1) Conduct implies freedom. This, indeed, has been assumed in all we have said about the relation of character and conduct. We simply took it for granted that a man's character expresses itself freely in his actions. Conduct could not be an index to character unless it were free. Human conduct is free, both positively and negatively. Man is free from the dominion of particular impulses and appetites. The animal is governed by his appetites and impulses, but man is emancipated from the slavery they would fain impose. Man is able, as we have seen, to consider his impulses and desires, his emotions and sentiments, in relation to his self and the comprehensive ideals which he cherishes; and he can reject, restrain, modify, confirm, or encourage them as he wills. In all his conduct man should be realising his highest individuality: his conduct is free and spontaneous.
(2) All conduct is responsible conduct. Man's moral responsibility is a consequence of his freedom. If all man's actions were mechanically produced, like those of the steam engine or electric dynamo, he could not be held accountable for them. The steam engine is not responsible for its breakdowns. The responsibility for them is shifted on to the shoulders of the engineer. A bull is not held responsible if he gores a child. The responsibility for the bull's acts is referred to its owner. In every case responsibility attaches to the character of a human being. Man acknowledges his conduct as his own and accepts responsibility for it.[3]
(3) Conduct involves moral obligation. Every action is either right or wrong. Right conduct is conduct that ought to be as it is; and wrong conduct is conduct that ought not to be as it is. Of every moral action we can say either that it ought to have been done, or that it ought not to have been done. An ideal of duty is implied in all conduct. Now, moral obligation attaches only to conduct. I cannot strictly say that my type-writer ought to run more smoothly than it does: no moral obligation can attach to it: the type-writer has no duty. If I do say that it ought to work more smoothly, what I really mean is that the makers ought to have built it more carefully, or that I ought to have kept it free from dust. The ought is really referred from the type-writer to some person who is responsible for it.
(4) All conduct is conceived to have some moral value. The moral quality of conduct depends partly on the disposition and attitude of the self whose conduct it is. This disposition will comprise feelings of pleasure and pain, and certain emotions and sentiments. The value of conduct is partly estimated in terms of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, of happiness and misery.
§5. Conduct and the School. It is often maintained that the life of the child in school is highly artificial, and that the ordinary school curriculum affords little opportunity to the child to develop qualities of character that it will need in later life. According to this argument, the child's character at school issues in departments of conduct which are quite other than those which express its life in the outer world. Now, there are, of course, obvious differences between the life that the child lives in school and the life that he lives outside and will live after his school-days are over. And in spite of all that has been done and advocated by Froebel and Montessori—to mention only two names—to minimise this difference and secure for the child a more natural school-life, it is certain that, from the nature of the case, school-life must continue to differ in some respects from the rest of the child's life. But it does not follow that the conduct of the child in school is something so utterly different from the rest of its conduct that the training it receives in school will have no influence on the formation of its character as a whole. On the contrary, if we train children in those aspects of conduct which manifest themselves in the life of the class-room or playing-fields, that training should normally influence the development of the character as a whole. Thus, even those departments of conduct which are not touched by ordinary school-life will be affected by the training received in school, for that education will influence the whole character, from which every voluntary act issues. In particular, it may be shown that every one of the implications of conduct, whose importance has been indicated, is present in the ordinary conduct of the child at school.
(1) The child is free in his activities. He requires, of course, to submit to discipline, but educationists have insisted, on the whole with singular unanimity, that he should be made to feel that the authority to which he is subjected is not alien to himself, but is the condition of his own highest development; that he should be encouraged to maintain discipline in class and in play by himself; and that, so far as possible, he should be encouraged to develop his own individuality spontaneously along the lines most natural and congenial to himself.
(2) The notion of responsibility is strongly developed in the conduct of the child at school. He is held responsible for everything he does. He is responsible for every class task he performs, and he receives credit or blame accordingly. He is regarded as responsible for his punctuality and attendance, unless his parents expressly acknowledge by "note" that they accept responsibility for it. As the child grows older, he may be made responsible for the conduct of others. As monitor or prefect or captain of a games team his responsibility may be considerable, and to him may even seem oppressive. The lesson of responsibility is one that the child learns pre-eminently at school.
(3) The child's school-life is saturated with moral obligation. The danger is not that this aspect of school-life should be absent, but that it should be too constantly and too intensely present. The child naturally regards his school tasks as duties, and he recognises that he is under an obligation to discharge them. But too often the duties seem wholly disagreeable, and the obligation appears to be externally imposed by a grim authority. The consequence is that the notion of duty is apt to be defined in the child's mind as "that which is unpleasant" or "that which is to be avoided if at all possible." Such early associations of duty may do lifelong harm to the child by making it impossible for him to see that his duty may be at the same time his highest privilege and his truest pleasure. And moral progress depends on learning that lesson.
(4) It follows from what has just been said that the value-aspect of conduct is often inadequately developed in schools. Vast numbers of children pass through our schools without ever realising, without ever feeling, the sense of value in connection with their education. Their one desire is to be free of the drudgery of school at the earliest possible moment. Their education seems to have no value-for-life for them. It is the great problem of education (a) so to organise the curriculum as to afford the greatest value-for-life for the child, and (b) so to present it to the child that he will appreciate its value.
For further reading: J. S. Mackenzie: Manual, bk. i. ch. iii.; J. H. Muirhead: Elements, §§15-20; J. Dewey and J. H Tufts: Ethics, ch. i. and xiii.; Aristotle: Ethics, bk. i. and ii.
- ↑ This is true on the whole. But many exceptions to the general rule may occur. Men of good character often do wrong, and men of evil character may do noble actions. But normally, in general, good character will issue in right actions. If a man acts inconsistently with his character, this may be explained in three ways:
(1) The self may not be completely systematised and unified. We may call the character good on the whole, though there may be aspects of the self which are not in harmony with the self as a whole. Hence isolated actions may be performed which are wrong and inconsistent with the character as a whole. Most people would agree that on the whole Queen Victoria's character was good, though some of her actions were undoubtedly wrong.
(2) A good man may do wrong because of inadequate knowledge. His wrong action is due to intellectual error, and not to voluntary sin. He is very often held responsible for his action, and he may even blame himself bitterly for it, but such an action is not really an expression of his character, unless his ignorance was due to culpable negligence.
(3) A good man may do wrong in a sudden gust of passion. Some overwhelming impulse may issue in action before he can marshal his moral strength to restrain it. In such cases a man is justly held responsible for his action on the ground that he ought to have been able to resist the temptation and control the impulse. But such an action is not really an expression of character. The man's character disclaims the impulsive action. "How could I have done it?" he asks himself afterwards. The action does not really reveal the character, at least in any positive way. What it does is to indicate a weakness in the character. - ↑ Aristotle: Ethics, ii. i. § 4.
- ↑ That only human beings are responsible agents is a principle that took long to establish. According to the Mosaic code, an ox which gored a man was to be put to death (Ex. xxi. 28). During the Middle Ages, pigs, rats, and other animals were prosecuted before the civil and ecclesiastical courts. Thus, in 1403 in Paris a pig was tried, condemned, and executed for the murder of a baby. Animals were thought to be both morally and legally responsible.