Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/691

 

Automatism in Morality. J. G. Hibben. Int. J. E., V, 4, pp. 462-471.

To the theory of automatism in morality the author opposes the following considerations, (1) The explanation of the higher social instincts by referring them to the lower, is inconsistent with the true principle of evolution. On the contrary, the lower, as containing potentially all that the higher reveals, is to be explained by the higher. Hence, the crude social instincts of the savage are to be understood by comparing them with the moral susceptibilities of the civilized man, rather than with the social instincts of brutes. (2) It is not true that the development of morality and of society have always followed parallel lines. The latter may not be regarded as wholly the cause of the former. Such a theory would not account for the individual reformer who is far ahead of his time. (3) The fact that moral practices appear before the consciousness of Right and Duty does not prove that moral conduct, without a rational consciousness of it, is the essence of morality. (4) The explanation of the genesis of the social conscience by referring it to a differentiation of the nervous system, is not satisfactory since social excitations cannot be investigated in the same way as physiological excitations. The definition of morality as health, of immorality as disease, implies the assumption of the very point in question, viz., the automatism of the will. (5) The statement that morality has no significance except in society utterly ignores the worth of the individual as such, and this our belief in personality and the inherent worth of character will not permit. (6) The acknowledged fact that in the highest known morality conscious activity is rare, is not inconsistent with the theory of the formation of habits of morality through conscious effort. The later unconscious movement in the moral sphere is but an illustration of the principle of the conservation of energy. Struggle and will may yet remain as the essence of the moral activity.—Finally, there is in the common consciousness a universal feeling of the superiority of the individual to the external material world in time and space, and this feeling as a psychological reality must be explained rather than explained away, before a theory of automatism can be satisfactorily established.

J. F. Brown.