The Religious Aspect of Philosophy/Chapter 2

by Josiah Royce

CHAPTER II.

THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM.

“Certain spirits, by permission, ascended from hell, and said to me, ‘You have written a great deal from the Lord, write something also from us.’ I replied, ‘What shall I write?’ They said, ‘Write that every spirit, whether he be good or evil, is in his own delight, — the good in the delight of his good, and the evil in the delight of his evil.’ I asked them, ‘What may your delight be?’ They said that it was the delight of committing adultery, stealing, defrauding, and lying. . . . I said, ‘Then you are like the unclean beasts.’ . . . They answered, ‘If we are, we are.’” — Swedenborg, Divine Providence.

“There’s nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — Hamlet.

With which of the two considerations mentioned in our introduction shall a religious philosophy begin? Of its two chief considerations, the moral code, and the relation of this code to reality, which is the one that properly stands first in order? We have already indicated our opinion. The philosophy of religion is distinguished from theoretic philosophy precisely by its relation to an ideal. If possible, therefore, it should early be clear as to what ideal it has. The ideal ought, if possible, to be studied first, since it is this ideal that is to give character to our whole quest among the realities. And so the first part of religious philosophy is properly the discussion of ethical problems.

I.

The theoretic philosopher might interpose just here, and insist that as one can be moral only in a real world, the philosopher has a theoretical right and duty to point out, first of all, wherein consists the reality of the world and whereon is based our assurance of this reality. Yet this strictly logical order we must decline, in the present discussion, to follow. Our interest is, first of all, with the ideal in its relation to human life. So much of the world of commonplace reality as we have to assume in any and every discussion of the ideal, we accept in this first book wholly without theoretical question. For such questions, in their relation to religious philosophy, the proper place will come later. But at the outset we will suppose a moral agent in the presence of this concrete world of human life in which we all believe ourselves to exist. Beyond the bright circle of these commonplace human relations, all shall for the present remain dark to this moral agent. His origin, his destiny, his whole relation to nature and to God, if there be a God, he shall not at the outset know. But he shall be conceived as knowing that he is alive in the midst of a multitude of living fellows. With them he is to have and to define and to develop certain moral relations. For his life, or for human life in general, he is to form his ideal. Then later, after forming and striving to realize this ideal of his, he is to come to the real physical world, and to ask of it how it stands related to these, his moral needs. In the answer to this question he is to find, if at all, the completion of his religious philosophy. When he comes to this second stage, which our second book is to treat, he may find himself obliged to analyze afresh and skeptically the naïve theoretic notions that he has possessed concerning nature, and so even concerning his own fellow-men. But for his analysis itself he will have a fresher courage, because he will have filled himself with the love of an ideal, whose realization he will be hoping somehow to find all through all the tedious wanderings of his theoretic study. If the order of his whole thought is thus not the order of the truth itself, still his little inconsequence in beginning his religious philosophy with assumptions that he proves only after he has gone some distance in his investigation, may be a useful concession both to his own human weakness and to the needs of his practical nature.

With the search for the ideal, then, we begin, expressly assuming, in this part of the first book, without proof, as much of the world of daily life as may be necessary to a study of the moral law in its application to this daily life. Yet, with this explanation, we are only at the beginning of the troubles that arise in examining the relation between the basis of ethics and the real world. These troubles form a great part of the obscurity of moral doctrine.

II.

In treating of ethical doctrine, it is common to avoid by all sorts of devices the main and most difficult problem of all. Men like to fill half a volume with a description of the “moral sentiments,” or with a panegyric of the “moral principle in man,” or in these days especially, with a great deal of talk about savages and about the “evolution of the moral sense.” Having occupied so many pages in entertaining digressions, when they come, if they ever do come, to the central problem, namely, the nature of moral distinctions considered purely as such, such writers have no time to do more than to appeal to the common sense of readers, and then to pass on to consequences. It seldom occurs to them that a description of the “moral faculties” in this man or in that, or a history of moral and immoral notions and practices as they have come up among men in the order of evolution, is no more a “moral philosophy,” in the proper sense, than is a description of the coinage or of the products of any country or of the world a true explanation of the difference between commercial solvency and insolvency.

We for our part shall be obliged, however, by our limited space, to aim forthwith at the heart of the problem of a philosophical ethic. What is the real nature of this distinction between right and wrong? What truth is there in this distinction? Is this truth relative to particular conditions, or independent thereof? What ideal of life results? These things we want to know; and we do not want to spend our time more than we shall be obliged to do in irrelevant descriptions of the mental states of this or that man. All mental states now interest us only in so far as we first see what logical bearing they may have upon our problem. We shall have to describe a good deal, but that work will have only its proper subordinate place.

As for the main problem itself, we can best bring its nature home to ourselves by considering forthwith some aspects of an old and often neglected question, namely, the very question before referred to about the proper relation of one’s moral ideal to the reality that he may have recognized.

We are to form a moral ideal apart, as we have said, from any theory of the physical universe outside of man. But is this practicable? Is not every moral theory dependent in truth on a theory of things? Is it possible for us to make for ourselves our ideal, and only afterwards to go to the real world and to see if our ideal is realized? Must not rather our ideal be founded, in the very nature of the case, on what we know, or think we know, about the world? Is not then this whole undertaking of ours a blunder? Is a rational moral distinction possible save through a knowledge of the facts about the world? Can the ideal say to the world: “I demand that thou shouldst be like me?” Must not the ideal rather humbly say: “Thus and thus it is in truth, and therefore I am what I am?”

The nature of moral ideals and distinctions is plainly involved just here. We must look closely at these questions; for to answer them aright is to answer the fundamental questions of all ethical philosophy.

To understand then more justly the nature of this difficulty, let us consider more closely the two possible answers to the foregoing questions. Let us call a man who insists in spite of all upon going to the real world, to find there in some way the sole basis for his ideal distinctions between good and evil, an ethical realist. Let us on the other hand call him who would somehow demonstrate if he could some ideal as the true and only moral ideal, without in any wise making it depend upon physical reality, a moral idealist. Let us then let the two parties discuss, in their opposing ways, the question at issue. Let us hear their views briefly stated and argued. First the view of the extreme ethical realists: “Go to reality,” they say, “and to whatever reality you need to consider. Thence derive your notion of duty. Morality must not be built in the air, but on a solid foundation of natural fact. Your moral doctrine may have to depend upon all that you can find out about the universe.” — On the other hand we have the idealistic doctrine: “Morality,” say the supporters of this view, “is for the first an ideal. From reality one learns the relations that are to be judged by the ideal, but cannot by any searching find the ideal itself. From reality one can learn the means; the End of action is an Ideal, independent of all reality save the bare existence of our choice of this End. As Prometheus defied Zeus, so the moral consciousness could and must defy the forces of nature in case they made the ideal forever hopeless. If the good be unattainable, that makes it no less the good. If the existent world were the worst world imaginable, it would not be justified by the mere fact that it was the real world. Ideals must be realized in so far as we can realize them, but what can be realized need not therefore turn out to be the ideal. The judgments: This is, and, This is good, are once for all different; and they have to be reached by widely different methods of investigation.” — Such are the two opposing views. We cannot yet repeat in detail the arguments for each, but we can suggest a few of them.

“See,” says the supporter of the first view, “how absurd it is to evolve moral theories out of one’s inner consciousness. What happens to such theories? Either nature favors them, and then they survive in the struggle for life, or they are unequal to the tasks of the real world, and then their supporters go mad, or die. But in the first case they are merely such theories as could have been much better reached by a process, not of guessing at truth, but of studying nature’s laws. In the second case, the result is enough for common sense people. The moral theory that is destined to die out for want of supporters can hardly triumph over more useful opinions. If we want a moral theory, we must therefore consider what kind of action, what rule of life, wins in the battle of existence, and tends most to outlive its rivals. That rule is the one destined to become universal.”

The maintainers of the second view are ready with their answer. “What sort of morality is this?” they say. “Is this the morality of the martyrs? Is this an ideal that can satisfy us? The preservation of truly valuable life may indeed be an end in itself, and therefore an action that tends, on the whole, to destroy rather than to save such life may be bad from any point of view; but the moral thinker is not, on that account, bound to choose a code that will make its believers survive. The believers are not all who are affected by obedience to the code, and it may be the believer's place to be sacrificed, either because his life is worth less than his ideal, or because the unbelievers may somehow be bettered through his death. And, in general, what would be the consequence of the consistent following out of the principle that the true goal is conformity to reality? Assume that, for instance, a man in society is to regulate his actions solely according to the demands that society as a real power makes upon him, in view of his place in the social organism, and that morality thus expresses simply the requirements that the individual must meet if he is to remain a successful member of this social organism. Then, to get your moral code, you are to examine the facts of social life. You are to see, for example, what each man must nowadays do if he is to be tolerable to his fellows. You will find something of this sort: It will not do for him to kill his fellows, or to steal from them, or openly to insult them. It will be unprofitable for him to be caught in cheating them, or in lying to them. He will do well to help them as far as his means allow, and so to get a reputation for kind-heartedness and public spirit, as well as for strict integrity. For such, at least in our society, are some of the requisite or useful kinds of adjustment to our environment. On these is founded our moral code, if it is to be founded on reality alone.

“But these requirements are not equally good in all societies. Once a power to kill certain kinds of people was a necessary condition to happy social life. A reputation for fearlessness, for prowess, for military skill, for a certain kind of cunning, for perfect willingness to take your weaker enemy’s property; all this was a part of the necessary adjustment to one’s environment. Was all this then for that society true morality? If morality were the body of rules governing successful adjustment to the social environment, then morality would be relative to the environment, and would vary with it. So even now such rules vary with one’s social position. Ministers of religion are considered to be best adjusted to the environment if they are outwardly meek, save when defending their creeds against heretics. But politicians are best adjusted when they are aggressive and merciless. A poet or artist is best adjusted if he has a reputation for very ideal and impersonal aims, and he can then even afford to leave his debts unpaid; but a business man must be very concrete in behavior, severely definite in his dealings with his fellows. And so runs the world away. Find your place, and farm it cleverly, for that is the whole duty of man.

“Such would be,” say our idealists, “the consequences of looking simply to reality for a definition of the moral code. There would no longer be a difference between morality and cleverness. Practical skill in the art of living is what survives in this world: and if it is survival, or tendency to survival, that distinguishes a true from a false moral code, then universal cleverness as a moral code would on the whole tend to survive, with its adherents.”

But a realistic opponent is not thus silenced. “Such caricatures,” he insists, “do not fairly represent my doctrine.” He, too, has an ideal but it is wholly dependent on reality. What he means by conformity to reality as the foundation of a moral code is properly expressed by the more thoughtful advocates of the doctrine of evolution. “Adjustment to one’s real surroundings is always,” they say, “one very important element in morality. But there are higher and lower forms of adjustment. Cannibals, or conquerors, or bad politicians, may be sufficiently adjusted to their environment to be momentarily successful; but true philanthropists and truly great statesmen are better than they, since the statesmen and philanthropists have a higher form of adjustment than have the others, and are thus higher in the scale of progress. There is in the world a constant evolution of higher out of lower forms of life. This applies also to society. And on this fact of evolution depends the true morality. The ideal morality is that form of adjustment of the social man to his environment towards which society in its progress forever tends.” How then shall we define our moral code? “Why, once more," says the evolutionist, “by the facts. Do not make your code first and then judge the world. You will do well to accept the universe even if you did not make it. But examine the world to see in what way it is tending. Then conform yourself to that tendency; try to hasten the realization of the coming ideal perfection. Progress does not depend on you, but you will do well to assist progress. So, by experience, we are to find the direction in which society is moving, we are to discover the goal toward which this movement tends, and this object of life, once formulated, is to give us our moral code.”

Again, however, the idealist objects. This, he admits, is a view higher, no doubt, than the preceding; but is it a clear and consistent view? Will it bear criticism? In one respect, as appears to him, it fails badly. However certain and valuable the facts about evolution may be, the theory that founds morality wholly upon these facts of evolution is defective, because it confuses the notion of evolution with the notion of progress, the conception of growth in complexity and definiteness with the conception of growth in moral worth. The two ideas are not necessarily identical. Yet their identity is assumed in this theory. How does it follow that the state toward which a physical progress, namely, evolution, tends, must be the state that is to meet with moral approval? This is not to be proved unless you have already done the very thing that the doctrine of evolution wishes to teach you to do, that is, unless you have already formed a moral code, and that independently of what you know of the facts of natural evolution. Why is the last state in an evolution better than the former states? Surely not because it is the last stage, surely not because it is physically more complex, more definite, or even more permanent; but solely because it corresponds to some ideal that we independently form. Why should my ideal necessarily correspond with reality? Why should what I approve turn out to be that which exists? And why, if any correspondence is to exist, should that particular bit of reality that comes at the end of a physical process called evolution be just the one bit that is to answer my ideal demands? It will be very satisfactory if such correspondence between the real and the ideal is found to result; but how can I know beforehand that it must result?

Evolution and progress: what do the terms respectively mean? Evolution, we learn, is an increase in the complexity, definiteness, individuality and organic connection of phenomena. But progress is any series of changes that meets with the constantly increasing approval of somebody. The growth of a tree or of a thistle is an evolution. The climbing of a hill for some purpose may throughout be a progress. Evolution may or may not meet with the approval of anybody; and a pessimist might fully accept some proposed law of evolution. But unless there is some approval from some source, we have no progress. How thoughtless then it is, our idealist insists, to confound such different notions. But is a case of evolution ever a process of degeneration? Certainly. You want to eat asparagus before it is full grown. Hence every moment of its evolution after a certain point is for you distinctly a degeneration. You want the potatoes in your cellar to keep fresh. If they sprout, a process of evolution has begun, but every moment of it is for you the reverse of progress. The egg that begins to incubate is in full course of evolution; but what if it is wanted for market? Might not the evolution of the whole world conceivably be for the moral consciousness what such cases of evolution are for the purposes of ordinary life?

“But,” the realist may say, “in fact the world does grow better. The course of evolution is on the whole a progress.” “Be it so,” the idealist answers, “but how can we know it? Only by first setting up our moral ideal, and then comparing the facts with this ideal. If we know what we mean by better, we can judge whether the world is growing better. But we may not pretend to determine what is better by simply observing how the world grows. Growth and improvement are not identical ideas. One may grow while growing ever worse.”

And thus a moral code, according to our idealist, does not, as a code, depend on physical facts; tells us nothing of what does exist, but tells us solely what ought to exist. If the ideal either does exist, or some day will exist, so much the better; but through all the changes of fate the terrible ought remains, and judges fearlessly the world, whether it be good or whether it be evil. But here the realist, to whom the moral code that is not built on natural fact is just a dream, interposes what shall just here be his final objection. “Be it so,” he says, “judge after your heart's desire; but remember this, that some other idealist beside you will be judging the world in his own way, after what will seem to you the folly of his heart, and his judgment and yours will differ, as the dreams of any two dreamers must differ. Did Plato’s ideal agree with Paul’s? or did Byron judge the world after the same fashion as Wordsworth? Even so in the present day the ideals war their wars, shadowy struggles, such as one would expect the tedious ghosts of Ossian’s heroes to carry on in their cloudy cars; but reality will never be one whit the wiser for all such deeds. For when you forsake the real world you have no basis left for your ideals but individual caprice, and every idealist will be his own measure of all things, and an elastic measure at that.”

To this, how can the idealist answer? Only, if at all, by the fact of his success in establishing such a criterion as shall be independent of his own caprice, without being realistic.

We have let the contending doctrines fight some part of their old battles over again. How shall we decide between them? Alas! the decision is the whole labor of founding a moral doctrine. We have not yet seen deeply enough into their opposition. They may both be one-sided. The truth may lie in the middle. But as yet we have no right to dogmatize. This capriciousness in the choice of ideals seems a grave defect in a moral system; we cannot submit to the objection that our boasted ideal is just our whim. Yet how shall we escape this? Equally unsatisfactory it seems to say: “I believe in such and such ideal solely because I see it realized.” That is too much like saying, “Might is right.” And thus we should come to an equal capriciousness on this side; for if might makes right, then another and opposing might, if triumphant, would make another and opposing right. And in this wise there would be no true distinction at all between right and wrong. There seems in fact so far only an accidental distinction. This ideal or that is the highest because somebody chances to choose it for his, or because the physical world chances to realize it. This is a perfectly empty distinction.

But difficulties must not discourage us so early in the day. The world has talked of these matters before. Let us turn to the history of some of the speculations about the ideal. They may suggest something to us.