In our earlier account of the matter it was more convenient to use language which implied that ethical and economic judgment must be preceded by implicit or explicit acceptance of a definite situation presented in sense-perception, and that these evaluating judgments could be carried through to their goal only upon the basis of such an inventory of fixed conditions. Thus the ultimate ethical quality of the general purpose of building a house would seem to depend upon the precise form which this purpose comes to a.s.sume after the actual presence and the quality of the means of building have been ascertained and the economic bearings of the proposed expenditure have been considered. Surely it is a waste of effort to debate with oneself upon the ethical rightness of a project which is physically impossible or else out of the question from the economic point of view. We are, however, now in a position to see that this way of looking at the matter is both inaccurate and self-contradictory. In the actual development of our purposes there is no such orderly and inflexible arrangement of stages; and if it is a waste of effort to deliberate upon a purpose that is physically impossible, it may, with still greater force, be argued that we cannot find, and judge the fitness of, the necessary physical means until we know what, precisely, it is that we wish to do. The truth is that there is constant interplay and interaction between the various phases of the inclusive judgment-process, or rather, more than this, that there is a complete and thoroughgoing mutual implication. It is indeed true that our ethical purposes cannot take form in a vacuum apart from consideration of their physical and economic possibility, but it is also true that our physical and economic problems are ultimately meaningless and impossible, whether of statement or of solution, except as they are interpreted as arising in the course of ethical conflict.
We have, then, to do, in the present division, with situations in which, whether at the outset or from time to time during the course of the reflective process, there is explicit conflict between ends of conduct.
These situations are the special province of the judgment of valuation.
Our line of argument may be briefly indicated in advance as follows:
1. The judgment of valuation, whether expressed in terms of the individual experience or in terms of social evolution, is essentially the process of the explicit and deliberate resolution of conflict between ends. As an incidental, though nearly always indispensable, step to the final resolution of such conflict, physical judgment, or, in general, the judgment of fact or existence, plays its part, this part being to define the situation in terms of the means necessary for the execution of the end that is gradually taking form. The two modes of judgment mutually incite and control each other, and neither could continue to any useful purpose without this incitement and control of the other. Both modes of judgment are objective in content and significance. At the end of the reflective process and immediately upon the verge of execution of the end or purpose which has taken form the result may be stated or apprehended in either of two ways: (1) directly, in terms of the end, and (2) indirectly, in terms of the ordered system of existent means which have been discovered, determined, and arranged.
If such final survey of the result be taken by way of preparation for action, or for whatever reason, the end will be apprehended as possessing ethical value and the means, under conditions later to be specified, as possessing economic value.
2. What then is the nature and source of this apprehension of end or means as valuable? The consciousness of end or means as valuable is an emotional consciousness expressive of the agent"s practical att.i.tude as determined in the just completed judgment of ethical or economic valuation and arising in consequence of the inhibition placed upon the activities which const.i.tute the att.i.tude by the effort of apprehending or imaging the valued object. Ethical and economic value are thus strictly correlative; psychologically they are emotional incidents of apprehending in the two respective ways just indicated the same total result of the inclusive complex judgment-process. Finally, as the moment of action comes on, the consciousness of the ethically valued end lapses first; then the consciousness of economic value is lost in a purely "physical," _i. e._, technological, consciousness of the means and their properties and interrelations in the ordered system which has been arranged; and this finally merges into the immediate and undifferentiated consciousness of activity as use of the means becomes sure and unhesitating.
When we say that the ends which oppose each other in an ethical situation (that is, a situation for the time being seen in an ethical aspect) are related, and the ends in an economic situation are not, we by no means wish to imply that in the one case we have in this fact of relatedness a satisfactory solution at hand which is wanting in the other. To feel, for example, that there is a direct and inherent relationship between a cherished purpose of self-culture and an ideal of social service which seems now to require the abandonment of the purpose does not mean that one yet knows just _how_ the two ends should be related in his life henceforth; and again, to say that one can see no inherent relation between a desire for books and pictures and the need of food, excepting in so far as both ends depend for their realization upon a limited supply of means, is not to say that the issue of the conflict is not of ethical significance. Such a view as we here reject would amount to a denial of the possibility of genuinely problematic ethical situations[126] and would accord with the opinion that economic judgment as such lies apart from the sphere of ethics and is at most subject only to occasional revision and control in the light of ethical considerations.
By the relatedness of the ends in a situation we mean the fact, more or less explicitly recognized by the agent, that the new, and as yet undefined, purpose which has arisen belongs in the same system with the end, or group of ends, which the standard inhibiting immediate action represents. The standard inhibits action in obedience to the impulse that has come to consciousness, and the image of the new end is, on its part, definite and impressive enough to inhibit action in obedience to the standard. The relatedness of the two factors is shown in a practical way by the fact that, in the first instance at least, they are tacitly expected to work out their own adjustment. By the process already described in outline, subject and predicate begin to develop and thereby to approach each other, and a provisional or partial solution of the problem may thus be reached without resort to any other method than that of direct comparison and adjustment of the ends involved on either side.
The standard which has been called in question has enough of congruence with the new imaged purpose to admit of at least some progress toward a solution through this method.
We can best come to an understanding of this recognition of the relatedness of the ends in ethical valuation by pausing to examine somewhat carefully into the conditions involved in the acceptance or reflective acknowledgment of a defined end of conduct as being one"s own. Any new end in coming to consciousness encounters some more or less firmly established habit represented in consciousness by a sign or symbolic image of some sort, the habit being itself the outcome of past judgment-process. Our present problem is the significance of the agent"s recognition of a relatedness between his new impulsive end and the end which represents the habit, and we shall best approach its solution by considering the various factors and conditions involved in the agent"s conscious recognition of the established end as being such.
In any determinate end there is inevitably implied a number of groups of factual judgments in which are presented the objective conditions under which execution of the end or purpose must take place. There is in the first place a general view of environing conditions, physical and social, presented in a group of judgments (1) descriptive of the means at hand, of the topography of the region in which the purpose is to be carried out, of climatic conditions, and the like, and (2) descriptive of the habits of thought and feeling of the people with whom one is to deal, their prejudices, their tastes, and their inst.i.tutions. The project decided on may, let us say, be an individual or a national enterprise, whether philanthropic or commercial, which is to be launched in a distant country peopled by partly civilized races. In addition to these groups of judgments upon the physical and sociological conditions under which the work must proceed, there will also be a more or less adequate and impartial knowledge of one"s own physical and mental fitness for the enterprise, since the work as projected may promise to tax one"s physical powers severely and to require, for its successful conduct, large measure of industry, devotion, patience, and wisdom.
Indeed any determinate purpose whatever inevitably implies a more or less varied and comprehensive inventory of conditions. Further ill.u.s.tration is not necessary for our present purpose. We may say that in a general way the conditions relevant to a practical purpose will group themselves naturally under four heads of cla.s.sification, as physical, sociological, physiological, and psychological. All four cla.s.ses are objective, though the last two embrace conditions peculiar to the agent as an individual over against the environment to which for purposes of his present activity he stands in a sense opposed.
Now our present interest is not so much in the enumeration and cla.s.sification of possible relevant conditions in a typical situation as in the significance of these relevant conditions in the agent"s apprehension of them. Perhaps this significance cannot better be described than by saying that essentially and impressively the conditions are apprehended as, taken together, _warranting_ the purpose that has been determined. We appeal, in support of this account of the matter, to an impartial introspection of the way in which the means and conditions of action stand related to the formed purpose in the moment of survey of a situation. The various details presented in the survey of a situation are apprehended, not as bare facts such as one might find set down in a scientist"s notebook, but as warranting--as closely, uniquely, and vitally relevant to--the action that is about to be taken.
This, as we believe, is a fair account of the situation in even the commoner and simpler emergencies that confront the ordinary man. Quite conspicuously is it true of cases in which the purpose is a purely technological one that has been worked out with considerable difficulty and is therefore not executed until after a somewhat careful survey of conditions has been taken. It is often true likewise in cases of express ethical judgment; if the ethical phases of the reflective process have not been excessively long and difficult, our definite sense of the ethical value of the act we are about to do lapses quite easily, and the factual aspects and features of the situation as given in one or more of the four cla.s.ses which we have distinguished take on an access of significance in their character of warranting, confirming, or even compelling the act determined upon. Of our ordinary sense-perception in the moments of its actual functioning no less than of conscience in its aspect of a moral perceptive faculty are the words of Bishop Butler sensibly true that "to preside and govern, from the very economy and const.i.tution of man, belongs to it."[127] I Even in cases of more serious moral difficulty this sanctioning aspect of the means and conditions of action is not overshadowed. If the situation is one in which by reason of their complexity these play a conspicuous role and must be surveyed, by way of preparation on the agents" part, for performance of the act, they inevitably a.s.sume, for the agent, their proper functional character. In general, the conditions presented in the system of factual judgments have a certain "rightful authority" which they seem to lend to the purpose or end with reference to which they were worked out to their present degree of factual detail. The conditions can thus seem to sanction the end because conditions and end have been worked out together. Gradual development on the one side prompts a.n.a.lytical inquiry upon the other and is in turn directed and advanced by the results of this inquiry. In the end the result may be read off either in terms of end or in terms of conditions and means.[128] The two readings must be in accord and the agent"s apprehension of the conditions as warrant for the end is expression in consciousness of this "agreement."[129]
Now in this mode of apprehension of factual conditions there is a highly important logical implication--an implication which inevitably comes more and more clearly into view with the continued exercise of judgment, even though the agent"s habit of interest in the scrutiny of perplexing situations may still remain, by reason of the want of trained capacity for a broader view, limited in its range quite strictly to the physical sphere. This implication is, we shall declare at once, that of an endeavoring, striving, active principle or self which can be helped or hindered in its unfolding by particular purposes and sets of corresponding conditions--can lose or gain, through devotion to particular purposes, in the breadth, fulness, and energy of its life.
The agent"s apprehension of and reference to this active principle of course varies in all degrees of explicitness, according to circ.u.mstances, from the vague awareness that is present in a simple case of physical judgment to the clear recognition and endeavor at definition that are characteristic of serious ethical crises.
That the situation should develop and bring to light this factor is what should be expected on general grounds of logic--for to say that a set of conditions warrants or sanctions or confirms a given purpose implies that our purposes can stand in need of warrant, and this would seem to be impossible apart from reference to a process whose maintenance and development in and through our purposes are a.s.sumed as being as a matter of course desirable. It is of the essence of our contention that the apprehension of the conditions of action as _warranting the end_ is a primordial and necessary feature of the situation--indeed, its const.i.tutive feature. If our concern were with the psychological development of self-consciousness as a phase of reflective experience, we should endeavor to show that this development is mediated in the first instance by the "subjective" phenomena of feeling, emotion, and desire which find their place _in the course_ of the judgment-process.
We should then hold that, with the _conclusion_ of the judgment-process and the accompanying sense of the known conditions as rea.s.suring and confirmatory of the end, comes the earliest possibility of a discriminative recognition of the self as having been all along a necessary factor in the process. We should hold that outside of the _process_ of reflective attention there can be no psychical or "elementary" _beginnings_ of self-consciousness, and then that, except as a development out of the experience to which we have referred as marking the _conclusion_ of the attentive process, there can be no recognized specific and in any degree definable consciousness of self.
All this, however, lies rather beside our present purpose. We wish simply to insist that it is out of the apprehension of conditions as rea.s.suring and confirmatory, out of this "primordial germ," that the agent"s definite recognition of himself as a center of development and expenditure of energy takes its rise. Here are the beginnings of the possibility of self-conscious ethical and economic valuation.
This apprehension of the means as _warranting_ is, we have held, a fact even when the means surveyed are wholly of the physical sort, and we have thereby implied that consciousness of the self as "energetic" may take its rise in situations of this type or during the physical stage in the development of a more complex total situation. It would be an interesting speculation to consider to what extent and in what way the development of the sciences of sociology and physiology may have been essentially facilitated by the emergence of this form of self-consciousness. But however the case may stand with these sciences or with the rise of real interest in them in the mind of a given individual, interest in the objective psychological conditions of a contemplated act is certainly very closely dependent upon interest in that subjective self which one has learned to know through the past exercise of judgment in definition and contemplation of conditions of the three other kinds. The more diversified and complex the array of physical and social conditions with reference to which one is to act, the more important becomes not simply a clearly articulated knowledge of these, but also a knowledge of oneself. The self that is warranted in its purpose by the surveyed conditions must hold itself in a steady and consistent att.i.tude during the performance on pain of "falling short of its opportunity" and thereby rendering nugatory the reflective process in which the purpose was worked out. Experience abundantly shows how easily the a.s.surance that comes with the survey of conditions may come to grief, though there may have been on the side of the conditions, so far as defined, no visible change; and in so far as self-consciousness has already emerged as a distinguishable factor in such situations, failures of the sort we here refer to are the more easily identified and interpreted. Some sudden impulse may have broken in upon the execution of the chosen purpose; there may have been an unexpected shift of interest away from that general phase of life which the purpose represented; or in any one of a number of other ways may have come about a wavering and a slackening in the resolution which marked the commencement of action. The "energetic" self forthwith (if we may so express it) recognizes that the sanction which the conditions so far as then known gave to its purpose was a misleading because an incomplete one, and it proceeds to develop within itself a new range of objective fact in which may be worked out the explanation, and thereby a method of control, of these new disturbing phenomena. The qualities of patience under disappointment, courage in encountering resistance, steadiness and self-control in sustained and difficult effort--these qualities and others of like nature come to be discriminated from each other by introspective a.n.a.lysis and may be as accurately measured, and in general as objectively studied, as any of the conditions to a saving knowledge and respect of which one may already have attained, and these newly determined psychological conditions will henceforth play the same part in affording sanction to one"s purposes as do the rest. An ordered system of psychological categories or points of view comes to be developed, and an accurate statement of conditions of personal disposition and capacity relevant to each emergency as it arises will hereafter be worked out--over against and in tension with one"s gradually forming purposes in like manner as are statements of all the other relevant objective aspects of the situation.[130]
In the "energetic" self, we shall now seek to show, we have the common and essential principle of both ethical and economic valuation which marks these off from other and subordinate types of judgment. Let us determine as definitely as possible the nature and function of this principle.
The recognition of the chosen purpose as one favorable or otherwise to the self, and so the recognition of the self as capable of furtherance or r.e.t.a.r.dation by its chosen purposes, is not always a feature of the state of mind which may ensue upon completed judgment. In the commoner situations of the everyday life of normal persons, as practically always in the lives of persons of relatively undeveloped reflective powers, it is quite wanting as a separate distinguished phase of the experience. In such cases it is present, if present at all, merely as the vaguely felt implicit meaning of the recognition that the known conditions sanction and confirm the purpose. Such situations yield easily to attack and threaten none of those dangers, none of those possible occasions for regret or remorse, of which complex situations make the person of developed reflective capacity and long experience so keenly apprehensive. They are disposed of with comparatively little of conscious reconstruction on either the subject or the predicate side, and when a conclusion has been reached the agent"s recognition of the conditions carries with it the comfortable though too often delusive a.s.surance of the complete and perfect eligibility of the purpose. If the question of eligibility is raised at all, the answer is given on the tacit principle that "whatever purpose is, is right." To the "plain man," and to all of us on certain sides of our lives, every purpose for which the requisite means and factual conditions are found to be at hand is, just as our purpose, therefore right.
The same experience of failure and disappointment which proves our purpose to have been, from the standpoint of enlargement and enrichment of the self, a mistaken one brings a clearer consciousness of the logic implicit in our first confident belief in the purpose, and at the same time emphasizes the need of making this logic explicit. The purpose, as warranted to us by the conditions and a.s.sembled means that lay before us, was our own, and _as our own_ was implicitly a purpose of furtherance of the self. The disappointment that has come brings this implication more clearly into view, and likewise the need of methodical procedure, not as before in the determination of _conditions_, but in the determination of purposes as such; for the essence of the situation is that the _execution_ of the purpose has brought to light some unforeseen consequence now recognized as having been all the while in the nature of things involved in the purpose. This consequence or group of consequences consists (in general terms) in the abatement or arrest of desirable modes of activity which find their motivation elsewhere in the agent"s system of accepted ends, and it is registered in consciousness in that sense of restriction or repression from without which is a notable phase of all emotional experience, particularly in its early stages. The consequences are as undesirable as they are unexpected, and the reaction against them, at first emotional, presently pa.s.ses over into the form of a reflective interpretation of the situation to the effect that the self has suffered a loss by reason of its thoughtless haste in identifying itself with so unsafe a purpose.[131]
It is the essential logical function of the consciousness of self to stimulate the valuation processes which take their rise in the stage of reflective thought thus attained. The consciousness of self is a peculiarly baffling theme for discussion from whatever point of view, because one finds its meaning shifting constantly between the two extremes of a subjectivity to which "all objects of all thought" are external and an objective thing or system of energies which is known just as other things are--known in a sense by itself, to be sure, but _known_ nevertheless, and thought of as an object standing in possible relations to other objects. Now, it is of the subjective self that we are speaking when we say that its essential function is the stimulation or incitement of the valuation processes, but manifestly in order to serve thus it must nevertheless be presented in some sort of sensuous imagery. The subjective self may, in fact, be thought of in many ways--presented in many different sorts of imagery--but in all its forms it must be distinguished carefully from that objective self which, as described in psychology, is the a.s.semblage of conditions under which the subjective or "energetic" self works out its purposes. It may be the pale, attenuated double of the body, or a personal being standing in need of deliverance from sin, or an atom of soul-substance, or, in our present terminology, a center of developing and unfolding energy. The significant fact is that, however different in content and in motive these various presentations of the subjective self may be, they are, one and all, as presentations and as in so far objective, stimuli to some definite response. The savage warrior deposits his double in a tree or stone for safety while he goes into battle; the self that is to be saved from sin is a self that prompts certain acceptable acts in satisfaction of the quasi-legal obligations that the fact of sin has laid upon the agent. The presented self, whatever the form it may a.s.sume as presentation, has its function, and this function is in general that of stimulus to the conservation and increase, in some sense, of the self that is not presented, but for whom the presentation is. Now our own present description of the self as "energetic," as a center or source of developing and unfolding energy is in its way a presentation. It consists of sensuous imagery and suggests a mechanical process, or the growth of a plant perhaps, which if properly safeguarded will go on satisfactorily--a process which one must not allow to be perturbed or hindered by external resistance or internal friction or to run down. To many persons doubtless such an account would seem arbitrary and fantastic in the extreme, but no great importance need be attached to its details. The kind and number and sensuous vividness of the details in which this essential content of presentation may be clothed must of course depend, for each person, upon his psychical idiosyncrasy.
Indeed, as the habit of reflection upon purposes comes to be more firmly fixed, and the procedure of valuation to be consciously methodical and orderly, the sensuous content of the presented self must grow constantly more and more attenuated until it has declined into a mere unexpressed principle or maxim or tacit presumption, prescribing the free and impartial application of the method of valuation to particular practical emergencies as these arise. For a self, consisting of presented content of whatever sort, which one seeks to further through attentive deliberation upon concrete purposes, must, just in so far as it has _content_, determine the outcome of ethical judgment in definite ways. Thus the soul that must be saved from sin (if this be the content of the presented self) is one that has transgressed the law in certain ways and the right relations that should subsist between creature and Creator, and has thereby incurred a more or less technically definable guilt. This guilt can only be removed and the self rehabilitated in its normal relations to the law by an appropriate response to the situation--by a choice on the agent"s part, first, of a certain technical procedure of repentance, and then of a settled purpose of living as the law prescribes.[132] So also our own image of the self as "energetic" after the manner of a growing organism may well seem, if taken too seriously as to its presentational details, to foster a bias in favor of over-conservative adherence to the established and the accredited as such.[133]
The argument of the last few paragraphs may be restated in the following way in terms of the evolution of the individual"s moral att.i.tude or technique of self-control:
1. In the stage of moral evolution in which custom and authority are the controlling principles of conduct, moral judgment in the proper sense of self-conscious, critical, and reconstructive valuation of purposes is wanting. Such judgment as finds here a place is at best of the merely casuistical type, looking to a determination of particular cases as falling within the scope of fixed and definite concepts. There is no self-consciousness except such as may be mediated by the sentiment of willing obedience. It is, at this stage, not the _particular sort_ of conduct which the law prescribes that in the agent"s apprehension enlarges and develops the self; so far as any thought of enlargement and development of the self plays a part in influencing conduct, these effects are such as, in the agent"s trusting faith, will come from an entire and willing acceptance of the law as such. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." Moreover, the stage of custom and authority goes along with, in social evolution, either very simple social conditions or else conditions which, though very complex, are stable, so that in either case the conditions of conduct are in general in harmony with the conduct which custom and authority prescribe. The law, therefore, can be absolute and takes no account of possible inability to obey. The divine justice punishes infraction of the law simply as objective infraction; not as sin, in proportion to the sinner"s responsibility.
2. But inevitably custom and authority come to be inadequate. As social conditions change, custom becomes antiquated and authority blunders, wavers, contradicts itself in the endeavor to prescribe suitable modes of individual conduct. Obedience no longer is the way to light. The self becomes self-conscious through feeling more and more the repression and the misdirection of its energies that obedience now involves. This is the stage of subjective morality or conscience; and the rise of conscience, the att.i.tude of appeal to conscience, means the beginning of endeavor at _methodical solution_ of those new problematic situations in the attempt to deal with which authority as such has palpably collapsed.
We say, however, that conscience is the _beginning_ of this endeavor; for conscience is, in fact, an ambiguous and essentially transitional phenomenon. On the one hand conscience is the inner nature of a man speaking within him, and so the self furthers its own growth in listening to this expression of itself. In this aspect conscience is methodological. But on the other hand conscience _speaks_, and, speaking, must say something determinate, however general this something may be. In this aspect conscience is a _resume_ of the _generic_ values realized under the system of custom and authority, but to the present continued attainment of which the _particular prescriptions_ of custom and authority are no longer adequate guides. Conscience is thus at once an inward prompting to the application of logical method to the case in hand and a body of general or specific rules under some one of which the case can be subsumed. In ethical theory we accordingly find no unanimity as to the nature of conscience. At the one extreme it is the voice of G.o.d speaking in us or through us, in detailed and specific terms--and so, virtually, custom and authority in disguise. At the other it is an empty abstract intuition that the right is binding upon us--and, so, simply the hypostasis of demand for a logical procedure. The history of ethics presents us with all possible intermediate conceptions in which these extreme motives are more or less skilfully interwoven or combined in varying proportions. The truth is that conscience is essentially a transitional conception, and so necessarily looks before and after. In one of its aspects it is a self which has come to miss (and therefore to image for itself) the values and, it may be, a certain dawning sense of vitality and growth which obedience to authority once afforded.[134] In its other aspect it is a self that is looking forward in a self-reliant way to the determination on its own account of its purposes and values.
And finally, as for the environing world of means and conditions, clearly this is not necessarily harmonious with and amenable to conscience; indeed, in the nature of things it can be only partially so.
The morality of conscience is, therefore, either mystical, a morality that seeks to escape the world in the very moment of its affirmation that the world is unreal (because worthless), or else it takes refuge in a virtual distinction between "absolute" and "relative" morality (to borrow a terminology from a system in which properly it should have no place), perhaps setting up as an intermediary between heaven and earth a machinery of special dispensation.[135]
3. Conscience professes in general, that is, to be autonomous, and the profession is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms. Moreover, apart from considerations of the logic of the situation, theories of conscience have, as a matter of fact, always lent themselves kindly to theological purposes just as the theory of self-realization in its cla.s.sic modern statement rests upon a metaphysical doctrine of the Absolute.[136] Inevitably the movement concealed within this essentially unstable conception must have its legitimate outcome (1) in a clearing of the presented self of its fixed elements of content, thus setting it free in its character of a non-presentational principle of valuation, and (2) a setting apart of these elements of content from the principle of valuation as standards for reference and consultation rather than as law to be obeyed.
We have thus correlated our account of the logic whereby the "energetic"
self comes to explicit recognition as stimulus to the valuation-process with the three main stages in the moral evolution of the individual and the race. We were brought to this first-mentioned part of our discussion by our endeavor to find out the factors involved in the first acceptance of a conscious purpose (or, indifferently, the subsequent recognition of it as a standard)--an endeavor prompted by the need of distinguishing, with a view to their special a.n.a.lysis, the two types of valuation-process. We now return to this problem.
The following ill.u.s.tration will serve our present undertaking: A lawyer or man of business is struck by the great need of honest men in public office, or has had his attention in some impressive way called to the fact of great inequality in the present distribution of wealth, and to the diverse evils resulting therefrom. These facts hold his attention, perhaps against his will, and at last suggest the thought of his making some personal endeavor toward improvement of conditions, political or social, as the case may be. On the other hand, however, the man has before him the promise of a successful or even brilliant career in his chosen occupation, and is already in the enjoyment of a substantial income, which is rapidly increasing. Moreover, he has a family growing up about him, and he is not simply strongly interested in the early training and development of his children, and desirous of having himself some share in conducting it, but he sees that the suitable higher education of his children will in a few years make heavy demands upon his pecuniary means. Here, then, we have a situation the a.n.a.lysis of which will enable us to distinguish and define the provinces of ethical and economic judgment.
It is easy to see that we have here a conflict between ends. On the one side is the thought of public service in some important office or, let us say, the thought of bettering society in a more fundamental way by joining the propaganda of some proposed social reform. This end rests upon certain social impulses in the man"s nature and appeals to him as strongly, we may fairly a.s.sume, as would any purpose of immediate self-interest or self-indulgence, so that it stands before him and urges him with an insistent pertinacity that at first even puts him on his guard against it as a temptation. Over against this concrete end or subject of moral valuation stand other ends comprehended or symbolized in the ideals of regular and steady industry, of material provision for family, of paternal duty toward children, of scholarly achievement as lawyer or judge, and the like--ideals which are indeed practical and personal, but which, as they now function, are general or universal in character, are lacking in the concreteness and emotional quality which belong to the new purpose which has just come to imagination and has brought these ideals into action on the predicate side. Will this life of social agitation really be quite "respectable," and befitting the character of a sober and industrious man? Will it enable me to support and educate my family? Will it permit me to devote sufficient attention to their present care and training? And will it not so warp my nature, so narrow and concentrate my interests, as in a measure to disqualify me for the right exercise of paternal authority over them in years to come?
Moreover, will not a life of agitation, of constant intercourse with minds and natures in many ways inferior to my own and those of my present professional a.s.sociates, lower my intellectual and moral standards, and so make of me in the end a less useful member of society than I am at present? These and other questions like them present the issue in its earlier aspect. Presently, however, the tentative purpose puts in its defense, appealing to yet other recognized ideals or standards of self-sacrifice, benevolence, or social justice as witnesses in its favor. The conflict thus takes on the subject-predicate form, as has already been explained. On the one hand we have the undefined but strongly insistent concrete purpose; on the other hand we have a number of symbolic concepts or universals standing for accepted and accredited habitual modes of conduct. The problem is that of working the two sides of the situation together into a unified and harmonious plan of conduct which shall be at once concrete and particular, as a plan chosen by way of solution of a given present emergency, and universal, as having due regard for past modes of conduct, and as itself worthy of consideration in coping with future emergencies.
Now, how shall we discriminate the ethical and the economic aspects of the situation which we have described? We shall most satisfactorily do this through a consideration of the various sorts of conditions and means of which account must be taken in working the situation through to a solution, or (to express it more accurately) the various sorts of conditions and means which need to be defined over against the purpose as the purpose gradually develops into detailed form.
We may say, first of all, that there are _psychological_ conditions which must be taken into consideration in the case before us. Our thesis is that in so far as a situation gives rise to the determination of psychological conditions and is advanced along the way toward final solution through determination of these, the situation is an ethical one. In other words, we hold that the ends at issue in the situation are "related" in so far as they depend upon the same set of psychological conditions. In so far as these statements are not true of the situation there must be a resort to economic judgment.
By the general questions suggested above as presenting themselves to the agent we have indicated in what way the course of action taken must have regard to certain psychological considerations. Entering upon the new way of life will inevitably lessen the agent"s interest in his present professional pursuits and so make difficult, and in the end even irksome, any attempt at continuing in them either as a partial means of livelihood or as a recreation. The new work will be absorbing--as indeed it must be if it is to be worth while. In the same way the man must recognize that his nature is not one of the rare ones so richly endowed in capacity for sympathy that constant familiarity with general conditions of misery and suffering does not dull their fineness of sensibility to the special concerns and interests of particular individuals. If he takes his suffering fellow-men at large for his children, his own children will probably suffer just in so far the loss of a father"s special sympathy and understanding care. And likewise he must be drawn away and isolated from his friends, for it will be hard for him, he must foresee, to hold free and intimate converse with men whose ways of thinking lie apart from his own controlling interest and for whose insensibility to the things that move him so profoundly he must come more and more to feel a certain impatience if not contempt.
Not to enlarge upon these possibilities and others of like nature, we must see that reflection upon the situation must presently bring to consciousness these various consequences of the kind of action which is proposed and a recognition that the ground of relation between them and the action proposed lies in certain qualities and limitations of his own nature. These latter are for him the general psychological conditions of action, his "empirical self," the general nature of which he has doubtless already come to be familiar with in many former situations perhaps wholly different in superficial aspect from from the present one.
Now, just in so far as there is this relation of mutual exclusiveness between the end proposed and certain of the standard ends or modes of conduct which are involved, judgment will be by the direct or ethical method of adjustment presently to be described. Let us a.s.sume accordingly that a tentative solution of the problem has been reached to the effect that a portion of the lawyer"s time shall be given to his profession and to his family life, and that the remainder shall be given to a moderate partic.i.p.ation in the social propaganda. Over against this tentative ethical solution, as its warrant in the sense explained above, will stand in the survey of the situation that may now be taken a certain fairly definite disposition or _Anlage_ of the capacities and functions of the empirical self.[137] Now on the basis of the ethical solution thus reached there will be further study of the situation, perhaps as a result of failure in the attempt to carry the solution into practice, but more probably as a further preparation for overt action.
Forthwith it develops that the compromise proposed will be impossible.
Partic.i.p.ation in the social agitation will excite hostility on the part of the cla.s.ses from which possible clients would come and will cause distrust and a suspicion of inattention to details of business among the lawyer"s present clientage. There are, in a word, a whole a.s.semblage of "external" sociological conditions (and we need not stop to speak of physical conditions which co-operate with these and contribute to their effect) which effectually veto the plan proposed. In general these external conditions are such as to deprive the agent of the means of living in the manner which the ethical determination of the end proposes. In the present case, unless some other more feasible compromise can be devised, either the one extreme or the other must be chosen--either continuance in the profession and the corresponding general scheme of life or the social propaganda and reliance upon such scant and precarious income as it may incidentally afford.
We can now define the economic aspect of a situation in terms of our present ill.u.s.tration. The end which the lawyer had in view in a vague and tentative way was, as we saw, defined with reference to his ethical standards--that is to say, a certain measure of partic.i.p.ation in the new work was determined as satisfactory at once to his ideals of devotion to the cause of social justice and to his sense of obligation to himself and to his family. In this sense, logically speaking, a subject was defined to which a system of predicates, comprehended perhaps under the general predicate of right or good, applies. Now, however, it appears, from the inspection of the material and social environment, that the execution of this purpose, perfectly in accord though it may be with the spiritual capacities and powers of the agent, is possible only on pain of certain other consequences, certain other sacrifices, which have not hitherto been considered. That a half-hearted interest in his profession would still not prevent his earning a moderate income from it was never questioned in the ethical "first approximation" to a final decision, but now the issue is fairly presented, and, as we must see, in a very difficult and distressing way; for the essence of the situation is that the ends now in conflict, that of earning a living and caring for his family and that of laboring for the social good, are not intrinsically (that is, from the standpoint of the empirical self) incompatible. On the contrary, these two ends are psychologically quite compatible, as the outcome of the ethical judgment shows; only the "external"
conditions oppose them to each other. The difficulty of the case lies, then, just in the fact that the conflicting ends, both standing, as they do, for strong personal interests of the self, nevertheless cannot be brought to an adjustment by the direct method of an apportionment between them of the "spiritual resources" or "energies" of the self.
Instead, the case is one calling for an apportionment of the external means, and so, proximately, not for immediate determination of the final end, but for economic determination of the means.
We come now to the task of describing, so far as this may be possible, the judgment or valuation-processes which correspond to the types of situation thus distinguished. We are able now to see that these must be constructive processes, in the sense that in and through them courses of conduct adapted to unique situations are shaped by the concourse of established standards with a new end which has arisen and put in its claim for recognition. We can see, moreover, that these valuation-processes effect a construction of a different order from that given in factual judgment. Factual judgment determines external objects as means or conditions of action from standpoints suggested by the a.n.a.lysis and development of ends. Judgments of valuation determine concrete purposes from standpoints given in recognized general purposes of the self--purposes which are general in virtue of their having been taken by abstraction from concrete cases, in which they have received particular formulation as purposes, and set apart as typical modes of conduct in general serviceable to the "energetic" self.[138] Logically factual judgment is at all times subordinate to valuational; when valuational judgment has become consciously deliberate, this logical subordination becomes explicit and factual judgment appears in its true character. Its essential function is that of presenting the conditions which sanction and stimulate our ethically and economically determined purposes.[139] Finally, in the construction of purposes and reconstruction of standards in valuation the ideal of the expansion and development of the "energetic" self controls--not as a "presented" or contentual self prescribing particular modes of conduct, but as a principle prescribing the greatest possible openness to suggestion and an impartial application of the method of valuation to the case in hand.
As we have said, in whatever sensuous image we figure the "energetic"
self, its essential character lies in its function of stimulating methodical valuation. In place of the two-faced and ambiguous "presented" self, which is characteristic of the stage of conscience, we now have in the stage of valuation the "energetic" self on the one hand and standards on the other.[140]
We have now to consider the actual procedure of valuation, and first the ethical form as above defined. Bearing in mind that we are not concerned with cases of obedience to authority or deference to conscience, let us take a case of genuine moral conflict such as we were considering some time since. Suppose that one has the impulse to indulge in some form of amus.e.m.e.nt which he has been in the habit of considering frivolous or absolutely wrong. The end, as soon as imaged, or rather as the condition of its being imaged, encounters past habits of conduct symbolized by standards--standards which may be presented under a variety of forms, a maxim learned in early childhood, the ideal of a Stoic sage or Christian saint, the example of some friend, or a precept put in abstract terms, but which, however presented, are essentially symbolic of established habits of thought or action.[141] Solution of such a problem proceeds, in general, along two closely interwoven lines: (1) collation and comparison of cases recognized as conforming to the standard, with a view to determining the standard type of conduct in a less ambiguous way, and (2) definition of the relations between this type of conduct and other recognized types in the catalogue of virtues.
Now, these two movements are in fact inseparable, for, without reference to the entire system of virtues of which the one now a.s.serting itself is a member, the comparison of cases with a view to definition of the virtue would be blind and hopeless of any outcome. The agent in the case before us desires to be temperate in amus.e.m.e.nt and to make profitable use of leisure time, but after all he may wonder whether these ideals really require the austerities of certain mediaeval saints or the Stoic _ataraxy_. The saint"s feats of spiritual athletics may have served a useful purpose, in ruder times, as evidence of human power to lead a virtuous and thoughtful life, but can such self-denial now be required of the moral man? It is apparent, in short, that the superficially conceived ideal must be a.n.a.lyzed. We must consider the "spirit" of our saint or hero, not the letter of his conduct, as we say, and in interpreting it make due allowance for the conditions of the time in which he lived and the grade of general intelligence of those he sought to edify. Whether our standard is a person or a parable or an abstractly formulated precept, the logic of the situation is the same in every case of judgment. The a.n.a.lysis of a standard cannot proceed without the "synthesis" or co-ordination of the type of conduct thereby defined with other distinguishable recognized types of conduct into a comprehensive ideal of life as a whole. In the last resort the implicit relations of all the virtues will be made explicit in the process of defining accurately any one of them.
In the last resort, then, the predicate of the ethical judgment is the whole system of the recognized habits of the agent, and each judgment-process is in its outcome a readjustment of the system to accommodate the new habit that has been seeking admission. Both the old habits and the new impulse have been modified in the process just as the intension of a cla.s.s term and the particular "subsumed" under the cla.s.s are reciprocally modified in the ordinary judgment of sense-perception.
We are once more able to see that the process of ethical judgment or valuation is not a process of subsumption or cla.s.sification, of _ascertaining_ the value of particular modes of conduct, but on the contrary a process of determining or _a.s.signing_ value. Each judgment process means a new and more or less thoroughgoing redetermination of the self and hence a fixation of the ethical value of the conduct whose emergence as a purpose gave rise to the process. The moral experience is not essentially and in its typical emergencies a _recognition_ of values with a view to shaping one"s course accordingly, but rather a determining or a _fixation_ of values which shall serve for the time being, but be subject at all times to re-appraisal.
If the present discussion were primarily intended as a contribution to general ethical theory, it would be a part of our purpose to show in detail that any formulation of an ethical ideal in contentual "material"
terms must always be inadequate for practical purposes and hence theoretically indefensible. This, as we believe, could be shown true of the popularly current ideal of self-realization as well as of hedonism in its various forms and the older systems of conscience or the moral sense. These all are essentially fixed ideals admitting of more or less complete specification in point of content and regarded as tests or canons by appeal to which the moral quality of any concrete act can be deductively ascertained. They are the ethical a.n.a.logues of such metaphysical principles as the Cartesian G.o.d or the Substance of Spinoza, and the logic implied in regarding them as adequate standards for the valuation of conduct is the logic whereby the Rationalist sought to deduce from concepts the world of particular things. The present desideratum in ethical theory would appear to be, not further attempts at definition of a moral ideal of any sort, but the development of a logical method for the valuation of ideals and ends in which the results of more modern researches in the theory of knowledge should be made use of--in which the concept of self should play the part, not of the concept of Substance in a rationalistic metaphysics,[142] but of such a principle as that of the conservation of energy, for example, in scientific inference.[143]
We have, then, in each readjustment of the activities of the self a reconstruction in knowledge of ethical reality--a reconstruction which at the same time involves the a.s.signment of a definite value to the new mode of conduct which has been worked out in the readjustment. We conclude, then, that the ethical experience is one of continuous construction and reconstruction of an order of objective reality, within which the world of sense-perception is comprised as the world of more or less refractory means to the attainment of ethical purposes. In this process of construction of ethical reality current moral standards play the same part as concepts already defined--that is to say, the agent"s present habits--do in the typical judgment of sense-perception. They play the part of symbols suggestive of recognized and heretofore habitual modes of action with reference to conduct of the type of the particular instance that is under consideration, serving thus to bring to bear upon the subject of the judgment sooner or later the entire moral self. The outcome is a new self, and so for the future a new standard, in which the past self as represented by the former standard and the new impulse have been brought to mutual adjustment. Our position is that this adjustment is essentially experimental and that in it the _general principle_ of the unity and expansion of the self must be presupposed, as in inductive inference general principles of teleology, of the conservation of energy, and of organic interconnection of parts in living things are presupposed. The unity and increase of the self is not a test or canon, but a principle of moral experimentation.[144]
Finally, we must note one further parallel between ethical judgment and the judgment of sense-perception and science. However the man of science may, as a nominalist, regard the laws of nature as mere observed uniformities of fact and particulars as the true realities, these same laws will nevertheless on occasion have a distinctly objective character in his actual apprehension of them. The stubbornness with which a certain material may refuse to lend itself to a desired purpose will commonly be reinforced, as a matter of apprehension, by one"s recognition of the "scientific necessity" of the phenomenon. As offering resistance the thing itself, as we have seen, becomes objective; so also does the law of which this case may be recognized as only a particular example--and the other type of objectivity experience we need not here do more than mention as likewise possible in one"s apprehension of the law as well as of the "facts" of nature. Both types of objectivity attach to the moral law as well. The standard that restrains is one "above" us or "beyond" us. Even Kant, as the similitude of the starry heavens would suggest, was not incapable of a faint "emotion of the heteronomous," and authority in one form or another is a moral force whose objective validity as moral, both in its inhibiting and in its sanctioning aspects, human nature is p.r.o.ne to acknowledge. The apprehension of objectivity is everywhere, as we have held, emotional.
One type of situation in which the moral law takes on this character is found in the interposition of the law to check a forward tendency; the other is found in the instant of transition from doubt to the new adjustment that has been reached. In the one case the law is "inexorable" in its demands. In the other case there are two possibilities: If the adjustment has been essentially a rejection of the new "temptation," the law which one obeys is one no longer inexorable, but sustaining, as a rock of salvation. If the adjustment is a distinctly new att.i.tude, the sense of the objectivity of the principle embodied in it will commonly be less strong, if not for the time being almost wholly wanting; but in the moment of overt action it will in some degree wear the character of a firm truth upon which one has taken his stand.