Or finally, shall the doctrine retreat behind an ancient maxim, and state itself thus: “ Evolution shows us what are the ultimate tendencies of acts; but no act ought to be committed which belongs to a class of acts whose general tendency is bad ”? Would not this be a lamentable surrender of the whole position? Yet such a surrender is found in one or two passages of the book that is nowadays supposed best to represent the doctrine that we have been criticising in the foregoing, namely, in Mr. Spen¬ cer’s “Data of Ethics.” The physical facts of evo¬ lution are to give us our ideal. How? By telling us what in the long run, for the world at large, pro¬ duces happiness. But if my individual happiness in the concrete case is hindered by what happens to be known to help in the long run towards the produc¬ tion of general happiness, how shall the general rule be applicable to my case? Mr. Spencer replies, in effect, that the concrete consequences for individuals must not be judged, but only the general tendency of the act. Happiness is the ultimate end; but in practice the “ general conditions of happiness ” must be the proximate end. But how is this clear? If I know in a given case what will make me happy, and if the means to my happiness are not the general ones at all, but, in this concrete case, something con¬ flicting therewith, why should I not do as I please 1 Because, Mr. Spencer says, the concrete case must be tested by the general law of Evolution. But once more, why? The only answer is the principle, which Mr. Spencer sometimes tacitly assumes, sometimes very grudgingly acknowledges, sometimes seems to claim as his peculiar property, namely, the wellknown Kantian principle, that nothing should be done which we could not wish to see done universally, or that the rule of the single act ought to be a rule adapted to serve as an universal rule for all ra¬ tional beings. But if this maxim is essential to the foundation of a moral system, then how poor the pretense that the law of evolution gives us any foundation for ethics at all. The facts of evolution stand there, mere dead realities, whollv without value as moral guides, until the individual assumes his own moral principle, namely, his ideal determi¬ nation to do nothing that a person considering the order of the world as a whole and desiring universal happiness would condemn, from the point of view of the general tendencies of acts. Grant that princi¬ ple, and you have an ideal aim for action. Then a knowledge of the course of evolution will be use¬ ful, just as a knowledge of astronomy is useful to a navigator. But astronomy does not tell us why we are to sail on the water, but only how to find our way. With Kant’s principle assumed, we already have at¬ tained, apart from any physical doctrine of evolution, the essentials of an ethical doctrine to start with; and we need no doctrine of evolution to found this ethical doctrine, but need it only to tell us the means. But if we have not already this Kantian principle, then it is hard indeed to see what the doctrine of evolution can do to help us to get it. Mr. Spencer seems to forget that a doctrine of Means is not a doctrine of Ends.
In sum then, either the fundamental moral dis¬ tinctions are clear apart from the physical fact of evolution, or the physical fact cannot illustrate for us the distinctions that we do not previously know. If there is a real moral conflict between egoism and altruism, then this conflict must concern the aims of these two dispositions, not the accidental outcome that we reach, nor the more or less variable means that we employ in following the dispositions. And any effort to reconcile the two tendencies by showing that through evolution, or otherwise, it has become necessary for an altruistic aim to be reached by seemingly selfish means, or for a selfish purpose to be gained by seemingly altruistic devices, — any such effort has no significance for ethics. If the question were: “ Shall we buy mutton or beef at the market to-day? ” it would surely be a strange answer to the question, or “ reconciliation ” of the alternatives, if one replied, “ But whichever you do you must go over the same road to get to the market.” How then are we helped by knowing that, in our society, altruism and egoism, these two so bitterly opposed moral aims, have very often to hide their conflicts under a use of very much the same outward show of social conformity.
There is indeed no doubt that all the knowledge we may get about the facts of evolution will help us to judge of the means by which we can realize the moral ideals that we independently form. But the ideals themselves we apply to the course of evolution as tests of its worth, or hold as aims to be realized through knowledge of nature. We do not get them from studying the course of nature as a mere pro¬ cess. There is no doubt of the reality and of the vast importance of the physical fact of evolution. Its ethical importance, however, has been, we hold, misunderstood. Evolution is for ethics a doctrine not of ends, but of the means that we can use. In fact, there is an applied ethic of evolution, but no fundamental ethical doctrine based upon evolution. Those who investigate evolution are doing much to further the realization of ethical ideals, but they cannot make or find for us our ethical ideals. They show us where lies the path to an already desired goal. For them to try to define the goal merely by means of their physical discoveries, is a great mis¬ take. It can lead only to such labored efforts as we have here been criticising, efforts to prove some such opinion as that altruism is a form of selfish¬ ness, or that selfishness is the only possible altruism. Whether we are just in fancying that these latter efforts are really identical with the actual efforts of any recent evolutionists, the reader must judge for himself. Altruism we must, at all events, justify in another way.
Y.
Y.
But now let us turn from those who define unself¬ ishness as a useful means to a selfish end, and let us consider the effort to make pure unselfishness a selfevident goal of conduct, by founding unselfishness on the direct revelation of the emotion of Pity. Here, as before, we shall meet with the skeptical criticism that the mere physical fact of the existence of certain conditions is no proof of the validity of an ideal moral demand. Just as the physical fact that a clever self-seeker must pretend to be unselfish, and must outwardly produce effects that benefit others, is no foundation for a genuinely unselfish ideal, just so the presence of a pitiful impulse, a mere fact of human nature, is no foundation for an ideal rule of conduct. The feeling is capricious, just as the social conditions that render public spirit and gen¬ erosity the best selfish policy are capricious. As the selfish man would behave with open selfishness in case he were where unselfishness in outward con¬ duct no longer was worth to him the trouble, even so the pitiful man would, merely as pitiful, be cruelly selfish if cruel selfishness, instead of generous deeds, could satisfy his impulse. In fact, he often is cru¬ elly selfish; and if sympathy were always unselfish, still, as a feeling, it is a mere accidental fact of hu¬ man nature. So again, the effort to found a moral ideal on a natural fact will fail. But let us look closer.
Schopenhauer is the best modern representative of the view that Pity or sympathetic emotion is the foundation of right conduct. In pity he finds the only unselfish principle in man, and he insists that pity is a tendency not reducible to any other more selfish emotion of our nature. He finds it necessary to refute as an error the oft repeated opinion that1 1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 211 (2d ed ).
“ pity springs from a momentary illusion of imagi¬ nation, so that we first put ourselves in the sufferer’s place, and now, in imagination, fancy that we suffer his pangs in our person.” This, replies Schopen¬ hauer, is a blunder. “ It remains to us all the time clear and immediately certain, that he is the suf¬ ferer, not we; and it is in his person, not in ours, that we feel the pain, and are troubled. We suffer with him, so in him; we feel his pain as his, and do not fancy that it is ours; yes, the happier our own state is, and the more the consciousness of it con¬ trasts in consequence with the situation of our neigh¬ bor, so much the more sensitive are we to pity.” And of this wondrous feeling no complete psycholog¬ ical explanation can be given; the true explanation, thinks Schopenhauer, must be metaphysical. In pity a man comes to a sense of the real oneness in essence of himself and his neighbor.
This pity is, therefore, for Schopenhauer, the only moral motive, first, because it is the only non-egoistic motive, and secondly, because it is the expression of a higher insight. The first character of pity is illustrated by Schopenhauer in an ingenious passage, by means of a comparison of pity and other motives as exhibited in a supposed concrete instance. We shall find it well to quote the most of the passage in full: — “ I will take at pleasure a case as an example to furnish for this investigation an experimentum crucis. To make the matter the harder for me, I will take no case of char¬ ity, but an injustice, and one, too, of the most flagrant sort. Suppose two young people, Caius and Titus, both passionately in love, and each with a different maiden. Let each one find in his way a rival, to whom external cir¬ cumstances have given a very decided advantage. Both shall have made up their minds to put each his own rival out of the world; and both shall be secure against any discovery, or even suspicion. But when each for himself sets about the preparations for the murder, both of them, after some inner conflict, shall give up the attempt. They shall render account to us, plainly and truthfully, of why they have thus decided. Now what account Caius shall render, the reader shall decide as he pleases. Let Caius be prevented by religious scruples, by the will of God, by the future punishment, by the coming judgment, or by any¬ thing of that sort. Or let him [with KantJ say: ‘ I re¬ flected that the maxim of my procedure in this case would not have been fit to serve as an universal rule for all pos¬ sible rational beings, since I should have used my rival as means and not at the same time as End in himself.’ Or let him say with Fichte: ‘ Every human life is Means or instrument for the realization of the Moral Law; there¬ fore I cannot, without being indifferent to the moral law, destroy one who is destined to contribute to that end.’
Or let him say, after Wollaston: ‘ I have considered that the deed would be the expression of an untrue proposi¬ tion.’ Or let him say, after Hutcheson: ‘ The moral sense, whose sensations, like those of every other sense, are not further to he explained, has determined me to refrain.’ Or let him say, after Adam Smith: ‘ I foresaw that my deed, if I did it, would arouse no sympathy with me in the spectators of the act.’ Or, after Christian Wolff: ‘I recognized that I should thereby hinder my own growth towards perfection without helping the growth of anybody else.’ Or let him say, after Spinoza: ‘ Hornini nihil utilius homine; ergo, hominem interimere noluil In short, let him say what he will. But Titus, whose ac¬ count of himself I reserve for my choice, let him say: ‘ When I began to prepare, and so for the moment was busy no longer with my passion, but with my rival, then it became for the first time quite clear to me what now was really to be his fate. But just here pity and compas¬ sion overcame me. I grieved for him; my heart would not be put down; I could not do it.’ I ask now every honest and unprejudiced reader, which of the two is the better man? To which of the two would he rather in¬ trust his fate? Which of them was restrained by the purer motive? Where, therefore, lies the principle of moral action? ” 1 What shall we say of this foundation for altru¬ ism? Are pity and unselfishness thus shown to be, for the purposes of ethics, identical? Schopenhau¬ er’s suggestion seems attractive, but from the outset doubtful. Let us examine it more carefully.
VI.
This Pity is, at all events, for the first just an im¬ pulse, no more; so at least, as we learn, it appears in the unreflective man.2 “ Nature,” Schopenhauer tells us, has “ planted in the human heart that won¬ drous disposition through which the sorrows of one are felt by the other, and from which comes the voice that, according to the emergency, calls to one ‘ Spare,’ to another, ‘ Help,’ and calls urgently and with au¬ thority. Surely there was to be expected from the aid thus originating more for the prosperity of all 1 Grundlage der Moral, p. 231. a Grundlage der Moral, p. 245.
than could have been expected from a strict maxim of duty, general, abstract, and deduced from certain rational considerations and logical combinations of ideas. For from the latter source one might the less expect success, because the mass of men must re¬ main what they always have been, rude men, unable, by reason of their inevitable bodily tasks, to get time to cultivate their minds, and therefore, being rude men, must find general principles and abstract truths unintelligible, so that only the concrete has meaning for them. But for the arousing of this pity, which we have shown to be the only source of unselfish actions, and so the true basis of morality, one needs no abstract, but only perceptive knowl¬ edge ( bedarf es keiner abstrakten, sondern nur der anschauenden Enkenntniss ), only the mere under¬ standing of the concrete case, to which pity at once lays claim, without further reflective mediation.” And, to make his view clearer, Schopenhauer fur¬ ther appeals to passages quoted by him with ap¬ proval from Rousseau: 1 “II est done bien certain, que la pitie est un sentiment naturel, qui, moderant dans chaque individu l’amour de soi-m§me, concourt a la conservation mutuelle de toute l’espece...C’est, en un mot, dans ce sentiment naturel plutdt, que dans les argumens subtil s, qu’il faut chercher la cause de la repugnance qu ’ Sprouverait tout homme a mal faire.” Pity, then, is no abstract principle, but a tendency to do so and so in a concrete case.
For the natural and unlearned man it is a mere sentiment, a feeling with his fellow, no more. x 1 “Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalite.” Quoted in the Grundlage der Moral, p. 247.
But then does this sentiment exhaust for Schopen¬ hauer the whole meaning of pity? In no wise. Not for this sole reason is pity the whole basis of morality, namely, because it is the only non-egoistic impulse in us; but besides this reason, there is the second rea¬ son used by Schopenhauer to give special dignity to pity. This other reason is in fact the deeper basis for him of pity as the principle of conduct. Pity is namely a revelation in concrete form of a great fun¬ damental truth, the one above referred to, the great fact of the ultimate and metaphysical Oneness of all sentient beings. Because pity reveals this, therefore has this sentiment an authority, a depth and a sig¬ nificance that a sentiment, merely as such, could never have.
About this aspect of the matter, Schopenhauer in¬ structs us more than once in his writings. A few quotations from one discussion will serve for present illustration.
“ The difference between my own and another’s person seems for experience an absolute difference. The differ¬ ence of space that separates me from my neighbor, sep¬ arates me also from his joy and pain. But on the other hand, it must still be remarked, that the knowledge that we have of ourselves is no complete and clear knowledge.” 1 “ Whereon is founded all variety and all multiplicity of beings? On space and time; through these alone is va¬ riety or multiplicity possible, since what is many can only be conceived as coexistent or as successive. Because the many like things are called individuals, 1 therefore call space and time, as making possible the existence of a mid- 1 Grundtage der Moral, p. 267.
titude of individuals, the princip ium individuationis.” 1...“If anything is undoubtedly true in the explanations that Kant s wonderful insight has given to the world, then surely it is the Transcendental ^Esthetics.”...“ Ac¬ cording to this doctrine, space and time...belong only to the phenomena...But if the world in itself knows not space or time, then of necessity the world in itself knows nothing of multitude.”...“ Hence only one iden¬ tical Being manifests itself in all the numberless phenom¬ ena of this world of sense. And conversely, what appears as a multitude, in space or in time, is not a real tiling in it¬ self, but only a phenomenon.”...“ Consequently that view is not false that abolishes the distinction between Self and Not-self; rather is the opposed view the false one.”...“ But the former is the view that we have found as the real basis of the phenomenon of pity, so that in fact pity is the expression of it. This view then is the meta¬ physical basis of ethics, and consists in this: that one in¬ dividual directly recognizes in another his own very self his own true essence." 2 These passages from Schopenhauer are, as one sees, interesting not only because they defend the emotion of pity as the foundation of morals, but also because they offer an interesting suggestion of an aspect of the matter not before noticed in our study. Like so many of Schopenhauer’s suggestions, this one is neither wholly original, nor very complete in itself. But it is so expressed as to attract attention; it is helpful to us by its very incompleteness. It is stim¬ ulating, although it proves nothing. This modern Buddhism brings to our minds the query (which gpes beyond the present scope of this chapter), whether the altruistic motives, whatever they are, might not somehow be made of evident and general validity as ethical principles, if we could show that in the mo¬ ment of pity or in some other altruistic moment there is expressed the nascent discovery of an Illu¬ sion, namely, the Illusion of Selfishness. That is what Schopenhauer supposed himself to have found out. In pity he found an unselfish impulse. But this unselfish impulse was, for the first, just an impulse, a sentiment, beloved of Rousseau, remote from the abstract principles that the philosophers had been seeking. Here was unselfishness, but still seeming to need reflective development and deeper founda¬ tion. Schopenhauer thought that he had found such a deeper basis for pity when he suggested that it was an imperfect metaphysical insight. In effect one might sum up his views thus: In deeper truth, he says, you and I are one Being, namely, the One great Being, the Absolute Will, which works in us both. But because we both perceive in time and space, therefore you and I seem to ourselves to be different and perhaps warring individuals, like the two halves of a divided worm. Only the sentiment of pity sees through the temporal veil of illusion, and so seeing, in its own intuitive, unreflective way, it whispers to us that the pain of each is in truth the other s pain.
And when we really feel thus, we forget the illusion of sense, and act as if we were one. So acting we fol¬ low the higher insight, and when metaphysic comes, it will justify us in our view. Such, in our own words, are Schopenhauer s ideas.
We are still not concerned for Schopenhauer’s metaphysic, which, God knows, was a rotten enough tub for a wise man to go down to the sea in. But in his character as keeper of beautiful curiosities, Schopenhauer shows us in his literary museum, that is built on the dry land, many very useful thoughts; and we need not follow him out onto the great deep at present. But we note with interest this sugges¬ tion that he adds to his theory of pity. Is that sug¬ gestion worth anything? Is pity in fact a detection of an illusion? And does this illusion constitute the basis of selfishness? Perhaps that suggestion will be needed in a future chapter. Meanwhile, how¬ ever, we have at present to do only with pity as a mere emotion. Surely if pity does discover for us any illusion in selfishness, then it must be a particu¬ lar form of pity to which this function belongs. For much of pity simply illustrates this illusion. We cannot then do better than first to distinguish the selfish from the altruistic forms of what we popu¬ larly include under the one name Pity, or, to use the more general word, Sympathy. We shall have to go over old and commonplace ground, but we need to; for the illusion of selfishness, to be detected, needs also to be illustrated.
VII.
VII.
When one sees his neighbor in pain, does one of necessity come to know that pain as Such, to realize its true nature as it is in his neighbor? Or does one often fall into an illusion about that pain, regarding it as somehow not quite real? Schopenhauer would reply: The heartless man, who has no compas¬ sion, falls into a sort of illusion about his neighbor. He thinks more or less clearly that that pain of his neighbor’s is a sort of unreal pain, not as living as would be his own pain. But the pitiful man, the only quite unselfish man, — he perceives the reality of his neighbor’s suffering. He knows that that is no phantom suffering, but even such pain as his own would be.
We want to test this idea in a practical way. So we say: Let us judge of this sympathy by its fruits? Are we in fact certain to be led to unselfish acts if in all cases we obey the dictates of sympathy? Sehopenhauer thinks that he has secured altruism for his sympathetic or pitiful man by remarking that, in true pity, one feels the pain, not as his own, but as the other’s pain. To follow the dictates of this sympathy would of necessity lead, one might say, to the effort unselfishly to relieve the other. But then does not this depend very much upon the way in which pity conies to be an object of reflection for the man that feels it? Pity is often of itself an in¬ determinate impulse, that may be capable of very various interpretation by the subsequent reflection of the pitiful mind. One may through pity come to reflect that this feeling stands for a real pain in the other man, and may act accordingly; or one may have very different reflections. One may fail to realize the other’s pain as such, and may be driven back upon himself. For most people the first re¬ flection that follows upon strong pity is no unselfish one at all. It is very simply the precept: “ Get rid of the pain that your neighbor causes you to feel.” Sympathy with pain may make you tremble, grow faint, feel choked, weep; and all these sudden emo¬ tions are followed perhaps by long-enduring melan¬ choly. All this causes you to forget the reality of the other’s pain. This personal trouble of yours, felt in stronger cases in your body as a physical dis¬ turbance, as something unnerving, prostrating, over¬ whelming, turns your reflection upon yourself, and you are very apt to ask: What am I to do to be free from it? So to ask is already to begin to forget your neighbor. The pain that his pain caused has simply become your pain. You are, even through your pity, bound fast in an illusion. For there are three ways of removing this pain, and of satisfying for you the sympathy that caused it. One way, and often a very hard one, puzzling to follow, full of re¬ sponsibility and of blunders, would be taken if you did your best, perseveringly and calmly, to get your neighbor out of his trouble. That would doubtless take a long time, you would never be adequately thanked for your trouble, and you might very easily blunder and do harm instead of good to him, thus causing in the end yet more sympathetic pain for you, coupled this time with remorse. The second way is to get used to the sight of pain, so that you no longer feel any sympathetic suffering. The third way is generally the easiest of all. That is to go away from the place, and forget all about the sad business as soon as possible. That is the way that most sensitive people take in dealing with most of the suffering that they meet. The first way gives you the most of hard work to do. The second way, by dulling your sensibilities, makes you less alive to the pleasures that are to be gained in the company of happy men. The stern man, who has seen so much suffering as to be indifferent to it, may be less alive to the bliss of sympathy that gentler natures come to know, in refined and peaceful society. By far the most inviting way is the third. It prevents you from growing callous, cold, and harsh. It leaves you sensitive, appreciative, tender-hearted, freshly sympathetic, an admirable and humane being. But it also saves you from the pangs that to refined nar tures must be the most atrocious, the pangs of con¬ templating a world of sorrow which your best efforts can but very imperfectly help. People with a deli¬ cate sense of the beautiful surely cannot endure to go about seeing all sorts of filthy and ugly miseries, and if they can endure it, will they not be much happier, as well as more refined, more delicate in taste, much higher in the scale of beautiful cultiva¬ tion, if they do not try to endure it, but keep them¬ selves well surrounded by happy and ennobling com¬ panions? For the sight of pain is apt to make you coarse; it might degrade you even to the level of the peevish sufferer himself. Does a refined soul desire that? No one is a duller, a less stimulating, a less ennobling companion, than the average man when he is suffering atrociously. Pain brings out his native brutishness. He is abject, he curses, he behaves perhaps like a wild beast. Or he lies mute and helpless, showing no interest in what you do for him, hating you possibly, just because you are the nearest creature to him. His gratitude is apt to be a myth. So long as he yet suffers, he does not ap¬ preciate what you are doing for him, for why should he thank you while you make him no better? And if you can cure him, what then? Nobody can re¬ member very clearly a very sharp pain once over. Hence he will underrate your services. You can much better appreciate your moderate trouble in helping him than he can afterwards appreciate the very great and agonizing trouble from which you saved him. One forgets in part one’s greatest an¬ guish, one’s most dangerous diseases. The worst troubles are not favorable to clear memory. Above all, however, his memory will be weak for what you did in his case. He will shock you afterwards by having failed to notice that you took any serious trouble in his behalf at all. But, if he was sick and you nursed him, he will remember very well how you harassed him as you nursed him. He will re¬ member a creaking door or an ill-cooked steak, when he forgets your cups of cold water, your sleepless nights, your toil to secure silence when he needed it, your patience when he complained, your sacrifice of all other present aims in life on his account. All that he will forget, not because he is a bad man, but because he is an ordinary creature whom pain de¬ based and corrupted, so that he became hardly a fit companion for an elevated and refined soul like yours. He is only human. If you, were an average man yourself, you would treat your friends that aided you in your worst suffering after much the