A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 12

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that what things are in themselves, not what they are for us, is of importance to us; as if we could have an interest in that which things are not for us. The decisive point is the fact that, not things as they appear to us, but their rightly conceived appearance, their appearance as understood by adequate concepts, is the beginning and end of knowledge. Hence the true student of nature can no more do without the concept than the true philosopher can leave material perception out of account. Stiff-necked Materialism is as one-sided as old-time Metaphysics; the one has no meaning for its form, the other no form for its content; the one is a corpse, the other a ghost, and each strives in vain to attain the warmth of life. Natural Science and Philosophy must tread different paths, in so far as division of labor requires them to do so; but they labor at the two sides of one whole. Nature is not a machine, but life in its fullest form, and the task set us is to understand her as she is, not to patch together a nature out of disconnected sc.r.a.ps.

Carneri adopts the definition given by Claude Bernard, to whom life is neither a principle nor a result, but a conflict. To the chemical synthesis, from which protoplasm results, is added, through mechanical integration, morphological synthesis, to whose special form inherited characteristics are related as elements. Through the conflict within living forms, and between these and the rest of the world, motion, attaining to the character of function, appears as continuous consumption. Destruction and renewal are inseparable correlative concepts. This fact is contained in the concept of the conservation of force, work, and motion. We may distinguish between (1) latent life, such as that acc.u.mulated in the germ, (2) the merely oscillating plant-life, and (3) free animal life. With this distinction, we place ourselves upon the standpoint of the individual, for whom there is both beginning and end, and to whom renewal is subordinated to destruction; for consumption, death is the characteristic of living in distinction from non-living matter. If, therefore, we regard life as identical with death, we merely a.s.sert that we consider death identical with life, and that, in the broader sense of the word, for the universe as a whole, there is no death. That which Claude Bernard designates as Construction is the differentiation and division of labor arising in the process of integration. The cell const.i.tutes the first integration of protoplasm.

In it, motion takes place in a particular form, organizes according to this form, causes division and synthesis, and impresses features of character that, by their action and reaction with the environment, either effect their own destruction, or else maintain their existence, propagate themselves, become fixed, and undergo further evolution. In this manner species arise and vary: and the more primitive the form, the more variable it is; the more advanced, the more fixed. Hence the invariable character of the germ-cells. In bone-formation, it is clearly shown that special structure begins very early,--in the cell, namely; but it is preserved only where it is aided by the necessary action and reaction. Autonomic in itself, life submits itself to the general laws of evolution.[67] As the direction of motion is determined for whole groups of cells by the direction of the motion of the protoplasm in the single cells, so organic function is determined by the grouping of the irritable, contractile, sensible cells. From the first origin of life up to its most perfect development, everything is formed at the cost of other forms. If life is, therefore, to be conceived as a conflict, it is a conflict as wide as the universe itself, and we say, with Claude Bernard, that "life may be characterized, but not defined."

Everything that has sensation lives. As life depends upon particular combinations of particular elements, so sensation is the characteristic mark of such combinations, and a higher form of that simple reaction common to nature in general. Reaction has its reason in the motion arising from the endless divisibility of matter, through which the most different combinations and reactions are produced. Since we have before us, in our contemplation of corporeal nature, not abstract matter in general, but some sixty or more special chemical elements, we must, in thinking of atoms, have in mind atoms of these particular elements, and not atoms of abstract matter in general; of such atoms of matter in general, or, if one will, of primordial matter, we can know only that they would in general attract and repel. Only by degrees can a particular reaction of the elements have been developed; and since our known elements have particular different reactions, they must be the product of different combinations. Sensation is due to certain combinations of these elements; when the combinations no longer exist, the atoms of these elements still react according to their characteristic method as atoms of particular elements, but the sensation dependent on their peculiar combinations is destroyed. The atom as such is devoid of sensation, and we may convert our earlier proposition, making it read: Only that which lives is sensible. We know quite well how much of this course of reasoning is of hypothetic nature; but the strictest consistency cannot be denied it. The method which explains life by the a.s.sumption of sensible atoms is a much shorter and easier one; but is it not likewise a method of greater risk? And is there no danger that, in rejecting a method by which all changes in phenomena are referred to functions of combinations of elements, we may seek, in matter itself, something that is not matter? The above theory of life, also, takes its departure from the a.s.sumption that all was, originally, in the formation of the world, living in the broader sense of the word.

But here we are concerned with life in the narrower sense of the word, as distinguished from what we call dead nature.

Soul is, therefore, according to our definition, equivalent to animal life, in contrast to the life of the plant. The significance of the distinction lies in the intermediation of the general organic unity, not in a qualitative division. The elements are the same; only their connection is different, and that which distinguishes the animal is a centralization of the organs. In referring to the possession of soul by the animal, we simply point out the independent manner in which, by reason of sensation, its impulses govern, and develop, through the scale, up to consciousness and will. Of course the gradations are very numerous, inasmuch as the functions of the soul are determined by the development of the organism. The difference between animals whose sensation attains clear consciousness and such as do not attain to more than a mechanical action, does not concern us, as long as we regard the psychical phenomena in their most general form. Every animal possesses soul; we avoid the expression "_a_ soul," as giving the soul the significance of something by itself. In like manner, we do not say that _a_ life, but that life belongs to the animal. The chief condition necessary to soul as to life consists in union to a whole, and soul represents the gradation by which life lifts itself to the plane where it becomes a mirror of the world.

Sensation, as centralized in the brain, becomes perception, the sensation of a part becoming the sensation of the whole, a _feeling_ of the individual. It is perceptions which cause movement. To find a connection between perception as generally understood and the action of the muscle would be as difficult as to show the connection between body and soul in the sense of Spirit. But if we regard perception as feeling, then the awakening of a corresponding impulse, and the transformation of this into will, which finds expression in a corresponding motion, is something so natural that it needs but a glance at the nerve-apparatus in order to comprehend the rapidity of the whole process. With regard to the unconscious character of the greater part of the process, and its corresponding rapidity, we have to consider the gradual nature of the development of the nervous system, the gradual drill of the parts, until the whole process becomes perfect. By feeling is here not meant necessarily feeling as pain or pleasure. This quality of feeling does not necessarily belong to every perception, else thought, as a train of perceptions, would be unbearable; a certain strength of feeling is necessary in order that it may attain the character of pain or pleasure; as we recognize a boundary at which sensation begins, so we recognize one at which feeling begins to attain the character of pleasure and from which, up to a second boundary-line, it continues to appear as pleasure; beyond this line it appears as pain. Moderate feeling is beneficial to the organism, immoderate feeling harmful; hence the appearance of the one as pleasure, and of the other as pain. We say expressly "moderate,"

not "weak" feeling, because too weak feeling may also, under certain conditions, be painful. Horwicz rightly protests against any attempt to arrange the feelings in an exact scale, since a particular feeling may lead to quite different phenomena of emotion, according to the particular circ.u.mstances and the particular development which it undergoes in the organism, and since it is furthermore nothing changeless and distinct, but merely an energy that necessarily leads to activity. Hence it is that the excitation which does not pa.s.s the stage of sensation remains localized, but when it attains to the stage of feeling takes possession of the whole individual, and brings the essential tendency of his being[68] to expression.

As Carneri tends to interpret the sensation which he predicates of the lower animals as a mere higher reaction of living matter, and thus wholly mechanical, so he tends to regard the activity of all animals which lack brain (under which he understands especially the nervous developments found in the gray matter which contains Haeckel's "soul-cells") as devoid of pleasure and pain, and due to mere inheritance and force of habit. So the action of the ants is not to be attributed to intelligence, but to mere reaction upon sensation due to inheritance and exercise; and so the movements of a b.u.t.terfly impaled upon a red-hot needle would be attributable to the hindrance of its flight, not to pain.[69] Thus, with Carneri, the words "sensation,"

"soul," "perception," and "feeling," lose their ordinary significance; and this fact must be held in mind in the interpretation of his a.s.sertions that "all animals have soul," and "all animals have sensation."

Carneri further cites Haeckel's definition of the organism as a cell-monarchy, in which different individuals, and different groups of individuals, having different duties, are guided by a central power. He does not intend thus to a.s.sume special centres for consciousness and will, but only to a.s.sert that, through such centralization, the expression of the whole individual, as total consciousness and total will, takes place.

Not only the brain, but other parts of the nervous system, are affected in perception; and the same parts are operative in remembrance. Thus the a.s.sociation of ideas is explained.

As long as the animal remains upon the plane of mere instinct, it has only blind impulses.[70] Only in the most highly organized animals do we find the first traces of conscious, though not yet of self-conscious, will. In that the animal knows what it will, it distinguishes clearly the objects of its will, and hence its own impulses. Upon the earlier plane of mere self-preservation, the beneficial, harmful, and indifferent were not yet made inward, but only distinguished outwardly by nature in the struggle for existence, in which the fittest survived; in consciousness, however, the harmful and advantageous become inward, taking the form of pain and pleasure. But the animal never gets beyond the concrete case,--in which his inherited instincts, working with a rapidity and freedom we often see imitated in the pa.s.sions of men, sometimes act so advantageously as almost to deceive us into believing them the result of reflection; yet sometimes, again, bring most disastrous results. The animal never attains to a notion of the Whole.

a.s.sociations and general perceptions the higher animal species have, but not concepts.

Impulses appear, in their primary form in the animals, as pa.s.sions.[71]

The first beginning of the ethical may be found in the pa.s.sion of love in the broadest sense of the word, as s.e.xual love and the love of offspring. The first is chiefly exacting, the second is higher, in that it gives.

That which divides man physically from the brutes is merely the union of qualities, all of which, but never all of which united, we find among the animals; that which divides him mentally from them is self-conscious thought, developed by means of speech. Through the development of attention, which arises in connection with a greater and greater centralization, sensation becomes perception, this develops further to general perceptions, and is still further perfected to concepts.

Carneri believes primitive man to have been, not more benevolent than the animals, but less so. Leaving out of account the carnivorous animals, the brutes seem to satisfy their own wants without interfering with the satisfaction of others, and, except where the possession of females is concerned, to live in peace with each other. On the other hand, the influence of man upon the domestic animals may be seen in the greed of the dog, who, as capable of instruction, takes on himself all the evil qualities of his master. The cat, who is not so intelligent as the dog, is not thus influenced.

For nature there is no good and evil. The animal which tears and devours its prey is no worse than the swollen stream, that uproots the trees in its course. With consciousness, intention awakes; yet in the brute this is only secondary; the brute distinguishes between pain and pleasure, but not between these as the result of its own action in distinction from that of nature outside itself. Only the self-consciousness of the human being knows good and evil; nature does not know evil, for she does not know the opposition on which it is based. There is wisdom in the story of Genesis, which sees in the beginning of knowledge, the commencement of evil. The awakening of self-feeling is the beginning of a chasm, through the full development of which the individual is at length separated from nature. With self-consciousness and the feeling of boundless isolation that therein comes over him, man begins his ethical development.

But the ethical does not begin with the human being known to us by natural history; even yet there are races of man which stand lower than many species of animals; and the early development of moral activity was of necessity much more of the nature of that which we call evil than of that which we call good. The mind is a sort of light; and as warmth is indivisible from the motion which we call light, and the first warmth of the sun could only burn, so the motion which we call mind could at first only have destroyed; self-consciousness, in its earliest stages, can have produced only the intense feelings which lie nearer pain than pleasure. As man came to have intention, and gained new wants in development, he could regard the intentions of his fellow-men only with distrust. Envy, hatred, dislike, were developed long before the family, and, later, the tribe furnished opportunity for love. Self-consciousness could, at first, interpret good and evil only as having reference to self, just as it also conceived its freedom as that of its own caprice.

The desire for happiness and endeavor to attain it is the primary incentive to all human undertakings. It is erroneous to suppose that man is nearer to the brutes by this impulse; the animal does not possess it, has only the impulse to self-preservation.

The idea that man and wife together first const.i.tute the complete human being, and that the real future of this human being lies in the children--the idea of the family is, certainly, of all ideas, primordial, though it probably came late to consciousness. From the family developed the tribe with the eldest at its head. The more peaceful the tribe, the more others combined against it, and by their combination compelled it still further to strengthen its resources. The feeling of power awakened by the growing concord extended further and further, and finally made its way to the individual with the full force of the Idea. This development, but more especially the compelling power of the struggle for existence, soon called the bravest to command in place of the eldest of the tribe.

It is by the agency of no other being that, in the mutual relation of physical and mental activity, consciousness is attained; man himself comes to a feeling of himself. In the being endowed with soul, who on the one hand attains, through integration, an independence that appears as the impulse to self-preservation, on the other hand becomes conscious of this impulse to self-preservation through a centralized nervous system that raises the part-sensations to feelings of the whole, sensation divides into two chief functions, which appear as pa.s.sion and thought. We are not concerned, in thought and pa.s.sion, with opposites, but with an opposition which a single phenomenon develops through manifold action and reaction with the rest of the world of phenomena.

The distinction is merely a convenience in finer investigations; there is, in fact, as little thought without emotion as emotion without thought. And since emotion always manifests itself as will, this highest opposition is best defined as that of thought and will. In order to understand the human being, we must a.n.a.lyze these two sides of consciousness.

Carneri's examination of the primary laws of thought can be only touched upon here. In the law of Ident.i.ty, or, negatively speaking, the law of Consistency,[72] there comes to our consciousness a more general Species which includes a determinate species. "The adequate, clear, correct, corresponding[73] concept is consistent with itself," means, the adequate concept finds itself again in every object which it includes.

The law of Ident.i.ty expresses, therefore, not entire sameness, with which the cessation of all thought would be reached, but simple consistency. It affords us, thus, the means of recognizing the Untrue in that which is not what it is called, hence also the means of recognizing the True. The law of Excluded Middle contains an extension or doubling of the law of Ident.i.ty, in that the ident.i.ty here appears, not in the form of consistency, but in that of contradiction; as, "either--or." Not one, but two cases are supposed, only one of which can exist or be true.

The disjunctive proposition which corresponds to it is not less determinate than the categorical proposition which corresponds to the law or judgment of Ident.i.ty, but is rather, on the contrary, a more forcible affirmation of it. In this determinate nature lies the worth of the Excluded Middle. Du Bois Raymond's address on the Limits of Knowledge has caused much joy to conservative thinkers; but these have made much more out of it than it really means. There is either for us a transcendental, or there is not; and if not, then we are limited to the knowledge of nature. The scientific limit set to our knowledge by our hypotheses and theories is, however, merely a limit set for the purpose of rounding knowledge to a whole, not of closing it to a further advancement; but such hypotheses must be consistent with experience and founded upon it; otherwise we leave knowledge behind us and abandon the hope of it. We cannot say what, within the province of science, man will not know, except that he never will know everything.

The law of Causality is the most important law of thought, after that of Ident.i.ty. Reason and result are often confused with cause and effect.

The reason on account of which we do a thing is not, however, the cause by which it occurs. The cause is the complexity of all conditions which make it possible, and the reason of its performance coincides with a conscious design on our part that const.i.tutes our purpose. Causality has nothing in common with the concept of purpose. The princ.i.p.al of Sufficient Reason has been made the bridge between Causality and Design.

Probably human experience reached first the conception that nothing occurs without sufficient reason, and only later, by a further mental step, the conviction that everything for which the necessary conditions exist takes place. With this conviction, the concept of causality became clear; but, at the same time the bridge which connects it with the theory of design in the succession of events was destroyed, so that only a logical leap can restore us to this incomplete conception of earlier experience. Causal necessity excludes purposed necessity. That which takes place may be regarded as, in one direction, conformable to an end, but may, on the other hand, conform to no end in any direction. A succession of events conforms to purpose only in so far as it is regarded by a particular consciousness which combines it in thought with ends of its own or such as it ascribes to another consciousness. In the law of Causality, as in the law of Ident.i.ty, the necessity of self-consistency and the self-consistency of Necessity reaches expression. The sufficient reason is simply the completeness of the conditions, with the existence of which the event takes place, and the absence of which the event fails to take place.

Spinoza's "Will and intellect are one and the same" is the ethical law of Ident.i.ty. All thought is willed; that is, indivisible from a certain coloring which it has in virtue of its ident.i.ty with the will, just as all will is connected with thought; there is, indeed, a will-less thought, which might, however, just as correctly be called "unthinking thought,"[74] just as "unthinking willing" is, in reality, will-less willing. In all mental operations, the ident.i.ty of the two functions is found. A will is unthinkable without something willed--an end, given by thought. It is the fact that, in his practical life, man recognizes purpose as a necessity, which causes him to read purpose into nature.

"At the basis of ident.i.ty lies a concept which throws light upon the teleological principle. This is the concept of the General. The basis of the principle of ident.i.ty is a concept of species which embraces the general in contrast to the singular and particular; just as the judgment of Ident.i.ty const.i.tutes an advance to still greater Generality. The concept of the General which reaches expression in species coincides with the concept: Law of Nature. The Law is, for a particular circle of events, what the Species is for a particular circle of objects. As in the Species, the characteristics are expressed which an object must exhibit in order to belong to it, so in the Law the conditions are expressed which much exist in order that the instance included under it may take place. The relation of Ident.i.ty to Causality is unmistakable.

Species and Law include no mere plurality of objects and instances, for as often as the instance comes to pa.s.s the law is fulfilled, and the number belonging to a species is, in conception, limitless. Worlds like our earth may come into existence again and again; hence specimens of a certain species, eternally destroyed, may eternally renew themselves, and instances which fall under a certain law may eternally occur. Simply their conditions must exist in order that they may occur. Such cases form, therefore, a whole; and this is Totality in Little." The importance of every whole which sets itself over against the greater whole has already been noticed. The former whole const.i.tutes the concept of Individuality which, as Undivided Unity, becomes independent. "The limitlessness which we claim for the whole is one of conception; we thus seek to make that which is incomprehensible conceivable." The concept does not need to be imagined; it may be thought. "Every one knows what he means when he opposes the whole to the part. The whole is not a larger part, but the opposite of the part, as 'all' const.i.tutes the opposite of the many and the particular."

What we aim at, in this a.n.a.lysis, is a true Realism in the conception of the Purposeful. The Purposeful is that which conduces to an end, the Useful. From Individuality follows the individual nature of ends. Every man has his own ends, and in the attempt to attain his ends does not hesitate to set himself in opposition to all the rest of mankind. If he is sufficiently energetic and cunning, he may even succeed, for a time, in his endeavors, to the harm of humanity. Yet to have the whole of humanity against oneself is to endeavor to proceed in the direction of greater resistance, and the process must, sooner or later, result in the triumph of the stronger power. In the struggle for existence, in its larger as well as its smaller manifestations, the individual seeks, with all his power, to satisfy the impulse to happiness which arises with conscious existence; while the species, as the complex of all energies developed by its parts, has an impulse to self-preservation of its own, which, by its action as type, has originated and preserved for centuries the conception of changeless kind.

"Here is the beginning of the dawn, whose sun, however, in order to become visible and impart warmth, must rise still higher. The certainty afforded in the law of Ident.i.ty in positive form, in the law of Contradiction in negative form, in the law of Excluded Middle in the form of an opposition, and in the law of Sufficient Reason in conditional form, is based upon Causality, Community of Species, or Totality. For this reason, deduction and induction are only then to be relied upon when the first form of reasoning has for its middle proposition one that expresses causality, community of species, or totality, and the latter form of reasoning takes these for its point of departure. The a.n.a.lysis of Deduction is of worth as clarifying and confirming thought, and thus extending its field as often as the syntheses of Induction stand the proof of the process of clarification.

The supernaturalism of Dualism leads to a dead, the natural character of Monism to a living, dialectic,--to the dialectic of Becoming. The concept a.s.sumes a concrete form, and, as higher and higher rising sun, enables us to conceive what it will be to us as Idea. The understanding knows nothing of ideas; their realm is that of the reason; yet since the reason is but a higher development of the understanding, the commencement of this dawn must be perceptible in it. Moreover, the division which we make between the two originates in our genetic treatment of the subject, which seeks to explain the concept by showing the course of its development. Yet the distinction is no empty abstraction which may not claim life and form to a certain extent. The human being is always the whole human being; but he is not always uniformly developed, either physically or mentally. In one individual the understanding, in another the reason, manifests itself more plainly in thought. This is also true of the race, the people, and the epoch, as of the individual. Modern development has turned more and more from the ideal to material interests; we seem to be progressing towards a reaction," but what that reaction will be, we cannot say; it may be a reaction in the worst sense. The mistakes of the understanding cannot be predicted. With the point of culmination, the extreme is reached, and in Spiritualism may be found traces of a touching of extremes. Yet the influence of the understanding is to be relied on in so far as it is the clear mirror of Necessity. The understanding may err, just because it is conscious; but experience always corrects these mistakes. Nature, as gifted with mind, is no new nature; the laws of thought are the natural laws of the mind. In their mirror the will sees the accomplishment of the first mental development, and learns to comprehend this, on higher mental planes, as Common Weal.

The opposition of the individual to the rest of the world which arises with self-consciousness and individuality is greater, the greater the individuality. To the struggle for existence is added the struggle for happiness, which, separating into numberless desires that gain in attractiveness with every obstacle opposed to their satisfaction, is the origin of all the pa.s.sions,--of greed, jealousy, envy, hatred, etc.

Through pa.s.sion, which is the exaggeration of activities that, in a normal form, are good, man is led into a struggle for false happiness, just as the concepts under which his pa.s.sions arise are false. The individual against the world cannot attain happiness for himself. The greatest good, peace of soul, freedom from pa.s.sion, is attained only through knowledge, by which the concepts of the individual are corrected; it is attained, not as dead incapability of emotion, but only as clear enjoyment of life after past storm. Labor and education are the path to true happiness and, through true happiness, to virtue. The pa.s.sions are not separate existences; the whole man is the pa.s.sion of his heart; the whole man feels, just as the whole man thinks. But just for this reason, because of the ident.i.ty of will and understanding, the correction of the concept is the correction of will. This is not saying that will and understanding are never in opposition to each other; the apparent opposition is, however, merely a hesitation of the will, which does not know what it really will. It is true that one pa.s.sion can be conquered only by another; we cannot will an emotion that leads to a certain course of action; but we can fix our attention on the objects which produce it, and by thus reaching a clear recognition of their actual and necessary relations, affect our own action. It is true that man does as he wills; but he wills necessarily as he does. According to the doctrine of freedom, it must be exactly those who act without knowing wherefore they act, and who are thus driven by blind impulse, who are the most fully self-determined. A real freedom and conquest of necessity can, on the contrary, be attained only by obedience. Just as, in the animal, the summation of impulses and desires reaches a focus in feeling, so in man, in proportion to his development, the summation is in consciousness, the focus of which is the point of concentration of the will's activity. Spinoza's "Will and understanding are one" means: the activity of the will is the realization of the activity of thought.

Every one, the more self-sacrificing, as the less self-sacrificing man, does that which is to him the pleasantest; egoism turns the scale in both cases; only in the one case the egoism has a basis of broader love.

And since we act according to our conception of things, the question of our responsibility is the question of our full possession of consciousness. The necessity of nature must take away our desert, as far as a future life and its reward are concerned; but from the standpoint of a being who desires happiness and attains to it through evolution, necessity gains a new aspect. Natural Selection is Natural Necessity.

Yet not in the understanding, as such, but in the reason, is the reconciliation of the same with will. Reason in the narrower sense is a higher development of the understanding, const.i.tutes its completion and perfection, and presupposes a high degree of culture; though in a wider sense, as the half-unconscious modification of the impulses by adjustment to the needs of the species, it develops early in man. By it alone man becomes man in the full sense of the word. The activity of the mere understanding is an a.n.a.lytical, that of the reason a synthetical one, the return of cold consciousness to warm feeling, of abstract mind to concrete nature. Truth lies, for the reason, in Totality; hence, to it, the General alone is comprehensible. It has to do, not with abstract concepts, to which nothing in the realms of the mental or physical corresponds, but with concepts of species, concrete concepts, which we call, in distinction from abstract concepts, ideas. By ideas is not meant existences in the Platonic sense, but the Typical in species.

The impulse to happiness which arises with consciousness as thought and will, calls itself "I." It is the individual who, with every nerve-cell and every drop of blood, attempts his own realization. But all individuals are alike in this, that they reach, at last, a point where they recognize the fact that their ego is but a miserable half which needs a Thou to its completion. In the union of the Thou and the I, the first I becomes a complete and perfect I. Man and woman both realize that only together do they represent the whole human being. I and Thou together const.i.tute a We. The ego remains after, as before the union, the axis upon which the whole world turns. But the egoism of mere understanding is, by a broader thought, elevated to the altruism of reason. As the highest union of thought and will, the reason becomes Idea in and for itself, actual, absolute Idea. With the We was born the Saviour who should reconcile the sharply opposed factors of awaking consciousness. The light of his gospel spread in wider and wider circles; man and woman no longer beheld, each, merely his own happiness in the other; they saw their mutual happiness in their children, and their own and their children's happiness in friends, and their own and their children's and their friends' happiness in their fellow-men. The I of the reason is the self-conscious We.

The struggle for happiness has brought forth, out of the privileges and endeavors of individuals, civilization in its present form. Want and the necessity for labor have been the spur to endeavor and advance. Through the concepts of ends and of intention, the self-conscious will further evolved ideas, which themselves undergo a struggle in the activities to which they give rise; and this is no longer the struggle for existence, but the struggle for civilization.

There are three Ideas which, arising out of the extension of the I to Thou and We, are the spring of all ethical conceptions; these are Love, Humanity, and Public Spirit.[75] Love is the pa.s.sion of pa.s.sions and is the spring of all capacity to altruistic emotion. Love is life in its highest degree;[76] and by the manner in which a human being loves one may know what manner of man he is, and what will be the nature of his feelings towards his fellow-men in other relations of life. A man's conduct towards women is the surest test of his character. That which Spencer calls Integration, that which has created all nature, from the first germ to the perfect human being, and, as preservative cell-labor, still continues to create,--this infinite Something comes to consciousness in the human being, as Love. On the lowest plane it can appear only as simple impulse; but what, developing from stage to stage, it can accomplish, the history of Love shows us.

To these three ideas of Love, Humanity (or Benevolence), and Public Spirit correspond three outward phenomena, which bear such relation to them in the development of morality as the body bears to the soul. These are: the Family, the State-form, and the Representatives of Great Ideas.

These latter, the men who have been pioneers of civilization, we do not need to pity or regard as victims, though life was to them a mighty struggle and a restless labor; in their suffering was their pleasure; and that which impelled them and compelled them to attain their end was the impulse to happiness. Therein lies the wonderful secret of the clarified impulse to happiness, that it finds its highest satisfaction in itself. Such representatives of great ideas are those in whom the species overcomes the individual, and out of the species "man" the species-man is developed. That which they express is the True, if only the True for, and in, mankind. In this lies their worth; as worth in Science also, and in the Beautiful, lies in the truth of the Idea that is therein expressed. The True becomes practical in the Good.

The reason is thus the first condition of happiness, and freedom of the will lies in the ethical enn.o.blement of reason, which is nothing more nor less than obedience, as the total result of all natural causes; by it the individual is lost in the species as a whole. This ethical height does not consist in impulse, but in the self-conscious activity of will.

Its mental expression is an Ethical Sense, in distinction from the Moral Sense of the Intuitionists. Through it man is at one with himself as with his kind.

The Ethical Sense is not the common property of the species. Just as it has, however, reached expression in a few, so it is more and more realized in the many by the process of evolution, through which a common will, purpose, and good are necessarily finally evolved from all striving of individual wills after happiness. Ethical ideas arise as the result of experience, and in them man gradually attains reason.

For the Reason to which Love, Public Spirit, and Humanity are the natural element, the General (Common) as truth, is no empty conception, but a promise whose fulfilment is the Good and the Beautiful. The faithfulness of this Reason never swerves, since it depends on no fear, but springs from the clearest conviction, and therefore is one with the love which it feels and inspires. Its friends.h.i.+p is as strong as it is unselfish, for it does not call anything "friends.h.i.+p" that is based on other relations than those of mind. Its generosity is always strength, its mercy never weakness. As far as its power reaches, so far and no farther do its remorse and pity extend; for all pa.s.sions which reduce or dim the activity of the soul are unreasonable. The way to the attainment of the ethical spirit is pleasure, which guides, though it often misguides us; fortunately, on the wrong paths we sooner or later meet with pain, while on the right path we are ever accompanied by pleasure as "transition from less to greater perfection," to quote Spinoza. The feeling of Responsibility consists in the soul's recognition of all its action and omission of action as its own, and in the courage to endure the consequences of these.

The ethical Ideal, which the ethical imagination as "scientific"

conceives, is the truly happy man, the man fully in harmony with himself. This idea is to be regarded as a star by which we are to shape our course, not as an end to be fully attained. Through labor mankind approaches this ideal, attains knowledge from experience, and clarifies the concept of happiness. The "I" extends itself to an "I" of mankind, so that the individual, in making self his end, comes to make the whole of mankind his end. The ideal cannot be fully realized; the happiness of all cannot be attained; so that there is always choice between two evils, never choice of perfect good, and it is necessary to be content with the greatest good of the greatest number as principle of action.

This is an ideal which is actually and necessarily evolved. Benevolence has become more general, and has attained a degree not conceived of in former times. The ideal of a happy humanity has gained definite outlines, and has become an earnest aim towards which we steer with filling sails. The end is not to be reached by force, which brings in its train evil that cannot be gotten rid of for generations, but must be attained within the bounds prescribed by the state, through education and increase of intelligence. Nor can the state declare and ensure happiness; the duties of the state are chiefly negative, as Bentham has said. Each individual sacrifices a portion of his happiness in order that the rest may be secured to him by the state; the first-named part comprises his duties, the rest const.i.tutes his rights; the office of the state is to hold each to his duties and secure to each his rights. There is no perfect state, just as there is no perfectly good individual; but there is progress in states as in individuals.

The merely Useful can never furnish a full solution of the problem of Ethics, any more than Mathematics and Mechanics or Physics and Physiology can do so. The Perfect is much more than the merely Useful.

Spencer finds the condition of happiness in the exercise of function.

But he regards happiness as the final end of morality, while, according to our system, the latter is the product of the former.

Carneri again pleads, in this book, for the like right of woman with man to mental culture, and to labor which shall make her independent of the caprice of man; the good of the family alone to be regarded as the limiting factor.

The extent of Carneri's work on the subject of Ethics makes it impossible to consider minor points of his theory, such as are included, for instance, in his criticism of Hartmann, of Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and others; or to define more clearly than has been done his relation to Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, etc. His book "Entwicklung und Gluckseligkeit,"

published in 1886, is a collection of essays which first appeared separately in "Kosmos," and which, as such, do not hold to each other the relation of parts of an organic whole. They are chiefly a recapitulation of the views already expressed in the "Grundlegung der Ethik," with some extensions and possibly some modifications;--these last, however, chiefly of an extraneous character. In these essays Carneri demands a systematic moral training in the common school, to the end of the development of conscience, such training to be non-religious, though not anti-religious excepting in case the religion itself be seen to transgress the laws of right established by humane reason; he protests against the error of Materialism, as likewise against that of the Apriorists and the "Ideologists" or Idealists in the narrower sense of the word; and he reaffirms, defines, and further defends his standpoint as that of a "Real-idealist"; that is, of one to whom Kant is the point of departure in a farther evolution of theory. He reaffirms the oneness of the universe, so of man with nature, restates the self-ident.i.ty of the individual in will and thought, limits the knowledge of man to nature as it is for us, but invests it with certainty within these bounds, and rea.s.serts the necessity of the progress of the whole through the efforts of the many for happiness. He lays further stress upon the absence of morality, not only among the animals, in whom at least general ethical feelings, in distinction from those towards individuals, are not found, but also among savages; morality being not the incentive to, but the product of the state. From this standpoint, he combats Socialism as proposing impossible ideals, since it presupposes ethically perfect men as governing and being governed by the laws, and since it disposes of the freedom of the individual. The theory of compulsion reckons without the will of man as he is and must be. Man has no primordial rights (except, perhaps, the right to get and keep all he can); he has only rights that he has gained by the help of the state. There is no one commandment in which man's whole duty may be expressed, unless it be, perhaps, some such new rendering of Kant's words as this: Act always in such a manner that the maxims of thy will might be taken as the principle by which to render happy the greatest possible number of human beings. But this can never become a categorical imperative for all men. Morality lies in the Will to Good, which becomes in the moral, or according to Carneri's phrase, the ethical man, a second nature: his sense of duty is joy in duty, highest satisfaction of his desire for happiness. It might perhaps be claimed that Carneri, in his theory of the Conscience, has in this book laid more stress on feeling than in his others; however, it is to be recollected that, with him, thought and feeling are no distinct faculties, but that conscience means less an impulse unconscious of final ends than a self-conscious att.i.tude or readiness of the will as the result of conviction.

Carneri's latest book, "Die Lebensfuhrung des modernen Menschen" (1891), is practical rather than theoretical, a consideration of general problems and rules of action.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] Wirklich.