Creative Intelligence Part 13

For never before has peace set its forces so determinedly to protect life. The span of human life has been lengthened: the wastefulness of accident and disease has been magnified. The dumb acquiescence with which former generations accepted the death of infants and children and those in the prime of life has given way to active and increasingly successful efforts to preserve. The enormous increase in scientific study of biology, including eugenics, reflects not only an advance of science but a trend in morality. It is scarcely conceivable that it should grow less in absolute importance, whatever crises may temporarily cause its depreciation relatively to other values.

One exception to the growing appreciation calls for notice--the interest in immortality appears to be less rather than greater. The strong belief in life beyond the grave which since the days of ancient Egypt has prevailed in the main stream of Western culture seems not only to be affected by the scientific temper of the day, but also to be subject to a s.h.i.+ft in interest. This may be in part a reaction from other-worldliness. In part it may be due to loss of fervor for a theological picture of a future heaven of a rather monotonous sort and may signify not so much loss of interest in life as desire for a more vital kind of continuance. It is not true that all that a man hath will he give for his life, yet it is true that no valuing process is intelligible that leaves out life with its impulses, emotions, and desires as the first factor to be reckoned with.

(2) The second factor is the life in common, with its system of relations, and its corresponding instincts, emotions, and desires.

So much has been written in recent years on the social nature of man that it seems unnecessary to elaborate the obvious. Protest has even been raised against the exaggeration of the social. But I believe that in certain points at least we have not yet penetrated to the heart of the social factor, and its significance for morals.

So far as the moral aspect is concerned I know nothing more significant than the att.i.tude of the Common Law as set forth by Professor Pound.[66]

This has sought to base its system of duties on relations. The relation which was prominent in the Middle Ages was that of landlord and tenant; other relations are those of princ.i.p.al and agent, of trustee, etc. An older relation was that of kins.h.i.+p. The kin was held for the wergeld; the goel must avenge his next of kin; the father must provide for prospective parents-in-law; the child must serve the parents. Duty was the legal term for the relation. In all this there is no romanticism, no exaggeration of the social; there is a fair statement of the facts which men have recognized and acted upon the world over and in all times.

Individualistic times or peoples have modified certain phases. The Roman law sought to ground many of its duties in the contract, the will of the parties. But covenants by no means exhaust duties. And according to Professor Pound the whole course of English and American law today is belying the generalization of Sir Henry Maine, that the evolution of law is a progress from status to contract. We are shaping law of insurance, of public service companies, not by contract but by the relation of insurer and insured, of public utility and patron.

Psychologically, the correlate of the system of relations is the set of instincts and emotions, of capacity for stimulation and response, which presuppose society for their exercise and in turn make society possible.

There can be no question as to the reality and strength of these in both animals and men. The bear will fight for her young more savagely than for her life. The human mother's thoughts center far more intensely upon her offspring than upon her own person. The man who is cut dead by all his acquaintance suffers more than he would from hunger or physical fear. The pa.s.sion of s.e.x frequently overmasters every instinct of individual prudence. The majority of men face poverty and live in want; relatively few prefer physical comfort to family ties. Aristotle's [Greek: philia] is the oftenest quoted recognition of the emotional basis of common life, but a statement of Kant's earlier years is particularly happy. "The point to which the lines of direction of our impulses converge is thus not only in ourselves, but there are besides powers moving us in the will of others outside of ourselves. Hence arise the moral impulses which often carry us away to the discomfiture of selfishness, the strong law of duty, and the weaker of benevolence. Both of these wring from us many a sacrifice, and although selfish inclinations now and then preponderate over both, these still never fail to a.s.sert their reality in human nature. Thus we recognize that in our most secret motives, we are dependent upon the rule of the general will."[67]

The "law of duty," and I believe we may add, the conception of right, do arise objectively in the social relations as the common law a.s.sumes and subjectively in the social instincts, emotions, and the more intimate social consciousness which had not been worked out in the time of Kant as it has been by recent authors. This point will receive further treatment later, but I desire to point out in antic.i.p.ation that if right and duty have their origin in this social factor there is at least a presumption against their being subordinate ethically to the conception of good as we find them in certain writers. If they have independent origin and are the outgrowth of a special aspect of life it is at least probable that they are not to be subordinated to the good unless the very notion of good is itself reciprocally modified by right in a way that is not usually recognized in teleological systems.

(3) Intelligence and reason imply (_a_) considering the proposed act or the actually performed act as a whole and in its relations. Especially they mean considering consequences. In order to foresee consequences there is required not only empirical observation of past experience, not only deduction from already formulated concepts--as when we say that injustice will cause hard feelings and revolt--but that rarer quality which in the presence of a situation discerns a meaning not obvious, suggests an idea, "injustice," to interpret the situation. Situations are neither already labeled "unjust," nor are they obviously unjust to the ordinary mind. a.n.a.lysis into elements and rearrangement of the elements into a new synthesis are required. This is eminently a synthetic or "creative" activity. Further it is evident that the activity of intelligence in considering consequences implies not only what we call reasoning in the narrower sense but imagination and feeling. For the consequences of an act which are of importance ethically are consequences which are not merely to be described but are to be imagined so vividly as to be felt, whether they are consequences that affect ourselves or affect others.

(_b_) But it would be a very narrow intelligence that should attempt to consider only consequences of a single proposed act without considering also other possible acts and their consequences. The second important characteristic of intelligence is that it considers either other means of reaching a given end, or other ends, and by working out the consequences of these also has the basis for deliberation and choice.

The method of "multiple working hypotheses," urged as highly important in scientific investigation, is no less essential in the moral field. To bring several ends into the field of consideration is the characteristic of the intelligent, or as we often say, the open-minded man. Such consideration as this widens the capacity of the agent and marks him off from the creature of habit, of prejudice, or of instinct.

(_c_) Intelligence implies considering in two senses all persons involved, that is, it means taking into account not only how an act will affect others but also how others look at it. It is scarcely necessary to say that this activity of intelligence cannot be cut off from its roots in social intercourse. It is by the processes of give and take, of stimulus and response, in a social medium that this possibility of looking at things from a different angle is secured. And once more this different angle is not gained by what in the strict sense could be called a purely intellectual operation, although it has come to be so well recognized as the necessary equipment for dealing successfully with conditions that we commonly characterize the person as stupid who does not take account of what others think and feel and how they will react to a projected line of conduct. This social element in intelligence is to a considerable degree implied in the term "reasonable," which signifies not merely that a man is logical in his processes but also that he is ready to listen to what others say and to look at things from their point of view whether he finally accepts it or not.

The broad grounds on which it is better to use the word intelligence than the word reason in the a.n.a.lysis with which we are concerned are two. (1) It is not a question-begging term which tends to commit us at the outset to a specific doctrine as to the source of our judgments. (2) The activity of intelligence which is now most significant for ethical progress is not suggested by the term reason, for unless we arbitrarily smuggle in under the term practical reason the whole activity of the moral consciousness without inquiry as to the propriety of the name we shall be likely to omit the constructive and creative efforts to promote morality by positive supplying of enlarged education, new sources of interest, and more open fields for development, by replacing haunting fears of misery with positive hopes, and by suggesting new imagery, new ambitions in the place of sodden indifference or sensuality. The term reason as used by the Stoics and by Kant meant control of the pa.s.sions by some "law"--some authority cosmic or logical. It prepared for the inevitable; it forbade the private point of view. But as thus presenting a negative aspect the law was long ago characterized by a profound moral genius as "weak." It has its value as a schoolmaster, but it is not in itself capable of supplying the new life which dissolves the old sentiment, breaks up the settled evil habit, and supplies both larger ends and effective motives.

If we state human progress in objective fas.h.i.+on we may say that although men today are still as in earlier times engaged in getting a living, in mating, in rearing of offspring, in fighting and adventure, in play, and in art, they are also engaged in science and invention, interested in the news of other human activities all over the world; they are adjusting differences by judicial processes, cooperating to promote general welfare, enjoying refined and more permanent friends.h.i.+ps and affections, and viewing life in its tragedy and comedy with enhanced emotion and broader sympathy. Leaving out of consideration the work of the religious or artistic genius as not in question here, the great objective agencies in bringing about these changes have been on the one hand the growth of invention, scientific method, and education, and on the other the increase in human intercourse and communication. Reason plays its part in both of these in freeing the mind from wasteful superst.i.tious methods and in a.n.a.lyzing situations and testing hypotheses, but the term is inadequate to do justice to that creative element in the formation of hypotheses which finds the new, and it tends to leave out of account the social point of view involved in the widening of the area of human intercourse. More will be said upon this point in connection with the discussion of rationalism.

(4) The process of judgment and choice. The elements are not the sum.

The moral consciousness is not just the urge of life, plus the social relations, plus intelligence. The _process_ of moral deliberation, evaluation, judgment, and choice is itself essential. In this process are born the concepts and standards good and right, and likewise the moral self which utters the judgment. It is in this twofold respect synthetic, creative. It is as an interpretation of this process that the concept of freedom arises. Four aspects of the process may be noted.

(_a_) The process involves holding possibilities of action, or objects for valuation, or ends for choice, in consciousness and measuring them one against another in a simultaneous field--or in a field of alternating objects, any of which can be continually recalled. One possibility after another may be tried out in antic.i.p.ation and its relations successively considered, but the comparison is essential to the complete moral consciousness.

(_b_) The process yields a universe of valued _objects_ as distinguished from a subjective consciousness of desires and feelings. We say, "This is right," "That is good." Every "is" in such judgments may be denied by an "is not" and we hold one alternative to be true, the other false. As the market or the stock exchange or board of trade fixes values by a meeting of buyers and sellers and settles the price of wheat accurately enough to enable farmers to decide how much land to seed for the next season, so the world of men and women who must live together and cooperate, or fight and perish, forces upon consciousness the necessity of adjustment. The preliminary approaches are usually hesitant and subjective--like the offers or bids in the market--e.g., "I should like to go to college; I believe that is a good thing"; "My parents need my help; it does not seem right to leave them." The judgments finally emerge. "A college education is good;" "It is wrong to leave my parents"--both seemingly objective yet conflicting, and unless I can secure both I must seemingly forego actual objective good, or commit actual wrong.

(_c_) The process may be described also as one of "universalizing" the judging consciousness. For it is a counterpart of the objective implication of a judgment that it is not an affirmation as to any individual's opinion. This negative characterization of the judgment is commonly converted into the positive doctrine that any one who is unprejudiced and equally well informed would make the same judgment.

Strictly speaking the judgment itself represents in its completed form the elimination of the private att.i.tude rather than the express inclusion of other judges. But in the making of the judgment it is probable that this elimination of the private is reached by a mental reference to other persons and their att.i.tudes, if not by an actual conversation with another. It is dubious whether an individual that had never communicated with another would get the distinction between a private subjective att.i.tude and the "general" or objective.

Moreover, one form of the moral judgment: "This is right," speaks the language of law--of the collective judgment, or of the judge who hears both sides but is neither. This generalizing or universalizing is frequently supposed to be the characteristic activity of "reason." I believe that a comparison with the kindred value judgments in economics supports the doctrine that in judgments as to the good as well as in those as to right, there is no product of any simple faculty, but rather a synthetic process in which the social factor is prominent. A compelling motive toward an objective and universal judgment is found in the practical conditions of moral judgments. Unless men agree on such fundamental things as killing, stealing, and s.e.x relations they cannot get on together. Not that when I say, "Killing is wrong," I mean to affirm "I agree with you in objecting to it"; but that the necessity (a) of acting as if I either do or do not approve it, and (b) of either making my att.i.tude agree with yours, or yours agree with mine, or of fighting it out with you or with the whole force of organized society, compels me to put my att.i.tude into objective terms, to meet you and society on a common platform. This is a _synthesis_, an achievement. To attribute the synthesis to any faculty of "practical reason," adds nothing to our information, but tends rather to obscure the facts.

(_d_) The process is thus a reciprocal process of valuing objects and of constructing and reconstructing a self. The object as first imaged or antic.i.p.ated undergoes enlargement and change as it is put into relations to other objects and as the consequences of adoption or rejection are tried in antic.i.p.ation. The self by reflecting and by enlarging its scope is similarly enlarged. It is the _resulting_ self which is the final valuer. The values of most objects are at first fixed for us by instinct or they are suggested by the ethos and mores of our groups--family, society, national religions, and "reign under the appearance of habitual self-suggested tendencies." The self is const.i.tuted accordingly.

Collisions with other selves, conflicts between group valuations and standards and individual impulses or desires, failure of old standards as applied to new situations, bring about a more conscious definition of purposes. The agent identifies himself with these purposes, and values objects with reference to them. In this process of revaluing and defining, of comparing and antic.i.p.ation, freedom is found if anywhere.

For if the process is a real one the elements do not remain unaffected by their relation to each other and to the whole. The act is not determined by any single antecedent or by the sum of antecedents. It is determined by the process. The self is not made wholly by heredity, or environment. _It is itself creating for each of its elements a new environment_, viz., the process of reflection and choice. And if man can change the heredity of pigeons and race horses by suitable selection, if every scientific experiment is a varying of conditions, it is at least plausible that man can guide his own acts by intelligence, and revise his values by criticism.

The self is itself creating for each of its elements a new environment--this is a fact which if kept in mind will enable us to see the abstractness and fallacies not merely of libertarianism and determinism, but of subjectivism and objectivism. Subjective or "inward"

theories have sought standards in the self; but in regarding the self as an ent.i.ty independent of such a process as we have described they have exposed themselves to the criticism of providing only private, variable, accidental, unauthoritative sources of standards--instincts, or emotions, or intuitions. The self of the full moral consciousness, however,--the only one which can claim acceptance or authority--is born only in the process of considering real conditions, of weighing and choosing between alternatives of action in a real world of nature and persons. Its judgments are more than subjective. Objectivism in its absolutist and abstract forms a.s.sumes a standard--nature, essence, law--independent of process. Such a standard is easily shown to be free from anything individual, private, or changing. It is universal, consistent, and eternal, in fact it has many good mathematical characteristics, but unfortunately it is not moral. As mathematical, logical, biological, or what not, it offers no standard that appeals to the moral nature as authoritative or that can help us to find our way home.

II

If we are dissatisfied with custom and habit and seek to take philosophy for the guide of life we have two possibilities: (1) we may look for the good, and treat right and duty as subordinate concepts which indicate the way to the good, that is, consider them as good as a means, or (2) we may seek first to do right irrespective of consequences, in the belief that in willing to do right we are already in possession of the highest good. In either case we may consider our standards and values either as in some sense fixed or as in the making.[68] We may suppose that good is objective and absolute, that right is discovered by a rational faculty, or we may consider that in regarding good as objective we have not made it independent of the valuing process and that in treating right as a standard we have not thereby made it a fixed concept to be discovered by the pure intellect. The position of this paper will be (1) that good while objective is yet objective as a value and not as an essence or physical fact; (2) that a social factor in value throws light upon the relation between moral and other values; (3) that right is not merely a means to the good but has an independent place in the moral consciousness; (4) that right while signifying order does not necessarily involve a timeless, eternal order since it refers to an order of personal relations; (5) that the conception of right instead of being a matter for pure reason or even the "cognitive faculty" shows an intimate blending of the emotional and intellectual and that this appears particularly in the conception of the reasonable.

(1) We begin with the question of the synthetic and objective character of the good. With G. E. Moore as with the utilitarians the good is the ultimate concept. Right and duty are means to the good. Moore and Rashdall also follow Sidgwick in regarding good as unique, that is, as "synthetic." Sidgwick emphasized in this especially the point that moral value cannot be decided by physical existence or the course of evolution, nor can the good be regarded as meaning the pleasant. Moore and Russell reinforce this. However true it may be that pleasure is one among other good things or that life is one among other good things, good does not mean either pleasure or survival. Good means just "good."

A similar thought underlies Croce's division of the Practical into the two spheres of the Economic and the Ethical. "The economic activity is that which wills and effects only what corresponds to the conditions of fact in which a man finds himself; the ethical activity is that which, although it correspond to these conditions, also refers to something that transcends them. To the first correspond what are called individual ends, to the second universal ends; the one gives rise to the judgment concerning the greater or less coherence of the action taken in itself, the other to that concerning its greater or less coherence in respect to the universal end, which transcends the individual.[69]

Utilitarianism is according to Croce an attempt to reduce the Ethical to the Economic form, although the utilitarians as men attempt in various ways to make a place for that distinction which as philosophers they would suppress. "Man is not a consumer of pleasures. He is a creator of life." With this claim of the distinctive, synthetic, character of the moral consciousness and of the impossibility of testing the worth of ideals by cosmic laws, or by gratification of particular wants as measured by pleasure, I have no issue. The a.n.a.lysis of the moral judgment made above points out just how it is that good is synthetic. It is synthetic in that it represents a measuring and valuing of ends--instinctive and imagined, individual and social--against each other and as part of a whole to which a growing self corresponds. It is synthetic in that it represents not merely a process of evaluating ends which match actually defined desires, but also a process in which the growing self, dissatisfied with any ends already in view, gropes for some new definition of ends that shall better respond to its living, creative capacity, its active synthetic character. Good is the concept for just this valuing process as carried on by a conscious being that is not content to take its desire as ready made by its present construction, but is reaching out for ends that shall respond to a growing, expanding, inclusive, social, self. It expresses value _as_ value.

Value _as value!_ not as being; nor as independent essence; nor as anything static and fixed. For a synthetic self, a living personality, could find no supreme value in the complete absence of valuing, in the cessation of life, in the negation of that very activity of projection, adventure, construction, and synthesis in which it has struck out the concept good. A theory of ethics which upholds the synthetic character of the good may be criticized as being not synthetic enough if it fails to see that on the basis of the mutual determination of percepts and concepts, of self and objects, the synthetic character of the process must be reflected in the ultimate meaning of the category which symbolizes and incorporates the process.

(2) We may find some light upon the question how moral value gets its distinctive and unique character, and how it comes to be more "objective" than economic value if we consider some of the social factors in the moral judgment. For although the concept good is rooted in the life process with its selective activity and attending emotions it involves a subtle social element, as well as the more commonly recognized factors of intelligence.

Within the fundamental selective process two types of behavior tend to differentiate in response to two general sorts of stimulation. One sort is simpler, more monotonous, more easily a.n.a.lyzable. Response to such stimulation, or treatment of objects which may be described under these terms of simple, a.n.a.lyzable, etc., is easily organized into a habit. It calls for no great s.h.i.+fts in attention, no sudden readjustments. There is nothing mysterious about it. As satisfying various wants it has a certain kind of value. It, however, evokes no consciousness of self.

Toward the more variable, complex sort of stimuli, greater attention, constant adjustment and readjustment, are necessary.

Objects of the first sort are treated as things, in the sense that they do not call out any respect from us or have any intrinsic value. We understand them through and through, manipulate them, consume them, throw them away. We regard them as valuable only with reference to our wants. On the other hand, objects of the second sort take their place in a bi-focal situation. Our attention s.h.i.+fts alternately to their behavior and to our response, or, conversely, from our act to their response.

This back and forth movement of attention in the case of certain of these objects is reinforced by the fact that certain stimuli from them or from the organism, find peculiar responses already prepared in social instincts; gesture and language play their part. Such a bi-focal situation as this, when completely developed, involves persons. In its earlier stages it is the quasi-personal att.i.tude which is found in certain savage religious att.i.tudes, in certain aesthetic att.i.tudes, and in the emotional att.i.tudes which we all have toward many of the objects of daily life.

Economic values arise in connection with att.i.tudes toward things. We buy things, we sell them. They have value just in that they gratify our wants, but they do not compel any revision or change in wants or in the self which wants. They represent a partial interest--or if they become the total interest we regard them as now in the moral sphere. Values of personal affection arise as we find a constant rapport in thought, feeling, purpose, between the two members of our social consciousness.

The att.i.tude is that of going along with another and thereby extending and enriching our experiences. We enter into his ideas, range with his imagination, kindle at his enthusiasms, sympathize with his joys or sorrows. We may disagree with our friend's opinions, but we do not maintain a critical att.i.tude toward _him_, that is, toward his fundamental convictions and att.i.tudes. If "home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," as Frost puts it, a friend is one who, when you go to him, has to accept you.

Moral values also arise in a social or personal relation--not in relation to things. This is on the surface in the form of judgment; "He is a good man," "That is a good act." If it is less obvious in the practical judgment, "This is the better course of action," i.e., the course which leads to the greater good, or to the good, this is because we fail to discern that the good in these cases is a something with which I can identify myself, not a something which I merely possess and keep separate from my personality. It is something I shall be rather than have. Or if I speak of a share or partic.i.p.ation it is a sharing in the sense of entering into a kindred life. It is an ideal, and an ideal for a conscious personal being can hardly be other than conscious. It may be objected that however personal the ideal it is not on this account necessarily social. It embodies what I would be, but does not necessarily imply response to any other personality. This, however, would be to overlook the a.n.a.lyses which recent psychology has made of the personal. The ideal does not develop in a vacuum. It implies for one thing individuality which is conceivable only as other individuals are distinguished. It implies the definition of purposes, and such definition is scarcely if ever attempted except as a possible world of purposes is envisaged.

aesthetic valuation is in certain respects intermediate between the valuation of things on the one hand and the moral evaluation of acts of persons or conscious states on the other. aesthetic objects are in many cases seemingly things and yet even as things they are quasi-personal; they are viewed with a certain sympathy quite different from that which we feel for a purely economic object. If it is a work of art the artist has embodied his thought and feeling and the observer finds it there.

The experience is that of _Einfuhlung_. Yet we do not expect the kind of response which we look for in friends.h.i.+p, nor do we take the object as merely a factor for the guidance or control of our own action as in the practical judgment of morality. The aesthetic becomes the object of contemplation, not of response; of embodied meaning, not of individuality. It is so far personal that no one of aesthetic sensibility likes to see a thing of beauty destroyed or mistreated. The situation in which we recognize in an object meaning and embodied feeling, or at least find sources of stimulation which appeal to our emotions, develops an aesthetic enhancement of conscious experience. The aesthetic value predicate is the outcome of this peculiar enhancement.

It seems that the social nature of the judgment plays a part also in the varying objectivity of values. It is undoubtedly true that some values are treated as belonging to objects. If we cannot explain this fully we may get some light upon the situation by noticing the degree to which this is true in the cases of the kinds of values already described.

Economic values are dubiously objective. We use both forms of expression. We say on the one hand, "I want wheat," "There is a demand for wheat," or, on the other, "Wheat is worth one dollar a bushel."

Conversely, "There is no demand for the old-fas.h.i.+oned high-framed bicycle" or "It is worthless." The Middle Ages regarded economic value as completely objective. A thing had a _real value_. The retailer could not add to it. The mediaeval economist believed in the externality of relations; he prosecuted for the offenses of forestalling and regrating the man who would make a profit by merely changing things in place. He condemned usury. We have definitely abandoned this theory. We recognize that it is the want which makes the value. To make exchange possible and socialize to some degree the scale of prices we depend upon a public market or a stock exchange.

In values of personal affection we may begin with a purely individual att.i.tude, "I love or esteem my friend." If I put it more objectively I may say, "He is an honored and valued friend." Perhaps still more objectively, we--especially if we are feminine--may say "Is not X dear?"

We may then go on to seek a social standard. We perhaps look for reinforcement in a small group of like-minded. We are a little perplexed and, it may be, aggrieved if other members of the circle do not love the one whom we love. In such a group judgment of a common friend there is doubtless greater objectivity than in the economic judgment. The value of a friend does not depend upon his adjustment to our wants. As Aristotle pointed out, true friends.h.i.+p is for its own sake. Its value is "disinterested." If a man does not care for an economic good it does not reflect upon him. He may be careless of futures, neglectful of corn, indifferent to steel. It lessens the demand, lowers the values of these goods, an infinitesimal, but does not write him down an inferior person.

To fail to prize a possible friend is a reflection upon us. However the fact that in the very nature of the case one can scarcely be a personal friend to a large, not to say a universal group, operates to limit the objectivity.

In the aesthetic and moral att.i.tudes we incorporate value in the object decisively. We do not like to think that beauty can be changed with s.h.i.+fting fas.h.i.+ons or to affirm that the firmament was ever anything but sublime. It seems to belong to the very essence of right that it is something to which the self can commit itself in absolute loyalty and finality. And, as for good, we may say with Moore in judgments of intrinsic value, at least, "we judge concerning a particular state of things that it would be worth while--would be a good thing--that that state of things should exist, even if nothing else were to exist besides."

With regard to this problem of objectivity it is significant in the first place that the kind of situation out of which this object value is affirmed in aesthetic and moral judgments is a social situation. It contrasts in this respect with the economic situation. The economic is indeed social in so far as it sets exchange values, but the object valued is not a social object. The aesthetic and moral object is such an object. Not only is there no contradiction in giving to the symbolic form or the moral act intrinsic value: there is entire plausibility in doing so. For in so far as the situation is really personal, _either member is fundamentally equal to the other and may be treated as embodying all the value of the situation_. The value which rises to consciousness in the situation is made more complete by eliminating from consideration the originating factors, the plural agents of admiration or approval, and incorporating the whole product abstractly in the object. In thus calling attention to the social or personal character of the aesthetic or moral object it is not intended to minimize that factor in the judgment which we properly speak of as the universalizing activity of thought, much less to overlook the importance of the judgmental process itself. The intention is to point out some of the reasons why in one case the thinking process does universalize while in the other it does not, why in one case the judgment is completely objective while in the other it is not. In both aesthetic and moral judgments social art, social action, social judgments, through collective decisions prepare the way for the general non-personal, objective form. It is probable that man would not say, "This is right,"

using the word as an adjective, if he had not first said, as member of a judicially acting group, "This is right," using the word as a noun. And finally whatever we may claim as to the "cognitive" nature of the aesthetic and moral judgment, the only test for the beauty of an object is that persons of taste discover it. The only test for the rightness of an act is that persons of good character approve it. The only test for goodness is that good persons on reflection approve and choose it--just as the test for good persons is that they choose and do the good.

(3) Right is not merely a means to good but has a place of its own in the moral consciousness. Many of our moral choices or judgments do not take the form of choice between right and wrong, or between duty and its opposite; they appear to be choices between goods. That is, we do not always consider our value as crystallized into a present standard or feel a tension between a resisting and an authoritative self. But when they do emerge they signify a distinct factor. What Moore says of good may be said also of right. Right means just "right," nothing else. That is, we mean that acts so characterized correspond exactly to a self in a peculiar att.i.tude, viz., one of adequate standardizing and adjustment, of equilibrium, in view of all relations. The concept signifies that in finding our way into a moral world into which we are born in the process of valuing and judging, we take along the imagery of social judgment in which through language and behavior the individual is constantly adjusting himself, not only to the social inst.i.tutions, and group organization but far more subtly and unconsciously to the social consciousness and att.i.tudes.

This conception of an order to which the act must refer has usually been regarded as peculiarly a "rational" factor. It is, however, rather an order of social elements, of a nature of persons, than of a "nature of things." In savage life the position of father, wife, child, guest, or other members of the household, is one of the most prominent facts of the situation. The relations.h.i.+p of various totem groups and inter-marrying groups is the very focus of moral consciousness. Even in the case of such a cosmic conception of order as Dike and Themis, Rita and Tao, the "Way" is not impersonal cosmos. It is at least quasi-personal. And if we say such primitive myth has no bearing on what the "nature" of right or the "true" meaning of right is, it is pertinent to repeat that concepts without percepts are empty; that the term means nothing except the conceptual interpretation of a unique synthetic process in which an act placed in relation to a standard is thereby given new meaning. So long as custom or law forms the only or the dominant factor in the process, we have little development of the ideal concept right as distinct from a factual standard. But when reason and intelligence enter, particularly when that creative activity of intelligence enters which attempts a new construction of ends, a new ordering of possible experience, then the standardizing process is set free; a new self with new possibilities of relation seeks expression.

The concept "right" reflects the standardizing, valuing process of a synthetic order and a synthetic self. Duty born similarly in the world of social relations and reflecting especially the tension between the individual and the larger whole is likewise given full moral significance when it becomes a tension within the synthetic self. And as thus reflecting the immediate att.i.tudes of the self to an ideal social order both right and duty are not to be treated merely as means to any value which does not include as integrant factors just what these signify.

This view is contrary to that of Moore, for whom "right does and can mean nothing but 'cause of a good result,' and is thus identical with useful."[70] The right act is that which has the best consequences.[71]

Similarly duty is that action which will cause more good to exist in the Universe than any possible alternative. It is evident that this makes it impossible for any finite mind to a.s.sert confidently that any act is right or a duty. "Accordingly it follows that we never have any reason to suppose that an action is our duty: we can never be sure that any action will produce the greatest value possible.[72]

Whatever the convenience of such a definition of right and duty for a simplified ethics it can hardly be claimed to accord with the moral consciousness, for men have notoriously supposed certain acts to be duty. To say that a parent has no reason to suppose that it is his duty to care for his child is more than paradox. And a still greater contradiction to the morality of common sense inheres in the doctrine that the right act is that which has the best consequences. Considering all the good to literature and free inquiry which has resulted from the condemnation of Socrates it is highly probable--or at least it is arguable--that the condemnation had better results than an acquittal would have yielded. But it would be contrary to our ordinary use of language to maintain that this made the act right. Or to take a more recent case: the present war may conceivably lead to a more permanent peace. The "severities," practised by one party, may stir the other to greater indignation and lead ultimately to triumph of the latter. Will the acts in question be termed right by the second party if they actually have this effect? On this hypothesis the more outrageous an act and the greater the reaction against it, the better the consequences are likely to be and hence the more reason to call the act right and a duty.