Life in common, even under the gregarious form, requires certain ways of acting, and habits founded on sympathy and determined by the concerted aim pursued by all. In order that it may become stable and constitute a society, an element of fixity must be added—the more or less clear consciousness of an obligation, of a rule, of what has to be done or avoided. This is the appearance of the _moral sentiment_. All conceptions of morality, coarse or refined, theoretical or purely practical, agree on this point; divergences exist, in practice, only as to the characteristics of the act reputed obligatory; in theory, only as to its origin.
All _real_ morality which has lived, _i.e._ governed a human society, large or small, which has existed, not in the academic abstractions of moralists, but in the concrete development of history, and has run its complete course, passes through two principal periods.
One of these is instinctive, spontaneous, unconscious, unreflecting, determined by the conditions of existence of a given group at a given moment. It expresses itself in custom—a heterogeneous mixture of beliefs and actions which, from the point of view of reason and of a more advanced culture, we consider sometimes as moral, sometimes as immoral, sometimes as unmoral, _i.e._, puerile and futile, but all of which have been rigorously observed.
The other is conscious, reflecting, many-sided, complex, like the higher forms of social and moral life. It expresses itself in institutions, written laws, religious or civil codes; and still more in the abstract speculations of philosophical moralists. Then, the apogee being reached, vague aspirations reach out towards a new, dimly apprehended ideal, and the cycle begins over again.
Most constructors of a scientific system of morality have forgotten or neglected the first period; but wrongly so, for it is the source of the second. This, too, is the reason for the two opposite views held with regard to the origin of moral development.
Some seek it in the order of knowledge, whence they deduce all the rest; they suppose innate ideas, or an adaptation acquired through a long process and fixed by heredity (Spencer), or the consciousness of a categorical imperative, or the notion of utility; all of which are intellectual solutions.
Others seek it in the order of instinct and feeling. They admit tendencies, impulses implanted in us by nature, _i.e._, forming part of our organisation, like thirst and hunger, whose satisfaction produces pleasure and their non-satisfaction pain; this is the emotional view.
The two are not absolutely irreconcilable: each of them corresponds to a different period of evolution; the emotional view to the instinctive stage, the stage of moral chaos; the intellectualist view to the reflective stage of rational organisation; but it is clear that one alone can claim the mark of its origin. In other words, we may say: in the moral consciousness there are two elements—judgment and feeling. A judgment (approving or condemnatory) on our own conduct and that of others is the result of a deeper process—not an intellectual one—of an emotional process of which it is only the clear and intelligible manifestation in consciousness. It would be a psychological absurdity to suppose that a bare, dry idea, an abstract conception without emotional accompaniments, and resembling a geometrical notion, could have the least influence on human conduct. No doubt, we must admit that the evolution is rather that of moral ideas than of the moral sentiment, which, in itself, is no more than a tendency to act—a predisposition; but an evolution of _purely speculative_ ideas, with no emotional accompaniment, will have no results in the practical order. We may note that the opposition between these two views is constantly reflected in the history of moral theory. In England, where psychology predominates, the doctrine of feeling has had numerous champions, from Shaftesbury down to the present day. In Germany, where metaphysics are predominant, the intellectualist doctrine, since Kant, occupies the first place, except with Schopenhauer and his adherents. It is quite natural that the metaphysicians, intellectualists by temperament and by profession, should have adopted this position.
For the rest we are concerned here with the moral sentiment, and with that alone; the other elements of morality do not form part of our study. It consists, at bottom, in movement or arrest of movement, in a tendency to act or not to act; it is not, _in its origin_, due to an idea or a judgment; it is instinctive, and herein lies its strength. It is innate, not like an alleged archetype, infused into man, invariable, illuminating him everywhere and always, but in the same way as hunger and thirst and other constitutional needs. It is necessary; it forces one to act (when not kept in check by counter-tendencies), as the sight of water forces the duckling to plunge into it. Thus we must say that the man who impulsively throws himself into danger to save another is more thoroughly moral than he who only does so after reflection; one must be blinded by intellectualist prejudices to maintain the contrary. _Natural_ morality is a gift—theologians would say a grace; it is artificial, acquired morality, which is measured by the quantity of resistance overcome. Finally, like every other tendency, it results in satisfaction or dissatisfaction (_e.g._, remorse).[178] In short, its innateness and its necessity place it in the _motor_, not in the intellectual order.
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Footnote 178:
“The Australians attribute the death of their friends to spells cast by some neighbouring tribe; for this reason they consider it a sacred obligation to avenge the death of a relative by killing a member of the tribe in question. A native having lost one of his wives, announced his intention of going to kill a woman belonging to a distant tribe. The magistrate told him that if he committed this act, he would be confined in prison for the rest of his life. He therefore did not start on his journey; but, month by month, he wasted away: remorse preyed on his mind, he could neither sleep nor eat; the ghost of his wife haunted him, reproaching him with his negligence. One day he disappeared; a year later he came back, having accomplished his duty” (Guyau, _Esquisse d’une Morale_, etc., p. 109). Here we have an example of instinctive morality and rational immorality. It should be noted that in this work Guyau has returned to the view of the moral instinct, adopted by him, after having previously criticised it, in his _Morale Anglaise_ (III. chap. iv.).
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These characteristics being determined, let us follow the progress of its evolution. It presents two aspects: first, the positive, corresponding to the genesis of the beneficent feelings, or active altruism, an internal evolution—_i.e._, one of the primary feeling, in and through itself; secondly, negative, corresponding to the rise of the sense of justice, an external evolution—_i.e._, one produced under the pressure of conditions of existence and coercive means.
I. We include under the name of beneficence, or active altruism, such feelings as benevolence, generosity, devotion, charity, pity, etc.; in short, those foreign or contrary to the instinct of individual self-preservation. Their fundamental conditions are two psychological facts already studied:
1. Sympathy, in the etymological sense, _i.e._, an emotional unison, the possibility of feeling with another, and like him. Could a society be based on this state alone? In extreme cases this might happen; but such a society would be transitory, precarious, unstable: we have found similar examples in the gregarious state, animal or human. Stability requires stronger ties, that is to say, moral ones.
2. The altruistic tendency, or tender emotion, which exists in all men, except in those to be referred to at the end of this chapter. It belongs to our constitution, as much as the fact of having two eyes or a stomach.
Now the question put to us is this: How is active altruism developed, and by what psychological mechanism? How do disinterested feelings arise from primitive egoism? Setting aside all metaphysical solutions, such as Schopenhauer’s theory of universal pity, compassion (_Mitleid_) for all beings, founded on a vague consciousness of community of being and identity of origin—a monistic conception,—I shall confine myself to a strictly psychological explanation.
Benevolence arises from a particular form of activity accompanied by pleasure: this vague and obscure formula will be explained presently.
The fundamental tendency consists, in the first place, of preserving, and then of extending one’s self, of being and well-being, _i.e._, expending activity. Man may devote this activity to things: he cuts, hacks, destroys, overthrows,—these are destructive activities; he sows, plants, builds, and exercises preservative or creative activities. He may apply it to animals or to men; he injures, maltreats, destroys, or he cares for, helps, saves. Destructive activity is accompanied by pleasure, but by a pathological one, since it is the cause of evil. Preservative or creative activity is accompanied by pure pleasure, leaving behind it no painful feeling; consequently, it tends to repeat and increase itself: the object or the person which is the cause of pleasure becomes a centre of attraction, the starting-point of an agreeable association. To sum up, we have (1) a tendency to the display of our creative activity; (2) the pleasure of succeeding; (3) an object or living being to play a receptive part; (4) an association between this being or object and the pleasure experienced; whence a continually increasing attraction towards this being or object. The conservative tendency in action and the law of transference (see Part I., Chap. XII.) are the essential agents in the rise of altruism.
This may be justified by several examples. If we reflect on the preceding, it will be understood that benevolence may well be the result of chance, and have, in its origin, no intentional character. A man, without paying any special heed to it, happens to throw some water on a plant which was drying up beside his door; next day he chances to notice that it is beginning to revive; he repeats the operation, intentionally; he becomes more and more interested in the plant, grows attached to it, and would not like to be deprived of it.[179] This is a very trivial, everyday occurrence, and there is no one who has not experienced something of the sort; this is all the better, as showing us the rise of the feeling in all its simplicity. If this happens in the case of a plant, how much more easily in that of an intelligent animal or a man!
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Footnote 179:
Friedmann, “Genesis of Disinterested Benevolence,” _Mind_, vol. i. (1878), p. 404.
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It is an observed fact that a man attaches himself to another rather in proportion to the services he renders than to those he receives from him. There is, in general, a stronger current of benevolence passing from the benefactor to his _protégé_ than _vice versâ_. Common opinion considers this illogical: from the point of view of reason, it is so—not from that of feeling; and the preceding analysis even shows that it _must be_ so, because the benefactor has put more of himself into the recipient of his bounty than the latter can do to him. Thus, in many persons, gratitude needs to be supported by reflection.
If we are ill-disposed towards any one, the best and surest remedy against this incipient aversion is to render him some service. Conversely, the person who refuses all our benefits and obstinately avoids them becomes an object of indifference, or even hatred.
“During the proscriptions of Marius and Sulla,” says Friedmann, “there were many sons who, out of fear, gave up their father, but it was never known that a father had denounced his son; a fact that somewhat startled the Roman moralists, who were unable to explain it.” The explanation is involved in the constitution of the Roman family, by which the father could confer many benefits on the son, whereas the son was entirely dependent on the father, and could do nothing for him.
Many other incidents might be cited to justify the accuracy of the preceding analysis. Such is the mechanism by means of which our emotional self succeeds in externalising, in alienating itself; but this could not be done were there not at the origin and starting-point a primary tendency, already studied under the name of tender emotion. It is clear, also, that beneficence is a generic term designating forms which vary according to circumstances: charity, generosity, devotion, etc.
The extension and heightening of the feeling of beneficence have taken place slowly, and owing to the work of certain men who deserve to be called _discoverers_ in morals. This expression may sound strangely in some ears, because they are imbued with the theory of an innate and universal knowledge of good and evil imparted to all men at all times. If we admit, on the contrary,—as observation teaches us to do,—not a ready-made, but a growing morality, it must necessarily be the discovery of an individual or group of individuals. Every one admits the existence of inventors in geometry, in music, in the plastic and mechanical arts; but there have also been men in moral disposition far superior to their contemporaries, who have initiated or promoted reform in this department. Let us note (for this point is of the highest importance) that the _theoretic_ conception of a higher moral ideal, of a step in advance, is not sufficient; it needs a powerful emotion leading to action, and, by contagion, communicating its own impulse to others. The onward march is proportioned to what is _felt_, not to what is understood.
Were the human race, in the beginning, cannibals? Some affirm this, others deny it. What is certain is that the custom of eating one’s fellow-men has existed in many places, and still exists in some. It has been explained by scarcity of food, by superstitious beliefs, by the intoxication of triumph in annihilating a vanquished enemy, by the idea of assimilating his strength and courage, and by a variety of other reasons; but it has not been sufficiently remarked that its extinction has not always been due to the intervention of superior races. It has sometimes taken place on the spot. In the Tahiti Islands it had disappeared shortly before the arrival of Bougainville; among the Redskins, and even among the Fijians, parties had been formed in order to suppress not only cannibalism, but the tortures inflicted on prisoners of war.[180] The promoters of this abolition, whether individuals or groups, were certainly inventors. The universality of human sacrifices is well known; they are found still existing during the historic period, from China to Judæa, from Greece to Gaul, from Carthage to Rome. How did they disappear? On this point we have nothing but ignorance or legends, but they could not have disappeared without the agency of man. Du Chaillu cites a case in which reform is, so to speak, caught in the act—that of an African chief who was the first to give orders that no slave should be killed at his tomb.[181] Among the Aztecs, with their bloodthirsty religion, a sect, formed before the arrival of the Spaniards, had placed itself under the protection of a deity who abhorred bloodshed. All the great ancient legislators, whether historical or legendary—Manes, Confucius, Moses, Buddha,—we might say all founders of religions, have been discoverers in morals; whether the discovery originated with themselves alone or with a collectivity as whose summary and embodiment they may be regarded, matters little.
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Footnote 180:
About 1820, during the time of scarcity consequent on Tshaka’s wars, certain of the Natal tribes (the natives say, at the suggestion of a chief named Umdava) adopted the practice of cannibalism. It was abandoned when food again became plentiful, and has always been regarded with great horror; those individuals who had acquired such a taste for human flesh as to prefer it to other food, fled into the recesses of the Drakensberg and Maluti mountains. Moshesh, the great Basuto chief, directed his efforts for years to the extirpation of the practice, though unwilling to do so, as his advisers desired, by means of a summary massacre of the offenders. The _Amazimu_ (_Modimo_) are now a myth to both Zulus and Basutos; indeed the word, as now used, is frequently synonymous with “ogre.” It is to be noted that Moshesh was not in any way acting under European influence, in fact the last of the cannibals had disappeared long before the country came under British rule, and though the memory of their atrocities was still fresh when the French missionaries arrived in 1833, the chief had already been proceeding against them for some time. See Casalis, _Les Bassoutos_.
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Footnote 181:
Staniland Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. pp. 427 _et seq._ To be consulted for facts of this kind.
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It would be easy to continue this historical demonstration, but the above is sufficient to justify the term discoverers. From causes of which we are ignorant, but analogous to those which produce great poets or painters, there arise men of indisputable moral superiority who _feel_ what others do not feel, just as a great poet does compared with ordinary men. And for one who has succeeded, how many have failed for want of a favourable environment! A St. Vincent de Paul among the Kanakas would be as impossible as a Mozart among the Fuegians.
In primitive societies there has been a long struggle between the strongest egoistic tendencies, with their dissolvent action, and the weaker and intermittent altruistic tendencies, which have progressed through the agency of some more enlightened individuals, and also with the help of force, of which we still have to speak.
II. Let us now examine the development of the moral sentiment under its negative and restrictive aspect—_i.e._, as the sense of justice. Here the intellectual element evidently preponderates, and its evolution involves the other.
“Justice,” says Littré, “has the same foundation as science.” One rests on the principle of identity which governs the region of speculation, the other rests on the principle of equivalence and rules the sphere of action. Justice, in its origin, is a compensation for damages. Its evolution starts from an instinctive semi-conscious manifestation, rising by progressive steps to a universalist conception. Let us mark the principal stages.
The first, and lowest, is neither moral nor social, but purely animal and reflex—"a defensive reflex."[182] The individual who suffers violence, who thinks himself attacked or injured, immediately reacts. This is “the exasperated instinct of conservation,” or, to call it by its true name, revenge. So the savage who, before Darwin’s eyes, broke his son’s head for having dropped a store of shell-fish, the fruit of a laborious day’s fishing. This defensive reflex frequently recurs in the psychology of crowds; it is needless to give instances. It may seem paradoxical to take revenge as a starting-point for the sense of justice; but we shall see how it becomes mitigated and rationalised.
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Footnote 182:
Letourneau, _L’évolution juridique chez les différents peuples_.
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In fact, a second stage corresponds to revenge deferred through premeditation, reflection, or some analogous cause. It tends towards equivalence and reaches it under the form of retaliation, so frequent in primitive communities. The idea of equality, tooth for tooth, eye for eye, has won its way; the instinct has become intellectualised.
So far, the compensation claimed would appear to have only an individual character; but it must very early have taken on a collective character, by reason of the close solidarity uniting the members of the small social aggregate—the clan or family. An all-powerful opinion forces the injured party to pursue his revenge even when he does not wish it; and when a _vendetta_ is in force as between clan and clan, the stage of collective responsibility appears, and the notion of the compensation due is enlarged.
However, revenge restores, in the social aggregate, a state of war, which has to be eliminated; hence a reaction on the part of the community tending to suppress or attenuate it. This is the stage of arbitration and peace-making. Many facts show that, in the beginning, the decision of the umpires is without binding value, and supported by no coercive means. It is a proof not so much of culpability as of an indemnity to be paid to those concerned; the criminal trial is as yet a civil action.
For this temporary and unsanctioned arbitration the social development logically substitutes a permanent and guaranteed arbitration, exercised by a chief, or an aristocracy, or the popular assembly. Compensation becomes obligatory and is forcibly imposed. The condemned person must submit or leave the community; if refractory, he is excommunicated, and in primitive societies the outlaw’s life is intolerable; we see the equivalent of it in modern strikes. Let us also note the somewhat widely distributed custom of a division of the indemnity imposed, one portion being assigned to the injured party, the other to the state—_i.e._, the chief. The notion of justice has taken on a definitely social character.
It only remains that it should become universal. It long remains enclosed within the limits of the social group. All that contributes to the material and moral welfare of the group is good, and conversely; outside the group, all acts are _unmoral_. We find in history, and even at the present time, many proofs of this dualism or duplication of the individual, according as he is acting within his own social environment or with regard to strangers. Such were the Germans of Cæsar’s time.[183] In their earlier period, the Greeks considered themselves as less under moral obligation towards the Barbarians, and the Romans towards foreigners (_hostes_). It is especially owing to the efforts of the philosophers—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics—that justice ceased to be national and became universal. It might be added that at that period when the notion of justice remains a national one, it still varies within the group, according to caste; it is not the same for priests and warriors, for free men and for slaves, for aristocrats and for merchants. In the beginning, particularism was the rule.
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Footnote 183:
“Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam quæ extra fines cujusque _civitatis_ fiunt.”—_De Bell. Gall._, vi. 21.
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It is evident that, on the negative side, the evolution of moral life has been especially due to the progress of intelligence; the emotional element has only been incidental. Compared with the sense of justice, the feeling of active benevolence, if not evolved more quickly, at least appeared sooner, because nearer to instinct and less dependent on reason. A certain philosopher (Kant, I believe) was surprised that there is so much kindness and so little justice among men. He did not observe as a psychologist, or else he was led astray by intellectualist prejudice. This must be so, because tenderness is innate and spontaneous, justice acquired and deliberate; because one springs directly from an instinct, while the other has to undergo various metamorphoses. If man is sociable and moral, it is less because he thinks than because he feels in a certain manner and tends in a certain direction.
To conclude: moral emotion is a very complex state. Those sentimentalists in the last century, or in this, who have maintained the hypothesis of a “moral sense,” have erroneously considered it as a special sense with an innate faculty of discriminating good and evil. It is not a simple act, but the sum of a set of tendencies. Let us eliminate the intellectual elements, and enumerate its emotional constituents only: (1) as basis, sympathy—_i.e._, a community of nature and disposition; (2) the altruistic or benevolent tendency manifesting itself under different forms (attraction of like to like, maternal or paternal affection, etc.), at first weak, but gaining more expansion by the restriction of the egoistic feelings; (3) the sense of justice with its obligatory character—whose origin we have just traced; (4) the desire of approbation or of divine or human rewards, and the fear of disapprobation and punishments. As in the case of all complex feelings, its composition must vary with the predominance of one or other of its constituent elements; in one case it is obligation (the Stoics), in another charity, in many the fear of public opinion or of the law, of God or of the devil. It is impossible that it should be constant and identical in all men.
