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Even more than this, however, can now be said. For such a criterion as is here suggested has significant implications for the human body,--that upon which life and mind ultimately depend. Experiments in psychology and psychiatry have revealed that traits of character are more than skin-deep and brain-deep; indeed, they are more than muscle-deep: they are as deep as the vital organs themselves. Even more than this is apparent, for these same sciences have demonstrated that not only is such a trait as anxiety just another name for a chronic muscular tension, but also that many diseases are, if not caused, at least abetted by what we think, how we act, and what feelings we cultivate. In more precise terms, the mechanisms of thought and action, being partly identical with the mechanisms of locomotion and metabolism, can produce either a hygienic or an unhygienic effect upon the whole structure of man's organism. And in this fact, I think, we can find an acceptable basis, even if a new one, for the distinction between virtue and vice.

This basis we propose is not altogether a novelty to keen students of human nature. We know that the normal, healthy and successfully adapted human individual is characterized by a relaxed and resilient condition, not only of his superficial or locomotor muscles, but also of the muscles of his alimentary tract. Both his voluntary and involuntary systems are constantly in a state of readiness to perform their necessary functions, and they also return to this condition after any series of actions has been performed. Such a man possesses aplomb, and is an example of the healthy Greek ideal of a sane mind in a sound body. In striking contrast to such a normal, resilient state, there are frequently found two other organic conditions which are readily delineated. The one is called muscular flabbiness, characterized by a powerless or a-tonic state of the muscles of either the voluntary and the involuntary systems, or both. A man in this a-tonic plight is incapable of vigorous, coordinate action, and his muscles do not manifest a normal readiness to respond to successive stimulations. The other abnormal condition, at the opposite pole from this one, is the one involving chronic muscular tensions, a condition which may be compared to the state of a steel spring which is always kept under severe strain, and which is never released far enough to give the metal a chance to recover from the stresses it undergoes. Highstrung, over-anxious, jealous, irascible people illustrate this type of organism with exactness.

The ethical implications of the foregoing must have already been guessed. Is it not possible to define the virtuous man as the relaxed, resilient, coordinate individual, and the vicious man as either the muscularly flabby, and therewith the lazy, spineless, procrastinating, lecherous man; or else as the abnormally hypertonic organism, whose muscles constantly pay dividends of wrath, and whose grudges and malice are carried even through his slumber? If so, there should be no paradox implied in speaking of virtue and vice as functions of the human organism.

FOOTNOTES:

Compare the expression, "And now abideth faith, hope, and charity" with "And now there are faithful men, hopeful men, and charitable men." Only the latter of these statements has any real meaning.

Plato's list is very brief, and his virtues correspond to the three parts of the soul as he conceived it. Self-control, courage, and wisdom are the three virtues which characterize the desire, the will, and the reason respectively, while the supreme virtue is a harmony or health of the soul.

For Aristotle, virtue is found in a moderation between extremes. For example, the virtue of courage is a mean between cowardliness and rashness. Others of his virtues likewise derived are: temperance, liberality, high-mindedness, mildness, friendliness, candor, urbanity, and justice.

The Christian virtues, while never stated in systematic form, are typically represented by humility, kindliness, self-denial, meekness, patience, temperance, and, perhaps, other-worldliness.

Comparatively few ethical writers attempt to give a list or scale of virtues and vices, and some of them ignore the question completely. Martineau, in a somewhat successful attempt to free himself from an irreconcilable dualism in ethics, presents a scale of traits beginning, presumably, with vices , and ending with virtues . In the application of this system, the chief question is, not what is bad or what is good, but simply, which trait is better and which worse than another.

It is to be observed that Jesus was much more specific and empirical than either Plato or St. Paul, since in his treatment of this phase of the problem of conduct, Jesus often described the situation concretely, e. g., "those persecuted for righteousness' sake," rather than by employing, as did Plato and St. Paul, abstract nouns, such as "courage," "charity," and the like. But it must also not be forgotten that of all the ethical teachers of antiquity, Socrates alone consistently stuck to the concrete realities of ethics and constantly admitted the size and difficulties of the problems involved.

IS CONSCIENCE ALWAYS A PATHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON?

"When the rookery is pretty well filled, and the nest-building is in full swing, the birds have a busy and anxious time. To get enough of suitable small stones is a matter of difficulty, and may involve long journeys for each single stone. The temptation is too strong for some of them, and they become habitual thieves. The majority remain stupidly honest. Amusing complications result. The bearing of the thief clearly shows that he knows he is doing wrong. He has a conscience, at least a human conscience, i. e., the fear of being found out. Very different is the furtive look of the thief, long after he is out of danger of pursuit, from the expression of the honest penguin coming home with a hard-earned stone.

"An honest one was bringing stones from a long distance. Each stone was removed by a thief as soon as the owner's back was turned. The honest one looked greatly troubled as he found that his heap didn't grow, but he seemed incapable of suspecting the cause.

"A thief, sitting on his own nest, was stealing from an adjacent nest, whose honest owner was also at home, but looking unsuspectingly in another direction. Casually he turned his head and caught the thief in the act. The thief dropped the stone and pretended to be busy picking up an infinitesimal crumb from the neutral ground."

"The Heart of the Antarctic," SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON, Vol. II, p. 253 .

This emphasis which Hobbes placed upon the untrustworthiness of private ethical judgments was fatal to his purpose. His successors began straightway to reanimate that which he had sought to bury once and for all, and, whether on account of their temperamental antipathy to the intellectualism of Hobbes, or because they were honestly seeking for some valid ethical principle, they asserted, first timidly, and later with a surprising boldness the very thing which Hobbes had sought especially to efface from the docket of ethical discussion.

We find this reaction beginning in Shaftesbury . Albeit this author gives a minor place in his ethical theory to the notion of a "moral sense," or rational, reflex affection which approves only socially beneficial actions, yet the positive emphasis which he puts upon it is nevertheless significant. The affirmation proved to be contagious, for those who followed Shaftesbury immediately elevated conscience to a central position in their systems. We refer here to Butler, Clarke, Kant, and Reid, who are known as intuitionists.

The old belief in the certainty of conscience now begins to reappear. It was Clarke who attempted to defend it by the use of a mathematical analogy. We are all familiar with the axiom that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. If now we keep the general form, but alter the substance of this axiom, so that it reads: "Whatever I judge reasonable or unreasonable for another to do for me, that by the same judgment I declare reasonable or unreasonable that I in the like case should do for him," we have Clarke's Law of Equity. To an arm-chair philosopher such a statement sounds fairly cogent, but its empirical value is not thereby guaranteed. As every student of psychology knows, individual differences, individual preferences, and the capacity of individuals by this method of give-and-take are completely ignored in the formulation of this law. Besides, Clarke's conception of conscience may be said to contain a hint of ethical solipsism, or the theory that oneself is the only accurate authority on social justice. We need not pause longer over the insuperable difficulties of such a point of view.

Most people who have heard the name of John Locke will recall his arguments against the assumptions of the moral intuitionists in those passages where he combats the theory of innate moral ideas. According to Locke, all such ideas would have to be independent of geographical location and climate, independent of the age of the person and of his training, and recognized by all persons as fundamental. But none of these conditions are found to be satisfied by anyone who makes the shortest pilgrimage through the world in the search for these statistics. And consequently the intellectually honest Locke rejects the philosophical theory of conscience, independently of his recognition of the facts of self-approval and self-disapproval.

"The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be, is one and the same--a feeling in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility. This feeling ... is the essence of Conscience; though in that complex phenomenon as it actually exists, the simple fact is in general all encrusted over with collateral associations, derived from sympathy, from love, and still more from fear; from all the forms of religious feeling; from the recollections of childhood and of all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem of others, and occasionally even self-abasement."

Such a definition as we seek, however, could only be obtained by securing an elaborate census of cases in which the words "conscience" or "moral sense" were used. The census-taker would have to roam over the whole earth, ask questions all day long, and even become an eavesdropper at night, in order to gain the information he desired. Even this method would hardly be exhaustive, since perhaps far more "pangs of conscience" are felt than are ever expressed in language; and so our census-taker, were he as thorough as we might desire him to be, would have to be equipped with a sort of ultra-stethoscope,--one that could elevate a blush into an audible phenomenon,--in order to return with a full and complete report. The lack of such exhaustive statistics must, of course, be permanent; not only for want of census-takers, and for want of accuracy and sincerity on the part of those giving their introspection, but also because the concept of conscience may be slowly evolving, so that the end of the census might not harmonize with its beginning.

Yet something more remains to be said about the popular conception of the word "conscience." This word, as commonly used, denotes an emotional state which, far from being in harmony with the ideals of the group, often denotes the very opposite condition. It is hardly necessary to remark that the fear of being found out does not imply loyalty to the group any more than it implies the recognition of that which makes for power, wisdom, and peace in the individual. Indeed, conscience as popularly experienced, involving as it does anxiety, trepidation, self-abasement, and a host of other introversive tendencies, is an ethical liability, both to the group and to the individual. The man who has transgressed the will of the group is surely not a bit better off because of his fear of being caught, nor can he regard his fear, even though he has already been tortured by it, as giving him any right to a mitigation of the penalty. As for himself, the conscience-stricken individual may have so long squandered his energy in his effort to conceal his offence as to bring him very close to ethical bankruptcy. The picture we draw is not extreme,--it can be duplicated in every neighborhood, if not in every family on the globe. For conscience, as it is usually experienced, is a painful, withdrawing reaction, implying negation rather than affirmation, incoordination rather than skilful prevision, and morbidity instead of frank, overt, constructive action. Accurate indeed is the phrase, "The pangs of conscience," as a description of the organic turmoil incident to this condition of mal-adjustment. Can it not, then, be truthfully said, that in the cases just described conscience is a pathological phenomenon?

Thus to discover that the popular form of conscience implies a vice rather than a virtue is not, however, enough. We wish also to know how and why this form of conscience has attained so great a vogue. And here again we touch upon matters of the greatest importance for a mechanistic ethics.

Conscience as a form of fear is so strong and so wide-spread for two reasons. The first is already familiar to us, and is briefly repeated. It is that the flexor system is originally stronger than the extensor system. And so in the great majority of men whose natures are less evolved, fear is almost a daily experience,--not only the fear of nature and of the unknown, but also the fear of the group by whose tolerance they exist. Moreover, sentiment and not knowledge is the great group asset, by which we imply no such educated sentiments as are derived from analytical inquiry, or from an open search after the facts, but rather that kind of sentiment which passively bars and actively hinders the enlargement of the understanding. The group really never explains. When offended, it simply becomes suspicious, and its gossips freely translate this suspicion into rumor and inuendo. It is small wonder, then, that the conscience-stricken individual, as a product of his group, has as his first, and sometimes his only reaction, the tendency to shrink and become unresilient when he realizes that his acts, or worse still, his thoughts, have transgressed the taboos of his tribe. It is a case of like master, like man; the group does not usually know what its purposes are, much less does it ask to have those purposes examined and revealed; and so the conscience-stricken individual,--the sentimental child of the group,--reacts to his realization of estrangement from the group in a manner that makes his last state worse than his first.

This cannot be taken to imply that it is a sign of intellectual maturity to transgress all the taboos of the group. Yet the argument still holds that the influences produced by the exclusive use of this negative form of conscience are baleful. Very early in the life of the average child the expressions: "Don't," "If you dare to do that again, I'll whip you," "What would people say?" and a score of other negations are employed by his parents and teachers on the principle that ethical guidance is achieved by such means. As a result, says Edwin Holt, "The parent has set a barrier between the child and a portion of reality; and forever after the child will be in some measure impeded in its dealings" with those things which have become taboo, always first feeling the prohibition, rather than the urgency to act discriminatively upon a knowledge which a close contact with the reality should produce. Such a parent has not "trusted the truth," and the final result is that the child has actually become "a second-rate mind, not in harmony with itself," since not in creative touch with the environment.

Even more pointedly John Dewey writes in his criticism of the doctrine of self-denial. "Morals is a matter of direction, not of suppression. The urgency of desires cannot be got rid of; nature cannot be expelled. If the need of happiness, of satisfaction of capacity, is checked in one direction, it will manifest itself in another. If the direction which is checked is an unconscious and wholesome one, the one which is taken will be likely to be morbid and perverse. The one who is conscious of continually denying himself cannot rid himself of the idea that it ought to be 'made up' to him; that a compensating happiness is due him for what he has sacrificed, somewhat increased, if anything, on account of the unnatural virtue he has displayed. To be self-sacrificing is to 'lay up' merit, and this achievement must surely be rewarded with happiness--if not now, then later. Those who habitually live on the basis of conscious self-denial are likely to be exorbitant in the demands which they make on some one near them, some member of their family or some friend; likely to blame others if their own 'virtue' does not secure for itself an exacting attention which reduces others to the plane of servility. Often the doctrine of self-sacrifice leads to an inverted hedonism; we are to be good--that is, forego pleasure--now, that we may have a greater measure of enjoyment in some future paradise of bliss. Or, the individual who has taken vows of renunciation is entitled by that very fact to represent spiritual authority on earth and to lord it over others."

They who wish even a more striking picture of the extent to which the negative type of conscience degrades the intellect, have only to consult Alfred Adler's "The Neurotic Constitution." If Dr. Adler correctly depicts the salient traits of the neurotic, many intuitionists themselves are by implication introverts, and consequently forfeit their claims to ethical leadership. The neurotic is described as "a person possessing anxiety," "the self-sacrificing virtue," "a marked sensitiveness," "an irritable debility," "an estrangement from reality," as well as "a person with a strong tendency to symbolization," and a penchant for "guiding fictions" invented for the purpose of compensating him for his feeling of inferiority at having lost solid contacts with reality. This, then, is the success which the conscience-theory has met with at the hands of scientific experts,--keen and sympathetic observers of the ways of men.

Such an account of the degeneration of conscience into a self-annihilating sentiment is, however, only one chapter in the history of this concept. And while the list of uses to which the word "conscience" has been put does not furnish as solid a basis upon which to build a constructive ethical technique as did the uses of "good," "right," and "virtue," we can nevertheless still find a positive ethical value for this term. How, then, will this value be discovered?

It will be found by a study of those persons who have attained the power to view the world in a purely objective and empirical manner; of those persons who treat their own and other peoples' actions as experiments in the great laboratory of time, rather than as timid ventures to be apologized for on the slightest provocation; of those persons who have evolved to that point where their knowledge determines their sentiments, and not their sentiments their knowledge; and of those who, having by this means chosen their dependable goods, learn the right methods to attain them, and thereafter employ plain judgments of fact in estimating the success which they acquire and the quality of the virtue which they achieve. In such persons the positive, constructive, liberalizing type of conscience exists,--a conscience which, through being built up of objectively tested judgments, becomes the outstanding ethical asset of the personality.

This type of conscience is not a myth, for it may be acquired in the same way as any other skill is acquired. The objective knowledge which it presupposes can be gained where every natural curiosity of a child or an adult is developed into a frank acquaintance with the object of curiosity; where fear is turned into intrepidity by a bold analysis of its cause and by a frontal attack upon the exciting stimulus; where one learns that ethical problems are always solved by forming serviceable habits and never by the cultivation of permanent anxieties; and where, finally, all the entangling alliances forced upon one by unprofitable acquaintances are boldly, but politely, annihilated. Even though many strongly entrenched traditions and institutions of the world would decay were the type of conscience we here describe to become wide-spread, yet this cannot deter the wise man from making it his life work to add as many new names to the list of those possessing ethical insight as it is within his power to do. Indeed, whenever this list becomes so large as to be generally regarded by autocrats as dangerous, we shall have come to that place in the course of civilization where the first real ethical advance is to be made.

THE MITIGATION OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FREEDOM AND OBLIGATION

"There is a phrase 'liberty of conscience' which well expresses the modern conception of moral obligation. It recognizes that duty in the last analysis is imposed upon the individual neither by society nor even by God, but by himself; that there is no authority in moral matters more ultimate than a man's own rational conviction of what is best."

R. B. PERRY, "The Moral Economy," p. 34.

"One could scarcely construct a more erroneous view than that every human being is endowed at birth with the same 'lump sum' of freedom, which remains an inalienable possession throughout life. Our freedom is not complete, it is in the making.... The process by which freedom is won is the process of enlightenment. It is the truth that sets men free, the clear perception of moral relations and moral laws, the understanding of human nature and its true needs."

W. G. EVERETT, "Moral Values," pp. 358-9.

One of the most revolutionary changes which the scientific study of psychology has wrought consists in the demolition of all the barriers which formerly divided the body from the mind. The intellect, once securely enthroned as the highest faculty in the mental hierarchy; the reason, erstwhile religiously devoted to the contemplation of pure truth; and the will, which formerly completed this trio of sublime, unitary faculties, have, in the unbiased and careful scrutiny of laboratory science, been shown to be not only highly complicated processes, but products of experience as well; and not only products of experience, but functions of brain and gland. Furthermore, they have been revealed to be not solely functions of a biological mechanism controlled by external stimuli, but also in a larger sense they are now regarded as means by which the body of a man adjusts itself to and gains control of its physical and social environments. No longer do we ask the old question: "Why has the mind a body?" but rather, "Why does the body have a mind?" And the answer is: The body has a mind to enable the body to experiment with its environment so that when it gets what it seems to want, it can know that it has really wanted what it has gotten.

Some results of this highly reconstructive iconoclasm upon ethical thought have already been depicted in the preceding chapters. Here we are soon to see what effect such a doctrine has upon the last two ethical concepts we shall analyze, namely, duty and freedom.

As may have already been divined, a mechanistic ethics on its constructive side does not maintain a pension list for the outworn conceptions of an earlier day. Consequently, in this place we shall not ask what used to be thought of the "Freedom of the Will," nor shall we quote Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" as a prologue to our theme. For while only a hundred years ago no ethical teacher could have safely omitted giving great emphasis to the theological setting of these two concepts, today such a treatment would not arouse the slightest "problematic thrill." What used to be called "the Will" is now an obsolete expression;--indeed, ever since Spinoza wrote, it has been regarded as a myth. In its stead, we speak of the individual or particular volitions of men, and we discuss their value in reducing the gap between our liquid matter and its good. Likewise, what was once called the lump-sum of our Duty has now become separated and analyzed into claims, interests, other-regarding sentiments, and the like, each one of which has a history and a real meaning for our flesh-and-blood personality.

Right here we ask whether this first meaning of freedom does not have an important bearing on the question of ethical obligation. Is it, indeed, not plain that just as we cannot do what is physically impossible, so there is no valid obligation under these conditions? This, however, is something which the intuitionists and the idealists have persistently ignored, regarding it often as somehow the very acme of virtue to declare as an ideal of conduct something which is totally impossible of realization, and thereby fostering the neurotic temperament instead of ethical enlightenment. Yet it is plain that if, while being unable to do the impossible, I still am pathologically anxious about it, I shall succeed only in accumulating impatience and turmoil, and be forced to get what sour consolation I can from Schopenhauer, or else to "gnaw the file" in some other fashion. Moreover, according to a mechanistic ethics, I am an evil person as long as I waste energy in this fashion, or in demanding consolation for my erroneous sentiment. Not only am I bound to fail, and thereby to create discord rather than relieve it, but I am also losing time and energy which might have gone into more profitable pursuits. On the other hand, while we do not yet say that we are under obligation to perform every physically possible action, yet every valid urgency still lies in that direction.

Nevertheless, while many similar hindrances to human action exist, such as the friction-hindrance to perpetual motion, and the wall which kept Pyramus from Thisbe, yet, on the whole, most of the so-called external restraints are far less serious barriers to freedom than we realize. This is not only attested by the magnificent conquests of nature recently made by applied science, but it might also be deduced from the properties of man's protoplasm as modified in his muscular architecture. For protoplasm is liquid, and liquids flow; and man's stream of thought as a derivative of his liquid protoplasm acquires its labile character as a sort of natural right. Just as a liquid under pressure transmits that pressure in all directions, so a man who is made of good protoplasm tends, when confronted by such obstacles as we have just described, to think, and plan, and experiment, that is, TO FLOW, out of the difficulty. His neuro-muscular equipment also singularly facilitates the turning of his wish into a will. Our muscles do not only contract and relax to produce lever movements in one plane, but they also combine their movements into pronation, supination, and rotation, and these synergic actions enable us to explore the obstacle and almost literally to flow around it. This is also the mechanism by which we puzzle out any problem. The all-or-none principle makes mental analysis always possible and often accurate. Applied to Pyramus, this means that the wall that separates him from Thisbe stimulates him with her aid so variously that he not only rebels and laments, but also starts to explore its surface and its possibilities, with the final result that he vaults it and descends "until he can come at Thisbe's lips more directly." There has always been an abundance of old saws to encourage the bold and the faint-hearted to regard obstacles as merely stepping-stones to future success, but the physiological basis of such maxims we are only beginning to comprehend. In fine, then, when we speak of a permanent obstacle to our actions, we mean it only in so far as we do not also imply some serious deficiency in the quality of our protoplasm.

The relation between this second type of freedom and obligation is very obviously hinted at by the popular maxims on the theme of perseverance. Moreover, it is historically demonstrable that pragmatic urgency usually increases in direct ratio to the ease with which external restraints can be surmounted. On the other hand, it is gradually becoming recognized that "there are hundreds of thousands of human beings who can by no possibility ever do what is expected of them by society. Society must give over expecting such things." Those who have no power to plan, scheme, or supervise, are consequently not educated enough to appreciate the obligations which such abilities involve.

It is thus plain that there is no fundamental difference between ethics and any other science. Just as the business of physical science is to describe the conditions under which any phenomenon occurs, so the business of ethical science is to ascertain, by a study of the mechanisms of human behavior, the conditions which underlie all of our ethical values. Wisely indeed did Protagoras remark that "Man is the measure of all things," but it was not until many centuries after this statement had been made that a positively constructive interpretation, could be put upon it.

FOOTNOTES:

George Clarke Cox, "The Public Conscience," p. 25.

THE ACQUISITION OF AN ETHICAL TECHNIQUE

"One of the reasons why pantheistic revery has been so popular is that it seems to offer a painless substitute for genuine spiritual effort.... When pushed to a certain point the nature cult always tends towards sham spirituality.

'Oh world as God has made it All is beauty, And knowing this is love, and Love is duty, What further can be sought for or desired?'

It seems to follow from these lines of Browning, perhaps the most flaccid spiritually in the English language, that to go out and mix oneself up with the landscape is the same as doing one's duty. As a method of salvation this is even easier and more aesthetic than that of the Ancient Mariner, who, it will be remembered, is relieved of the burden of his transgression by admiring the color of water-snakes!"

IRVING BABBITT, "Rousseau and Romanticism."

"Objection: Will not this end in ethical scepticism? Answer: Nothing is further from scepticism than the conception of a reality subject to laws, and of a rational action based on the knowledge of those laws."

L. LEVY-BR?HL, "Ethics and Moral Science," Table of Contents, p. xi.

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