Progressive Morality by Thomas Fowler
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8 PROGRESSIVE MORALITY
_FOWLER_
[Illustration]
PROGRESSIVE MORALITY
AN ESSAY IN ETHICS
BY
THOMAS FOWLER, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A.
PRESIDENT OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
WYKEHAM PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
1884
PREFACE.
These pages represent an attempt to exhibit a scientific conception of
morality in a popular form, and with a view to practical applications
rather than the discussion of theoretical difficulties. For this purpose
it has been necessary to study brevity and avoid controversy. Hence, I
have made few references to other authors, and I have almost altogether
dispensed with foot-notes. But, though I have attempted to state rather
than to defend my views, I believe that they are, in the main, those
which, making exception for a few back eddies in the stream of modern
thought, are winning their way to general acceptance among the more
instructed and reflective men of our day.
It is necessary that I should state that this Essay is independent of a
much larger work, entitled the 'Principles of Morals,' on which I was,
some years ago, engaged with my predecessor, the late Professor Wilson.
Owing to the declining state of his health during the latter years of
his life, that work was, at the time of his death, left in a condition
which rendered its completion very difficult and its publication
probably undesirable. For the present work I am solely responsible,
though no one can have been brought into close contact with so powerful
a mind as that of Professor Wilson, without deriving from it much
stimulus and retaining many traces of its influence.
It has long been my belief that the questions of theoretical Ethics
would be far less open to dispute, as well as far more intelligible, if
they were considered with more direct reference to practice. This little
book will, I trust, furnish an example, however slight and imperfect, of
such a mode of treatment.
C.C.C.
_July_ 25, 1884.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Introduction. The Sanctions of Conduct.
CHAPTER II.
The Moral Sanction or Moral Sentiment. Its
Functions and the Justification of its claims
to Superiority.
CHAPTER III.
Analysis and Formation of the Moral Sentiment.
Its Education and Improvement.
CHAPTER IV.
The Moral Test and its Justification.
CHAPTER V.
Examples of the Practical Application of the Moral
Test to existing Morality.
PROGRESSIVE MORALITY.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION. THE SANCTIONS OF CONDUCT.
All reflecting men acknowledge that both the theory and the practice of
morality have advanced with the general advance in the intelligence and
civilisation of the human race. But, if this be so, morality must be a
matter capable of being reasoned about, a subject of investigation and
of teaching, in which the less intelligent members of a community have
always something to learn from the more intelligent, and the more
intelligent, in their turn, have ever fresh problems to solve and new
material to study. It becomes, then, of prime importance to every
educated man, to ask what are the data of Ethics, what is the method by
which its general principles are investigated, what are the
considerations which the moralist ought to apply to the solution of the
complex difficulties of life and action. And still, in spite of these
obvious facts, ethical investigation, or any approach to an independent
review of the current morality, is always unpopular with the great mass
of mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject which
most concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient of
speculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man of
indolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moral
principles on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usually
apportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general rules,
with little or no regard to the individual circumstances of the case.
And of all innovators, the innovator on ethical theory is apt to be the
most unpopular and to be the least able to secure impartial attention to
his speculations. And hence it is that vague theories, couched in
unintelligible or only half-intelligible language, and almost totally
inapplicable to practice, have usually done duty for what is called a
system of moral philosophy. The authors or exponents of such theories
have the good fortune at once to avoid odium and to acquire a reputation
for profundity.
In the following pages, I shall attempt (1) to discriminate morality,
properly so called, from other sanctions of conduct; (2) to determine
the precise functions, and the ultimate justification, of the moral
sentiment, or, in other words, of the moral sanction; (3) to enquire how
this sentiment has been formed, and how it may be further educated and
improved; (4) to discover some general test of conduct; (5) to give
examples of the application of this test to existing moral rules and
moral feelings, with a view to shew how far they may be justified and
how far they require extension or reformation. As my subject is almost
exclusively practical, I shall studiously avoid mere theoretical
puzzles, such as is pre-eminently that of the freedom of the will,
which, in whatever way resolved, probably never influences, and never
will influence, any sane man's conduct. Questions of this kind will
always excite interest in the sphere of speculation, and speculation is
a necessity of the cultivated human intellect; but it does not seem to
me that they can be profitably discussed in a treatise, the aim of which
is simply to suggest principles for examining, for testing, and, if
possible, for improving the prevailing sentiment on matters of practical
morals.
To begin with the first division of my subject, How is morality,
properly so called, discriminated from other sanctions of conduct? By a
sanction I may premise that I mean any pleasure which attracts to as
well as any pain which deters from a given course of action. In books on
Jurisprudence, this word is usually employed to designate merely pains
or penalties, but this circumstance arises from the fact that, at least
in modern times, the law seldom has recourse to rewards, and effects its
ends almost exclusively by means of punishments. When we are considering
conduct, however, in its general aspects and not exclusively in its
relations to law, we appear to need a word to express any inducement,
whether of a pleasureable or painful nature, which may influence a man's
actions, and such a word the term 'sanction' seems conveniently to
supply. Taking the word in this extended sense, the sanctions of conduct
may be enumerated as the physical, the legal, the social, the religious,
and the moral. Of the physical sanction familiar examples may be found
in the headache from which a man suffers after a night's debauch, the
pleasure of relaxation which awaits a well-earned holiday, the danger to
life or limb which is attendant on reckless exercise, or the glow of
constant satisfaction which rewards a healthy habit of life. These
pleasures and pains, when once experienced, exercise, for the future, an
attracting or a deterring influence, as the case may be, on the courses
of conduct with which they have respectively become associated. Thus, a
man who has once suffered from a severe headache, after a night's
drinking-bout, will be likely to exercise more discretion in future, or
the prospect of agreeable diversion, at the end of a hard day's work,
will quicken a man's efforts to execute his task.
The legal sanction is too familiar to need illustration. Without penal
laws, no society of any size could exist for a day. There are, however,
two characteristics of this sanction which it is important to point out.
One is that it works almost exclusively[1] by means of penalties.
It would be an endless and thankless business, in a society
of any size, even if it were possible, to attempt to reward the virtuous
for their consideration in not breaking the laws. The cheap, the
effective, indeed, in most cases, the only possible method is to punish
the transgressor. By a carefully devised and properly graduated system
of penalties each citizen is thus furnished with the strongest
inducement to refrain from those acts which may injure or annoy his
neighbour. Another characteristic of the legal sanction is that, though
it is professedly addressed to all citizens alike, it actually affects
the uneducated and lower classes far more than the educated and higher
classes of society. This circumstance arises partly from the fact that
persons in a comfortable position of life are under little temptation to
commit the more ordinary crimes forbidden by law, such as are theft,
assault, and the like, and partly from the fact that their education and
associations make them more amenable to the social, and, in most cases,
to the moral and religious sanctions, about to be described presently.
Few persons in what are called the higher or middle ranks of life have
any temptation to commit, say, an act of theft, and, if they experienced
any such temptation, they would be at least as likely to be restrained
by the consideration of what their neighbours would think or say about
them, even apart from their own moral and religious convictions, as by
the fear of imprisonment.
[Footnote 1: There are a few exceptions to the rule that the sanctions
employed by the state assume the form of punishments rather than of
rewards. Such are titles and honours, pensions awarded for distinguished
service, rewards to informers, &c. But these exceptions are almost
insignificant, when compared with the numerous examples of the general
rule.]
One of the most effective sanctions in all conditions of life, but
especially in the upper and better educated circles of a civilized
society, is what may be called the social sanction, that is to say, a
regard for the good opinion and a dread of the evil opinion of those who
know us, and especially of those amongst whom we habitually live. It is
one of the characteristics of this sanction that it is much more
far-reaching than the legal sanction. Not only does it extend to many
acts of a moral character which are not affected, in most countries, by
the legal sanction, such as lying, backbiting, ingratitude, unkindness,
cowardice, but also to mere matters of taste or fashion, such as dress,
etiquette, and even the proprieties of language. Indeed, as to the
latter class of actions, there is always considerable danger of the
social sanction becoming too strong. Society is apt to insist on all men
being cast in one mould, without much caring to examine the character of
the mould which it has adopted. And it frequently happens that a wholly
disproportionate value thus comes to be attached to the observance of
mere rules of etiquette and good-breeding as compared with acts and
feelings which really concern the moral and social welfare of mankind.
There is many a man, moving in good society, who would rather be guilty
of, and even detected in, an act of unkindness or mendacity, than be
seen in an unfashionable dress or commit a grammatical solecism or a
broach of social etiquette. Vulgarity to such men is a worse reproach
than hardness of heart or indifferent morality. In these cases, as we
shall see hereafter, the social sanction requires to be corrected by the
moral and religious sanctions, and it is the special province of the
moral and religious teacher in each generation to take care that this
correction shall be duly and effectively applied. The task may, from
time to time, require the drastic hand of the moral or religious
reformer, but, unless some one has the courage to undertake it, we are
in constant danger of neglecting the weightier matters of the law, while
we are busy with the mint and cummin and anise of fashion and
convention. But, notwithstanding the danger of exaggeration and
misapplication, there can be no doubt of the vast importance and the
generally beneficial results of a keen sensitiveness to the opinions of
our fellow-men. Without the powerful aid of this sanction, the
restraints of morality and religion would often be totally ineffective.
When the social sanction operates, not through society generally, but
through particular sections of society, it may be called a Law of
Honour, a term which originated in the usages of Chivalry. In a complex
and civilized form of society, such as our own, there may be many such
laws of honour, and the same individual may be subject to several of
them. Thus each profession, the army, the navy, the clerical, the legal,
the medical, the artistic, the dramatic profession, has its own peculiar
code of honour or rules of professional etiquette, which its members can
only infringe on pain of ostracism, or, at least, of loss of
professional reputation. The same is the case with trades, and is
specially exemplified in the instance of trades-unions, or, their
mediaeval prototypes, the guilds. A college or a school, again, has its
own rules and traditions, which the tutor or undergraduate, the master
or boy, can often only violate at his extreme peril. Almost every club,
institution, and society affords another instance in point. The class of
'gentlemen,' too, that is to say, speaking roughly, the upper and upper
middle ranks of society, claim to have a code of honour of their own,
superior to that of the ordinary citizen. A breach of this code is
called 'ungentlemanly' rather than wrong or immoral or unjust or unkind.
So far as this code insists on courtesy of demeanour and delicacy of
feeling and conduct, it is a valuable complement to the ordinary rules
of morality, though, so far as it fulfils this function, it plainly
ought not to be the exclusive possession of one class, but ought to be
communicated, by means of example and education, to the classes who are
now supposed to be bereft of it. There are points in this code, however,
such as that the payment of 'debts of honour' should take precedence of
that of tradesmen's bills, and that less courtesy is due to persons in
an inferior station than to those in our own, which at least merit
re-consideration. It may, indeed, be said of all these laws or codes of
honour, that, though they have probably, on the whole, a salutary effect
in maintaining a high standard of conduct in the various bodies or
classes where they obtain, they require to be constantly watched, lest
they should become capricious or tyrannical, and specially lest they
should conflict with the wider interests of society or the deeper
instincts of morality. It must not be forgotten that we are 'men' before
we are 'gentlemen,' and that no claims of any profession, institution,
or class can replace or supplant those of humanity and citizenship.
We see, then, or rather we are obliged at the present stage of our
enquiry to assume, that the social sanction, whether it be derived from
the average sentiment of society at large or from the customs and
opinions of particular aggregates of society, requires constant
correction at the hands of the moralist. The sentiment which it
represents may be only the sentiment of men of average moral tone, or it
may even be that of men of an inferior or degraded morality, and hence
it often needs to be tested by the application of rules derived from a
higher standard both of feeling and intelligence. Nor is it the moral
standard only which may be used to correct the social standard. We may
often advantageously have recourse to the legal standard for the same
purpose. For the laws of a country express, as a rule, the sentiments of
the wisest and most experienced of its citizens, and hence we might
naturally expect that they would be in advance of the average moral
sentiment of the people, as well as of the social traditions of
particular professions or classes. And this I believe to be usually the
case. For instances, we have to go no further than the comparison
between the laws and the popular or professional sentiment on bribery at
elections, on smuggling, on evasion of taxation, on fraudulent business
transactions, on duelling, on prize-fighting, or on gambling. At the
same time it must be confessed that, as laws sometimes become
antiquated, and the leanings of lawyers are proverbially conservative,
it occasionally happens that, on some points, the average moral
sentiment is in advance of the law. I may select as examples, from
comparatively recent legal history, the continuance of religious
disabilities and the excessive punishment of ordinary or even trivial
crimes; and, perhaps, I may venture to add, as a possible reform in the
future now largely demanded by popular sentiment, some considerable
modifications of the laws regulating the transfer of and the succession
to landed property. Thus it will be seen that law and the sentiment of
society may each be employed as corrective of the other, and that,
consequently, their comparison implies a higher standard than either, by
means of which each may be tested, and to which each, in its turn, may
be referred. This higher or common standard it will be our business to
consider in a subsequent part of this Essay. Meanwhile, it may be
pointed out that, in addition to its function as an occasional
corrective of the legal sanction, the social sanction subserves two
great objects: first, it largely complements the legal sanction, being
applicable to numberless cases which that sanction does not, and, in
fact, cannot reach; secondly, the legal sanction, even in those cases
which it reaches, is greatly reinforced by the social sanction, which
adds the pains arising from an evil reputation, and all the indefinable
social inconveniences which an evil reputation brings with it, to the
actual penalties inflicted by the law.
The religious sanction varies, of course, with the different religious
creeds, and, in the more imperfect forms of religion, by no means always
operates in favour of morality. But it will be sufficient here to
consider the religious sanction solely in relation to Christianity. As
enforced by the Bible and the Church, the religious sanctions of conduct
are two, which I shall call the higher and the lower sanctions. By the
latter I mean the hope of the divine reward or the fear of the divine
punishment, either in this world or the next; by the former, the love of
God and that veneration for His nature which irresistibly inspires the
effort to imitate His perfections. The lower religious sanction is
plainly the same in kind with the legal sanction. If a man is induced to
do or to refrain from doing a certain action from fear of punishment,
the motive is the same, whether the punishment be for a long time or a
short one, whether it is to take immediate effect or to be deferred for
a term of years. And, similarly, the same is the case with rewards. No
peculiar merit, as it appears to me, can be claimed by a man because he
acts from fear of divine punishment rather than of human punishment, or
from hope of divine rewards rather than of human rewards. The only
differences between the two sanctions are (1) that the hopes and fears
inspired by the religious sanction are, to one who believes in their
reality, far more intense than those inspired by the legal sanction, the
two being related as the temporal to the eternal, and (2) that, inasmuch
as God is regarded as omnipresent and omniscient, the religious sanction
is immeasurably more far-reaching than the legal sanction or even than
the legal and the social sanctions combined. Thus the lower religious
sanction is, to those who really believe in it, far more effective than
the legal sanction, though it is the same in kind. But the higher
religious sanction appeals to a totally different class of motives, the
motives of love and reverence rather than of hope and fear. In this
higher frame of mind, we keep God's commandments, because we love Him,
not because we hope for His rewards or fear His punishments. We
reverence God, and, therefore, we strive to be like Him, to be perfect
even as He is perfect. We have attained to that state of mind in which
perfect love has cast out fear, and, hence, we simply do good and act
righteously because God, who is the supreme object of our love and the
supreme ideal of conduct, is good and righteous. There can be no
question that, in this case, the motives are far loftier and purer than
in the case of the legal and the lower religious sanctions. But there
are few men, probably, capable of these exalted feelings, and,
therefore, for the great mass of mankind the external inducements to
right conduct must, probably, continue to be sought in the coarser
motives. It may be mentioned, before concluding this notice of the
religious sanctions, that there is a close affinity between the higher
religious sanction and that form of the social sanction which operates
through respect for the good opinions of those of our fellow-men whom we
love, reverence, or admire.
But, quite distinct from all the sanctions thus far enumerated, there is
another sanction which is derived from our own reflexion on our own
actions, and the approbation or disapprobation which, after such
reflexion, we bestow upon them. There are actions which, on no
reasonable estimate of probabilities, can ever come to the knowledge of
any other person than ourselves, but which we look back on with pleasure
or regret. It may be said that, though, in these cases, the legal and
the social sanctions are confessedly excluded, the sanction which really
operates is the religious sanction, in either its higher or its lower
form. But it can hardly be denied that, even where there is no belief in
God, or, at least, no vivid sense of His presence nor any effective
expectation of His intervention, the same feelings are experienced.
These feelings, then, appear to be distinct in character from any of the
others which we have so far considered, and they constitute what may
appropriately be called the moral sanction, in the strict sense of the
term. It is one of the faults of Bentham's system that he confounds this
sanction with the social sanction, speaking indifferently of the moral
_or_ popular (that is to say, social) sanction; but let any one examine
carefully for himself the feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction
with which he looks back upon past acts of his own life, and ask himself
whether he can discover in those feelings any reference to the praise or
blame of other persons, actual or possible. There will, if I mistake
not, be many of them in which he can discover no such reference, but in
which the feeling is simply that of satisfaction with himself for having
done what he ought to have done, or dissatisfaction with himself for
having done that which he ought not to have done. Whether these feelings
admit of analysis and explanation is another question, and one with
which I shall deal presently, but of their reality and distinctness no
competent and impartial person, on careful self-examination, can well
doubt. The answer, then, to our first question, I conceive to be that
the moral sanction, properly so called, is distinguished from all other
sanctions of conduct in that it has no regard to the prospect of
physical pleasure or pain, or to the hope of reward or fear of
punishment, or to the estimation in which we shall be held by any other
being than ourselves, but that it has regard simply and solely to the
internal feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with which, on
reflexion, we shall look back upon our own acts.
CHAPTER II.
THE MORAL SANCTION OR MORAL SENTIMENT.
ITS FUNCTIONS AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF
ITS CLAIMS TO SUPERIORITY.
I now proceed to consider more at length what are the precise functions
of the moral sentiment or moral sanction[1], and what is the justification
of the weight which we attach to it, or rather of the preference which
we assign to it, or feel that we ought to assign to it, over all the
other sanctions of conduct. We have already seen that the moral
sentiment or sanction is the feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction
which we experience when we reflect on our own acts, without any
reference to any external authority or external opinion. Now it is
important to ask whether this feeling is uniformly felt on the
occurrence of the same acts, or whether it ever varies, so that acts,
for instance, which are at one time viewed with satisfaction, are at
another time regarded with indifference or with positive
dissatisfaction. It would seem as if no man who reflects on ethical
subjects, and profits by the observation and experience of life, could
possibly answer this question in any other than one way. There must be
very few educated and reflective men who have not seen reason, with
advancing years, to alter their opinion on many of, at least, the minor
points of morality in which they were instructed as children. A familiar
instance occurs at once in the different way in which most of us view
card-playing or attendance at balls or theatres from the much stricter
views which prevailed in many respectable English households a
generation ago. On the other hand, excess in eating and drinking is
regarded with far less indulgence now than it was in the days of our
fathers and grandfathers. On these points, then, at least, and such as
these, it must be allowed that there is a variation of moral sentiment,
or, in other words, that the acts condemned or approved by the moral
sanction are not invariably the same. Moreover, any of us who are
accustomed to reason on moral questions, and can observe carefully the
processes through which the mind passes, will notice that there is
constantly going on a re-adjustment, so to speak, of our ethical
opinions, whether we are reviewing abstract questions of morality or the
specific acts of ourselves or others. We at one time think ourselves or
others more, and, at another time, less blameable for the self-same
acts, or we come to regard some particular class of acts in a different
light from what we used to do, either modifying our praise or blame, or,
in extreme cases, actually substituting one for the other. But, though
these facts are patent, and may be verified by any one in his experience
either of himself or others, there have actually been moralists who have
appeared to maintain the position that, when a man is unbiassed by
passion or interest, his moral judgments are and must be invariably the
same. This error has, undoubtedly, been largely fostered by the loose
and popular use of the terms conscience and moral sense. These terms,
and especially the word conscience, are often employed to designate a
sort of mysterious entity, supposed to have been implanted in the mind
by God Himself, and endowed by Him with the unique prerogative of
infallibility. Even so philosophical and sober a writer as Bishop Butler
has given some countenance to this extravagant supposition, and to the
exaggerated language which he employs on the prerogatives of conscience,
and to the emphatic manner in which he insists on the absolute, if not
the infallible, character of its decisions, may be traced much of the
misconception which still prevails on the subject. But we have only to
take account of the notorious fact that the consciences of two equally
conscientious men may point in entirely opposite directions, in order to
see that the decisions of conscience cannot, at all events, be credited
with infallibility. Those who denounce and those who defend religious
persecution, those who insist on the removal and those who insist on the
retention of religious disabilities, those who are in favour of and
those who are opposed to a relaxation of the marriage laws, those who
advocate a total abstention from intoxicating liquors and those who
allow of a moderate use of them,--men on both sides in these
controversies, or, at least, the majority of them, doubtless act
conscientiously, and yet, as they arrive at opposite conclusions, the
conscience of one side or other must be at fault. There is no act of
religious persecution, there are few acts of political or personal
cruelty, for which the authority of conscience might not be invoked. I
doubt not that Queen Mary acted as conscientiously in burning the
Reformers as they did in promulgating their opinions or we do in
condemning her acts. It is plain, then, not only that the decisions of
conscience are not infallible, but that they must, to a very large
extent, be relative to the circumstances and opinions of those who form
them. In any intelligible or tenable sense of the term, conscience
stands simply for the aggregate of our moral opinions reinforced by the
moral sanction of self-approbation or self-disapprobation. That we ought
to act in accordance with these opinions, and that we are acting wrongly
if we act in opposition to them, is a truism. 'Follow Conscience' is the
only safe guide, when the moment of action has arrived. But it is
equally important to insist on the fallibility of conscience, and to
urge men, by all means in their power, to be constantly improving and
instructing their consciences, or, in plain words, to review and,
wherever occasion offers, to correct their conceptions of right and
wrong. The 'plain, honest man' of Bishop Butler would, undoubtedly,
always follow his conscience, but it is by no means certain that his
conscience would always guide him rightly, and it is quite certain that
it would often prompt him differently from the consciences of other
'plain, honest men' trained elsewhere and under other circumstances. To
act contrary to our opinions of right and wrong would be treason to our
moral nature, but it does not follow that those opinions are not
susceptible of improvement and correction, or that it is not as much our
duty to take pains to form true opinions as to act in accordance with
our opinions when we have formed them.
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