Progressive Morality by Thomas Fowler

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I will next take the familiar case of a trust, voluntarily undertaken,
but involving considerable trouble to the trustee, a case of a much more
complicated character than the last. If the trustee altogether neglects
or does not devote a reasonable amount of attention to the affairs of
the trust, there is no doubt that, besides any legal penalties which he
may incur, he merits moral censure. Rather than sacrifice his own ease
or his own interests, he violates the obligation which he has undertaken
and brings inconvenience, or possibly disaster, to those whose interests
he has bound himself to protect. But the demands of the trust may become
so excessive as to tax the time and pains of the trustee to a far
greater extent than could ever have been anticipated, and to interfere
seriously with his other employments. In this case no reasonable person,
I presume, would censure the trustee for endeavouring, even at some
inconvenience or expense to the persons for whose benefit the trust
existed, to release himself from his obligation or to devolve part of
the work on a professional adviser. While, however, the work connected
with the trust did not interfere with other obligations or with the
promotion of the welfare of others, no one, I imagine, would censure the
trustee for continuing to perform it, to his own inconvenience or
disadvantage, if he chose to do so. His neighbours might, perhaps, say
that he was foolish, but they would hardly go to the length of saying
that he acted wrongly. Neither, on the other hand, would they be likely
to praise him, as the sacrifice he was undergoing would be out of
proportion to the good attained by it, and the interests of others to
which he was postponing his own interests would not be so distinctly
greater as to warrant the act of self-effacement. But now let us suppose
that, in attending to the interests of the trust, he is neglecting the
interests of others who have a claim upon him, or impairing his own
efficiency as a public servant or a professional man. If the interests
thus at stake were plainly much greater than those of the trust, as they
might well be, the attitude of neutrality would soon be converted into
one of positive censure, unless he took means to extricate himself from
the difficulty in which he was placed.

The supposition just made illustrates the fact that the moral feelings
may attach themselves not only to cases in which the collision is
between a man's own higher and lower good, or between his own good and
that of another, but also to those in which the competition is entirely
between the good of others. It may be worth while to illustrate this
last class of cases by one or two additional examples. A man tells a lie
in order to screen a friend. The act is a purely social one, for he
stands in no fear of his friend, and expects no return. It might be said
that the competition, in this example, is between serving his friend and
wounding his own self-respect. But the consciousness of cowardice and
meanness which attends a lie spoken in a man's own interest hardly
attaches to a lie spoken for the purpose of protecting another. And, any
way, a little reflexion might show that the apparently benevolent
intention comes into collision with a very extensive and very stringent
social obligation, that of not impairing our confidence in one another's
assertions. Without maintaining that there are no conceivable
circumstances under which a man would be justified in committing a
breach of veracity, it may at least be said that, in the lives of most
men, there is not likely to occur any case in which the greater social
good would not be attained by the observation of the general rule to
tell the truth rather than by the recognition of an exception in favour
of a lie, even though that lie were told for purely benevolent reasons.
In all those circumstances in which there is a keen sense of
comradeship, as at school or college, or in the army or navy, this is a
principle which requires to be constantly kept in view, and to be
constantly enforced. The not infrequent breach of it, under such
circumstances, affords a striking illustration of the manner in which
the laws of honour, spoken of in the first chapter, occasionally
over-ride the wider social sentiment and even the dictates of personal
morality, _Esprit de corps_ is, doubtless, a noble sentiment, and, on
the whole, productive of much good, but, when it comes into collision
with the more general rules of morality, its effects are simply
pernicious. I will next take an example of the conflict between two
impulses, each having for its object the good of others, from the very
familiar case of a man having to appoint to, or vote in the election to,
a vacant office or situation. The interests of the public service or of
some institution require that the most competent candidate should be
preferred. But a relative, or a friend, or a political ally is standing.
Affection, therefore, or friendship, or loyalty to party ties often
dictates one course of conduct, and regard for the public interests
another. When the case is thus plainly stated, there are probably few
men who would seriously maintain that we ought to subordinate the wider
to the narrower considerations, and still, in practice, there are few
men who have the courage to act constantly on what is surely the right
principle in this matter, and, what is worse still, even if they did,
they would not always be sustained by public opinion, while they would
be almost certain to be condemned by the circle in which they move. So
frequently do the difficulties of this position recur, that I have often
heard a shrewd friend observe that no man who was fit for the exercise
of patronage would ever desire to be entrusted with it. The moral rule
in ordinary cases is plain enough; it is to appoint or vote for the
candidate who is most competent to fulfil the duties of the post to be
filled up. There are exceptional cases in which it may be allowable
slightly to modify this rule, as where it is desirable to encourage
particular services, or particular nationalities, or the like, but, even
in these cases, the rule of superior competency ought to be the
preponderating consideration. Parliamentary and, in a lesser degree,
municipal elections, of course, form a class apart. Here, in the
selection of candidates within the party, superior competency ought to
be the guiding consideration, but, in the election itself, the main
object being to promote or prevent the passing of certain public
measures, the elector quite rightly votes for those who will give effect
to his opinions, irrespectively of personal qualifications, though, even
in these cases, there might be an amount of unfitness which would
warrant neutrality or opposition. Peculiarly perplexing cases of
competition between the rival claims of others sometimes occur in the
domain of the resentful feelings, which, in their purified and
rationalised form, constitute the sense of justice. My servant, or a
friend, or a relative, has committed a theft. Shall I prosecute him? A
general regard to the public welfare undoubtedly demands that I should
do so. There are few obligations more imperative on the individual
citizen than that of denouncing and prosecuting crime. But, in the
present case, there is the personal tie, involving the obligation of
protection and assistance. This tie, obviously, must count for
something, as a rival consideration. No man, except under the most
extreme circumstances, would prosecute his wife, or his father, or his
mother. The question, then, is how far this consideration is to count
against the other, and much must, evidently, depend on the degree of
relationship or of previous intimacy, the time and amount and kind of
service, and the like. A similar conflict of motives arises when the
punishment invoked would entail the culprit's ruin, or that of his wife
or family or others who are dependent upon him. It is impossible, in
cases of this kind, to lay down beforehand any strict rules of conduct,
and the rectitude of the decision must largely turn on the experience,
skill, and honesty of the person who attempts to resolve the difficulty.

Instances of the last division, where the conflict is between the
pleasure or advantage of others and a disproportionate injury to
oneself, are of comparatively infrequent occurrence. It is not often
that a man hesitates sufficiently between his own manifest disadvantage
and the small gains or pleasures of his neighbours to make this class of
cases of much importance to the moralist. As a rule, we may be trusted
to take care of ourselves, and other people credit us sufficiently with
this capacity not to trade very much upon the weakness of mere
good-nature, however much they may trade upon our ignorance and folly.
The most familiar example, perhaps, of acts of imprudence of the kind
here contemplated is to be found in the facility with which some people
yield to social temptations, as where they drink too much, or bet, or
play cards, when they know that they will most likely lose their money,
out of a feeling of mere good fellowship; or where, from the mere desire
to amuse others, they give parties which are beyond their means. The
gravest example is to be found in certain cases of seduction. Instances
of men making large and imprudent sacrifices of money for inadequate
objects are very rare, and are rather designated as foolish than wrong.
With regard to all the failings and offences which fall under this head,
it may be remarked that, from their false show of generosity, society is
apt to treat them too venially, except where they entail degradation or
disgrace. If it be asked how actions of this kind, seeing that they are
done out of some regard to others, can be described as involving
self-indulgence, or the resistance to them can be looked on in the light
of sacrifice, it may be replied that the conflict is between a feeling
of sociality or a spirit of over-complaisance or the like, on the one
side, and a man's self-respect or a regard to his own highest interests,
on the other, and that some natures find it much easier to yield to the
former than to maintain the latter. It is quite possible that the spirit
of sacrifice may be exhibited in the maintenance, against temptation, of
a man's own higher interests, and the spirit of self-indulgence in
weakly yielding to a perverted sympathy or an exaggerated regard for the
opinions of others.

Before concluding this chapter, there are a few objections to be met and
explanations to be made. In the first place, it may be objected that the
theory I have adopted, that the moral feeling is excited only where
there has been a conflict of motives, runs counter to the ordinary view,
that acts proceeding from a virtuous or vicious habit are done without
any struggle and almost without any consciousness of their import. I do
not at all deny that a habit may become so perfect that the acts
proceeding from it cease to involve any struggle between conflicting
motives, but, in this case, I conceive that our approbation or
disapprobation is transferred from the individual acts to the habit from
which they spring, and that what we really applaud or condemn is the
character rather than the actions, or at least the actions simply as
indicative of the character. And the reason that we often praise or
blame acts proceeding from habit more than acts proceeding from
momentary impulse is that we associate such acts with a good or evil
character, as the case may be, and, therefore, include the character as
well as the acts in the judgment which we pass upon them.

It may possibly have occurred to the reader that, in the latter part of
this chapter, I have been somewhat inconsistent in referring usually to
the social sanction of praise and blame rather than to the distinctively
moral sanction of self-approbation and self-disapprobation. I have
employed this language solely for the sake of convenience, and to avoid
the cumbrous phraseology which the employment of the other phrases would
sometimes have occasioned. In a civilized and educated community, the
social sentiment may, on almost all points except those which involve
obscure or delicate considerations of morality, be taken to be identical
with the moral sentiment of the most reflective members of the society,
and hence in the tolerably obvious instances which I have selected there
was no need to draw any distinction between the two, and I have felt
myself at liberty to be guided purely by considerations of convenience.
All that I have said of the praise or blame, the applause or censure, of
others, of course, admits of being transferred to the feelings with
which, on reflexion, we regard our own acts.

I am aware that the expressions, 'higher and lower good,' 'greater and
lesser good,' are more or less vague. But the traditional acceptation of
the terms sufficiently fixes their meaning to enable them to serve as a
guide to moral conduct and moral feeling, especially when modified by
the experience and reflexion of men who have given habitual attention to
the working of their own motives and the results of their own practice.
As I shall shew in the next chapter, any terms which we employ to
designate the test of moral action and the objects of the moral feeling
are indefinite, and must depend, to some extent, on the subjective
interpretation of the individual. All that we can do is to avail
ourselves of the most adequate and intelligible terms that we can find.
But, admitting the necessary indefiniteness of the terms, it may be
asked whether it can really be meant, as a general proposition, that the
praise of others and our approbation of ourselves, on reflexion, attach
to acts in which we subordinate our own good to the greater good of
others, however slight the preponderance of our neighbour's good over
out own may be. If we have to undergo an almost equal risk in order to
save another, or, in order to promote another's interests, to forego
interests almost as great, is not our conduct more properly designated
as weak or quixotic, than noble or generous? This would not, I think, be
the answer of mankind at large to the question, or that of any person
whose moral sentiments had been developed under healthy influences. When
a man, at the risk of his own life, saves another from drowning, or, at
a similar risk, protects his comrade in battle, or, rushing into the
midst of a fire, attempts to rescue the helpless victims, surely the
feeling of the bystanders is that of admiration, and not of pity or
contempt. When a man, with his life in his hands, goes forth on a
missionary or a philanthropic enterprise, like Xavier, or Henry Martyn,
or Howard, or Livingstone, or Patteson, or when a man, like Frederick
Vyner, insists on transferring his own chance of escape from a murderous
gang of brigands to his married friend, humanity at large rightly
regards itself as his debtor, and ordinary men feel that their very
nature has been ennobled and exalted by his example. But it is not only
these acts of widely recognised heroism that exact a response from
mankind. In many a domestic circle, there are men and women, who
habitually sacrifice their own ease and comfort to the needs of an aged
or sick or helpless relative, and, surely, it is not with scorn for
their weakness that their neighbours, who know their privations, regard
them, but with sympathy and respect for their patience and self-denial.
The pecuniary risks and sacrifices which men are ready to make for one
another, in the shape of sureties and bonds and loans and gifts, are
familiar to us all, and, though these are often unscrupulously wrung
from a thoughtless or over-pliant good-nature, yet there are many
instances in which men knowingly, deliberately, and at considerable
danger or loss to themselves, postpone their own security or convenience
to the protection or relief of their friends. It is in cases of this
kind, perhaps, that the line between weakness and generosity is most
difficult to draw, and, where a man has others dependent on him for
assistance or support, the weakness which yields to the solicitations of
a reckless or unscrupulous friend may become positively culpable.

The last class of instances will be sufficient to shew that it is not
always easy to determine where the good of others is greater than our
own. Nor is it ever possible to determine this question with
mathematical exactness. Men may, therefore, be at least excused if,
before sacrificing their own interests or pleasures, they require that
the good of others for which they make the sacrifice shall be plainly
preponderant. And, even then, there is a wide margin between the acts
which we praise for their heroism, or generosity, or self-denial, and
those which we condemn for their baseness, or meanness, or selfishness.
It must never be forgotten, in the treatment of questions of morality,
that there is a large number of acts which we neither praise nor blame,
and this is emphatically the case where the competition is between a
man's own interests and those of his neighbours. We applaud generosity;
we censure meanness: but there is a large intermediate class of acts
which can neither be designated as generous nor mean. It will be
observed that, in my enumeration of the classes of acts to which praise
and blame, self-approbation and self-disapprobation attach, I have
carefully drawn a distinction between the invariable connexion which
obtains between certain acts and the ethical approval of ourselves or
others, and the only general connexion which obtains between the
omission of those acts and the ethical feeling of disapproval. Simply to
fall short of the ethical standard which we approve neither merits nor
receives censure, though there is a degree of deficiency, determined
roughly by society at large and by each individual for himself, at which
this indifference is converted into positive condemnation. A like
neutral zone of acts which we neither applaud nor condemn, of course,
exists also in the case of acts which simply affect ourselves or simply
affect others, though it does not seem to be so extensive as in the case
where the conflict of motives is between the interests of others and
those of ourselves.

In determining the cases in which we shall subordinate our own interests
to those of others, or do good to others at our own risk or loss, it is
essential that we should take account of the remote as well as the
immediate effects of actions; and, moreover, that we should enquire into
their general tendencies, or, in other words, ask ourselves what would
happen if everybody or many people acted as we propose to act. Thus, at
first sight, it might seem as if a rich man, at a comparatively small
sacrifice to himself, might promote the greater good of his poor
neighbours by distributing amongst them what to them would be
considerable sums of money. If I have ten thousand a year, why should I
not make fifty poor families happy by endowing them with a hundred a
year each, which to them would be a handsome competency? The loss of
five thousand a year would be to me simply an abridgment of superfluous
luxuries, which I could soon learn to dispense with, while to them the
gain of a hundred a year would be the substitution of comfort for penury
and of case for perpetual struggle. The answer is that, in the first
place, I should probably not, in the long run, be making these families
really happy. The change of circumstances would, undoubtedly, confer
considerable pleasure, while it continued to be a novelty, but their
improved circumstances, when they became accustomed to them, would soon
be out-balanced by the _ennui_ produced by want of employment; while,
the motive to exertion being removed, and the taste for luxuries
stimulated, they or the next generation would probably lapse again into
poverty, which would be all the more keenly felt for their temporary
enjoyment of prosperity. Moreover, I should be injuring the community at
large, by withdrawing a number of persons from industrial employments
and transferring them to the non-productive classes. Again, if the five
thousand a year were withdrawn not from my personal expenditure, but
from industrial enterprises in which I was engaged, I should be actually
depriving the families of many workmen and artisans of the fruits of
their honest labour for the purpose of enabling a smaller number of
families to live in sloth and indolence. But, now, suppose the case I
have imagined to become a general one, and that it was a common
occurrence for rich men to dispense their superfluous wealth amongst
their poorer neighbours, without demanding any return in labour or
services. The result would inevitably be the creation of a large class
of idle persons, who would probably soon become a torment to themselves,
while their descendants, often brought up to no employment and with an
insufficient income to support them, would probably lapse into
pauperism. The effect on the community at large, if the evil became
widely spread, would be the paralysis of trade and commerce. Of course,
I am aware that these evils would be, to a certain extent, modified in
practice by the good sense of the recipients, some of whom might employ
their money on reproductive industries instead of on merely furnishing
themselves with the means of living at their ease; but that the general
tendency would be that which I have intimated no one, I think, who is
acquainted with the indolent propensities of human nature, can well
doubt. Similar results might be shewn to follow from an indiscriminate
distribution of charity on a smaller scale. It seems hard-hearted to
refuse a shilling to a beggar, or a guinea to a charitable association,
when one would hardly miss the sum at the end of the week or the month.
But, if we could trace all the consequences, direct and remote, of these
apparent acts of benevolence, we should often see that the small act of
sacrifice on our own part was by no means efficacious in promoting the
'greater good' of the recipient, and still less of society at large. A
life of vagrancy or indolence may easily be made more attractive than
one of honest industry, and well-meant efforts to anticipate all the
wants and misfortunes of the poor may often have the effect of making
them careless of the future and of destroying all elements of
independence and providence in their character. Another instance of the
contrast between the immediate and remote, or apparent and real, results
of acts of intended beneficence is to be found in the prodigality with
which well-to-do persons often distribute gratuities amongst servants.
These gratuities have the immediate effect of giving gratification to
the recipients and securing better service to the donors, but they have
often the remote and more permanent effect of rendering the recipients
servile and corrupt, and (as in the case of railway porters) of
depriving poorer or less prodigal persons of services to which they are
equally entitled.

In adducing these illustrations, I must not be understood to be
advocating or defending a selfish employment of superfluous wealth, but
to be shewing the evils which may result from an unenlightened
benevolence, and the importance of ascertaining that the 'greater good
of others,' to which we sacrifice our own interests or enjoyments, is a
real, and not merely an apparent good, and, moreover, that our conduct,
if it became general, would promote the welfare of the community at
large, and not merely particular sections of it to the injury of the
rest.

To sum up the results of this chapter, we may repeat that we must
distinguish carefully between the intellectual act of moral judgment, or
the judgment we pass on matters of conduct, and the emotional act of
moral feeling, or the feeling which supervenes upon that judgment, and
that, so far as we can give a precise definition of the latter, it is an
indirect or reflex form of one or other of the sympathetic, resentful,
or self-regarding feelings, occurring when, on consideration, we realise
that, in matters involving a conflict of motives and of sufficient
importance to arrest our attention and stimulate our reflexion, one or
other of these feelings has been gratified or thwarted: moreover, that
we praise, in the case of others, and approve, in our own case, all
those actions of the above kind, in which a man subordinates his own
lower to his higher good, or his own good to the greater good of others,
or, when the interests only of others are at stake, the lesser good of
some to the greater good of others, as well as, under certain
circumstances, those actions in which he refuses to subordinate his own
greater good to the lesser good of others; while we blame, in the case
of others, and disapprove, in our own case, all those actions of the
above kind, in which he manifestly and distinctly (for there is a large
neutral zone of actions, which we neither applaud nor condemn)
subordinates his own higher to his lower good, or the greater good of
others to his own lesser good, or, where the interests only of others
are at stake, the greater good of some to the lesser good of others, or,
lastly, under certain circumstances, the lesser good of others to the
greater good of himself, especially where that greater good is the good
of his higher nature.

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