Recent Tendencies in Ethics / Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge

on in biological science. Intimate as is its connexion with the progress of science, metaphysics does not keep step with it,-any more than it simply marks time as the for

ncluding those efforts which take the generalisation of some special science as their all-comprehending principle. An attempt of this kind to make a philosophy out of a scientific generalisation has in our own time been the obvious result of the theory of evolution, and has given new vogue to the philosophical system called Naturalism. That system draws its strength from the scientific doctrine of evolution; but as a philosophy it gives an exte

ght amongst the English metaphysicians of the last generation. That generation was remarkable for the reappearance in this country of a reasoned Idealism; and all forms

cent English idealism. But the ethical tone of a treatise and the ethical interest of its author are not always a guarantee that ethical conceptions have a secure position in his system of thought. This is the case, I think, with Spinoza; and it seems to me to hold also of some writers of the present day. Mr Bradley, for instance, is perhaps the most influential, as he is without doubt not the least

'friend of ideas,' And he was a friend of ideas because he saw their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities of human life. Green's 'Prolegomena' was published in 1883, the year after his death. And, had I been speaking twenty years ago, I should have had to emphasise the ethical character of the metaphysics of the day. His metaphysical thinking, through all its subtleties, never strayed far from the moral ideal. Owing to his teaching that ideal, and th

express the nature of the moral ideal. Green is perfectly alive to the need of a distinction-and to the difficulty of drawing it. According to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may define a good action as the sort of action which pr

egomena to Ethics

: Ibid., §

omena to Ethics, §§

of a moral agent can really find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in the former case: this has a permanence-or rather an independence of time-which distinguishes it from the satisfaction of some temporary desire. But I do not think that this is what Green means. He wished to avoid falling back upon mere disconnected judgments of conscie

: Ibid., §

he immoral. For we are unable to define the 'true good.' It is not a part of experience; it is an ideal: and Green allows that we can give no complete account of it;

s good and what is evil in human achievement. Which developments are truly realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,-these have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? and does not Green himself use such a criterion when he appeals to the tendency of certain institutions and habits to "make the welfare of all the welfare of each," and of certain arts to make nature "the friend of man"?[2] Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the se

egomena to Ethics

Prolegomena,

Ibid., §§ 173

case that we can know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness was attained? And the question here is whether the special results reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty. As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that the consciousness which is

dness the spirit of God is manifest, that the good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker. By whatever metaphor this may be expressed-and Green's statement that the divine self-consciousness 'reproduces' itsel

conscious activity of man as a reproduction of the divine. Instead of doing anything to solve the problem of the meaning of goodness, Green simply brings forward a new difficulty-that of understanding how the temporal process in which human morality is developed can be related to a reality which is defined as out of time or eternal. This difficulty cannot be avoided in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone. Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism has

hroughout. Neither change nor time nor any relation can belong to it. But intelligence works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations; it is, therefore, excluded from reality. Truth is mere appearance. The same judgme

arance and Realit

n be asserted of the real. Nay more, to be consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute (for the two terms are here interchangeable)

1: Ibid.,

but at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay-strang

ted that these two characteristics of harmony and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the "degree of reality" possessed by any "appearance." The more harmonious anything is-the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions-the higher is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness-the fewer predicates left outside it-the highe

pearance and Re

mena and is real nowhere outside them;... it is all of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute is good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of goodness and badness."[1] What would be contradiction in another writer is only two-sidedness in Mr Bradley. And it is this second side which interests us, for here "the Absolute is good," and yet, good as it is, manifests itself in badness as well as

pearance and Re

2: Ibid.

3: Ibid.

ion. Even to say that the Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the Absolute. But nevertheless there is a world of phenomena, which the most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world of illusion. The sum-total

egrees of goodness and badness," and that the justification for using the term is not made clear. It seems to be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were jure dignitatis and to have as little ethical significance as "right honourable" when applied to a politician or "reverend" to a clergyman: cases in which it might be consistent to say that rig

e and Reality-Appearan

duces the bloom. But here 'lower' does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with evil. Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less degree. This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to have an ethical value. Or again, the completeness referred to may b

pearance and Re

e good something that ought to be striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that

vil. If the distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological rather than cosmical, to be relative to the a

moral agent"; and in so saying had simply walked round the difficulty, for he was unable to say wherein consisted the peculiarity of the moral agent without reference to the conception of moral good which he had started out to define. But Mr Bradley dispenses with the qualification, and says simply that the good "satisfies desire." And in so far his definition is more logical. The question is whether it distinguishes good from evil. Both the practical importance and the theoretical difficulty of the problem arise from the fact that evil is sometimes desi

pearance and Re

such that that is good to each man at any time which he at that time approves or holds to be good; and this latter view would make all discussion impossible. But this is not what Mr Bradley means. "Approbation is to be taken in its widest sense"; in which sense "to approve is to have an idea in which we feel satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in existence."[2] And here the criterion is the same as b

ppearance and

pearance and Re

h we come to 'approve' or hold something as good. The point is, that it does not advance us at all towards de

is said to consist is defined in relation to desire, and to some kind of feeling on the part of the conscious subject. Nor was his account successful in distinguishing good from evil: to that distinction feeling is a blind guide. When he goes on to discuss goodness in the narrower sense, in which it belongs to the results of finite volition, he adopts, as expressing the nature of goodness, that conception of 'self-realisation' which, as put forward by Green, has been found inadequate. The same conception was used by Mr Bradley, in his first work, as "the most general expression for the end in itself," "May we not say," he asked, "that to realise self is always to realise a whole, and that the question in morals is to find the true whole, realising which will practically realise the true self?"[4] It is easy to make the distinction between good and evil depend upon this, that in the former the true self is realised, and that what is realised in the latter is only a false self. But it is equally easy to see that this is only to substitute one unexplained distinction for another. This short and easy method is not that which Mr Bradley adopts in his later

pearance and Re

2: Ibid.

arance and Realit

ical Studies (18

pearance and Re

pearance and Re

7: Ibid.

ylor, Problem of Con

ort, inconsistent with itself. For, so far as it is quite satisfied, it is not a desire; and, so far as it is a desire, it must remain at least partly unsatisfied."[1] Of course, if the desire is satisfied, it ceases. It was and it is not. But there is no more contradiction here than in any other case of temporal succession. A satisfied desire is, it is true, no longer a desire. But the phrase is contradictory only in appearance; for it means that the desire has been satisfied and in its satisfaction has ceased to exist as a desire. A much more important discrepancy is asserted when it is said that "two great divergent forms of moral goodness exist." The fight for moral goodness is 'under two flags'-self-assertion and self-sacrifice. And the allies "seem hostile to one another," "at least in some respects and with some persons."[2] We have here the time-honoured opposition of egoism and altruism, wit

pearance and Re

pearance and Re

or, Problem of Co

pearance and Re

5: Ibid.

6: Ibid.

e literature of morals, and no hint is given that they are used here in any meaning other than the ordinary. And surely the term 'self-sacrifice' is an inappropriate term for describing the conduct which seeks expansion by multiplying the objects of desire-by the pursuit of whatever offers a chance of widened interests, whether social or intellectual, aesthetic or sensual,-even although "my individuality suffers loss" thereby, and "the health and harmony of my self is injured."[1] Loss may be the result; but aggrandisement is w

pearance and Re

on for the distinction of good and evil. He has cast his net so wide as to include all conduct within it without discrimination of moral worth. His own result is that "the good is, as such, transcended and submerge

pearance and Re

metaphysical thought. This school offers no solution of the problem which was found insoluble by the type of philosophy whos

a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it.... Those who believe that the vacuum can be filled, and that it must be filled, are called on to do something in pursuance of their belief."[1] But more than fifty years after the publication of this first essay, as, with the completion of the 'Principles of Ethics,' his whole system of philosophy lay unrolled before him, he made the significant and pathetic confession

eface to Data o

to Principles of Et

adequacy of the empirical method in the hands of Hume to give any criterion or ideal for conduct that he made his significant appeal to "Englishmen under five-and-twenty" to leave "the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent amongst us" and take up "the study of Kant and Hegel."[1] His call to spe

troduction to Hume's T

ey, Appearance and

at ethical construction which is based upon a theory of reality. In consequence, recourse is sometimes had to a purely empirical treatment of morality such as that indicated at the close of the second lecture. Such an account, however, can never rise

upplement reality by an Ideal World of his own creation, and that in such creations the highest and noblest functions of his mind co-operate. But must this free act of the mind bear ever and ever again the deceptive form of demonstrative science? I

hte des Materialismu

dance with this hypothesis is a risk taken in the sphere of will; and that being is higher who will undertake and risk the more whether in thought or action."[1] Thus, "for example, if I would perform an act of charity pure and simple, and wish to justify this act rationally, I must imagine an eternal Charity at the ground of things and of myself, I must objectify the sent

d'une morale sans obligatio

: Ibid., pp

eal of love, a sensual ideal as well as a spiritual. Nietzsche's over-man is an ideal; the Mohammedan paradise is an ideal; and conduct can be modelled on them. But it is not enough to have system in conduct, irrespective of the worth of the ideal which determines the system. Some criter

the merely theoretical reason can reach. Various lines of recent thought may be said to have been suggested by this view. Almost every idealist metaphysician has tended to look upon thought itself

o the understanding of things; and the understanding of things with which alone we are satisfied is commonly that which helps us so to describe our experience as to be able to control some practical resul

'mass,' 'energy,' and the like, are no longer held to express realities the denial of which would be treason to science; they are simply descriptive notions whose truth consists in their utility: that is to say, in their ability to comprehend a

psychological analysis, and the special claims of the moral consciousness-have combined to bring about a tendency s

at present concern ourselves. In spite of the high claims it makes for the theoretical significance of moral ideas, its adherents have not as yet devoted much attention to the question of the worth of these moral ideas and the criteria by which that worth may be determined. Yet this surely is the fundamental question for ethical theory. On t

te recognition be first of all given to the fact that the experience which is the subject-matter of philosophy is not merely a sensuous and thinking, but also a moral, experience. The approval of the good, the disapproval of the evil, and the preference of the better: these would seem to be basal facts for an adequate philosophical theory: and they

in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians. It seems to have been assumed that moral principles can be reached by the application of scientific generalisations or of the results of a metaphysical analys

may be some more recondite conception to which physical analysis points. In either case the unity reached will be mechanical. For the idealist, on the other hand, reason may be said to be the central principle of things: the unity of reality is a rational unity. I have contended in these lectures that neither the mechanical unity of the naturalists nor the rational unity of the idealists has succeeded i

s. These modes of description are all affected by the fragmentariness which always belongs to temporal apprehension. But, when things are seen in the light of a purpose, a view of them as a whole becomes possible, and the fragmentariness of time i

gh system, and system is brought about by the rule of the morally higher and the submission of the morally lower: in this goodness lies, in the opposite evil. If we isolate the individual and consider him apart, he may be said to attain goodness by the due ordering and control of his sensuous and pa

life, he must have regard to the social factor. In this respect he attains goodness only when his individual life seeks a unity higher than that of his own individuality, and not centred in his selfish interests. From this point of view we may say, again negatively, that goodness consists in the suppression of selfishness. But once again there is a difficulty about the positive description. Many moralists, undoubtedly, are content to rest with the social aspect: to regard the 'health' or 'vitality' of society as the final

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