his own needs, as it is obvious that he can best do, is increasingly aided in satisfying them by coöperation, while he also gives increasing aid in return. Against the list of the advantages of egoism enumerated by Spencer and others, I would muster the advantages of altruism, for by coöperation alone can the individual attain the pleasures which now so often lie beyond his reach; by it alone can society attain a higher plane; and the pleasures of altruism are the highest and most unfailing. The selfish man will suffer disappointment and loss as well as the benevolent man, and he will lack the refuge of sympathy, and of the power to find happiness in the happiness of others. What man who has felt the joys of sympathy would exchange even the hardships it brings for the brutal liberty and unmoved selfishness of the savage; what man who has known the joys of the higher, the more unselfish, love, would exchange them for the ungoverned and quickly palling pleasures of the proffigate? Those joys first lend life worth and meaning; through association and altruism, coöperation in action and feeling, man first becomes a power in the world. Yet the man who is capable of the higher sympathy is incapable of a selfish calculation of its personal advantages to him."1 (3) And now let us look at the acts regardless of the motives which have prompted them. Do we 1 Williams, A Review of Evolutional Ethics, chap. viii, p. 513. See also Paulsen, Ethics, Bk. II, chap. vi, § 5. demand that personal interests be invariably sacrificed to the interests of others? And must we make this sacrifice in every case in order to subserve the ends of morality? I do not believe it. We do not expect a person to sacrifice his important interests to the unimportant interests of another. It is right and proper that a person should sacrifice himself for the real interests of his family; but it is not necessary that he should sacrifice himself in order that his wife and children might enjoy things which were never intended for them. It is right and proper for me to offer up my life in the defence of my country; but it cannot be required that I sacrifice myself in order to save a lady's pug dog from being run over by a carriage. It is right that I should deny myself many pleasures and comforts for the sake of helping others; but it is not right that I should ruin my health and impede my own intellectual development in order to keep a drunken loafer out of the poorhouse. In order that the ends of morality may be realized, men must be altruistic, of course. They must work for others, and they must be able to make sacrifices for others. But they cannot work for others without first working for themselves. They cannot care for themselves in the proper way if they allow their care for others to go too far. We may say, I believe, that each man ought to care for his own good, for the good of his family, for his neighbors, his town, his county, his state, his nation, and humanity at large. He should work from the centre to the periphery, that is, protect and advance his own interests and those of his family, and then those of farther circles. Charity begins at home. "It is wisely ordained by nature," says Hume, "that private connections should commonly prevail over universal views and considerations; otherwise our affections and actions would be dissipated and lost for want of a proper limited object. Thus a small benefit done to ourselves or our near friends, excites more lively sentiments of love and approbation, than a great benefit done to a distant commonwealth." 2 9. Biology and the Highest Good. - Biology, too, will give us some hints concerning the direction of life or the ideal toward which we are making. On the lowest stages of animal existence life consists wholly in the acquisition of food and in attempts to ward off unfavorable external influences. If there are any psychical processes at all, they are exceedingly simple. Gradually, however, sexual and social impulses arise, the intelligence develops, and we have the beginnings of social and intellectual life which reach their highest stage in man. As conscious life develops the so-called lower faculties are subordinated to the higher ones, the sensuous feelings and impulses are placed under the control of the reason, and are regarded as inferior to the others; the egoistic feelings and impulses yield, in a large measure, 1 See Paulsen, Ethics, Bk. II, chap. vi, pp. 391 ff. to sympathetic feelings and impulses, and the individual is subordinated to society. The spiritual forces are unfolded, the spiritual me takes precedence in the hierarchy of the mes of the material me. The so-called lower functions are not, of course, neglected; they are exercised, on the one hand, for their own sake, as partial ends in themselves, but they are especially conceived as means to higher ends the unfolding of the spiritual powers. Similarly, the individual comes to be regarded, on the one hand, as a whole, as an end in himself, and, on the other, as a part of a wider whole, as a part of humanity. We may liken this relation to the relation which the different members of an organism bear to the entire organism. The heart, the brain, the hands, the eyes, the muscles, the bones, etc., are all means to an end, the preservation of the body. But they are at the same time parts of the body; they are the body, and hence means of preserving themselves.1 The welfare of the body depends upon the welfare of its organs, and the welfare of the organs depends upon the welfare of the whole. In a perfect organism the parts work harmoniously to a common end. The parts are means to an end (seeing is a means to an end), and yet ends in themselves (seeing is valuable in itself). So the individual is both a means to an end and an end in himself. We may safely assert, I believe, that history is 1 See Paulsen, Ethics, Bk. II, chap. ii, § 7. tending toward the further development of spiritual life and toward a fuller realization of the individual in society. We may say that humanity will continue to advance in intelligence and morality, that mankind will gain a deeper insight into the workings of psychical and physical nature, and a larger control over reality, and that there will be less friction between the different members of society and the different societies themselves.1 - 10. Morality and the Highest Good. We have found thus far, I believe, that the preservation and promotion of individual and social life is the highest good, or the end aimed at by humanity, in the sense explained before. That is, the individual human being strives to preserve and advance himself as well as those persons with whom he sympathizes. At first the sympathetic impulse is both weak and narrow in its scope, being limited to the members of a small group. In the course of time, however, the consciousness of kind develops more and more, the feeling of sympathy increases in intensity, and extends to wider and wider circles. A glance at the growth of religions, which always embody the conceptions and ideals of men, exemplifies this gradual extension of other-regarding or sympathetic feelings. There is an advance from the narrow family religion through the universal type to the universal religion of Christianity.2 The history of Greece and Rome 1 See Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct. 2 See Sir Henry Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 57. |