the predicate attributes to it. If I say that it is wrong to resist evil, and yet resistance to evil has no tendency whatever to call forth in me an emotion of moral disapproval, then my judgment is false.
If there are no general moral truths, the object of scientific ethics cannot be to fix rules for human conduct, the aim of all science being the discovery of some truth. It has been said by Bentham and others that moral principles cannot be proved because they are first principles which are used to prove everything else.24 But the real reason for their being inaccessible to demonstration is that, owing to their very nature, they can never be true. If the word “Ethics,” then, is to be used as the name for a science, the object of that science can only be to study the moral consciousness as a fact.25
24 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 4. Cf. Höffding, Etik, p. 43.
25 Cf. Simmel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, i. p. iii. sq.; Westermarck, ‘Normative und psychologische Ethik,’ in Dritter Internationaler Congress für Psychologie in München, p. 428 sq.
Ethical subjectivism is commonly held to be a dangerous doctrine, destructive to morality, opening the door to all sorts of libertinism. If that which appears to each man as right or good, stands for that which is right or good; if he is allowed to make his own law, or to make no law at all; then, it is said, everybody has the natural right to follow his caprice and inclinations, and to hinder him from doing so is an infringement on his rights, a constraint with which no one is bound to comply provided that he has the power to evade it. This inference was long ago drawn from the teaching of the Sophists,26 and it will no doubt be still repeated as an argument against any theorist who dares to assert that nothing can be said to be truly right or wrong.
26 Zeller, History of Greek Philosophy, ii. 475.
To this argument may, first, be objected that a scientific theory is not invalidated by the mere fact that it is likely to cause mischief. The unfortunate circumstance that there do exist dangerous things in the world, proves that something may be dangerous and yet true. Another question is whether any scientific truth really is mischievous on the whole, although it may cause much discomfort to certain people. I venture to believe that this, at any rate, is not the case with that form of ethical subjectivism which I am here advocating. The charge brought against the Sophists does not at all apply to it. I do not even subscribe to that beautiful modern sophism which admits every man’s conscience to be an infallible guide. If we had to recognise, or rather if we did recognise, as right everything which is held to be right by anybody, savage or Christian, criminal or saint, morality would really suffer a serious loss. But we do not, and we cannot, do so. My moral judgments are my own judgments; they spring from my own moral consciousness; they judge of the conduct of other men not from their point of view but from mine, not with primary reference to their opinions about right and wrong, but with reference to my own. Most of us indeed admit that, when judging of an act, we also ought to take into consideration the moral conviction of the agent, and the agreement or disagreement between his doing and his idea of what he ought to do. But although we hold it to be wrong of a person to act against his conscience, we may at the same time blame him for having such a conscience as he has. Ethical subjectivism covers all such cases. It certainly does not allow everybody to follow his own inclinations; nor does it lend sanction to arbitrariness and caprice. Our moral consciousness belongs to our mental constitution, which we cannot change as we please. We approve and we disapprove because we cannot do otherwise. Can we help feeling pain when the fire burns us? Can we help sympathising with our friends? Are these phenomena less necessary or less powerful in their consequences, because they fall within the subjective sphere of experience? So, too, why should the moral law command less obedience because it forms part of our own nature?
Far from being a danger, ethical subjectivism seems to me more likely to be an acquisition for moral practice. Could it be brought home to people that there is no absolute standard in morality, they would perhaps be somewhat more tolerant in their judgments, and more apt to listen to the voice of reason. If the right has an objective existence, the moral consciousness has certainly been playing at blindman’s buff ever since it was born, and will continue to do so until the extinction of the human race. But who does admit this? The popular mind is always inclined to believe that it possesses the knowledge of what is right and wrong, and to regard public opinion as the reliable guide of conduct. We have, indeed, no reason to regret that there are men who rebel against the established rules of morality; it is more deplorable that the rebels are so few, and that, consequently, the old rules change so slowly. Far above the vulgar idea that the right is a settled something to which everybody has to adjust his opinions, rises the conviction that it has its existence in each individual mind, capable of any expansion, proclaiming its own right to exist, and, if need be, venturing to make a stand against the whole world. Such a conviction makes for progress.
CHAPTER II
THE NATURE OF THE MORAL EMOTIONS
IN the preceding chapter it was asserted, in general terms, that the moral concepts are based on emotions, and the leading arguments to the contrary were met. We shall now proceed to examine the nature of the moral emotions.
These emotions are of two kinds: disapproval, or indignation, and approval. They have in common characteristics which make them moral emotions, in distinction from others of a non-moral character, but at the same time both of them belong to a wider class of emotions, which I call retributive emotions. Again, they differ from each other in points which make each of them allied to certain non-moral retributive emotions, disapproval to anger and revenge, and approval to that kind of retributive kindly emotion which in its most developed form is gratitude. They may thus, on the one hand, be regarded as two distinct divisions of the moral emotions, whilst, on the other hand, disapproval, like anger and revenge, forms a sub-species of resentment, and approval, like gratitude, forms a sub-species of retributive kindly emotion. The following diagram will help to elucidate the matter:—
That moral disapproval is a kind of resentment and akin to anger and revenge, and that moral approval is a kind of retributive kindly emotion and akin to gratitude, are, of course, statements which call for proof. An analysis of all these emotions, and a detailed study of the causes which evoke them, will, I hope, bear out the correctness of my classification. In this connection only the analysis can be attempted. The study of causes will be involved in the treatment of the subjects of moral judgments.
Resentment may be described as an aggressive attitude of mind towards a cause of pain. Anger is sudden resentment, in which the hostile reaction against the cause of pain is unrestrained by deliberation. Revenge, on the other hand, is a more deliberate form of non-moral resentment, in which the hostile reaction is more or less restrained by reason and calculation.1 It is impossible, however, to draw any distinct limit between these two types of resentment, as also to discern where an actual desire to inflict pain comes in. In its primitive form, anger, even when directed against a living being, contains a vehement impulse to remove the cause of pain without any real desire to produce suffering.