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The Christian Conception of Holinessby
Edward Harrison Askwith, M.A. [Editor's note: David Cox Sept 2007 I have reformatted this book for ease in reading. I have moved all footnotes up into the actual text and put the footnote in brackets "[]". I have tried to find all Greek and Hebrew words and phrases and reformatted the garbage text that the scanning process put it with Greek and Hebrew letters (but no vowel pointings). I have taken out all page breaks and replaced the page numbers and page break with "[CCH pg ##]" so that you can search on this phrase to find a specific page. There were a minor number of text scanning errors that I tried to correct, but probably didn't find them all. None of the British spellings were corrected though. ] London Contents Preface. 1 Preface.THE thought of this essay is original. Yet it seems to me to be the logical outcome of some of the ethical and theological thought of our day. In publishing the book I do so in the hope that what is here written may seem to others as profoundly true as it does to myself, and that it may serve to restore the faith to some who, amid the unrest of the time and the unsettlement of old opinions, have felt the need of a restatement of the eternal Gospel of Christ in the language of modern thought. My thanks are due to the Rev. F. R. Tennant, of Oonville and Caius College, for kindly reading through the proof-sheets. E. H. A.
Contents.ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Purpose
of the enquiry, - 3
CHAPTER II. MORAL DUTY. The
subject of the science of ethics, 25 CHAPTER III. VIRTUE, RIGHT AND GOOD. Instincts
of worship and self-respect 43 CHAPTER IV. CONSCIENCE AND REASON.
Conscience a function of moral reason and of reason other than moral, 63 CHAPTER V. HAPPINESS AND THE GOOD. Darwin's
theory of the conscience 85 CHAPTER VI. THE OLD TESTAMENT NOTION OF HOLINESS.
Distinction between ' holy ' and ' common,' 105 CHAPTER VII. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AND THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD. The
Kingdom of Heaven a Jewish expectation, 128 CHAPTER VIII. THE GOSPEL OF CREATION. Christ's
claim not merely to teach men about the Father but Himself to reveal Him 150
CHAPTER IX. PAULINE THEOLOGY. Flesh and
Spirit, 171 CHAPTER X. THE WILL. The
Divine Will, 193 CHAPTER XI. THE FALL AND THE ATONEMENT. Story of
Fall not historical, 219 CHAPTER XII. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. Holiness
cannot now be interpreted as separateness, whatever be the root meaning of
fdq (shdq)-
- 239 Chapter I. Introductory.IT is the purpose of this essay to set forth the answer contained in the Christian Revelation to the question which Moral Philosophy has asked, and must ask : What is the rationale of man's moral nature? The answer to this question will be found in the conception of Holiness as we have it in the New Testament. What that conception is, and how it was foreshadowed in the Old Testament, I hope to shew in the following chapters. But it is obvious that it is useless to attempt to answer any question, unless the meaning of it be first apprehended. It will be necessary then to devote the earlier chapters of this essay to a preliminary enquiry into the principles of Ethics; for only so can we see the real purport of the problem, the solution of which is required. But while an incursion into the region of the science of ethics is a desideratum in order that we may get a clear notion of the question at issue, I wish to state plainly that this essay is not intended to be a treatise on ethics. It [CCH pg 4] is primarily concerned with dogmatic theology, which it will utilise for the supply of an answer to the question propounded by Moral Philosophy. And it is important to make a clear distinction between ethics as a science and ethical or moral philosophy. It belongs to the science of ethics to discover from observation, including of course introspection, since it is man himself that is to be observed, what man's moral nature is, and to come at the facts of the moral life. This is science. But moral philosophy, starting from an already acquired knowledge of the facts, proceeds to question their meaning, and to come at their reason. And in speaking of their reason we mean something other than their cause. Science concerns itself with cause and effect; philosophy seeks to penetrate into the reason of things, to come at their meaning, their teloj (telos)? Confusion must inevitably arise when science and philosophy are not clearly discriminated. It is the function of both of these to enter into the reason of things; but this word ' reason ' is somewhat elastic, and care must always be exercised to have clearly before the mind the sense attaching to it in any particular connection. When we speak of the scientific reason of any thing, we mean what we may call its reason retrospectively; but the reason of things as philosophy has to do with them is their prospective reason. When science questions the Why of a phenomenon, it is that it may discover its cause, and the means by which it has come about; but when philosophy asks the Why of things, it seeks [CCH pg 5] rather to know whereto they are directed, for what purpose they are. We might illustrate the distinction by saying that a reason of the eye to the philosopher is sight; but this would not be a scientific reason for the eye. For science would want rather to get at the stages by which the eye came to be, and to know why, the eye being formed, it is formed as it is; and why, being what it is, it is an instrument of sight. We sometimes say that we do not see the reason of a phenomenon, and by this we mean that we do not understand its cause, what has made it to happen. This would be the reason in the scientific sense of the word. But when we say that we do not see the good or use of something in nature, we express our ignorance of the philosophical reason of it. Now it may seem to some minds that philosophy is pure speculation, and that we can never know whether the conclusions of the speculation are correct or not. Science on the other hand is sure, and its results verifiable. It is the case that some scientific minds are prejudiced against philosophy which it seems to them but waste of time to pursue, carrying us, as it does, into regions where we are lost through our inability to verify what we have guessed at. But the fact remains that the human mind is naturally philosophical, and we can no more refuse to satisfy the craving after a knowledge of the reason of things than we can decline to heed the pangs of hunger when we feel them. For it must be remembered that the reason of things includes the reason [CCH pg 6] of ourselves. We naturally want to know what is meant by ourselves, what we are here for, and what is our destiny. It is absurd to prejudge the case and to say that no answer to these questions can be found. As a matter of fact, looking back over the world's history, we see that when man has found an answer to the question as to the reason of him- self, he has been able to live more truly than before. Life has become richer and nobler; and we count ourselves qualified in some measure to judge of its richness and nobleness. This is a fact that moral science has to take account of. Again, as a matter of history, we know that philosophy, speculative unaided philosophy, failed to discover a reason for man himself which gave true satisfaction to the human mind and heart. And at last philosophy was glad to welcome the light which revelation was able to throw upon those very problems with which philosophy had concerned itself. Dogmatic theology claims to give an authoritative answer to the question which philosophy raises. It supplies a philosophy which appeals to the human reason as does speculative philosophy, which rests on no other authority than its own intrinsic reasonableness. And it is a presumption in favour of revelation being what it claims to be, if it furnishes such an answer to the questions philosophy has already asked as will commend itself to the human reason as likely to be correct. A point which will here be contended for is, that the answer given by revelation or dogmatic theology [CCH pg 7] to the question proposed by moral philosophy as to the reason of man's moral nature is intrinsically reasonable; that it is indeed far more reasonable than any answer which speculative philosophy, ignoring the aid of revelation, is able to give. I know that to many the very epithet ' dogmatic ' will sound terrible. Dogmatism is the very last thing that people care for to-day. They ask for argument and reason, not for dogma, I recognise the justice of their request, and I here state that I am not going to dogmatise but to reason. The argument is this: Men ask for some reason of themselves; to what end they are what they are, and so forth. They want to know what to make of themselves. They seek a philosophy of life. Has any been given which can satisfy them? There is a philosophy of life contained in the New Testament which claims to be authoritative, claims that is to be divinely given. Let us ignore at first its claims of authority, and ask only what this philosophy is. Let us examine it as we should examine any other system of philosophy and study its reasonableness. In doing this we are not troubling ourselves as to whether man thought out this philosophy or whether he received it from heaven. The point is : What is it? Is it reasonable? There are no anathemas compelling us to believe it against our reason. The appeal is essentially to the reason. And this record of revelation contained in the New Testament, with its philosophy of human life, also claims to give some knowledge of God. Now [CCH pg 8] respecting the Divine life man can of course know nothing a priori, but of human life he does know something, and, if we may so say, he has a right to an opinion about it. Dogmatic theology, as we have it in the Christian books of the New Testament, is partly concerned with man and partly with God. It is true that the derivation of the word ' theology ' suggests that this is all about God and not at all about man; and it is possible that the popular objection to dogmatic theology arises from a notion that in it man is puzzling himself about questions which he is incapable of understanding, that he is pretending to comprehend what he cannot comprehend. However this may be, let it be explained that by dogmatic theology is not here meant merely what the New Testament professes to reveal about God, but also what it reveals about man; it includes, that is to say, a philosophy of human life. As then we know something of man apart from revelation, let us simply ask what the so-called revelation has to say of the meaning, the reason of this something we know. Does it throw any light upon it? It will be found that it sheds a most welcome light on what would otherwise be unexplained. And further, the philosophy of human life as it is supplied by dogmatic theology is not only speculatively reasonable; it supplies also a working hypothesis of life. This hypothesis not only can work but it has worked; and the Christian Church, spite of all its imperfections (and they are many indeed), is the proof of this. History tells us what has been the effect upon [CCH pg 9] the world of the Christian philosophy of life. In spite of the fact that there have been among professing Christians many travesties of this philosophy, it yet remains true that what men count good in the world to-day is to be traced to the Christian view of human life. And if the holding of the Christian philosophy has for its result the making of man into just that which his philosophy sets before him as his reason or meaning in the scheme of the universe, we have a further proof of its reasonableness. Is there then anything unreasonable in putting ourselves voluntarily to school under the authority that has given us this philosophy of life whose reasonableness we have once allowed? If Jesus Christ has so revealed God as that the Divine character is itself the explanation of man's moral nature according to the highest demands of reason, shall we say that it is unreasonable to take His word about God Himself, of Whom we should otherwise be ignorant? For we can know nothing of God apart from a revelation He may make of Himself. It may seem that we are here adopting an entirely new apologetic, and that we are tacitly assenting to the principles of Rationalism. But a candid reflection on the line here taken will make it clear that while an appeal is here made to the reason, no claim is made that the reason of itself is able to get at the meaning of the universe and man's place therein. Rationalism repudiates authority altogether, but true reason can accept an authority which has once justified itself to reason. [CCH pg 10] But we have passed from speaking of the reason of things to the human reason, and it is desirable to have clearly in our minds what this transition involves; and we must enquire whether there is a proper connection of thought between what we have called the reason of things and the human reason. What do we mean by human reason? First of all we may say that we do not mean something separable from the human personality. There is not an Ego and a reason; but there is an Ego who reasons. Reasoning is a power, a function of the Ego, and the power to reason we call the reason. But there is no such thing as reason. It has not substance. It is only an abstraction. We know that we are and that we reason, and so we say that we have reason. Reason then is an element of our personality and inseparable from it save in thought. When we speak of appealing to a man's reason, we really mean appealing to the man himself as one capable of reasoning. A man is not at one time a reasoning being, and at another a moral being, and at another something else. He is always himself, and when he reasons it is himself reasoning, himself, all the time that he is reasoning, a moral being. I do not think it necessary to stop now to speak at length of what is meant by saying that a man is a moral being. To that we shall come in the next chapter. What is now insisted on is that, whatever abstractions we may make of man's powers these are but abstractions and not realities save in relation to the Ego. When then man reflects on the reason of things, it [CCH pg 11] is the man and not the reason of man that is reflecting. The very power he has to reflect on the reason of things, whether the scientific or philosophical reason of them, we call his reason, but it is not reason but a man reflecting, a man with all his powers. It may be questioned how far it is justifiable to speak of the reason of animals lower in the scale of creation than man. Some would say that animals have intelligence but not reason. But it seems to me that some animals are endowed with reason in an elementary degree. They have a certain power to discern cause and effect, and this may be called reason. But it is very much a matter of definition. I do not see why it should be considered necessary that reason should be conscious of itself to be entitled to be called reason. Reason does not of course come to maturity until the being in possession of it knows of his possession. Man has what the brutes have not, both speculative and moral reason; but men have these in very varying degrees, and the savage may have no consciousness of an endowment of moral reason and yet his action may be affected by it. We may say that man in general has a power to form ideals but the power is slight in the savage. The power to form ideals arises from the possession of moral reason. What I am here calling moral reason will be seen to include what Kant calls " practical reason." Practical reason, according to Kant, is reason determining the will. But moral reason, while it does this, does [CCH pg 12] something more. By it we are able to judge of the dignity or worth of being, and even to speculate on the divine character. There is reason determining action but not the will, reason determining, that is to say, action as distinguished from conduct. We speak of the action of brutes but not of their conduct. The term conduct is applicable to man because he is endowed with moral reason. The end of all action with the brutes is determined by instinct, but the means whereby the instinct is to be satisfied may be partly reasoned. With man the end of conduct is determined by moral reason, but there must be, I believe, also an accompanying instinct. Of this more in later chapters. What I am anxious to make clear here is that man's estimate of the reason of things is necessarily conditioned by the fact that he is endowed with moral reason and not simply with speculative reason, which is that whereby he discerns cause and effect and traces the universal reign of law and order. I shall speak in the next chapter of the relation of conscience to moral reason, but it will be seen at once that there is no necessary antagonism either between reason and faith, or between reason and authority. Indeed I should go so far as to say that the highest form of faith would be quite impossible to a being who had not moral reason, and some degree of faith would seem to be a necessary accompaniment of moral reason. Nor again can any reasonable being exercise faith to order, impelled that is by authority, until that authority [CCH pg 13] has first justified itself to reason. And even when this justification has been made, it needs to be constantly renewed. If what purports to be a divine revelation contains what is contrary to reason, its authority is inevitably weakened in men's minds. Whatever we find in Revelation as new and undiscovered before by reason, we shall believe just so far as we believe the Revelation to be divinely given and so authoritative. If we find ourselves unable to believe the contents of the Revelation, our faith in it will be shaken. Our belief then in the Revelation, our acceptance of it as authoritative, may be weakened or strengthened by examination of its contents. But it is most important to judge of it first of all by what it says of something about which we know, and not by what it has to say of something of which we know nothing. But it will be said that it is a new line of defence which is being here adopted, and it will be asked whether the appeal to miracles is to be entirely superseded. What is the value of miracles to prove that a revelation is divine? This is really the question that has to be faced. Paley's argument, of the insufficiency of which I am more and more convinced, is this : If a revelation is to be given it can only be by miracles. Let then the reality of the miracles be established and you have a proof that the revelation of which they were the seal is divine. I am quite ready to acknowledge that Paley has [CCH pg 14] proved satisfactorily that according to the belief of the first propagators of the Christian religion miracles really had taken place. But Paley has not shown, nor could he have shown, that those who, as he says, " passed their lives in labours, dangers and suffer- ings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts," believed the Revelation to be divine because of the miracles they had witnessed. Nor can you convince men to-day that the Christian Revelation was divinely given by arguing that miracles prove it so to be. And even if miracles help to convince those who witness them, the same cannot be said of their effect on those who hear of them eighteen hundred years afterwards and are themselves not eye-witnesses. If men are to be con- vinced by miracles at all, these must be miracles which they themselves witness. I am disposed to agree with Hume that "a miracle can never be proved so as to be the foundation of a system of religion." But it may be said : Is not the miracle of the Resurrection the foundation of the Christian religion? Unless the Resurrection is a fact of history where is the value of the Christian faith? To such questions as these, supposing them to be put, I should answer that to attempt to prove the miracle of the Resurrection apart from the moral appeal made by the life and teaching of Jesus Christ would be futile. A system of religion, while it must rest on fact and not on fiction to be of any value, must yet appeal to man's moral reason. [CCH pg 15] It is just here as it seems to me that Paley's Evidences and Moral Philosophy fail. He regards the Creator as benevolent and as providing for the good of his creatures, but he looks upon Revelation as simply a making known of what God wills men to do in order that they may attain to happiness in the next life. But there seems to be in Paley's teaching an utter lack of the thought that Revelation is a Revelation of God and not simply a Revelation given by God of human duty. Characteristic of his utterances is the following passage from his Moral Philosophy [Book V. , Chapter ix.] : " Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the following, ' The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth : they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation'; he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mission was introduced and attested; a message in which the wisest of man- kind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their enquiries. It is idle to say that a future state had been discovered already : it had been discovered as the Copernican system was; it was one guess among many. He alone discovers who proves; | and no man can prove this point, but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from I God." This passage is thoroughly characteristic of the [CCH pg 16] writer. If we suppose that Jesus Christ had, accord- ing to the author's hypothesis, spoken no other words than those quoted above, they would have been meaning- less according to Paley's philosophy. For he does not make it clear how men could interpret what would be meant by 'doing good' and 'doing evil' respectively, seeing that he dismisses the question of man's " moral sense " by saying : " This celebrated question there- fore becomes in our system a question of pure curiosity; and as such, we dismiss it to the determination of those who are more inquisitive than we are concerned to be about the natural history and constitution of the human species." [Moral Philosophy, Book I., Chapter v. ] Thus ' doing good ' and ' doing evil ' would mean, according to Paley, acting according to the commandments of God and acting contrary to those commandments respectively, such commandments being given by the utterance of some prophet of God who must confirm his message by a miracle. God's will is made known to man only when it is sealed by miracle. In this case it seems strange that we are not permitted to be ourselves the witnesses of miracles, instead of depending on the testimony of witnesses who lived more than eighteen hundred years ago. There must be something very unsatisfactory in a philosophy which can dismiss the question of the 'moral sense’ as Paley does and substitute for the Revelation which God has given of Himself, and which appeals to man's moral reason, as I hope presently [CCH pg 17] to argue, a mere making known of what God requires of man under pain of eternal punishment. But it is only when we have understood Paley's so-called moral philosophy that we see the real defects of his Evidences of Christianity. These Evidences are, it seems to me, right so far as they go. Paley proves conclusively on the assumption that the New Testament Scriptures are authentic, a point which he himself investigates that those who first propagated the Christian religion themselves believed that they had witnessed miracles; but that , the miracles were an attestation of the divine origin of the revelation associated with them, this he does not [prove; nor could he by his own methods give proof of this, seeing that lying signs and wonders are possibilities contemplated in the Gospel. How then is the true to be discriminated from the false unless an appeal be made to the moral reason? If it were the case that anyone not already pre- disposed to accept the Christian faith should be convinced by Paley's reasoning, I do not think he would " obey the Gospel " with any sense of freedom. For it would seem that Paley's philosophy is quite deficient, and his view of the end of divine revelation far removed from that of Him who appealed to His disciples not as slaves but as friends. But I do not wish it to be thought that this essay is intended as a treatise on Christian Evidences any more than it is a treatise on Ethics. My desire rather is to extricate Christian evidences from their association with what seems to me to be no true philosophy [CCH pg 18] at all, and most certainly is not the Christian philosophy of the New Testament. The book on the evidences of Christianity suitable to the temper of the present time and sufficient to meet the demands of modern thought has yet to be written. If ever it comes to be written it will have to appeal to that department of the human reason which is conveniently classed as moral. It is quite remarkable how few writers there have been in recent times ready to treat of moral philosophy from the standpoint of dogmatic theology, that is to say, regarding the Christian revelation as authoritative. There are, however, not wanting signs of an improvement in this respect; and the attention which is now being paid to the study of social questions makes it imperative that the very foundations of morality should be properly investigated from a Christian standpoint. The old "Moral Governor of the Universe " theory which, however much it may represent the Creator and Governor of the world as working for the happiness of His creatures, yet forgets the essentially Christian doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood, is wholly insufficient. The so- called religious " sanctions " of morality, which mean the prospect of rewards and punishments, the one for obedience and the other for disobedience to divine commands, are a mere travesty of Christian doctrine. Where the Moral Governor of the Universe is substituted for the Divine Father whom Christ revealed, there can be no wonder that many are repelled by what claims to be Christian teaching from Christianity [CCH pg 19] itself. On the other hand, if the truth of the Divine Fatherhood be insisted on without due regard being paid to the complementary truth of the Divine holiness, an easy-going system of life is the inevitable result. Unless these two truths are rightly balanced and blended together, Christian teaching becomes but a caricature of its true self. Let us at least be clear what Christ and His apostles really did teach, and what was the philosophy of human life implicit in their doctrine. It is my purpose then in this essay to set forth as clearly as I can what I believe to be the Christian teaching about God, and of man's relation to the Supreme Being. I do not disguise at the outset that my object in doing this is essentially practical. I regard speculation on these subjects as useless unless it ultimately makes demands on life. It is a rationale of life, which will make life truer and better, that men are really asking for. And a mere speculative discussion, to whose conclusions we are more or less indifferent, is of no avail. On the other hand, I recognise that we have to be careful not to assume as true what we only wish to be true. The a priori method must be carefully checked by a knowledge of the facts of life. At the same time it seems to me that through the moral reason we have d priori intuitions and that these are of real value, that they are not deceptive. I do not mean of course to suggest that a priori intuitions are possible to us through the moral reason [CCH pg 20] except as following upon knowledge and experience. We cannot form moral judgments without the experience of life. What these words imply will be better understood as the argument of the essay proceeds. To this argument we had better proceed at once. First of all, in the two next chapters, we must investigate the elementary notions of ethics contained in the four words Duty, Virtue, Right, and Good. It is essential to clearness of thought to have some definition of these four. In the fourth chapter I propose to examine the relation of conscience to reason. On this point there is, as it seems to me, a good deal of confusion. In the fifth chapter I shall discuss the place assigned to Happiness in Utilitarianism. It is not until we reach the sixth chapter that the subject proper of the essay is reached. The first five chapters rather point to the need for the introduction of the notion of holiness into ethical or moral philosophy. I shall try in Chapter VI. to trace the growth of the ethical conception of holiness in the Old Testament, not without the help of others, and particularly of the late Robertson Smith, whose fear- less sifting of the Old Testament is now bearing fruit on all sides. The persistence of the notion of holiness throughout the Old Testament and from the Old Testament into the New has to be explained; and I shall try to shew in the seventh chapter how the doctrine of Jesus Christ completely transformed the notion according to the tendency which had already been manifest in the development of Old Testament [CCH pg 21] doctrine. This will lead up to the central thought of the book, which will be found in the eighth chapter, for which I have borrowed a title from Bishop Westcott, but without any desire to make him in any way responsible for the views there expressed. The four remaining chapters of the book will show the consistency of this Gospel of Creation with the general drift of New Testament theology, and the reader must judge for himself whether or not he agrees with the writer that we have here a consistent whole which removes many difficulties, and is not alien to the demands of modern thought.
Chapter II. Moral Duty.IT has been said that the science of ethics differs from all other sciences in that it deals, not with what is, but with what ought to be. But this does not seem to me to be a proper account to give of ethics. For every science must deal with what is, or (not to lay too much stress on the word ' is ') with phenomena. To this rule ethics can be no exception, whether you call it a study or a science. It too must treat of phenomena and seek to give some explanation of them; otherwise it becomes mere speculation. Not that speculation is valueless; quite the contrary. For science must have her speculative hypotheses which she seeks to verify by an inductive method. But these are hypotheses to account for and to connect together phenomena. It seems to me that the correct account to give of ethics is that it has to do not with what ought to be, but with the human cognition of an ought. This latter is a fact of experience, a phenomenon, as we say. It can then be made the subject of a science. [CCH pg 26] It would be fair enough to say of ethics that it has to deal with an ' ought to be/ provided that this ' ought to be ' were looked upon as real in the same way that mass and motion are regarded as real in dynamics. We could not make mass and motion the subject of a science unless we had some cognition of them. Nor is it of the least use to speculate what ought to be, apart from the present reality of an ' ought.' As what ' ought to be ' is often opposed in thought to what actually is, we come to think of the ' ought to be ' as non-existent. But you can- not have a science of the non-existent. A subject of study must at least have an existence in the human mind; and so the ' ought to be ' of ethics must appear to the mind as clearly as do mass and motion, or you cannot study it or make of it a systematic science. We must at once proceed to investigate the ethical use of the word ' ought,' and it will conduce to clearness if we consider, first of all, what we mean when we say that men ought to do anything. In other words, we will postpone the discussion of what ' ought to be ' until we have considered the ' ought to do.' Strictly speaking, it is with what men ought to do that ethics is concerned. Whether any meaning can be attached to the ' ought to be,' apart from this that men ought to bring it about, will be considered after an explanation has been given of what it is convenient to call the ' moral ought.' Now in propositions which have a human subject [CCH pg 27] and, for a predicate, a simple present ought with its completed infinitive, we soon detect that there are two distinct 'oughts.' Thus the 'ought ' in ' You ought to speak the truth' is not the same as the 'ought ' in ' You ought to be rewarded.' For while the ' ought ' of the first of these is really an ' ought ' of the subject addressed, the ' ought ' of the second, if it is properly an ' ought ' at all, implies the ' ought ' of some one else who ought to reward the person addressed. It might be that ' You ought to be re- warded ' meant no more than ' You deserve to be rewarded.' If so, then clearly the ought of ' You ought to speak the truth ' and that of ' You ought to be rewarded' are entirely different things. For to substitute 'deserve' for 'ought' in 'You ought to speak the truth ' is to alter the meaning of what any one could possibly mean by using these words. The ' oughts ' then which occur in propositions such as have been described above may be conveniently divided into (1) oughts of activity, (2) oughts of passivity. Thus in ' You ought to speak the truth ' the ' ought ' is one of the subject's potential activity. In ' You ought to be rewarded ' the ' ought ' is one of the subject's potential passivity. This second proposition may, as has been said, imply the ' ought ' of some other person's activity; but as this is not expressed, the ' ought ' must be considered to be one of passivity. When we speak of the subject's activity, such activity must be understood to involve the activity of the will of the subject. That is to say, the [CCH pg 28] activity is or results from volition. If any one dispute the fact of human will and say that volition is purely illusory, then to that person the distinction here made between the ' oughts of activity ' and the ' oughts of passivity ' is illusory too. It becomes waste of time to argue further. These propositions which have a human subject and, for a predicate, a simple present ' ought ' with its completed infinitive are possible ethical 'propositions when the ' ought ' is one of the subject's activity in the sense explained above. 'You ought to help your friends,' ' Men ought to abstain from theft ' are examples of what may be ethical propositions. But not all such propositions commonly used are ethical propositions, as will presently be seen. But it must be carefully noted that the ' ought ' of these propositions must not be qualified in any way. Thus ' Men ought not to steal ' is not an ethical proposition if not qualifies ought. If this means Men ought to not-steal, or to refrain from stealing, the proposition may be an ethical one, not otherwise. That is to say, in ethical propositions the predicate must be an ' ought ' and not the negation of an ' ought.' Consider the proposition : We ought to obey God rather than men. This, if it is to be an ethical proposition, must be understood to mean : We ought to prefer obedience to God to obedience to man. But it is not to be accounted a possible ethical proposition if it be understood to be : We ought to obey God more than we ought to obey man. For the words [CCH pg 29] 'more than we ought to obey man' serve here to qualify the ' ought ' of ' We ought to obey God.' The proposition ' You ought to have gone out yesterday ' is not a possible ethical proposition as it stands. For it cannot be a present ' ought ' to go out yesterday. This proposition might be used to express the fact that yesterday the ethical proposition was true, ' You ought to go out.' But as the proposition ' You ought to have gone out yesterday ' stands, the ' ought ' can only be one of passivity. ' You ought to sleep ' may be an ethical proposition, or on the other hand the ' ought ' may be one of passivity. There would be no difficulty in deciding the point if the meaning of the words were known. The ' ought ' in ' You ought to be asleep ' can only be one of passivity. For so far as the sleeping depends on the volition of the subject, the ' ought ' is a past and not a present ' ought,' whereas the ' ought ' of an ethical proposition is, according to the definition, present and not past. We may now pass on to a further analysis of the ' oughts ' of human activity. These may be classed under two heads, viz. (1) the moral oughts, and (2) the hypothetical or prudential oughts. The distinction between these which must now be set forth is of the greatest importance. To explain what is meant by a ' moral ought ' it is necessary to have some clear notion what we mean when we speak of a man as a moral being. We cannot define the word ' moral ' straight away. For it is [CCH pg 30] impossible to define any adjective simply, except in terms of a noun from which it may be derived. And when the definition of the adjective is given in terms of the noun, it is of no value unless we have further a definition of the noun itself which is employed in the definition of the adjective. Thus if we define ' virtuous ' as ' shewing virtue,' we have given no real definition of the adjective unless we give also a definition of 'virtue.' Those who have ever attempted to formulate a definition of the adjective ' good ' know how difficult it is. Now it would seem that every finite being must have instincts. Man has instincts in common with the beasts. The beasts, so far as we can see, are entirely guided by their instincts, though it is not to be denied that they have also intelligence or incipient reason, by which they know how their instincts can be satisfied. They do not, so far as we know, set before themselves any end, except so far as that end is suggested by instinct. The means to an end instinctively desired may become known to them by reason. It is not to be assumed that the instincts of the brute creation are all selfish. Quite the contrary. There are what are called altruistic instincts which direct the creature to a course of action seemingly detrimental to itself, instincts which even lead animals to sacrifice their lives in the interests of another, and even, as in the case of a moth at a candle, to sacrifice their lives, as it seems to us, to no purpose. The animal creation then lower in the scale than [CCH pg 31] man is a marvellous machinery controlled by what we call instincts, the means to the gratification of such instincts being determined to some extent by reason. But when we come to man the case is different. He has ends set before him by his reason, to the attainment of which his instincts may fail to carry him. From this fact, namely, man's possession of what I am calling moral reason, which is at war with his instincts, results man's unhappiness, which can only come to an end when his moral reason and highest instinct are ultimately at one. How this will come about we shall try to discover in the course of this essay. By speaking of man as a moral being we mean that he has, besides instincts, moral reason, which, becoming imperative in what we call his Conscience, tells him that he ought to control his instincts, to prefer this to that, and, it may be, to suppress certain instincts altogether. Man then, as a moral being, has a consciousness of having to choose between certain courses of action, while he has all the while a cognition of a dictate to choose in a particular way. It is as if he were free to choose, and yet he is enslaved by his instincts, which assert themselves in defiance of his reason. I do not now stop to discuss the question of Free Will, to which we shall come, however, in a later chapter. It will be understood then that temptation is a sine qua non of a moral being. In the words of St. James : " Each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust.' [CCH pg 32] 32 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF HOLINESS Conscience then dictates to us what we ought to do according to the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves, and the ' ought ' is absolute, and in no way conditional. This is that which we mean by the ' moral ought.' It is Kant's categorical imperative. It does not tell us what we ought to do in order to avoid punishment. If it whispers any threat of punishment, it tells us that we deserve to suffer if we disobey. For the conscience not only commands but commends. It tells us that that which is commanded is right and the opposite wrong. Conscience is the voice of God within the soul of man. It is God who teaches us the meaning of right and wrong. This is the great truth which leads us into life. It will be understood that no human being can dictate to me my ' moral oughts.' Say I am taught as a child not to lie. Unless, when desiring to lie, I have within myself a cognition of a dictate of conscience not to lie, or, at any rate, of a dictate to obey whoever so teaches me, then there is no ' moral ought ' not to lie. It is not dictation from without that makes the ' moral ought ' but the voice of conscience within. Whether the cognition of the ' moral ought,' which is internal, has to be called forth by words from without spoken into the ear or by actions witnessed by the eye, is not now being discussed. It is possible to deny the existence of the Conscience, and to say that the cognition of an ' ought ' is purely illusory. But I doubt whether any man living could deny that he ought to shew gratitude for favours disinterestedly bestowed upon him. If he allowed this [CCH pg 33] one ' ought ' he would be accepting the principle of the ' moral ought,' however much he might wish to restrict its application. I do not in this chapter enter into the content of the ' moral ought,' or what will be better called by the name ' moral duty '; but I shall assume that gratitude is at least included in it. My moral duty is then that which I ought to do, whatever desire I may feel to the contrary. And it is important to make a perfectly clear distinction between the fact of moral duty and the motive for its fulfilment. The answer to the question, Why ought I to speak the truth? or Why is it my moral duty to speak the truth? is not necessarily the same as the answer to the question Why should I speak the truth? This last question, where the word ' should ' is not intended as equivalent to ' ought,' may only mean that the questioner desires some motive of advantage to himself or some one else sufficient to induce him to speak the truth. It is the first function of ethics to discover the ground of human duty and to supply a test by which it may be known what that duty is. The question whether or not it is, as men say, worth while to fulfil their duty is a separate one. In discriminating the two, however, I do not mean to imply that the one question should be considered to the neglect of the other. Unless the theory of ethics can contribute something towards the practice of life, it will neither win nor deserve to win much attention. But my own experience is that the study of ethics may not only conduce to clearness of thought but also prove a valuable moral discipline. Indeed it leads [CCH pg 34] us right into the presence of God Himself, as will presently appear. My moral duty then is that which my conscience tells me I ought to do, and it varies from moment to moment. As circumstances change, my moral duty changes too, in its details, that is. When I say that I ought to do something, I mean by " I " what I am at that moment when I accept the truth of the pro- position I, that is, in those particular circumstances in which I am then placed. But it must not be thought that my moral duty is for that reason conditional. My moral duty to me at every moment is a categorical imperative, absolute and unconditional. I, being in such and such circumstances, ought to act in such a manner. But it may be said : But if you were in other circumstances it would not be your moral duty to do what in these present circumstances you ought to do. To this I should reply that I am not in other circumstances. I am in my present circumstances and these determine my moral duty. It is true that I am always myself, but I cannot say that I ought to do anything apart from the circumstances in which I am placed. It is true that we make use of general ethical or moral propositions such as ' Men ought not to steal,' ' Men ought to speak the truth.' By these propositions we do not mean that it is always man's moral duty not to steal, and to speak the truth, but that these propositions hold good whenever they are relevant. That is to say, if man is tempted to steal, finds within [CCH pg 35] himself any desire to take what does not belong to him, he ought to check such desire and refrain from the theft. If tempted to lie, he should speak the truth. General moral duties, while always binding, are not always relevant. Our power to form general moral judgments, and to judge of cases in which we are not ourselves the actors would be nothing at all, unless we had a con- science by which we could judge of our own duty in the like circumstances. All men are not equally instructed in moral duty; the conscience of all is not equally enlightened, nor their moral reason at the same stage of development; consequently some men might not recognise as moral duties what others recognise and fulfil. When I say to another : You ought to do so-and-so, I either expect that my words will call forth in him a response, or that, failing that, there is some way by which I can persuade him of the truth of the moral proposition of which he is the subject. But if ever I am to convince him of the truth of it, it can only be by an appeal to his moral reason, which his conscience will make personal to him. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define what I have been calling moral reason, as indeed it is difficult to define reason without the epithet ' moral ' prefixed to it. But we may come at an understanding of what is meant by moral reason by reflection on our own conduct and actions, and perhaps most of all by reflecting on [CCH pg 36] our conceptions of the Supreme Being. It may be that reason other than moral gives man his first conception of God. For reason demands a first cause of what we see, and know, and have experience of, and this first cause we call God. But we are not content simply to regard the Deity as the first cause. Quiet reflection brings to us the assurance that this Being who is the cause of all created things has also a character. That this is so is shown by the fact that people refuse to believe of God that which is revolting to their moral reason. I am not unmindful of the fact that men have had most unworthy thoughts of God, and still have. But this is where the moral reason is but slightly developed. Where the moral reason is fully active, men cannot allow that God can be anything but good and kind and merciful in all His dealings. If we could conceive of two beings perfectly happy, we should judge that one of the two the higher and the better who shared his happiness with others. Certainly we should account a being who was indifferent to suffering as unworthy of our highest reverence. We may say then that moral reason is that department of human reason whereby we judge of the worth and dignity of being, and the possession of which enables us to say that God must be this or this. We cannot of course say of God that He ought to be or do anything, for we cannot conceive of Him as acting otherwise than perfectly. If we can say of anything that it ought to be, meaning by this some- thing which it is not a moral duty of humanity to [CCH pg 37] bring about, then we judge that God must bring it to pass. But it seems inappropriate to speak of what ' ought to be' unless we mean by this what man ought to bring about. But while exception may be taken to this expression ' what ought to be,' if applied to that which is not seen to be a moral duty of man, we must nevertheless take into our consideration the thing intended by it, and recognise that moral philosophy cannot treat of its subject satisfactorily without taking into account those aspirations of the human soul to believe that there are certain things which the moral reason demands but which in the experience of man have not yet become actual. Thus far we have spoken of the ' moral ought,' the ' ought ' which occurs in ethical or moral propositions which are an expression of moral duty. But it must be acknowledged that men do make use of the word ' ought ' in a hypothetical sense. Thus we might say : You ought to go out, if you want to preserve your health. Here the ' ought ' is conditioned by the words ' if you want to preserve your health.' Such ' oughts' then are conveniently called hypothetical or prudential. The Hedonistic system of ethics so far as it is based on an ' ought ' at all is based on a hypothetical ought. But the system is fallacious. It says to man: "You desire happiness all of you. Well then, find out what will produce your happiness. This is what you ought [CCH pg 38] to do." Of course this is quite illogical. You cannot argue You desire happiness. You cannot be happy unless you do x. Therefore you ought to do x. The final ought is conditioned by ' if you desire happiness.' It therefore has no moral use at all. The ' moral ought ' must be absolute. If it were true that I ought to seek my own happiness (the ' ought ' being moral) then I ought to do x. " But," says the Hedonist, " ought you not to seek your happiness? " I say " No !" But he replies : " But you do seek your own happiness; you cannot deny it." I reply that I have an instinct to produce my own happiness, or I have an instinct to certain things which I think will produce my happiness, but I have no cognition of a moral duty to seek it. The two things are quite distinct. My conscience dictating to me my moral duty tells me in what order to prefer my instincts, which to satisfy and which to leave un- satisfied. It certainly does not single out my instinct to produce my own happiness and say that is always to stand first. Quite the contrary. It puts it low down in the scale of instinct, calls it indeed selfish. It cannot be denied that there is always in our use of the word ' ought ' a suggestion of opposition, actual or possible. Thus ' You ought to speak the truth ' suggests that there is or may be an instinct prompting us to lie. But because such a proposition as ' You ought to speak the truth ' might have appended to it [CCH pg 39] the words ' If tempted to lie,' this addition does not make the ' ought ' hypothetical; it merely defines the circumstances in which the proposition would be relevant. There is a view taken by some writers, notably by Paley, that in saying that a man ought to do anything we really mean that he will be punished if he does not. When conscience then makes its voice heard, it is a voice of warning, of threatening. This is a view which will not be adopted here, for it is not according to moral reason. The threatenings of con- science would be worthless unless our moral reason gave us the power to see that we deserve punishment for transgressing the dictate. In the ideal state of human existence every 'ought' will have become a ' must.' Christ's every ' ought ' was a ' must.' With Him there was no ' ought.' Before passing on, it will be well to recapitulate the contents of the present chapter. Ethics is the science of moral duty. Moral duty is the duty of man, that which he ought to do. It is absolute, unconditional, independent of desires or instincts. If any deny the categorical imperative, there is no science of ethics for such. Hedonism is the inevitable and logical creed. But while moral duty is unconditional and imperative in its demands, there is nothing unreasonable in it. So far from being not according to reason, it is the outcome of moral reason, which, if undefinable, is yet intelligible to one in the possession of it. I have [CCH pg 40] not in this chapter attempted to investigate the con- tent of man's moral duty. Though use has been made here of ethical or moral propositions, such as ' Men ought not to steal,' ' Men ought to speak the truth,' this has not been done with any assumption of their truth, but only for illustration. It would have done just as well, but would hardly be suitable to the general reader, if I had said, ' Men ought to ,' thus leaving the completion of the predicate uncertain. The concrete appeals to some people better than does the abstract. I have therefore made use of concrete examples, and it is open to any to deny if they will that these are true ethical propositions. If they are ethical propositions, that is to say if they contain a ' moral ought,' or, in other words, are an expression of moral duty, the ' ought ' is an absolute one.
Chapter III. Virtue, Right and Good.IN the preceding chapter something was said about man's instincts. These he has in common with the beasts, though of course his instincts go far beyond theirs. Still instincts they are, even though man has the power to ascend in character to the dignity of God Himself. It seems necessary to say something more about instincts in order to elucidate the notion of virtue. Some of the instincts that man has in common with the brutes are the instinct of self-preservation, the instinct to feed, the instinct to sleep, the sexual instinct, and there are sundry altruistic instincts, such as love of children, and other social instincts, including the instinct of sympathy. Of course it is not only man that is a social being; the social instincts are well developed in the lower animals. But there are many instincts that men have which are not shared by the beasts, and there are two which seem to belong to all men as men, namely, the instinct of reverence or worship or holiness (but care must be taken not to attach an ethical meaning [CCH pg 44] to this word at this stage) and the instinct of self- respect. The instinct of awe or reverence or worship, or by whatever name we call it, would seem to follow upon the development of reason. Reason demanded a cause of the various phenomena of which men had experience; and to men in that stage there were very many causes or spirits or gods. Unseen beings, or beings resident in what was seen, presented themselves to the human imagination at this stage. Mysterious beings, some beneficent and some malevolent, were invented by reason to account for what was otherwise unaccountable. And with this invention of the reason came possibly the instinct of awe, reverence, worship, holiness. But while we may suppose that one was an accompaniment of the other, we must not confuse reason and instinct. The one is thought, the other is feeling. There must be an accompanying feeling, or reason could not determine action. This point has, I think, been very clearly set forth by Mr. Leslie Stephen in his Science of Ethics, to which reference may be made. Then we have in man the instinct of self-respect, the instinct to care what others think of him. It is the possession of this instinct which gives meaning to virtue. To practise virtue is to give evidence of self- respect. Self-respect is indeed virtue, and the virtues are the evidence of it. Moral duty passes into conduct through the operation of the instinct of self-respect or virtue. And it is the conscience, which, as we keep saying, is the moral reason becoming imperative, that prescribes the moral duty. [CCH pg 45] The instinct of self-respect then is associated with the moral reason, which gives man a knowledge of the worth or dignity of being, and so of himself. The virtues are those qualities, or, shall we say? those items of conduct which men recognise as proceeding from self-respect, the respect of man for himself as man. A virtue, such as fortitude, may be to some extent selfish, that is to say it may proceed from a desire to be thought well of by others, yet still there is the thought of our own worth involved in it. The instinct of self-respect must be most carefully distinguished foom the altruistic instincts, the former being moral, the latter not. For the instinct of self- respect operates to carry out the dictates of the conscience which define our moral duty. It is not self-respect that makes a hen brood over her eggs. Nor is it self-respect that makes a mother care for her young. Yet in a degree both these sights may arouse in us respect, and through the moral reason make their demand upon us; so that, if a mother had lost the instinct to care for her children, she might yet know that she ought to care for them. It may be permissible perhaps to hazard a guess that the altruistic instincts served the end in the evolution of creation, according to the purpose of God, of forming material for the exercise of the moral reason, which had before been latent. Though altruism is non-moral, the sight of it is yet beautiful. The moral reason sees in it the possibility of some- thing more than instinctive altruism; the conscience makes an imperative demand, and self-respect operates [CCH pg 46] to induce men to do acts of kindness. Kindness is a virtue if it proceeds from self-respect. But again the instinct of sympathy must be distinguished from that of self-respect. Sympathy cannot be accounted a virtue. Sympathy is found in the lower animals, but we do not think of them as virtuous. Indeed virtue is that which distinguishes man as man, and depends on the fact that man is a moral being. If a man relieves pain because it is more painful to him to witness it than to remove it, he is not acting virtuously. But if a man relieves pain, when he might get away from the sight of it by going away altogether to another place, because he knows that he ought to relieve it, and because his instinct of self-respect operates to make him fulfil this duty, then he acts virtuously. To act virtuously then, as I understand it, is to act from a motive of self-respect, though it must be allowed that there are degrees of self-respect. Next I think a distinction should be made between virtuous instinct and the instinct of virtue or self- respect. And this is the distinction I should make. A virtuous instinct is an instinct which has been acquired through the habits of former generations in the practice of virtue. It is thus an altruistic instinct which has been, if we may so say, morally acquired, and while it is not in any way antagonistic to self- respect, yet is it not dependent on it. A man may acquire virtuous instincts for himself by the steady practice of virtue, so that it becomes comparatively easy for him to do what once he did with difficulty. [CCH pg 47] It is a mistake, I think, to suppose that the virtues and the practice of virtue are not dictated to us by the conscience, and to regard them as something supererogatory. In his Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics, posthumously published, the late Professor W. Wallace says : [P. 325.] " One of the greatest defects noticeable in certain philosophers' books on Morals is that they confound the duties (devoirs) with the virtues, or that they give names of virtues to simple duties : so that though, properly speaking, there is only one virtue, the love of order, they produce an infinity of them. This puts confusion everywhere and so embarrasses the science of ethics that it is hard enough to see clearly what one ought to do to be a good man (homme be Men)." But surely it is all a matter of definition, and it is exactly here that confusion has arisen in the science of ethics. Writers do not clearly define their terms and oftentimes the reader is carried from one meaning to another of words until he hardly knows whether or not he agrees with his author. Imagine the confusion that would result in mathematics and the physical sciences if words were allowed to pass from one meaning to another ! Yet such is the state of ethical science; though some writers, notably Professor Sidgwick, have done excellent work in clearing it of equivocation. The question is : What do we mean by ' duty ' and what do we mean by ' virtue '? When Wallace says a few lines further on " Some of them imagine they [CCH pg 48] follow virtue, though they only follow the natural inclination they have to perform certain duties," it is clear that he is using the word ' duties ' in a sense different from that for instance in which I have ventured to define ' moral duty' (which is capable of subdivision into moral duties). It seems likely that by ' duties ' in this passage Wallace meant what I have called ' virtuous instincts,' for he speaks of there being a natural inclination to perform them. Some writers mean by ' duty ' and ' duties ' what your fellowmen expect of you. Of course you cannot include all the virtues under the category of duty if you thus define duty. It seems to me to be a fatal mistake in ethics to restrict the term 'duty' to the claims of society upon us. If 'duty' be what our fellowmen expect of us, and if ethics be the science of duty, then to pursue it we must investigate what our fellowmen do expect of us. Clearly this would vary according to the community in which we happened to live. I have not chosen this passage from Wallace through love of criticising. My one desire just now is to make clear the meaning of the terms I use. I cannot see that the virtues are other than moral duties, though what I do fully recognise is that Virtue, as a quality, might remain, when moral duty has ceased through the instinct of virtue becoming supreme. When a man acts from a motive of fear he does not act virtuously, unless indeed the fear be based on self-respect. The fear of losing the good opinion of [CCH pg 49] your fellowmen I should call a fear proceeding from self-respect. The fear of being put into prison, I should say, did not proceed from self-respect, but from dislike of discomfort. The notion of virtue serves, as it seems to me, to make objective what if looked at from the point of view of moral duty might appear but subjective. For moral duty is that which is dictated in the individual conscience, and no science of any value could be made of this unless individual consciences had some agreement one with another. And there has been, I think, this advantage in considering virtue, as we have done, as distinct in idea from moral duty, that it has given the opportunity to draw attention to the use of both moral reason and instinct in the determining of conduct. Lest it should seem to some that I am treating too much of instinct and saying too little about will, it is well to remind ourselves that, according to Christian teaching, it is God who makes us both ' to will ' and ' to do.' God enables us to act by the instincts He has given us. Unless there were appropriate instincts the will would not pass into conduct. It must not, however, be assumed that man's instincts are all a manifestation of divine character even though they be a divine gift. And if it seems to be inappropriate to speak of evil instincts as a divine gift, we must at least recognise that they proceed according to a divine law whereby evil begets evil for the setting forth of its own hideousness. [CCH pg 50] We pass next to the notion of Right. I am not proposing to speak of what are called ' rights ' regarded as correlatives of duties, duties being regarded as what we owe to others, who in consequence of our debt have ' rights.' I am treating of what we call right in regard to conduct. It will, I think, conduce to clearness if we define as right in human conduct that which is not contrary to the dictates of con- science. It will be seen from this definition that the notion of ' right ' is different from that of duty. For it is right to satisfy instincts which are not opposed by moral duty, and of which we should not say that it Was our moral duty to satisfy them if they were unopposed by other and stronger instincts. Thus it is not often my moral duty to eat my dinner, but it is right so to do. The distinction between right and wrong has no meaning as applied to the action of the brutes, who have no conscience or moral reason. But the distinction is of the greatest importance for moral beings. But the definition of what is right, given above, is really insufficient; for it seems to make what is right a matter for the individual conscience. The relation of individual consciences one to another is a question we have not yet investigated, nor will the limits of this chapter permit of its investigation. All that we can now say is that what is not forbidden by any individual's conscience seems to that individual right. In other words, it is subjectively right. It is a fact that will have to be taken account of in the next [CCH pg 51] chapter that the dictates of conscience are not always the same, that morality is, as we say, progressive. It is also a fact that disobedience to the dictates of conscience tends to deaden the conscience, so that it becomes not a perfect instrument for determining what is right. That the notion of right differs from that of duty is further clear from the fact that we think and speak of God acting rightly, though we could not conceive of Him acting according to duty. This would be impious, and contrary to the idea we have of an absolutely perfect Being, conditioned by nothing but His own perfection. We finite beings have not the faculty to judge of right action save so far as that is determined for us by our cognition of moral duty. We do not know why particular instincts are right in the same way that we know why moral duty is right. This we discern in our moral reason. God alone can know the appropriateness of each instinct implanted by Him in His creatures; and while we can guess at and probably form a true opinion as to the " reason " of many instincts, we are not yet able to perceive the perfect wisdom and love which has formed them all. For my own part I cannot conceive that there can be any instinct implanted by God in any creature that He has made which has not its root in the divine love and wisdom. By assuming that God acts rightly, we assume that if we could perfectly know the whole plan and purpose of creation, we should find in it nothing contrary [CCH pg 52] to our moral reason. I do not mean by this that we should need a different moral reason. It is my pro- found conviction that the moral reason we have is true, and that, if we were to suppose, as some have tried to do, that God's ways are not to be judged by ordinary canons of moral reason, we should be lodged in the most hopeless contradictions, and well-nigh reduced to despair. I am further convinced that unless the more we come to know of God the more we shall find we can love Him as well as reverence Him, then religion is a hopeless concern, and there is no gospel for the world. When we speak of a good God we must mean to include in the divine attributes those qualities which we count good in man. There cannot be one standard of goodness in the moral reason of man and another standard of goodness for God Himself. We cannot call that good in God which we call evil in man. But we must be careful to guard against judging what we have not the ability to judge. We should say that it was in general wrong to take the life of a fellowman. But we cannot say that it is revolting to our moral reason that God should take away life as He has Himself given it. We can only believe that when we know all, we shall find that even in death God's love and wisdom extend to man. We now pass to speak of the Good. This word is used both adjectivally and as a substantive. We find it applied as an epithet to persons and things. We speak of a good horse, a good poem, a good joke, [CCH pg 53] and we speak also of a good man. But we should not apply the epithet ' good ' to man except in reference to his moral qualities, whereas these have nothing to do with the application of ' good ' to a horse, or a poem, or a joke. We want then if possible to come at some common conception which shall explain the very wide application of the term, and shall connect naturally the epithet ' good ' with the substantive Good. "Every art and every scientific enquiry (meqodoj)" says Aristotle in the introduction to his Ethics, "and similarly every action and purpose may be said to aim at some good. Hence the good has been well defined as that at which all things aim (ou pant efietai)." [Nic. Ethics, I. i., Welldon's translation.] It seems to me that we have here in a nutshell a definition which is sufficient to cover the use of the epithet ' good ' in its various applications, as well as of the substantive ' Good.' It will be observed that the underlying notion in this definition is essentially teleological, and things will be ' good ' which attain their end. Thus we form ideals of what things should be, and we judge of these things as good in proportion as they approach the ideal we have formed of them. Some writers seem to assume that things are good if and because they give us pleasure. But this appears to me an insufficient account to give of the epithet 'good,' as Professor Sidgwick has clearly shown in his Methods of Ethics. [Book I., Chapter ix.] It is true that we do call things good which are pleasant to us; but this is not necessarily because [CCH pg 54] they are pleasant, but because our ideal of those things is that they should be pleasant. If we speak of 'good wine,' meaning that it is wine which is pleasant to the taste, the epithet ' good ' is only properly applicable, if it be a property of ideal wine that it should be pleasant to the taste. If our ideal of wine is that it should be wholesome as well as pleasant to the taste, then we shall withhold the epithet 'good' from any wine that has injurious effects, however pleasant it may be at the time we drink it. I am aware that we teach children to speak of things as ' good ' which are pleasant to the taste; but this is capable of explanation in accordance with what has been said above. In speaking to them of anything as ' good ' which is pleasant to the taste, we are not really limiting the application of the epithet to that which gives pleasure, but only acquiescing in what is perfectly obvious, that it is a property of our ideal of food that it should be pleasant to the taste. But we should be ready enough to instil into young minds that this was not the only property of the ideal, even of food. Indeed we speak commonly of things being good to eat when we mean no more than that they are suitable for food. If a traveller enquires whether water that he finds springing up by the roadside is. 'Good,' he does not seek to know what the taste of it may be, but whether it is fit to drink. Water that is good for one purpose is not fit for another. Our ideal of water for drinking is not the same as that of water that may be used for washing. [CCH pg 55] It is worth while to observe that ' ideal ' is some- times applied as an epithet to things when 'good' might be equally well used. Strictly speaking, nothing that exists is ideal, for the Ideal can exist only in imagination. When anything actually existing is called ideal, it is meant that it is perfectly good of its kind. The epithet ' good ' then is applicable to that which, if it does not come up to, at least approaches our ideal of it. And when ' good ' is used of man (and chiefly in regard to his ethical qualities this is the case) we must, consistently with what has been said, under- stand the epithet to mean that the person to whom it is applied approximates to our ideal of what a man should be. That the term is chiefly applicable to man for his ethical qualities is in itself a witness that the common sense or reason of mankind regards those qualities as the distinguishing characteristic of man, and that without them there is no ideal man. We might call a man a good runner or a good athlete, because he had in a pre-eminent degree the qualities and powers necessary to a runner or an athlete; but we should not call such an one a good man because he had these qualities. The qualities of a 'good man ' distinguish him as a man, as an ethical or moral being. But it may be well to enquire what would be the bearing of this definition of ' good ' on the application of the epithet to God. It may seem at first that the definition breaks down at this point. It must be remembered that we do not speak of [CCH pg 56] a good God as distinguished from a God who is not good. Such a way of speaking might be possible where a belief in polytheism was prevalent. But when once we have grasped the thought of one Supreme Being, the notion of Goodness as applied to Him is that of Absolute Perfection. But this notion we could never have had but for the fact that we are moral beings, endowed with moral reason. It is this which enables us to form any conception of God worthy of Him, and to judge whether or not a Revelation purporting to come from Him really does so. Our moral reason gives us then in some degree our idea of God, or supports us in it when it is given. Man can become good because he is a moral being. But we cannot speak of God as a moral being, in the sense in which this was defined in the last chapter. 'God cannot be tempted of evil.' He is and does not become Good. It is because we conceive of God as the very Ideal of Being that we call Him Good -- Good absolutely and perfectly. God then must be conceived of as Good acting always rightly, so that of no act of His can it be said that it is a denial of His Goodness. Having now considered the notion implied in the use of the epithet good as applied to things, persons and to God Himself, we go on to speak of the Good. The ancients introduced their science of ethics with an enquiry into the end of human conduct, and this it was that they meant by ' the Good.' Aristotle opens [CCH pg 57] his treatise on ethics with the following words, some of which have been already quoted above: "Every art and every scientific enquiry, and similarly every action and purpose may be said to aim at some good. Hence the good has been well defined as that at which all things aim. But it is clear that there is a difference in the ends; for the ends are sometimes activities (energeiai), and sometimes results (erga) beyond the mere activities. Also where there are certain ends (telh) beyond the actions, the results are naturally superior to the activities." [Welldon's translation.] Again: "
If it is true that in the sphere of action there is an end which we wish for its
own sake, and for the sake of which we wish everything else, and that we do not
desire all things for the sake of something else (for so the process will go on
ad infinitum and our desire will be idle and futile), it is clear that this will
be the good or the supreme good (tagaqon kai to
ariston). Does it not follow then that the
knowledge of this supreme good is of great importance for the conduct of life (proj
ton bion) Man then idealises human life; he knows that it must have an end (teloj) which must yield him perfect satisfaction. Happiness is therefore an element or factor in the summum bonum. But the question is : Wherein does his happiness consist? We want [CCH pg 58] to define the nature of happiness for man. And for this we need to ascertain the function of man (to ergon tou anqrwpou). " For as with a flute player, a statuary, or any artisan, or in fact any body who has a definite function and action, his goodness or excellence seems to lie in his function, so it would seem to be with Man, if indeed he has a definite function. Can it be said then that, while a carpenter and a cobbler have definite functions and actions, Man unlike them is naturally functionless (argon)? The reasonable view is that as the eye, the hand, the foot, and similarly each several part of the body has a definite function, so Man may be regarded as having a definite function apart from all these. What then can this function be? It is not life (to zhn); for life is apparently something which man shares with the plants; and it is something peculiar to him (to idion) that we are looking for. We must exclude therefore the life of nutrition and increase. There is next what may be called the life of sensation (aisqhtikh). But this, too, is apparently shared by Man with horses, cattle, and all other animals. There remains what I may call the practical life of the rational part of Man's being (praktikh tis tou logon econtoj)." Aristotle's point then is that man is meant or designed for some end, and that if he can only find out what it is, and after striving to reach it find it, he will find Happiness. I cannot but think that there is some confusion of thought among writers on ethics in the use they [CCH pg 59] make of the term Happiness. It is not always clear whether they mean by this a state or an activity. That the state can only be realised by an activity can well be imagined. But in investigating the summum bonum there must be perfect clearness as to what is meant. It is clear from Aristotle that when he spoke of Happiness he meant something that was not capable of realisation by the lower animals. He did not mean simply a state of contentment and satisfaction. Everyone would agree that it was better to be a discontented man than a contented pig. And so, when Happiness is set forth as the summum bonum of human effort, it must surely be meant that the Happiness, regarded as a state of satisfaction, a state of pleasurable feeling, is to result from the realisation of true manhood. When Happiness is set forth as the end of human life then, unless some clear definition is given of the term, we are left in uncertainty whether it is meant that the reasonable thing for man is to seek for pleasurable feelings. It is a fairly obvious criticism to make on Aristotle that he assumes Happiness to be the supreme good before he has defined what Happiness is. It is according to him that which is sought for as an end in itself, and not for the sake of something else. If it be the case that Happiness is sought for its own sake, why is there .any uncertainty as to what Happiness is? That there may be doubt what will produce it, is intelligible. But there cannot be any doubt what a thing is which is sought for its own sake. [CCH pg 60] I take it that what is needed to make this point clear is to carefully discriminate the two factors of the summum bonum. These we may call its active and passive factors. As when we speak of a man as a 'good man,' we mean that in him the qualities which make our ideal man are conspicuous, and that these qualities are displayed in action, so when we speak of the ' supreme good ' of human life we must include in this term a perfect human activity. But reason demands that this should be in a state of perfect happiness.
Chapter IV. Conscience and Reason.IT seems well now to say something of the relation of Conscience to Reason. I have already said that I regard conscience as the imperative aspect of moral reason. Conscience then, in mathematical language, is a function of the moral reason. But I take it that conscience is also a function of reason other than moral. In so far as conscience is a function of moral reason I hold that Intuitionism is true. In so far as conscience is a function of reason other than moral Intuitionism seems to me not true. The intuitional view of ethics is in principle this: that we know the Tightness of actions intuitively, or, in other words, when the conscience tells us that some action is wrong, it is not that we have reasoned out that it is wrong, but that by a special faculty called conscience we know it to be wrong. This is, I believe, a false psychology. Conscience is much too complex a thing to be explained as a special faculty. At the same time it seems to me clear that Intuitionism is partly true, and that we have an intuitive [CCH pg 64] knowledge that there are certain things which we ought to do. Unless there is some 'ought ' intuitively known, there can be no ought at all. For by no possible process of reasoning can you get an ought out of a not-ought. But if there be some one moral duty known by intuition, other moral duties may be deduced from it by a process of ordinary reasoning. We have here an ethical syllogism by which an ethical or moral proposition is deduced from an ethical proposition and another proposition not ethical. Thus I ought to do x. To do x it is necessary to do y, Therefore I ought to do y. But it is important to notice that doing y must be an exercise of my volition, otherwise the syllogism is fallacious. We could not argue that because I ought to speak the truth, and because I cannot speak the truth without increasing my own happiness, therefore I ought to increase my own happiness. For here, in the non-ethical premise, the increasing of my own happiness may not express an activity of my volition, but only a result which will follow on speaking the truth. This being so the conclusion does not follow. The only conclusion that could be drawn from these two premises would be that it is not a moral duty to me not to increase my happiness; or in other words, that it is right to increase my happiness. In the above syllogism then it is necessary that doing x and doing y should both express an activity of the subject's volition. If this is so the ' ought ' of the conclusion is moral, as is the ought of the ethical premise. [CCH pg 65] This kind of ethical reasoning which can be ex- pressed in the form of the above syllogism is not uncommon. There are instances of it in the New Testament. Thus in the Epistle to the Romans St. Paul writes, " We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves . . . for Christ also pleased not himself" (Rom. xv. 1, 3). It is here implied that Christians ought to be imitators of Christ, and this imitation makes necessary the duty of pleasing not ourselves. There is a very remarkable moral appeal in St. John's first Epistle : " If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man hath beheld God at any time : if we love one another God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us." It is here taken for granted that we ought to shew love to those who have shewn love to us. The argument may be ex- pressed in two syllogisms : 1. We ought to shew love to those who have shewn love to us. God has shewn love to us, Therefore we ought to shew love to God. 2. We ought to shew love to God. We cannot shew love to God except by shewing love to one another, Therefore we ought to shew love to one another. The conclusion here has been deduced from one ethical proposition, namely, ' We ought to shew love to those who have shewn love to us,' and two non- ethical propositions, ' God hath shewn love to us,' and [CCH pg 66] ' We cannot shew love to God except by shewing love to one another.' This last seems to be what St. John means when he says : ' No man hath beheld God at any time.' It becomes clear then that to derive an ethical pro- position, which is an expression of moral duty, by a process of reasoning, it is necessary to have one ethical proposition to start with and no more than one. All the other propositions made use of are non-ethical. It would of course be utterly useless to attempt to deduce ethical propositions by a logical process unless we had some admitted ethical proposition to form the ethical premise of the first syllogism. Nor is it of any use to have more than one. We see then that if to do x, which is my moral duty, it is necessary for me to do y, then to do y becomes to me a moral duty, and the reason why the doing of y is a moral duty is that the doing of # is a moral duty. If we proceed further to enquire why the doing of a; is a moral duty, one of two reasons must be found for this. Either the doing of a? is a moral duty because it is necessary to the doing of a, say, itself a moral duty. Or the doing of x is a moral duty because it is intuitively seen to be such. In this case the reason for it lies in the nature of the case. Unless there is some one moral duty the reason of which lies in the nature of the case, there can be no moral duty at all, and no science of ethics worthy of the name of science. There must be at least one intuitively known moral duty, and there may of course be more than one, if there are any at all. [CCH pg 67] Thus if the moral intuitions were to remain constant moral duties would vary according to the growth of experience interpreted by reason other than moral. Say that it is a moral intuition to shew gratitude and to make return for benefits received from another person who has voluntarily bestowed them. Endless moral duties may flow by a perfectly logical sequence from this one. A Christian and another not a Christian have, say, both alike this moral intuition of grati- tude. Yet what consequences follow from it to the Christian who believes St. John's words that "God so loved us," which consequences do not apply to the case of the non-Christian who does not know God's love ! If we know that we have freely received, we know also that we ought freely to give. Ignorance of the fact that we have freely received would mean that we could not know that we ought freely to give, even though the moral intuition to show gratitude for benefits were ours. A critical case for testing any theory of the variations of conscience is that of the trial of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. I have never yet seen a satisfactory explanation of this moral perplexity. Yet it seems to me that if the above analysis of the conscience be true, we can explain this incident without any shock to the moral reason. For if we suppose, as just now, that it is a moral intuition to shew gratitude and to make return for benefits received, but that it is not a moral intuition not to kill on this point I propose to say something [CCH pg 68] presently then the moral perplexity is removed. For Abraham has, according to the story in Genesis, received a child in his old age, whose birth had been announced beforehand to him by a messenger from God. The child is born in due course. He is obviously from the circumstances of his conception and birth a divine gift. What gratitude can the father shew for this signal favour ? It seems to me possible that the people among whom Abraham was living were in the habit of sacrificing their children to their gods. If so, here was Abraham's trial. Does he owe less to his God than these people were ready to give to theirs ? Ought he not to sacrifice his son to the God who has given him ? And it must be remembered that the whole point of the story depends on the fact that this which God demanded of Abraham, and which accorded with his moral reason, was quite contrary to his altruistic instincts. The temptation, as we use the word, was to disobey. The temptation was not to slay his son. All the instincts of a father's affection rebelled against the command ; and yet he owed his son to God. His moral duty was hard to fulfil, but it was clear. It was God's trial of him, and he stood the test. There is nothing to shock the moral reason in the conclusion of the story. Had Abraham wanted to slay his son, had an evil instinct prompted him to take his son's life, and had he made a divine command an excuse for doing what he wanted to do, the story would have shocked our moral reason. As it is, I do not think it need at all. [CCH pg 69] But it may be said that this explanation of a great moral difficulty, though satisfactory in its conclusion, proceeds from a false hypothesis, namely, that it is not an intuitively known moral duty to refrain from killing a fellow-man. Against such a supposition I can imagine that some may recoil with horror, as possibly it seems to them so obviously intuitive not to murder. But I think that an impartial investigation of the matter will shew that the hypothesis made above to justify the story of Abraham's meditated sacrifice of Isaac is correct after all. For let it be remembered first of all that we do not even to-day with all our enlightenment consider it in all cases wrong to take a fellow-man's life. It is true that the taking of life is regulated by law, yet still life is taken away, and even Christians take part in war which involves the slaughter of their fellows. I am not here discussing the ethics of war, for this is alien to the present subject, but I am insisting on the fact that man does even to-day under certain circumstances take away the life of man and that deliberately. This is a fact to be borne in mind. Further, I do not think that we are justified in regarding it as a primary moral intuition not to kill. For how would those who take this view explain the conduct of Moses recorded in Exodus ii. 11, 12? When people regard it as a moral intuition to abstain from murder, they are confusing, as it seems to me, two things, namely, moral intuition and virtuous instinct. It has become with us an instinct to refrain [CCH pg 70] from murder, and we shudder and recoil from the very thought of bloodshedding in revenge or hatred. This is one of those instincts of which I spoke in the last chapter, which have been acquired for us as instincts by the virtues of former generations. We do not count it a virtue to abstain from murder, because our instinct to do so is so strong apart from all motive of self-respect. But if it is said : Well, but it is certainly vicious to murder, I reply that of course it is. We know that we ought not to murder if we are tempted to do so, that is to say if some instinct tends to overpower the virtuous instinct of abstention from murder, such as the instinct of revenge or the instinct to have some- thing for our own which is kept from us by the life of another. And we know all the more that we ought not to murder because we feel within us the virtuous instinct against which the lower instinct is striving. It is our moral reason which tells us that the one instinct is lower than the other. But the moral duty of abstention from murder is really based on the general moral duty of refraining from hatred or injury of another. Jesus Christ traced murder to its proper source : " Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment : but I say unto you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment ; and whosoever shall say to his brother Raca [an expression of contempt] shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say Thou fool [an [CCH pg 71] expression of condemnation] shall be in danger of the Gehenna of fire " (St. Matt. v. 21, ff.). As I understand this passage, we have here three gradations of punishment. Our Lord is not instituting a legal system. Such was far from the intention of Him Who declared unmistakably that His kingdom was not of this world. The three degrees of punish- ment ascending from the cognisance of the local court through trial by the Sanhedrim, the highest spiritual jurisdiction, to the punishment of the worst criminal, are designed to shew the ascending gravity of the sins of anger, contempt, and condemnation. [See Lange's Gospel of St. Matthew on this passage.] The root sin is, according to Christ's teaching, anger or hatred. We may compare St. John's words in his first Epistle (iii. 15) : " Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." The moral reason then gives the duty of abstention from hatred or injury. The moral life of men in its earlier stages was of course only struggling towards the recognition of this, and the duty of abstention from murder would receive an early recognition, murder being the extreme instance of hatred. It is nothing to the purpose to say that abstention from murder only came about to make the life of a community at all possible, and that the law of the community, established in its own interest, made murder criminal. Human law such as this could not prove lasting unless it had its basis in the great moral law of God. Men who suffered the penalty of [CCH pg 72] the law of their community would recognise the justice and not merely the necessity of their sentence. Human law, while it supports itself by an appeal to cosmic principles what is implied in this expression later chapters will reveal is yet based on eternal laws of God. That it is possible that human law should not be based on eternal laws of God I fully recognise, for this is what we mean when we speak of a law as unjust. Unjust laws must in time give place to just laws, and the laws of man approximate more and more to the eternal laws of God. But the kingdoms of this world, which enforce the law, are not free from the cosmic spirit, yet are they God's agents for advancing the eternal law until they become "the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ." In saying this I am anticipating much that will be worked out more fully in later chapters of this essay. I have said enough now to justify the line I took up in regard to the story of Abraham's meditated sacrifice of his son Isaac. The gratitude he owed to God was a moral duty proceeding from self-respect. In obeying the command of God he acted morally, and his obedience was a righteous obedience. Of course it may be said that Abraham's notions of what God required of him were crude. This seems to me undeniable ; and it were absurd to expect to find in Abraham Christian thoughts about God. God's commands to men are, it would seem, a function of their moral state, and these cannot appear the same to a being with moral reason fully developed and to a [CCH pg 73] being whose moral reason is as yet/ only struggling to an understanding of itself. It seems to me that one of the earliest intuitions of the moral reason would be the nobility and the duty of gratitude. And along with the cognition that we ought to shew gratitude is the instinct to do it. But it may be said that the instinct is often but a weak one, and unable of itself to withstand stronger and selfish instincts. This is true. The weakness of the instinct of gratitude may result from our own selfishness which blinds us to the extent to which gratitude is due. For we find ourselves unable often to see that when we have received a benefit from some other person, the benefit has been bestowed disinterestedly. We are too ready to assume that when people do us good they have some ulterior motive other than the satisfaction of doing the good. And it is possible to withhold gratitude on the ground that it is not really due. The instinct to show gratitude is not blind. The reason must first be satisfied that gratitude is due, and the instinct then becomes very strong. It may seem that gratitude is a merely mercenary instinct. It is such an obvious duty to pay our debts, and one that no self-respecting person can refuse to recognise and act upon. It is something if it be allowed that self-respect as distinguished from selfishness (and the two are absolutely distinct) is the basis of gratitude, for this is to allow that it has its root in the moral reason. " What is thine is mine, and [CCH pg 74] what is mine is my own " is the thought of selfishness, that is the natural unspiritualised thought. " What is mine is thine " is a thought that springs from self- respect, even if there be appended to the words, " because I owe it to thee." Only a being endowed with moral reason can have a cognition of a debt. This may at first seem strange, but I think that reflection will convince us that self-respect is necessary to the acknowledgment that we owe anything. But it may seem that we are passing from the ' ought ' to the notion of what we owe, which is not necessarily the same; that while it is likely that ' ought ' is in origin the preterite of ' owe,' the two words have so separated from one another that it is mere equivocation to bring them together again. This equivocation I am most anxious to avoid, and although I think that in the end it will come to be recognised that all moral duties can be performed from a motive of gratitude, I am bound to recognise that we have a cognition of other duties in the first place which do not seem to be reasoned from the intuitively known moral duty of gratitude. But what it does seem to me important to recognise is the fact that gratitude is both instinct and duty. As conduct does not proceed wholly from reason, but requires instinct to carry it out, and as the instinct of gratitude can become stronger than all other instincts, it is of the very greatest importanc |