CHAPTER X
THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF CONSCIENCE
THE RIGHT AS THE RATIONAL—SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS VIEW—THE RIGHT AS THE ONWARD—THE RIGHT AS HABIT—RIGHT IS NOT THE SOCIAL AS AGAINST THE INDIVIDUAL—IT IS, IN A SENSE, THE SOCIAL AS AGAINST THE SENSUAL—THE RIGHT AS A SYNTHESIS OF PERSONAL INFLUENCES—PERSONAL AUTHORITY—CONFESSION, PRAYER, PUBLICITY—TRUTH—DEPENDENCE OF RIGHT UPON IMAGINATION—CONSCIENCE REFLECTS A SOCIAL GROUP—IDEAL PERSONS AS FACTORS IN CONSCIENCE.
I agree with those moralists who hold that what we judge to be the right is simply the rational, in a large sense of that word. The mind is the theatre of conflict for an infinite number of impulses, variously originating, among which it is ever striving to produce some sort of unification or harmony. This endeavor to harmonize or assimilate includes deliberate reasoning, but is something much more general and continuous than that. It is mostly an unconscious or subconscious manipulation of the materials presented, an unremitting comparison and rearrangement of them, which ever tends to organize them into some sort of a whole. The right, then, is that which stands this test; the sanction of conscience attaches to those thoughts which, in the long run, maintain their places as part of that orderly whole which the mental instinct calls for, and which it is ever working with more or less success to build up. That is right which presents itself, after the mind has done its full work upon the matter, as the mentally necessary, which we cannot gainsay without breaking up our mental integrity.
According to this view of the matter, judgments of right and wrong are in no way isolated or radically different in kind from other judgments. Such peculiarity as they have seems to come chiefly from the unusual intensity of the mental conflict that precedes them. The slightest scrutiny of experience shows, it seems to me, that the sharp and absolute distinction often assumed to exist between conscience and other mental activities does not hold good in life. There are gradual transitions from judgments which no one thinks of as peculiarly moral, through others which some would regard as moral and others would not, to those which are universally so regarded; and likewise moral feeling or sentiment varies a good deal in different individuals, and in the same individual under different conditions.
The class of judgments which everyone considers as moral is perhaps limited to such as follow an exciting and somewhat protracted mental struggle, involving an imaginative weighing of conflicting personal ideas. A line of conduct has to be chosen; alternatives present themselves, each of which is backed by strong impulses, among which are some, at least, of sympathetic origin; the mind is intensely, even painfully, aroused, and when a decision is reached, it is accompanied by a somewhat peculiar sort of feeling called the sense of obligation, duty, or right. There would be little agreement, however, as to what sort of situations evoke this feeling. We are apt to feel that any question in regard to which we are much in earnest is a question of right and wrong. To the artist a consciously false stroke of brush or chisel is a moral wrong, a sin; and a good carpenter will suffer remorse if he lets a bad joint go uncorrected.
The fact that the judgment of right is likely to present itself to people of emotional temperament as an imagined voice, admonishing them what they ought to do, is an illustration of that essentially social or interlocutory character of thought, spoken of in an earlier chapter. Our thoughts are always, in some sort, imaginary conversations; and when vividly felt they are likely to become quite distinctly so. On the other hand, people whose moral life is calm perceive little or no distinction, in this regard, between the conclusions of conscience and other judgments.
Of course, the view that the right is the rational would be untrue, if by rational were meant merely the result of formal reasoning. The judgment of right and the conclusion of formal thought are frequently opposed to each other, because, I take it, the latter is a comparatively narrow, partial, and conventional product of the mind. The former is rational and mentally authoritative in a larger sense; its premises are immeasurably richer; it deals with the whole content of life, with instincts freighted with the inarticulate conclusions of a remote past, and with the unformulated inductions of individual experience. To set the product of a superficial ratiocination over the final output, in conscience, of our whole mental being, is a kind of pedantry. I do not mean to imply that there is usually an opposition between the two—they should work harmoniously together—but only to assert that when there is, conscience must be regarded as of a profounder rationality.
On the other hand, the wrong, the immoral, is, in a similar sense, the irrational. It is that which, after the mind has done its full work upon the matter, presents itself as the mentally isolated, the inharmonious, that which we cannot follow without having, in our more collected moods, a sense of having been untrue to ourselves, of having done ourselves a harm. The mind in its fullest activity is denied and desecrated; we are split in two. To violate conscience is to act under the control of an incomplete and fragmentary state of mind; and so to become less a person, to begin to disintegrate and go to pieces. An unjust or incontinent deed produces remorse, apparently because the thought of it will not lie still in the mind, but is of such a nature that there is no comfortable place for it in the system of thought already established there.
The question of right and wrong, as it presents itself to any particular mind, is, then, a question of the completest practicable organization of the impulses with which that mind finds itself compelled to deal. The working out of the right conclusion may be compared to the process by which a deliberative body comes to a conclusion upon some momentous public measure. Time must be given for all the more important passions, prejudices, traditions, interests, and the like, to be urged upon the members with such cogency as their advocates can give them, and for attempts to harmonize these conflicting forces so that a measure can be framed which the body can be induced to pass. And when a decision is finally reached there is a sense of relief, the greater in proportion as the struggle has been severe, and a tendency, even on the part of the opposition, to regard the matter as settled. Those people who cannot achieve moral unity, but have always a sense of two personalities warring within them, may be compared to certain countries in whose assemblies political parties are so embittered that they never come to an understanding with one another.
The mental process is, of course, only the proximate source of the idea of right, the conflict by which the competitive strength of the various impulses is measured, and some combination of them achieved; behind it is the whole history of the race and of the individual, in which impulses are rooted. Instinctive passions, like love, ambition, and revenge; the momentum of habit, the need of change, personal ascendencies, and the like, all have their bearing upon the final synthesis, and must either be conciliated or suppressed. Thus in case of a strong passion, like revenge let us say, one of two things is pretty sure to happen; either it will succeed in getting its revengeful impulse, more or less disguised perhaps, judged as right; or, if opposing ideas prove stronger, revenge will be kept under by the rise of an intense feeling of wrong that associates itself with it. If one observes that a person has a very vivid sense of the wrong of some
## particular impulse, one may usually infer that he has had in some way to
contend with it; either as a temptation in his own mind, or as injuriously manifested in the conduct of others.
The natural way to solve a moral question, when immediate action is not required, is to let it lie in the mind, turning it over from time to time as attention is directed to it. In this manner the new situation gradually relates itself to all the mental forces having pertinency to it. The less violent but more persistent tendencies connect themselves quietly but firmly to recalcitrant impulse, enwrapping it like the filaments of a spider’s web, and bringing it under discipline. Something of this sort is implied in the rule of conduct suggested by Mr. H. R. Marshall, in his excellent work, “Instinct and Reason”: “Act to restrain the impulses which demand immediate reaction, in order that the impulse order determined by the existence of impulses of less strength, but of wider significance, may have full weight in the guidance of your life.”[93]
It occurs to me, however, that there is no absolute rule that the right is the deliberate. It is usually so, because the danger of irrationality and disintegration comes, in most cases, from the temporary sway of some
## active impulse, like that to strike or use injurious words in anger. But
rationality involves decision as well as deliberation; and there are persons in whom the impulse to meditate and ponder so much outweighs the impulse to decide and act, as itself to endanger the unity of life. Such a person may well come to feel that the right is the decisive. It seems likely that in most minds the larger rationality, which gives the sense of right, is the sequel of much pondering, but is definitely achieved in moments of vivid insight.
The main significance of the view that the right is the rational is to deny that there is any sharp distinction in kind between the question of right and wrong and other mental questions; the conclusion of conscience being held to be simply a more comprehensive judgment, reached by the same process as other judgments. It still leaves untouched the remoter problems, mental and social, underlying all judgments; as, for instance, of the nature of impulses, of what determines their relative intensity and persistence, of the character of that process of competition and assimilation among them of which judgments are the outcome; and of the social order as determining impulses both indirectly, through its action upon heredity, and directly through suggestion.
And behind these is that problem of problems, to which all the roads of thought lead, that question of organization or vital process, of which all special questions of society or of the mind are phases. From whatever point of view we look at life, we can see something going on which it is convenient to call organization, development, or the like; but I suppose that all who have thought much about the matter feel that we have only a vague notion of what the fact is that lies behind these words.
I mention these things merely to disclaim any present attempt to fathom them, and to point out that the aim of this chapter is limited to some observations on the working of social or personal factors in the
## particular sort of organization which we call conscience or moral
judgment.
It is useless to look for any other or higher criterion of right than conscience. What is felt to be right is right; that is what the word means. Any theory of right that should turn out to be irreconcilable with the sense of right must evidently be judged as false. And when it is urged that conscience is variable, we can only answer that, for this very reason, the right cannot be reduced to a universal and conclusive formula. Like life in all its phases, it is a progressive revelation out of depths we do not penetrate.
For the individual considering his own conduct, his conscience is the only possible moral guide, and though it differ from that of everyone else, it is the only right there is for him; to violate it is to commit moral suicide. Speculating more largely on conduct in general he may find the right in some collective aspect of conscience, in which his own conscience appears as member of a larger whole; and with reference to which certain particular consciences, at variance with his own, like those of certain sorts of criminals, may appear as degenerate or wrong—and this will not surprise him, because science teaches us to expect degenerate variations in all forms of life. But, however broad a view he takes, he cannot do otherwise than refer the matter to his conscience; so that what I think, or—to generalize it—what _we_ think, must, in one form or another, be the arbiter of right and wrong, so far as there can be any. Other tests become valid only in so far as conscience adopts them.
It would seem that any scientific study of the matter must consist essentially in investigating the conditions and relations of concrete right—the when, where, and why of what people _do_ think is right. Social or moral science can never be a final source or test of morality; though it can reveal facts and relations which may help conscience in making its authoritative judgment.
The view that the right is the rational is quite consistent with the fact that, for those who have surplus energy, the right is the _onward_. The impulse to act, to become, to let out the life that rises within from obscure springs of power, is the need of needs, underlying all more special impulses; and this onward _Trieb_ must always count in our judgments of right: it is one of the things conscience has to make room for. There can be no harmony in a mental life which denies expression to this most persistent and fundamental of all instinctive tendencies: and consequently the equilibrium which the active mind seeks, and a sense of which is one with the sense of right, is never a state of rest, but an _equilibrium mobile_. Our situation may be said to resemble that of an acrobat balancing himself upon a rolling sphere, and enabled to stand upright only on condition of moving continually forward. The right never remains precisely the same two days in succession; but as soon as any
## particular state of right is achieved, the mental centre of gravity
begins to move onward and away from it, so that we can hold our ground only by effecting a new adjustment. Hence the merely negative can never be the right to a vigorous person, or to a vigorous society, because the mind will not be content with anything so inadequate to its own nature. The good self must be what Emerson calls a “crescive self,” and the right must mark a track across the “waste abyss of possibility” and lead out the energies to congenial exertion.
This idea is nowhere, perhaps, more cogently stated and illustrated than in M. Guyau’s penetrating work, “A Sketch of Morality.” He holds that the sense of duty is, in one aspect, a sense of a power to do things, and that this power tends in itself to create a sense of obligation. We can, therefore we must. “Obligation is an internal expansion—a need to complete our ideas by converting them into action.”[94] Even pain may be sought as part of that larger life which the growing mind requires. “Leopardi, Heine, or Lenau would probably not have exchanged those hours of anguish in which they composed their finest songs for the greatest possible enjoyment. Dante suffered.... Which of us would not undergo a similar suffering? Some heart-aches are infinitely sweet.”[95] And so with benevolence and what is called self-sacrifice. “... charity is but one with overflowing fecundity; it is like a maternity too large to be confined within the family. The mother’s breast needs life eager to empty it; the heart of the truly humane creature needs to be gentle and helpful to all.”[96] “The young man is full of enthusiasm; he is ready for every sacrifice because, in point of fact, it is necessary that he should sacrifice something of himself—that he should diminish himself to a certain extent; he is too full of life to live only for himself.”[97]
The right, then, is not merely the repressive discipline with which we sometimes identify it, but is also something warm, fresh and outward-looking. That which we somewhat vaguely and coldly call mental development is, when at its best, the revelation of an expanding, variegating, and beautiful whole, of which the right act is a harmonious member.
When, on the other hand, we say that right is largely determined by habit, we only emphasize the other aspect of that progressive mingling of continuity with change, which we see in mental life in all its phases. Habit, we know, makes lines of less resistance in thought, feeling, and action; and the existence of these tracks must always count in the formation of a judgment of right, as of any other judgment. It ought not, apparently, to be set over against novel impulses as a contrary principle, but rather thought of as a phase of all impulses, since novelty always consists, from one point of view, in a fresh combination of habits. It is much the same question as that of suggestion and choice, or of invention and imitation. The concrete fact, the real thing, in each case, is not one of these as against the other, or one modified by the other, but a single, vital act of which these are aspects, having no separate existence.
Whether a person’s life, in its moral or any other aspect, is obviously changeful, or, on the contrary, appears to be merely repetitive or habitual, depends upon whether the state of his mind, and of the conditions about it, are favorable to rapid changes in the system of his thought. Thus if he is young and vigorous, and if he has a natural open-mindedness and keenness of sensibility, he will be so much the more likely, other things equal, to incorporate fresh elements of thought and make a new synthesis, instead of running on habit. Variety of life in the past, preventing excessive deepening of the mental ruts, and contact with strong and novel influences in the present, have the same tendency.
The rigidly habitual or traditionary morality of savages is apparently a reflection of the restriction and sameness of their social life; and a similar type of morals is found even in a complex society, as in China, when the social system has become rigid by the equilibration of competing ideas. On the other hand, the stir and change of the more
## active parts of our society make control by mere habit impossible. There
are no simple dominant habits; tendencies are mixed and conflicting, so that the person must either be intelligently moral or else degenerate. He must either make a fresh synthesis or have no synthesis at all.
What is called principle appears to be simply a habit of conscience, a rule formed originally by a synthesis of various impulses, but become somewhat mechanical and independent of its origin—as it is the nature of habit to do. As the mind hardens and matures there is a growing inaptitude to take in novel and powerful personal impressions, and a corresponding ascendency of habit and system; social sentiment, the flesh and blood of conduct, partly falls away, exposing a skeleton of moral principles. The sense of duty presents itself less and less as a vivid sympathetic impulse, and more and more as a sense of the economy and restfulness of a definite standard of conduct. When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty.
## Actions that appear memorable or heroic are seldom achieved at the
moment of decisive choice, but are more likely to come after the habit of thought which produces the action has become somewhat mechanical and involuntary. It is probably a mistake to imagine that the soldier who braves death in battle, the fireman who enters the burning building, the brakeman who pursues his duty along the icy top of a moving train, or the fisherman who rows away from his vessel into the storm and mist, is usually in an acute state of heroism. It is all in the day’s work; the
## act is part of a system of thought and conduct which has become habitual
and would be painful to break. Death is not imagined in all its terrors and compared with social obligation; the case is far simpler. As a rule there is no time in a crisis for complicated mental operations, and whether the choice is heroic or cowardly it is sure to be simple. If there is any conflict of suggestions it is brief, and the one that gains ascendency is likely to be followed mechanically, without calculation of the future.
One who studies the “sense of oughtness” in children will have no difficulty in seeing that it springs largely from a reluctance to break habits, an indisposition, that is, to get out of mental ruts. It is in the nature of the mind to seek a principle or unifying thought—the mind is a rule-demanding instinct—and in great part this need is met by a habit of thought, inculcated perhaps by some older person who proclaims and enforces the rule, or perhaps by the unintended pressure of conditions which emphasize one suggestion and shut out others. However the rule originates, it meets a mental want, and, if not too strongly opposed by other impulses, is likely to be adopted and felt as obligatory just because it is a consistent way of thinking. As Mr. Sully says, “The truth is that children have a tremendous belief in law.”[98]
The books on child-study give many instances of the surprising allegiance which children often give to rule, merely as rule, and even an intermittent observer will be sure to corroborate them. Thus a child five years old, when on a visit, was invited to “open his mouth and shut his eyes,” and upon his doing so a piece of candy was put into the former. When he tasted it he pulled it out and exclaimed, “Mamma don’t want me to have candy.” Now this did not seem to be affectation, nor was the child other than fond of sweets, nor afraid of punishment or blame; he was simply under the control of a need for mental consistency. The no-candy rule had been promulgated and enforced at home; he had adopted it as part of his system of thought, and, when it was broken, his moral sense, otherwise the harmony of his mind, was shocked to a degree that the sweet taste of the candy could not overcome. Again, R. was subjected nearly every evening for several years to a somewhat painful operation called “bending his foot,” intended to correct a slight deformity. After becoming accustomed to this he would sometimes protest and even cry if it were proposed to omit it. I thought I could see that moral allegiance to a rule, merely as such, weakened as he grew older; and the explanation of this I took to be that the increasing competition of suggestions and conflict of precepts made this simple, mechanical unity impossible, and so forced the mind, still striving for harmony, to exert its higher organizing activity and attempt a larger sort of unification. It is the same principle as that which prevents the civilized man from retaining the simple allegiance to rule and habit that the savage has; his complex life cannot be unified in this way, any more than his accounts can be notched on a stick; and he is forced, if he is to achieve any unity of life, to seek it in some more elaborate standard of behavior. Under uniform conditions the habitual is the rational, and therefore the moral; but under complex conditions this ceases to be the case.
Of course this way of looking at the matter does not do away with all the difficulties involved in it, but does, it seems to me, put habitual and other morality on the common ground of rationality, and show the apparently sharp division between them to be an illusion.
Those who think as I do will reject the opinion that the right is, in any general sense, the social as opposed to the individual. As already stated, I look upon this antithesis as false when used to imply a radical opposition. All our human thought and activity is either individual or social, according to how you look at it, the two being no more than phases of the same thing, which common thought, always inclined to confuse words with things, attempts to separate. This is as true in the ethical field as in any other. The consideration of other persons usually enters largely into questions of right and wrong; but the ethical decision is distinctly an assertion of a private, individualized view of the matter. Surely there is no sound general principle in accordance with which the right is represented by the suggestions of the social environment, and the wrong by our more private impulses.
The right is always a private impulse, always a self-assertion, with no prejudice, however, to its social character. The “ethical self” is not less a self for being ethical, but if anything more of a self, because it is a fuller, more highly organized expression of personality. All will recognize, I imagine, that a strong sense of duty involves self-feeling, so that we say to ourselves emphatically I ought. It would be no sense of duty at all if we did not feel that there was something about it peculiar to us and antithetical to some of the influences
## acting upon us. It is important for many purposes to emphasize the fact
that the ethical self is always a public self; but it is equally true and important that it is always a private self.
In short, ethical thinking and feeling, like all our higher life, has its individual and social aspects, with no peculiar emphasis on either. If the social aspect is here at its highest, so also is the individual aspect.
The same objection applies to any form of the antithesis self _versus_ other, considered as a general statement of moral situations. It is a fallacious one, involving vague and material notions of what personality is—vague because material, for we cannot, I think, reflect closely upon the facts of personality without seeing that they are primarily mental or spiritual, and by no means even analogous to the more obvious aspects of the physical. As a matter of fact, ego and alter, self and sympathy, are correlative, and always mingled in ethical judgments, which are not distinguished by having less self and more other in them, but by being a completer synthesis of all pertinent impulses. The characteristic of a sense of right is not ego or alter, individual or social, but mental unification, and the peculiar feeling that accompanies it.
Egoism can be identified with wrong only when we mean by it some narrow or unstable phase of the self; and altruism, if we take it to mean susceptibility to be impressed by other people, is equally wrong when it, in turn, becomes narrow or unstable, as we see it in hysterical persons. As I have already said, I hold altruism, when used, as it seems to be ordinarily, to denote a supposed peculiar class of impulses, separate from another supposed class called egoistic, to be a mere fiction, engendered by the vaguely material idea of personality just mentioned. Most higher kinds of thought are altruistic, in the sense that they involve a more or less distinct reference to other persons; but when intensely conceived, these same kinds of thought are usually, if not always, self-thoughts, or egoistic, as well.
The question whether a man shall keep his dollar or give it to a beggar, for example, looks at first sight like a question of ego _versus_ alter, because there are two physical bodies present and visibly associated with the conflicting impulses. In this merely physical sense, of referring to one material body rather than another, it is in fact such a question, but not necessarily in any properly mental, social, or moral sense.
Let us look at the matter a moment with reference to various possible meanings of the words altruism and altruistic. Taking the latter word as the most convenient for our purpose, I can think of three meanings, any one of which would answer well enough to the vague current usage of it: first, that which is suggested by another person, that is by his appearance, words, or other symbols; second, that which is for the benefit of another; third, good or moral.
In the first sense, which carries no moral implication at all, it is altruistic to give to the beggar, but the word is also applicable to the greater part of our actions, since most of them are suggested by others in some way. And, of course, many of the actions included are what are generally called selfish ones. To strike a man with whom we are angry, to steal from one of whom we are envious, to take liberties with an attractive woman, and all sorts of reprehensible proceedings suggested by the sight of another person, would be altruistic in this sense, which I suppose, therefore, cannot be the one intended by those who use the word as the antithesis to egoistic.
If we use the word in the second sense, that of being for the benefit of another, to give to the beggar may or may not be altruistic; thoughtful philanthropy is inclined to say that it is usually for his harm. It may, perhaps, be said that we at least intend to benefit or please him, that this is the main thing, and that it is a question whether the action has an I-reference or a you-reference in the mind of the actor. As to this I would again call attention to what was said of the nature of I and you as personal ideas in Chapter III ., and of the nature of egotism in
##