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All these subjective moral philosophers tacitly assume with Rousseau that man is by nature good. They take no account of the empirically established fact that there are men whose Fichtean conscience, or whose Kantian categorical imperative, urges them to a course of action which according to the general opinion is bad, wicked and revolting. This criticism applies to Beneke, according to whom Morality is "a development of human nature which exists as such within us, and which we need only continue or promote"; it applies equally to Reid and Dugald Stewart, who describe it as an inclination, which has become a habit or a principle, to act according to the dictates of conscience. But conscience must be explained. It is by no means self-evident that each individual conscience will have the same standard of good and evil. The moral philosopher must not shirk the duty of showing how the conscience acquires its concepts of moral values, with what weapons it provides Reason to combat Instinct, which demands satisfaction without paying any attention to the warnings of conscience.

The great majority of moral philosophers do not endorse the view of Kant and Fichte, that conscience is a piece of human nature, a sense inborn in man, an inner voice that is independent of, and unmoved by, external influences; on the contrary, they are convinced that conscience originates outside the individual, that, in his consciousness, it is the advocate retained by society, commissioned to plead the cause of the community before the reason of the individual even, nay, especially, when the interests of the community run counter to those of the individual.

Bacon calls the presence in our consciousness of a defender of the interests of society our innate social affection, and treats it unreservedly as the source of Morality. Long before his time the Stoics had noted the existence of this social affection and called it ; Hugo Grotius, with the intellectual perspicuity peculiar to himself, says that "Right and Morality flow from the same source, and this source is a strong social instinct natural to man, it is solicitude for the community, a solicitude guided by Reason." The English philosophers are practically unanimous in ascribing both conscience and Morality in general to a social source. The welfare of the community, says Richard Cumberland, is the highest moral law; Hutcheson remarks that, in the struggle between egoism and universal benevolence, the decisive factor in favour of the latter is the accompanying feeling, the reflective emotion of approval.

In modern parlance we call "universal benevolence," altruism, and the "reflective emotion of approval" is a paraphrase of conscience which contains an indication of its mode of action. For the idea that our action will meet with the approval of the community and the pleasurable emotion of satisfaction are in fact the reasons why we mostly submit to the dictates of conscience voicing the commands of the community. Only Hutcheson is too venturesome and goes too far, when he maintains unreservedly that the reflective emotion of approval in the struggle between egoism and universal benevolence is the decisive factor which turns the scales in favour of the latter. This is by no means always the case. When it does occur we call the action moral, but we characterize it as immoral when, in spite of the "reflective emotion of approval" "universal benevolence" is worsted by egoism.

The assumption, that sympathy with his neighbour must be present in man's consciousness before he is capable of moral action, is one that need not be made by subjective moral philosophers, who hold with Kant and his school that the moral law is an inborn categorical imperative, which proclaims its commands without reference to any extraneous object, or to the world, or mankind.

In the same way the theologians have no need of it, for they consider that what is morally good is the Will of God.

But he who holds with the moral philosophers of sociological tendencies that Morality is regard for one's fellow men, and the recognition that the claims of the real or supposed interest of the community are superior to those of the comfort of the individual, must admit that sympathy is a necessary preliminary to moral action; i.e. that the individual must have the ability to picture the sufferings of others so vividly that he feels their sorrows as his own, and with all his might and all his will strives to prevent, alleviate and heal them. The lack of this ability, psychic anaesthesia, is a symptom of disease. It renders the person affected incapable of moral action. It is a characteristic of the born criminal, and is the essential symptom of that state of mind which alienists term moral insanity. Even in this condition, if reason and the power of judgment are not affected, great offences against current moral law can be avoided. But this results from the fear of the painful and ruinous results which a collision with public opinion entails, even if the offender is not actually haled into court. It is not due to any inner necessity, nor to the prompting of one's own feelings.

Only the Rationalists have any cause or reason to inquire into the aims of Morality, whether they look upon the moral law as dictated by society or are of the opinion that it is the sum total of the rules by which Reason, of its own initiative, successfully combats the urging of Instinct. If the moral law is a creation of society, and is obeyed by the individual out of sympathy with his fellow-men or consideration for society, the logical conclusion is that society has set up the moral law to satisfy some real or imagined need. Its aim in this case can only be the real or supposed welfare of the community. This is the most widely accepted view.

"Morality and universal welfare," says Macchiavelli, "are conceptions which coincide." In his calm assurance this apodictic writer, who doubtlessly slept well and had an excellent digestion, is never troubled by a doubt as to whether there is such a thing as an absolutely reliable measure of universal welfare, and therefore whether Morality, which is termed its equivalent, can provide us with a perfectly unimpeachable standard. He whose ethical conscience is more tender and timid will inevitably anxiously ask himself: Who decides what universal welfare demands and what is conducive to it? Is it to be the masses? Is the mob, incapable of thought, ignorant, swayed by momentary and shifting impulses, to make moral laws for the select few who are its natural guides? What tragedies would necessarily result from this definition! How often a strong personality, trained to come to independent conclusions, refuses to obey the voice of the mob! Is the sheep who trots bleating along with the herd to be taken as the type of a moral being? Must we necessarily condemn as immoral those who swim against the stream, enlightened tyrants who force upon their people hateful innovations calculated to ensure their welfare,--such men as Peter the Great, the Emperor Joseph II, the reformer who comes into violent conflict with the majority who are creatures of habit? "The aim of Morality is the welfare of society; this is indeed the essence of Morality." A sufficiently safe and most soothing formula this seems; but really the security it gives is most deceptive, and it leaves unsolved the most important problems relating to the phenomenon of Morality.

A numerous group of moral philosophers seeks the aim of moral conduct in the individual himself, not outside him. In spite of Schopenhauer's sympathy, they doubt that consideration for the well-being of the community would act forcibly enough upon the individual to induce him to wage unceasing war on his impulses and struggle to overcome them. Rather they hold that the individual must find in his inner consciousness not only the spur to moral action, but also the reward for the same, and they characterize this driving force as pleasurable emotions in every sense of the words. According to them man acts morally because, and in so far as, he anticipates pleasurable results from so doing. Epicurus considers the aim of Morality always to be Pleasure. He makes only the one reservation, that a reasonable man will renounce an immediate pleasure for the sake of a greater one in the future, and that he may delight in the anticipation of pleasurable emotions which defeat and dull present pains. Thus the martyr may be a true Epicurean, even if by his actions he exposes himself to most cruel torture and the most painful death, for he is convinced that the everlasting joys of paradise will more than indemnify him for his temporary sufferings.

I have already shown that Aristotle considers Morality the activity of practical Reason, which is accompanied by pleasurable emotions. He makes these pleasurable emotions an essential part of Morality, and Spinoza shares this view, for he says: "Knowledge of good and evil is nothing but a pleasurable or a disagreeable emotion in so far as we are conscious of it."

No less roundly, one might almost say brutally, Leibnitz declares: "We term good that which gives us pleasure; evil that which gives us pain," while Feuerbach expresses himself rather more carefully and indefinitely thus: "The instinct for happiness is the most potent of all instincts. Where existence always occurs together with volition, volition and the will to be happy are inseparable; they are, indeed, essentially one. 'I will,' means 'I have the will not to suffer, not to be hindered and destroyed, but, on the contrary, to be assisted and preserved; that is, I have the will to be happy.'" This is a wordy paraphrase of Spinoza's: "All existence is self-assertion, and Morality is only the highest and purest form of this fundamental instinct in a reasonable being."

Among those moral philosophers who see in pleasurable emotions the aim of Morality, its reward and its incentive, we must distinguish two groups: those who understand by pleasurable emotions such as appeal to the senses--the Hedonists; and those who spiritualize the meaning of the word and expect of Morality not an immediate bodily gratification, a pleasure, or an insipid satisfaction of the sense, but lasting happiness--the Eudaemonists. At the first glance the Eudaemonists seem to have a higher and more worthy conception of the subjective reaction of moral conduct than have the Hedonists; for the satisfaction the former expect and promise does not apply to the lower spheres of our organic life, but to the loftiest functions of our mind, from which alone a feeling of happiness can emanate.

But if we look into the matter more closely we find that to draw a sharp distinction between the Hedonists and Eudaemonists is more than a little arbitrary. For Pleasure and Happiness differ hardly at all in essentials, but chiefly in degree; and this would at once be obvious if one only took the trouble to define the two ideas, which, however, is mostly not done. And with good reason, for it is impossible to explain Pleasure. You can use synonyms for it; you can look wise and say: Pleasure is that which is agreeable, or that which one desires, that in which one delights, or a certain quality of feeling which accompanies such organic processes as strengthen or vitalize the system; but all that this amounts to is to say in a roundabout way, Pleasure is Pleasure. It is a fundamental fact of our inner consciousness, just as inexplicable as life, or as its antithesis, Pain. But if we assume that Pleasure is something given by subjective experience, then the idea of Happiness can be defined. Happiness is a flooding of the consciousness with sunshine; it is enjoyment of the moment, a sense of living in the present accentuated by pleasurable emotion. If this feeling is organically differentiated, that is, if it springs from a certain section of the mind or mechanism of the body and can be located there, it is ecstasy. It is only felt as Happiness when it is, so to speak, melted, dissolved, distributed throughout the organism, coenesthetically diffused.

It may be objected that I am guilty of a contradiction when I assume the possibility of Happiness without Pleasure, as I have just described Happiness as a particular kind of Pleasure; but in reality there is no contradiction. For Pleasure springs from a special organic apparatus, whereas Happiness is not a condition of any particular apparatus in our body, but a general feeling that cannot be located; if it is roused by moral actions it originates in the self-satisfaction of Reason, in its pride in the victory over Instinct, in the rapture occasioned by one's own strength of will; therefore, it can well exist without any differentiated pleasurable emotion located in any particular organic apparatus.

Plato is among those who most emphatically deny that Pleasure is either the motive force, the accompaniment, the consequence, or the aim of Morality. But a reasonable thinker can derive no profit from his arguments in support of this point of view, for they are rambling, fantastic, mystical and visionary. Plato thinks it a necessary consequence of the very nature of Good that it should be absolutely self-sufficient. For Pleasure is a perpetual growth, a ceaseless longing for more; it can therefore not be self-sufficient, and on this account can not be the foundation of Morality.

However, it is by no means obvious why Morality should not be in a perpetual state of growth , or why it should not constantly desire an increase of its own activities. On the contrary, this craving is just what one would most wish Morality to have. True, it would not then attain self-satisfaction. But what is the good of this self-satisfaction? It is a pleasurable emotion, and according to Plato Morality is supposed to have nothing in common with Pleasure. It is not to be contentment and serene satisfaction, but rather tireless endeavour. However, Plato, of course, cannot admit this, because for him Good and the deity are identical, and being perfect can therefore advance no farther in perfection; and the striving after Good is merely an effort of memory on man's part to call to mind more clearly the deity whom he saw in his spiritual life before birth, and of whom he retains a dim and confused memory in his earthly life. It is plainly idle to waste reasonable criticism upon such visionary arguments.

The Stoics, too, try to sever the connexion between moral conduct and Pleasure, and to conceive the former as a simple activity of human nature, one, moreover, from which they expect no particular satisfaction. They overlook the fact that every activity of the impulses and instincts of man's own nature affords him satisfaction, and that Pleasure is nothing but this very satisfaction of natural instincts. If, then, Morality were, as the Stoics contend, only "Life in harmony with Nature herself," then, like every other satisfaction of natural desires, it should be an ever-flowing source of pleasurable emotions, and this characteristic would be inseparable from it, though the Stoics may vainly try to deny it.

Christianity has an easier job than Stoicism. With harsh severity, disregarding any plea for indulgence in view of the weakness of the flesh, it absolutely excludes the factor of pleasure from the fulfilment of moral duties. But this severity is only apparent. The good and just man can expect no reward for his moral conduct here on earth, but he will find a much more ample one in the life to come. To the devout believer who gives unlimited credit to it, the promise of the joys of paradise has the full value of a cash disbursement. It is somewhat childish juggling with words to deny pleasurable emotion to be the aim of moral conduct if at the same time a most vivid foretaste of the eternal bliss which awaits him after death be given to the virtuous man; as if the anticipation of heavenly bliss were not a pleasurable emotion of the highest degree!

Kant finds it due to his point of view to spurn every weak inclination to Eudaemonism. A Categorical Imperative cannot issue commands with an eye to profit or comfort. That is as clear as daylight. "All Morality of action must be founded on the necessity which arises from duty and respect for the law, and not from love or inclination for the desired result of the action." Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and John Stuart Mill have recorded such irrefutable criticisms of the Kantian doctrine of the absolute disinterestedness of moral action, that it is unnecessary to add to their arguments.

Only some moral philosophers, and particularly Mill, are guilty of logical inaccuracy when they reject Eudaemonism but retain Utility as the aim of morality. Why do the Utilitarians not realize that they are merely Eudaemonists under another name, and that he who disregards his own immediate interests in order to further the well-being of the community experiences a pleasurable emotion of high order in the satisfaction he derives from the sacrifices whereby he has contributed to the good of the community?

The useless exertions of a section of moral philosophers to eliminate not only Hedonism but also Eudaemonism from moral action are a veritable labour of Sisyphus. Hardly have these two with difficulty been expelled by the door than they return by the window or the chimney. It is a mere conjuring trick to remove them from this world to the next, as do the theologians, or to substitute universal well-being for the feeling of happiness. All the same, the desire to purge moral action of the least admixture of hope of profit or pleasure is comprehensible. Common experience, which is equally forced upon the profound thinker and upon the plain man in the street least inclined to cudgel his brain, teaches us that Morality consists, with very few exceptions, in acting against our own immediate interest, in denying ourselves some coveted pleasure, in renouncing some attainable profit, in undertaking some disagreeable exertion because Reason bids us do so. From this practical experience the man in the street gets the impression that duty is a bitter necessity and that decency is attended by many and varied inconveniences. The theorist, the philosopher, derives a principle from his empirical facts; he observes that the moral man often acts against his own immediate interests, and expresses this in the pretentious axiom: "Morality from the very beginning excludes all thought of profit."

And yet the philosophers are guilty of the same superficiality as the man in the street. They do not go far enough into the matter to perceive that the morality of pleasure, of interest, and of duty, Hedonism, Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative, all lead in very slightly different ways to the same goal--Eudaemonism. The fulfilment of duty affords spiritual satisfaction, a pre-eminently pleasurable emotion which increases in direct proportion to the effort which its fulfilment demands. Interest also implies pleasure, for every interest ultimately comes to this, that it is an attempt to secure a pleasure. This aim lies at the bottom of all interests; it is the fundamental interest from which all seemingly different interests are derived; it is the universal goal to which all human effort tends, whether it be a question of making money to satisfy ambition, of winning love and friendship, of material, spiritual, personal or social values. Interest is self-assertion and the intensifying of the zest for life. But these are always accompanied by pleasurable emotions; thus interest is forthwith identified with pleasurable emotion, even though one has to work hard, even though at the moment it entails drudgery and discomfort. Hedonism makes no secret of its nature and its tendency. It openly admits what the Categorical Imperative denies and what Utilitarianism veils with vague phrases: that the aim and object of moral action is Pleasure and nothing else.

In our short survey of the immense field of literature dealing with moral philosophy we have learnt that, although the most various and divergent views are expressed as to the essence and source of Morality, nevertheless there is but one opinion, be it clearly or vaguely stated, be it the result of knowledge or surmise, as to the mechanism by means of which moral concepts determine action, and as to the conscious or unconscious aim of moral action: Moral concepts do their work by means of inhibition, and the aim of moral action is a feeling of happiness.

THE IMMANENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF MORALITY

It is natural for man's thoughts to be concentrated on himself until he has learnt to rise from the deep and narrow well of his egoism to a higher and wider view of life and, free from the taint of self-love, to form an idea of his place in the world and his relationship to it. Not till the development of his intellect is far advanced does any doubt assail him as to the truth of his conviction that all his personal affairs, the least as well as the most weighty, are of the greatest importance to the universe, that every ache or pain he feels must wake an echo in the heavens, that the Earth shudders in anticipation when he is about to stumble and sprain his ankle, and that the stars in their courses mysteriously, though intelligibly to the discerning, foretell the hour of his birth and of his death. An Indian legend pours cruel scorn upon this childlike megalomania: A fox had fallen into a stream and was drowning. "The world is coming to an end!" gasped the animal in its agony. A peasant standing on the brink replied coldly, "Oh, no, I see only a little fox drowning."

Many moral philosophers, those of the Kantian school without exception, labour under the delusion of this same, egocentric view. In their eyes the phenomenon of Morality is a cosmic one. Morality is the law of human conduct, therefore it is the law of world processes, of the universe. Indeed, it is the law of the universe before it becomes that of human conduct. It would exist even if there were no men, no humanity, no human conduct at all. The solemn innocents who weightily give utterance to this doctrine are unaware how ridiculous they are. They do not hesitate to subject Sirius to the yoke of the Ten Commandments. They are convinced that the Milky Way practises virtue and shuns, or ought to shun, vice, just as we inconsiderable human beings do. The precept, "Thou shalt not steal," applies with binding force to gravity, and the warning, "Thou shalt not kill," to electricity, though the latter ruthlessly disregards it, as the results of being struck by lightning and accidents with high voltage installations frequently prove. If they do not threaten Nature with police and prison it is only because in their eyes Morality is independent of all sanctions, is superior to rewards and punishments, depends upon itself alone, constitutes its own aim, is by its very nature a compelling force, and therefore has no need of adventitious compulsion.

Such profound nonsense cannot lay claim to serious treatment. It is a counterpart to the belief that events in the history of mankind, like war and pestilence, are foretold by heavenly signs such as fiery comets. The stars revolve, the clockwork of the universe continues undisturbed, as though the earth were still uninhabited, as it was when it was a glowing fluid globe or, earlier still, a nebular mass; and this although man's self-esteem be hurt by such a lack of consideration. If we care to call the unalterable laws, according to which the forces of Nature act and the mechanism of the world works, the Morality of the Universe, that may pass. Only we must in that case clearly realize that we are speaking metaphorically, that we are making use of a poetic simile, that we are anthropomorphically attributing human traits to the universe. Morality is a phenomenon restricted to mankind, or, to be strictly accurate, a phenomenon which occurs only among living beings; for the beginnings of Morality may be traced in creatures of a lower order than man, and it develops simultaneously with the consciousness and the mentality of living beings. Morality is a function of life, dependent upon it, begotten and developed by it, to meet life's needs and serve its interests. The existence of Morality apart from life is as unthinkable as that of hunger, ambition, or gratitude.

Morality is a collection of laws and prohibitions which Reason opposes to organic instincts, by means of which the former forces the latter into actions from which they would like to refrain, or prevents them from carrying out that which they yearn to do. The existence of Morality, therefore, presupposes in the first place that of an intelligence sufficiently developed to form a clear idea of something that is still in the future, namely, an image of the consequences resulting from an action.

Guided by this inner contemplation of the image of the consequences of an action, Reason decides to carry out or prevent the action. This gives us the lowest plane upon which Morality can occur as the cause of action and of abstention from action. It implies, above all things, foresight, and can therefore only exist in a consciousness which is sufficiently developed to grasp the idea of the future and form a picture of it. This consciousness must be capable of extracting the elements of a conception from memory according to the laws of the association of ideas, and be able to group them logically in a new order. In other words, as long as the mind cannot visualize the past and from it build up a picture of the future, Morality can find no place in it.

This statement requires no limitation, but it demands a short explanation. It is quite true that Morality is foresight, but it is only among the elect that the latter is developed to such a pitch that it is possible to form images of the consequences of action and abstention sufficiently clear and definite to exercise a restraining or encouraging influence.

The average man can act morally without first working out a clear picture of the future. It is enough that he has been trained to the habit of respecting current precepts, and of accepting the views obtaining in his circle as to what is good or bad, what is admissible or inadmissible. This morality, of course, is merely a matter of drill or training; it is unthinking automatism; it is inferior, and not to be compared with the living, creative morality of higher natures, which, as a sovereign law-giver, comes to an independent decision in every case and, like the guardian angel of childlike faith, guides man on his path through life, indicates the right course at the cross-roads, and warns him of pitfalls and stumbling-blocks. But for everyday use mechanical morality may suffice. In the uneventful existence of the average man, which passes in a stereotyped way, this mechanical morality is an acceptable guide and counsellor, but it remains an outside influence foreign to his inner consciousness; he is glad to deceive and outwit it, as a slave does his master's bailiff if he can do so without running the risk of a thrashing; but if his destiny unexpectedly rises above its accustomed dead level, then this dogmatic morality, which he has never really assimilated, leaves him in the lurch, and mournfully, in piteous tones, he utters the well-known cry, "It is easy to do one's duty; it is difficult to know where one's duty lies."

Reason, then, which is capable of foreseeing the results of actions, teaches a man what he must do and from what he must abstain, where he may follow his instinct and where he must resist it, according as it considers the presumptive results of yielding to impulse good or bad. But whence does Reason obtain the standard it applies to the actions of men and their results? How does it acquire the fundamental concepts Good and Bad, and what is their significance? Generally speaking, the answer will be as follows: Moral values are appraised by a standard supplied by a general consensus of opinion; Reason acknowledges as good that which meets with the approval of the community, that which the latter desires and therefore praises; the community, for its part, echoes the pronouncements of influential personages, i.e. of the most respected, most powerful, and most aristocratic; Reason condemns as bad that which the community disapproves, and which it therefore censures and rejects. This definition does not solve the problem of good and bad, it only shifts it.

Later we shall have to show upon what grounds the community discriminates between acceptable and reprehensible facts, calling the former good and the latter bad. For the present it is enough to observe that Reason derives the laws, which it constantly impresses on man, from the opinion of the community.

It can happen that Reason rejects the opinion of the community and forms a conclusion opposed to it. This revolt of individual morality against conventional morality is the great tragedy of man. It can only occur in the soul of a hero, for mediocre and insipid people always bow to the opinion of the majority. There is clearly imminent danger of making a mistake. Not seldom, however, the individual is right in his opposition to the community, and then the latter is fired by his example to examine its traditional dogmas and to correct or reject them. This is not the only, but it is the most common means by which Morality is developed and changed. Its progress demands martyrs. Strong personalities must be sacrificed to force a revision of moral values. Socrates has to swallow the draft of hemlock so that unfettered thought may acquire the right to doubt the legend of the gods. Jesus has to incur the dangerous anger of the Pharisees so that the adulteress may be treated with indulgence and human sympathy instead of being punished according to rigorous law. But the opposition of a self-willed, subjective Morality to the accepted moral law is always exceptional; the general rule is submission to the moral law. This is indeed a necessary preliminary to revolt against the moral law of the community, for it is only by means of a vigorous social education that man develops such a nicely balanced and keen sense of Good and Bad, that he cannot prevail upon himself to carry out generally approved actions which his own intelligence does not recognize as moral. He whose moral sense has not been intensified by strict discipline will never be assailed by doubt, as long as he follows in the footsteps of the multitude.

Hence, as a rule, Reason exercises its control of the actions of man in conformity with the laws prescribed by the community. Before Morality develops into the practice of Good and the rejection of Bad it takes the form of consideration for the world at large, since it is the latter which has created the concepts of Good and Bad as well as the standard by which they are judged, and in order to avoid conflict with the community, and to maintain uninterrupted agreement with it, the individual exerts himself to persist in doing good and to refrain from doing evil.

The establishment of these facts gives deep offence to the mystics among moral philosophers. "What a debasement and belittling of Morality! What! It is supposed to be nothing more than a sort of obsequiousness towards the multitude? Its laws are observed for the sake of pleasing others? It is a comedy played to win applause and a call before the curtain? That is a libel and a calumny. The truly moral man looks neither to the right nor to the left. He does not condescend to ask, 'What will the world say to this?' There is but one judge in whose eyes he wishes to be justified: his conscience."

Quite right. But what is conscience found to be if we penetrate the fog of mystic words with which it has come to be surrounded? Conscience is the permanent representative of the community in the consciousness of the individual, just as public opinion may be termed the conscience of every member of society made manifest. Metaphorically, it wields the powers pertaining to society; it praises and blames, it condemns and exalts, it punishes and rewards, as society could do; and it actually pronounces judgment in the name of society, even though it does not preface such judgment with this formula which is tacitly implied and must always be mentally added. Conscience is the invisible link which unites the individual with a social group, just as speech, custom, tradition, and political institutions are the visible links. But the social origin and representative nature of conscience set limits to its power. Conscience is a respected authority with wide powers only in the consciousness of those individuals who have a highly developed social sense. I purposely do not say those in whom the instinct to follow the crowd preponderates, because this mode of expression might imply blame and condemnation which I do not intend to convey.

For social instinct comes natural to an individual born, educated and working in a community, who shares its feelings, views and interests, nay, even its prejudices and mistakes; and if he lacks it, it is a sign of a morbid deviation from the normal. Only the decadent man is uncannily lonely in spirit, alien, indifferent or definitely hostile to his human surroundings; he is, according to the violence and polarization of his instincts, the passionate anarchist or the born criminal; the public opinion of his circle is unintelligible to him and makes no impression on him; it has no significance for him; he attaches no importance to its approbation, and its anger leaves him cold; he would take no notice of it, were it not that he knows its power to destroy him, and fears its police, its prisons, and its scaffolds. Such a man, organically predisposed to crime, most urgently needs a conscience. It would arrest him on the downward path to which his evil instincts lead. It would warn him to resist the wicked impulses of his selfishness. But he, of all people, has no conscience. He can have none. He is anti-social, he is at war with society, diplomatic relations between him and it have been broken off, and it has no representative in his consciousness. A lively and active feeling of joint responsibility with the community is a necessary predisposition on the part of the individual before conscience can have any power. Where the former is lacking the latter is mute and paralysed.

The essence of Morality, as we have found, is the subjection of instinct and direct organic impulses to the discipline of Reason. The latter exercises a censorship in pursuance of a law which it derives not from within, but from without, from the ordinances of the community which instructs Reason as to what it should permit, what it should forbid, and what it should demand. Conscience ensures respect for its commands, and may be called the executive power or police of Reason, acting as the authorized representative of Morality. It is the garrison which the community maintains in the individual's consciousness, which it arms and supplies with authority and instructions; the power of conscience lies in the strength of the community at its back, and is without influence only upon those who refuse admission to the troops of the community and yield to none but actual physical force. All this proves irrefutably that Morality is a phenomenon arising from the social life of man, and its power is a function of society.

If under the conditions in which humanity lives nowadays one could imagine a man totally detached from his species, leading a solitary life, Morality would be absolutely meaningless to him. The idea is one he could never conceive. It would have no significance. Good and bad would always retain their original meaning as labels for sensual qualities, for pleasant or unpleasant sensations of taste, smell, etc.; they would never be spiritualized or apply to the quality of actions. He would be unable to attach any meaning to the words duty and right. The terms virtue, vice, conscience, repentance would convey nothing to him. Morality can only originate when the individual lives united with fellow beings in a social community. It is a consequence of this union. It is the one condition on which alone this union can be permanent.

This primitive man of the golden geological period before the Ice Age knew no Morality, and as far as human intelligence can tell he would never have known of it had there been a continuance of the paradisaic conditions obtaining at the time of his birth, and had the climate not deteriorated. The occurrence of murderous frosts, the necessity of seeking protection from them in natural caves or artificially constructed shelters, and of kindling and maintaining fires, the diminution or disappearance of vegetable food, and the need to replace it by the booty of the chase or fishing--all these forced him to unite his efforts with those of other men who shared his wretched lot on earth. But in order to maintain this community with others he had to learn a new science, one he had hitherto not known because he had had no need of it: consideration for his fellows. He might no longer think of himself alone, consider his own inclinations in all eventualities, give way to all his moods or yield to every whim; he had unceasingly to bear his neighbour in mind and take care not to annoy him, not to make an enemy of him, not to become hateful to him. Forbearance towards his neighbour was the necessary condition of their life in common, just as their life in common was the necessary condition of self-preservation. The penalty for selfish indulgence was stern persecution, punishment, perhaps death; in any case, expulsion from the community. Man, therefore, stood before the choice of self-control or destruction, and this dilemma taught him Morality.

Such, we must imagine, were the beginnings of Morality. It was not prearranged or purposely sought; it grew naturally from the companionship of men and developed simultaneously with society. If the struggle for existence made life in communities a necessity, the first coercive law of the community was to enjoin upon its members a mode of conduct which alone rendered the existence of the community possible, and the fundamental rule of this conduct was mutual consideration. Without this two egoisms cannot exist side by side and develop. They either destroy or shun one another. This phenomenon may also be observed among the higher animals. Elephants, living in herds, expel quarrelsome individuals and force them to wander alone far from the rest. The natives of Ceylon and India fear these "bachelor elephants" as being specially savage and malicious. They think that they grow like this because of their loneliness. That is probably a false conclusion. It is much more likely that these animals have been driven from their herd because they were savage and malicious, because their characters were opposed to discipline. Here we come upon the first faint foreshadowing of the phenomenon of Morality in an animal community.

Now that we have introduced the idea of the growth and development of Morality, it becomes obvious that it must have begun with mere indications, and that from rude, dim, undeveloped beginnings it gradually grows more perfect, more refined, more nicely differentiated. At first man avoids only the most brutal injuries to his neighbour, such as hurting him, doing him bodily harm, threatening to kill him, openly robbing him. In proportion as he becomes more spiritually sensitive, as he learns to feel the insult and humiliation of injuries other than those inflicted with a fist or club, he is led to refrain from giving his fellow-men similar offence, which though it deals no gaping wounds, yet hurts his spiritual sensibilities. A series of values is developed, growing ever longer, ever more complicated, with more and more gradations, until, going far beyond the simple, artless commandments, "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife nor his goods," it reaches the pitch of agonized self-reproach, because of the slightest and most secret impulses to dislike, injustice, covetousness, dissimulation, etc.

Morality must be regarded as a support and a weapon in the struggle for existence in so far as, given present climatic conditions on earth and the civilization arising therefrom, man can only exist in societies, and society cannot exist without Morality. The chain of thought runs as follows: without morality no society, without society no individual existence; consequently, Morality is the essential condition for the existence of the individual as well as for that of the community. However, we must always bear in mind the reservation, "given the present climatic conditions on earth." Had the earth continued to be the paradise it must have been at the birth of our species , the necessity would never have arisen for the individual to band himself together with others of his kind, no society would ever have developed, and there would have been no Morality. Serious as the subject is, one cannot but smile at the thought of the comic figure the learned, professorial Neo-Kantians would cut with their dogma of the absolute and cosmic nature of Morality, if they propounded it among men whose wants Nature's bounty was able to satisfy as easily as the frog is satisfied in his puddle or the crow on his tree top. They would find no trace of absolute Morality among mankind, and would be reduced to seeking it among the stars.

The very nature of Morality, in that it is an aid to man in the struggle for existence, makes it easy to understand the origin and nature of the concepts Good and Bad. There are propensities and actions which facilitate life in a community which, indeed, alone make it possible: love of one's neighbour, helpfulness, liberality, consideration for the feelings of others, and amiability. There are others which make such a life difficult or absolutely impossible: uncompromising selfishness, violence, cruelty, rapacity, instinctive hostility to one's neighbour. Men recognized that the former were beneficial to them, the latter harmful. The former aroused their liking, the latter their disapproval, dislike and animosity. The quality of feeling which accompanied the perceptions of actions of the former kind was akin to that with which they responded to beneficial, profitable, useful and welcome sense impressions. The quality of feeling, which actions of the second category gave rise to, was akin to that due to harmful and repellent sense impressions. Following the law of analogy, they placed on an equal footing actions which were felt to be pleasing and pleasant sensations of taste and smell; similarly with disagreeable actions and unpleasant sense impressions; and finally they called the former good and the latter bad, using terms originally applicable only to the realm of the senses.

Not everything that is pleasant to the senses is beneficial. There are poisons which are pleasing to taste, but none the less noxious for that, such as alcoholic drinks and impressions of a certain order, like voluptuousness, which man greedily pursues, even though they ruin his health. But these are exceptions. As a rule, not only man, but all living creatures, derive pleasant sensations from beneficial things; and it is probable that that category of sensations, which we are conscious of as being pleasant, is nothing but the state of coenesthesis, when the organism functions particularly energetically under the influence of the absorption of food or of a special stimulus of the senses, when it feels its life processes carried on particularly vigorously, freely and harmoniously; just as we feel that state of coenesthesis to be unpleasant, which occurs when the organism functions badly, slackly, and in a manner calculated to endanger the continuance of life. With the reservation that has been indicated we can say in general that Good is equivalent to beneficial and pleasant, Bad to harmful and unpleasant. This is true of the transferred and spiritualized as well as of the immediate and material meaning of these expressions of value. The significance of the words Good and Bad, the point of departure, development and change of conception they indicate, suffice to justify the Utilitarians and the Hedonists or Eudaemonists among the moral philosophers, and to confute the contentions of their critics, who deny all connexion between Morality and a practical purpose, profit or pleasure, and declare these to be unworthy humiliations of its majesty.

They wriggle, with the agility of a contortionist on the music-hall stage, to get over the obvious and palpable aim of moral conduct. They display all the cunning of dishonest sophistry in their arguments to prove that the element of subjective satisfaction which moral action yields is non-existent, and that, therefore, the Hedonists and Eudaemonists are wrong. They stir up an opaque cloud of words, phrases and formulae to hide the fact, which nevertheless emerges clearly, that he who acts morally expects to derive pleasurable emotions from his action, or at least tries thereby to avoid probable painful emotions, and that moral conduct, just as it is designed to give the individual subjective satisfaction which is a kind of pleasure, is also meant to be a benefit, or at any rate a supposed benefit, to the community.

Morality must never try for a reward and never expect one. It must be absolutely disinterested. It has no business to pursue any aim outside itself. Thus say the mystics of moral philosophy, juggling with words; and they think they are doing especial honour to Morality and raising it to a particularly proud eminence. But Morality has no need of this artificial and false grandeur to maintain its lofty place among the phenomena of life, and it is derogatory neither to its authority nor to its influence to be recognized as a beneficial force conducive to happiness.

The opponents of Utilitarianism and Eudaemonism in Ethics, if they speak in good faith, may be excused on the grounds that their analysis of the phenomenon of Morality is shallow. For them Morality is something absolute, which exists by itself as an eternal and unalterable law of the Universe, but which is revealed in the individual and therefore must be conceived individually as a quality which has become human, as a human value. If anyone persists in looking upon Morality as an absolutely individual matter, without any connexion with anything outside the individual, if anyone obstinately shuts his eyes to the fact that Morality has not been developed by the individual out of his own immediate needs and in consideration of himself alone, but that it is, on the contrary, a creation of society and has no sense or significance except as a social phenomenon, then indeed he can with some show of justification deny Utilitarianism and Hedonism. For truly, looked at from the point of view of the individual, moral conduct appears neither pleasant nor immediately beneficial. On the contrary, it is, as a rule, directly opposed to his own apparent interest, and it is achieved with difficulty by sacrifice and renunciation, which are never pleasant and often very painful.

Once in a drawing-room, during a game of definitions, I heard a light-hearted young lady define Duty in the following terms: "Duty is that which we do unwillingly." A stern professor contradicted her at once with the solemnity he thought due to his position, and assured her reprovingly: "It is my duty to give lectures, and I do this duty gladly. If you were right, madam, expressions such as 'zealous in one's duty' and 'willing performance of duty' would have no meaning and could never have been coined." That seems convincing, but yet it is wrong. Expressions such as "zealous in one's duty" and "willing performance of duty" were not coined until society had developed its system of Morality and had educated its members to strive for its approval by conducting themselves in accordance with this system, to look on its approval as a flattering distinction and to fear its disapproval as a disgrace. Such phrases are Pharisaical, calculated to exercise a suggestive influence profitable to society. They are the sugar to sweeten the pill; but the young lady was honest and the professor conventional; the pill is bitter. Thinkers recognized and admitted this thousands of years ago. Antiphon, the sophist, says: "The law, the outcome of an agreement, coerces nature, the result of growth, and goes against the interest of the individual." The same idea is expressed by the tragic poet in the lines: "The gods have placed sweat before virtue." This was said in the very same words by Lao Tse, the disciple of Meng Tse, the pupil of Confucius and the reformer of his doctrine.

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