(4) Moreover, it does not follow that, because the sum of man's activities, his behavior, broadly taken, is vastly altered, by an increase in his control over his material environment, the result is an advance in moralization. An advance in civilization—in knowledge, in the control over nature's resources, in the evolution of the industrial and even of the fine arts—does not necessarily imply a corresponding ethical advance on the part of a given community. New conditions, brought about by an increase of knowledge, of wealth, of power, may result in ethical degeneration.

What constitutes the moral in human behavior, what marks out right or wrong conduct from conduct ethically indifferent, we have not yet considered. But no man is wholly without information in the field of morals, and we may here fall back upon such conceptions as men generally possess before they have evolved a science of morals. In the light of such conceptions a simple and comparatively undeveloped culture may compare very favorably with one much higher in the scale of civilization.

In the simplest groups of human beings, justice, veracity and a regard to common good may be conspicuous; the claim of each man upon his fellow-man may be generally acknowledged. In communities more advanced, the growth of class distinctions and the inequalities due to the amassing of wealth on the part of individuals may go far to nullify the advantage to the individual of any advance made by the community as a whole. The social bonds which have obtained between members of the same group may be relaxed; the devotion to the common good may be replaced by the selfish calculation of profit to the individual; the exploitation of man by his fellow-man may be accepted as natural and normal. It is not without its significance that the most highly civilized of states have, under the pressure of economic advance, come to adopt the institution of slavery in its most degraded forms; that the problem of property and poverty may present itself as most pressing and most difficult of solution where national wealth has grown to enormous proportions. The body politic may be most prosperous from a material point of view, and at the same time, considered from the point of view of the moralist, thoroughly rotten in its constitution.

It is well to remember that, even in the most advanced of modern civilizations, whatever the degree of enlightenment and the power enjoyed by the community as a whole, it is quite possible for the individual to be condemned to a life little different in essentials from that of the lowest savage. He whose feverish existence is devoted to the nerve- racking occupation of gambling in stocks, who goes to his bed at night scheming how he may with impunity exploit his fellow-man, and who rises in the morning with a strained consciousness of possible fluctuations in the market which may overwhelm him in irretrievable disaster, lives in perils which easily bear comparison with those which threaten the precarious existence of primitive man. To masses of men in civilized communities the problem of the food supply is all-absorbing, and may exclude all other and broader interests. The factory-worker, with a mind stupefied by the mechanical repetition of some few simple physical movements of no possible interest to him except as resulting in the wage that keeps him alive, has no share in such light as may be scattered about him.

The control of the forces of nature brings about great changes in human societies, but it may leave the individual, whether rich or poor, a prey to dangers and anxieties, engaged in an unequal combat with his environment, absorbed in the satisfaction of material needs, undeveloped, unreflective and most restricted in his outlook. Of emancipation there can here be no question.

And a civilization in which the control of the forces of nature has been carried to the highest pitch of development may furnish a background to the darkest of passions. It may serve as a stage upon which callous indifference, greed, rapacity, gross sensuality, play their parts naked and unashamed. That some men sunk in ignorance and subject to such passions live in huts and have their noses pierced, and others have taken up from their environment the habit of dining in evening dress, is to the moralist a relatively insignificant detail. He looks at the man, and he finds him in each case essentially the same—a primitive and undeveloped creature who has not come into his rightful heritage.



CHAPTER X

MAN'S SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

27. MAN IS ASSIGNED HIS PLACE.—The old fable of a social contract, by virtue of which man becomes a member of a society, agreeing to renounce certain rights he might exercise if wholly independent, and to receive in exchange legal rights which guarantee to the individual the protection of life and property and the manifold advantages to be derived from cooperative effort, points a moral, like other fables.

The contract in question never had an existence, but neither did the conversation between the grasshopper and the ant. In each case, a truth is illustrated by a play of the imagination. Contracts there have been in plenty, between individuals, between families, between social classes, between nations; but they have all been contracts between men already in a social state of some sort, capable of choice and merely desirous of modifying in some particular some aspect of that social state. The notion of an original contract, lying at the base of all association of man with man, is no more than a fiction which serves to illustrate the truth that the desires and wills of men are a significant factor in determining the particular forms under which that association reveals itself.

No man enters into a contract to be born, or to be born a Kaffir, a Malay, a Hindoo, an Englishman or an American. He enters the world without his own consent, and without his own connivance he is assigned a place in a social state of some sort. The reception which is accorded to him is of the utmost moment to him. He may be rejected utterly by the social forces presiding over his birth. In which case he does not start life independently, but is snuffed out as is a candle-flame by the wind. And if accepted, as he usually is in civilized communities, he takes his place in the definite social order into which he is born, and becomes the subject of education and training as a member of that particular community.

28. VARIETIES OF THE SOCIAL ORDER.—The social order into which he is thus ushered may be most varied in character. He may find himself a member of a small and primitive group of human beings, a family standing in more or less loose relations to a limited number of other families; he may belong to a clan in which family relationship still serves as a real or fictive bond; his clan may have its place in a confederation; or the body politic in which he is a unit may be a nation, or an empire including many nationalities.

His relations to his fellow-man will naturally present themselves to him in a different light according to the different nature of the social environment in which he finds himself. The community of feeling and of interests which defines rights, determines expectations, and prescribes duties, cannot be the same under differing conditions. Social life implies cooperation, but the limits of possible cooperation are very differently estimated by man at different stages of his development. To a few human beings each man is bound closely at every stage of his evolution. The family bond is everywhere recognized. But, beyond that, there are wider and looser relationships recognized in very diverse degrees, as intelligence expands, as economic advance and political enlightenment make possible a community life on a larger scale, as sympathy becomes less narrow and exclusive.

It is not easy for a member of a community at a given stage of its development even to conceive the possibility of such communities as may come into existence under widely different conditions. The simple, communistic savage, limited in his outlook, thinks in terms of small numbers. A handful of individuals enjoy membership in his group; he recognizes certain relations, more or less loose, to other groups, with which his group comes into contact; beyond is the stranger, the natural enemy, upon whom he has no claim and to whom he owes no duty.

At a higher level there comes into being the state, including a greater number of individuals and internally organized as the simpler society is not. But even in a highly civilized state much the same attitude towards different classes of human beings may seem natural and inevitable. To Plato there remained the strongly marked distinctions between the Athenian, the citizen of another Hellenic community, and the barbarian. War, when waged against the last, might justifiably be merciless; not so, when it was war between Greek states. [Footnote: Republic, Book V.] Into such conceptions of rights and duties men are born; they take them up with the very air that they breathe, and they may never feel impelled to subject them to the test of criticism.

It is instructive to remark that neither the speculative genius of a Plato nor the acute intelligence of an Aristotle could rise to the conception of an organized, self-governing community on a great scale. To each it seemed evident that the group proper must remain a comparatively small one. Plato finds it necessary to provide in his "Laws" that the number of households in the State shall be limited to five thousand and forty. Aristotle, less arbitrarily exact, allows a variation within rather broad limits, holding that a political community should not comprise a number of citizens smaller than ten, nor one greater than one hundred thousand. [FOOTNOTE: PLATO, Laws, v. ARISTOTLE, Ethics, ix, 10.] That a highly organized state, a state not composed of a horde of subjects under autocratic control, but one in which the citizens are, in theory, self-governing, should spread over half a continent and include a hundred millions of souls, would have seemed to these men of genius the wildest of dreams. Yet such a dream has been realized.

29. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.—The social body of which man becomes, by the accident of birth, an involuntary member, may stand at any point in the scale of economic evolution. It may be a primitive group living from hand to mouth by the chase, by fishing or by gathering such food as nature spontaneously produces. It may be a pastoral people, more or less nomadic, occupied with the care of flocks and herds. It may be an agricultural community, rooted to the soil, looking forward from seed- time to harvest, capable of foresight in storing and distributing the fruits of its labors. It may combine some of the above activities; and may, in addition, have arrived at the stage at which the arts and crafts have attained to a considerable development. In its life commerce may have come to play an important role, bringing it into peaceful relations with other communities and broadening the circle of its interests. That human societies at such different stages of their development should differ greatly in their internal organization, in their relations to other communities, and in the demands which they make upon the individuals who compose them, is to be expected. Some manner of life, appropriate to the status of the community, comes to be prescribed. The ideal of conduct, whether unconsciously admitted or consciously embraced and inculcated, is not the same in different societies. The virtues which come to be prized, the defects which are disapproved, vary with their setting.

Moreover, the process of inner development results in differentiation of function. Clearly marked social classes come into existence, standing in more or less sharply defined relations to other social classes, endowed with special rights and called to the performance of peculiar duties.

Man is not merely born into this or that community; he is born into a place in the community. In very primitive societies that place may differ little from other places, save as such are determined by age or sex. But in more highly differentiated societies it may differ enormously, entail the performance of widely different functions, and prescribe distinct varieties of conduct.

"What will be the manner of life," said Plato, [Footnote: Laws, vii.] "among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts to others, and whose husbandry, committed to slaves paying a part of the produce, brings them a return sufficient for living temperately?"

His ideal leisure class is patterned after what he saw before him in Athens. He conceives those who belong to it to be set free from sordid cares and physical labors, in order that they may devote themselves to the perfecting of their own minds and bodies and to preparation for the serious work of supervising and controlling the state. Their membership in the class defined their duties and prescribed the course of education which should fit them to fulfill them. It is not conceived that the functions natural and proper to one human being are also natural and proper to another in the same community.

The flat monotony which obtains in those simplest human societies, resembling extended families, where there is scarcely a demarcation of classes, a distinction of occupations and a recognition of private property in any developed sense, has given place in such a state to sharp contrasts in the status of man and man. Such contrasts obtain in all modern civilized communities. Man is not merely a subject or citizen; he is a subject or citizen of this class or of that, and the environment which molds him varies accordingly.

30. SOCIAL ORDER AND HUMAN WILL.—We have seen that the material environment of a man, the extent of his mastery over nature and of his emancipation from the dictation of pressing bodily needs, is a factor of enormous importance in determining what he shall become and what sort of a life he shall lead. That his social setting is equally significant is obvious. What he shall know, what habits he shall form, what emotions he shall experience in this situation and in that, what tasks he shall find set before him, and what ideals he shall strive to attain, are largely determined for him independently of his choice.

To be sure, it remains true that man is man, endowed with certain instincts and impulses and gifted with human intelligence. Nor are all men alike in their impulses or in the degree of their intelligence. Within limits the individual may exercise choice, reacting upon and modifying his environment and himself. But a moment's reflection reveals to us that the new departure is but a step taken from a vantage-ground which has not been won by independent effort. The information in the light of which he chooses, the situation in the face of which he acts, the emotional nature which impels him to effort, the habits of thought and action which have become part of his being—these are largely due to the larger whole of which he finds himself a part. He did not build the stage upon which he is to act. His lines have been learned from others. He may recite them imperfectly; he may modify them in this or in that particular. But the drama from which, and from which alone, he gains his significance, is not his own creation.

The independence of the individual in the face of his material and social environment makes itself more apparent with the progressive development of man. But man attains his development as a member of society, and in the course of a historical evolution. It was pointed out many centuries ago that a hand cut off from the human body cannot properly be called a hand, for it can perform none of the functions of one. And man, torn from his setting, can no longer be considered man as the proper subject of moral science.

It is as a thinking and willing creature in a social setting that man becomes a moral agent. To understand him we must make a study of the individual and of the social will.



PART IV

THE REALM OF ENDS

CHAPTER XI

IMPULSE, DESIRE, AND WILL

31. IMPULSE.—Commands and prohibitions address themselves to man as a voluntary agent. But it seems right to treat as willed by man much more than falls under the head of conscious and deliberate volition. We do not hesitate to make him responsible for vastly more; and yet common sense does not, when enlightened, regard men as responsible for what is recognized as falling wholly beyond the direct and indirect control of their wills.

Motions due to even the blindest of impulses are not to be confounded with those brought about by external compulsion. They may have the appearance of being vaguely purposive, although we would never attribute purpose to the creature making them. The infant that cries and struggles, when tormented by the intrusive pin, the worm writhing in the beak of a bird,—these act blindly, but it does not appear meaningless to say that they act. The impulse is from within.

Some impulses result in actions very nicely adjusted to definite ends. Such are winking, sneezing, swallowing. These reflexes may occur as the mechanical response to a given stimulus. They may occur without our being conscious of them and without our having willed them.

Yet such responses to stimuli are not necessarily unconscious and cut off from voluntary control. He who winks involuntarily when a hand is passed before his eyes may become conscious that he has done so, and may, if he chooses, even acquire some facility in controlling the reflex. One may resist the tendency to swallow when the throat is dry, may hold back a sneeze, or may keep rigid the hand that is pricked by a pin. That is to say, actions in their origin mechanical and independent of choice may be raised out of their low estate, made the objects of attention, and brought within the domain of deliberate choice.

Furthermore, many actions which, at the outset, claimed conscious attention and were deliberately willed may become so habitual that the doer lapses into unconsciousness or semi-unconsciousness of his deed. They take on the nature of acquired reflexes. The habit of acting appears to have been acquired by the mind and then turned over to the body, that the mind may be free to occupy itself with other activities. The man has become less the doer than the spectator of his acts; perhaps he is even less than that, he is the stage upon which the action makes its appearance, while the spectator is his neighbor. The complicated bodily movements called into play when one bites one's nails had to be learned. It requires no little ingenuity to accomplish the act when the nails are short. Yet one may come to the stage of perfection at which one bites one's nails when one is absorbed in thought about other things. And one may learn to slander one's neighbor almost as mechanically and unthinkingly as one swallows when the throat is dry.

When we speak of man's impulses, we are using a vague word. There are impulses which will never be anything more. There are impulses which may become something more. There are impulses which are no longer anything more. Impulses have their psychic aspect. At its lower limit, impulse may appear very mechanical; at its upper, one may hesitate to say that desire and will are wholly absent. It is not wise to regard impulse as lying wholly beyond the sphere of will.

32. DESIRE.—At its lower limit, desire is not distinguished by any sharp line from mere impulse. Is the infant that stretches out its hands toward a bright object conscious of a desire to possess it? Or does the motion made follow the visual sensation as the wail follows the wound made by the pin? At a certain stage of development the phenomena of desire become unmistakable. The idea of something to be attained, the notion of means to the attainment of an end, the consciousness of tension, may stand out clearly. The analysis of the psychologist, which finds in desire a consciousness of the present state of the self, an idea of a future state, and a feeling of tension towards the realization of the latter, may represent faithfully the elements present in desire in the higher stages of its development, but it would be difficult to find those elements clearly marked in desire which has just begun to differentiate itself from impulse. There may be a desire where there can scarcely be said to be a self as an object of consciousness; one may desire where there is no clear consciousness of a future state as distinct from a present one.

Moreover, the consciousness of desire may be faint and fugitive, as it may be intense and persistent. Desire is the step between the first consciousness of the object and the voluntary release of energy which works toward its attainment. This step may be passed over almost unnoticed. The thought of shifting my position when I feel uncomfortable may be followed by the act with no clear consciousness of a tension and its voluntary release. The mere thought, itself but faintly and momentarily in consciousness, appears to be followed at once by the act, and desire and will to be eliminated. It does not follow that they are actually eliminated; they may be present as fleeting shadows which fail to attract attention.

If, however, the desire fails to find its immediate fruition, if it is frustrated, consciousness of it may become exceedingly intense. There is the constant thought of the object, a vivid feeling of tension, of a striving to attain the object. Desire may become an obsession, a torment filling the horizon, and the volition in which it finds its fruition stands forth as a marked relief. This condition of things may be brought about by the inhibition occasioned by the physical impossibility of attaining the object; but it may also be brought about by the struggle of incompatible desires among themselves. The man is drawn in different directions, he is subject to various tensions, and he becomes acutely conscious that he is impelled to move in several ways and is moving in none.

I have used the word "tension" to describe the psychic fact present in desire. I have done so for want of a better word. Of the physical basis of desire, of what takes place in the brain, we know nothing. With the psychic fact, the feeling of agitation and unrest, we are all familiar. Of the tendency of desire to discharge itself in action we are aware. A desire appears to be an inchoate volition—that which, if ripened successfully and not nipped in the bud, would become a volition. It may be looked upon as the first step toward action—a step which may or may not be followed by others. It does not seem out of place to call it a state of tension, of strain, of inclination. In speaking, thus, we use physical metaphors, but they do not appear out of place.

33. DESIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE.—But if a desire may be regarded as an unripe act of will, an inchoate volition, how is it that we can desire the unattainable, a sufficiently common experience? I may bitterly regret some act of my own in the past; I may earnestly wish that I had not performed it. But the past is irrevocable. Hence, the desire for the attainment of what is in this case the object, a different past, can hardly be regarded as even a preparatory step toward attainment.

In this case it can not, and were all desires directed upon what is in the nature of the case wholly unattainable by effort, it would occur to no one to speak of desire as a first step toward action. But normally and usually desires are not of this nature. They usually do constitute a link in the chain of occurrences which end in action. Did they not, they would have little significance in the life-history of the creature desiring. With the appearance of free ideas, with an extension of the range of memory and imagination, objects may be held before the mind which are not properly objects to be attained. Yet such objects are of the kind which attract or repel, i.e., of the kind which men endeavor to realize in action. They cannot be realized; we do not will to realize them; but we should will to do so were they realizable. The psychic factor, the strain, the tension, is unmistakably present. Real desire is revealed, and common speech, as well as the language of science, recognizes the fact.

This general attraction or repulsion exercised by objects, in spite of the fact that the objects may not appear to be realizable, is not without significance. The hindrance to realization may be an accidental one; it may not be wholly insuperable. The presence of a persistent desire may result in persistent effort, which may ultimately be crowned by success. Or it may show itself as a permanent readiness for effort. Were every frustrated desire at once dismissed from consciousness, the result would show itself in a passivity detrimental to action in general. Where the object is intrinsically an impossible one, persistent desire is, of course, futile. The dog baying at the cat in the tree is the prey of such a desire, but he does not realize it, or he might discontinue his inefficacious leaps. The man tormented by his unworthy act in the past is quite aware of the futility of his longings. His condition is psychologically explicable, but to a rational being, in so far as rational, it is not normal.

Normally, desire is the intermediate step between the recognition of an object and the will to attain it. The most futile of desires may be harbored. The imaginative mind may range over a limitless field, and give itself up to desires the most extravagant. But indulgence in this habit serves as a check to action serviceable to the individual and to the race. As a matter of fact, desire is usually for what seems conceivably within the limit of possible attainment. The man desires to catch a train, to run that he may attain that end; his mind is little occupied with the desire to fly, nor does his longing center upon the carpet of Solomon. To the desirability of dismissing from the mind futile desires current moral maxims bear witness.

34. WILL.—The natural fruition of a desire is, then, an act of will; the tension is normally followed by that release of energy which makes for the attainment of the object or end of the desire.

The question suggests itself, may there not be present, even in blindly impulsive action, something faintly corresponding to desire and will? That there should be an object in the sense of something aimed at, held in view as an idea to be realized, appears to be out of the question. But may there not be a more or less vague and evanescent sense of tension, and some psychic fact which may be regarded as the shadowy forerunner of the consciousness of the release of tension which, on a higher plane, reveals itself as the consciousness of will? There may be: introspection is not capable of answering the question, and one is forced to fall back upon an argument from analogy. Blindly impulsive action and action in which will indubitably and consciously plays a part are not wholly unlike, but they differ by a very wide interval. The interval is not an empty gap, however, for, as we have seen, all volitions do not stand out upon the background of our consciousness with the same unmistakable distinctness. There are volitions no one would hesitate to call such. And there are phenomena resembling volition which we more and more doubtfully include under that caption as we pass own on the descending scale.

Naturally, in describing desire and volition we do not turn to the twilight region where all outlines are blurred and indistinct. We fix our attention upon those instances in which the phenomena are clearly and strongly marked. They are most clearly marked where desire does not, at once and unimpeded, discharge itself in action, but where action is deferred, and a struggle takes place between desires.

The man is subject to various tensions, he is impelled in divers directions, he hesitates, deliberates, and he finally makes a decision. During this period of deliberation he is apt to be vividly conscious of desire as such—as a tension not yet relieved, as an alternation of tensions as the attention occupies itself, first with one desirable object, then with another. And the decision, which puts an end to the strife, is clearly distinguished from the desires as such.

In the reflective mind, which turns its attention upon itself and its own processes, the distinction between desire and will seems to be a marked one. But it is not merely the developed and reflective mind which is the seat of deliberation. The child deliberates between satisfying its appetite and avoiding possible punishment; it reaches for the forbidden fruit, and withdraws its hand; it wavers, it is moved in one direction as one desire becomes predominant, and its action is checked as the other gains in ascendency. Deliberation this unmistakably is. And deliberation we may observe in creatures below the level of man; in the sparrow, hopping as close as it dares to the hand that sprinkles crumbs before it; in the dog, ready to dart away in pursuance of his private desires, but restrained by the warning voice of his master. This is deliberation. Such deliberation as we find in the developed and enlightened human being it is not. That, however, there is present even in these humble instances, some psychic fact corresponding to what in the higher mind reveals itself as desire and volition, we have no reason to doubt.

35. DESIRE AND WILL NOT IDENTICAL.—I have had occasion to remark that the modern psychologist draws no such sharp line between desire and volition as the psychologist of an earlier time. That some distinction should be drawn seems palpable. It is not without significance that immemorial usage sanctions this distinction. The ancient Stoic's quarrel was with the desires, not with the will. The will was treated as a master endowed with rightful authority; the desires were subjects, often in rebellion, but justly to be held in subjection. And from the days of the Stoic down almost to our own, the will has been treated much as though it were an especial and distinct faculty of man, not uninfluenced by desire, but in no sense to be identified with it,—above it, its law-giver, detached, independent, supreme. This tendency finds its culmination in that impressive modern Stoic, Immanuel Kant, who desires to isolate the will, and to emancipate it altogether from the influence of desire.

Recently the pendulum has swung in the other direction. It has been recognized that will is the natural outcome of desire, and that without desire there would be no will at all. It has even been maintained that will is desire, the desire "with which the self identifies itself." [Footnote: See, for example, GREEN, Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 144-149.]

To this last form of expression objection may be made on the score of its vagueness. What does it mean for the self to "identify" itself with a desire? And if such an identification is necessary to will, can there be volition or anything resembling volition where self-consciousness has not yet been developed? It is very imperfectly developed in young children, and in the lower animals still less developed, if at all; and yet we see in them the struggle of desires and the resultant decision emerging in action. If we call a volition in which consciousness of the self has played its part "volition proper," it still remains to inquire how volitions on a lower plane are to be distinguished from mere desires.

What happens in a typical case of deliberation and decision? Two or more objects are before the mind and the attention occupies itself with them successively. Tensions alternate, wax strong and die away, only to recover their strength again. Finally the attention fixes upon one object to the exclusion of others, the strife of desires come to an end, and there is an inception of action in the direction of the realization of that particular desire. The desire itself is not to be confounded with the decision; the tension, with its release. The psychic fact is in the two cases different. The decision brings relief from the strain. It cannot properly be called a desire, not even a triumphant desire, although in it a desire attains a victory and its realization has begun.

Such a victory not all desires, even when most intense and prolonged, are able to attain. We have seen that the desire for the unattainable may amount to an obsession, and yet it will not ripen into an act of volition. The release of the tension in incipient action does not come. The bent bow remains bent. From the sense of strain in such a case one may be freed, as one is freed from the desires which succumb during the process of deliberation, by the occupation of the attention with other things. But the desire has been forgotten, not satisfied. It may at any time recur in all its strength.

We cannot more nearly describe the psychic fact called decision. Just as we cannot more nearly describe the psychic fact to which we have given the name "tension." Although the nervous basis of the phenomena of desire and will are unknown, we can easily conceive that, during desire, and before desire has resulted in the release of energy which is the immediate forerunner of action, the cerebral occurrence should be different from that which is present when that release takes place. Nor should it be surprising that the psychical fact corresponding to each should be different.

The view here set forth does not confuse desire and will, making will indistinguishable from desire, or, at least, from certain desires. On the other hand, it does not separate them, as though they could not be brought within the one series of occurrences which may properly be regarded as a unit. It has the advantage of making comprehensible the mutual relations of impulse, desire, and will. Blind impulse discharges itself in action seemingly without the psychic accompaniments which distinguish desire and will. But all impulse is not blind impulse, and desiring and willing admit of many degrees of development. To deny will to creatures lower than man, as some writers have done, is to misconceive the nature of the process that issues in action. We are tempted to do it only when we compare will in its highest manifestations with those rudimentary foreshadowings of it which stand at the lower end of the scale. But even in man we can discern blind impulse, dimly conscious desires which ripen into as dimly recognized decisions, and, at the very top of the scale, conscious decisions which follow deliberation, and are the resultant of a struggle between many desires.

For ethical science it is of no little importance to apprehend clearly the relation of decision to desire. Moral rules aim to control human conduct, and conduct is the expression of the whole man. If we have no clear conception of the desires which struggle for the mastery within him, and of the relation of his decisions to those desires, in vain will we endeavor to influence him in the direction in which we wish him to move.

36. THE WILL AND DEFERRED ACTION.—It remains to speak briefly of one point touching the nature of will. It has been suggested that the decision is the psychic fact corresponding to the release of nervous energy which relieves the tension of desire. It is the beginning of action, of realization. But what shall we say of resolves which cannot at once be carried out in action? Of decisions the realization of which is deferred? I may long debate the matter and then determine to pay a bill when it comes due next month. The decision is made; but, for a time, at least, nothing happens. How can I here speak of the beginning of action?

The action does not at once begin, yet it is, in a sense, initiated. The struggle of conflicting considerations has ceased; the man is "set" for action in a certain direction. For the time being the matter is settled, and only an external circumstance prevents the resolve from being carried out. The psychic factor is widely different from that of mere desire, and is not recognized to be different from that present in volition which at once issues in action.



CHAPTER XII

THE PERMANENT WILL

37. CONSCIOUSLY CHOSEN ENDS.—Our volitions, deliberate, less deliberate, and those verging upon what scarcely deserves the name of volition, weave themselves into complicated patterns, which find their expression in long series of the most varied activities. The nature of the pattern as a whole may be determined by the deliberate selection of an end, and to that the other choices which enter into the complex may be subordinate.

Thus, a man may decide that he can afford to give himself the pleasure of a long walk through the country before taking the train at the next town. During the course of the ramble he may make a number of more or less conscious decisions not incompatible with the purpose he originally embraced—to take this bit of road or that, to loiter in the shade, to climb a hill that he may enjoy a view, to hasten lest he find himself too late in arriving at his destination. These decisions may require little deliberation; they spring into being at the call of the moment, are not preceded by deliberation, and leave little trace in the memory. They may be made semi-consciously, and while the mind is largely occupied with other things, with thoughts of the past or the future, with other scenes suggested by the landscape, or with the flowers which skirt the road. Nevertheless, we would not hesitate to call them decisions.

May we apply the word in speaking of the single steps made by the traveler as he advances? His feet seem to move of themselves and to make no demands at all upon his attention.

Yet it is not strictly true to say that they move of themselves. They are under control, and the successive steps follow upon each other not without direction. They serve as expressions of the will to take the walk, and they are adjusted to the end consciously held in view. That attention is not fixed upon the individual steps does not remove them from the sphere of the voluntary, in a proper sense of the words. They are expressions of the man's will, even if they be not the result of a conscious series of deliberations and decisions. Whether we shall use the term decision in connection with the single step is rather a question of verbal usage than of the determination of fact. We have seen that decisions shade down gradually, from those quite unmistakable and characteristic, to occurrences far less characteristic and more disputable. The consciousness of deliberation and decision does not disappear abruptly at some point in the series. It fades away, as the light of day gradually passes, through twilight, into the shades of night. And actions not directly recognizable as consciously voluntary may be obviously under voluntary control. They weave themselves, with actions more palpably voluntary and higher in the scale, into those complicated patterns determined by the conscious selection of an end. As long as they serve their purpose, and require no effort, they may remain inconspicuous and unconsidered. But, as soon as a check is met with, attention is directed upon them and they become the subject of conscious voluntary control.

38. ENDS NOT CONSCIOUSLY CHOSEN.—In the above illustration the end which determines the character of a long chain of actions has been deliberately chosen. It is a consciously selected end. When, however, we contemplate critically the lives of our fellow-men, we seem to become aware of the fact that many of them act in unconsciousness of the ultimate end upon which their actions converge. The attention is taken up with minor decisions, and takes no note of the permanent trend of the will.

Thus, the selfish man may be unaware of the significance of the whole series of choices which he makes in a day; the malicious man may not realize that he is animated by the settled purpose to injure his neighbors; one may be law-abiding without ever having resolved to obey the laws through the course of a life. If called upon to account for this or that subordinate decision, each may exhaust his ingenuity in assigning false causes, while ignoring the permanent attitude of the will revealed in the series of decisions as a whole and giving them what consistency they possess.

Hence, the choice of ends, as well as the adoption of means to the attainment of ends, may reveal itself either in conscious deliberate decisions, or in the working of obscure impulses which do not emerge into the light. Even in the latter case, we have not to do with what is wholly beyond the sphere of intelligent voluntary control. The selfish man may be made aware that he is selfish; the malicious man, that he is malicious; and each may deliberately take steps to remedy the defect revealed.

When we understand the word "will" in the broad sense indicated in the preceding pages, we see that a man's habits may justly be regarded as expressions of the man's will. That, through repetition, his actions have become almost automatic does not remove them from the sphere of the volitional. That he does not clearly see, or that he misconceives, the significance of his habits, and may acquiesce in them even though they be injurious to him, does not make them the less willed, so long as he follows them. It is only when he actively endeavors to control or modify a habit that he may be said to will its opposite.

39. THE CHOICE OF IDEALS.—Nor is it too much to bring under the head of willing the attitudes of approval and disapproval taken by man in contemplating certain occurrences, actual or possible, which lie beyond the confines of the field within which he can exercise control. The field of control, direct and indirect, is as we have seen a broad one, but it has its limits, and many of the things he would like to see accomplished or prevented lie without it.

A man's will may be set upon the preservation of his health, he may strive to attain that end, and circumstances may condemn him to a life of invalidism. He would be healthy if he could, but his strivings are overruled. Or he may earnestly pursue the attainment of wealth, and may end in bankruptcy. He has the will to be rich, but that will is frustrated.

It is the same when we consider his attitude toward the decisions and actions of other men. By mere willing he cannot condition another's choice. But by willing he can often influence indirectly the volitions of his fellows. He can enlighten or misinform, persuade or threaten, reward or punish. In many ways he can weight the scale of his neighbor's mind. But such influences are not all-powerful, and only within limits can we bend other wills to follow a course prescribed for them by our own.

Nevertheless, even beyond those limits, the attitude of a man's mind toward the actions of his neighbor may be a volitional one. His will may be for them or against them; he may approve or disapprove, command or prohibit. We know quite well that commands and prohibitions laid upon children and servants will not always be effective, yet we issue general commands and prohibitions, as though assuming unlimited control. It is quite in accordance with usage to speak of a man as willing an end, even where it is clearly recognized that the will to attain does not guarantee attainment. The man does what he can; could he do more he would do so; in his helplessness the attitude of the will persists unchanged.

It is obvious that, in this large sense of the word "will," we may speak of a man as continuing to will or to approve a given end, even when he is not willing or approving anything, in a narrower sense of the words, at this or that moment. We speak of a man as inspired by the permanent will to be rich, although at many times during the day, and certainly during his hours of sleep, no act of volition with such an end in view has an actual existence.

No man always thinks of the permanent ends which he has selected as controls to his actions. They are selected, they pass from his mind, and, when they recur to it again, the selection is reaffirmed. But, whether he is actually thinking about the ends in question or not, the settled trend of his will is expressed in them.

This settled trend of the will, even when scarcely recognized by the man himself, may be vastly more significant than the passing individual decision, although the latter be accompanied by clear consciousness. In certain cases the latter is a true exponent of character, but not infrequently it is not. It may be the result of a whim, of an irrational impulse little congruous with a man's nature. It may be the outcome of some misconception and in contradiction with what the man would will, if enlightened. The individual volition appears only to disappear; it may leave no apparent trace. The permanent will indicates a habit of mind, a way of acting, which may be expected to make its influence felt with the persistency of that which exerts a steady pressure. To refuse it the name of will seems arbitrary and unjustifiable.

In the permanent will is expressed the character of the man. This character is reflected in his ideals. Sometimes ideals are clearly recognized and deliberately chosen. Sometimes a man is little aware of the nature of the ideals which control his strivings. He may be said to choose, but to choose more or less blindly. But, whether he chooses with clear vision or without it, he may choose well or ill.



CHAPTER XIII

THE OBJECT IN DESIRE AND WILL

40. THE OBJECT AS END TO BE REALIZED.—The expression "the object before the mind in desiring and willing" is not free from ambiguity. It may be used in referring to the idea, the psychic fact, which is present when one desires or wills. Or it may be used to indicate the future fact which is the realization of the idea, that which the idea points to as its end.

The idea and the end are, of course, not identical, but they are related. The idea mirrors the end, foreshadows it. In the attempt to explain a voluntary act we may turn either to the one or to the other; we may regard the idea as the efficient cause which has resulted in the act, or we may account for the act by pointing out the end it was purposed to attain. There is no reason why we should not recognize both the efficient cause and the final cause, or end.

The latter has been the subject of more or less mystification. How, it has been asked, can an end, which does not, as yet, exist, be a cause which sets in motion the apparatus that brings about its own existence? [Footnote: See JANET, Les Causes Finales, Paris, 1901, p. 1, ff.]

The difficulty is a gratuitous one. It lies in the confusion of the final cause or end, with the efficient cause. When we realize that the expression "final cause" means simply that which is purposed, or accepted as an end, objections to it fall away. That, in desire and will, in all their higher manifestations, at least, there is consciousness of an end, there can be no question.

If we attempt to give more than a vague physical explanation of actions due to blind impulse, we are compelled to refer to the idea, the psychic fact present, as efficient cause. Not so when we are concerned with actions of a higher order. We constantly refer such actions to the ends they have in view. We regard them as satisfactorily explained when we have pointed out the end upon which they are directed.

To the moralist it is of the utmost importance to know what ends men actually choose, and what they may be induced to choose. He is concerned with conduct, which is intelligent and purposive action. Conduct may be studied without entering upon an investigation of the efficient causes, whether physical or mental, which are the antecedents of action of any kind. Such matters one may leave to the physiologist and the psychologist.

Accordingly, when I speak of "the object" in desiring and willing, I shall use the word to indicate the end held in view, that toward which the creature desiring or willing strives.

41. HUMAN NATURE AND THE OBJECTS CHOSEN.—What objects do men actually desire and will to attain? To give a detailed account of them appears to be a hopeless and profitless task.

I take up my pen, I write, I turn to a book; I look at my watch, change my position, stretch, walk up and down, speak to some one who is present, smile or give vent to irritation; I sit down to a meal, eat of this dish rather than of that, go out to visit a place of amusement, respond to the appeal of the beggar in the street—in short, I fill my day with a thousand actions the most diverse, which follow each other without intermission.

Each of these actions may be the object of desire and will. No novel, however realistic, however prolix in its descriptions, can give us more than the barest outlines of the course of life followed by the personages it attempts to portray. A touch here, a touch there, and a character is indicated. No more, for more would be intolerable.

It is significant, however, that the few points touched upon can serve to give an idea of a character. Not-withstanding their diversity, volitions fall into classes; it is quite possible to indicate in a general way the kind of choices a given creature may be impelled to make. They are a revelation of the nature of the creature choosing. That beings differing in their nature should be impelled to different courses of action can surprise no one. Cats have no temptation to wander in herds; the exhibition of pugnacity in a sheep would strike us with wonder.

To every kind of creature its nature: and, although individuals within a kind differ more or less from one another, we look for approximation to a type. So it is with man. The expression "human nature," so much in the mouths of certain moralists ancient and modern, although somewhat vague, is not without its significance. To it we refer in passing a judgment upon individual human beings, and we regard as abnormal those who vary widely from the type.

42. THE INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF MAN.—In sketching for us the outlines of this distinctively human nature, the psychologist proceeds to an enumeration of the fundamental instincts and general innate tendencies of man, and he draws up a list of the emotions which correspond to them. He mentions the instincts of flight, repulsion, curiosity, pugnacity, self- abasement, self-assertion, the parental instinct, the instinct of sex, the instinct for food, that for acquisition, etc. He points out that man is by nature open to sympathy, is suggestible, and has the impulse to play. In such instincts and inborn general tendencies, blending and reinforcing or opposing and inhibiting one another, he sees the forces which give their direction to desire and will; which select, out of all possible objects, those which are to become objects for man.

It is not necessary here to discuss the nature of instinct, to distinguish between an instinct and a more general inborn tendency, or to attempt a complete list of the instincts and inborn tendencies of man. Nor need I ask whether every choice made by a human being can be traced, directly or indirectly, to one or more of the instincts and other tendencies given in the above or in any similar list. In explaining the individual choices which men make, or the desires to which they are subject, there is much scope for the ingenuity of the psychologist.

But of the significance for human life of the impulses mentioned there can be no question. What would the life of a man be if he could feel no fear or repulsion? Could there be a development of knowledge in the absence of curiosity? How long would the race endure if the parental instinct were wholly lacking? What would become of a man who never desired food? Could a human society of any sort exist if there were no sympathy or tender feeling, no impulse to seek the company of other men? It is men, such as they are, endowed with the qualities which distinguish man, who associate themselves into communities, and the customs and laws of such reflect the fundamental impulses in which they had their origin.

43. THE STUDY OF MAN'S INSTINCTS IMPORTANT.—That a careful study of human nature is of the utmost importance to the moralist is palpable. He must not prescribe for man a rule of conduct which it is not in man to follow. He must not set before him, as inducements to actions, objects which it is impossible for him to desire and, hence, to choose.

To be sure, the main traits of human nature were pretty well recognized many centuries before the modern science of psychology had its birth. Had they not been, man could not have had rational dealings with his fellow- man; could not effectively have persuaded and threatened, rewarded and punished, and, in short, set in motion all the machinery which is at the service of one man when he wants to influence the conduct of another. But moralists ancient and modern have made serious blunders through an imperfect understanding of the impulses natural to man; and the modern psychologist, without claiming to be a wholly original or an infallible guide, may be of no little service in helping us to detect them.

Thus, it was possible for as shrewd an observer of man as Aristotle to explain the affection of a man for his child by regarding it as an extension of self-love, the child being, in a sense, a part of the parent. [Footnote: Ethics, Book VIII, chapter xii.] Aristotle's quaint explanation of the fact that maternal affection is apt to be stronger than paternal is an error of a kindred nature. [Footnote: Ibid., Book IX, chapter vii.] And the ancient egoists, [Footnote: See the answer to Epicurus in the Discourses of Epictetus, translated by LONG, London, 1890, pp. 69-70.] in setting before man their selfish and anti-social ideal of human conduct, made their appeal, not to the whole man, but only to a part of him. The normal man, whether savage or civilized, whether ancient or modern, cannot desire a life filled only with the objects which they set before him. Nor is the modern moralist, or as he prefers to style himself, "immoralist," Nietzsche, [Footnote: A sketch of Nietzsche's doctrine is given later, see chapter xxix.] guilty of less gross a blunder. He rails at morality as commonly understood, calling it "the morality of the herd," and he recommends isolation, the repression of sympathy, and a contempt for one's fellows. To be sure, the "herd" is a scornful, rhetorical expression,—what Bentham would have called a "question-begging epithet,"—for men do not, properly speaking, live in herds; but they do normally live in human societies of some sort, and they have the instincts and impulses which fit them to do so. The repression of such instincts and impulses does violence to their nature, and he who advocates other than a social morality should advocate it for some creature other than man. Man is a social creature, and, among the objects of his desire and will, he must give a prominent place to some which are distinctively social.

44. THE BEWILDERING MULTIPLICITY OF THE OBJECTS OF DESIRE, AND THE EFFORT TO FIND AN UNDERLYING UNITY.—The mere enumeration of the characteristics which have been adduced as instincts or fundamental innate tendencies of man is enough to reveal the truth that man is not merely the subject of desire, but of desires; that is to say, his impulses are directed upon objects widely different from each other.

And when we call to mind that the concepts of the instincts and fundamental tendencies of human nature, as thus enumerated, are products of abstraction and generalization—are general notions gathered from the numberless concrete instances of desire and will furnished by our observation—we are forced to realize that the objects which individual men set before themselves in desiring and willing are really endlessly varied.

All men are not equally moved by fear, anger, repulsion, tender emotion, or sympathy. Nor do all men find the same things the objects of their fear, anger, repulsion, and the rest. The desire for food is an abstraction; in the concrete, this man eagerly accepts an oyster, and that one turns from it in disgust. In order to deal successfully with our fellow-man, we must not merely know man. We must know men.

Furthermore, not only do individuals set their affections upon different objects, but the same person at different stages of his development desires widely different things. What is a temptation to the boy has no attraction for the man. What fills the savage with longings may inspire in the product of a high civilization no other feeling than repulsion.

And what is true of the individual is true of men in the mass. The objects of desire and of endeavor are not the same in communities of all orders. Each kind of man has its own nature, which differs in some respects from that of each other kind, and dictates what shall be, for this or that man, an object of desire and will. No two men desire precisely the same thing in all particulars. Yet each is a man, and is endowed with the usual complement of human instincts.

The process of abstraction and generalization which resulted in the above-mentioned list of the elements which enter into the constitution of human nature is, nevertheless, not without its uses. It serves to order, to some extent, at least, the bewildering variety of the phenomena presented to us when we view the broad field of the desires and volitions of all sorts and conditions of men. Men's choices fall into kinds; there is similiarity in difference. We do not approach an unknown man with the feeling that he is a wholly unknown quantity. He is, at least, a man, and we know something of men. We have some notion how to go at him.

But the ordering of the motley multiplicity of men's desires by a reference to the fundamental instincts of man stops far short of a complete unification. We are left with a number of distinct and apparently irreducible impulses and tendencies on our hands. If it is useful to go so far, may it not be much more useful to go still farther?

Aristotle divided things eligible into those eligible in themselves and those eligible for the sake of something else. How it would illuminate the field of action, if it were discovered that men ultimately desire but one thing, and choose all other things on account of it! Would the discovery not facilitate immensely our dealings with our fellows, suggesting new possibilities of control? A notorious instance of the attempt to conjure away the bewildering diversity in men's desires and choices lies in the selection of pleasure as the one thing eligible in itself, the unique ultimate object of human action. Of this object we have, so far, taken no account.



CHAPTER XIV

INTENTION AND MOTIVE

45. COMPLEX ENDS.—I may desire to clear my throat and may do so. The action is a trivial one, is over in a moment, and is forgotten. On the other hand, I may desire to spend my summer on the sea-coast, to grow rich in business, to attain to high social position, or to satisfy political ambition.

When the object is of this complicated description, there may easily be elements in it which, considered alone, I should not desire at all.

The summer on the New Jersey coast may make for health. But it may entail mosquitoes, uncomfortable rooms, unaccustomed food, the lack of wonted occupations, and a distasteful association at close quarters with neighbors not of one's choosing. The road to wealth is an arduous one. The envied social station may imply the swallowing of many rebuffs. The way of the politician is hard.

One may desire, on the whole, one of these objects, or a thousand like them; but there are, obviously, many things comprised in the whole, or unavoidably bound up with it, that cannot attract, and are not eligible for their own sake.

46. INTENTION.—An object chosen and realized may bring in its train an indefinite series of consequences foreseen or unforeseen.

The striking of a match to light a candle may result in an unforeseen and disastrous conflagration. The overmastering desire to grow rich may have its fruit in an excessive application to business, the neglect of the family and of the duties of citizenship, and in hard and, perhaps, unscrupulous dealings. These things may be foreseen and accepted as natural accompaniments of the end chosen. But there may also be entailed shattered health, overwhelming anxieties, and the distress of seeing one's sons, brought up in luxury and without incentive to effort, victims to the dangers which menace the idle rich.

Whether such consequences might have been foreseen and provided against or not, it is true that they are frequently not foreseen with clearness. They certainly form no part of the intention of the man who bends his energies to the attainment of wealth. He does not deliberately intend to injure his health, to lose the affection of his family, to leave behind him degenerate children. He does intend to get rich, if he can.

How many of the elements contained in the object chosen, or so bound up with it that they must be accepted along with it, may fairly be said to fall within the intention of the chooser? There may easily be dispute touching the latitude with which the word intention may be used. Some things a man sees clearly to be inseparably connected with the object of his choice; some he is less conscious of; some he overlooks altogether. It does not seem unwarranted to maintain that the first of the three classes of things, at least, may be said to be intended. When Dr. Katzenberger, in his desire to get across the road without sinking in the mire, used as a stepping-stone his old servant Flex, who had fallen down, his complete intention was not simply to cross the road unmuddied. It was to cross the road unmuddied by stepping on Flex.

Evidently the intention—the whole object—gives some revelation of the character of a man. Many men may will to avoid the mud; but not all of these can will to avoid it by stepping upon a fellow-man.

47. MOTIVE.—The stepping upon a fellow-man with whom one is on good terms can scarcely be regarded as a thing desirable in itself. If it is desired, it is because of the complex in which it is an element. Some other element or elements may exert the whole attractive force which moves desire and will. In other words, some things are chosen for the sake of others.

When we have discovered that for the sake of which any object is chosen, we have come upon the Motive. The intention may be said to embrace the whole object as foreseen. The motive embraces only a part of it, but the vital part, the part without which the object would not be desired and willed.

48. ETHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF INTENTION AND MOTIVE.—There has been much dispute among moralists as to the ethical significance of intention and motive. Bentham maintains that "from one and the same motive, and from every kind of motive, may proceed actions that are good, others that are bad, and others that are indifferent." He gives the following illustration: [Footnote: Principles of Morals and Legislation, chapter x, Sec 3.]

"1. A boy, in order to divert himself, reads an inspiring book; the motive is accounted, perhaps, a good one; at any rate, not a bad one. 2. He sets his top a-spinning: the motive is deemed at any rate not a bad one. 3. He sets loose a mad ox among a crowd: his motive is now, perhaps, termed an abominable one. Yet in all three cases the motive may be the very same: it may be neither more nor less than curiosity."

In criticizing this citation I must point out that curiosity is not, properly speaking, an object of choice at all. I have used the word "object" to indicate what is chosen, not to indicate the psychic fact present at the time of the choice. And I have said that the motive is the vital part of the object.

Hence curiosity should not be called the motive. No man chooses curiosity as an object, either in the abstract or in the concrete. Curiosity is a fundamental impulse of human nature; we may elect to satisfy the impulse in any given instance; in other words, we may choose the appropriate object.

In the case of the boy letting loose the bull in the crowd, the object is to see what will happen under the given circumstances. This is what appeals to the boy. Something else might have appealed to him in performing the action. He might have had the deliberate wish to injure certain persons present against whom he harbored resentment. Or his sympathies might have been with the bull, which had been the victim of bad treatment, and to which he wished to grant its liberty. Were the crowd in question a band of ruffians intent upon lynching, he might have been moved by the desire to assist, in a somewhat irregular way, in the re-establishment of law and order. But even if his real object is only to see what will happen, there is no reason to put it on a par with the object in view when a boy spins a top. "To see what will happen" is the vaguest of phrases, and covers a multitude of disparate objects. He who does things to see what will happen has, at least, a very general knowledge of the kind of thing likely to happen, if a given experiment is made. A boy does not hold his finger in the candle-flame to see what will happen. He who does things to see what will happen, in really complete ignorance of what is likely to happen, may be set down as too much of a fool to be the subject of moral judgments.

It is obvious that an act may be done with many different objects in view—I mean real objects, motives. I give money to a beggar whose case is one to inspire pity. My motive, my "vital" object, may be to relieve the man. But it may equally well be to get rid of him, to gratify my self-feeling by becoming the dispenser of bounty, or to inspire admiration in the onlooker. The intention, as I have used the word above, is to relieve the beggar, with such consequences of the act as may be foreseen at the time. Within the limits of this intention, the motive may vary widely, and may, in a given instance, be either admirable or contemptible.

It may be claimed, in answer to this, that the real intention is, in every case, what I have called the motive; that, in the first case, it was to relieve suffering; in the second, to get rid of an annoyance; in the third to satisfy vanity; in the fourth, to be admired.

The word "intention," thus used, is equivalent to "motive." Popular usage gives some sanction to this confusion of the words. We say of a man who has done a questionable act: "His intentions were good," or, "His motives were good." Still, popular usage does not always regard the two expressions as equivalent. To revert to the case of the unhappy Flex. It does not seem inappropriate to say that the use of a man as a stepping- stone was a part of his master's intention. It does appear inappropriate to call it the motive or a part of the motive of the whole transaction.

Intention and motive are convenient words to designate the whole object chosen and the part of the object which accounts for the choice of the whole. That it is important to distinguish between the two is palpable.

The intention gives some indication of character. We know something about a man when we know what kinds of objects he will probably set before himself as aims. But we know more when we know why he chooses these objects rather than others; when we can analyze the complex and can discover just what elements in it attract him.

With an increase of our knowledge comes an increased power of control. Until we know a man's motives, we do not really know the man; and until we know the man, our efforts to influence him must be rather blind.

The search for motives appears to carry us in the direction of the systematization and simplification of the embarrassing wealth of objects which are actually the goal of human desires and volitions. Man may desire a boundless variety of objects. His motives in desiring them may, conceivably, be comparatively few.

It should be apparent that both intention and motive have ethical significance. We have our opinion of men capable of harboring certain intentions. But we recognize that some men may harbor them with better motives than others. And we can see that a man's intention may be bad, and yet his motive, considered in itself, be good. How we are to rate the man, morally, becomes rather a nice question.



CHAPTER XV

FEELING AS MOTIVE

49. FEELING. [Footnote: See the notes on this chapter at the end of this volume.]—Two men may recognize with equal clearness the presence of a danger. That recognition may evoke in the one a violent emotion of fear, and in the other little or no emotion. Two men may be treated with indignity. The one fumes with rage; the other remains calm. It is well recognized that men may be susceptible to emotion in general, or to certain specific emotions, in varying degrees. Knowledge is not always accompanied by a marked manifestation of emotion. Thoughts may be clear, but cold. There are, however, natures whose intellectual processes are steeped in emotion. Such men live in an atmosphere of agitation.

Lists of the emotions which correspond to the instincts and fundamental impulses of man have been drawn up. In them we find mentioned fear, disgust, wonder, anger, elation, tender feeling, and so forth; phenomena which, by earlier writers, were classified as "passions," and to which we may conveniently give the name "feeling." We constantly speak of our emotions as our "feelings," and we contrast the man of feeling with the coldly intellectual mind in which emotion is at a minimum.

But it is not alone to such specific emotions as those above-mentioned that we apply the term feeling. Thoughts are agreeable or disagreeable, pleasurable or painful. So are emotions. The agreeableness or disagreeableness, pleasantness or painfulness, which are the accompaniments of thoughts and emotions, have been called by modern psychologists their feeling-tone. It is not out of harmony with common usage to give them the name of feelings. In so doing we contrast them with knowledge and assimilate them to emotion.

Whether every sensation and every thought gives rise to an emotion of some sort is matter for dispute, as is also the question whether every sensation, thought and emotion is tinged with some degree of pleasurable or painful feeling. In the absence of conclusive evidence, it is open to us to assume that some feeling is always present where there is mental activity of any kind. The feeling may be so faint and evanescent as to escape detection, but this does not prove that it is absent.

50. FEELING AND ACTION.—Emotions and feelings of pleasure and pain are the normal accompaniments of the exercise of the instincts and impulses of creatures that desire and will. Within limits, we appear to be able to take them as an index of the strength of the desire and the vigor of the effort at attainment.

An act of cruelty is perpetrated. I see it, and it leaves me, perhaps, cold and unmoved. In such case, it is hardly expected of me that I should take energetic measures to have the evil-doer punished. The man whose face flushes, whose brows descend, whose teeth come together, whose fists clench, whose heart beats thickly, at the recognition of an insult, is, as a rule, the man from whom we look for vigorous efforts at retaliation. The apathetic creature who feels no resentment is usually expected to swallow the indignity. The child who jumps for joy at the sight of a new doll is supposed to desire it eagerly, and to be ready to make efforts to obtain it.

But it is only within limits that this relation between feeling and action holds. Men of little emotion may be resolute and prompt to action. Their desires, as evinced by their actions, may be persistent and effective. Nor need the individual fix his choice upon the particular object that arouses in him the most feeling. A man may see his fellow- creature destitute, and may shed tears over his pitiable lot. But he will not bequeath his money to him. He will leave it to his son, for whom, perhaps, he has no respect and has come to have little affection. And he may leave it to him with regret, knowing that it will be dissipated in ways which he cannot approve. It has been pointed out with justice that the exercise of many instincts may be accompanied with little feeling; and we are all aware of the fact that, as action becomes habitual, emotion tends to evaporate and the pleasure of effort and attainment is apt to be reduced to a minimum.

51. FEELING AS OBJECT.—It is well to keep in mind the distinction between feeling as a psychic fact present in the mind of the creature desiring and willing, and feeling as the object of desire and will. A man in a rage is the victim of a storm of feeling. The thought of the injury he has received and the desire for retaliation by no means exhaust the contents of his mind. But the passion which shakes him is not his object; that object is revengeful action.

Nevertheless, feeling may be made the object of desire and will. One may attend a religious or political meeting with the deliberate view of arousing in one's self certain complex emotions. Poe's gruesome tales are read for the sake of the thrill which is produced by the perusal. Probably the desire for excitement, for the experiencing of certain vivid emotions, has no little to do with the attraction exercised by certain criminal professions. The burglar desires the booty, but he may desire something more.

Emotions have, as we have seen, their "tone" of pleasure or pain. They are agreeable or the reverse, and it is palpable that men do not, as a rule, deliberately make them the object of desire and will in indifference to the fact that they are pleasant or are painful. We do not normally wish to attain to states of mind in which remorse plays a prominent part; we do not aim to revel in shame; we do not seek to be haunted with fear. Pleasurable emotions are desired, where desire is set on emotions at all; and painful emotions are regarded by the mind as unwelcome guests. At any rate, this appears to be the rule, and to characterize the man whom we regard as normal.

This being the case, it seems natural to ask whether, when we embrace the intention of producing in ourselves a given emotion, our motive may not be narrower in scope, namely, the attainment of pleasure? and, when we wish to rid the mind of any emotion, our motive may not be the avoidance of pain?

The adoption of this view would give to the feelings of pleasure and pain a unique importance. They would be accepted as the only ultimate objects of desire and will. By many they have been thus accepted. It has been insisted that objects of every description are chosen only as they arouse some feeling; and that those which promise pleasant feeling are sought and those which entail pain are avoided. The general recognition of the primacy of pleasure and pain over our other feelings, over the specific emotions mentioned above, is indicated by the fact that ethical writers of eminence sometimes make pleasure and pain synonymous with feeling in general, passing over other feelings, as though it were not important for the moralist to take them into consideration. The dispute whether the proper course for human action to take is prescribed by reason or is dictated by feeling often resolves itself into the problem whether we should be guided by reason, or by a consideration of pleasure to be attained or pain to be avoided.

52. FREEDOM AS OBJECT.—The acceptance of pleasure and pain as the ultimate motives of human action seems, at first sight, to be of inestimable assistance to us in threading our way through the labyrinth of diverse choices made by creatures that desire and will.

But only at first sight. Even if it be true that every creature seeks only to attain pleasure and to avoid pain, and uses the means it finds to hand in the attainment of these ends, the endless diversity of the means remains as a thing to reckon with. The knowledge that all men desire pleasure does not help us a whit in dealing with men, unless we know what things will give pleasure to this man or to that. All men may desire pleasure; but it remains true that what gives pleasure to the spendthrift gives pain to the miser; what appeals to the glutton disgusts a man of refined tastes. If all men were alike and precisely alike, and if their natures were very simple and remained unchanged, the problem of the distribution of pleasures would be vastly simplified.

Whether the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain may be regarded as the only ultimate ends proper to man will be discussed later. [Footnote: See chapter xxv.] Here, it is important to insist that so general a formula gives us little useful information touching the set of the will either of classes of men or of individuals. This we can attain to only as a result of the study of the complex nature of man as revealed in the choices which he actually makes. The ends of man are many and various; some of these ends are accidental, palpably means for the attainment of other ends more fundamental, and for them other means of attaining the same ends may be substituted. But other ends, and they are by no means to be reduced to a single class, appear to belong to the very nature of man. In seeking them he is giving expression to the impulses which make him what he is.

In so far as these impulses find an unimpeded expression the man is free; otherwise he is under restraint. Without rendering here a final decision upon the importance of the role played in human life by pleasure and pain, one feels impelled to ask the question whether the goal of a man's endeavors may not best be described as freedom? Not freedom in the abstract, freedom to do anything and everything, but freedom to live the life appropriate to him as man, and as a man of a given type. That this freedom is limited in a variety of ways, by his material environment, by the clashing of impulses within himself, by the conflict of his desires with the will of the social organism in which he finds his place, is sufficiently palpable.



CHAPTER XVI

RATIONALITY AND WILL

53. THE IRRATIONAL WILL.—As dreams do not consist of an insignificant medley of elements drawn from the experiences of waking life, but, in spite of their fantastic character, bear some semblance of ordered reality, so the impulses of even the most unintelligent and inconsequent of human beings are not wholly chaotic, but differ only in the degree of their organization from those of the most rational and far-seeing.

Where there is even a glimmer of intelligence, ends are recognized and means to their attainment are chosen. Ends are compared, and the preference is given to some over others. But, with all this, there may be much incoherence and planlessness. Men can live somehow without looking far into the future, or keeping well in mind the lessons to be learned from the past. They can manage to exist in the face of no little short- sighted impulsiveness and inconsistency. But it is palpable that they cannot, under such circumstances, live as they might live were they more truly rational.

The individual deficient in foresight and control may, it is true, be carried along and defended from disaster by the presence of these qualities in the greater organism of which he is a part. The infant is a parasite upon society; it is provided for independently of its own efforts. The child would soon come to grief were its ends not chosen by others and its conduct kept under control. And a vast number of persons not children are in much the same position. There is foresight and rational purpose somewhere; they profit by it; but of foresight and rational purpose they themselves possess but a modicum.

Where breadth of view is lacking, where the future is unforeseen or ignored and the past is forgotten, where desires arise and impel to action in relative independence of one another, the man seeks today what tomorrow he rejects. We can scarcely say that the man chooses. He is the scene of independent choices, varied and inconsistent. He is the victim of caprice, and appears to us largely the creature of accident, a prey to the impulse which happens to be in his mind at the moment. From such a man we cannot look for an adherence to distant aims, and the marshalling of the proper means to their attainment. He cannot count upon himself, and he cannot be counted upon. That he can play no significant role in such stable organizations as the state and church is obvious. His desires may be many and varied, but they converge upon no one end. We set him down as irrational.

54. ONE VIEW OF REASON.—Concerning the part played by reason or intelligence in the active life of man there has been no little dispute.

It has been maintained, on the one hand, that reason or intelligence serves its whole purpose in holding before the mind all its impulses and desires, revealing their interrelations, and making possible an enlightened and deliberate choice from among them. Where the horizon is thus extended and mental clarity reigns, the attention can roam unimpeded over the whole field, consider the objects of desire in their true relations and compare them with one another. Congruous desires can reinforce each other; conflicting desires can be brought face to face, and the one or the other can deliberately be dismissed; fundamental and dominant desires may assert their supremacy, and give their stamp to far- reaching decisions which exercise a control over minor decisions and favor or repress a multitude of desires and volitions.

The attainment of perfect rationality in this sense is an ideal never completely realized. No man can hold before his mind all his impulses and desires, see them in their true relations to each other, and come to a decision which will do complete justice to all. But the ideal may be approached.

The reason, in this case, resembles the presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, who insists that all the members shall be heard from, all proposals seriously considered, and that the ultimate decision shall justly represent the true will of the deliberative body as a whole. The specious but fallacious argument is, in the debate, revealed in its true nature; the obstinate insistence of the individual is not allowed to prevail; the loud voice is recognized to be a loud voice and nothing more; fugitive gusts of passion exhaust themselves; the permanent and fundamental will of the assembly is revealed in the final vote. It is claimed that, in such a mind, the result is a harmonization and unification of the multiplicity of the desires and purposes which, in a mind less rational, jostle one another without control, and refuse to fall into an ordered system. That the decisions of a rational mind reveal both a unity and a harmony not evinced by a mind short-sighted and impulsive cannot be denied. But it is well to understand clearly what is meant by such unity and harmony.

55. DOMINANT AND SUBORDINATE DESIRES.—Wherever a group of desires fall into a system and work together toward a common end, we have unity. Such a system may be short-lived, comparatively poor in content, and of no great significance for a man's life as a whole. It may come into competition with another similar system, and be displaced by it. An interest that has dominated our minds for a time, and controlled our desires and volitions, may readily give place to different choices. I may successively bend all my energies upon the winning of a game, the doing of a successful stroke of business, the defeat of a social rival, the success of a philanthropic undertaking. There is no normal human being who does not exhibit such limited volitional units. The most idle and purposeless of vagrants, the most scatter-brained school-boy, the most volatile coquette, may, for a time, be dominated by some desire which calls into its service other desires and thus realizes some chosen end.

Such volitional units do not, however, go far toward unifying the efforts of a life. It is only when some dominant and deep-seated desire, oft recurring, not easily displaced by others, sweeps into its train the other desires of a man, establishing a sovereignty and exacting subservience, that such an effect is accomplished. Then the lesser units fall into a significant relation to each other as constituent elements in the greater unit. The life, as such, may be said to have a purpose; it strives toward a single goal.

Whatever bears upon the attainment of such a dominant purpose may, however trivial in itself, acquire a vital importance and be eagerly desired. To a man of mature mind there can be little interest in hitting a small ball with a stick, abstractly considered. Nor is the dropping of a bit of paper into a box with a slit in it an action in itself calculated to stir profound emotion. But if the hitting of the ball in the right way marks the critical point in winning an eagerly contested game of golf, the interest in it may be absorbing. And if the bit of paper is an offer of marriage committed to the post, the hand may tremble and the heart leap in the breast. A dominant desire may create or reinforce other desires to a degree to which it is not easy to set limits.

56. THE HARMONIZATION OF DESIRES.—And it may actively repress other desires or cause them to dwindle and disappear. A man possessed by a devouring ambition may resolutely scorn delights to which he would otherwise be keenly susceptible, or he may simply ignore them without effort. The attention, fixed upon some chosen end, and busied with the means to its attainment, may leave them unheeded. Finding no place in the volitional pattern that occupies the mind, they are cast aside and soon forgotten.

In so far, hence, as the desires of a man tend to fall thus into groups converging upon a single end, we find not merely unity but harmony. The volitional pattern is of a given kind, and the colors which enter into it are selected.

When, however, we speak of the desires of a rational mind as harmonized, we do not mean that incompatible desires are reconciled. One cannot laugh and drink at the same time, nor can the desire for luxurious ease be made to fall upon the neck of the desire for attainment through strenuous effort. The final harmony attained resembles in some respects the peace enforced by the violent character depicted by Mark Twain, who would have peace at any price, and was willing to sacrifice to it the life and limb of the opposing party. The cessation of strife does not imply the satisfaction of all parties to a contest; nor does the fact that a life is controlled by a ruling motive, which reinforces or calls into being certain desires and robs others of their insistence, imply that by any device all the desires which man has, still less all that he, as a human being, might have, can find their satisfaction. Harmony is obtained at the price of the suppression of many desires; but, where a mind is strongly dominated by a comprehensive volitional unit, the price may be paid without much regret.