Part 7
We may go even further than this and say that it is only actions which proceed from character that are properly the subject of moral judgment. Let us take a concrete illustration of this. A man distributes a large sum of money among the inhabitants of a town, some of it in the form of personal gifts among its needy inhabitants, the rest in endowing various institutions connected with its social and municipal life. Twelve months later he comes forward as candidate in a parliamentary election. The question of his donations at once comes up for judgment, and in defence he may plead that he was only invited to contest the seat after the money was given. How shall we determine what his motives were? Obviously by an appeal to his character. If he were well known as a wealthy person of recognized benevolent disposition, it would be argued that while his candidature would inevitably reap benefit from his donations it was highly probable that in giving the money he was only acting as one would expect him to act. If, on the other hand, he was well known as a person of a mean and grasping disposition, it would be concluded that the donation was an attempt to bribe the electorate, his giving the money so long before being an intelligent anticipation of events. In either case we should be appealing to character, and judging the man by what of his character was known. Numerous instances of a like kind might be given, but in every case it would be found that we infer from an action a particular kind of motive, and that our judgment of the motive is determined by the character of the individual. This is so far the case that we are apt to mistrust our own judgment when we find a benevolent person doing what looks like a mean action, or a brave person committing what looks like an act of cowardice. While action is thus--so far as it is intentional--always the registration of motive, and motive the expression of a preponderating desire, the desire, whether it be licentious or chaste, noble or ignoble, is the outcome of character.
Determinism thus finds a fit and proper place for character in its philosophy of things. It does not say that the fact or the consideration of character is irrelevant; on the contrary, it says it is all-important. And in saying this it challenges the position of the Indeterminist by the implication that it is only on lines of Determinism that character is important or that it can be profitably cultivated. For consider what is meant by saying that conduct implies and proceeds from character. It clearly implies that a man acts in this or that manner because he has been in the habit of acting in this or that manner. We do not gather grapes from thistles, and we do not experience noble actions from a depraved character. The actions of each are determined by the character of each, and character is in turn the outcome of psychic inheritance, plus the effects of the interaction of organism and environment from the moment of birth onward. Personal characteristics, honesty, courage, truthfulness, loyalty, thus imply strictly determined qualities. They are qualities determined by the nature of the organism. They could not be expressed unless the surrounding circumstances were favourable to their expression; but neither could they be manifested unless the character was of a particular order. Conduct is, in fact, always a product of the two things.
Let us also note that it is this determination of qualities that is implied when we speak of a good or a bad, a strong or a weak character. We should not call a man a good character who to-day fed a starving child, and to-morrow kicked it from his doorstep. We should describe him as, at best, a person of an exceedingly variable disposition who satisfied the caprice of the moment irrespective of the feelings and needs of others. We should not call a person strong who withstood a temptation one hour and yielded to it the next. He would be described as weak, and lacking the compelling force of a stable disposition. It is also true that the moralization of character is the more complete as the determined nature of impulses is the more evident. Most people would not only resent the imputation of having committed a mean action, they would also resent the likelihood of their committing one. And in common speech, and in fact, the highest tribute we can pay a man is to say that a certain kind of action is beneath him. We say that we know A would not have committed a theft, but we are quite willing to believe it of B. In each case we make no allowance for the operation of an undetermined will; such doubts as we have being connected with our inability to completely analyze the character in question. But our prognostications are strictly based upon our knowledge of character and upon the conviction that given a certain character and the operation of particular motives, specific action follows with mathematical certainty.
And this, as has previously been pointed out, gives the only reliable basis for the cultivation of character. The whole aim of education, whether it be that received in the home, in the school, or the larger and more protracted education of social life, has the aim and purpose of securing the spontaneous response of a particular action to a particular stimulus, or on the negative side that certain circumstances shall not arouse desires of a socially unwelcome character. The phrase "Patriotism" thus serves to arouse a group of feelings that cluster round the state and social life. "Home" awakens its own groups of domestic and parental feelings. "Duty," again, covers a wider sphere, but involves the same process. By instruction and by training, certain conditions, circumstances, words, or associations are made to call up trains of connected feelings which, culminating in a desire, imperatively demand conduct along a given line. The more complete the education, the stronger the desire; the stronger the desire, the more certain the action. The more defective the education the less the certainty with which we can count upon specific conduct. The man who acts to-day in one way and to-morrow in another way is not a man of strong desires, so much as he is a man whose desires are undisciplined. The man who acts with uniform certainty is not a man of weak desire, but one whose desires run with strength and swiftness in a uniform direction. And it is a curious feature of indeterministic psychology that it should take as clear evidence of the subordination of desire to "will" the man whose desire is so strong as to preclude hesitation between it and action.
The whole of education, the whole of the discipline of life, is thus based upon the determination of conduct by circumstances and character. If the principle of cause and effect does not fully apply to conduct, all our training is so much waste of time. But it is because we cannot really think of the past not influencing the present, once we bring the two into relation, that we, Determinist and Indeterminist alike, proceed with our deterministic methods of training, and in this instance at least wisdom is justified of her children.
Finally, if the above be granted, can we longer attach meaning to the expression that man forms his own character? Well, if it means that a man has any share in his psychic endowments, or that they being what they are at any given time he could at that time act differently from the way in which he does act, the expression is meaningless. It is absolute nonsense. But in another sense it does convey an important truth. We must, however, always bear in mind that in speaking of a man's character we are not dealing with two things, but with one thing. The character is the man, the man is the character. Or to be quite accurate, body and mind, physical and psychical qualities together, form the man, and any separation of these is for purposes of analysis and study only. If we say, then, that a man is master of his own character, or that a man may mould his own character, we do not imply the existence of an independent entity moulding or mastering something else. We are saying no more than that every experience carries its resultant into the sum of character. Action generates habit, and habit means a more or less permanent modification of character. What a man is, is the outcome of what he has been, and a perception of this truth no more conflicts with the principles of Determinism as above explained, than a stone being intercepted in its fall down the side of a hill by lodging against a tree is an infraction of the law of gravitation. In this sense, using figurative language, a man may be said to be master of himself. What he does proceeds from himself; it is the expression of his character, and his doing cuts deeper the grooves of habit, and so makes more certain the performance of similar actions in the future. It is the fact of the motive springing from character which determines the act that makes the man its author. And the knowledge of this supplies him with, not alone the most powerful incentive towards the determination of his own character, but, what is equally important, the only method whereby to fashion the character of others.
VIII.
A PROBLEM IN DETERMINISM.
If human feeling followed logical conviction the discussion of Determinism might, so far as the present writer is concerned, be considered as finished. Ultimately this doubtless occurs; but in the interim one has to reckon with the play of feeling, fashioned by long-standing conviction, upon convictions that are of recent origin. Thus it happens that many who realise the logical force of arguments similar to those hitherto advanced, find themselves in a state of fearfulness concerning the ultimate effect on human life of a convinced Determinism. The conflict between feeling and conviction that exists in their own minds they naturally ascribe to others, and endow it with a permanency which mature consideration might show to be unwarranted. It would indeed be strange and lamentable if the divorce between feeling and conviction--to adopt a popular classification--was not simply incidental to change, but was also an inexpugnable part of fundamental aspects of human life.
Mr. A. J. Balfour has indeed gone so far as to suggest,[9] as a theory to meet this phenomenon, that the immediate consciousness of our actions being determined would be so paralyzing to action, that Nature has by "a process of selective slaughter" made a consciousness of this character a practical impossibility. But it would seem that the fact of a consciousness of determination developing at all affords strong presumptions in favour of the belief that no such selective slaughter is really necessary to the maintenance of vital social relations. Mr. Balfour's argument might have some weight against Fatalism, which says that what is to be will be in despite of all that may be done to prevent its occurrence; but we are on different ground with a theory which makes what _I_ do part of the sequence that issues in a particular result.
[9] _International Journal of Ethics_, vol. iv. pp. 421-422.
The problem is put very plainly in the following two quotations. The first is from a private source, written by one who fears the consequences of Determinism on conduct. The writer says:--
"In a moral crisis, and with the consciousness of a strong tendency in the direction of what is felt to be wrong, is there no danger of this desire gaining further strength and becoming the predominant feeling by accepting Determinism, causing a weakened sense of responsibility, besides providing a convenient excuse for giving way to the lower instead of the higher? Thus in a question of alternatives is it not conceivable that by dwelling on this thought, the agent is resisting possibilities which might otherwise have a different effect had Determinism no advocacy and with a different competitive factor to oppose? This, it seems to me, is what the Indeterminist fears, and I think it must be admitted not without some reason."
The second comes from Mr. F. W. Headley's work, _Life and Evolution_. Mr. Headley, after discussing the evolution of mind, and after admitting the impregnable nature of the determinist position, says that notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary we cannot help cherishing the belief that we are in some sense "free," and adds:--
"For practical purposes what is wanted is not free-will but a working belief in it. When the time for decision and for action comes, a man must feel that he is free to choose or he is lost. And this working belief in free-will, even though the thing itself be proved to be a phantom and an illusion, is the inalienable property of every healthy man."
Both these criticisms might be met by the method of analysing the use made of certain leading words. For example, the Determinist would quite agree that for conduct to be fruitful a man must feel that he is free to choose. But unless his freedom consists in liberty to obey the dictates of his real nature, the term is without significance. The fact of choice, as has been pointed out, is common ground for both Determinist and Indeterminist. The real question is whether the choice itself is determined or not. What a man needs to feel is that his choice is decisive, and that it is based upon an impartial review of the alternatives as they appear to him. Determinism makes full allowance for this; it is Indeterminism which in denying the application of causality to the will substantially asserts that the whole training of a lifetime may be counteracted by the decision of an uncaused will, and so renders the whole process unintelligible. And as to Determinism causing a weakened sense of responsibility, surely one may fairly argue that the consciousness of the cumulative force of practice may well serve to warn us against yielding to a vicious propensity, and so strengthen the feeling of resistance to it. There could hardly be conceived a stronger incentive to right action, or to struggle against unwholesome desires, than this conviction. Moreover, the practical testimony of those who are convinced Determinists is all in this direction. The fears are expressed by those whose advocacy of Determinism is at best of but a lukewarm description.
But in order that the full weight of the difficulty may be realized let us put the matter in a still more forcible form. Determinism, it is to be remembered, is an attempt to apply to mind and morals that principle of causation which is of universal application in the physical world, and where it has proved itself so fruitful and suggestive. On this principle all that is flows from all that has been in such a way that, given a complete knowledge of the capacities of all the forces in operation at any one time, the world a century hence could be predicted with mathematical accuracy. So likewise with human nature. Human conduct being due to the interaction of organism with environment, our inability to say what a person will do under given circumstances is no more than an expression of our ignorance of the quantitative and qualitative value of the forces operating. The possibilities of action are co-extensive with the actualities of ignorance. There is no break in the working of causation, no matter what the sphere of existence with which we happen to be dealing.
It is at this point that Determinism lands one in what is apparently an ethical _cul-de-sac_. If all that is, is the necessary result of all that has been, if nothing different from what does occur could occur, what is the meaning of the sense of power over circumstances that we possess? And why urge people to make an effort in this or that direction if everything, including the effort or its absence, is determined? I may flatter myself with the notion that things are better because of some action of mine. But beyond the mere fact that my action is part of the stream of causation, all else is a trick of the imagination. My conduct is, all the time, the result of the co-operation of past conditions with present circumstances. To say that praise or blame of other people's conduct, or approval or disapproval of my own conduct, is itself a determinative force, hardly meets the point. For these, too, are part of the determined order.
It might be urged that the knowledge that by exciting certain feelings others are proportionately weakened operates in the direction of improvement. Quite so; and as a mere description of what occurs the statement is correct. But to the Determinist there is no "I" that determines which feeling or cluster of feelings shall predominate. "I" am the expression of the succession and co-ordination of mental states; we are still within a closed circle of causation. Whether I am good or bad, wise or unwise, I shall be what I must be, and nothing else; do as I must do, and no more.
This is, I think, putting the Indeterminists' case as strongly as it can be put. How is the Determinist to meet the attack? A common retort is that all this being granted things remain as they were. If the criminal action is determined so is that of the judge, and so no harm is done. We shall go on praising or blaming, punishing or rewarding, doing or not doing, exactly as before, simply because we cannot do otherwise. This, however, while effective as a mere retort, is not very satisfactory as an answer. For it neither explains the sense of power people feel they possess, nor does it meet the criticism raised. On the one hand there is the fact that character does undergo modification, and the conviction that _my_ effort does play a part in securing that modification. And with this there goes the feeling--with some--that if everything, mental states and dispositions included, is part of an unbroken and unbreakable order, why delude ourselves with the notion of personal power? Why not let things drift? And on the other hand there is the conviction that scientific Determinism holds the field. The state of mind is there, and it is fairly expressed in the two quotations already given; particularly in Mr. Headley's statement that we ought to act as though Free-Will were a fact, even though we know it to be otherwise. The difficulty is there, and one must admit that it is not always fairly faced by writers on Determinism. An appeal is made to man's moral sense, and this, while legitimate enough in some connections, is quite irrelevant in this. Or it is said that a knowledge of the causational nature of morals should place people on their guard against encouraging harmful states of mind. This is also good counsel, but it clearly does not touch the point that, whether I encourage harmful or beneficial states of mind, it is all part of the determined order of things.
As an example of what has been said we may take a passage from John Stuart Mill. In his criticism of Sir William Hamilton, Mill remarks:--
"The true doctrine of the causation of human actions maintains ... that not only our conduct, but our character, is, in part, amenable to our will; that we can by employing the proper means, improve our character; and that if our character is such that while it remains what it is, it necessitates us to do wrong, it will be just to apply motives which will necessitate us to strive for its improvement, and so emancipate ourselves from the other necessity; in other words, we are under a moral obligation to seek the improvement of our moral character."
Admirable as is this passage it is clearly no reply to the criticism that whether we seek moral improvement or not, either course is as much necessitated as is the character that needs improving. To give a real relevance to this passage we should have to assume the existence of an ego outside the stream of causation deciding at what precise point it should exert a determining influence. That so clear a thinker as Mill should have overlooked this gives point to what has been said as to writers on Determinism having failed to squarely face the issue.
A more valid reply to Mr. Headley's position would be that so long as we believe a theory to be sound there is no real gain in acting as though we were convinced otherwise. Granting that an illusion may have its uses, it can only be of service so long as we do not know it to be an illusion. A mirage of cool trees and sparkling pools may inspire tired travellers in a desert to renewed efforts of locomotion. But if they _know_ it to be a mirage it only serves to discourage effort. And once we believe in Determinism, our right course, and our only profitable course, is to face all the issues as courageously as may be. Not that a correct reading of Determinism leads to our sitting with folded hands lacking the spirit to strive for better things.
It may be that certain people so read Determinism, but one cannot reasonably hold a theory responsible for every misreading of it that exists. Theologians in particular would be in a very uncomfortable position if this rule were adopted. A theory is responsible for such conclusions or consequences as are logically deducible therefrom, but no more. And what we are now concerned with is, first, will Determinism, properly understood, really have the effect feared; and, second, is it possible for Determinism to account adequately for the belief that it is possible to modify other people's character, and in so doing modify our own? In Mill's words, can we exchange the necessity to do wrong for the necessity to do right? I believe that a satisfactory reply can be given to both questions.
In the first place we have to get rid of the overpowering influence of an atomistic psychology. A very little study of works on psychology--particularly of the more orthodox schools--is enough to show that the social medium as a factor determining man's mental nature has been either ignored, or given a quite subordinate position. Because in studying the mental qualities of man we are necessarily dealing with an individual brain, it has been assumed that mental phenomena may be explained with no more than a casual reference to anything beyond the individual organism. This assumption may be sound so long as we are dealing with mind as the function of definitely localized organs, or if we are merely describing mental phenomena. It is when we pass to the contents of the mind, and study the significance of mental states, or enquire how they came into existence, that we find the atomistic psychology breaking down, and we find ourselves compelled to deal with mind as a psycho-sociologic phenomenon, with its relation to the social medium. Then we discover that it is man's social relationships, the innumerable generations of reaction between individual organisms and the social medium, which supply the key to problems that are otherwise insoluble.
It has already been pointed out that the whole significance of morality is social. If we restrict ourselves to the individual no adequate explanation can be given of such qualities as sympathy, honesty, truthfulness, chastity, kindness, etc. Separate it in thought from the social medium and morality becomes meaningless. Properly studied, psychology yields much the same result. When we get beyond the apprehension of such fundamental qualities as time and space, heat and cold, colour and sound, the contour of man's mind, so to speak, is a social product. His feelings and impulses imply a social medium as surely as does morality. From this point of view the phrase "Social sense" is no mere figure of speech; it is the expression of a pregnant truth, the statement of something as real as any scientific law with which we are acquainted.