Part 5

It may also be said--and this is a characteristic which is not merely negative--that all forms of Idealism agree in ascribing special significance to the moral and religious aspects of life. This holds true of the great idealists, different as their types of thought may be--of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Leibniz, of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. It holds true also of the leading representatives of recent English idealism. But the ethical tone of a treatise and the ethical interest of its author are not always a guarantee that ethical conceptions have a secure position in his system of thought. This is the case, I think, with Spinoza; and it seems to me to hold also of some writers of the present day. Mr Bradley, for instance, is perhaps the most influential, as he is without doubt not the least brilliant, of contemporary metaphysicians; he carries on the tradition of a school of thought predominantly ethical; his first book was a defence of the ethical positions of that school; but, if we turn to the elaborate metaphysical treatise which has resulted from his mature reflexion, its most impressive feature will be found to be the almost complete bankruptcy of the system in the region of ethics.

Not only had this idealist movement in its beginnings a predominantly ethical tone. It was really started in the interest of moral ideals as well as of intellectual thoroughness; and its contribution of greatest value to English thought was a work on ethics. The 'Prolegomena to Ethics' of T.H. Green was a fitting result of his unwearied controversies in defence of the spiritual nature of man and the universe. No one is more worthy than he to be called by the Platonic name a 'friend of ideas,' And he was a friend of ideas because he saw their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities of human life. Green's 'Prolegomena' was published in 1883, the year after his death. And, had I been speaking twenty years ago, I should have had to emphasise the ethical character of the metaphysics of the day. His metaphysical thinking, through all its subtleties, never strayed far from the moral ideal. Owing to his teaching that ideal, and the general character of the philosophy with which it was associated, have permeated a great part of the better thought of the present day, and have influenced its practical activities in various directions,--social, political, and religious. But the magnetism of his personality has been removed; and those whose business it is to test intellectual notions have been impressed by the difficulties involved in Green's metaphysical positions and in his connexion of them with morality.

The single word 'self-realisation' has been taken to express the view of the moral ideal enforced by Green. And it is as suitable as any single word could be. But it is clear that, in every action whatever of a conscious being, self-realisation may be said to be the end: some capacity is being developed, satisfaction is being sought for some desire. A man may develop his capacities, seek and to some extent attain satisfaction--in a manner, realise himself--not only in devotion to a scientific or artistic ideal or in labours for the common good, but also in selfish pursuit of power or even in sensual enjoyment. So far as the word 'self-realisation' can be made to cover such different activities, it is void of moral content and cannot express the nature of the moral ideal. Green is perfectly alive to the need of a distinction--and to the difficulty of drawing it. According to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions. And for each method of definition something may be said. But if we adopt both methods together and say in one breath that good is what the good man does and that the good man is he who does good, is our logic any better than that of the ordination-candidate who defined the functions of an archdeacon as archdiaconal functions? And yet Green comes very near to describing this logical circle. "The moral good," he says, is "that which satisfies the desire of amoral agent"; but "the question, ... What do we mean by calling ourselves moral agents? is one to which a final answer cannot be given without an answer to the question, What is moral good?"[3]

[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 154, p. 160.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., § 156, p. 163.]

[Footnote 3: Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 171, 172, p. 179.]

When Green really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the distinction--these different ways being, however, not independent but complementary to one another in his thought. The first suggestion is that good is distinguished from evil, or the true good from a good which is merely apparent, by its permanence. It gives a lasting satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction: "the true good ... is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in the former case: this has a permanence--or rather an independence of time--which distinguishes it from the satisfaction of some temporary desire. But I do not think that this is what Green means. He wished to avoid falling back upon mere disconnected judgments of conscience after the manner of the intuitional moralists. The 'true good' for him seems to mean the attainment, the complete realisation, of the moral ideal. Were this reached we should indeed 'find rest,' for moral activity as we know it would be at an end. But the moral ideal is never thus attained; its realisation, as Green holds, is only progressive and never completed. Consequently 'rest' is never 'found.' It is of the nature of the moral life to press onward constantly towards a goal which it cannot attain; each achievement leads to a further effort and a higher reach.

[Footnote 1: Ibid., § 171, p. 179.]

By itself, therefore, the assertion that the moral agent 'finds rest' in the 'true good' does not enable us to distinguish the moral agent or the moral action from the immoral. For we are unable to define the 'true good.' It is not a part of experience; it is an ideal: and Green allows that we can give no complete account of it; he even says that we can give no positive account of it. At the same time this consideration leads to another and connected method for distinguishing good from evil.

"Of a life of completed development," Green holds, "of activity with the end attained, we can only speak or think in negatives, and thus only can we speak or think of that state of being in which, according to our theory, the ultimate moral good must consist."[1] But the development is a real process which manifests itself in habits and social institutions; and from these its actual achievements we can to a certain extent see what the moral capability of man "has in it to become," and thus "know enough of ultimate moral good to guide our conduct." One of the most valuable portions of Green's own work is his description of the gradual widening and purifying of human conceptions regarding goodness in character and conduct. But all this implies some standard of discrimination and selection between what is good and what is evil in human achievement. Which developments are truly realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,--these have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? and does not Green himself use such a criterion when he appeals to the tendency of certain institutions and habits to "make the welfare of all the welfare of each," and of certain arts to make nature "the friend of man"?[2] Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the service of man seem to be taken as tests of the true development of moral capabilities. The criteria themselves may be excellent; but they are not got out of the mere record: they are brought by us to its contemplation. To this special question I can find no answer in Green. He is indeed aware that there is a difficulty; or rather he admits that something has been "taken for granted." He has assumed that there is "some best state of being for man"; that this best state is eternally present to a divine consciousness; and further, that this "eternal mind" is reproducing itself as the self of man.[3] On this supposition only, he says, can our moral activity be explained; and he holds that the supposition can be justified metaphysically and has been so justified by himself in the earlier part of his treatise.

[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 172, p. 180.]

[Footnote 2: Prolegomena, § 172, p. 180.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., §§ 173, 174, p. 181.]

Now I am willing to admit that Green showed a correct instinct in examining the nature of man before entering upon his properly ethical enquiry. One must know what man is before one can say what his 'good' or his duty is; and it is only because man's nature cannot be accounted for as a merely natural or animal product that the way is open for an idealist ethics such as Green's. But perhaps Green laid too much stress on the problem of historical causation. What matters it how we came by our knowledge, provided it is the case that we can know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness was attained? And the question here is whether the special results reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty. As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that the consciousness which is in man and which raises him above nature is the manifestation of--the "reproduction" of itself by--an eternal self-consciousness. Man's own self-consciousness in knowledge and volition is simply God's self--consciousness "reproduced" (to use Green's term) in man's animal nature: so that the animal body and its temporal activities become in some unexplained (and no doubt inexplicable) way "organic" (to use Green's terminology once more, where no terminology seems adequate) to a spiritual reality which is eternal and infinite.

I am far from denying the greatness of this conception or its practical value. There is no stronger support to moral endeavour than the conviction that the moral life is a realisation of the divine purpose, that in all goodness the spirit of God is manifest, that the good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker. By whatever metaphor this may be expressed--and Green's statement that the divine self--consciousness 'reproduces' itself in human morality is also a metaphor--it betrays the assurance that moral achievement is permanent, and that (in spite of all apparent failures) goodness will prevail. He who fights for the good may be confident of victory.

This is the practical value of the conception; but in order that it may have this practical value, the distinction of good from evil must be first of all made clear. Green's appeal to an eternal self-consciousness does nothing of itself to elucidate this distinction. Tendencies to exalt selfish interest over common welfare, and to prefer sensual to what are called higher gratifications, enter into the nature of man, and have fashioned his history. Green does not even ask the question whether these also are not to be considered manifestations or 'reproductions' of the eternal self-consciousness. But his metaphysical view does not exclude them; and if they are included, morality disappears for lack of any criterion between good and evil. If good is to be discriminated from evil, it must be by some other means than by describing the whole conscious activity of man as a reproduction of the divine. Instead of doing anything to solve the problem of the meaning of goodness, Green simply brings forward a new difficulty--that of understanding how the temporal process in which human morality is developed can be related to a reality which is defined as out of time or eternal. This difficulty cannot be avoided in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone. Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism has followed, and not only from the representatives of opposed schools. Writers whose intellectual affinities are on the whole the same as his have let their dialectic play around his fundamental conceptions with a result very different from that which he contemplated. Mr Bradley, like Green, has faith in an eternal Reality, which might be called spiritual, inasmuch as it is not material; like Green, he looks upon man's moral activity as an appearance--what Green calls a reproduction--of this eternal reality. But under this general agreement there lies a world of difference. He refuses, by the use of the term self-consciousness, to liken his Absolute to the personality of man, and he brings out the consequence, which in Green is more or less concealed, that the evil equally with the good in man and in the world are appearances of the Absolute.

Mr Bradley's whole work is ruled by the distinction between "Appearance" and "Reality," which gives his book a title. On the one hand there is the Absolute Reality, spoken of as perfect, and described as all--comprehensive and harmonious throughout. Neither change nor time nor any relation can belong to it. But intelligence works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations; it is, therefore, excluded from reality. Truth is mere appearance. The same judgment must be passed on our moral activity. We strive after and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from reality.[1] Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, pp. 402, 410.]

This needs no elaboration. If all predication involves relation, and relation is excluded from reality,[1] then no predicate--not even truth or goodness--can be asserted of the real. Nay more, to be consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute (for the two terms are here interchangeable) is perfect, or one, or all-comprehensive, or harmonious: for all these are predicates. _Ens realissimum_ is the only _ens reale_; all else is mere appearance.

[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 32-34.]

Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought. For what is an appearance, and what is it that appears? It can only be reality that thus appears; the 'mere' appearance is yet an 'appearance of reality.' It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay--strange as it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley's first line of thought--"degrees of reality." Relations are excluded from reality; and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees. The logic is unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value of its own.

Here, then, is another view of the universe--not an unchanging, relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world and sometimes 'experience,' But the two views are connected. For it is assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive; and it is further asserted that these two characteristics of harmony and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the "degree of reality" possessed by any "appearance." The more harmonious anything is--the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions--the higher is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness--the fewer predicates left outside it--the higher also is its degree of reality. No attempt is made at a measured scale of degrees of reality, such, for example, as is offered by the Hegelian dialectic; but a sort of rough classification of various 'appearances' is offered. In this classification a place is given to goodness which is comparatively high, and yet "subordinate" and "self-contradictory." [1]

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 420.]

Mr Bradley's Absolute, we may say, has two faces, one of which is described as good, while the other is inscrutable. "Obviously," he says, "the good is not the Whole, and the Whole, as such, is not good. And, viewed thus in relation to the Absolute, there is nothing either bad or good, there is not anything better or worse. For the Absolute is _not_ its appearances." This is the inscrutable side. But yet "the Absolute appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them;... it is all of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute _is_ good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of goodness and badness."[1] What would be contradiction in another writer is only two-sidedness in Mr Bradley. And it is this second side which interests us, for here "the Absolute _is_ good," and yet, good as it is, manifests itself in badness as well as goodness, and that in various degrees. If we are to follow another statement of the doctrine, however, we shall have to allow that the "badness" is also good, and that the "various degrees" are all equal. For "the Absolute is perfect in all its detail, it is equally true and good throughout."[2] Whether or not the good is contradictory, as Mr Bradley maintains,[3] we must allow that he succeeds in making his account of it contradictory.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 401.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 409.]

I will try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it involves determination and therefore negation. Even to say that the Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the Absolute. But nevertheless there _is_ a world of phenomena, which the most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world of illusion. The sum-total of these phenomena may be called the appearances of the Absolute; and the Absolute, according to Mr Bradley, "is real nowhere outside them." In this sense of reality we may make predicates about it. Indeed all our predicates, Mr Bradley teaches in his 'Logic,' have reality--the universe of reality--for their ultimate subject.

In this sense it may be possible to speak of reality as good (though it is a misapplication of the term "Absolute" to call it good). But the question remains what we mean by "good" in this connexion, and what justification we have for using the predicate. And the answer must be that Mr Bradley means very little, since the goodness is manifested "in various degrees of goodness and badness," and that the justification for using the term is not made clear. It seems to be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were _jure dignitatis_ and to have as little ethical significance as "right honourable" when applied to a politician or "reverend" to a clergyman: cases in which it might be consistent to say that right honourable gentlemen manifest various degrees of honour and dishonour, or that reverend gentlemen are worthy of various degrees of reverence and the opposite. All the details of the phenomenal world are bound together by chains of necessity; each is an essential part of the sum-total.[1] How can the distinction of good and evil apply as between these parts?

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality-Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]

We may speak of parts as higher or lower; and Mr Bradley defines the "lower" as "that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a more total transformation of its nature."[1] The meaning of this is not clear. The reference may be to the complete state which a thing may reach in process of growth. Thus an early stage of a rose-bud may be said to be "lower" than its later stage because it requires a greater transformation before it produces the bloom. But here 'lower' does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with evil. Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less degree. This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to have an ethical value. Or again, the completeness referred to may be that which is alone complete in the strict sense of the word, namely, the universe. And we might say that a rose-leaf would require greater transformation in order to become complete in this sense than a rose-bush, or that the act of giving a cup of cold water was less complete than the far-reaching activity say of the first Napoleon. But this difference in completeness would not entail a corresponding difference in moral worth or goodness.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]

Where all stages are essential, it is not possible to say that one is good and another evil. Is not the good something that ought to be striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that ought not to be at all? And how can we say that any part ought not to be when every part is essential?

From the monistic view of reality, as set forth by Mr Bradley, there is no direct route to the distinction between good and evil. If the distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological rather than cosmical, to be relative to the attitude of the human mind which contemplates the facts, and in this strict sense to be, what Mr Bradley calls it, appearance.