Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/435

 NO TES AND ABSTRA CTS 42 I

But, while external sanction is the origin of the moral conscience, preferences and personal aspirations enter into determining an individual's conscience ; experi- ence imitation, sympathy these operate either to confirm or to contradict the external sanction.

There has been much discussion as to whether the term " moral " should be applied to the external act or to the intention. In primitive times the only criterion was, no doubt, the outward result. Men judged of things by their good or bad results. Punishment was naturally severe ; the gods were thought to avenge blindly. But as the intention was more and more recognized in men's acts, it entered more and more into legal and moral evaluations, an illustration of which is seen in " good character testimony " in court. But it is finally the act that forms the basis of the judgment. Intention alone does not determine moral char- acter, it does not constitute the peculiar domain of morality. The interior life of the individual interests us from the moral point of view only so far as it is manifested by his acts.

The moral value, now, is independent of the accidental and unforeseen results of the act as also of the individual and impenetrable motives of the agent ; morality depends upon the tendency, one might say the intention, not of the agent, but of the act, which is, in other words, only the regular, the normal, result of that act, its foreseen result. It is the result aimed at and not the chance result which constitutes morality ; the intention that determines the moral judgment is not the interior tendency of the agent ; it is the exterior tendency manifested by the act, i. e., the normal result.

The result of the act being the principle of moral judgment, it is evident that moral value is founded upon the utility of the act. Acts are judged good or bad according as they tend to produce advantageous or injurious effects. But it is socal utility and not individual happiness that is the moral criterion of the modern social sciences. This is quite evident from the parallel development of morality and society. Association is as fundamental to the social and to the moral as is the con- servation of energy to physics. Every association, whatever be its aim, implies some elements of morality. War and consequent subordination of individuals to the group, leaders and governments, are most powerful forces in determining groupings and at the same time cultivating morality. A thing that conserves group- life is by that group regarded moral. The protectors of the tribe as its fetiches and gods are thus inseparably linked with the morality of the group, and are made to serve as superior powers for reward and punishment. Thus religion serves as a sort ot effective sanction for morality. Further, variation in ideals of morality is parallel with changes in groups and successive stages of culture. The moral disposition progresses in the species by natural selection even as does any other quality.

But morality is not only a product of society, for it, in turn, modifies society. The virility of a group expresses itself in appropriate and beneficent forms of organization. If it is sometimes difficult to see the social value of certain moral precepts, it is because these rules bear upon themselves marks of the exceptional and passing conditions which gave rise to them, or of the authorities that instituted them. The fact that the moral expresses a collective interest does not imply that every collective interest is of a moral value. The moral is always announced positively by the collective will ; that which is socially useful or hurtful is moral only on the condition that the group has expressly proclaimed it as its will. The moral good is not a social abstract; it is what society at that moment judges useful and necessary. Thus in certain cases that which was once useful and moral may become injurious and immoral, even criminal. But not only utility, but also formal sanction, is necessary to make an act moral.

The moral good expresses only the variable and contingent nature of the social life : it is a fact of the same order as religion or a monetary system, accepted within the limits of a country, a race, or a civilization. That men should think to find in their morals a necessary and universal morality, that they should hope to deduce a moral universal and absolute from such and such existing morality, is apiece with the disposition of prmitive man to objectify, to personify, to ascribe