Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/273

* ETHICS. L'll ETHICS. of this desire involves obligations. Experience leaches what actions are necessary In render the accomplishment possible. These ad ions In me obligatory with the acceptance of the end, and because the end is no! questioned the obligations it imposes e to be regarded as absolutely un- conilii ioned. But experience is not the only agency at work in suggesting proper means for the accomplish- ment nl' the common supre mil. Superstiti- tion plays its part. Many means are supposed to lie necessary, which are really not necessary. How this comes to be is intelligible only in the concrete ease. Dreams, hallucinations, accidents of all sorts, arc regarded as having value in sug- gesting proper means to strengthen the commu- nity. Thus it was seen that cowardice was fatal to tribal welfare; but it was also thought that "meet adoration to the household gods" was as necessary as bravery. Whatever in any way came to be regarded as a necessary means to se- cure the public welfare came to be uncondition- ally demanded; and thus, as we have seen, arose the categorical imperative. But its rationally binding character on the individual depended entirely upon his acceptance of the general scale of values current in his community. In primitive times this acceptance must have been all but in- evitable. Liberty of private opinion is a modern luxury, and when private opinion is not tolerated the individual either accepts the general esti- mate or is killed or banished. It should be noticed that in the above explana- tion of the ethical solidarity of a primitive com- munity, it is not implied that tribal morals are forced upon every member of the tribe against his will. In the large number of cases the obliga- tions imposed are cheerfully accepted. There is no thought of revolt. The individual may even feel that his observance of the tribal regulations is of his own undetermined will. But freedom of choice is not incompatible with an explana- tion of the causes of choice. The question is not what views the individual has of the origin of his ethical unanimity with his fellows. His views on the subject, as well as his views about the origin of his tribe from some totem animal, may be absolutely false. The question is, what view a careful scientific investigation of the facts, sociological, anthropological, and psychological, renders probable or satisfactory as a working hypothesis ; and all that is claimed for the above explanation is that it seems to do justice to all the facts, and is the only explanation as yet given that does this justice. The explanation thus given of the moral una- nimity within a tribe explains also such- limited measure of moral unanimity as we actually find between tribes. When actual experience of social injury resulting from some course of action is the chief cause of the social condemnation of such act,.it may very well be that communities widely separated have the same experience. Such consensus of moral judgment as is found actually to exist among different communities is thus largely to be accounted for by similar experiences under similar circumstances. Such consentient judgments as are not thus accounted for may per- haps be explained by common tradition from some common source, or, in some cases, by acci- dental coincidences. Such differences as are found to exist may be accounted for by differences of circumstances, of superstition, intelligence, or by other considerations, 'thus scarcity of food in communities where men are the food-get! may make polyandry socially advantageous, while in other communil ies, win-re different eond >• ii n prevail, polygyny may nol be recognized aa prej udicial to the interests of the community. Diffi enees in moral views due to differences in supei siiii.m and in intelligence are too numerous and too well recognized to need more than passing remark. With the growth of freedom of the individual to think for himself, there inevitably comi - about a change in the moral I litions. Individual freedom is often gained at the expense of the integrity of the tribe, or of the Slate into which the tribe has grown or merged. l such times, with the removal of the cause thai makes for unanimity of ethical judgment, morality takes on a personal ralher than a social character. The morally right is no longer so much what is so- cially advantageous as what is to the advan- tage of the individual agent. This deseriali- zation of morality is a marked feature of the later ethics of the Greek decadence, and to a large extent of the ethics of the revolutionary eighteenth century. And this change of the moral centre of gravity from the community to the individual continues until a new social in- tegration takes place. During such a period of transition from one form of social morality to another, many superstitions disappear; perhaps some new ones take their place. Some are modi- fied instead of totally disappearing. This change in superstition profoundly modifies the character of morality, which tends to dissociate itself from superstition and to depend more largely upon intelligence, but not necessarily upon the intelli- gence of the individual moral agent. His insight, if it is superior to that of his fellows, tends some- what to modify current moral views; but nor- mally this change is slow. Not only insight, but emotion, plays the part of cause in such change. A man of strong affections may succeed in arous- ing the feelings and modifying the desires of his fellows, and this affectional change may ulti- mately result in marked alteration of social morality. Of course it must not be thought that the action of intelligence and of emotion can ever be completely separated. All that can be said is that either intelligence or emotion may vary largely without equal variation in the other, and this non-coincidence of variation makes it pos- sible to distinguish with some precision changes in morality that are more largely due to change in knowledge from changes in morality that are largely due to change in feeling. Thus the ethics of modern warfare differs from that of earlier times more, perhaps, by reason of a growing cosmopolitan sympathy than by reason of insight into the uselessness, even the harmfulness, of wanton outrage committed against an enemy. But in this case growth of insight has also undoubtedly played a part. On the other hand, such change as has taken place, at least in America, in the moral attitude toward the marriage of a widower with his deceased wife's sister, is due rather to growing knowledge of the harmlessness of such a union than to any increase of sympathy or to other emotions, al- though even here emotion may have something to do with the change. We are now perhaps in a position to define morality. The definition is long and cumbersome;