Part 37 (2/2)
Socrates went a step further. If current customs are not authoritative, he said, let us find those that have and _ought_ to have enduring authority over men. If the traditional standards are proved to be futile and inefficacious, let us find the unfaltering standards authenticated by reason. Let us subst.i.tute relevant and adequate codes and creeds for those which have by reason been shown to be unreasonable. Beneath the multiplicity of contradictory and often vicious customs, reason must be able to discover ways of life, which, if followed, will lead men to eventual happiness.
There are thus two stages in the process of reflection upon morals. In the first stage reflection does no more than to point out the essential discrepancies and absurdities of the current moral codes. Reflection upon morals begins by being critical and querying. It starts when an individual, a little more thoughtful and perspicacious than his fellows, notes the discrepancies between the customs of different men, and notes also the discrepancies between the threatened results of the violation of traditional codes and the actual results. He may then come to the cynic's conclusion that morality is a myth and a delusion, and, in the words of the Sophist in Plato's _Republic_, ”justice is merely the right of the stronger.” Men in whom reflection or social sympathy extends not very far may, as they frequently do, stop at this point. These are the worldly wise; they are interested not in goodness, truth, and justice, but in those effective representations of those things publicly accounted good, true, and just which will win them public approval and increase their own wealth or power and position. Plato, in the _Republic_, pictures the type with magnificent irony:
All those mercenary adventurers who, as we know, are called sophist by the mult.i.tude, and regarded as rivals, really teach nothing but the opinions of the majority to which expression is given when large ma.s.ses are collected, and dignify them with the t.i.tle of wisdom.
As well might a person investigate the caprices and desires of some huge and powerful monster in his keeping, studying how it is to be approached, and how handled,--at what times and under what circ.u.mstances it becomes most dangerous, or most gentle--on what occasions it is in the habit of uttering its various cries, and further, what sounds uttered by another person soothe or exasperate it,--and when he has mastered all these particulars, by long-continued intercourse, as well might he call his results wisdom, systematize them into an art, and open a school, though in reality he is wholly ignorant which of these humours and desires is fair, and which foul, which good and which evil, which just and which unjust; and therefore is content to affix all these names to the fancies of the huge animal, calling what it likes good, and what it dislikes evil, without being able to render any other account of them,--nay, giving the t.i.tles of ”just” and ”fair” to things done under compulsion, because he has not discerned himself, and therefore cannot point out to others, that wide distinction which really holds between the nature of the compulsory and the good.[1]
[Footnote 1: Plato: _Republic_ (Golden Treasury edition), pp. 209-10.]
Throughout human history, there have been periods of individualism, of self-a.s.sertion against the traditional morality, which have been marked by loss of moral restraints, by a breakdown of the old standards without a subst.i.tution of new and sounder ones. There has been, in the beginning of almost every advance toward a new stage of moral valuation, the accompaniment of liberty by license.
Reflection upon morals is not likely to produce immediately good results. The established morality is at least established.
In so far as it is controlling in men's actions, it keeps those actions ordered and regular. The traditional code by which a man's life is governed may be a poor code, but it is more satisfactory than no code at all. On discovering the inadequacy of the morality by which he has lived, a man may reject morality altogether. From that time forth he may have no other standard than his own selfish desires. When a whole society, as at the time of the Renaissance, throws its traditional morality to the winds, it may make havoc of its freedom.
In place of a bad moral order it may cease to have any moral order at all.
The discovery that the codes by which we have lived are misleading and delusive may lead us to have nothing whatsoever to do with morals. The individual may decide simply to employ his superior insight in the exploitation of other people.
It is something of this point of view that is expressed in the rampant individualism of Nietzsche and Max Stirner.
The customary morality is meant for slaves; the Superman must stride above the signs and s.h.i.+bboleths by which men are led, and create himself a morality more adequate to his own superb and insolent welfare.
For the reconstruction of a morality more adequate than the prevailing codes, more is demanded than merely a reflective criticism of prevailing standards. Where reflection goes no further than this, the net result is merely cynicism and libertinism. For moral progress there is needed ”a person who is individual in choice, in feeling, in responsibility, and at the same time social in what he regards as good, in his sympathies and in his purposes.”
REFLECTIVE RECONSTRUCTION OF MORAL STANDARDS. The second stage of reflection upon morals consists in the reconstruction of moral standards, in a deliberate discovery of codes by which men can live together happily. It attempts to establish standards of action which are enforced and recommended not because they have been current and are currently approved, but because they give promise, upon critical examination, of contributing to human happiness. It must be recalled here that reflective morality is not a subst.i.tute for action based upon instinct or custom. It merely modifies these types of action in the light of the desirable consequences which would result from such modification.
The establishment of reflective standards is limited by two general conditions. The first, previously mentioned, is that human beings come into the world with certain fixed tendencies to act. These original impulses may be obscured, but cannot be abolished. Secondly, reflection upon morals always must occur in a given social situation, that is, in a situation where certain habits of mind, emotion and action, are already in operation. Moral standards are not fresh constructions; they are _reconstructions_. We may want to _change_ current customs and traditions; but that is simply another way of iterating the fact that they _are there to be changed_. The moral reformer who would improve society must take into account the fact that there exist among the adult members of a generation, powerful habits, which may be improved or amended, but which cannot be ignored. Any attempt to improve men's ways of action starts within processes of action already going on. It is not as if we could hold up the processes of human life, and say, ”Let us begin afresh.” The generation whose habits are to be changed consists of living men, who are acting on the basis of customs which have become intimately and powerfully controlling in their lives. These customs, though they may not be altogether satisfactory, are yet great social economies.
They give men certain determinate and efficacious modes of action. Reflection must start with them and from them.
Unless men, furthermore, did act according to custom, they would have to reflect in detail about every step of their conduct. The aim of reflection is simply to transform existing customs into more effective methods for achieving the good.
Reflection, indeed, must move within certain limits; it must take certain things for granted. We have already seen that reflection arises in a crisis of greater or lesser degree; it settles ambiguities, resolves the obscure and doubtful phases of situations. It is designed to secure adjustments where instinct and habit are inadequate to adapt the individual to his environment.
But unless there were certain fixed, determined points to start with, certain limits within which reflection could operate, and which it could use as points of reference or departure, all would be chaos, and reflection would be impossible.
It is precisely because we do take certain things as settled, because, as the phrase runs, ”they go without saying,” that we can think to any purpose whatsoever. Useful customs once established provide precisely these fixed points. If arbitration of labor disputes has become a fixed social habit, for example, attention can be turned to ways and means. If education has become a generally approved social habit, we can spend our time on instruments and methods. Every useful custom firmly established gives a basis of operations.
That much is settled; that much does not demand our alert attention and inquiry. A society without any fixed habits would be sheer anarchy. The aim of intelligent consideration of morals is not to abolish customs, but to bring about their modification so that they will be the most effective adjustment of the individual and the group to their environment.
Indeed, in advanced societies, reflection may itself become a custom, and the most highly valued of all. For where alert and conscious criticism of existing folkways is habitual among all the members of a society, that society is saved from subjection through inertia to disserviceable habits. It acts as a continual check and control; it prevents social and moral stagnation. The habit of reflection upon conduct, if it could be made generally current, would insure social progress.
For customs would be regarded merely as tools, as instruments to be modified and adapted to new circ.u.mstances, as provisional modes of attaining the good. Fixity and rigidity in social life would give place to flexibility and wise continual adaptation.
THE VALUES OF REFLECTIVE MORALITY. Some of these have already been noted. We may briefly summarize the foregoing discussion, and call attention to some additional values of a morality based upon reason, as contrasted with a morality of mere mechanical conformity to custom. It has already been pointed out that intellectual preferences and valuations are rooted in primary impulses; that is, our desires are anterior to reflection. What we intellectually value and prefer has its roots in primary impulses. Reason can discover how man may attain the good; but what _is_ good is determined by the desires with which man is, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, endowed. Our preferences are, within limits, fixed for us. As Santayana writes:
Reason was born, as it has since discovered, into a world already wonderfully organized, in which it found its precursor in what is called life, its seat in an animal body of unusual plasticity, and its function in rendering that body's volatile instincts and sensations harmonious with one another and with the outer world on which they depend.[1]
[Footnote 1: Santayana: _Life of Reason_, vol. I, p. 40.]
Our chief aim in reflective behavior is to discover ways and means by which a harmony may be achieved, a harmony of those very instincts which, left to themselves, would be in perpetual collision, frustrating and checking each other.
Reflection not only seeks to find a way of life in which no natural impulse shall be frustrated, but it is through reflection that desires are broadened, and that new desires arise. Out of reflection upon social relations, which is in the first instance prompted by man's innate gregariousness, arise the conception of ideal friends.h.i.+p and the thirst for and movement toward ideal society. Out of reflection upon the animal pa.s.sion of s.e.x may rise Dante's beatific vision of Beatrice.
Conduct, consciously controlled, finds not only ways by which animal desires may be fulfilled without catastrophe; it trans.m.u.tes animal desires into ideal values.
REFLECTION TRANSFORMS CUSTOMS INTO PRINCIPLES. In reflective behavior, as contrasted with that which is controlled by instinct and custom, there are established standards of action to which the individual consciously conforms. That is, instead of merely conforming to custom, an individual comes to act upon principles, consciously avowed and maintained. A man who sets up a standard of action in his professional or business relations is not conforming to an arbitrary code; he is living according to a way of life which he has deliberately and consciously chosen. When a man acts upon principles because he has consciously adopted them in view of the consequences which he believes to be a.s.sociated with them, he will not make his standard an idol. Reflection establishes standards, but it is not mastered by them. It is persistently critical.
Standards are tools, instruments toward the achievement of the good. They are merely general rules, derived from experience and retained so long as they bear desirable fruits in experience. Moral laws are not regarded as arbitrary and eternal, but as good only in so far as they produce good. A virtue is a virtue because it is conducive to human well-being.
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