Part 3 (1/2)

The Relativity of Pleasures, although admitted in many individual cases, has often been misconceived. The view is sometimes expressed, that there can be no pleasure without a previous pain; but this goes beyond the exigencies of the principle. We cannot go on for ever with any delight; but mere remission, without any counterpart pain, is enough for our entering with zest on many of our pleasures. A healthy man enjoys his meals without any sensible previous pain of hunger. We do not need to have been miserable for some time as a preparation for the reading of a new poem. It is true that if the sense of privation has been acute, the pleasure is proportionally increased; and that few pleasures of any great intensity grow up from indifference: still, remission and alternation may give a zest for enjoyment without any consciousness of pain.

The principle of Comparison is capriciously made use of by Paley, in his account of the elements of Happiness. He applies it forcibly and felicitously to depreciate certain pleasures--as greatness, rank, and station--and withholds its application from the pleasures that he more particularly countenances,--namely, the social affections, the exercise of the faculties, and health.

[SIMPLICITY OF STYLE A RELATIVE MERIT.]

The great praise often accorded to Simplicity of Style, in literature, is an example of the suppression of the correlative in a case of mutual relations.h.i.+p. Simplicity is not an absolute merit; it is frequently a merit by correlation. Thus, if a certain subject has never been treated except in abstruse and difficult terminology, a man of surpa.s.sing literary powers, setting it forth in homely and intelligible language, produces a work whose highest praise is expressed by Simplicity. Again, after the last century period of artificial, complex, and highly-wrought composition, the reaction of Cowper and Wordsworth in favour of simplicity was an agreeable and refres.h.i.+ng change, and was in great part acceptable because of the change. It does not appear that Wordsworth comprehended this obvious fact; to him, a simplicity that cost nothing to the composer, and brought no novelty to the reader, had still a transcendent merit.

It has been a frequent practice of late years to celebrate the praises of Knowledge. Many eloquent speakers have dilated on the happiness and the superiority of the enlightened and the cultivated man. Now, the correlative or obverse must be equally true: there must be a corresponding degradation and disqualification attaching to ignorance and the want of instruction. This correlative and equally cogent statement is suppressed on certain occasions, and by persons that would not demur to the praises of knowledge: as, when we are told of the native good sense, the untaught sagacity, the admirable instincts of the people,--that is, of the ignorant or the uneducated. Hence the great value of the expository device of following up every principle with its, counter-statement, the matter denied when the principle is affirmed. If knowledge is a thing superlatively good, ignorance--the opposite of knowledge--is a thing superlatively bad. There is no middle standing ground.

In the way that people use the argument from Authority, there is often an unfelt contradiction from not adverting to the correlative implication. If I lay stress upon some one's authority as lending weight to my opinion, I ought to be equally moved in the opposite direction when the same authority is against me. The common case, however, is to make a great flourish when the authority is one way, and to ignore it when it is the other way. This is especially the fas.h.i.+on in dealing with the ancient philosophers. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are quoted with much complacency when they chime in with a modern view; but, in points where they contradict our cherished sentiments, we treat them with a kind of pity as half-informed pagans. It is not seen that men liable to such gross errors as they are alleged to have committed--say on Ethics--are by that fact deprived of all weight in allied subjects, as, for example, Politics--in which Aristotle is still quoted as an authority.

[DIGNITY OF ALL LABOUR ABSURD.]

Many of the sins against Relativity can be traced to rhetorical exaggeration. Some remarkable instances of this can be cited.

When a system of ranks and dignities has once been established, there are a.s.sociations of dignity and of indignity with different conditions and occupations. It is more dignified to serve in the army than to engage in trade; to be a surgeon is more honourable than to be a watchmaker. In this state of things a fervid rhetorician, eager to redress the inequalities of mankind, starts forth to preach the dignity of _all_ labour. The device is a self-contradiction. Make all labour alike dignified, and nothing is dignified; you simply abolish dignity by depriving it of the contrast that it subsists upon.

Pope's lines--

Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part; there all the honour lies--

cannot be exempted from the fallacy of self-contradiction. Differences of condition are made by differences in the degree of honour thereto attached. If every man that did his work well were put on a level, in point of honour, with every other man that did the same; if the gatekeeper of a mansion, by being unfailingly punctual in opening the gate, were to be equally honoured with a great leader of the House of Commons, then, indeed, equality of pay would be the only thing wanted to abolish all differences of condition. There is, no doubt, in society, a quant.i.ty of misplaced honour; but so long as there are employments exceptionally arduous, and virtues signally beneficent in their operation, honour is a legitimate spur and reward, and should be graduated according to the desert in each case.

In spurring the ardour of youth to studious exertion, it is common to repeat the Homeric maxim, ”to supplant every one else, and stand out first”. The stimulating effect is undoubted; it is strong rhetorical brandy. Yet only one man can be first, and the exhortation is given simultaneously to a thousand.[5]

[JUSTICE ADMIRABLE ONLY IF RECIPROCATED.]

In the discussion and inculcation of the moral duties and virtues, there has been, in all ages, a tendency to suppress correlative facts, and to affirm unconditionally what is true only with a condition. Thus, the admirable nature of Justice, and the happiness of the Just man, are a proper theme to be extolled with all the power of eloquence. It has been so with every civilized people, pagan as well as Christian. In the dialogues of Plato, justice is a prominent subject, and is adorned with the full splendour of his genius. Aristotle, in one of the few moments when he rises to poetry, p.r.o.nounces justice ”greater than the evening-star or the morning-star”. Now all this panegyric is admissible only on the supposition of _reciprocal_ justice. Plato, indeed, had the hardihood to say that the just man is happy in himself, and by reason of his justice, even although others are unjust to him; but the position is untenable. A man is happy in his justice if it procure for him justice in return; as a citizen is happy in his civil obedience, if it gain him protection in return. There are two parties in the case, and the moralist should obtain access to both; he should induce the one to fulfil his share before promising to the other the happiness of justice and obedience. It may be rhetorical, but it is not true, that justice will make a man happy in a society where it is not reciprocated.

Justice, in these circ.u.mstances, is highly n.o.ble, praiseworthy, virtuous; but the applying of these lofty compliments is the proof that it does not bring happiness, and is an attempt to compensate the deficiency. There is a certain tendency, not very great as human nature is const.i.tuted, for justice to beget justice in return--for social virtue on one side to procure it on the other side. This is a certain encouragement to each man to perform his own part, in hope that the other party concerned may do the same. Still, the reciprocity occasionally fails, and with that the benefits to the just agent. It is necessary to urge strongly upon individuals, to impress upon the young, the necessity of performing their duty to society; it is equally implied, and equally indispensable, that society should perform its part to them. The suppressing of the correlative obligation of the State to the individual leaves a one-sided doctrine; the motive of the suppression, doubtless, is that society does not often fail of its duties to the individual, whereas individuals frequently fail of their duties to society. This may be the fact generally, but not always. It is not the fact where there are bad laws and corrupt administration. It is not the fact where the restraints on liberty are greater than the exigencies of the State demand. It is not the fact, so long as there is a single vestige of persecution for opinions. To be thoroughly veracious, for example, in a society that restrains the discussion and expression of opinions, is more than such a society is ent.i.tled to.

[PLEASURES OF BENEVOLENCE CONDITIONAL.]

The same fallacy occurs in an allied theme,--the joys of Love and Benevolence. That love and benevolence are productive of great happiness is beyond question; but then the feeling must be mutual, it must be reciprocated. One-sided love or benevolence is a _virtue_, which is as much as to say it is _not_ a pleasure. The delights of benevolence are the delights of reciprocated benevolence; until reciprocated, in some form, the benevolent man has, strictly speaking, the sacrifice and nothing more. There is a great reluctance to encounter this simple naked truth; to state it in theory, at least, for it is fully admitted in practice. We fence it off by the a.s.sumption that benevolence will always have its reward somehow; that if the objects of it are ungrateful, others will make good the defect at last. Now these qualifications are very pertinent, very suitable to be urged after allowing the plain truth, that benevolence is intrinsically a sacrifice, a painful act; and that this act is redeemed, and far more than redeemed, by a fair reciprocity of benevolence. Only such an admission can keep us out of a mesh of contradictions. Like justice in itself, Benevolence in itself is painful; any virtue is pain in the first instance, although, when equally responded to, it brings a surplus of pleasure. There may be acts of a beneficent tendency that cost the performer nothing, or that even may chance to be agreeable; but these examples must not be given as the rule, or the type. It is the essence of virtuous acts, the prevailing character of the cla.s.s, to tax the agent, to deprive him of some satisfaction to himself; this is what we must start from; we are then in a position to explain how and when, and under what circ.u.mstances, and with what limitations, the virtuous man, whether his virtue be justice or benevolence, is from that cause a happy man.

It is a fallacy of the suppressed relative to describe virtue as determined by the _moral nature_ of G.o.d, as opposed to his arbitrary will. The essence of Morality is obedience to a superior, to a Law; where there is no superior there is nothing either moral or immoral. The supreme power is incapable of an immoral act. Parliament may do what is injurious, it cannot do what is illegal. So the Deity may be beneficent or maleficent, he cannot be moral or immoral.

Among the various ways, proposed in the seventeenth century, of solving the difficulty of the mutual action of the heterogeneous agencies--matter and mind--one was a mode of Divine interference, called the ”Theory of Occasional Causes”. According to this view, the Deity exerted himself by a _perpetual miracle_ to bring about the mental changes corresponding to the physical agents operating on our senses--light, sound, &c. Now in the mode of action suggested there is nothing self-contradictory; but in the use of the word ”miracle” there is a mistake of relativity. The meaning of a miracle is an exceptional interference; it supposes an habitual state of things, from which it is a deviation. The very idea of miracle is abolished if every act is to be alike miraculous.

[MYSTERY CORRELATES WITH THE INTELLIGIBLE.]

We shall devote the remainder of this exposition to a still more notable cla.s.s of mistakes due to the suppression of a correlative member in a relative couple--those, namely, connected with the designation, ”Mystery,” a term greatly abused, in various ways, and especially by disregarding its relative character. Mystery supposes certain things that are plain, intelligible, knowable, revealed; and, by contrast to these, refers to certain other things that are obscure, unintelligible, unknowable, unrevealed. When a man's conduct is entirely plain, straightforward, or accounted for, we call that an intelligible case; when we are perplexed by the tortuosities of a crafty, double-dealing person, we say it is all very mysterious. So, in nature, we consider that we understand certain phenomena: such as gravity, and all its consequences, in the fall of bodies, the flow of rivers, the motions of the planets, the tides. On the other hand, earthquakes and volcanoes are very mysterious; we do not know what they depend upon, how or in what circ.u.mstances they are produced. Some of the operations of living bodies are understood,--as the heart's action in the mechanical propulsion of the blood; others, and the greater number, are mysterious, as the whole process of germination and growth. Now the existence of the contrast between things plainly understood, and things not understood, gives one distinct meaning to the term Mystery. In some cases, a mystery is formed by an apparent contradiction, as in the Theological mystery of Free-will and Divine Foreknowledge; here, too, there is a contrast with the great ma.s.s of consistent and reconcilable things. But now, when we are told by sensational writers, that _everything is mysterious;_ that the simplest phenomenon in nature--the fall of a stone, the swing of a pendulum, the continuance of a ball shot in the air--are wonderful, marvellous, miraculous, our understanding is confounded; there being then nothing plain at all, there is nothing mysterious. The wonderful rises from the common; as the lofty is lofty by relation to something lower: if there is nothing common, then there is nothing wonderful; if all phenomena are mysterious, nothing is mysterious; if we are to stand aghast in amazement because three times four is twelve, what phenomenon can we take as the type of the plain and the intelligible? You must always keep up a standard of the common, the easy, the comprehensible, if you are to regard other things as wonderful, difficult, inexplicable.

[LOCKE ON THE LIMITS OF THE UNDERSTANDING.]

The real character of a MYSTERY, and what const.i.tutes the Explanation of a fact, have been greatly misconceived. The changes of view on these points make up a chapter in the history of the education of the human mind. Perhaps the most decisive turning point was the publication of Locke's ”Essay concerning Human Understanding,” the motive of which, as stated in the homely and forcible language of the preface, was to ascertain what our understandings can do, what subjects they are fit to deal with, and where they should stop. I quote a few sentences:--