Moral judgments claim to be subjective and demand assent from all men. Hence they imply a standard by which the claims can be tested. What is this standard? In logic there is an abstract truth which is the standard of thought. In ethics there must be an ideal good which furnishes the criterion of what ought to be. What is this ideal supreme good, by which the ethics of an action can be judged?
Only revealed religion approached the question of morality in a logical way. It first created as a standard of morality the will of God, as laid down in the sacred scriptures and traditions of every creed. If the philosopher, or rather the freethinker, can not accept the standard of revelation he must find some other criterion for general morality, or rather he must learn in some way to read the will of the supreme intelligence. Every advance in science, the unlocking of every secret in nature, every interpretation and revelation of her laws that comes to man through scientific research proves, confirms and stamps, with the seal of eternal truth, the existence of a supreme intelligence, the Great First Cause, the Soul and Source of all life, energy, and intelligence. When the will of the supreme intelligence is found, then there is also found the standard of morality. A philosopher can not raise his finger and say this is moral and this immoral. Such an arbitrary standard must lead to chaos, disorder and confusion in the realm of morals. The moral sense is the last to be developed and the first to be confused and disordered. With the dogmas of revealed religion the old standards of morality were also swept aside, and the modern moralists have no foundation to build their moral systems upon, hence their drifting from one system to another, from economic determinism to the worship of the superman, to work-worshipping, love-worshipping, or pleasure-worshipping.
Among all the modern systems of moral conduct, the radicals who are building theirs upon economics have chosen the easiest way. They simply borrowed the ideal of revealed religion and raised it to their moral standard. They preach economic equality. This represents their religion, their economics, their morality, their all. Their watchword is, social justice by giving the laborer the full share of his labor. This principle of social justice has been borrowed from the Judeo-Christian creed.DH
Social justice composes the chief part of the religious tenets of the Bible. Even Nietzsche (Jenseits des Guten und Bösen) considers the Old Testament as essentially the book of Divine justice. אל רחום וחנון a God of mercy and pity is Jehova—, but אל רחום וחנון he will by no means clear the guilty. (Exodus xxxiv, 6-7.) Even the passage in the stern Nahum (I, 2) אל קנוא ונקם is falsely translated, “a god of revenge.” It really means “He is a god of retributory justice.” The prophetic teachers, just as the present-day socialists, never asked for love and mercy but for right and justice. The portrayal of a pious man in ancient Israel is given in Job xxix, 12, and xxxi, 13. It is the man of strict social justice. Philo Judeus (Περὶ Φιλανθρωπίας) pointed out the greatness of the social law in ancient Judaism.
These Biblical ideas of liberty, equality and brotherly love have been taken up by the altruistic materialists and raised to the top of the mountain of life as a beacon for humanity’s fragile skiff. But the sources whence these ideals originated are not only entirely ignored but are reviled, defamed and ridiculed by these radicals. The socialists did not create the ideals of social justice, as found in their doctrines. They borrowed them from the Jewish-Christian creed, and as atheists—ninety per cent. of them profess atheism—they repudiate this same creed. They borrow the ancient religious ideals of charity and social justice from Christianity and repudiate Christianity.DI As altruistic materialists, they are theologically agnostics, but their impulses are Christian. But by this repudiation of religion they forfeit the very foothold to stand upon. Religion has behind its ideal the authority of the divine will. What is behind the materialistic ideal? What is the goal of materialism? Supposing the Spirit of the age, that puts material well-being before all other prizes of life, should carry the victory, supposing the ideal of a perfect materialism should be realized, what then? Cui bono?
Contrary to the Judeo-Christian highest ideal of protection of the poor and disinherited, there is the brutal philosophy of Nietzsche’s superman. While the former proclaims the sublimity of abnegation in the interest of the present weak and downtrodden, the latter preaches the extermination of these weaklings in the interest of the future generations of supermen.
The vindictive vandal-like philosophy of Nietzsche demands the destruction of the weaker by the stronger.DJ In this way a perfect aristocracy will arise. But the principle of a good aristocracy must be not to exist for the sake of society, but only as a foundation and scaffolding by means of which an elect kind of being may arise to its higher tasks.
But what are the higher tasks? Here Nietzsche is perfectly silent. What is the highest value, what is man’s standard of values by which we may judge and measure the valuable? What is the best for society? What are the greatest aims and ends in life? Are the material gains of society of supreme value? Is the building of railroads, telegraphs, telephones or factories of supreme value, or are the ends of life the writing of lyrics, painting of pictures, and the chiseling of statues? What will be reached with the superstate of society? If the end and purpose of human existence were known, we could decide whether it is worth while to expend human energy upon the increase of material well-being, whether it is preferable to conserve the energy for the attainment of spiritual joys, or whether the ethical efforts would be of the highest cosmic value. But the ultimate purpose being unknown, or even unknowable, what will be reached when the superman has been produced? What is he going to accomplish? What when the highest degree of accomplishment has been reached in science, art, literature and economics, what then? If all men were Aristoteles, Kants, Spencers, if all women were Sapphos, Mme. de Staëls or George Eliots, what then? Humanity would soon starve if it consisted of Apollos, Venuses and intellectual giants only. A Venus was not created to wash dishes, neither will an astronomer make a proficient bricklayer or a poet a good shoemaker, Hans Sachs to the contrary notwithstanding. The catch-phrase that society nowadays wants not the man who is a good machine but the man who can make one, sounds clever but is not true. The truth is that for every machine invented, we need hundreds and thousands of men to handle the same. A population consisting of supermen only, such as inventors, captains of industry, professional men, rulers, statesman, generals, poets, artists, etc., could not exist for any length of time.
The different brands of reformers claim that, following their doctrines, it will lead to the highest advantage of humanity. But they fail to give the definition of advantage. What is the best for humanity? What is man’s purpose and aim in this world? What is meant by the fulfilment of man’s destiny? The answer is entirely meaningless, that the real aim is to be useful in real life, and only begs the question. What is life, what is it here for? Whence does man come, whither is he traveling?
What is the aim of civilization? All civilization is merely an intense effort to make life beautiful. If life is trivial, then civilization is vanity and vexation of the spirit. What profits man to wear out body and mind in the service of civilization? Civilization has been developed on a metallic basis. Tools, implements, instruments and machinery form the landmarks of the different civilizations. The gold of Ophir, the copper of Sinai, the silver of Laurium were part of the web and woof of the early civilization. In modern times industrialism has become nearly the sum total of our civilization. The highest boast of our present civilization is wireless, aeroplanes, telephones, telegraphs, railroads, all mere facilities of living and communication. If life is mere vanity, then all civilization or progress is a figment.
Another kind of ethical valuation has been proclaimed by the “moralists of work.” It has first found eloquent expression in Zola’s so-called four evangelia, especially in ‘Le Travail’ and in ‘La Fécondité.’ The sermon preached there is work for work’s sake. The god worshiped is the god of things material. Man is told to go forth with a high and noble purpose toward the god of things. These new preachers of the morality of work have almost succeeded to create a certain frenzy for work. The success virus of things material is being steadily pumped into men and even women, so that life has become simply a whirl of things of no survival value whatsoever. The crude materialism and realism of our times have created a feverish and almost insane craving for things, a quenchless fever for things material. The spirit of the hour is the material world-building, the lust for material things, the intoxication of work.DK Hence the high-pressure requirements of modern existence which have created in the people a total lack of proportion, a lack of all sense of relative values. The relative value of a thing, representing its power to relieve man’s wants, has become confounded with positive values which only timeless things possess.
People labor and look forward; but what do they look forward to? Our existence is so fleeting. One intangible fleeting hour, and we drop into the hollows of oblivion. If the only aim in life are material things, then the absurdity of life is unquestionable. If life means anything at all, none of man’s expressions of life can be an end in itself. If the only divinity is the god of work, then the triviality of life, whether of the life of the high or of that of the low, of the king or of the beggar, is evident. What profit will accrue to humanity even if it consisted of kings and princes only? If the future of man is only a material well-being, there is no profit in struggling and suffering for an aimless future. Granted that in this future such fatalities of life, as sorrow, hunger, vice, prejudice could be eliminated, granted that every man, woman and child will have their equal shares in the great duties and privileges of life, will such a life be less valueless and purposeless when death approaches?
Morality of love.—While the three systems of conduct, just mentioned, are founded upon certain ideals, even if they be the ideals of materialism (paradox), the morality of a certain school of modern writers has raised as its ideal the most perfect egotism extant. This effeminate, fade species of literature proclaims the absolute dictature of Eros as the new ethics. The genius of propagation has deluded and beguiled these new moralists to proclaim their intoxication of sensuality as a new religion of personality.DL Their doctrine teaches that voluptuous sensuality is the moral ground of sexual relations.DM They preach the all-importance of love as the last word of human wisdom. Men should live for the physical desires, and in the instincts of the moment. Man ought to ignore every thing that is not wholly material, he must strive to be a good animal. The complete satisfaction of his desires, the dip into the vices and pleasures of the senses, the plenary indulgences of the flesh, are the primordial and ineffaceable rights of man. These individualists simply deify passion. Their vulgar eroticism and their constant erotic rumination, which fill their entire effeminate literature, are covered with a veil of insipid verse. The high-sounding phrases and glittering generalities, emitted by these writers of the literature of futurism, poorly conceal the true meaning of their religion of sensuality. A phrase that expresses their belief in a heaven wherein men and especially women will come into their own, really means wherein men and women will be allowed to give their passions free rein. Nothing but sensuality is meant by phrases such as spiritual attraction or the soul’s complement. When such a feminist proclaims to the world that “woman wishes to cease to be a subject and longs to be considered a human being,” she really means that every sensual excitement she awakens should be taken seriously.
This new ethics is a mixture of self-deception, arrogance, sensuality and irresponsibility. In their works these realists reveal their cold, absolutely surfeited, caring for nothing. They measure a man’s strength not by the power to subdue but by the weakness of being subdued by passion. They preach that there is no merit in self-control, sex-repression, generosity, service, and proclaim that man’s unpardonable sin is that of denying his nature, his greatest crime against life is the rigid repression of the blood. They know of nothing holier than the sumptuous, sensuous, time-worshipping world of paganism. All their writings are replete with unending thrills and climaxes, all taken from the domain of sex. Their gaze roves in voluptuous quest over the nudity of erotic sin and social transgression.
Such high-sounding phrases as “live to fulfill your nature, profess the faith of life, or woman’s desire for self-expression, her desire to live and find her true destiny” crope out everywhere in their writings and only serve to befuddle weak minds. What does self-expression, nature, destiny, mean in the mouths of people, drunk with the ravages of sensual pleasure? What will it profit to these apostles of sensuality, when they have fulfilled their nature, when they have found their destiny? At the hour of death they hold in their hands only the ashes of spent fancies.DN
Philosophy of pleasure.—Another philosophy of life akin to the morality of love is the philosophy of pleasure or rather of happiness. The partisans of the hedonic philosophy proclaim the sole reason of man’s existence is to procure the greatest possible amount of happiness in this world.
Now in a certain respect, this is quite true. The ultimate appraiser of all relative values is the promotion of happiness. The hedonic is the supreme test of terrestrial values. The motive for most of man’s actions is the desire for happiness. All advances of humanity, the ethical, the artistic, the scientific and especially the material, have contributed to the enhancement of human welfare. Civilization means the victory of man over nature, in the interest of the greatest good to the greatest number. Culture is the pursuit of happiness of humanity. Progress means the advance towards a higher and higher level of humanity’s well-being. Commerce, industry, art and science must enhance the welfare of human society. Social ends cannot be served unless they tend to the gratification of the desire for happiness. In all dreams of a future utopia, human welfare and happiness is the goal. But is it possible that the attainment of happiness and of the fleeting transitory joy shall be the only purpose of life? The philosophy of pleasure allots to man not only the right but also the duty of making his attainment of happiness the only aim of his life. All law, custom, and ethics, the three spontaneous regulators of the species “man,” are claimed by this philosophy to exist for the sole purpose to plane the road that leads to happiness.
But if this be true, if the value of life be only hedonic, if the sole and only meaning of life is to enjoy and die, then man’s existence is mere vanity. Then the community, nation, race and humanity have no positive value. Civilization is a failure, progress is worthless, and all our virtues are only the aberrations of the spirit. This is the pessimism in which all philosophies, that proclaim the hedonic to be the only aim of existence, must end and actually do end.DO But if life has no meaning at all, if everything is, as Heine sings,
mere vanity, whence this will to live, this most deep-seated part of our being, this unparalleled tenacity to life, manifested in the lowest plant to the highest animal. There must be something behind this will to live, something behind this tenacity not only of the individual’s life, but of the life of future generations. If the only end in life are joys that know no bounds, whence comes the emotion that causes men to die for an abstract principle, such as honor, truth, liberty, justice, etc.? Who has implanted in man this spirituality, this will to work for a future he knows not?
Moral standard in nature.—Behind the tenacity of every organic being to life must be searched the standard of morality, behind this tenacity must lie the will of the First Cause, of the Supreme Intelligence. The place to look for the will of the Creative Power is, therefore, nature. But the philosopher must not look only in one part of nature, insensate or irrational nature, but in entire nature, human nature included.
It was the trick of the ages for the philosopher, high up on a pedestal, to discuss the immutable laws of irrational nature in the cosmos, without including the rational philosopher himself as a part of nature. It was “Hic homo, hic natura.”
The truth of evolution has swept away for ever this kind of sophistry. Evolution teaches unity in nature. The mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms are composed of the same elements. The transition from one kingdom into another is almost imperceptible. There is no line to be drawn between living and non-living matter. Botanists and zoologists are often at a loss to determine to which kingdom certain specimens belong.DP There is unity in nature, and man is no less an integral part of nature than the air or the stars.
Now, man is a rational being. Hence an integral part of nature is rational, and there is rationality in nature. If a thousand millions of human brains, or a thousand million kilograms of brain-matter on our planet possess intelligence, reason, wisdom, judgment, memory, foresight, mind and ideas, then there is rationality in nature. Even if this rationality is now only perceivable in the human brain, it must, eons ago, have been present in potentiality in the primordial cell, which developed into the human brain, the flower of organic life. Nay, rationality must have transcended the primordial cell. “The soul, or the power of judgment, being the factor that makes experience possible,” says Bergson, “cannot be a complex of experience only, it transcends experience.”
The soul, mind and body become a unity in man, a trinitarian unity, a “Dreieinigkeit.” There is interdependence between the physical and the mental. The higher psychic centres are dominated and domineered by the lower, or vegetative centres. But two things, mutually dependent, are not for that matter equivalent. The subtle and delicate influences by which soul and body affect each other do not make them identical. The mind which includes intellect and emotion is something entirely different from the brain-cell. The action between mind and brain-cell is absolutely unknown to us.
Everything tends to show that there is an intelligence behind the creative energy in the world. All nature is in motion, in vibration, in harmony. Five hundred millions of stars, all flaming suns, whirling through space and carrying along with them systems of planets and satellites, can not do so without a directing intelligence. The universe must be supported by a principle, immanent or transcendent. Human logic, which itself is transcendental, forces every real thinker to acknowledge wisdom in nature. Natural, immutable laws do not explain the harmony of things, which the soul, tuned to the high, distinctly perceives. Who was the legislator of these laws but a transcendental intelligence? Besides, there is an infinite beyond of which gravitation is a puzzle. No man can imagine a limit beyond which there is nothing; on the other hand, nobody can imagine the infinite in time and space, things going on and on without end. Both are inconceivable, still one must be true.
The feeling of extension and duration must hence be transcendental in man, for it is entirely independent of reason. Reality itself—Das Ding an sich—is inconceivable by reason and is transcendental. The very idea of a thing is transcendental and eternal. “The logos, or the logical axiom,” says Bergson, “is eternal. The logical essence of a circle, e. c., the possibility of drawing a circle, is eternal and infinite. It has neither place nor date; for ‘Nowhere,’ at ‘No moment’ has drawing a circle begun to be possible.”
If reason and all its attributes are transcendental and eternal, then reason can only be a part of a larger reason. From nothing comes nothing. If there were no reason in the nature of the universe, whence did the primordial cell, which eons later developed into the brain of an Aristoteles, Kant, Spencer, get its reason? Whence do emotions, such as philanthropy and pity, honor and sense of duty, justice and love of truth, and all other ethical values come from? What is it that comprehends, feels, loves, wills, hopes, fears? It is the soul in man, a part of the Intelligence in the Universe, which Hinduism calls Trimutri, Judaism designates as Jehovah, and Christianity terms Logos. All these different names mean one and the same thing, i. e., the transcendental intelligence behind the universe, of which man is the conscious part of the scheme.
Hence the philosopher looking for the will of the Supreme Intelligence, will have to return to nature, and especially to human nature. For as Protagoras cogently once said: πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος, “man is the measure of all things.” Now, what does nature will? We find in organic nature excessive production and wholesale destruction. The abundance of the reproductive cells in plant and animal is simply amazing. Every ejaculation in man contains two or three hundred million spermatozoa, each one of them sufficient for impregnation. Each ovary of the new-born baby girl contains about thirty thousand ova, each potentially a human being. The first effort of growth is to set aside a part of the germ itself for future reproduction, so that the germ may be indefinitely multiplied and handed down to untold generations. The reproductive cells, the cells which have not lost the primary power of multiplication, are of the first consideration; the specialized cells, or the somatic cells which cannot reproduce any longer, are of secondary importance. Nature’s sole solicitation is the race. The supreme law of organic nature is the preservation of the kind. Her sole aim is the perpetuation of the species, hence the abundance of the germ-plasm in plant and animal. Nature takes no chances. She secures the continuance of the kind by the extravagant production of material and the ruthless destruction of all that is superfluous. Nature preserves the individual until it has brought forth its offspring, after the message is delivered, the messenger is discharged. Nature has no regard for the individual. The fly is destined as a prey to the spider, the spider to the swallow, the swallow to the hawk, the hawk to the eagle, and the eagle to the hunter. But what is the hunter’s destiny?
Here nature is silent. The crown of creation seems to be here for no purpose. Man seems to have no value whatever. The individual does not count, it is created to be destroyed. Nature is careless of the single life. The individual may wither, the race is more and more.DQ Everything that serves to improve the race is in harmony with nature. But to what purpose is the race here? Cosmic nature owes us the answer. But when we return to a certain part of nature, the conscious part of nature, human nature, we find the hints for the reason of our existence. It is the experience of the divine urge of progress and the certainty that the crown of altruism is of the highest value in life. Both these qualities are transcendental, bestowed already upon the primordial cell by the creative power of the universe. Self-sacrifice resides in every cell. In every drop of pus millions of dead white corpuscles, or cells can be seen who, in the defence of the colony or the human body, sacrificed themselves in the struggle with the invading bacteria. This cellular self-sacrifice has developed in man into the impulse to serve others, the inner possession of every human heart.
Altruism becomes thus the criterion of morality. There is no morality for him who lives in solitude, there is only right conduct. Morality is bound up with altruism, which on the highest scale of moral development overcomes egotism. Man feels then a moral obligation within himself to serve others in the face of human need, of hunger, thirst, loneliness, nakedness, sickness, etc. This obligation is felt in obedience to Kant’s categorical imperative. The moral feeling is a part of man’s life, it is transcendental. Morality and character are functions of the brain like memory or imagination. The essence of morality is as unexplainable by mechanical laws as the nature of life itself. The creative power that gave life to man implanted in him moral aspirations of the whole soul. The moral law is hence based upon human feeling. What the throbbing heart of the best of humanity considers right is the will of the Supreme Intelligence, and hence the moral law. Human feeling and human longing are the basis of every moral action. When it is agreed among the best men, everywhere, and in every epoch, that altruism is noble and that egotism is ignoble, then altruism is the foundation of morality. The larger the altruistic circle is, the praiseworthier it is. To benefit one’s family is laudable, but a service rendered in the interest of the community, of the nation, or of the human race, is far worthier. The highest degree of morality is hence reached in actions rendered in the interest of the race.