Handbook of Ethical Theory by George Stuart Fullerton (e reader TXT) 📕

21. THE BACKGROUND OF ACTIONS.—In estimating human actions we take into consideration both the doer and the circumstances under which the deed was done. Actions may be desirable or undesirable, good or bad, according to their setting. How shall we judge of the blow that takes away human life? It may be the involuntary reaction of a man startled by a shock; it may be a motion of justifiable self-defence; it may be one struck at the command of a superior and in the defence of one’s country; it may be the horrid outcome of cruel rapacity or base malevolence.

Nor are the emotions, torn out of their context, more significant than actions without a background. They are mental phenomena to be observed and described by the psychologist; to the moralist they are, taken alone, as unmeaning as the letters of the alphabet, but, like them, capable in combination of carrying many meanings. Anger, fear, wonder, and all the rest are, as natural emotions, neither good nor bad; they are colors, which may enter into a picture and in it acquire various values.

In morals, when men have attained to the stage of enlightenment at which moral estimation is a possible process, they always consider emotions, intentions, and actions in the light of their background. We do not demand a moral life of the brutes; we do not look for it in the intellectually defective and the emotionally insane; nor do we expect a savage caught in the bush to harbor the same emotions, or to have the same ethical outlook, as the missionary with whom we may confront him. The concepts of moral responsibility, of desert, of guilt, are emptied of all significance, when we lose sight of the nature, inborn or acquired, of the creature haled before the bar of our judgment, and of the environment, which on the one hand, impels him to action, and, on the other, furnishes the stage upon which the drama of his life must be played out to the end.

Hence, he who would not act as the creature of blind impulse or as the unthinking slave of tradition, but would exercise a conscious and intelligent control over his conduct, seems compelled to look at his life and its setting in a broad way, to scrutinize with care both the nature of man and the environment without which that nature could find no expression. When he does this, he only does more intelligently what men generally do instinctively and somewhat at haphazard. He seeks a rational estimate of the significance of conduct, and a standard by which it may be measured.

22. MAN’S NATURE.—Moralists ancient and modern have had a good deal to say about the nature of man. To some of them it has seemed rather a simple thing to describe it. Its constitution, as they have conceived it, has furnished them with certain principles which should guide human action. Aristotle, who assumed that every man seeks his own good, conceived of his good or “well-being” as largely identical with “well-doing.” This “well-doing” meant to him “fulfilling the proper functions of man,” or in other words acting as the nature of man prescribes. [Footnote: Politics, i, 2. See, further, on Man’s Nature, chapter xxvi.] To the Stoic man’s duty was action in accordance with his nature. [Footnote: MARCUS AURELIUS, Thoughts, v, 1.] Butler, [Footnote: Sermons on Human Nature, ii] many centuries later, found in man’s nature a certain “constitution,” with conscience naturally supreme and the passions in a position of subordination. This “constitution” plainly indicated to him the conduct appropriate to a human being.

Such appeals to man’s nature we are apt to listen to with a good deal of sympathy. Manifestly, man differs from the brutes, and they differ, in their kind, from each other. To each kind, a life of a certain sort seems appropriate. The rational being is expected to act rationally, to some degree, at least. In our dealings with creatures on a lower plane, we pitch our expectations much lower.

And the behavior we expect from each is that appropriate to its kind. The bee and the ant follow unswervingly their own law, and live their own complicated community life. However the behavior of the brute may vary in the presence of varying conditions, the degree of the variation seems to be determined by rather narrow limits. These we recognize as the limits of the nature of the creature. It dictates to itself, unconsciously, its own law of action, and it follows that law simply and without revolt.

When we turn to man, “the crown and glory of the universe,” as Darwin calls him, we find him, too, endowed with a certain nature in an analogous sense of the word. He has capacities for which we look in vain elsewhere. The type of conduct we expect of him has its root in these capacities. Human nature can definitely be expected to express itself in a human life,—one lower or higher, but, in every case, distinguishable from the life of the brute. It means something to speak of the physical and mental constitution of man, that mysterious reservoir from which his emotions and actions are supposed to flow. We feel that we have a right to use the expression, even while admitting that the brain of man is, as far as psychology is concerned, almost unexplored territory, and that the relation of mind to brain is, and is long likely to remain, a subject of dispute with philosophers and psychologists.

23. HOW DISCOVER MAN’S NATURE?—Nevertheless, in speaking of the nature of any living creature, we are forced to remind ourselves that the original endowment of the creature studied can never be isolated and subjected to inspection independently of the setting in which the subject of our study is found. Who, by an examination of the brain of a bee or of an ant, could foresee the intricate organized industry of the hive or the anthill? The seven ages of man are not stored ready-made in the little body of the infant. At any rate, they are beyond the reach of the most penetrating vision. In the case of the simple mechanisms which can be constructed by man a forecast of future function is possible on the basis of a general knowledge of mechanics. But there is no living being of whose internal constitution we have a similar knowledge. From the behavior of the creature we gather a knowledge of its nature; we do not start with its nature as directly revealed and infer its behavior. That there are differences in the internal constitution of beings which react to the same environment in different ways, we have every reason to believe. What those differences are in detail we cannot know. And our knowledge of the capacities inherent in this or that constitution will be limited by what we can observe of its reaction to environment.

Sometimes the reaction to environment is relatively simple and uniform. In this case we feel that we can attain without great difficulty to what may be regarded as a satisfactory knowledge of the nature of the creature studied. The conception of that nature appears to be rather definite and unequivocal. When it is once attained, we speak with some assurance of the way in which the creature will act in this situation or in that. If, however, the capacities are vastly more ample, and the environment to which this creature is adjusted is greatly extended, the difficulty of describing in any unequivocal way the nature of the creature becomes indefinitely greater.

Is it possible to contemplate man without being struck with the breadth and depth of the gulf which separates the primitive human being from the finished product of civilization? What a difference in range of emotion, in reach of intellect, in stored information, in freedom of action, between man at his lowest and man at his highest! Can we describe in the same terms what is natural to man everywhere and always?

For the filthy and ignorant savage, absorbed in satisfying his immediate bodily needs, standing in the simplest of social relations, taking literally no thought for the morrow, profoundly ignorant of the world in which he finds himself, possessing over nature no control worthy of the name, the sport and slave of his environment, it is natural to act in one way. For enlightened humanity, acquainted with the past and forecasting the future, developed in intellect and refined in feeling, rich in the possession of arts and sciences, intelligently controlling and directing the forces of nature, socially organized in highly complicated ways, it is natural to act in another way. And to each of the intermediate stages in the evolution of civilization some type of conduct appears to be appropriate and natural.

Whither, then, shall we turn for our conception of man’s nature? Shall we merely