CHAPTER III.

MORALITY.

MORALITY is the Science of man's Duties. It concerns, in the first place, Why he should act in any particular way, or the Principles of Morality; and secondly, How he should act under the guidance of such principles, or the Practice of Morality.

THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY.

In considering the question why a man should act in one way rather than in another, we have first to ask, is there anything in actions themselves that makes one line of conduct more desirable than another? I reply, certainly not. The differences that man has created in this respect are purely subjective, having no existence whatever without himself: in fact, the Moral World is as much the creation of the mind as we have shown the physical world to be. All actions are equally Necessary, that is, they are the result of antecedent irresistible force or cause, and therefore there can be nothing in the actions themselves to distinguish them from each other, or to make one action more a duty than another. Of course this is hard of belief; it has been, and still is, much disputed; we must give some little space therefore to its elucidation. The modern expression of this doctrine of "Philosophical Necessity," as it has been rather erroneously called, is to be found in the comparatively recent discovery of the Persistence or Conservation of Force. In deference to theologians and others bound to support special views, this doctrine of the Persistence and Correlation of Force has been hitherto confined to the physical forces, but Herbert Spencer and others

have shown that it equally applies to Mind or mental force, and "that each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force; no matter whether it be an inorganic action, an animal movement, a thought, or feeling. Either this must be conceded, or else it must be asserted that our successive states of consciousness are selfcreated. Either mental energies, as well as bodily ones, are quantitatively correlated to certain energies expended in their production, and to certain other energies which they initiate; or else nothing must become something and something must become nothing." *

"The grand point permanent throughout all these considerations is that nothing is created. We can make no movement which is not accounted for by the contemporaneous extinction of some other movement." †

The more ancient expression of the same truth is given in various ways by various eminent authorities. I shall give a few only. Thus: " Nothing comes to pass without a cause. What is self-existent must be from Eternity, and must be unchangeable; but as to all things that begin to be, they are not self-existent, and therefore must have some foundation of their existence without themselves." ‡

*

*

"In no mind is there an absolute or free volition; but it is determined to choose this or that by a cause, which likewise has been fixed by another, and this again by a third, and so on for ever. * Human Liberty, of which all boast, consists solely in this, that man is conscious of his will, and unconscious of the causes by which it is determined." § Every action or phenomenon, so far as it produces an event, is itself an event or occurrence which pre-supposes another state wherein the cause is to be met with; and thus

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*Herbert Spencer.

"Heat a Mode of Motion," third edition, p. 499; Tyndall.

everything that happens is but a continuation of the series, and no beginning which occurs of itself is possible: consequently, all the actions of the natural causes in the succession are themselves again effects." *

"Everything that exists depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is related to the whole." †

"Rejecting, then, the metaphysical dogma of free-will, and the theological dogma of predestined events, we are driven to the conclusion that the actions of men, being determined solely by their antecedents, must have a character of uniformity, that is to say, must, under precisely the same circumstances, always issue in precisely the same results."

"The life of man is, therefore, like a stream of events or changes in linked sequence, flowing on as necessarily as the waters of Niagara. It is true that, in common language, the will is spoken of as the first cause of conscious thoughts and acts; but no acts of will (that is, of mental energising) can occur without its necessary co-existents and antecedents —that is, its causes; and such as these are, so will the act be. There is, in fact, no more a spontaneous act of will than there is spontaneous generation." § ||

Suppose even that in a million people no two are alike, still, if that is the extent of their difference, all beyond that number would be like some in the million-one at least; so that in every 10 millions there would be 10 persons who would do exactly the same in similar circumstances. The fact is that none are exactly alike; still they are sufficiently so as to predicate actions with certainty in a given number. Experience or Statistics can alone point out what that number is. In a given number the crimes that will be committed, and the character of those crimes, are exactly known. The number of people who go mad, the number who commit suicide and the exact method, the number even who will put their letters into the post without any address, are certainly known. There is no chance, or contingency, or free-will anywhere: the same causes, under the

If then all actions are Necessary," that is, if each mani. festation of force, mental and bodily, can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force, (which the persistence

same conditions, always produce the same results. In the RegistrarGeneral's Annual Report there are certainly some things that look like chance. For instance, one person died through terror produced by a thunder-storm, one from the sting of a wasp, one from the bite of a donkey, and one was choked by swallowing a set of artificial teeth. A good many people may die from the bite of a donkeywitness the lamented death of the poor poet Keats; but the last-mentioned cause of death perhaps is not sufficiently general to assume the form of a law at present, and it may not be known with absolute certainty how many people will die next year from swallowing their teeth -at present they are too expensive to make the liability very great. The Registrar of Killin mentions that an old bachelor who died at the age of 91 years "five or six years ago cut six new teeth, which he said were quite serviceable and as sharp as lancets."-(The RegistrarGeneral for Scotland, 14th Annnal Report.) It certainly would be a great convenience, and save considerable expense and, as it appears, danger, if nature would provide a set of teeth for our second childhood, as it does for our first; but as this gentleman was 91 years old and a bachelor, I fear we have not much to hope for from "Natural Selection" in this case. It may sound like a paradox, but it is nevertheless true, that all History is false, but all Fiction is true. It is almost, if not quite impossible, to say truly what happened to particular individuals at some definite specified time and place, but it is probably equally impossible to state anything in fiction that has not occurred, and that is not most likely occurring at that very moment, somewhere in the world. Sixty people die every minute and in the 12 hundred millions of the human race-as like causes produce like effects-there is probably nothing we can imagine that is not taking place many times over somewhere during that minute. The motives that move us are similar, constant, and in constant action. Young people fall in love, and mothers are certain there are not, and never were, such darlings in the world as their children &c., and they think it all new and quite original; but the same thing is happening all the world over, and has been from time immemorial. There are the same murders, the same suicides, the same number of fools putting their letters into post without any address; Babbage could do it all by a machine.

of force implies,) and "free-will" is consequently a delusion, whence does this delusion arise? The freedom universally recognized is the power which every creature has, in common with everything else, organic and inorganic, to act in accordance with its nature or the laws of its being, when free from external constraint; which power, however, equally in mind and matter, is derived from without. Our consciousness it is that is guilty of the delusion in this case, as in so many others; the fact being that the persistence of force does not appear in consciousness, but only its correlation. The discussion on this much-vexed question would not have continued so long, and be yet undecided, if there were not some misunderstanding of the terms in which it is expressed. Persistent force or cause is always from without, but its mode of action or manifestation depends upon the nature of the substance or organ through which it passes, and when this action is unconstrained—that is, not interfered with or interruptedit is called free. But everything has a nature of its own, and its mode of action is determined by that nature. In mental action we are thus compelled by our nature to do things voluntarily. This has been called a free necessity. Thus it is said, "God is free because He acts from the necessity of His own nature.”* But everything has this freedom, which is no freedom at all, as everything, and everybody, and every mind, necessarily acts definitely in accordance with the laws of its nature or being. It is this which has been mistaken for freedom, as distinguished from the condition in which some impediment has been imposed to such action. Thus a thing is said to be free when it is determined to action by itself alone; but that self, whatever it may be, acts necessarily in accordance with the laws of its own nature. It is thus that people delude themselves into believing both in free-will and necessity, or in free necessity. It is necessity, not freedom, that increases as we ascend in the scale of being.

* Spinoza.