02 Moral Duty

CHAPTER II. MORAL DUTY.

IT has been said that the science of ethics differs from all other sciences in that it deals, not with what is, but with what ought to be. But this does not seem to me to be a proper account to give of ethics. For every science must deal with what is, or (not to lay too much stress on the word ’ is ’) with phenomena. To this rule ethics can be no exception, whether you call it a study or a science. It too must treat of phenomena and seek to give some explanation of them; otherwise it becomes mere speculation. Not that speculation is valueless; quite the contrary. For science must have her speculative hypotheses which she seeks to verify by an inductive method. But these are hypotheses to account for and to connect together phenomena.

It seems to me that the correct account to give of ethics is that it has to do not with what ought to be, but with the human cognition of an ought. This latter is a fact of experience, a phenomenon, as we say. It can then be made the subject of a science.

It would be fair enough to say of ethics that it has to deal with an ’ ought to be/ provided that this ’ ought to be ’ were looked upon as real in the same way that mass and motion are regarded as real in dynamics. We could not make mass and motion the subject of a science unless we had some cognition of them. Nor is it of the least use to speculate what ought to be, apart from the present reality of an ’ ought.’ As what ’ ought to be ’ is often opposed in thought to what actually is, we come to think of the ’ ought to be ’ as non-existent. But you can- not have a science of the non-existent. A subject of study must at least have an existence in the human mind; and so the ’ ought to be ’ of ethics must appear to the mind as clearly as do mass and motion, or you cannot study it or make of it a systematic science.

We must at once proceed to investigate the ethical use of the word ’ ought,’ and it will conduce to clearness if we consider, first of all, what we mean when we say that men ought to do anything. In other words, we will postpone the discussion of what ’ ought to be ’ until we have considered the ’ ought to do.’ Strictly speaking, it is with what men ought to do that ethics is concerned. Whether any meaning can be attached to the ’ ought to be,’ apart from this that men ought to bring it about, will be considered after an explanation has been given of what it is convenient to call the ’ moral ought.’

Now in propositions which have a human subject and, for a predicate, a simple present ought with its completed infinitive, we soon detect that there are two distinct ’oughts.’ Thus the ’ought ’ in ’ You ought to speak the truth’ is not the same as the ’ought ’ in ’ You ought to be rewarded.’ For while the ’ ought ’ of the first of these is really an ’ ought ’ of the subject addressed, the ’ ought ’ of the second, if it is properly an ’ ought ’ at all, implies the ’ ought ’ of some one else who ought to reward the person addressed. It might be that ’ You ought to be re- warded ’ meant no more than ’ You deserve to be rewarded.’ If so, then clearly the ought of ’ You ought to speak the truth ’ and that of ’ You ought to be rewarded’ are entirely different things. For to substitute ’deserve’ for ’ought’ in ’You ought to speak the truth ’ is to alter the meaning of what any one could possibly mean by using these words. The ’ oughts ’ then which occur in propositions such as have been described above may be conveniently divided into (1) oughts of activity, (2) oughts of passivity. Thus in ’ You ought to speak the truth ’ the ’ ought ’ is one of the subject’s potential activity. In ’ You ought to be rewarded ’ the ’ ought ’ is one of the subject’s potential passivity. This second proposition may, as has been said, imply the ’ ought ’ of some other person’s activity; but as this is not expressed, the ’ ought ’ must be considered to be one of passivity. When we speak of the subject’s activity, such activity must be understood to involve the activity of the will of the subject. That is to say, the activity is or results from volition. If any one dispute the fact of human will and say that volition is purely illusory, then to that person the distinction here made between the ’ oughts of activity ’ and the ’ oughts of passivity ’ is illusory too. It becomes waste of time to argue further.

These propositions which have a human subject and, for a predicate, a simple present ’ ought ’ with its completed infinitive are possible ethical ’propositions when the ’ ought ’ is one of the subject’s activity in the sense explained above. ’You ought to help your friends,’ ’ Men ought to abstain from theft ’ are examples of what may be ethical propositions. But not all such propositions commonly used are ethical propositions, as will presently be seen. But it must be carefully noted that the ’ ought ’ of these propositions must not be qualified in any way. Thus ’ Men ought not to steal ’ is not an ethical proposition if not qualifies ought. If this means Men ought to not-steal, or to refrain from stealing, the proposition may be an ethical one, not otherwise. That is to say, in ethical propositions the predicate must be an ’ ought ’ and not the negation of an ’ ought.’

Consider the proposition : We ought to obey God rather than men. This, if it is to be an ethical proposition, must be understood to mean : We ought to prefer obedience to God to obedience to man. But it is not to be accounted a possible ethical proposition if it be understood to be : We ought to obey God more than we ought to obey man. For the words ’more than we ought to obey man’ serve here to qualify the ’ ought ’ of ’ We ought to obey God.’ The proposition ’You ought to have gone out yesterday’ is not a possible ethical proposition as it stands. For it cannot be a present ’ought’ to go out yesterday. This proposition might be used to express the fact that yesterday the ethical proposition was true, ’You ought to go out.’ But as the proposition ’You ought to have gone out yesterday’ stands, the ’ought’ can only be one of passivity.

’You ought to sleep’ may be an ethical proposition, or on the other hand the ’ ought ’ may be one of passivity. There would be no difficulty in deciding the point if the meaning of the words were known. The ’ ought ’ in ’ You ought to be asleep ’ can only be one of passivity. For so far as the sleeping depends on the volition of the subject, the ’ ought ’ is a past and not a present ’ ought,’ whereas the ’ ought ’ of an ethical proposition is, according to the definition, present and not past.

We may now pass on to a further analysis of the ’oughts’ of human activity. These may be classed under two heads, viz. (1) the moral oughts, and (2) the hypothetical or prudential oughts. The distinction between these which must now be set forth is of the greatest importance. To explain what is meant by a ’moral ought’ it is necessary to have some clear notion what we mean when we speak of a man as a moral being. We cannot define the word ’ moral ’ straight away. For it is impossible to define any adjective simply, except in terms of a noun from which it may be derived. And when the definition of the adjective is given in terms of the noun, it is of no value unless we have further a definition of the noun itself which is employed in the definition of the adjective. Thus if we define ’virtuous’ as ’shewing virtue,’ we have given no real definition of the adjective unless we give also a definition of ’virtue.’ Those who have ever attempted to formulate a definition of the adjective ’good’ know how difficult it is.

Now it would seem that every finite being must have instincts. Man has instincts in common with the beasts. The beasts, so far as we can see, are entirely guided by their instincts, though it is not to be denied that they have also intelligence or incipient reason, by which they know how their instincts can be satisfied. They do not, so far as we know, set before themselves any end, except so far as that end is suggested by instinct. The means to an end instinctively desired may become known to them by reason.

It is not to be assumed that the instincts of the brute creation are all selfish. Quite the contrary. There are what are called altruistic instincts which direct the creature to a course of action seemingly detrimental to itself, instincts which even lead animals to sacrifice their lives in the interests of another, and even, as in the case of a moth at a candle, to sacrifice their lives, as it seems to us, to no purpose. The animal creation then lower in the scale than man is a marvellous machinery controlled by what we call instincts, the means to the gratification of such instincts being determined to some extent by reason. But when we come to man the case is different. He has ends set before him by his reason, to the attainment of which his instincts may fail to carry him. From this fact, namely, man’s possession of what I am calling moral reason, which is at war with his instincts, results man’s unhappiness, which can only come to an end when his moral reason and highest instinct are ultimately at one. How this will come about we shall try to discover in the course of this essay. By speaking of man as a moral being we mean that he has, besides instincts, moral reason, which, becoming imperative in what we call his Conscience, tells him that he ought to control his instincts, to prefer this to that, and, it may be, to suppress certain instincts altogether.

Man then, as a moral being, has a consciousness of having to choose between certain courses of action, while he has all the while a cognition of a dictate to choose in a particular way. It is as if he were free to choose, and yet he is enslaved by his instincts, which assert themselves in defiance of his reason. I do not now stop to discuss the question of Free Will, to which we shall come, however, in a later chapter.

It will be understood then that temptation is a sine qua non of a moral being. In the words of St. James: "Each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust.”

Conscience then dictates to us what we ought to do according to the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves, and the ’ought’ is absolute, and in no way conditional. This is that which we mean by the ’moral ought.’ It is Kant’s categorical imperative. It does not tell us what we ought to do in order to avoid punishment. If it whispers any threat of punishment, it tells us that we deserve to suffer if we disobey. For the conscience not only commands but commends. It tells us that that which is commanded is right and the opposite wrong. Conscience is the voice of God within the soul of man. It is God who teaches us the meaning of right and wrong. This is the great truth which leads us into life.

It will be understood that no human being can dictate to me my ’ moral oughts.’ Say I am taught as a child not to lie. Unless, when desiring to lie, I have within myself a cognition of a dictate of conscience not to lie, or, at any rate, of a dictate to obey whoever so teaches me, then there is no ’ moral ought ’ not to lie. It is not dictation from without that makes the ’ moral ought ’ but the voice of conscience within. Whether the cognition of the ’ moral ought,’ which is internal, has to be called forth by words from without spoken into the ear or by actions witnessed by the eye, is not now being discussed.

It is possible to deny the existence of the Conscience, and to say that the cognition of an ’ ought ’ is purely illusory. But I doubt whether any man living could deny that he ought to shew gratitude for favours disinterestedly bestowed upon him. If he allowed this one ’ ought ’ he would be accepting the principle of the ’ moral ought,’ however much he might wish to restrict its application. I do not in this chapter enter into the content of the ’ moral ought,’ or what will be better called by the name ’ moral duty ’; but I shall assume that gratitude is at least included in it. My moral duty is then that which I ought to do, whatever desire I may feel to the contrary. And it is important to make a perfectly clear distinction between the fact of moral duty and the motive for its fulfilment. The answer to the question, Why ought I to speak the truth? or Why is it my moral duty to speak the truth? is not necessarily the same as the answer to the question Why should I speak the truth? This last question, where the word ’ should ’ is not intended as equivalent to ’ ought,’ may only mean that the questioner desires some motive of advantage to himself or some one else sufficient to induce him to speak the truth. It is the first function of ethics to discover the ground of human duty and to supply a test by which it may be known what that duty is. The question whether or not it is, as men say, worth while to fulfil their duty is a separate one. In discriminating the two, however, I do not mean to imply that the one question should be considered to the neglect of the other. Unless the theory of ethics can contribute something towards the practice of life, it will neither win nor deserve to win much attention. But my own experience is that the study of ethics may not only conduce to clearness of thought but also prove a valuable moral discipline. Indeed it leads us right into the presence of God Himself, as will presently appear. My moral duty then is that which my conscience tells me I ought to do, and it varies from moment to moment. As circumstances change, my moral duty changes too, in its details, that is. When I say that I ought to do something, I mean by " I " what I am at that moment when I accept the truth of the pro- position I, that is, in those particular circumstances in which I am then placed. But it must not be thought that my moral duty is for that reason conditional. My moral duty to me at every moment is a categorical imperative, absolute and unconditional. I, being in such and such circumstances, ought to act in such a manner. But it may be said : But if you were in other circumstances it would not be your moral duty to do what in these present circumstances you ought to do. To this I should reply that I am not in other circumstances. I am in my present circumstances and these determine my moral duty. It is true that I am always myself, but I cannot say that I ought to do anything apart from the circumstances in which I am placed.

It is true that we make use of general ethical or moral propositions such as ’ Men ought not to steal,’ ’ Men ought to speak the truth.’ By these propositions we do not mean that it is always man’s moral duty not to steal, and to speak the truth, but that these propositions hold good whenever they are relevant. That is to say, if man is tempted to steal, finds within himself any desire to take what does not belong to him, he ought to check such desire and refrain from the theft. If tempted to lie, he should speak the truth. General moral duties, while always binding, are not always relevant. Our power to form general moral judgments, and to judge of cases in which we are not ourselves the actors would be nothing at all, unless we had a con- science by which we could judge of our own duty in the like circumstances. All men are not equally instructed in moral duty; the conscience of all is not equally enlightened, nor their moral reason at the same stage of development; consequently some men might not recognise as moral duties what others recognise and fulfil. When I say to another : You ought to do so-and-so, I either expect that my words will call forth in him a response, or that, failing that, there is some way by which I can persuade him of the truth of the moral proposition of which he is the subject. But if ever I am to convince him of the truth of it, it can only be by an appeal to his moral reason, which his conscience will make personal to him.

It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define what I have been calling moral reason, as indeed it is difficult to define reason without the epithet ’ moral ’ prefixed to it. But we may come at an understanding of what is meant by moral reason by reflection on our own conduct and actions, and perhaps most of all by reflecting on our conceptions of the Supreme Being. It may be that reason other than moral gives man his first conception of God. For reason demands a first cause of what we see, and know, and have experience of, and this first cause we call God. But we are not content simply to regard the Deity as the first cause. Quiet reflection brings to us the assurance that this Being who is the cause of all created things has also a character. That this is so is shown by the fact that people refuse to believe of God that which is revolting to their moral reason. I am not unmindful of the fact that men have had most unworthy thoughts of God, and still have. But this is where the moral reason is but slightly developed. Where the moral reason is fully active, men cannot allow that God can be anything but good and kind and merciful in all His dealings. If we could conceive of two beings perfectly happy, we should judge that one of the two the higher and the better who shared his happiness with others. Certainly we should account a being who was indifferent to suffering as unworthy of our highest reverence.

We may say then that moral reason is that department of human reason whereby we judge of the worth and dignity of being, and the possession of which enables us to say that God must be this or this. We cannot of course say of God that He ought to be or do anything, for we cannot conceive of Him as acting otherwise than perfectly. If we can say of anything that it ought to be, meaning by this some- thing which it is not a moral duty of humanity to bring about, then we judge that God must bring it to pass. But it seems inappropriate to speak of what ’ ought to be’ unless we mean by this what man ought to bring about. But while exception may be taken to this expression ’ what ought to be,’ if applied to that which is not seen to be a moral duty of man, we must nevertheless take into our consideration the thing intended by it, and recognise that moral philosophy cannot treat of its subject satisfactorily without taking into account those aspirations of the human soul to believe that there are certain things which the moral reason demands but which in the experience of man have not yet become actual.

Thus far we have spoken of the ’ moral ought,’ the ’ ought ’ which occurs in ethical or moral propositions which are an expression of moral duty. But it must be acknowledged that men do make use of the word ’ ought ’ in a hypothetical sense. Thus we might say : You ought to go out, if you want to preserve your health. Here the ’ ought ’ is conditioned by the words ’ if you want to preserve your health.’ Such ’ oughts’ then are conveniently called hypothetical or prudential. The Hedonistic system of ethics so far as it is based on an ’ ought ’ at all is based on a hypothetical ought. But the system is fallacious. It says to man: "You desire happiness all of you. Well then, find out what will produce your happiness. This is what you ought to do." Of course this is quite illogical. You cannot argue You desire happiness.

You cannot be happy unless you do x.

Therefore you ought to do x. The final ought is conditioned by ’ if you desire happiness.’ It therefore has no moral use at all. The ’ moral ought ’ must be absolute. If it were true that I ought to seek my own happiness (the ’ ought ’ being moral) then I ought to do x.

"But," says the Hedonist, "ought you not to seek your happiness? " I say " No !" But he replies : " But you do seek your own happiness; you cannot deny it." I reply that I have an instinct to produce my own happiness, or I have an instinct to certain things which I think will produce my happiness, but I have no cognition of a moral duty to seek it. The two things are quite distinct. My conscience dictating to me my moral duty tells me in what order to prefer my instincts, which to satisfy and which to leave un- satisfied. It certainly does not single out my instinct to produce my own happiness and say that is always to stand first. Quite the contrary. It puts it low down in the scale of instinct, calls it indeed selfish.

It cannot be denied that there is always in our use of the word ’ ought ’ a suggestion of opposition, actual or possible. Thus ’ You ought to speak the truth ’ suggests that there is or may be an instinct prompting us to lie. But because such a proposition as ’ You ought to speak the truth ’ might have appended to it the words ’ If tempted to lie,’ this addition does not make the ’ ought ’ hypothetical; it merely defines the circumstances in which the proposition would be relevant.

There is a view taken by some writers, notably by Paley, that in saying that a man ought to do anything we really mean that he will be punished if he does not. When conscience then makes its voice heard, it is a voice of warning, of threatening. This is a view which will not be adopted here, for it is not according to moral reason. The threatenings of con- science would be worthless unless our moral reason gave us the power to see that we deserve punishment for transgressing the dictate. In the ideal state of human existence every ’ought’ will have become a ’ must.’ Christ’s every ’ ought ’ was a ’ must.’ With Him there was no ’ ought.’

Before passing on, it will be well to recapitulate the contents of the present chapter. Ethics is the science of moral duty. Moral duty is the duty of man, that which he ought to do. It is absolute, unconditional, independent of desires or instincts. If any deny the categorical imperative, there is no science of ethics for such. Hedonism is the inevitable and logical creed. But while moral duty is unconditional and imperative in its demands, there is nothing unreasonable in it. So far from being not according to reason, it is the outcome of moral reason, which, if undefinable, is yet intelligible to one in the possession of it. I have not in this chapter attempted to investigate the con- tent of man’s moral duty. Though use has been made here of ethical or moral propositions, such as ’ Men ought not to steal,’ ’ Men ought to speak the truth,’ this has not been done with any assumption of their truth, but only for illustration. It would have done just as well, but would hardly be suitable to the general reader, if I had said, ’ Men ought to,’ thus leaving the completion of the predicate uncertain. The concrete appeals to some people better than does the abstract. I have therefore made use of concrete examples, and it is open to any to deny if they will that these are true ethical propositions. If they are ethical propositions, that is to say if they contain a ’ moral ought,’ or, in other words, are an expression of moral duty, the ’ ought ’ is an absolute one.