Quite right, all this so called "moral values" are jibber jabber
for the weak.
If I could victimize somebody and get away with it, there is really
nothing stopping me from robbing, killing and what have you not.
These actions are not "good" or "evil", they are just actions.
"Good" and "Evil" are arbitrary human constructs with no
absolutes.
Hence if I have devised a foolproof method of breaking into
Oriakan's home him and tying him up, torture his parents to death
in front of him before cutting their bodies up and smearing the
blood all over him, followed by killing him slowly by removing the
least important body parts one at a time followed by the organs
I
should do so with wild abandon without worrying about all these
silly things called morality.
For really, absolute morality does not exist. It is up to us to
decide what's good for ourselves and if I can derive sadistic
pleasure in torturing and murdering a total stranger who has done
nothing to me
it is something I can do, who cares about what
people say. As Nietzsche has long called us, we must abandon all
these silly slave mentalities to thought systems of servitute and
become supermen. Power and will to act are the only things that
matter in the end. And with my power and will I choose to do such a
thing to Oriakan.
The assertion that morality would never have existed for human
beings without belief in a god or without a revelation from god is
equal to saying that man alone should have never discovered the
value of being honest and truthful or loyal. He would not even have
had such terms as good and bad in his vocabulary, for the use of
those words implies moral judgment, and there would have been no
such thing -- at least, so we are told.
It is so glaringly absurd to say that without religion man would
not know right from wrong, that it is given a very slight covering
in the expression, "destroy religion and you remove all moral
restraints". Restraints! That expression is indeed a revelation. To
the theist morality stands for no more than a series of restraints,
and restraints are unpleasant things, because they prevent a man
from doing what he would like to do. It is acting in defiance of
one's impulses that makes one conscious of "restraints".
A pickpocket in a crowd is restrained by the knowledge that there
is a policeman at his elbow. A burglar is restrained from breaking
into an house by hearing the footsteps of a policeman. Each
refrains from doing as he would like to do because he is conscious
of restraints. It may be god; it may be a policeman. god is an
unsleeping policeman
From this point of view, what are called moral rules are treated
much as one may treat the regulation that one must not buy
chocolates after a certain hour in the evening. The order is
submitted to because of "sanctions" that may be applied if you do
not. So to the type of theist with whom we are dealing the question
of right or wrong is entirely one of coercion from without. If he
disobeys he may be punished, if not here, then hereafter. He asks,
"Why should a man impose restraints on himself if there is no
future life in which to be rewarded or punished? Why not enjoy
oneself and be done with it?
But all this is quite wrong. The ordinary man is not conscious of
restraint when he behaves himself in a decent manner. A mother is
not conscious of restraint when she devotes herself to nursing her
sick child, or goes out to work to supply it with food. A man who
is left in the house of a friend is not conscious of restraint when
he refrains from pocketing the silver, or when he does not steal a
purse that has been left on the mantlepiece. A person sent to the
bank to cash a check does not feel any restraint because he returns
with the money. The man who is conscious of a restraint when he
does a decent action is not a "good" man at all. He is a potential
criminal who does not commit a crime only because he is afraid of
being caught.
The moral problem is not how does man manage to do wrong, but how
does he find out what is right?
With so many opportunities of doing the wrong thing the moral
problem is how did man come to hit on the right one, and to make
the treading of the right road to some extent automatic?
Nature takes no more heed of our moral rules and judgements than it
does of our tastes in art or literature. A man is not blessed with
good health because he is an example of lofty morality, nor is he
burdened with disease because he is a criminal in thought and act.
Nature is neither moral or immoral. Such terms are applicable only
when there is conscious action to a given end. Nature is amoral,
that is, it is without morality. The common saying that nature
"punishes" us or "rewards" us for this or that is merely a
picturesque way of stating certain things; it has no literal
relation to actual fact. In nature there are no rewards or
punishments, there are only actions and consequences. We benefit if
we act in one way; we suffer if we act in another. That is the
natural fact; there is no ethical quality in natural happenings.
Laws of morals are human creations; they are on all fours with
"laws" of science -- that is, they are generalizations from
experience.
So morality existed in fact long before it was defined or described
in theory. Man did not first discover the laws of physiology in
order to realize the need for eating or breathing, to digest food
or to inhale oxygen. Nor did the rules, Thou shalt not kill, Thou
shalt not steal, etc., first make stealing and killing wrong. A
moral law makes explicit in theory what is implicit in fact. The
fact creates the rule; it is not the rule that creates the
fact.
Moral rules stand to human society pretty well as laws of
physiology do to the individual organism. They constitute the
physiology of social life, with the distinction that whatever rules
we have must be modified in form from time to time to meet changing
circumstances.
Nature requires but one thing of all living creatures. This is
efficiency. The "moral" quality of this efficiency does not matter
in the least.
The "moral" quality of this efficiency does not matter in the
least. A Church without a lightning conductor is at a disadvantage
with a brothel that possesses one. A man who risks his life in a
good cause has, other things equal, no advantage over a man who
risks his life in a bad one. Leave on one side this matter of
efficiency and there is not the slightest attention paid to
anything that we consider morally worthy in the organism that
survives.
Finally, efficiency in the case of living beings is to be expressed
in terms of adaption to environment, a fish to water, an
air-breathing animal to land, a carnivorous animal to its capacity
to stalk its prey, a vegetable feeder to qualities that enable it
to escape the attack of the carnivora, and so forth. An animal
survives as it is able to adapt itself, or as it becomes adapted to
its environment. It is well to bear in mind this principle of
efficiency, because while what constitutes efficiency varies from
time to time, the fact of its being the main condition determining
survival remains true whether we are dealing with organic structure
or with mental life.
Now if we take ethical terminology, it is plain that the language
used implies a relation and one of a very definite kind. The part
of the environment to which these terms are related is that of
other and like individuals. Kindness, truthfulness, justice, mercy,
honesty, etc., all imply this. A man by himself -- if we can
picture such a thing -- could not be kind; there would be no one to
whom to be kind. He could not be truthful; there would be none to
whom he could tell a lie. He could not be honest, or generous, or
loyal; there would be none to whom these qualities would have any
application. Every moral quality implies the existence of a group
of which an individual is a member. And as the group enlarges so
moral qualities take on a wider application. But this cardinal
fact, that ethical qualities, whether they be good or bad, have no
significance apart from group life, remains constant
throughout.
Now let us revert to man as a theoretically solitary animal, a
condition that has nowhere existed, for the sociality of man is
only a stage in advance of the gregariousness of the animal world
from which man has descended. But as an animal he must develop
certain habits and tastes in order to merely exist. Somehow man
must usually avoid doing things that threaten his existence. Even
in matters of food he must develop a taste for things which
preserve life and a distaste for things that destroy it; and, as a
matter of fact, there are a number of capacities developed in the
body that automatically offer protection in the case of food
against things that are too injurious to life. But it is quite
obvious that if a man developed a taste for prussic acid, such a
taste would not become hereditary.
Human life, in line with animal life in general, has to develop not
merely a dislike for such things as threaten life, but also a
liking for their opposite. The development of this capacity means
that in the long run the actions which promote pleasure, and those
which preserve life, roughly coincide.
But man never does exist as an individual only, one that is
fighting for his own hand, and whose thoughts and tendencies are
consciously or unconsciously concerned only with his own welfare.
Man is always a member of a group, and the mere fact of living with
others imposes in the individual a kind of discipline that gives a
definite direction to the character of his development. The law of
life is, that to live an organism must be adapted to its
environment, and the important part of the environment here is that
formed by one's fellow-beings. The adaption need not be perfect,
any more than that the food one eats need be of the most nutritious
kind. But just as the food eaten must contain enough nutrition to
maintain life, so conduct must be such as to maintain some kind of
harmony between and individual and the rest of the group to which
he belongs. If an individual's nature is such that he will not or
cannot adapt himself to his fellows then he is, in one stage of
civilization, killed off, and in another he is subjected to pains
and penalties, and various kinds of restraints that keep his
antisocial tendencies in check. There is a selective process in all
societies, and even more rigid in low societies than in the higher
ones, in which those ill-adapted to the common life of the group
are placed at a disadvantage even in procreating their own
kind.
And side by side with this process of selection within the group
there is going on another eliminative process on a larger scale in
the contest of group with group. A group in which the members show
little signs of a common action of loyalty to each other, is most
likely to be subjugated, or wiped out and replaced by a group in
which the cohesion is greater and the subordination of purely
individualistic tendencies to the welfare of the whole is
greater.
The nature of the process by which man becomes a moral animal is
therefore given when we say that man is a social animal. Social
life is in itself a kind of discipline, a training which fits a man
to work with his fellows, to live with them, and to their mutual
advantage. There are rules of the social game which the individual
must observe if he is to live as a member of the tribe. Man is not
usually conscious of the discipline he is undergoing, but neither
is any animal conscious of the process of the forces which adapt it
to its environment. The moralizing of man is never a conscious
process, but it is a recognizable process nonetheless.
It may also be noted that the rules of this social game are
enforced with greater strictness in primitive societies than is the
case with later ones. It is quite a mistake to think of the live of
savages as free, and that of civilized man as being bound down by
social and legal rules. Quite the opposite is the case. The life of
uncivilized man is bound by customs, by taboos, that leave room for
but little initiative, and which to a civilized man would be
intolerable.
But from the earliest times there is always going on a discipline
that tends to eliminate the ill-adapted to social life. Real
participation in social life means more than an abstention from
injurious acts, it involves a positive contribution to the life of
the whole. A type of behaviour that is not in harmony with the
general social characteristics of the groups sets up an irritation
much as a foreign substances does when introduced to the tissues of
an organism. Thus we have on the one hand, a discipline that forces
conformity with the social structure, and on the other hand a
revolutionary tendency making for further improvement.
There are still other factors that have to be noted of we are
properly to appreciate the forces that go to mould character and to
establish a settled moral code. To a growing extent the environment
to which the human being has to adapt himself is one of ideas and
ideals. There are certain ideals of truthfulness, loyalty,
obedience, kindness, etc., which surround one from the very moment
of birth. The society which gives him the language he speaks and
the stored-up knowledge it possesses, also provides him with ideals
by which he is more or less compelled to guide his life.
There are endless differences in the form of these social ideals,
but they are of the same mental texture, from the taboo of the
savage to the "old school tie".
The last phase of this moral adaption is that which takes place
between groups. From the limited family group to which moral
obligations are due, we advance to the tribe, from thence to the
group of tribes that constitute the nation, and then to a stage
into which we are now entering that of the relations between
nations, a state wherein in its complete form, there is an
extension of moral duties to the whole of humanity.
But wherever and whenever we take it, the substance of morality is
that of an adaption of feelings and ideas to the human group, and
to the animal group so far as they can be said to enter into some
form of relationship with us. There is no alteration in the
fundamental character of morality. Its keynote is always, as I have
said, efficiency, but it is an efficiency, the nature of which is
determined by the relations existing between groups of human
beings.
If what has been said is rightly apprehended, it will be understood
what is meant by saying that moral laws are to the social group
exactly what laws of physiology are to the individual organism.
There is nothing to cause wonder or mystification about moral laws;
they express the physiology of social life. It is these laws that
are manifested in practice long before they are expressed in set
terms. Human conduct, whether expressed in life or formulated in
"laws", represents the conditions that make social life possible
and profitable. It is this recognition that forms the science of
morality and the creation of conditions that favour the performance
of desirable actions and the development of desirable feelings
constitutes the art of morality.
Finally, in the development of morality as elsewhere, nature
creates very little that is absolutely new. It works up again what
already exists. That is the path of all evolution. Feelings of
right and wrong are gradually expanded from the group to the tribe,
from the tribe to the nation, and from the nation to the whole of
human society. The human environment to which man has to adapt
himself becomes even wider. "My neighbour" ceases to express itself
in relation to those immediately surrounding me, begins to extend
to all with whom I have any relations whatsoever. It is that stage
we are now entering, and much of the struggle going on in the world
is due to the attempts to adapt the feeling already there to its
wider environment. The world is in the pangs of childbirth. Whether
civilization will survive those pangs remains to be seen, but the
nature of the process is unmistakable to those who understand the
past, and are able to apply its lessons to the present and the
future.
There is, then, nothing mysterious about the fact of morality.
There is no more need for supernaturalism here than there is room
for it in any of the arts and sciences. Morality is a natural fact;
it is not created by the formulation of "laws"; these only express
its existence and our sense of value. The moral feeling creates the
moral law; not the other way about. Morality has nothing to do with
god; it has nothing to do with a future life. Its sphere of
application and operation is in this world; its authority is
derived from the common sense of mankind and is born of the
necessities of life.
Chapman Cohen
