William Dawson Le Sueur

“ But just as no theory of man's origin can make him other than he actually is to-day, so no theory of the origin of morality can affect the fact that in the conscience of the modern civilized man there is a great gulf fixed between right and wrong. But, some will say, upon the evolution theory the highest morality is but self-seeking. Be it so, but if myself embraces other selves, if my personality has globed itself out till it includes a large portion of humanity, I can afford to be self-seeking without any falling away from nobility or disinterestedness. ”

“ He comes to this higher test fortified by self-conquest, and with an increased sense of the dignity and worth of life—prepared, moreover, to believe that the path of true happiness is an ascending one. Let these truths—for they are truths—be believed and taught; let men see the path along which their moral development has lain in the past, and along which it must lie in the future, and we shall have little reason to regret the lures and terrors of the old theology. ”

“ That worthy citizen might, in the interest of his digestion, like to think that the shivering, storm-tossed mariner, the delver in the mine, the overworked and underfed farm-laborer, and all the beaten and baffled and despairing ones whose lot is so disagreeable a contrast to his own, should some day, after they had served their turn here in the production of capital, have some modicum of compensating happiness dealt out to them in a better world. ”

“ The materialist has to live as other men, and, where his theories are not at stake, he will use ordinary human language as freely as others. He will talk of hope and fear, of love and hatred, of ambition and apathy, of honor and disgrace, of character and motive and principle, as if he knew what he meant, and as if the words he used answered to certain realities of human life. ”

“ From a social point of view, no action is perfect which benefits only the actor, or which benefits some one else at the actor's expense. Self-sacrifice may be ethically noble; but that any necessity for it should arise implies some defect in the conditions of existence, and therefore of action. If it enables us, on the one hand, to estimate the moral resources of humanity, it points, on the other, to evils which it behooves us to remedy; for why, we ask, should the gain of one be purchased by the loss of another? ”

“ The main motif of the "Positive Philosophy" is the importance, or rather the absolute necessity, if a stable and satisfactory condition of society is ever to be attained, of applying to social and political affairs those scientific principles and methods which have proved their efficacy in the physical domain. The circle of the sciences, he holds, can never be complete until there is a duly constituted science of society. So long as there exists a region, the phenomena of which are not recognized as subject to law, human thought can not assume a really integral character ”

“ Purposive action in the lower animals is not moral, though it may be said to be a preparation for morality. We pronounce our most emphatic judgments upon those acts by which men affect one another, because in them we see most conspicuously the conflict of higher and lower impulses, and because members of society must have an especial interest in what men do as members of society. Every right action done adds to the security and happiness of life, every wrong action implies some diminution of happiness, and seems to threaten the general welfare. ”

“ Then let us set our faces steadfastly forward, not to "confront a void," for there is no void to confront—nothing has fallen out of the universe that ever was in it—but with a determination to conquer more and more of moral freedom, and, by our conscious efforts, to aid that unconscious labor of the ages by which better and better conditions are ever being won for the human race. ”

“ To say that this system will be powerless for regulative purposes is to take a thoroughly unnatural view of human nature. It is to assume some tendency in man to evil, over and above the promptings of the self-protective instinct. Now, this surplusage of evil in human nature I, for one, strenuously deny. Every man comes into the world with a problem to solve, upon the solution of which his whole course in life depends; and that problem is the due balancing of higher and lower instincts in the interest of higher life. ”

“ Spencer undertakes to write must be from such an account as we might gather from the dicta of consciousness. But, if our individual lives are but links in one great chain of life, which we have learned in these latter days to extend to the lowest forms of the animate creation, can the individual consciousness, however bright and penetrating we may suppose it, be trusted in its affirmations regarding the genesis of action and the development of moral feeling? What can mere consciousness—apart from knowledge derived from external sources—tell us of our bodily constitution and development? ”

“ But, if theology has to dally with development, how much better founded, and how much better adapted for acting upon men's minds, must a system be which, from first to last, assumes development, and which is not checked in its exposition and application of natural laws by any stereotyped creed or text?
In the new system we really have the reconciliation of self-interest and duty, for we see self-interest merging into duty, and we see duty bringing the highest rewards that self-interest could desire. ”

“ Naturally enough, seeing that, to impugn its authority means an unsettlement of all that the rule had settled. Take the case now in question. We can not conceive the existence of any social order, unless the principle is recognized that no man should, for selfish purposes of his own, take the life of another. But, let a man be so overmastered by his cupidity as to commit this crime, he can not by that one act of rebellion undo the work already accomplished in his mind, by virtue of which he had learned to condemn murder on principle. ”

“ Such is the eminently complex character of social questions that, even when deliberate sophistry is absent, either side can be defended by extremely plausible arguments; seeing that there is no institution whatever, no matter how really indispensable to society, that has not many and serious drawbacks; while, on the other hand, the most extravagant Utopia always presents some undeniable advantages. We must not, therefore, be surprised if we see nearly all the great principles of public morality undergoing attack ”

“ What the universe is ultimately made of he does not inquire, because he knows the inquiry is vain. He is content with facts, and to him a fact is whatever produces a complete and definite impression upon the mind. He does not make his own mind the measure and test of all possible existence, but he holds that it is the measure and test of all things that concern him. ”

“ Spencer as adopting, intention should make so much difference in actions. "Two men might lose their lives by the hands of two of their fellows, and we should call the one a case of murder and the other a case of accidental death." Why—if actions are to be judged solely by their consequences? This is almost too puerile; but, since a Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh has raised the question, let me simply remark that, while the act of carelessness has no ulterior consequences, the act of felony has—or will have if left unpunished—the direst consequences to society. ”

“ It would seem as if, before long, those who now profess to take things as they come, and make light of all attempts to construct a philosophy applicable to human affairs, might be compelled to humble themselves to believe that Science may have a word to say in regard to the highest order of phenomena just as she has had in regard to all orders up to the highest. ”

“ The whole solar system may be hurrying on through space toward some unknown goal, or in some infinite and incalculable circuit; but the motions that concern us are those that take place within the solar system, that lend themselves to observation and calculation, and that affect more or less the conditions of human life. We live in an environment to which we are adapted: absolute truth lies beyond us, but relative truth is within our grasp. ”

“ In speaking of life here, we speak not only of the condition of animation, but of all that successive experiences, successive enlargements of the range of thought, action, and sympathy, have built into, or worked into, the human consciousness. ”

“ It is, however, when we consider man in society that the range of impalpable realities becomes widest, and embraces facts of the deepest import; and just as society becomes more complex does this truth assume deeper significance. In a society like ours, at every step a man takes through life, he encounters forces as real as those of physical nature, but whose seat is in social institutions and in the dispositions of individual men. ”

“ Men, again, who have unlimited faith in the power of statute law to work moral reforms are so far materialists. Their trust is really in physical force. The whole school of political economists have helped to cultivate materialistic modes of thought, by making abstractions of all the influences that modify the working of their so-called economic laws. The truth of the matter is, that the moral condition of society at any given time profoundly modifies the whole course of business. Paralyze confidence between man and man, and the whole commercial and industrial world falls out of gear. ”

“ The revolutionary doctrine, according to Comte's nomenclature, is that which proclaims liberty in its widest sense—an unlimited right of free inquiry, and an unlimited freedom for the people of political action. ”

“ And yet the time has undoubtedly come when, in the private as well as in the public sphere, we are called upon to witness the lamentable results of the general unsettlement of opinion. Whether we consider the relations of the sexes, or of different ages and conditions, we shall find that the necessary elements of all satisfactory social life are directly compromised, and are daily becoming more so, by the action of a corrosive discussion, dominated by no real principles, which delivers up to hopeless uncertainty every idea of duty. ”

“ The prophet of olden times is represented to-day by the philosopher, who also leads a life of retirement and severe contemplation. And just as the contemporaries of the prophet insisted on investing him with magical powers, while they undervalued his real gifts of practical sagacity and spiritual insight, so do the men of to-day demand of the philosopher to "do some great thing," while they scorn the demonstration he offers that the truth has neither to be brought down from heaven nor up from hell, but is very nigh them—in their hearts and on their lips. ”

“ When we are struck by the generosity or baseness of an action, or feel the influence of character, or experience the pleasure of harmonious or the pain of discordant relations, our consciousness is in no way concerned with matter. ”

“ But to abandon the rules of social action to the blind and arbitrary decision of an incompetent public, is really to destroy their authority. Before, therefore, there can be that convergence of opinion in relation to such matters which is indispensable to social well-being, there must be a voluntary and intentional abdication by the majority of their sovereign right of judgment—an abdication which they would probably be very willing to make if they could only find suitable organs for the exercise of the function. ”

“ In a thousand ways, that people with materialistic modes of thought are apt to overlook, tangible results depend upon intangible causes, or are governed by intangible conditions. A true philosophy bids us always to try and rise in our speculations to the level of the phenomena with which we have to deal, and always to beware of denying or ignoring the complexity of a problem merely to indulge our intellectual indolence. ”

“ Sight may deceive, hearing may deceive; but what we can touch and feel is real. Here we find the true basis of the popular idea of matter—that which can be felt; that which resists our muscles. It is true that in this case, also, we are thrown back upon subjective impressions, or, in other words, upon mental experiences; but these experiences have at once a certain breadth and a certain intimacy about them, which leads us in general to give them the preference, and to make what seems to be the source of them our very type of reality, to which we apply the special name of matter. ”

“ The moral quality of an action depends upon the degree in which it tends to promote or diminish happiness; but this, as Mr. Spencer repeatedly points out, is in most cases to be determined rather by the conformity or non-conformity of the action with certain general principles ascertained to be favorable to happiness than by an inquiry into the results likely to flow from it in a special case. Moral actions, in general, are those favorable to life, not only to its preservation, but to its improvement; immoral actions are those which tend to the shortening or to the impoverishing of life. ”

“ Thus the birth of some man of transcendent abilities may alter, it is said, the whole course of a nation's history. The answer to this objection is twofold: first, that the great man or hero is himself a product of antecedent conditions, and is born into a society more or less fitted to feel and submit to his influence; secondly, that the effects wrought by exceptional characters are but exceptional, and that the great stream of human development follows its course but little affected by accidents here or there. ”

“ Materialism is a form of belief, or mode of thought, which in all things prefers to rest on the evidence of the broadest impressions of physical sense, and which suspects, where it does not deny, the reality of aught that can not be brought to the test of sense-impression. It objects to advancing beyond the primary elements of consciousness; and any steps which it takes in the region of mental or moral phenomena it takes grudgingly and with a constant dread lest it should be led to recognize as real anything that can not be felt as we feel sticks and stones. ”

“ The lowest creatures in the animal kingdom possess little or no power of self-protection, and are therefore, broadly speaking, wholly at the mercy of their environment. With greater complexity of structure comes greater power of providing for wants and averting dangers; while the interests of the progeny become more and more a care to the parent animals. The time comes, in process of evolution, when the individual acquires the power of choice between opposite courses of action. One sense may prompt to a certain line of action, and another to a different one. ”