but in the empirical facts of human life as they are revealed to
us in our concrete everyday experience of the world and mankind,
and sifted and systematized by the sciences of psychology and
sociology.... Ethics should be regarded as a purely ‘positive’
or ‘experimental’ and not as a ‘speculative’ science.” With
regard to the second position one quotation will suffice (op. cit.
p. 183). “Altruism and egoism are divergent developments
from the common psychological root of primitive ethical sentiment.
Both developments are alike unavoidable, and each is
ultimately irreconcilable with the other. Neither egoism nor
altruism can be made the sole basis of moral theory without
mutilation of the facts, nor can any higher category be discovered
by the aid of which their rival claims may be finally adjusted.”
Professor Taylor expounds these two theories with great brilliance of argument and much ingenuity, yet neither of them will perhaps carry complete conviction to the minds of the majority of his critics. It is curious, in the first place, to find the independence of moral philosophy upon metaphysics supported by metaphysical arguments. For whatever may be the real character of the interrelation of moral and metaphysical first principles it is obvious that Taylor’s own dissatisfaction with current moral principles arises from an inability to believe in their ultimate rationality, i.e. a belief that they are untenable from the standpoint of ultimate metaphysics; and perhaps the most interesting portion of his book is the chapter entitled “Beyond Good and Bad,” in which the highest and final form of the ethical consciousness of mankind is subjected to searching criticism. But further, it is becoming increasingly apparent that psychology (upon which Taylor would base morality) itself involves metaphysical assumptions; its position in fact cannot be stated except as a metaphysical position, whether that of subjective idealism or any other. And the need which most philosophers have felt for some philosophical foundation for morality arises, not from any desire to subordinate moral insight to speculative theory, but because the moral facts themselves are inexplicable except in the light of first principles which metaphysics alone can criticize.
Taylor himself attempts to find the roots of ethics in the moral sentiments of mankind, the moral sentiments being primarily feelings or emotions, though they imply and result in judgments of approval and disapproval upon conduct. But it may be doubted whether he succeeds in clearly distinguishing ethical feelings from ethical judgments, and if they are to be treated as synonymous it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the implications of moral “judgment” must involve a reference to metaphysics.
Moreover, it is obvious that a great part of Taylor’s quarrel with current moral ideals arises from the fact that they do not commend themselves to the moral judgment, i.e. from the standpoint of real goodness they are unsatisfactory, being tainted with evil. Hence it appears difficult to reconcile what is in effect a belief in the validity of the judgments of the moral consciousness with a belief that the real source and justification of that consciousness are to be found in the very sentiments and vague mass of floating feelings upon which it pronounces. Scepticism seems to be the only possible result of such a position. Taylor’s polemic against metaphysical systems of ethics is based throughout upon an alleged discrepancy and separation between the facts of moral “experience,” the judgments of the moral consciousness, and theories as to the nature of these which the philosophers whom he attacks would by no means accept. There is no doubt a distinction between morality as a form of consciousness and reflection upon that morality. But such a distinction neither corresponds to, nor testifies to, the existence of a distinction between morality as “experience” and morality as “theory” or “idea.”
Taylor is more persuasive when he is developing his second main thesis—that of the alleged existence of an ultimate dualism in the nature of morality. His accounts of the genesis of the conceptions of obligation and responsibility as of most of the ultimate conceptions with which moral philosophy deals will be accepted or rejected to the extent to which the main contention concerning the psychological basis of ethics commends itself to the reader. But in his exposition of the fundamental contradiction involved in morality elaborated with much care and illustrative argument he appeals for the most part to facts familiar to the unphilosophical moral consciousness. He begins by finding an ultimate opposition between the instincts of self-assertion and instincts which secure the production and protection of the coming generation even in the infra-ethical world with which biology deals. He traces this opposition into the forms in which it appears in the social life of mankind (as, e.g., in the difficulty of reconciling the conflicting claims of individual self-development and self-culture and social service), and finds “a hidden root of insincerity and hypocrisy beneath all morality” (p. 243), inasmuch as it is not possible to pursue any one type of ideal without some departure from singleness of purpose. And he finds all the conceptions by which men have hoped to reconcile admitted antagonisms and divergencies between moral ideals claiming to be ultimate and authoritative alike unsatisfactory (p. 285). Progress is illusory; there is no satisfactory goal to which moral development inevitably tends; religion in which some take refuge when distressed by the inexplicable contradictions of moral conduct itself “contains and rests upon an element of make believe” (p. 489).
With Taylor’s presentation of the difficulties with which morality is expected to grapple probably few would be found seriously to disagree, though they might consider it unduly pessimistic. But when he turns what is in effect a statement of certain forms of moral difficulty into an attack upon the logical and coherent character of morality itself, he is not so likely to command assent. For the difficulty all men meet with in realizing goodness, or in being moral, is not in itself evidence of an inherent contradiction in the nature of goodness as such. And what perhaps would first strike an unprejudiced critic in Taylor’s examples of conflicting ideals or antagonistic yet ultimate moral judgments would be the perception that they are not necessarily moral ideas or judgments at all, and hence necessarily not ultimate.
The claims of self-culture and of social service may when considered in the abstract or in some hypothetical case appear antagonistic and irreconcilable. But when they present themselves to the individual moral consciousness it may be safely asserted (1) that there can be only one moral choice possible, i.e. that their opposition (where they are opposed) involves no conflict of duties; and (2) that whichever ideal is in the end preferred, opportunities will nevertheless be provided within its realization for the concurrent realization of activities and capacities ordinarily associated with the ideal alleged to be contradictory. For just as there is no self-realization which does not involve self-sacrifice, so there is no room for that species of egoism within the confines of morality which is incompatible with social service.
It will be clear from the foregoing account of Taylor’s work that the tendency of his thought, as of that of Bradley, is by no means directed to the confirmation or re-establishment of those principles of conduct recognized by the ordinary moral consciousness. Psychology or metaphysics tend in their systems to usurp the place of authority formerly assigned to ethics proper.
It would be true on the whole to assert that evolutionary systems of ethics such as those of Herbert Spencer, Sir Leslie Stephen or Professor S. Alexander (Moral Order and Progress, 1899), together with the metaphysical Martineau. theories of morals of which T. H. Green and Bradley and Taylor are the chief representatives, have dominated the field of ethical speculation since 1870. Nevertheless it is only necessary to mention such a work as Martineau’s Types of Ethical Theory to dispel the notion that the type of moral philosophy most characteristically English, i.e. consisting in the patient analysis of the form and nature of the moral consciousness itself, has given way or is likely to give way to more ambitious and constructive efforts. Martineau’s chief endeavour was, as he himself says, to interpret, to vindicate, and to systematize the moral sentiments, and if the actual exhibition of what is involved, e.g., in
