TYPES OF ETHICAL THEORY.*

[CONCLUDING NOTICE.]

Wz cannot forbear expressing our very deep regret that in this, the most important and original ethical work which English philosophy has produced for at least a century and a half, we should

have had no full discussion of the most formidable of all the doctrines which are supposed to confute completely Dr. Martineau's own ethical view, and to demonstrate its incompatibility with the whole course of modern thought—we mean the doctrine of Determinism, or, as it used to be called, of Philosophical Necessity. We believe that there was no difficulty so formidable as this in Dr. Martinean's path, and none so important to shunt out of his way. Moreover, there is no thinker of the day who is so competent to deal with it, nor,—if we may argue either from the various references to it with which this book necessarily abounds, or from the evidence as to his own teaching of which we are in possession,—who has dealt with it in so masterly a manner ; and we cannot help hoping, from a passage in the Preface, that Dr. Martineau is reserving for a separate publication the formal and complete discussion of this formidable barrier in the way of all true Ethics. It is remarkable enough that in modern times the most thoroughgoing Determinists are those who, before adopting Determinism, have contrived to get rid of the most formidable of all the arguments in favour of Determinism,—the arguments derived from the principle of causality,—since they have denied the very existence of that principle itself. Dr. Martineau, of course, is not one of these. Like the true psychologist he is, he holds fast to the principle that for every change we inevitably conceive a cause; and in holding fast to this, he holds fast to one of the greatest obstacles in the way of that belief in Free Will to which nevertheless he adheres with all the force of his conviction. And it is, therefore, all the more obligatory on him to give us the full account of the manner in which he would meet by far the most serious objections which can be brought against the fundamental conception of his great work. Of course, we fully admit that that work stands on its own foundation, that the discussion between Free-Willists and Determinists, whichever way it were decided, would not and could not alter the character of the facts on which Dr. Martinean's constructive ethics are based. If Determinists were supposed to win the battle, that would only show that there is one line of reasoning which, if we can trust it, would prove our ethical creeds to be illusory. None the less we should be bound to set forth those creeds truly, as tending at least to prove that the Determinist reasoning has a flaw somewhere which had escaped

us. But so long as the assertions of our moral nature are supposed by so many thinkers to give a flat contradiction to the conclusions of what they hold to be an irrefutable argument, those assertions will never be trusted as they deserve to be ; and we earnestly hope

that Dr. Martinean will either include this subject in the volume on religious philosophy of which he holds out the promise, or at least insert in future editions of this book a separate chapter on this formidable class of objections to his ethical principles. Doubtless, in the late Dr. Ward's very masterly essays on The Philosophy of Theism, reviewed a year ago in these columns* the want is more or less supplied. But we desire to know how Dr. Martineau would meet the difficulty as well as how Dr. Ward met it ; and we cannot but feel that the absence of any full and frank discussion of this question would leave a weapon in the hands of hostile critics which Dr. Martineau might easily take from them. So far as Dr. Martineau really supplies a valid answer to Determinist objections in this book-, it is contained, we think, implicitly, rather than explicitly, in the following powerful passage on the class of difficulties which arise when the postulates of one faculty of our nature appear to be incompatible with the postulates of another faculty of our nature :

" Suppose that the postulates of one faculty should turn out contradictory to those of another ; what becomes of the reliance due to both ? If, e.g., external observation should imply or exhibit nieces8i1111 without causality ; and if the inner exercise of will should enforce belief in causality with or without succession ; or, if the one should teach universal necessity, and the other human freedom ; which has claim to our assent ? I reply, each is to be dictator in its own sphere, and no further ;—perception, among the objects of sense,—conscience, as to the conditions of duty : and for this plain reason, that neither has any jurisdiction or insight with regard to the realm of the other. Moral objects cannot be tasted, seen, or heard ; nor are sapid, visible, audible objects appreciated by the moral sense. And hence it will turn out that the contradictions alleged between two separate faculties are only apparent : the postulates will really be distinct and never meet ; the opposition will be merely negative, amounting not to a confutation, but to simple absence of evidence. Thus, the causality which volition compels as to believe, outward observation merely fails to detect ; which is by no means wonderful, since it is not an object of sense at all. If we insist on framing our doctrine of causation out of the resouroes of external perception, and forcing the

result on our internal experience ;—if, that is, we derive it from the negation of evidence, instead of from its only positive store ; we shall

naturally obtain a mere empty and sceptical product, which our personal consciousness will really contradict. But the denial in such ease is not put on any postulate of nature ; it is put upon the privative doctrine, the vacancy which we have invented out of a mere silence of nature. The positive attestation of any faculty is to be held valid against doubts springing from the mere limitation and incompetency of -another ; as the ear is not qualified to contradict the eye, on the ground that the light is inaudible, neither is the perceptive power entitled to question the depositions of the moral, on the ground that the distinctions of right and wrong, and the essence of binding authority, cannot be conceived and expressed in terms of the senses. If this rule, which surely recommends itself to the common reason, be carefully observed, it will be found that our nature condemns us to no real contradiction ; but only leaves us to struggle against that sluggish and sceptical repugnance with -which each lower faculty is apt (without the smallest right) to regard the witness of the higher. Against that tendency, to invert the order of psychological jurisdiction and carry our doctrinal appeal from an upper court to an inferior,—in other words, to frame a philosophy, not from our insight but from our incapacity,—it is impossible to be too much on our guard. It is humiliating to think how large a proportion of the-speculative-systems of the world have arisen from no worthier a propension than that which tempts dulness todisbelieve the inspirations of art, ease to see no misery, and the material faculties to treat as romance the thirst for ideal perfection."

In these last sentences Dr. Martineau really gives us a kept° the whole method of his book. There is nothing in it more powerful, —nothing, perhaps, quite so powerful,—as its discussion of the evolutionary form given to the utilitarian ethics by Spencer and Darwin, and his proof that you -cannot get out of any crystallisation of -habit or persistency of repetition in time, the authority which will transform a purely utilitarian -end into a sense .of . moral .obligation. The passage in

• .which Dr. Martineau insists that the evolution of organic life, take it how you mill, .gives you something new that was not implicitly contained in the antecedent form, and something that-will guide you .to fresh.truth. to .which you had moguide before,—so that it is impossibleiwithany kind of fidelity to the evolutionary idea, to. assume. that you have. erplained the latest and fullest issues of organic -development by referring them back to those initial forms which preceded themr-As one of the 'most striking in .the records of modern:philosophy :— " When an animal consciously takesanstep of 'evolution, itemerges from a dull indistinctness -into states no longer indissolubly-blended. The unity splits into a plurality, the members of which are not alike, and among them are some (or at least one) never-present before ; 431se there would be-no differentiation. New feelings or perceptions, then, have appeared and been.added to the creature's history. There is more in them, then, than there was in the previous undifferenced consciousness. Has this increment, should you say, the nature of illusion, or of emergence from illusion ? Suppose, for example, that, as a naturalist has suggested, the play of -sunbeams upon a mass of jelly on the sea shore has -brought together !its diffused •life-feeling into a more specially tingling point on the surface, and set it up.as henceforth responsive to the irritation of light; and that from this moment it commences an education which, carried on in it and in some morns of successors, terminates in the production of an eye; and follow-the story of .the advance, stage by-stage. When, from the dull sense which distinguished the jelly from-the-water. of the shore, the photistic thrill disengages itself as something other than the rest, it will not be denied that this is a perceptive gain, i.e., an accession mot only-to the creature's-sensory store,-but to his life-relations with -nudity. Next, the time will come-when the organ-thus started on-its history finds the unity of its light-feeling give way ; when examined, millenniums further on,-in some amphibian now basking on the-grassy sedge, then floundering in the ochrey stream, it is first in a green, then in a -yellow -bath. Is, then, this dual perception-truer or less true than its single predecessor ? are the links of the later:nature with the real world closer or less closer than of the earlier ? There can be bet one answer. Carry the test, yet onestep further. It is far from improbable that colour-blind persons, who are far more numerous than is commonly supposed, are the surviving representatives of what was once the normal constitution of the human eye, and that the spectrum of science -is a comparatively modern ap.parition. If, then, oar literature -went ibark far enough, we should find, in our oldest -libraries, books of two-coloured opticata set over against the three-coloured doctrine of Young and. Helmholtz and.Clerk Maxwell. It is -not possible to .doubt, which would teach the truer lesson : refer the question to the.colour-blind themselves ; and they-will surrender all claim for their own constituents. In every instance, then, the -new elements contributed by evolutionare trueelementa ; and the -measure of their•increment -of truth is the-extentof their :departure, by way-of -difference, -from -the -datum -whence .they start."

i3Or, again, take Dr. -Martineau's dissuasion of Mr. Spencer's theory that the apparently intuitive -character of mathematical axioms is due solely to the immense.number of inherited-sensibilities for space-measurement which the nervous system has accumulated in our ancestors from -generation:to generation, and transmitted to us for fresh verification

" Take another case of supposed evolution,suppliedrbyMr.-Spencer

timself, still-in the sphere of -perception. ' says, 'the intuition of -Space-to:messed by any living individual to have arisen

from organised and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their-slowly -developed nervous organisation ;' and I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience.' Compare, then, the first state of this experiential series with the last. It begins, we are assured, with the successive sensations of touch, combined with those of muscular feeling, during the movement of a finger or a hand, from end to end of an edge or surface. The series is now less, now more protracted ; its muscular components are different, accordingas the movement is of lateral, of pushing, or of lifting muscles ; and these and other varieties, rendered familiar by frequent recurrence, become distinguished in experience, and with the advance of language, draw to themselves names. What are these names ? We have samples of them in long ' and short," ' and down,' before' and behind," broad ' and narrow,' straight' and curved," square' and circular.' But are these then really the names of the experiences, which are the only-assigned data ? Is it the sensations that are square or circular, broad or narrow, up or -down ? Not so : these are terms that cannot be applied to states of consciousness. Perhaps, however, they will fit this or that set of them, though no single state ? No : this will not help us ; for, feelings dispose themselves in one of two possible arrangements, viz., together, or one following another ; and both of these are relations in Time ; whereas our list of names gives-no specifications of time. It is useless to tell-me that my synchronous feeling of the two ends of a box between my hands, or that my memory of the -muscular sensations in passing my finger from end to end, is the box's length these states are in me, and not in it ; and when reflected on, as they must be in order to be named, are a part of my self-knowledge, and not of other knowledge. Where then is, I do not may the intuition of space, but even the least inchoate rudiment of any geometrical idea, any inkling of any externality at all, any removal out of the limits of the mere time-order of our own feelings and ideas, i.e., of Number, in -successive or simultaneous arrangement ? -But Number is not Space. It matters not how many. ages and,organismsare expended in -grinding down and. refining and-recompounding these materials : never turn out either plenum or vacuum enough for a_hat toput your head in. If there is-nothing to depend upon but 'accumulation and consolidation' of such '-experiences,' the internal history, however .enriched,.mnat-remain without external oonnterpart."

It is -easy to conceive -how -a view of -evolution which-insists so strongly on the reality of the additions made at every step in the .npward ascent of organisation, treats-the -new points-of-departure at .which first, -consciousness, and afterwards, -volition, appears upon the scene. As Dr. Martineau aptly puts it, there are .stages at 'which-entirely new engines of development -maketheir appearance. No juggling can transform -material phenomena into phenomena of consciousness ; and -as Dr. Martineau-shows us, the ablest of those who in a former age would have called themselves sheer -Materialists, are now compelled to be-advocates of the -theory of what Haeckel calls an " atomic soul "—in other words, are inclined to -endow molecules with-rudimentary minds. The "atomic soul" is, of course, identical -with-what the late Professor Clifford used to speak of as the " mindstuff " inherent in even inorganic structures ; but it matters not ;whether lion call it an " atomic soul "'or " mind-shiff," or -anything ‘else,—the fact -remains that you have to assume something of the existence of -which there is :absolutely no evidence, in order to make the appearance of consciousness in the-midst of the material world anything but a portent, and the -appearance -of volition;—which 'breaks the :chain of continuous and uniform :development—anything -but a positive miracle. Dr. Martineau insists, -in the following powerful passage, that it -is just as impossible to-find the germs -of our moral judgments in -what is-unmoral, as to--find the germs of mathematicaljudg-meats in the blind. sensations of irrational brains : " It is plain from this survey of the process of evolution, that we -.havejustas much Jreasoir for trusting the-sense of Right, with the postalateaf -objective authority:which it carries, as for believing in the components of the rainbow or the infinitude of Space. These ideas are all acquisitions, in the sense that there-was a time when they were not to be found in-the creatures from which we descend. -They are all -evolved, in the sense that, -gradually and one by one, they cropped up into conaciousnessamid the crowd of feelinge'which they entered as-strangers. They are all original, or sui generis,-in the sense that they areintrinsically.dissimilar to the predecessors with -*which they-mingle, so that no rational scrutiny could you, out of -the contents-of these pvedeceesors,invenhand'preconceive them, any -more than you can predict -the psychology ofa million years hence. Whence then the strange anxiety to get rid of this originality, and assimilate again what you had registered as a differentiation ? You say that, when you undress the moral intuition ' and lay aside fold after fold of its disguise, you -End nothing at last but naked pleasure and utility ; then how is it that no foresight, with -largest command of psychologioclothes,-wonld enable you to invert the experiment and dress np these nuditieininto.the august form of Duty ? To say that the conscience is but the compressed contents of atrinheritedcalculas of the agreeable and -the serviceable, is no better than for one who -had been-colour:blind to insist that the -red-which be has gained is :nothing butlialanilliargreen:vrith some queer mask. It cannot be denied that the-sense of right has earned its separate-name, by -appearingdothosewho-have it and speak of it -to one another essentially different from the desire of pleasure, from the perception of related means and ends, and from coercive fear. Why not, therefore; frankly leave, it its proper place as a new differentiation of voluntary activity ? Why prebend, againstall fact, that it is homogeneous with self-interest.; instead. of acceptingit as the key to a moralorder of cognition and system of relations, supplementing the previous sentient and intellectual and affectional experience ? ITnlesswe so swept it, we aredriven to the unsatisfactory task of expiaining away the characteristics of our nature which are admitted. to Neon its meridian of culmination.; of plucking off the mask, of Divine authority from duty, and of human freedom from responsibility: of cancelling obligation except in the vaguer sense, If you want to walk, you are " bound" to move your legs"' of interpreting altruistic: claims as transfigured self-concern.; and of reducingmoral law from ultimate to instrumental; so that whatever of higher tone and more ideal aspect is superinduced upon the sentient and instinctive foundation comes to be regarded as a species of rhetorical exaggeration, and vesthetio witchery; by which we are tricked into serving one another and forgetting our self-love. For my part, I object to be led, blindfold, through the cunning of nature, into sham sacrifices and. heroisms, even though they should land me in a real heaven ; much more, when I find that they replace me among ' appetising' creatures, with only the-added knowledge that I ama dupe into the bargain.. Better far to trust, the veracity-of • nature ; and accept the independent reality of the moral relationait discloses, ealoyally as those laid open by the perceptive and intellectual evolution. The idea of a higher is as much entitled to be believed, as that of an outer: the right, as the., true ; and; both are distinct from the pleasant.'!

There is no portion, ofDn Martineau's book:that will_makea deeper'impression onthehistoryof ,philosophy than that,whicle deals with-the newest-form of the utilitarian.theory, that form, of it which appeals:, to the effect • of the aceumnlatione of experience in• the race, to eke out the insufficiency of the ordinary

utilitarian. theory of morale,

We have exhausted the space at our command, and yet are very sensible,that we have given our, readers • but a -very in

adequate conception of the contents'of one of the-subtlest and most original, of Englishphilosophical works---a book which, however far -short-it may fall of explainingadequately-the fall contents of enr moral experience, unquestionably strikes'ont the

true line of • investigation, andestablishes• on a solid basis the distinction between, what is morallynoblo and morally. ignoble, evenif itdoes .not succeed equally in establishing, the distinction between what is morally ignoble and-moral guilt or sin.

We shall look eagerly for the lectures. on the, Philosophy of Religion, which:Dr. Martineau gives us,some reason to hope for —all. the more eagerly because weare convinced:that only on such. a basis as he has here, laid down; can any:philosephy, of religion be. safely raised. And as. Dr: Ward made• his philosophy of. volition, the main foundation: of his philosophy of theism, we may, perhaps; rightlyinterpret some expressions in Dr. Martineau's Preface as giving-us reason to hope that his own• promised work, on the Philosophy of Religion will contain, as ample erefutation,• of Determinism as the case admits of.For Determinismiscertainly the,most formidable of the obstacles which, confront the,moderirphyeiciat who would otherwise fain believe that independent, volition is not an: illusion, and that the,hriman conscience, is something more than:a mirage in the desert of mortal -life.