38

CHAPTER III.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS.

1. Necessity of psychological basis.-Ethics, as the normative science of conduct and character, must be based upon a psychology, or natural science, of the moral life. Inadequacies in ethical theory will be found to be largely traceable to inadequacy in the underlying psychology. Kant, indeed, seeks to separate ethics from psychology, and to establish it as a metaphysic of the pure reason. But even Kant's ethical theory is based upon a psychology. Abstracting from all the other elements of man's nature, Kant conceives him as a purely rational being, a reason energising; and it is to this abstractness and inadequacy in his psychology that we must trace the abstractness and inadequacy of the Kantian ethics. So impossible is it for ethics to escape psychology. As Aristotle maintained in ancient times, and Butler in modern, the question, What is the characteristic excellence or proper life of man? raises the previous question, What is the nature and constitution of man, whose characteristic life and excellence we seek to

describe ?

Let us look a little more closely at the connection between ethics and psychology, as we can trace it in the history of ethical thought. In both ancient and modern thought we find two main types of ethical theory, which affiliate themselves to two main psychological doctrines.

This affiliation is even more explicit in ancient than in modern ethics. Plato and Aristotle have each a double representation of the virtuous life, corresponding to the dualism which they discover in man's nature - a lower and a higher life, according as the lower or the higher nature finds play. Man's nature consists, they hold, of a rational and an irrational or sentient part; and while the ordinary life of virtue is represented by Plato as a harmonious life of all the parts in obedience to reason the city of Mansoul being like a well-ordered State in which due subordination is enforced, and by Aristotle as a life of all the parts (irrational included) in accordance with right reason, yet both conceive the highest or ideal life as a life of pure reason, or intellectual contemplation. Thus both resolving human nature into a rational and an irrational element, both give two representations of virtue and goodness. The life may be good in form, but bad in content-a content of unreason moulded by reason; or it may be entirely good-its content as well as its form may be rational.

This psychological and ethical dualism is further emphasised by the Stoics and Epicureans, who had been anticipated by the Cynics and the Cyrenaics respectively. The one school, making reason supreme, either condemns or entirely subordinates the life of sensibility; the other, making sensibility supreme, either excludes or entirely subordinates the life of reason. The same two types may be traced in modern ethical theory-the ethics of pure reason in Kant and the Intuitionists, the ethics of sensibility in the Utilitarian and Evolutionary schools.

The abstractness of both ethical theories is traceable to the abstractness of the underlying psychology. The half-view of human life rests upon a half-view of human nature. The true ethical life must be the life of the whole man, of the moral person. of character, and character is the

Conduct is the exponent exponent of personality.

If we would discover the life of man in its unity and

entirety, we must see the nature of man in its unity and entirety. We must penetrate beneath the dualism of reason and sensibility-of reason and unreason to their underlying unity. The ethical point of view is neither reason nor sensibility, but will, as the expression of the true and total self. Plato had a glimpse of this unity when he spoke of Ovuós as carrying out the behests of reason in the government of the passions and appetites. Aristotle spoke more explicitly of will. But both, like their modern successors, insisted on construing man's life in terms either of reason or of sensibility, giving us an account of the intellectual or of the sentient life, but not of the moral life-not of the total life of man as man. In will we find the sought-for unity, the focal point of all man's complex being, the characteristic and distinguishing feature of his nature, which gives us the clue to his characteristic life. Man is not a merely sentient being, nor is he pure reason energising. He is will; and his life is that activity of will in which both reason and sensibility are, as elements, contained, and by whose most subtle chemistry they are inextricably interfused.

2. Involuntary activity: its various forms.-The moral life being the life of will, we must endeavour to reach a psychology of will. But we must approach volition gradually and from the outside. Voluntary presupposes involuntary activity. Volition implies a conception of an end, purpose, or intention. But we must execute movements before we can plan or intend them. The original stock of movements with which the will starts on its life must be acquired before the appearance of will on the stage of human life. "The involuntary activity forms the basis and the content of the voluntary. The will is in no way creative, but only modifying and selective."

1

1 Höffding, Psychology, p. 330 (Eng. tr.)

These primary and involuntary acts are of various kinds; some are the results of the constitution of the physical organism, others imply a mental reaction. The most important are the following: (1) Reflex and automatic, like the beating of the heart or the moving of the eyelids. These are purely physiological and unconscious. (2) Spontaneous or random movements, the involuntary and partly unconscious, partly conscious, discharge of superfluous energy, like the movements of the infant. (3) Sensori-motor or semi-reflex, the conscious but nonvoluntary adaptation to environment, the automatic response to external stimuli. (4) Instinctive, not, like (3), the mere momentary response to a particular stimulus, but complex activities, implying previous organisation, thus having their source within, in the motor centres, rather than in the external stimulus, and being guided by reference to a 'silent' or unconscious end.

Now, all these movements are, or may be, accompanied by sensations, which may accordingly be called 'motorsensations.' Further, of these psychical correlates of the physical movements, their 'feels '-we preserve a memory-image, which has been called a 'kinæsthetic idea.' We may, therefore, add to the sensori-motor (5) ideo-motor activities, which embrace the great mass of the higher actions of our life. The movement here ensues directly upon the idea or representation of it, or rather of the sensation attending it, as in the former case it follows from the sensation itself. There is still no volition. "We are aware of nothing between the conception and the execution. . . . We think the act, and it is done." 1 An extreme case of ideo-motor action is found in the hypnotic trance, but the phenomenon is of constant occurrence in ordinary life. To remember an engagement at the hour appointed is, in general, to execute it. The business of life could never go on, if we deliberated and decided about each of its several actions. Instead of

1 James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 522.

this, we surrender ourselves to the train of ideas, and let them bear us on our way. For ideas are essentially impulsive-idées-forces. When an idea fills the mind, the corresponding movement follows immediately. Even when two such ideas occupy the mind, when we are attracted in two different directions, the one movement may be inhibited through the idea of the other. There may be a block, and a clearance of the way, without the interference of any fiat of will,-a knot which unties itself, a struggle of ideas in which the strongest survives, and results in its appropriate movement.

3. Voluntary activity: how distinguished from involuntary. All this provision there is for movementpartly in the nervous system, partly in the mind itselfwithout any interposition of volition. This last is rather of the nature of inhibition of the natural tendency to movement the regulation and organisation of movements-than origination. The beginnings are given by nature. But these primary movements and their sensational correlates are vague and diffuse; they constitute a 'motor-continuum,' which is gradually made discrete and definite.1 This occurs largely, as we have seen, involuntarily. A movement is determined by the idea of the movement, that is, by the anticipation of the movement's sensible effects, without the explicit intervention of will. Now if there be such a thing as voluntary activity, its source must be found in the manipulation of the ideas of movements already made. In this sense all action is ideo-motor; its source is in an idea which at the moment fills the consciousness. The question of the nature of volition, therefore, resolves itself into this: What is the mind's power over its ideas? What is the genesis of the moving idea in the highest and most complex activities?

The function of will is obviously the regulation and

1 Cf. Ward, Art. "Psychology," Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed.