The Data of Ethics · Herbert Spencer
THE BIOLOGICAL VIEW.
Beyond the temporary falling short of complete life implied by undue or inadequate discharge of a function there is entailed, as an ultimate result, decreased length of life. If some function is habitually performed in excess of the requirement, or in defect of the requirement; and if, as a consequence, there is an often repeated perturbation of the functions at large, there results some chronic derangement in the balance of the functions. Necessarily reacting on the structures, and registering in them its accumulated effects, this derangement works a general deterioration; and when the vital energies begin to decline, the moving equilibrium, further from perfection than it would else have been, is sooner overthrown: death is more or less premature. Hence the moral man is one whose functions--many and varied in their kinds, as we have seen--are all discharged in degrees duly adjusted to the conditions of existence. § 31. Strange as the conclusion looks, it is nevertheless a conclusion to be here drawn, that the performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation. It is usually thought that morality requires us only to restrain such vital activities as, in our present state, are often pushed to excess, or such as conflict with average welfare, special or general; but it also requires us to carry on these vital activities up to their normal limits. All the animal functions, in common with all the higher functions, have, as thus understood, their imperativeness. While recognizing the fact that in our state of transition, characterized by very imperfect adaptation of constitution of conditions, moral obligations of supreme kinds often necessitate conduct which is physically injurious; we must also recognize the fact that, considered apart from other effects, it is immoral so to treat the body as in any way to diminish the fullness or vigor of its vitality.
Hence results one test of actions. There may in every case be put the questions--Does the action tend to maintenance of complete life for the time being? and does it tend to prolongation of life to its full extent? To answer yes or no to either of these questions, is implicitly to class the action as right or wrong in respect of its immediate bearings, whatever it may be in respect of its remote bearings. The seeming paradoxicalness of this statement results from the tendency, so difficult of avoidance, to judge a conclusion which presupposes an ideal humanity, by its applicability to humanity as now existing. The foregoing conclusion refers to that highest conduct in which, as we have seen, the evolution of conduct terminates--that conduct in which the making of all adjustments of acts to ends subserving complete individual life, together with all those subserving maintenance of offspring and preparation of them for maturity, not only consist with the making of like adjustments by others, but furthers it. And this conception of conduct in its ultimate form implies the conception of a nature having such conduct for its spontaneous outcome--the product of its normal activities. So understanding the matter, it becomes manifest that under such conditions any falling short of function, as well as any excess of function, implies deviation from the best conduct or from perfectly moral conduct.
We cannot omit doing this; because the psychical changes which accompany many of the physical changes in the organism are biological factors in two ways. Those feelings, classed as sensations, which, directly initiated in the bodily framework, go along with certain states of the vital organs and more conspicuously with certain states of the external organs, now serve mainly as guides to the performance of functions, but partly as stimuli, and now serve mainly as stimuli, but in a smaller degree as guides. Visual sensations which, as co-ordinated, enable us to direct our movements, also, if vivid, raise the rate of respiration; while sensations of cold and heat, greatly depressing or raising the vital actions, serve also for purposes of discrimination. So, too, the feelings classed as emotions, which are not localizable in the bodily framework, act in more general ways, alike as guides and stimuli--having influences over the performance of functions more potent even than have most sensations. Fear, at the same time that it urges flight and evolves the forces spent in it, also affects the heart and the alimentary canal; while joy, prompting persistence in the actions bringing it, simultaneously exalts the visceral processes. Hence, in treating of conduct under its biological aspect, we are compelled to consider that interaction of feelings and functions which is essential to animal life in all its more developed forms.
Fit connections between acts and results must establish themselves in living things, even before consciousness arises; and after the rise of consciousness these connections can change in no other way than to become better established. At the very outset, life is maintained by persistence in acts which conduce to it, and desistance from acts which impede it; and whenever sentiency make its appearance as an accompaniment, its forms must be such that in the one case the produced feeling is of a kind that will be sought--pleasure, and in the other case is of a kind that will be shunned--pain. Observe the necessity of these relations as exhibited in the concrete. A plant which envelops a buried bone with a plexus of rootlets, or a potato which directs its blanched shoots toward a grating through which light comes into the cellar, shows us that the changes which outer agents themselves set up in its tissues are changes which aid the utilization of these agents. If we ask what would happen if a plant's roots grew not toward the place where there was moisture, but away from it, or if its leaves, enabled by light to assimilate, nevertheless bent themselves toward the darkness, we see that death would result in the absence of the existing adjustments. This general relation is still better shown in an insectivorous plant, such as the _Dionoea muscipula_, which keeps its trap closed round animal matter, but not round other matter. Here it is manifest that the stimulus arising from the first part of the absorbed substance itself sets up those actions by which the mass of the substance is utilized for the plant's benefit.
When we pass from vegetal organisms to unconscious animal organisms, we see a like connection between proclivity and advantage. On observing how the tentacles of a polype attach themselves to, and begin to close round, a living creature, or some animal substance, while they are indifferent to the touch of other substance, we are similarly shown that diffusion of some of the nutritive juices into the tentacles, which is an incipient assimilation, causes the motions effecting prehension. And it is obvious that life would cease were these relations reversed. Nor is it otherwise with this fundamental connection between contact with food and taking in of food, among conscious creatures, up to the very highest. Tasting a substance implies the passage of its molecules through the mucous membrane of the tongue and palate; and this absorption, when it occurs with a substance serving for food, is but a commencement of the absorption carried on throughout the alimentary canal. Moreover, the sensation accompanying this absorption, when it is of the kind produced by food, initiates at the place where it is strongest, in front of the pharynx, an automatic act of swallowing, in a manner rudely analogous to that in which the stimulus of absorption in a polype's tentacles initiates prehension.
If from these processes and relations that imply contact between a creature's surface and the substance it takes in, we turn to those set up by diffused particles of the substance, constituting to conscious creatures its odor, we meet a kindred general truth. Just as, after contact, some molecules of a mass of food are absorbed by the part touched, and excite the act of prehension, so are absorbed such of its molecules as, spreading through the water, reach the organism; and, being absorbed by it, excite those actions by which contact with the mass is effected. If the physical stimulation caused by the dispersed particles is not accompanied by consciousness, still the motor changes set up must conduce to survival of the organism, if they are such as end in contact; and there must be relative innutrition and mortality of organisms in which the produced contractions do not bring about this result. Nor can it be questioned that whenever and wherever the physical stimulation has a concomitant sentiency, this must be such as consists with, and conduces to, movement toward the nutritive matter: it must be not a repulsive but an attractive sentiency. And this which holds with the lowest consciousness, must hold throughout; as we see it do in all such superior creatures as are drawn to their food by odor.
Besides those movements which cause locomotion those which effect seizure must no less certainly become thus adjusted. The molecular changes caused by absorption of nutritive matter from organic substance in contact, or from adjacent organic substance, initiate motions which are indefinite where the organization is low, and which become more definite with the advance of organization. At the outset, while the undifferentiated protoplasm is everywhere absorbent and everywhere contractile, the changes of form initiated by the physical stimulation of adjacent nutritive matter are vague, and ineffectually adapted to utilization of it; but gradually, along with the specialization into parts that are contractile and parts that are absorbent, these motions become better adapted; for necessarily individuals in which they are least adapted disappear faster than those in which they are most adapted. Recognizing this necessity we have here especially to recognize a further necessity. The relation between these stimulations and adjusted contractions must be such that increase of the one causes increase of the other; since the directions of the discharges being once established, greater stimulation causes greater contraction, and the greater contraction causing closer contact with the stimulating agent, causes increase of stimulus and is thereby itself further increased. And now we reach the corollary which more particularly concerns us. Clearly as fast as an accompanying sentiency arises, this cannot be one that is disagreeable, prompting desistance, but must be one that is agreeable, prompting persistence. The pleasurable sensation must be itself the stimulus to the contraction by which the pleasurable sensation is maintained and increased; or must be so bound up with the stimulus that the two increase together. And this relation which we see is directly established in the case of a fundamental function, must be indirectly established with all other functions; since non-establishment of it in any particular case implies, in so far, unfitness to the conditions of existence.
In two ways then, it is demonstrable that there exists a primordial connection between pleasure-giving acts and continuance or increase of life, and, by implication, between pain-giving acts and decrease or loss of life. On the one hand, setting out with the lowest living things, we see that the beneficial act and the act which there is a tendency to perform, are originally two sides of the same; and cannot be disconnected without fatal results. On the other hand, if we contemplate developed creatures as now existing, we see that each individual and species is from day to day kept alive by pursuit of the agreeable and avoidance of the disagreeable. Thus approaching the facts from a different side, analysis brings us down to another face of that ultimate truth disclosed by analysis in a preceding chapter. We found it was no more possible to frame ethical conceptions from which the consciousness of pleasure, of some kind, at some time, to some being, is absent, than it is possible to frame the conception of an object from which the consciousness of space is absent. And now we see that this necessity of thought originates in the very nature of sentient existence. Sentient existence can evolve only on condition that pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts.
Conversely, they do not doubt that notwithstanding occasional excesses the pleasure which accompanies the taking of food goes along with physical benefit; and that the benefit is the greater the keener the satisfaction of appetite. They have no choice but to acknowledge that the instincts and sentiments which so overpoweringly prompt marriage, and those which find their gratification in the fostering of offspring, work out an immense surplus of benefit after deducting all evils. Nor dare they question that the pleasure taken in accumulating property, leaves a large balance of advantage, private and public, after making all drawbacks. Yet many and conspicuous as are the cases in which pleasures and pains, sensational and emotional, serve as incentives to proper acts and deterrents from improper acts, these pass unnoticed; and notice is taken only of those cases in which men are directly or indirectly misled by them. The well-working in essential matters is ignored; and the ill-working in unessential matters is alone recognized. Is it replied that the more intense pains and pleasures, which have immediate reference to bodily needs, guide us rightly; while the weaker pains and pleasures, not immediately connected with the maintenance of life, guide us wrongly? Then the implication is that the system of guidance by pleasures and pains, which has answered with all types of creatures below the human, fails with the human. Or rather, the admission being that with mankind it succeeds in so far as fulfillment of certain imperative wants goes, it fails in respect of wants that are not imperative. Those who think this are required, in the first place, to show us how the line is to be drawn between the two; and then to show us why the system which succeeds in the lower will not succeed in the higher.
Already, while showing that among inferior creatures, pleasures and pains have all along guided the conduct by which life has been evolved and maintained, I have pointed out that since the conditions of existence for each species have been occasionally changing, there have been occasionally arising partial misadjustments of the feelings to the requirements, necessitating readjustments. This general cause of derangement, operating on all sentient beings, has been operating on human beings in a manner unusually decided, persistent, and involved. It needs but to contrast the mode of life followed by primitive men, wandering in the forests and living on wild food, with the mode of life followed by rustics, artisans, traders, and professional men in a civilized community, to see that the constitution, bodily and mental, well-adjusted to the one, is ill-adjusted to the other. It needs but to observe the emotions kept awake in each savage tribe, chronically hostile to neighboring tribes, and then to observe the emotions which peaceful production and exchange bring into play, to see that the two are not only unlike, but opposed. And it needs but to note how, during social evolution, the ideas and sentiments appropriate to the militant activities carried on by coercive co-operation have been at variance with the ideas and sentiments appropriate to the industrial activities, carried on by voluntary co-operation, to see that there has ever been within each society, and still continues, a conflict between the two moral natures adjusted to these two unlike modes of life. Manifestly, then, this readjustment of constitution to conditions, involving readjustment of pleasures and pains for guidance, which all creatures from time to time undergo, has been in the human race during civilization especially difficult, not only because of the greatness of the change from small nomadic groups to vast settled societies, and from predatory habits to peaceful habits, but also because the old life of enmity between societies has been maintained along with the new life of amity within each society. While there co-exist two ways of life so radically opposed as the militant and the industrial, human nature cannot become properly adapted to either.
That hence results such failure of guidance by pleasures and pains as is daily exhibited, we discover on observing in what parts of conduct the failure is most conspicuous. As above shown, the pleasurable and painful sensations are fairly well adjusted to the peremptory physical requirements: the benefits of conforming to the sensations which prompt us in respect of nutrition, respiration, maintenance of temperature, etc., immensely exceed the incidental evils, and such misadjustments as occur may be ascribed to the change from the outdoor life of the primitive man to the indoor life which the civilized man is often compelled to lead. It is the emotional pleasures and pains which are in so considerable a degree out of adjustment to the needs of life as carried on in society, and it is of these that the readjustment is made in the way above shown, so tardy because so difficult. From the biological point of view, then, we see that the connections between pleasure and beneficial action and between pain and detrimental action, which arose when sentient existence began, and have continued among animate creatures up to man, are generally displayed in him also throughout the lower and more completely organized part of his nature; and must be more and more fully displayed throughout the higher part of his nature, as fast as his adaptation to the conditions of social life increases.
Bodily agony long borne produces death by exhaustion. More frequently, arresting the action of the heart for a time, it causes that temporary death we call fainting. On other occasions vomiting is a consequence. And where such manifest derangements do not result, we still, in the pallor and trembling, trace the general prostration. Beyond the actual loss of life caused by subjection to intense cold there are depressions of vitality less marked caused by cold less extreme--temporary enfeeblement following too long an immersion in icy water; enervation and pining away consequent on inadequate clothing. Similarly is it with submission to great heat: we have lassitude reaching occasionally to exhaustion; we have, in weak persons, fainting, succeeded by temporary debilitation; and in steaming tropical jungles Europeans contract fevers which, when not fatal, often entail life-long incapacities. Consider, again, the evils that follow violent exertion continued in spite of painful feelings--now a fatigue which destroys appetite or arrests digestion if food is taken, implying failure of the reparative processes when they are most needed; and now a prostration of the heart, here lasting for a time and there, where the transgression has been repeated day after day, made permanent: reducing the rest of life to a lower level.
No less conspicuous are the depressing effects of emotional pains. There are occasional cases of death from grief; and in other cases the mental suffering which a calamity causes, like bodily suffering, shows its effects by syncope. Often a piece of bad news is succeeded by sickness; and continued anxiety will produce loss of appetite, perpetual indigestion and diminished strength. Excessive fear, whether aroused by physical or moral danger, will, in like manner, arrest for a time the processes of nutrition; and, not unfrequently, in pregnant women brings on miscarriage; while, in less extreme cases, the cold perspiration and unsteady hands indicate a general lowering of the vital activities, entailing partial incapacity of body or mind or both. How greatly emotional pain deranges the visceral actions is shown us by the fact that incessant worry is not unfrequently followed by jaundice. And here, indeed, the relation between cause and effect happens to have been proved by direct experiment. Making such arrangements that the bile-duct of a dog delivered its product outside the body, Claude Bernard observed that so long as he petted the dog and kept him in good spirits, secretion went on at its normal rate; but on speaking angrily, and for a time so treating him as to produce depression, the flow of bile was arrested. Should it be said that evil results of such kinds are proved to occur only when the pains, bodily or mental, are great, the reply is that in healthy persons the injurious perturbations caused by small pains, though not easily traced, are still produced; and that in those whose vital powers are much reduced by illness, slight physical irritations and trifling moral annoyances, often cause relapses.
Quite opposite are the constitutional effects of pleasure. It sometimes, though rarely, happens that in feeble persons intense pleasure--pleasure that is almost pain--gives a nervous shock that is mischievous; but it does not do this in those who are undebilitated by voluntary or enforced submission to actions injurious to the organism. In the normal order, pleasures, great and small, are stimulants to the processes by which life is maintained. Among the sensations may be instanced those produced by bright light. Sunshine is enlivening in comparison with gloom--even a gleam excites a wave of pleasure; and experiments have shown that sunshine raises the rate of respiration: raised respiration being an index of raised vital activities in general. A warmth that is agreeable in degree favors the heart's action, and furthers the various functions to which this is instrumental. Though those who are in full vigor and fitly clothed can maintain their temperature in winter, and can digest additional food to make up for the loss of heat, it is otherwise with the feeble; and, as vigor declines, the beneficence of warmth becomes conspicuous. That benefits accompany the agreeable sensations produced by fresh air, and the agreeable sensations that accompany muscular action after due rest, and the agreeable sensations caused by rest after exertion cannot be questioned. Receipt of these pleasures conduces to the maintenance of the body in fit condition for all the purposes of life.
More manifest still are the physiological benefits of emotional pleasures. Every power, bodily and mental, is increased by "good spirits," which is our name for a general emotional satisfaction. The truth that the fundamental vital actions--those of nutrition--are furthered by laughter-moving conversation, or rather by the pleasurable feeling causing laughter, is one of old standing; and every dyspeptic knows that in exhilarating company, a large and varied dinner, including not very digestible things, may be eaten with impunity, and, indeed, with benefit, while a small, carefully chosen dinner of simple things, eaten in solitude, will be followed by indigestion. This striking effect on the alimentary system is accompanied by effects, equally certain though less manifest, on the circulation and the respiration. Again, one who, released from daily labors and anxieties, receives delights from fine scenery or is enlivened by the novelties he sees abroad, comes back showing by toned-up face and vivacious manner, the greater energy with which he is prepared to pursue his avocation. Invalids especially, on whose narrowed margin of vitality the influence of conditions is most visible, habitually show the benefits derived from agreeable states of feeling. A lively social circle, the call of an old friend, or even removal to a brighter room, will, by the induced cheerfulness, much improve the physical state. In brief, as every medical man knows, there is no such tonic as happiness.
These diffused physiological effects of pleasures and pains, which are joined with the local or special physiological effects, are, indeed, obviously inevitable. We have seen (_Principles of Psychology_, §§ 123-125) that while craving, or negative pain, accompanies the under-activity of an organ, and while positive pain accompanies its over-activity, pleasure accompanies its normal activity. We have seen that by evolution no other relations could be established; since, through all inferior types of creatures, if defect or excess of function produced no disagreeable sentiency, and medium function no agreeable sentiency, there would be nothing to insure a proportioned performance of function. And as it is one of the laws of nervous action that each stimulus, beyond a direct discharge to the particular organ acted on, indirectly causes a general discharge throughout the nervous system (_Prin. of Psy._, §§ 21, 39), it results that the rest of the organs, all influenced as they are by the nervous system, participate in the stimulation. So that beyond the aid, more slowly shown, which the organs yield to one another through the physiological division of labor, there is the aid, more quickly shown, which mutual excitation gives. While there is a benefit to be presently felt by the whole organism from the due performance of each function, there is an immediate benefit from the exaltation of its functions at large caused by the accompanying pleasure; and from pains, whether of excess or defect, there also come these double effects, immediate and remote.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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