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Title: Why We Are Moral Author: Dora Marsden Date: 1914 Language: en Topics: cant, egoism, morality, The Egoist Source: Retrieved on 09/26/2021 from https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr521215/ Notes: Originally published in The Egoist Volume I Number 23 (December 1, 1914).
Although—and as we have many times explained—morals are modes of conduct
which have become customary, and the intent of the passionate rage in
support of the moral is to shield these customs from anything which may
cause them to vary, this exposition does not explain why these modes,
primarily special and particular, adapted to serve the interests not of
All but of a Few should have become customary for All: so much so in
fact that the guardianship of morals is in the safest hands when it is
left to the fierce partisan feelings of the "Crowd." Before going into
the psychology which explains this problem, so perplexing on the
surface, it is advisable to indicate a nice distinction which has come
to exist between kinds of conduct to which, in popular usage, is given
the term "Custom," and conduct equally customary but to which the term
morals ordinarily is given.
Custom is habitual conduct, but to the observance of which public
opinion attaches small weight either by way of approval or disapproval.
The emotion which failure to observe it calls up is, in the main,
surprise, not the blind, passionate rage which the bulk of people show
at the infringement of morals. Its observance or otherwise is left to
individual whim; judgment as to its benefits or disadvantages is left to
the caprice of private opinion. It is a habit which lies open and
unprotected from vulgar inquiry and personal individual tests of its
value. Its valuation is not fixed though its observance be wide-spread
and general. What separates Morals from Custom (popular version) is the
value which Authority (which commands public opinion) sets upon the
habit's significance. If the reference is to customary conduct of which
the continuance is necessary for the maintenance of the power which
keeps the articulate class in authority, such conduct is carefully
extracted from its association with mere customs and elevated by
Authority to the plane of the Sacred by the laying of the Taboo on all
discussions as to its origin and the fundamental nature of its motives,
so that in time it comes to be regarded as the Mysterious, the Occult,
the Supernatural, the Divine. Whereas customs are exposed and open to
valuation, their ancestry apparent and their future the possible victim
of whim and caprice, morals are kept unsullied from the common and
mundane touch and their origin and valuation one may question only under
pain of becoming impious and a blasphemer. Naturally many customs are on
the fringe between the status of Customs and that of Morals, a fact to
which elegant if delicate young intellectuals owe many hours of exciting
and dangerous sport. The debating clubs of the Literary and Philosophic
Societies and of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society, of the
Y.W.C.A's, not to mention the Smart Set and the Cranks: what violent
intellectual striving has given these birth if not the desire to settle
points of such cosmic significance as the Right and the Wrong of
church-going, theatre-going, gambling, racing; of those crimes or larks
for women: smokes, bicycles and bloomers, dyed hair and paint ? To
decide whether these things belonged to the go-as-you-please realm of
Custom or to that realm which supports the Cosmos high above Chaos
—Morals, has provided occasion for the exercise of the strong and daring
young wits of the last half-century.
---
This popular distinction between Morals and Custom throws into relief
the question which still awaits an answer as regards the genesis of
morals.
If men have held to custom, common sense is ready to suggest that this
is not due to accident, and if customs have been fostered it has been
because— sheer ease apart—the results which come from doing so are such
as seem to serve their interests best. Did they not, the custom would
surely if not speedily have been abandoned. And if not from a prescience
of this willingness of men to abandon a custom productive of
disappointing results, what other motive would the authorities have had
for taking measures to ensure such customs as they consider significant
from the possibility of such a fate, by protecting them with that
"Mystery" which results in their conversion into Morals. Customs are
habits which may be kept up. Morals are customs which Authority insists
must be kept up, good results or no. What, then, is the instinct,
primary and fundamental as it must be to have held good for so long,
which makes the great mass of people, the governed classes, not merely
faithful to morals in face of their ill-effects, but faithful in an
ardent and passionate spirit which does not seek to spare either
themselves or those near and dear to them? The character and working of
the inducements which are responsible for this seeming miracle, reveal
how unerring is the instinct which leads men steadily to track down
their major satisfactions through a whole complex tangle of conflicting
considerations.
---
The basis of any scheme of morals is altruism. The moral claim that its
observance, against or in conformity to inclination is for "Good,"
obviously is prepared to demand the over-riding of the private "good" of
him whose inclination is against it in favour of the "good" of those
"others" who constitute the All: in which remote good the thwarted one
is vaguely enjoined to believe that he will once again refind his own.
An element of strong, if vague, distrust of the belief that one finds
one's interest served best in the good of All, does not encourage a
close observer to seek for the clue of unswerving moral action in the
influence of this generalisation: the Unity of Humanity. One is tempted
rather to look about for definite egoistic rewards in altruism itself
than to believe there exists so much solid weight in flighty conceptual
stretches for the popular intelligence. What, then, does Altruism offer
to these egoists of not-too-intelligent an order? On its face value the
theory of Altruism appears to be a tactful statement of the case for
peaceful submission among the Dominated, and is made current by the
powerful egoists who are the backbone of the dominant class what time it
suits the latter's interests to remain at peace: that is, while
refraining from those more violent forms of competition called war. It
is the inculcation of the principle that it is wise to make peaceful
terms with, and good friends of, those who have established a dominance
by respecting their status, their interests and their wishes. That it is
the dominated class which practises altruism whereas the dominant
practise it only in so far as their necessities, i.e., their interests,
permit them, in no way detracts from the weight of evidence which goes
to prove its origin among the dominant: it merely supplies additional
testimony as to the fine quality of the tact employed in its
inculcation. Thus morality, i.e., the habitual practice of altruism made
compulsory by Authority and Public Opinion, is part of the great game of
egoistic war—the interplay of interests—which ebbs and flows ceaselessly
wherever life is. In that warfare, however, morality represents such a
distinction as to method that it is convenient to label it separately
and allocate it to a niche of its own. Morality is the mode of warfare
made use of during the "civil" periods, its rĂ´le corresponding to the
physical slaughter which is the mode when the warfare of civilisation
gives place to a special kind of warfare ordinarily called war. The
difference consists in the substitution of weapons—of Words in place of
Armaments. The nature of moral warfare necessitates a sort of
seige-action in place of the aggressive physical assaults of armed
warfare. The moral concepts fence round the authoritarian class as
effectually as, if not more than, concrete fortifications do a city; the
action of these Sacred Words being not so much to withstand the savagery
of an onslaught as to paralyse the forces of the enemy before he can
lift up an arm against them.
Their effect, handled as Authority tactfully handles them, amounts to
that of hypnotism: results not however due to a brilliantly conceived,
conscious artifice or planned contrivance of means to purposed ends on
the part of the dominant: but of a semi-conscious exploiting on their
part of an elementary human instinct too obviously in existence for its
possibilities to be ignored. On the other hand the practice of altruism
as opposed to its theoretical exhortation, subserves urgent egoistic
needs on the part of the second-rate egoistic powers. If its observance
by the dominated serves the egoism of the dominant inasmuch as it spares
their energies from the necessity of constant reassertion of
superiority, it spares at the same time the vanity of the dominated. The
"status quo" which at first blush was accepted through necessity and
fear by the class which that "state" leaves subjected, is, thanks to
morality, afterwards accepted in happy submission by dint of the tactful
assaults which the moral concepts make on their vanity. Owing to the
comforting hypnotism of "morality" and its "altruism” the submissively
dominated are able to flatter themselves with the thought that the
"Great" most scrupulously desire and strive after the formers' own
special and particular "good": that these actually make themselves
anxious on account of the state of their souls in addition to care for
their temporal good; and. later, in return for the adoption of the
course of action enjoined by the conceptual scheme—action which always
turns to the Good of the established, by the way—they are rendered
happier still by the sound of the inflating "well done" of their
betters. It all works extremely well. Man is the vainest of the animals,
and individual men are vain in inverse ratio to the stoutness of their
spiritual stamina. The "Crowd" the Non-distinctive, the Majority being
the vainest, the appeal of Morality realises its own special
hunting-ground in their midst. The "Crowd" provide the country's moral
backbone. They even make a boast of it. And sensibly enough since such
Conduct as we arrange to live by, we arrange also to praise if we value
our own comfort. And the adoption of Morality is as much a piece of
distinctive human ingenuity—a display of intelligence—as is the adoption
of Arms. That it is more definitely connected with the swagger of the
dominated, whereas prowess in Arms is the swagger of the Dominant, need
not necessarily induce the former to misprise the solaces of their
class.
---
Tennyson somewhere sings, not without a gasp of surprise indeed at his
unexpected discovery, of the speech which half reveals and half conceals
the thought within. As far as the speech, which moral concepts are
wrapped in is concerned, the poet has gone wrong in his proportions.
Their whole intent is to conceal: and the motive is as purposive with
those who practice them as with those who teach. That both sides are
inarticulate and only semi-conscious does not detract from the
superlative skill with which the set purpose is achieved. It enhances it
rather. Moral principles resting on altruism, by a skilful sleight of
hand conceal the fact that altruism is an illusion created to subserve
motives wholly egotistic; that the interchange can be effected without
raising a breath of suspicion, is due to the suffusing influence of one
of the most fundamental elements affecting human emotion: to the action
of vanity.
Vanity skilfully played upon goes a long way towards confounding even
the soundest human judgment. As palpably as heat expands a gas, flattery
expands the human spirit beyond the normal. It is this sense of
expansion which causes men to feel pleasure; it is the sensation of
conscious life in actual being: it is in fact the sense we call power. A
flouting of vanity depresses spirit and creates despondency. Both
actions—inflation and depression—tend to take place the more readily the
flimsier the vital force on which repute acts, but it is probable that
on no single intelligent human being can they fail to make some little
variation. It is true that those who are concerned with their own
self-initiated interests and with whom the powers which have play over
their spirits are more self-centred and self-impelled, are less
responsive to outside treatment. It happens however, that with the vast
majority of men, obedience and imitation are the strongest springs of
action. To be capable of acting from a self-interested motive is
extremely rare. Hence it turns out that the balance of pleasure for most
men must be come at by way of honour conferred by stronger and more
definitely conscious egoistic powers. The balance of satisfaction when
all has been counted in fear of failure, fear of envy, of punishment,
hostility, fear of lonelessness, and a deadening sense of
uncertainty—for the vast majority of men falls on the side of honour
rather than on the other. Accordingly men's actions inevitably set
towards Honour and the earning of Applause. Whereupon propitiation
rather than aggression becomes their natural rĂ´le. It becomes their
virtue and all forces— men and things.—which make little of
propitiation— which is peace, love—are their natural enemies. All things
propitiatory become thereupon "good": propitiatory proposals, offers of
peace, civility, mildness of temper, and all species of intra-mediation
are "good": and those w h o make them are "good": and it is "good" to
fall in with them. "Good," that is, for those who love Honour, for
Morality, for the reputation of Altruism. Hence the moral demands find
in these second-rate egoists a mind and temper ready prepared for them:
those who desire to be persuaded are already waiting for those who will
persuade them: the two come together by an inevitable attraction: the
outcome of a natural desire to make use of each other. United, they make
a compound hard and resistant enough to baffle all attempts to break in
upon it: a nugget to break one's teeth against rather than to crack.
Between the ardour of each for the other there is nothing to choose.
---
There are unobserving persons who imagine that human beings desire a
commodity which they call Truth. Now truth is a much-used word which may
mean anything or nothing according as one is pleased to employ it: but
allowing for the moment that it means what such persons imagine it to
mean, i.e., a faithful description of passions and motives and of the
relative powers among the individuals of a community, it is the crassest
stupidity to think that people desire truth or anything approaching it.
You, dear reader, don't want such truth about yourself. I, dear reader,
won't have it about myself. The maximum quantity of this species of
truth which you and I can stand is just as much as we are compelled to
swallow from our own disillusioning experiences; and even this amount we
prefer not to discuss with any, particularly not with familiars—families
and friends. But many of us are not averse from airing this truth as it
relates to others: our rivals and acquaintances, though even here we
must be content with a reasonable amount: penetration must not penetrate
too far because instinctively we are aware that some short distance
beneath its surface-layer the fabric of truth is in one piece: lower
than a certain depth the same fabric covers us all; penetrate inwards
too deeply and w e all stand with our motives naked and exposed. And our
motives are far more elegant clothed, as clothed they are. Men have
clothed them partly, perhaps, on account of use and comfort, and partly
because they have conceived a shame for them: a shame which is the
reverse side of the cult of Honour in fact. Only the external motive-—
the altruistic motive—is kept in evidence: the motive which was the
motive of the show of altruism is concealed: instinctively men know that
it is of the egoistic and dishonourable kind, and a poor specimen at
that. Men would never indeed have fallen into the attitude which makes
them ashamed of it had they not been aware that it was poor. Altruism is
egoism at the second and tenth rate, adopted because of one's inability
to make headway in the best. If men do not feel themselves possessed of
the power to make themselves respected on account of their skill in
getting what they want they compound in a purely egoistic bargain and
become Moral. And serviceably and comprehensibly enough. The pleasure
they will get from applause is likely to exceed any satisfaction they
expect to get from enterprises initiated by themselves: and on show of
the balance their egoism makes choice—for a cloak of altruism. (The
disadvantages they meet will form another story.) But because they are
not proud of the necessity which forces them they conceive a quite sound
detestation for the "Searchers for Truth ": alongside their approval of
the preachers of the Moral Ideal, They are suspicious of the evidences
of "Truth": they are not suspicious of the Moralist's praise: they have
no need to be, because praise to them is an end in itself: it is what
they want: the bona-fide exchange for the services they have rendered.
The Trojans were advised to be on their guard against the Greeks when
they came offering gifts; and sensibly, because such gifts to the
Trojans were of small concern: had these gifts been more to them than
Troy itself what would there have been to fear in receiving them? So
with the Moral and the Dominated's reception of the praise of the
Moralists. Their praise is Honour and Honour they have made into the
crown of life: how should they then allow the prying chatter of
so-called "Searchers for Truth" to endanger that which can confer on
them their most desired boon: allow the spoil-sports and kill-joys a
free hand amongst their own selected "good." And a moral community is
not going to welcome with a shout of glad surprise a too closely probing
inquiry into the reasons of morals ! They consider it is enough that
they are moral because it suits them, all things considered. And they
are not prepared to regard it as good manners to inquire beyond a point
what those things are. Their elaborate altruistic make-believe : their
artificial moralist construction is built round about what for them
constitutes the charm of life: subtly flattered vanity. The fact that it
is all on an "artificial" basis: a verbal basis does not affect them:
indeed the fact is lost sight of until civilisation gives place to war:
when this base proves to have been not only artificial but a trifle
flimsy.
Men find morality none the worse, i.e., it gives no less satisfaction
because it is artificial than a picture or a novel does because it is
artificial; the subtlest situations in life gather round just those
things which are most frail at their foundations, assumptions which, by
a tacit understanding are allowed for, but which are too perishable to
be battered about in discussion. The artificialities of civilisations
are not despicable because a sword may one day shatter all their
delicate and subtle tracery; they are to be despised only when they fail
in that which they set out to accomplish, i.e., to provide satisfactions
equal to or greater than those which they might have attained by a more
natural, i.e., a more frankly egoistic application of ability would have
furnished. One would be for instance an ingrate, not to say a fool, to
cavil at those aids to beauty which an ill-favoured human adopts to
avert at least the repulsion of his fellows, just because they were
artificial: if they serve their purpose. Very amusing, charming,
important, and impressive are the things which are "artificial." Even a
Krupp gun is artificial. In fact it is not artificiality which affects
the question: it is utility. The measure of the value of artificialities
like the measure of the value of everything else is gauged by the
purpose to which they are set, and their efficacy in achieving that
purpose. And purposes depend on the men who propose them: their
spiritual size among other things. He is a sad and sorry man who seeks
to frame a purpose bigger than he has the capacity to enjoy the
achieving of. So a man with a passion for big schemes but without the
capacity to effect them draws greater satisfaction from being a
doorkeeper in the houses of the great than he could eating out his heart
toiling at his own bench, the independence of which his taste cannot
relish: it is, in fact, too independent for him. What he would gain in
satisfaction, of course by so doing, he sacrifices in status: but then
all satisfactions demand their price. When these are greater than our
natural competence provides for we perforce let ourselves out into
bondage if bent on securing them. Our too great wants and our too small
abilities are the exploiter's opportunity.
---
One begins to understand why cranks and their works come to so little.
They have the misfortune to witness an indiscretion: one little brick in
the wall of pretence has fallen away and one thin shaft of light has
revealed egoism and duplicity at some point in the scheme of things. And
for the rest of their lives they live in wonder and uneasiness at their
own discovery. They devote their energies to the blocking-out of that
one gleam. They inaugurate a "propaganda." That it is but one thin
pencil streak of an ever-shining sun-like orb does not occur to them.
The world, to be sure, is heedless of their "discovery," and is in no
WAY "upset" to meet their "exposure.' Nor is it alarmed by those who cry
out against "Cant." Though men do not clearly know, they instinctively
feel that one who makes a fuss about "cant" does not understand cant.
They feel it is not cant that is objectionable but poor cant: cant that
is so badly sung that it fails in its purpose, i.e., the complete
deception of those whom it is intended to impress. The way to deal with
him who objects to cant is to ignore him or soothe him as the case may
demand, but never to follow up his argument. The Church of Rome has the
prescient understanding which knows this: it does not make the mistake
of thinking that doubts can be laid to rest piecemeal. It knows its
business and promptly anathematises doubt. It knows that the correct
answer to all the arguments of the Devil is to kill the Devil. Nor is
the World greatly put about by those who make light of its morals on the
big scale: it forgives its Napoleons as soon as their immediate
disagreeableness is forgotten and withdrawn: while as for the immoral on
a small scale, men content themselves with administering the usual and
necessary severe rebuke and punishment. It is a different person for
whom they reserve their full implacable rancour. Napoleon at the close
of a single century after his death is already held in honour more or
less: but four centuries have passed since Machiavelli wrote the
"Prince," and he still remains "Old Nick." In fact, the Devil is a
symbolic generalisation of all the injuries done to the Altruistic
Interpretation by those who dare to crumble the moral concepts, and lay
bare their egoistic foundations: so robbing them of their popular title
to Honour. The Devil is the common spirit of all Blasphemers everywhere:
Blasphemers being those who speak injuriously against the Sacred Words.
The Blasphemers are the figures drawn up in antithesis to those of the
Heroes. A Hero is one who represents the sublimation-point of adhesion
to the Divine; his distinguishing attribute is his close kinship with
the Gods to whose greater glory his bold deeds minister: that is, he is
one whose deeds establish the Word-System, the Moral-Scheme, the
Altruistic-Good, by providing them with a supremely hypnotising Crown of
Honour. Of course the Moral or Altruistic Scheme holds good only within
the limits of the particular community which has conceived its own
sum-total of the "All" as the single Organic Unit. Morality can only
find a place in a community in which the various factions have tried
their strength, and have more or less contentedly accepted the verdict
and settled down in their suitable classes as Servers and Served,
Dominant and Dominated. When two such moral communities are at
logger-heads and proceed to violent war, moral blandishments are at a
discount. As it is not the common people—the practisers of the
altruistic and the moral—who make international wars, but rather the
dominant and more strongly egoistic classes, the warring parties do not
attempt to address each other in terms of morals save in so far as it is
necessary to spare the moral susceptibilities of their own respective
following—their respective crowds. Otherwise, in war, it is bluntly a
struggle of Might against Might: and all the weapons of Might are
pressed into service precisely in so far as they give promise of
success, i.e., of crushing the opponent. But articulate spokesman of
neither side could say as much openly because of the attentive ears of
their followers as was said above: They know that sooner or later this
specific kind of warfare, fierce as for the moment it is, will cease for
a period and no matter which side wins or loses each will have to settle
down in their own communities and make good once more the Altruistic
Tale among their fellows. A wise economy, therefore, teaches them that
though war compels them to stand face to face with all verbal veils
withdrawn before the eyes of an acknowledged enemy, it is not necessary
to destroy these veils. If they have no place in war they have a place
of extreme importance among subjected peoples as long as ever the
Dominant seek to perpetuate submission by dint of the artifices of
peace: by Words in preference to the Sword.