Principia Ethica 13

Principia Ethica 13

The phrase seems to point to a vague notion that there is some such

thing as natural good; to a belief that Nature may be said to fix and

decide what shall be good, just as she fixes and decides what shall

exist. For instance, it may be supposed that ‘health’ is susceptible

of a natural definition, that Nature has fixed what health shall be:

and health, it may be said, is obviously good; hence in this case

Nature has decided the matter; we have only to go to her and ask her

what health is, and we shall know what is good: we shall have based an

ethics upon science. But what is this natural definition of health? I

can only conceive that health should be defined in natural terms as

the _normal_ state of an organism for undoubtedly disease is also a

natural product. To say that health is what is preserved by evolution,

and what itself tends to preserve, in the struggle for existence, the

organism which possesses it, comes to the same thing: for the point

of evolution is that it pretends to give a causal explanation of why

some forms of life are normal and others are abnormal; it explains the

origin of species. When therefore we are told that health is natural,

we may presume that what is meant is that it is normal; and that when

we are told to pursue health as a natural end, what is implied is that

the normal must be good. But is it so obvious that the normal must

be good? Is it really obvious that health, for instance, is good?

Was the excellence of Socrates or of Shakespeare normal? Was it not

rather abnormal, extraordinary? It is, I think, obvious in the first

place, that not all that is good is normal; that, on the contrary, the

abnormal is often better than the normal: peculiar excellence, as well

as peculiar viciousness, must obviously be not normal but abnormal.

Yet it may be said that nevertheless the normal is good; and I myself

am not prepared to dispute that health is good. What I contend is

that this must not be taken to be obvious; that it must be regarded

as an open question. To declare it to be obvious is to suggest the

naturalistic fallacy: just as, in some recent books, a proof that

genius is diseased, abnormal, has been used in order to suggest that

genius ought not to be encouraged. Such reasoning is fallacious, and

dangerously fallacious. The fact is that in the very words ‘health’

and ‘disease’ we do commonly include the notion that the one is good

and the other bad. But, when a so-called scientific definition of them

is attempted, a definition in natural terms, the only one possible is

that by way of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal.’ Now, it is easy to prove that

some things commonly thought excellent are abnormal; and it follows

that they are diseased. But it does not follow, except by virtue of the

naturalistic fallacy, that those things, commonly thought good, are

therefore bad. All that has really been shewn is that in some cases

there is a conflict between the common judgment that genius is good,

and the common judgment that health is good. It is not sufficiently

recognised that the latter judgment has not a whit more warrant for

its truth than the former; that both are perfectly open questions. It

may be true, indeed, that by ‘healthy’ we do commonly imply ‘good’;

but that only shews that when we so use the word, we do not mean the

same thing by it as the thing which is meant in medical science.

That health, _when_ the word is used to denote something good, is

good, goes no way at all to shew that health, when the word is used

to denote something normal, is also good. We might as well say that,

because ‘bull’ denotes an Irish joke and also a certain animal, the

joke and the animal must be the same thing. We must not, therefore, be

frightened by the assertion that a thing is natural into the admission

that it is good; good does not, by definition, mean anything that is

natural; and it is therefore always an open question whether anything

that is natural is good.

 

 

=28.= But there is another slightly different sense in which the

word ‘natural’ is used with an implication that it denotes something

good. This is when we speak of natural affections, or unnatural

crimes and vices. Here the meaning seems to be, not so much that the

action or feeling in question is normal or abnormal, as that it is

necessary. It is in this connection that we are advised to imitate

savages and beasts. Curious advice certainly; but, of course, there

may be something in it. I am not here concerned to enquire under what

circumstances some of us might with advantage take a lesson from the

cow. I have really no doubt that such exist. What I am concerned with

is a certain kind of reason, which I think is sometimes used to support

this doctrine--a naturalistic reason. The notion sometimes lying at

the bottom of the minds of preachers of this gospel is that we cannot

improve on nature. This notion is certainly true, in the sense that

anything we can do, that may be better than the present state of

things, will be a natural product. But that is not what is meant by

this phrase; nature is again used to mean a mere part of nature; only

this time the part meant is not so much the normal as an arbitrary

minimum of what is necessary for life. And when this minimum is

recommended as ‘natural’--as the way of life to which Nature points her

finger--then the naturalistic fallacy is used. Against this position

I wish only to point out that though the performance of certain acts,

not in themselves desirable, may be _excused_ as necessary means to

the preservation of life, that is no reason for _praising_ them, or

advising us to limit ourselves to those simple actions which are

necessary, if it is possible for us to improve our condition even at

the expense of doing what is in this sense unnecessary. Nature does

indeed set limits to what is possible; she does control the means we

have at our disposal for obtaining what is good; and of this fact,

practical Ethics, as we shall see later, must certainly take account:

but when she is supposed to have a preference for what is necessary,

what is necessary means only what is necessary to obtain a certain end,

presupposed as the highest good; and what the highest good is Nature

cannot determine. Why should we suppose that what is merely necessary

to life is _ipso facto_ better than what is necessary to the study of

metaphysics, useless as that study may appear? It may be that life

is only worth living, because it enables us to study metaphysics--is

a necessary means thereto. The fallacy of this argument from nature

has been discovered as long ago as Lucian. ‘I was almost inclined to

laugh,’ says Callicratidas, in one of the dialogues imputed to him[4],

‘just now, when Charicles was praising irrational brutes and the

savagery of the Scythians: in the heat of his argument he was almost

repenting that he was born a Greek. What wonder if lions and bears and

pigs do not act as I was proposing? That which reasoning would fairly

lead a man to choose, cannot be had by creatures that do not reason,

simply because they are so stupid. If Prometheus or some other god had

given each of them the intelligence of a man, then they would not have

lived in deserts and mountains nor fed on one another. They would have

built temples just as we do, each would have lived in the centre of

his family, and they would have formed a nation bound by mutual laws.

Is it anything surprising that brutes, who have had the misfortune

to be unable to obtain by forethought any of the goods, with which

reasoning provides us, should have missed love too? Lions do not love;

but neither do they philosophise; bears do not love; but the reason

is they do not know the sweets of friendship. It is only men, who, by

their wisdom and their knowledge, after many trials, have chosen what

is best.’

 

[4] Ἔρωτες, 436-7.

 

 

=29.= To argue that a thing is good _because_ it is ‘natural,’ or

bad _because_ it is ‘unnatural,’ in these common senses of the term,

is therefore certainly fallacious: and yet such arguments are very

frequently used. But they do not commonly pretend to give a systematic

theory of Ethics. Among attempts to _systematise_ an appeal to nature,

that which is now most prevalent is to be found in the application to

ethical questions of the term ‘Evolution’--in the ethical doctrines

which have been called ‘Evolutionistic.’ These doctrines are those

which maintain that the course of ‘evolution,’ while it shews us the

direction in which we _are_ developing, thereby and for that reason

shews us the direction in which we _ought_ to develop. Writers, who

maintain such a doctrine, are at present very numerous and very

popular; and I propose to take as my example the writer, who is

perhaps the best known of them all--Mr Herbert Spencer. Mr Spencer’s

doctrine, it must be owned, does not offer the _clearest_ example of

the naturalistic fallacy as used in support of Evolutionistic Ethics.

A clearer example might be found in the doctrine of Guyau[5], a writer

who has lately had considerable vogue in France, but who is not so well

known as Spencer. Guyau might almost be called a disciple of Spencer;

he is frankly evolutionistic, and frankly naturalistic; and I may

mention that he does not seem to think that he differs from Spencer by

reason of his naturalism. The point in which he has criticised Spencer

concerns the question how far the ends of ‘pleasure’ and of ‘increased

life’ coincide as motives and means to the attainment of the ideal: he

does not seem to think that he differs from Spencer in the fundamental

principle that the ideal is ‘Quantity of life, measured in breadth

as well as in length,’ or, as Guyau says, ‘Expansion and intensity

of life’; nor in the naturalistic reason which he gives for this

principle. And I am not sure that he does differ from Spencer in these

points. Spencer does, as I shall shew, use the naturalistic fallacy in

details; but with regard to his fundamental principles, the following

doubts occur: Is he fundamentally a Hedonist? And, if so, is he a

naturalistic Hedonist? In that case he would better have been treated

in my next chapter. Does he hold that a tendency to increase quantity

of life is merely a _criterion_ of good conduct? Or does he hold that

such increase of life is marked out by nature as an end at which we

ought to aim?

 

[5] See _Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction_, par

M. Guyau. 4me édition. Paris: F. Alcan, 1896.

 

I think his language in various places would give colour to all these

hypotheses; though some of them are mutually inconsistent. I will try

to discuss the main points.

 

 

=30.= The modern vogue of ‘Evolution’ is chiefly owing to Darwin’s

investigations as to the origin of species. Darwin formed a strictly

biological hypothesis as to the manner in which certain forms of animal

life became established, while others died out and disappeared. His

theory was that this might be accounted for, partly at least, in the

following way. When certain varieties occurred (the cause of their

occurrence is still, in the main, unknown), it might be that some of

the points, in which they varied from their parent species or from

other species then existing, made them better able to persist in the

environment in which they found themselves--less liable to be killed

off. They might, for instance, be better able to endure the cold or

heat or changes of the climate; better able to find nourishment from

what surrounded them; better able to escape from or resist other

species which fed upon them; better fitted to attract or to master the