id="Page_4" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 4]"/>cover the nature of the obstacle, and gives up any further attempt upon his mysteriously protected prey. Man, with a more highly developed intelligence than the pike, does not accept the phenomenon of Morality with dull resignation. Since he has become conscious of a mysterious barrier erected between his volitions and his actions, he has not ceased to reflect upon this barrier, to investigate it with a timid yet irresistible desire for knowledge, and to try and discover its nature.

It redounds to man's credit that he has devoted so much time and energy to investigating the character and essence of Morality. But the result of these investigations does not redound to his credit. With the exception of theology, there is no subject upon which so much has been written as upon ethics. Yet whosoever plunges into this boundless sea of literature will emerge with feelings bordering upon horror and despair. Here a free rein is given to all man's errors, to his habit of drawing false conclusions, to his faulty modes of thought. Incapacity to interpret facts, association of ideas, elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp and uncurbed by any criticism, intemperate mysticism, arrogant dogmatism, shallow self-sufficiency—all these vie with one another in the presentment of theories which either are patently foolish, arbitrary or ill-founded, or else prove to be so when impartially examined.

It is hard for the few reasonable thinkers who have taken part in this great investigation to make their voices heard amid the uproar raised by the solemn, unctuous, dictatorial or pedantic tomfools. And even the former are not entirely satisfactory, because they do not distinguish clearly enough between the form and the substance, the externals and the essence of Morality, and because they do not discriminate with sufficient care between questions as to its nature, origin and aim, and its powers or sanctions—questions which must on no account be confounded.

What is Morality? Obviously it is necessary to attempt a clear answer to this question before any useful purpose can be served by inquiring into the group of problems to which it gives rise: its aim, its laws, its origin, its method, its assumptions. The Stoics answer this question as follows: "Morality is living according to Nature." Furthermore, it is quite in accordance with the doctrine of the Stoics that Cicero says: "Virtue, however, is nothing but Nature developed to the highest possible degree of perfection" ("ad summum perducta"). Moral therefore means natural; Morality and Nature are equivalent; they are one. Really a simpler or more childlike explanation is hardly possible. The most superficial glance at human life and at our own soul teaches us that Morality is contrary to Nature, that it must struggle against Nature to assert itself, that it means a victory over Nature, in so far as we understand by Nature in this special sense the most primitive reaction of man to simple and more complicated stimuli, the first tendency of impulse, the immediate, instinctive urge to act. Further, the definition of the Stoics ignores the aggregation of concepts which the synthetic conception, Morality, involves; as if this were self-evident and required no definition. The Stoics tacitly assume that Morality and Good are synonymous. Cicero makes this assumption clearer by using the word Virtue (virtus) instead of Morality. But in all languages this word implies approbation and praise. It is an appreciation of worth (Werturteil), to use the expression so appropriately coined by Lotze.

But the very fact that we recognize Morality as being valuable is by no means a matter of course and it demands an explanation.

Certain actions could only be judged to be good if they were distinguished from others which did not suggest the same judgment, which were felt to be not good, to be bad or indifferent. We come to the question, What is Good, what is Bad? The Stoics reply, "That which is good is natural." It is easy to call facts which please us natural, and such as displease us unnatural. In reality both series of facts are equally natural; because everything that happens is natural; because by definition Nature is the synthesis of all phenomena; because nothing exists outside of Nature, and within Nature everything is a part of her and therefore is natural and can be nothing but natural. If we nevertheless wish to distinguish between natural and unnatural phenomena, if we call Good, Morality, and Virtue natural, and compare them favourably with the unnatural, this only proves that we use the words natural and unnatural as synonyms for good and bad, and that we have a ready-made standard by which we measure the naturalness or unnaturalness (that is, the goodness or badness) of actions, and that there exists within ourselves the law by which we judge them to be good or bad. But how do we come by this law? How, of what material, and why do we fashion this standard? Why do we approve of one thing as good and condemn another as bad? What qualities do the former and the latter possess, or what qualities do we ascribe to them? That is what we want to know when we inquire as to the significance of Morality, and the definition of the Stoics throws no light whatever upon the matter.

According to Aristotle Morality is "the activity of Practical Reason, which is accompanied by pleasurable emotion." It is not worth while to dwell upon this definition. It is absolutely valueless. Practical Reason is not a definite concept; Aristotle does not say anywhere what he understands by "practical" when he applies this attribute to Reason; and to call every activity of Practical Reason accompanied by pleasurable emotion Morality is mere eccentricity.

To take only one example: if I have a house built, and accept the architect's plans because they please me greatly, my practical reason is most certainly active; the gratification induced by my reasonable choice of the plans is doubtless a pleasurable emotion; but assuredly no one will characterize as moral this activity of my practical reason which is accompanied by pleasurable emotion. It may be that Aristotle was contemplating not a single action, but conduct in life as a whole. In that case he has expressed in an unfortunate, and much too loose a manner the thought that Morality is Reason plus pleasurable emotion. We shall frequently meet with and have to examine this idea, which omits to explain why pleasurable emotions attend certain activities of "Practical Reason," whatever that may be, and fail to be aroused by others.

Judaism, as embodied in its law-givers and prophets, teaches that Morality consists in living and acting in accordance with the divine Will. Maimonides, who, however, was regarded by many of his contemporaries as a heretic, does not consider Judaism a creed at all, but a code of Morality. He maintains that anyone who repudiates the tenets of the Jewish faith, even the most essential one, namely, the belief in a single god, must not be excluded from the Jewish community as long as he conforms to its moral laws. This thinker, usually so accurate and nice in his reasoning, overlooks the fact that in this case he is contradicting himself in a manner wellnigh comic. According to him, too, Morality consists in the endeavour to live and act in accordance with the divine Will. How is such an endeavour possible for a man who does not believe in God and for whom consequently no divine Will exists? Therefore either Morality must be something different from an approximation to the standard set up by the divine Will, or else he who denies God cannot be moral. But I will leave the author of the "Guide of those who have gone astray" to his self-contradiction, and only retain the Jewish definition of Morality as based upon the Will of