 Chapter 1 of Philosophical Essays by Bertrand Russell Second half This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. The Elements of Ethics Part 4. Determinism and Morals Section 24 The importance to ethics of the free will question is a subject upon which there has existed almost as much diversity of opinion, as on the free will question itself. It has been urged by advocates of free will that its denial involves the denial of merit and demerit, and that with the denial of these, ethics collapses. It has been urged on the other side that unless we can foresee, at least partially, the consequences of our actions, it is impossible to know what course we ought to take under any given circumstances, and that if other people's actions cannot be in any degree predicted, the foresight required for rational action becomes impossible. I do not propose, in the following discussion, to go into the free will controversy itself. The grounds in favor of determinism appear to me overwhelming, and I shall content myself with a brief indication of these grounds. The question I am concerned with is not the free will question itself, but the question how, if at all, morals are affected by assuming determinism. In considering this question, as in most of the other problems of ethics, the moralist who has not had a philosophical training appears to me to go astray and become involved in needless complications, through supposing that right and wrong in conduct are the ultimate conceptions of ethics, rather than good and bad, in the effects of conduct and in other things. The words good and bad are used both for the sort of conduct which is right or wrong, and for the sort of effects to be expected from right and wrong conduct respectively. We speak of a good picture, a good dinner, and so on, as well as of a good action, but there is a great difference between these two meanings of good. Roughly speaking, a good action is one of which the probable effects are good in the other sense. It is confusing to have two meanings for one word, and we therefore agreed in the previous section to speak of right action rather than a good action. In order to decide whether an action is right, it is necessary, as we have seen, to consider its probable effects. If the probable effects are, on the whole, better than those of any other action, which is possible under the circumstances, then the action is right. The things that are good are things which, on their own account, and apart from any consideration of their effects, we ought to wish to see in existence. They are such things as, we may suppose, might make the world appear to the Creator worth creating. I do not wish to deny that right conduct is among the things that are good on their own account, but if it is so, it depends for its intrinsic goodness upon the goodness of those other things which it aims at producing, such as love or happiness. Thus, the rightness of conduct is not the fundamental conception upon which ethics is built up. This fundamental conception is intrinsic goodness or badness. As the outcome of our discussions in the previous section, I shall assume the following definitions. The objectively right action, in any circumstances, is that action which, of all that are possible, gives us, when account is taken of all available data, the greatest expectation of probable good effects, or the least expectation of probable bad effects. The subjectively right or moral action is that one which will be judged by the agent to be objectively right if he devotes to the question an appropriate amount of candid thought, or, in the case of actions that ought to be impulsive, a small amount. The appropriate amount of thought depends upon the importance of the action and the difficulty of the decision. An act is neither moral nor immoral when it is unimportant, and a small amount of reflection would not suffice to show whether it was right or wrong. After these preliminaries, we can pass to the consideration of our main topic. Section 25. The principle of causality, that every event is determined by previous events and can theoretically be predicted when enough previous events are known, appears to apply just as much to human actions as to other events. It cannot be said that its application to human actions, or to any other phenomena, is wholly beyond doubt, but a doubt extending to the principle of causality must be so fundamental as to involve all science, all everyday knowledge, and everything, or almost everything, that we believe about the actual world. If causality is doubted, morals collapse, since a right action, as we have seen, is one of which the probable effects are the best possible, so that estimates of right and wrong necessarily presuppose that our actions can have effects, and therefore that the law of causality holds. In favor of the view that human actions alone are not the effects of causes, there appears to be no ground whatever, except the sense of spontaneity. But the sense of spontaneity only affirms that we can do as we choose, and choose as we please, which no determinist denies. They cannot affirm that our choice is independent of all motives, footnote 1, a motive means merely a cause of volition, end of footnote 1. And indeed, introspection tends rather to show the opposite. It is said by the advocates of free will, footnote 2, I use free will to mean the doctrine that not all volitions are determined by causes, which is the denial of determinism. Free will is often used in senses compatible with determinism, but I am not concerned to affirm it or deny it in such senses, end of footnote 2. That determinism destroys morals, since it shows that all our actions are inevitable, and that therefore they deserve neither praise nor blame. Let us consider, how far, if at all, this is the case. Section 26 The part of ethics which is concerned, not with conduct, but with the meaning of good and bad, and the things that are intrinsically good and bad, is plainly quite independent of free will. Causality belongs to the description of the existing world, and we saw that no inference can be drawn from what exists to what is good. Whether then causality holds, always, sometimes, or never, is a question wholly irrelevant in the consideration of intrinsic goods and evils. But when we come to conduct and the notion of ought, we cannot be sure that determinism makes no difference. For we saw that the objectively right action may be defined, as that one which, of all that are possible under the circumstances, will probably on the whole have the best consequences. The action which is objectively right must, therefore, be in some sense possible. But if determinism is true, there is a sense in which no action is possible, except the one actually performed. Hence, if the two senses of possibility are the same, the action actually performed is always objectively right. For it is the only possible action, and therefore, there is no other possible action which would have had better results. There is here, I think, a real difficulty, but let us consider the various kinds of possibility which may be meant. In order that an act may be a possible act, it must be physically possible to perform, it must be possible to think of, and it must be possible to choose if we think of it. Physical possibility, to begin with, is obviously necessary. There are circumstances under which I might do a great deal of good by running from Oxford to London in five minutes, but I should not be called unwise or guilty of an objectively wrong act for omitting to do so. We may define an act as physically possible when it will occur if I will it. Acts for which this condition fails are not to be taken account of in estimating rightness or wrongness. Section 27. To judge whether an act is possible to think of is more difficult, but we certainly take account of it in judging what a man ought to do. There is no physical impossibility about employing one's spare moments and writing lyric poems better than any yet written, and this would certainly be a more useful employment than most people find for their spare moments. But we do not blame people for not writing lyric poems, unless, like Fitzdraald, they are people that we feel could have written them. And not only do we not blame them, but we feel that their action may be objectively, as well as subjectively right, if it is the wisest that they could have thought of. But what they could have thought of is not the same as what they did think of. Suppose a man in a fire or a shipwreck becomes so panic-stricken that he never for a moment thinks of the help that is due to other people. We do not on that account hold that he does right in only thinking of himself. Hence, in some sense, though it is not quite clear what this sense is, some of the courses of action which a man does not think of are regarded as possible for him to think of, though others are admittedly impossible. There is thus a sense in which it must be possible to think of an action if we are to hold that it is objectively wrong not to perform the action. There is also, if determinism is true, a sense in which it is not possible to think of any action except those which we do think of, but it is questionable whether these two senses of possibility are the same. A man who finds that his house is on fire may run out of it in a panic without thinking of warning the other inmates. But we feel, rightly or wrongly, that it was possible for him to think of warning them in a sense in which it is not possible for a prosaic person to think of a lyric poem. It may be that we are wrong in feeling this difference, and that what really distinguishes the two cases is dependence upon past decisions. That is to say, we may recognize that no different choice among alternatives thought of at any time would have turned an ordinary man into a good lyric poet. But that most men, by suitably choosing among alternatives actually thought of, can acquire this sort of character which will lead them to remember their neighbors in a fire. And if a man engages in some useful occupation of which a natural effect is to destroy his nerve, we may conceivably hold that this excuses his panic in an emergency. In such a point it would seem that our judgment may really be dependent on the view we take as to the existence of free will, for the believer in free will cannot allow any such excuse. If we try to state the difference we feel between the case of the lyric poems and the case of the fire, it seems to come to this. That we do not hold an act objectively wrong when it would have required that we recognize as a special aptitude in order to think of a better act, and when we believe that the agent did not possess this aptitude. But this distinction seems to imply that there is not such a thing as a special aptitude for this or that virtue, a view which cannot, I think, be maintained. An aptitude for generosity or for kindness may be as much a natural gift as an aptitude for poetry. And an aptitude for poetry may be as much improved by practice as an aptitude for kindness or generosity. Thus it would seem that there is no sense in which it is possible to think of some actions, which in fact we do not think of, but impossible to think of others. Except the sense that the ones we regard as possible would have been thought of if a different choice among alternatives actually thought of had been made on some previous occasion. We shall then modify our previous definition of the objectively right action by saying that it is the probably most beneficial among those that occur to the agent at the moment of choice. But we shall hold that in certain cases. The fact that a more beneficial alternative does not occur to him is evidence of a wrong choice on some previous occasion. Section 28 But since occasions of choice do often arise, and since there certainly is a sense in which it is possible to choose any one of a number of different actions which we think of, we can still distinguish some actions as right and some as wrong. Our previous definitions of objectively right actions and of moral actions still hold, with the modification that, among physically possible actions, only those which we actually think of are to be regarded as possible. When several alternative actions present themselves, it is certain that we can both do which we choose and choose which we will. In this sense, all the alternatives are possible. What determinism maintains is that our will to choose this or that alternative is the effect of antecedents. But this does not prevent our will from being itself a cause of other effects, and the sense in which different decisions are possible seems sufficient to distinguish some actions as right and some as wrong, some as moral and some as immoral. Connected with this is another sense in which, when we deliberate, either decision is possible. The fact that we judge one course objectively right may be the cause of our choosing this course. Thus, before we have decided as to which course we think right, either is possible in the sense that either will result from our decision as to which we think right. This sense of possibility is important to the moralist, and illustrates the fact that determinism does not make moral deliberation futile. Section 29 Determinism does not, therefore, destroy the distinction of right and wrong, and we saw before that it does not destroy the distinction of good or bad. We shall still be able to regard some people as better than others, and some actions as more right than others. But it is said that praise and blame and responsibility are destroyed by determinism. When a madman commits what in a sane man we should call a crime, we do not blame him, partly because he probably cannot judge rightly as to consequences, but partly also because we feel that he could not have done otherwise. If all men are really in the position of the madman, it would seem that all ought to escape blame. But I think the question of choice really decides as to praise and blame. The madman, we believe, excluding the case of wrong judgment as to consequences, did not choose between different courses, but was impelled by a blind impulse. The sane man who, say, commits a murder has, on the contrary, either at the time of the murder, or at some earlier time, chosen the worst of two or more alternatives that occurred to him. And it is for this we blame him. It is true that the two cases merge into each other, and the madman may be blamed, if he has become mad, in consequence of vicious self-indulgence. But it is right that the two cases should not be too sharply distinguished, for we know how hard it often is in practice to decide whether people are what is called responsible for their actions. It is sufficient that there is a distinction, and that it can be applied easily in most cases, though there are marginal cases which present difficulties. We apply praise or blame, then, and we attribute responsibility, where a man having to exercise choice has chosen wrongly, and this sense of praise or blame is not destroyed by determinism. Section 30. Determinism, then, does not in any way interfere with morals. It is worth noticing that free will, on the contrary, would interfere most seriously, if anybody really believed in it. People never do, as a matter of fact, believe that anyone else's actions are not determined by motives. However much they may think themselves free. Bradshaw consists entirely of predictions as to the actions of engine drivers, but no one doubts Bradshaw, on the ground, that the volitions of engine drivers are not governed by motives. If we really believed that other people's actions did not have causes, we could never try to influence other people's actions, for such influence can only result, if we know, more or less, what causes will produce the actions we desire. If we could never try to influence other people's actions, no man could try to get elected to parliament, or ask a woman to marry him. Argument, exhortation, and command would become mere idle breath. Thus almost all the actions with which morality is concerned would become irrational. Rational action would be wholly precluded from trying to influence people's volitions, and right and wrong would be interfered with, in a way in which determinism certainly does not interfere with them. Most morality absolutely depends upon the assumption that volitions have causes, and nothing in morals is destroyed by this assumption. Most people, it is true, do not hold the free will doctrine in so extreme a form as that against which we have been arguing. They would hold that most of a man's actions have causes, but that some few, say one percent, are uncaused, spontaneous assertions of will. If this view is taken, unless we can mark off the one percent of volitions which are uncaused, every inference as to human actions is infected with what we may call one percent of doubt. This, it must be admitted, would not matter much in practice, because, on other grounds, there will usually be at least one percent of doubt in predictions as to human actions. But from the standpoint of theory there is a wide difference. The sort of doubt that must be admitted in any case is a sort which is capable of indefinite diminution. While the sort derived from the possible intervention of free will is absolute and ultimate. Insofar, therefore, as the possibility of uncaused volitions comes in, all the consequences above pointed out follow. And insofar, as it does not come in, determinism holds. Thus one percent of free will has one percent of the objectionableness of absolute free will, and has also only one percent of the ethical consequences. In fact, however, no one really holds that right acts are uncaused. It would be a monstrous paradox to say that a man's decision ought not to be influenced by his belief as to what is his duty. Yet, if he allows himself to decide on an act because he believes it to be his duty, his decision has a motive, that is, a cause, and is not free in the only sense in which the determinist must deny freedom. It would seem, therefore, that the objections to determinism are mainly attributable to misunderstanding of its purport. Hence, finally, it is not determinism, but free will that has subversive consequences. There is, therefore, no reason to regret the grounds in favor of determinism are overwhelmingly strong. Part 5, Egoism Section 31 We have next to consider an objection to the view that objective rightness consists in probably having the best consequences on the whole. The objection I mean is that of egoism, that a man's first duty is to himself, and that to secure his own good is more imperative than to secure other peoples. Extensions of this view are that a man should prefer the interest of his family to that of strangers, of his countrymen to that of foreigners, or of his friends to that of his enemies. All these views have in common the belief that, quite apart from practicability, the ends which one man ought to pursue are different from those which another man ought to pursue. Egoism has several different meanings. It may mean that every man is psychologically bound to pursue his own good exclusively. It may mean that every man will achieve the best result on the whole by pursuing his own good. It may mean that his own good is the only thing a man ought to think good, and it may mean, lastly, that there is no such thing as the general good at all, but only individual goods, and that each man is only concerned with what is good for himself. These meanings all presuppose that we know what is meant by my good, but this is not an easy conception to define clearly. I shall therefore begin by considering what it is capable of meaning. Section 32. My good is a phrase capable of many different meanings. It may mean any good that I desire, whether this has any further special relation to me or not. Or again, it may mean my pleasure or any state of mind in me which is good. Or it may include honor and respect from others, or anything which is good, and has some relation to me in virtue of which it can be considered mine. The two meanings with which we shall be concerned are 1. Any good I desire, 2. Any good having to me, some relation other than that I desire it, which it does not have to others, of the kind which makes it mine, as my pleasure, my reputation, my learning, my virtue, and so on. The theory that every man is psychologically bound to pursue his own good exclusively is I think, inconsistent with known facts of human nature, unless my good is taken in the sense of something which I desire, and even then I do not necessarily pursue what I desire most strongly. The important point is that what I desire has not necessarily any such other relation to me, as would make it my good in the second of the above senses. This is the point which must now occupy us. If my good means a good which is mine in some other sense than that I desire it, then I think it can be shown that my good is by no means the only object of my actions. There is a common confusion in people's thoughts on this subject, namely the following. If I desire anything, its attainment will give me more or less pleasure, and its non-attainment will give me more or less pain. Hence it is inferred that I desire it on account of the pleasure it would give me, and not on its own account. But this is to put the cart before the horse. The pleasure we get from things usually depends upon our having had a desire, which they satisfy. The pleasure of eating and drinking, for example, depend upon hunger and thirst. Or, take again, the pleasure people get from the victory of their own party in a contest. Other people would derive just the same pleasure from the victory of the opposite party. In each case the pleasure depends for its existence upon the desire, and would not exist if the desire had not existed. Thus we cannot say that people only desire pleasure. They desire all kinds of things, and pleasure comes from desires much oftener than desires from imagined pleasures. Thus the mere fact that a man will derive some pleasure from achieving his object is no reason for saying that his desire is self-centered. Section 33 Such arguments are necessary for the refutation of those who hold it to be obvious a priori that every man must always pursue his own good exclusively. But, as is often the case with refutations of a priori theories, there is an air of logic-chopping about a discussion as to whether desire or the pleasure expected from its satisfaction ought to have priority. Let us leave these questions and consider whether, as a matter of fact, people's actions can be explained on the egoistic hypotheses. The most obvious instances to the contrary are, of course, cases of self-sacrifice, of men to their country, for example, or of parents to children. But these instances are so obvious that the egoistic theory is ready with an answer. It will maintain that, in such cases, the people who make the sacrifice would not be happy if they did not make it, that they desire the applause of men or of their own consciences, that they find in the moment of sacrifice an exaltation which realizes their highest self and so on and so on and so on. Let us examine these arguments. It is said that the people in question would not be happy if they did not make the sacrifice. This is often false, in fact, but we may let that pass. Why would they not be happy? Either because others would think less well of them or they themselves would feel pangs of conscience or because they genuinely desired the object to be attained by their sacrifice and could not be happy without it. In the last case they have admittedly a desire not centered in self. The supposed effect upon their happiness is due to the desire and would not otherwise exist so that the effect upon happiness cannot be brought into account for the desire. But if people may have desires for things that lie outside their ego then such desires, like others, may determine action and it is possible to pursue an object which is not my good in any sense except that I desire and pursue it. Thus in all cases of self-sacrifice those who hold the egoistic theory will have to maintain that the outside end secured by the self-sacrifice is not desired. When a soldier sacrifices his life he does not desire the victory of his country and so on. This is already sufficiently preposterous and sufficiently contrary to plain fact but it is not enough. Assuming that this is the case let us suppose that self-sacrifice is dictated not by a desire for any outside end but by fear of the disapproval of others. If this were so there would be no self-sacrifice if no one would know of its non-performance. A man who saw another drowning would not try to save him if he was sure that no one would see him not jumping into the water. This also is plainly contrary to fact. It may be said that the desire for approval as well as the fear of disapproval ought to be taken into account and demand can always make sure of approval by judicious boasting but men have made sacrifices universally disapproved for example in maintaining unpopular opinions and very many have made sacrifices of which an essential part was that they should not be mentioned hence the defender of psychological egoism is driven back on the approval of conscience as the motive to an act of self-sacrifice but it is really impossible to believe that all who deny themselves are so destitute of rational foresight as this theory implies. The pangs of conscience are to most people a very endurable pain and practice in wrongdoing rapidly diminishes them and if the act of self-denial involves the loss of life the rapture of self-approbation which the virtuous man is supposed to be seeking must in any case be very brief. I conclude that the psychology of egoism is only produced by the exigencies of a wrong theory and is not in accordance with the facts of observable human nature thus when we consider human actions and desires apart from preconceived theories it is obvious that most of them are objective and have no direct reference to self if my good means an object belonging to me in the sense of being a state of my mind or a whole of which a state of my mind is apart or what others think about me then it is false that I can only desire or pursue my good the only sense in which it is true is when my good is taken to mean what I desire but what I desire need not have any other connection with myself except that I desire it thus there is no truth in the doctrine that men do as a matter of fact only desire or pursue objects specially related to themselves in any way except as objects desired or pursued section 34 the next form of egoism to be considered is the doctrine that every man will best serve the general good by pursuing his own there is a comfortable 18th century flavor about this doctrine it suggests a good income a good digestion and an enviable limitation of sympathy we may admit at once that in a well-ordered world it would be true and even that as society becomes better organized it becomes progressively truer since rewards will more and more be attached to useful actions and in so far as a man's own good is more in his control than other peoples his actions will rightly concern themselves more with it than with other peoples for the same reason he will be more concerned with the good of his family than with that of people with whom he has less to do and more with the good of his country than with that of foreign countries but the scope of such considerations is strictly limited and everyone can easily find in his own experience cases where the general good has been served by what at any rate appears to be a self-sacrifice if such cases are to be explained away it is necessary to alter the conception of my own good in a way which destroys the significance of the doctrine we are considering it may be said for example that the greatest of goods is a virtuous life it will then follow that whoever lives a virtuous life secures for himself the greatest of goods but if the doctrine means to assert as it usually does that self-centered desires if they are prudent and enlightened will suffice to produce the most useful conduct then a refutation may be obtained either from common experience or from any shining example of public merit the reformer is almost always a man who has strong desires for objects quite unconnected with himself and indeed this is a characteristic of all who are not petty minded I think the doctrine depends for its plausibility like psychological egoism upon regarding every object which I desire as my good and supposing that it must be mine in some sense other than that I desire it section 35 the doctrine that my good is the only thing that I ought to think good can only be logically maintained by those who hold that I ought to believe what is false for if I am right in thinking that my good is the only good then everyone else is mistaken unless he admits that my good not his is the only good but this is an admission which I can scarcely hope that others will be willing to make but what is really intended is as a rule to deny that there is any such thing as the general good at all this doctrine cannot be logically refuted unless by discovering in those who maintain it some opinion which implies the opposite if a man were to maintain that there is no such thing as color for example we should be unable to disprove his position provided he was careful to think out its implications as a matter of fact however everybody does hold opinions which imply a general good everybody judges that some sorts of communities are better than others and most people who affirm that when they say a thing is good they mean merely that they desire it would admit that it is better two people's desires should be satisfied than only one person's in some such way people fail to carry out the doctrine that there is no such concept as good and if there is such a concept then what is good is not good for me or for you but is simply good the denial that there is such a thing as good in an impersonal sense is only possible therefore to those who are content to have no ethics at all section 36 it is possible to hold that although there is such a thing as the general good and although this is not always best served by pursuing my own good yet it is always right to pursue my own good exclusively this doctrine is not now often held as regards individuals but in international politics it is commonly held as regards nations Englishmen and many Germans would admit that it is right for an English statesman to pursue exclusively the good of England and a German the good of Germany even if that good is to be attained by greater injury to the other it is difficult to see what grounds there can be for such a view if good is to be pursued at all it can hardly be relevant who is going to enjoy the good it would be as reasonable for a man on Sundays to think only of his welfare on future Sundays and on Mondays to think only of Mondays the doctrine in fact seems to have no merit except that it justifies acts otherwise unjustifiable it is indeed so evident that it is better to secure a greater good for A than a lesser good for B that it is hard to find any still more evident principle by which to prove this and if A happens to be someone else and B to be myself that cannot affect the question since it is irrelevant to the general maxim who A and B may be if no form of egoism is valid it follows that an act which ought to be performed may involve a self sacrifice not compensated by any personal good acquired by means of such an act so unwilling however are people to admit self sacrifice as an ultimate duty that they will often defend theological dogmas on the ground that such dogmas reconcile self interest with duty such reconciliations it should be observed are in any case merely external they do not show that duty means the pursuit of one's own interest but only that the acts which it dictates are those that further one's own interest thus when it is pretended that there are logical grounds making such reconciliations imperative we must reply that the logical purpose aimed at could only be secured by showing that duty means the same as self interest it is sometimes said that the two maxims you ought to aim at producing and you ought to pursue your own interest are equally evident and each is supposed to be true in all possible circumstances and in all possible worlds but if that were the case a world where self interest and the general good might conflict ought not only to be non existent but inconceivable yet so far is it from being inconceivable that many people conceive it to be exemplified in the actual world hence the view that honesty is the best policy may be a comfort to the reluctant saint but cannot be a solution to the perplexed logician the notion therefore that a good god or a future life can be logically inferred to remove the apparent conflict of self interest and the general good if there were a logical puzzle it could only be removed by showing that self interest and the general good mean the same thing not by showing that they coincide in fact but if the above discussion has been sound there is no logical puzzle we ought to pursue the general good and when this conflicts with self interest self interest ought to give way part six methods of estimating section 37 in order to complete our account of ethics it would be natural to give a list of the principal goods and evils of which we have experience I shall however not attempt to give such a list since I hold that the reader is probably quite as capable as I am of judging what things are good and what bad all that I propose to do in this section is to examine the view that we can never know what is good and what bad and to suggest methods to be employed and fallacies to be avoided in considering intrinsic goodness or badness there is a widespread ethical skepticism which is based upon observations of men's differences in regard to ethical questions it is said that one thing good and B thinks another and there is no possible way in which either can persuade the other that he is wrong hence it is concluded the whole thing is really only a matter of taste and it is a waste of time to ask which is right when two people differ in a judgment of value it would be absurd to deny that as compared with physical science ethics does suffer which such skeptics allege it must be admitted that ultimately the judgment this thing is good or that thing is bad must be an immediate judgment which results merely from considering the thing appraised and cannot be proved by any argument that would appeal to a man who had passed an opposite immediate judgment I think it must also be admitted that even after every possible precaution against error people's immediate judgments of value do still differ more or less but such immediate differences seem to me to be the exception most of the actual differences are of a kind which argument might lessen since usually the opinion held is either one of which the opposite is demonstrable or one which is falsely believed to be itself demonstrable this second alternative embraces all false beliefs held because they flow from a false theory and such beliefs though often the direct contraries of what immediate inspection would lead to are apt to be a complete bar to inspection this is a very familiar phenomenon Sydney Smith believed to be always witty says pass the mustard and the whole table was convulsed with laughter much wrong judgment in ethics is of this nature section 38 in regard to the things that are good or bad in themselves and not merely on account of their effects there are two opposite errors of this sort to be avoided the one the error of the philosopher the other that of the moralist the philosopher bent on the construction of a system is inclined to simplify the facts unduly to give them a symmetry which is fictitious and to twist them into a form in which they can all be deduced from one or two general principles the moralist on the other hand being primarily concerned with conduct tends to become absorbed in means to value the actions not to perform more than the ends which such actions serve this latter error for in theorizing it is an error is so forced upon us by the exigencies of practice that we may easily come to feel the ultimate ends of life far less important than the proximate and intermediate purposes which we consciously endeavor to realize and hence most of what they value in this world would have to be omitted by many moralists from any imagined heaven because there such things as self-denial and effort and courage and pity could find no place the philosopher's error is less common than the moralists because the love of system and of the intellectual satisfaction of a deductive edifice are rarer than the love of virtue but among writers on ethics the philosopher's error occurs oftener than the other because such writers are almost always among the few men who have the love of system Kant has the bad eminence of combining both errors in the highest possible degree since he holds that there is nothing good except the virtuous will which simplifies the good as much as any philosopher could wish and mistakes means for ends as completely as any moralist could enjoin section 39 the moralists fallacy illustrates another important point the immediate judgments which are required in ethics concern intrinsic goods and evils not right and wrong conduct I do not wish to deny that people have immediate judgments of right and wrong nor yet that in action it is usually moral to follow such judgments what I mean is that such judgments are not among those which ethics must accept without proof provided that whether by the suggestions of such judgments or otherwise we have accepted some such general connection of right action with good consequences in part three for then if we know what is good and bad we can discover what is right and wrong hence in regard to right and wrong it is unnecessary to rely upon immediate inspection a method which must be allowed some scope but should be allowed as little as possible I think when attention is clearly confined to good and bad between different people is seen to be much less than might at first be thought right and wrong since they depend upon consequences will vary as men's circumstances vary and will be largely affected in particular by men's beliefs about right and wrong since many acts will in all likelihood have a worse effect if they are generally believed to be wrong and believed to be right while with some acts the opposite is the case for example a man who in exceptional circumstances acts contrary to a received and generally true moral rule is more likely to be right if he will be thought to be wrong for then his action will have less tendency to weaken the authority of the rule thus differences as regards rules of right action for skepticism provided the different rules are held in different societies yet such differences are in practice a very powerful solvent of ethical beliefs section 40 some differences as to what is good in itself must however be acknowledged even when all possible care has been taken to consider the question by itself for example what is good as opposed to as opposed to was almost universally considered good until a recent time yet in our own day it is very generally condemned hell can only be justified if retributive punishment is good and the decay of a belief in hell appears to be mainly due to a change of feeling on this point but this difference is often due to some theory on one side or on both and not to immediate inspection thus in the case of hell people may reason consciously or unconsciously that revelation shows that God created hell and that therefore retributive punishment must be good in this argument doubtless influences many who hold retributive punishment to be bad where there is such an influence we do not have a genuine difference in an immediate judgment as to intrinsic good or bad and in fact such differences are I believe very rare indeed section 41 a source of apparent differences is that some things which in isolation are different are essential ingredients in what is good as a whole and some things which are good or indifferent are essential ingredients in what is bad as a whole in such cases we judge differently according as we are considering a thing in isolation or as an ingredient in some larger whole to judge whether a thing is in itself good whether we should value it if it existed otherwise then as an ingredient in some whole which we value but to judge whether a thing ought to exist we have to consider whether it is a part of some whole which we value so much that we prefer the existence of the whole with its possibly bad part to the existence of neither thus compassion is a good of which someone's misfortune is an essential part envy is an evil of which someone's good is an essential part hence the position of some optimists that all the evil in the world is necessary to constitute the best possible whole is not logically absurd though there is so far as I know no evidence in its favor similarly the view that all the good is an unavoidable ingredient in the worst possible whole is not logically absurd but this view not being agreeable has found no advocates even where none of the parts of a good whole are bad or of a bad whole good it often happens that the value of a complex whole cannot be measured by the values of its parts the whole is often better or worse than the sum of the values of its parts in all aesthetic pleasures for example it is important that the object admired should really be beautiful in the admiration of what is ugly there is something ridiculous or even sometimes repulsive although apart from the object there may be no difference in the value of the emotion per se and yet apart from the admiration it may produce a beautiful object if it is inanimate appears to be neither good nor bad thus in themselves an ugly object and the emotion it excites in a person of bad taste may be respectively just as good as a beautiful object and the emotion it excites in a person of good taste may consider the enjoyment of what is beautiful to be better as a whole than an exactly similar enjoyment of what is ugly if we did not we should be foolish not to encourage bad taste since ugly objects are much easier to produce than beautiful ones in like manner we consider it better to love a good person than a bad one than a good meal yet titiana is laughed at thus many goods must be estimated as holes not piecemeal and exactly the same applies to evils in such cases the holes may be called organic unities section 42 many theorists who have some simple account of the soul good have also probably have some as such immediate judgments of value inconsistent with their theory from which it appears that their theory is not really derived from immediate judgments of value thus those who have held that virtue is the soul good have generally also held that in heaven it will be rewarded by happiness yet a reward thus they plainly feel that happiness also is a good if virtue were the soul good it would be logically compelled to be its own reward a similar argument can be brought against those who hold that the soul good is pleasure or happiness as some prefer to call it this doctrine is regarded as self evident by many both philosophers and plain men but although the general principle may at first sight seem obvious many of its applications are highly paradoxical to live in a fool's paradise is commonly considered a misfortune yet in a world which allows no paradise of any other kind a fool's paradise is surely the happiest habitation all hedonists are at great pains to prove that what are called the higher pleasures are really the more pleasurable but plainly their anxiety to prove this arises from an uneasy instinct that such pleasures are higher even if they are not more pleasurable the bias which appears in hedonist arguments on this point is otherwise quite inexplicable although they hold that quantity of pleasure being equal push pin is as good as poetry they are careful to argue that quantity of pleasure is not equal but is greater in the case of poetry a proposition which seems highly disputable and chiefly commended by its edifying nature anyone would admit that the pleasure of poetry is a greater good than the pleasure of bathing on a hot day but few people could say honestly that it is as intense and even states of mind which as a whole are painful maybe highly good love of the dead may easily be the best thing in a life yet it cannot but be full of pain and conversely we condemn pleasure derived from the love of what is bad even if we admit that the pleasure in itself we consider the whole state of mind bad if two bitter enemies lived in different countries and each falsely believed that the other was undergoing tortures each might feel pleasure yet we should not consider such a state of things good we should even think it much worse than a state in which each derived pain from the belief that the other was in torture it may of course be said that this is due to the fact that hatred in general causes more pain than pleasure and hence is condemned broadly on hedonistic grounds without sufficient regard to possible exceptions but the possibility of exceptions to the principle that hatred is bad can hardly be seriously maintained except by theorists in difficulties thus while we may admit that all pleasure in itself is probably more or less good we must hold that pleasures are not good in proportion to their intensity and that many states of mind although pleasure is an element in them are bad as a whole and may even be worse than they would be if the pleasure were absent and this result has been reached by appealing to ethical judgments with which almost everyone would agree I conclude therefore from all that has been induced in this section that although some ultimate ethical differences must be admitted between different people by far the greater part of the commonly observed differences are due either to asking the wrong question as for example by mistaking means for ends of the theory in falsifying immediate judgments there is reason to hope therefore that a very large measure of agreement on ethical questions may be expected to result from clearer thinking and this is probably the chief benefit to be ultimately derived from the study of ethics section 43 we may now sum up our whole discussion of ethics the most fundamental notions and ethics we agreed are the notions of intrinsic good and evil these are wholly independent of other notions and the goodness or badness of a thing cannot be inferred from any of its other qualities such as its existence or non-existence hence what actually occurs has no bearing on what does occur and what ought to occur has no bearing on what does occur the next pair of notions with which we were concerned were those of objective right and wrong the objectively right act is the act which a man will hold that he ought to perform when he is not mistaken this we decided is that one should reduce the best results thus in judging what actions are right we need to know what results are good when a man is mistaken as to what is objectively right he may nevertheless act in a way which is subjectively right thus we need a new pair of notions which we called moral and immoral a moral act is virtuous and deserves praise an immoral act is sinful and deserves blame a moral act we decided is one which the agent would have judged right after an appropriate amount of candid reflection footnote one or after a small amount in the cases of acts which ought to be impulsive end of footnote one action depends upon the difficulty and importance of his decision we then considered the bearing of determinism on morals which we found to consist in a limitation of the acts which are possible under any circumstances if determinism is true there is a sense in which no act is possible except the one which in fact occurs is the one relevant to ethics in which any act is possible which is contemplated during deliberation provided it is physically possible that is will be performed if we will to perform it we then discussed various forms of egoism and decided that all of them are false finally we considered some mistakes which are liable to be made by an immediate judgment as to the goodness or badness of a thing and we decided that when these mistakes are avoided people probably differ very little in their judgments of intrinsic value the making of such judgments we did not undertake for if the reader agrees he could make them himself and if he disagrees without falling into any possible confusions there is no way of altering his opinion end of chapter one chapter two of philosophical essays by Bertrand Russell this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa the free man's worship footnote one reprinted from the independent review December 1903 end of footnote one to Dr. Fastis in his study Mephistopheles told the history of the creation saying to be worshipped by beings whom he tortured he smiled inwardly and resolved that the great drama should be performed for countless ages the hot nebula world aimlessly through space at length it began to take shape the central mass threw off planets the planets cooled boiling seas and burning mountains heaved and tossed from black masses of cloud hot sheets of rain deluged and now the first germ of life grew in the depths of the ocean and developed rapidly in the fructifying warmth into vast forest trees huge ferns springing from the damp mold sea monsters breeding fighting devouring and passing away and from the monsters as the play unfolded itself man was born with the power of thought the knowledge of good and evil saw that all is passing in this mad monstrous world that all is struggling to snatch at any cost a few brief moments of life before deaths inexorable decree and man said there is a hidden purpose could we but fathom it and the purpose is good for we must reverence something and in the visible world there is nothing worthy of reverence and man stood aside from the struggle resolving that God intended harmony chaos by human efforts and when he followed the instincts which God had transmitted to him from his ancestry of beasts of prey he called it sin and asked God to forgive him but he doubted whether he could be justly forgiven until he invented a divine plan by which God's wrath was to have been appeased and seeing the present was bad he made it yet worse that thereby the future and he gave God thanks for the strength that enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible and God smiled and when he saw that man had become perfect in renunciation and worship he sent another sun through the sky which crashed into man's sun and all returned again to Nebula yes he murmured it was a good play I will have it performed again end quote that man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental co-locations of atoms that no fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system and that the whole temple of man's achievements must inevitably of a universe in ruins all these things, if not quite beyond dispute are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand only within the scaffolding of these truths only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built how in such an alien and inhuman world can so powerless a creature as man preserve his aspirations untarnished a strange mystery it is that nature omnipotent but blind in the revolutions of her secular hurrings through the abysses of space has brought forth at last a child subject still to her power but gifted with sight with knowledge of good and evil with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking mother in spite of death the mark and seal man is yet free during his brief years to examine, to criticize, to know and an imagination to create to him alone in the world with which he is acquainted this freedom belongs and in this lies his superiority to the resist list that control his outward life the savage like ourselves feels the oppression of his impotence before the powers of nature but having in himself respects more than power he is willing to prostrate himself before his gods without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship pathetic and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture of degradation and human sacrifice endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods surely the trembling believer thinks when what is most precious has been freely given their lust for blood and more will not be required the religion of Moloch as such creeds may be generically called is in essence the cringing submission of the slave who dare not even in his heart allow the thought that his master deserves no adulation since the independence of ideals is not yet acknowledged power may be freely worshipped and receive an unlimited respect despite its wanton inflection of pain gradually as morality grows bolder the claim of the ideal world begins to be felt and worship if it is not to cease must be given to gods of another kind than those created by the savage some though they feel the demands of the ideal will still consciously reject them still urging that naked power is worthy of worship such as the attitude of God's answer to Job out of the whirlwind the divine power and knowledge are paraded but of the divine goodness there is no hint such also is the attitude of those who in our own day base their morality upon the struggle for survival maintaining that the survivors are necessarily the fittest but others not content with an answer so repugnant to the moral sense especially religious maintaining that in some hidden manner the world of fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals thus man creates God all powerful and all good the mystic unity of what is and what should be but the world of fact after all is not good and in submitting our judgment to it there is an element of slavishness from which our thoughts must be purged for in all things it is well to exalt the dignity of man by freeing him as far as possible from the tyranny of non-human power when we have realized that power is largely bad that man with his knowledge of good and evil is but a helpless atom in a world which has no such knowledge the choice is again presented to us shall we worship force or shall we worship goodness shall our God exist and be evil or shall he be recognized as the creation of our own conscience the answer to this question is very momentous and affects profoundly our whole morality the worship of force to which Carlisle and Nietzsche and the creed of militarism have accustomed us is the result of failure to maintain our own ideals and our own universe it is itself a prostrate submission to evil a sacrifice of our best to moa if strength indeed is to be respected let us respect rather the strength of those who refuse that false recognition of facts which fails to recognize that facts are often bad let us admit that in the world we know there are many things that would be better otherwise and that which we do and must adhere are not realized in the realm of matter let us preserve our respect for truth for beauty for the ideal of perfection which life does not permit us to attain though none of these things meets with the approval of the unconscious universe if power is bad as it seems to be let us reject it from our hearts in this lies man's true freedom it is an invitation to worship only the God created by our own love of the good to respect only the heaven which inspires the insight of our best moments in action, in desire we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces but in thought in aspiration we are free free from our fellow men free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl from the tyranny of death let us learn then that energy of faith which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good and let us descend in action into the world of fact with that vision always before us when first the opposition of fact and ideal grows fully visible a spirit of fiery revolt a fierce hatred of the gods seems necessary to the assertion of freedom to defy with Promethean constancy a hostile universe to keep its evil always in view always actively hated to refuse no pain that the malice of power can invent appears to be the duty of all who will not bow before the inevitable but indignation is still a bondage for it compels our thoughts to be occupied with an evil world and in the fierceness of desire from which rebellion springs there is a kind of self assertion which it is necessary for the wise to overcome indignation is a submission of our thoughts but not of our desires the stoic freedom in which wisdom consists is found in the submission of our desires but not of our thoughts from the submission of our desires to the virtue of resignation from the freedom of our thoughts springs the whole world of art and philosophy and the vision of beauty by which at last we half reconquer the reluctant world but the vision of beauty is possible only to unfettered contemplation to thoughts not weighted by the load of eager wishes and thus freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield to those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time although the necessity of renunciation is evidence of the existence of evil yet Christianity in preaching it has shown a wisdom exceeding that of the Promethean philosophy of rebellion it must be admitted that of the things we desire some though they prove impossible are yet real goods others however do not form part of a fully purified ideal the belief that what must be renounced is bad though sometimes false is far less often false than untamed passion supposes and the creative religion by providing a reason for proving that it is never false has been the means of purifying our hopes by the discovery of many austere truths but there is in resignation a further good element even real goods when they are unattainable ought not to be fretfully desired to every man comes sooner or later the great renunciation for the young there is nothing unattainable a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will and yet impossible is to them not credible yet by death by illness by poverty or by the voice of duty we learn each one of us that the world was not made for us and that however beautiful maybe the things we crave fate may nevertheless forbid them it is the part of courage when misfortune comes to bear without repining the ruin of our hopes to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets this degree of submission to power is not only just and right it is the very gate of wisdom but passive renunciation is not the whole of wisdom for not by renunciation alone can we build a temple for the worship of our own ideals haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination in music and architecture in the untroubled kingdom of reason and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics where beauty shines and glows remote from the touch of sorrow remote from the fear of change remote from failures and disenchantments of the world of fact in the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts giving at once a touchstone to judge the world about us and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever is not incapable of serving as a stone whether it's that are born without sin there is a cavern of darkness to be traversed before that temple can be entered the gate of that cavern is despair and its floor is paved with the gravestones of abandoned hopes there self must die there the eagerness the greed of untamed desire must be slain for only so can the soul be freed from the empire of fate but out of the cavern the gate of renunciation leads again to the daylight of wisdom by whose radiance a new insight, a new joy a new tenderness shine forth to gladden the pilgrim's heart when without the bitterness of impotent rebellion we have learned both to resign ourselves to the outward rule of fate and to recognize that the non-human world is unworthy of our worship it becomes possible at last so to transmute it in the crucible of imagination that a new image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clay in all the multi-form facts of the world in the visual shapes of trees and mountains in clouds in the events of the life of man even in the very omnipotence of death the insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of a beauty which its own thoughts first made in this way the mind asserts its subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of nature the more evil the material with which it deals the more thwarting to untrained desire the greater is its achievement in inducing the reluctant rock to yield up its hidden treasures the prouder its victory in compelling the opposing forces to swell the pageant of its triumph of all the arts the tragedy is the proudest the most triumphant for it builds its shining citadel in the very center of the enemy's country on the very summit of his highest mountain from its impregnable watchtowers his camps and arsenals his columns and forts are all revealed within its walls the free life continues while the legions of death and pain and despair and all the servile captains of the tyrant fate afford the burgers of that dauntless city new spectacles of beauty happy those sacred ramparts thrice happy the dwellers on that all-seeing eminence honor to those brave warriors who through countless ages of warfare have preserved for us the priceless heritage of liberty and have kept undefiled by sacrilegious invaders the home of the ums of dude but the beauty of tragedy does but make visible a quality which in more or less obvious shapes is present always and everywhere in life in the spectacle of death in the endurance of intolerable pain and in the irrevocableness of a vanished past there is a sacredness an overpowering awe a feeling of vastness the depth the inexhaustible mystery of existence in which in the passage of pain the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow in these moments of insight we lose all eagerness of temporary desire all struggling and striving for petty ends all care for the little trivial things that to a superficial view make up the common life of day by day we see surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour from the great night without a chill blast breaks in upon our refuge all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated upon the individual soul which must struggle alone with what of courage it can command against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears victory in this struggle with the powers of darkness is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes the true initiation into the over mastering beauty of human existence from that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world annunciation wisdom and charity are born and with their birth a new life begins to take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces of the spirits we seem to be death and change the irrevocableness of the past and the powerlessness of man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity to feel these things and know them is to conquer them this is the reason why the past has such magical power the beauty of its motionless and silent pictures is like the enchanted purity of late autumn still glow against the sky in golden glory the past does not change or strive like Duncan after life's fitful fever it sleeps well what was eager and grasping what was petty and transitory has faded away the things that were beautiful and eternal shine out of it like stars in the night its beauty to a soul not worthy of it is unendurable but to a soul which has conquered fate it is the key of religion the life of man viewed outwardly is but a small thing in comparison with the forces of nature the slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death because they are greater than anything he finds in himself and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour but great as they are to think of them greatly to feel their passionless splendor is greater still and such thought makes us free men we no longer bow before the inevitable in oriental subjection but we absorb it and make it a part of ourselves to abandon the struggle for private happiness to expel all eagerness of temporary desire to burn with passion for eternal things this is emancipation and this is the free man's worship and this liberation is affected by a contemplation of fate for fate itself is subdued by the mind which leaves nothing to be purged by the purifying fire of time united with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties the tie of common doom the free man finds that a new vision is with him always shedding over every daily task the light of love the life of man is a long march through the night surrounded by invisible foes tortured by wariness and pain towards a goal that few can hope to reach and where none may tarry long one by one as they march our comrades vanish from our sight seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death very brief is the time in which we can help them as the misery is decided be it ours to shed sunshine on their path to lighten their sorrows by the bomb of sympathy to give them the pure joy of a never tiring affection to strengthen failing courage to instill faith in hours of despair let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits but let us think only of their need of the sorrows, the difficulties perhaps the blindnesses of their lives let us remember that they are fellow sufferers in the same darkness actors in the same tragedy with ourselves and so when their day is over when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past be it ours to feel that where they suffered where they failed no deed of ours was the cause but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled their hearts with encouragement with sympathy with brave words in which high courage glowed brief and powerless is man's life on him in all his race the slow shore doom falls pitiless and dark blind to good and evil reckless of destruction omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way for man condemned today to lose his dearest only to cherish ere yet the blow falls the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of fate to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built undismayed by the empire of chance to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life proudly defiant of the irresistible forces his knowledge and his condemnation to sustain alone a wary but unyielding atlas the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power End of Chapter 2