part IV.
ON THE METAPHYSICAL EXPLANA-
TION OF THE PRIMAL ETHICAL
PHAENOMENON.
CHAPTER I.
HOW THIS APPENDIX MUST BE UNDERSTOOD.
IN the foregoing pages the moral incentive (Com-
passion) has been established as a fact, and I have
shown that from it alone can proceed unselfish justice
and genuine loving-kindness, and that on these two
cardinal virtues all the rest depend. Now, for the
purpose of supplying Ethics with a foundation, this
is sufficient, in a certain sense ; that is, in so far
as Moral Science necessarily requires to be supported
by some actual and demonstrable basis, whether
existing in the external world, or in the consciousness. The only alternative is to tread in the footsteps that so many of my predecessors have left, in other words, to choose arbitrarily some proposition or other, some bare and abstract formula and make it the source of all that morality prescribes ; or, like Kant, to sublimate a mere idea, that of law, into the key-stone of the ethical arch. But, dismissing this method for the reasons discussed above, in the Second Part, the investigation proposed by the Royal Society appears to me now completed. For their question, as it stands, deals only with the foundation of Ethics ; as to a possible metaphysical explanation of this foundation nothing whatever is asked. Nevertheless,
257 17
258 THE BASIS OF MORALITY.
at the point we have reached, I am very sensible
that the human spirit can find no abiding satisfaction, no real repose. As in all branches of practical research, so also in Ethical Science, when all is said, man is inevitably confronted with an ultimate phaenomenon, which while it renders an account of everything that it includes, and everything deduc- ible from it, remains itself an unexplained riddle. So that here, as elsewhere, the want is felt of a final interpretation (which, obviously, cannot but be metaphysical) of the ultimate data, as such, and through these, if they be taken in their entirety of the world. And here, too, this want finds utterance in the question : How is it that, what is present to our senses, and grasped by our intellect, is as it is, and not otherwise ? And how does the character of the phaenomenon, as manifest to us, shape itself out of the essential nature of things ? Indeed, in Moral Science the need of a metaphysical basis is more urgent than in any other, because all systems, philosophical no less than religious, are at one in persistently attaching to conduct not only an ethical, but also a metaphysical significance, which, passing beyond the mere appearance of things, transcends every possibility of experience, and therefore stands in the closest connection with human destiny and with the whole cosmic process. For if life (it is averred) have a meaning, then the supreme goal to which it points is undoubtedly ethical. Nor is this view a bare unsupported theory ; it is sufficiently established by the undeniable fact that, as death draws nigh, the thoughts of each individual assume
HOW THIS APPENDIX MUST BE UNDERSTOOD. 259
a moral trend, equally whether he be credulous of
religious dogmas, or not ; he is manifestly anxious
to wind up the affairs of his life, now verging to
its end, entirely from the moral standpoint. In
this particular the testimony of the ancients is of
special value, standing, as they do, outside the pale
of Christian influence. I shall therefore here quote
a remarkable passage preserved by Stobaeus, in his
Florilegium (chap. 44, . 20). It has been attri-
buted to the earliest Hellenic lawgiver, Zaleucus, though, according to Bentley and Heyne, its source is Pythagorean. The language is graphic and un- mistakable. Ael ri6eo-6ai Trpb o/uLfj,dra)v rov icaipbv rourov, ev d> <ylyvrai rb reXo9 e/cacrrw T rov r)z>. TlaaL yap e/j,7ri7rrei, fjt,era[jie\eia rots re\evrdv, fiefj-vrjuevo^ &v r)$i,Kr)Kacri, teal opftr) rov f3ov\eo-0ai rcavra TrtTrpayQai StKaltoS aurofc. 1
Furthermore, to come to an historical personage, we find Pericles, on his death-bed, unwilling to hear anything about his great achievements, and only anxious to know that he had never brought trouble on a citizen. (Plutarch, Life of Pericles.) Turning to modern times, if a very different case may be placed beside the preceding, I remember having noticed in a report of depositions made