CIVILIZATION AND MORALS. 549 



CIVILIZATION AND MORALS. 



By J. N. LAENED. 



IN bringing these two subject-matters of thought into conjunction 

 with one another, I wish, if possible, to set them clear of all con- 

 troversy at the outset. No attempt at a definition for either can 

 escape dispute ; but a merely indicative statement may be made in 

 each case that will give form enough to the conception without touch- 

 ing any point of question in it. If I should say, for example, with 

 Mr. Emerson, that civilization is " a certain degree of progress from 

 the rudest state in which man is found," I should provoke the disputes 

 that are rife as to what is and what is not " progress " for the human 

 race. But I may safely say that civilization is a certain cumulative 

 succession of modifications or changes in the state and character of 

 men which indicates the conception quite distinctly enough, and 

 excludes every matter of debate. In like manner I may avoid the 

 disputations of the ethical schools, and yet set out a notion of morals 

 that will serve every present purpose of thinking, if I say that moral 

 philosophy has for its subject human conduct, considered with refer- 

 ence to whatever absolute qualities may be found in it. It might 

 seem, on the first thought, that this statement assumes the very thing 

 that is in question between those who contend for the absoluteness 

 and those who contend for the relativity of our ideas of right and 

 wrong. But it is not so. The dispute of the moralists has reference, 

 not to any characteristic of the qualities in conduct which we cognize 

 as moral, but to the mode in which they are cognized. Our concep- 

 tion of such qualities involves the conception of absoluteness in them, 

 and it is only by that notion of absoluteness that they are distin- 

 guished from the other qualities which appear in human conduct, such 

 as wisdom, prudence, ingenuity, and the like. The imperative " ought^'' 

 which puts its mark upon what is moral, in distinction from wliat is 

 prudent or expedient, is just as autocratic in the doctrine of the utili- 

 tarian as in that of the intuitionist. The former, as Mr. Sidscwick has 

 pointed out in his admirable analysis of " The Methods of Ethics," 

 can only hold that the moral rules of conduct are means relative to an 

 end (greatest happiness) by holding that the end itself is prescribed 

 absolutely, and ought to be pursued. But absoluteness of end involves 

 absoluteness of means, since means and end are inseparable so far 

 as human knowledge goes and cannot be conceived of apart. Hence 

 the qualities in conduct which the utilitarian finds essential to the 

 attaining of the object that represents " duty " to him are just as abso- 

 lute in his view as in the view of the intuitive moralist, who admits 

 nothing objective in his notion of " duty." In what I have to say, 



