170 



NA TURE 



\ytme 20, 1889 



We must now pass on to consider that part of the work 

 which deals with the struggle of ideals. Moral order Mr. 

 Alexander regards as an equilibrium. This is seen both 

 in the individual and in society. The good man is de- 

 scribed as an equilibrated order of conduct, or an equili- 

 brium of moral sentiments. Good and bad acts and 

 conduct are distinguished by their adjustment or failure 

 of adjustment to the social order. Good conduct falls 

 within the order ; bad conduct fails to adjust itself and is 

 condemned. The equilibrium is not a state of rest, but a 

 mobile equilibrium in which all the parts are shifting. 

 The conception of a man's character is represented under 

 the name of an ideal— ?l plan of conduct or way of life 

 upon which he acts. A bad man's way of life is his ideal 

 as much as the good man's, and every one of his acts 

 implies such an ideal. INIoral progress results from a 

 conflict of ideals and the elimination of those which are 

 bad. But not only are there, in any given society, a great 

 number of interdependent individuals, each with his moral 

 ideal, but the society itself may be regarded as an indivi- 

 dual (the social organism) having relations to other social 

 individuals of the same order. Hence arises the concep- 

 tion of a social ideal. 



With regard to this social ideal, what it is, and wherein 

 it lies, Mr. Alexander is not quite explicit — or perhaps the 

 fault is in ourselves ; for we have always found the social 

 organism a difficult conception. It is clear that the social 

 ideal cannot in any sense be the mean of the individual 

 ideals of the constituent units of the society. It is presum- 

 ably not the ideal of the average man. It must be, we take 

 it, the moral ideal of the perfectly "equilibrated" individual 

 — of the man in completely harmonious adjustment with 

 his social surroundings. Such a representative man may 

 not exist in the flesh ; but he represents the ideal standard 

 of the social morality of his time. After-times may show 

 that there existed contemporaneously individuals with far 

 loftier ideals than the social standard. But these were 

 not perfectly equilibrated with their social surroundings, 

 and not improbably paid the penalty for their want of 

 equilibrium. 



The social ideal is thus the type-form of a species of 

 which the various ideals, as they exist in the minds of 

 good men, are the different individuals. " But," says Mr. 

 Alexander, " the type in the case of man is, owing to his 

 social character, itself an organism of which the individual 

 is an organ. Hence, if we are to use the analogy at all, 

 we must compare the relation of a species to its indi- 

 viduals with that between the social ideal and the indi- 

 vidual ideals." A little later on we read that " an ideal is 

 nothing but a person in so far as he acts the ideal." We 

 fail satisfactorily to correlate the idea of the type as 

 organism of which the individual is an organ, with that of 

 he social ideal as species of which the personal ideals 

 are individuals. 



Mr. Alexander next proceeds to show : (i) that the 

 social ideal varies ; (2) that there is a struggle between 

 the varieties ; (3) that the prevalence of good, and suc- 

 cessively better ideals constitutes moral .progress. " All 

 good men, so far as good, represent ideals which are the 

 individual members of one variety represented by the good 

 ideal : their various degrees of perfection correspond to 

 more or less strong, or swift, or big members of the animal 

 species. All bad men, so far as bad, act upon ideals 



which form other varieties. There is the variety of 

 thieves, of murderers, and the like. The distinction of 

 good and bad corresponds to the domination of one 

 variety, that of the good, which has come to prevail 

 according to the process described in virtue of its being a 

 social equilibrium." 



The differences between the struggle of ideals and the 

 struggle of animals under nature are not slurred over by 

 Mr. Alexander. " In morality," he says, " the struggle is 

 between ideals, and persons are concerned only as the 

 bearers of these ideals. Ideals of conduct exist in minds 

 (wills), not in bodies. Hence two important differences. 

 The animal variety predominates by two concurrent 

 methods : it multiplies its offspring, and it exterminates 

 other animals, and these two things are practically the 

 same, for other animals die out before the spread of the 

 more successful. But in man the predominance of the 

 good does not always require, and except in extreme cases 

 never requires, the extinction of the opposing person, but 

 only the extinction of his ideal, or its retirement from his 

 mind or will in favour of the good ideal. In the next 

 place, whereas animals multiply by propagation of new 

 individuals, the moral ideal acquires strength by teaching 

 and example, and it acquires adherents not only among 

 the new generation but among the old. Hence, while if 

 an animal variety were composed of only a few indi- 

 viduals it would perish, the reformer's cause may win 

 though he individually is destroyed. His ideal lives on 

 in the minds of those whom he has influenced, and \i\^ 

 influence may grow greater with his death." 



Enough has now been said — and as much as our space 

 will permit — to indicate the scope of Mr. Alexander's 

 conception of the nature and methods of moral progress. 

 How he works in such biological ideas as degeneration 

 and mimicry— the bad man simulating the external 

 actions of the good — must be ascertained from the work 

 itself. 



And what shall we say of this conception ? Fully 

 admitting the value of Mr. Alexander's independent 

 treatment of the subject, it still seems to us that the 

 separation of the moral ideals from the men and women 

 whose product they are is unsatisfactory. All that Mr. 

 Alexander contends for could be as well, nay better, ex- 

 plained as the result of the interaction of moral and 

 immoral human beings under the conditions of social 

 co-operation and the varied play of social life. For the 

 purposes of ethical science they may be divided, according 

 to their ideals of conduct, into moral varieties. And in 

 the course of their individual moral development they 

 may pass through several varietal states. The struggle 

 among men and women differs very considerably from 

 the struggle among animals, from the fact that man is, in 

 virtue of his high mental development, more plastic, that 

 he is to so large an extent a conscious agent in his own 

 evolution, and that his environment is a social environ- 1 

 ment of similar conscious agents. It is questionableBj 

 whether the conception of a social organism and a moraMl 

 organism helps us much. In any case it has to be used 

 with extreme care and with many reservations. And if 

 we can reach as good results with the more prosaic and 

 less imaginative conception of a co-operative society of 

 human individuals, we shall be wiser, and shall act 'more 

 in accordance with the spirit of science, to adhere to that 



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