Part 10

That we cannot know there is a God is a conclusion to which we have seen the decline of rationalism and the growth of empiricism slowly tending. But that we ought to live as though there were a God--what can such a phrase mean? What manner of life does it prescribe? Above all, what sort of an ought is this and how does it bind us?

There is no deeper interest for Kant than that which invites one to consider the meaning of the word “ought.” I say, the meaning of “ought,” yet it may be that the word has more than one meaning. For compare these two examples of its use,--first this: If you want to bisect a line you ought to describe certain arcs and draw a certain straight line. And then this: “You ought to speak the truth.”

We notice at once a rhetorical difference in these two uses of the ought. In the first, a certain procedure is commanded if and only if we want to bisect a line. Leave out the condition this if introduces, and the ought with all that follows on it loses its meaning. No decalogue could be imagined to contain among its commands an injunction to describe arcs and draw lines. Let us call this use of the ought the hypothetical use, let us call the command such an ought introduces a hypothetical command or in Kant’s own phrase a “hypothetical imperative.” An ought that is inseparable from an if is a hypothetical imperative.

On the other hand when I say, “You ought to speak the truth,” “You ought not to steal,” I seem to be using the ought in a sense that needs no if to make its meaning clear. More than that, attempts to supply an if, so far from making the meaning of the ought clearer, have more often than not the effect of changing, of travestying the meaning we instinctively see in it. Truthful speaking and honest dealing be indeed useful devices for getting along in the world, but one who is honest because honesty is the best policy seems to us hardly honest--at all events he seems to have missed the point that honesty is enjoined on us without ifs or buts. The obligation to be honest is an unconditional command, a “categorical imperative.” It is of such stuff as decalogues are made on--it is so the voice of duty speaks in us.

It needs no pointing out that so far as our examples go, the hypothetical ought has no moral flavor. No sin attaches to one who has left undone the things he ought to have done if he aimed at bisecting a line. Sin does attach to one who has done what he ought not to have done in the way of lying, no matter what end seemed to justify the means. This hypothetical ought finds its reason in pure science, this categorical in pure morality.

All this is true, and yet one would form a poor opinion of Kant’s thoroughness if one represented him as having rushed from one or two examples to the generalization: All hypothetical uses of the ought are scientific and non-moral; all categorical uses are moral and non-scientific. To such a generalization Kant does indeed come, and to it he clings through difficulties more than enough to discourage one in whom the conviction of its truth were less a matter of heart than it was to Kant. But however it fitted in with Kant’s character to view the command of duty as sternly categorical, it was equally part of his character patiently to seek a reason for the faith that was in him.

If Kant had wished to establish no more than that there must be something categorical about the moral ought distinguishing it from the many oughts that suggest nothing of morality, his task would not have been hard. For suppose that to every command there was really a hidden condition attached; suppose that the categorical was really a hypothetical imperative in disguise. Then the goodness of the act commanded could mean no more than its fitness to bring about a certain result. But what of the result? Is it, too, good? The question can obviously have no meaning, for only the way can be good; the goal cannot. And yet we seem to revolt against such meaning of goodness: there is a difference to us between a good way of cheating one’s neighbor and a way of being good. Either then there is some way of defining a good end--an end which justifies the means--or else there must be a moral excellence that belongs to certain types of act irrespective of what they may lead to, if indeed they lead to aught in common. In either case we come upon the categorical ought--the end that ought to be pursued for its own sake, or else the type of act that ought to be followed for its own sake with no view to consequences. The first interpretation of the moral ought would be illustrated in a theory that pointed, as did Hume’s, to the happiness of the community as an end imposed without condition, while it defined good actions to be such as were well calculated to bring about this end. The second interpretation is in the spirit of the Decalogue, or of the classic saying, Let justice be done though the heavens fall. It is not the business of the actor to consider the consequences of his just dealing; if the world is so divinely ordered that not the heavens but heaven’s blessing fall on the just man, this is a truth to be independently established. Duty first, consequences after!

No theory of the moral ought can escape a recognition of a categorical command; but we must choose between the end and the act as that to which the ought applies. If we are sometimes doubtful whether Kant abides at all points by the decision he first makes in this matter, there can be no doubt that he comes to a decision at once in favor of the view that the moral ought applies to a type of act, not to an end this type of act might be calculated to bring about. We should still know our duty if we knew of no such end, we ought still to follow duty if there were no such end. It is in trying to carry through this idea, which we may call the Decalogue idea, of the categorical ought, that Kant meets his most serious difficulties. Yet the motives which made him accept and cling to such an interpretation are such as the simplest may grasp--yes, the simpler one is of heart, the more easily may one sympathize with them.

In the first place a scientific insight into the means best calculated to bring about an end is obtainable only by study and thought. Even the simple device by which a line may be bisected is not at every one’s disposal, while the highest science has but imperfect means to suggest for accomplishing the ends we most crave. But it seemed to Kant that duty must make a universal appeal, to the poor understanding as clearly as to the richly endowed; morality must be no privilege of the high, but a treasure of the humble. “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever,” is a word of homely counsel that has crept into our language to show how good a Kantian the plain man may be.

Or again--but really it is the same thought differently expressed--duty ought to make no hesitating uncertain appeal. No one should have a chance to excuse himself on the ground that he was ignorant of the law. But ignorance of scientific law is the portion of all of us. Alas, if we should have to grope after goodness as we do after wisdom! The intellectuality of pagan Greece might and did contemplate such a state of affairs with equanimity or even with favor. The spirit of Christianity expressed the deep desire of the unintellectual that at least virtue might be theirs for the willing.

Kant had a name for any law that was thus universal (that is, applying to everybody) and necessary (that is, free from uncertainty). He called such laws a priori; that is, not dependent for their authority upon the slow uncertain gathering of experimental evidence. To him then, the one chance of possessing a moral law a priori lay in the recognition that such a law must in decalogue fashion prescribe a type of act, not an end which might be uncertainly tried for now by truth-telling, now by lying--not an end in short which justified the means so dubiously that it might be taken to justify any means.

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To us mortals wandering in the mazes of life and perplexed--we think honestly perplexed--by the way issues of right and wrong present themselves, the possession of an indubitable law of duty whose authority was higher than any consideration of consequences would be a godsend. Yet because such a thing is desirable, it does not follow that it is possible, and we are quite prepared to find Kant at this point setting up as the deepest problem of ethics the question, “How is a categorical imperative possible?” That is, what sort of a world would it be in which men recognized the authority of such an ought and were free and willing to obey it?

An image of one such world is the common possession of our race. God created this world, and the beings that dwell in it. On these beings he lays certain commands in the form of a decalogue, and their authority rests on the will of God regarded now as King. If God had purpose in laying these commands on his subjects, their duty to God’s will must not wait on their insight into his purpose and their acceptance of it as theirs. Man has been created free to obey or not to obey God’s commands, and is told that happiness will be meted out to him in the measure of his obedience, unhappiness in the measure of his disobedience. But to deserve reward, he must not only obey God’s law, but do it uniquely because it is God’s will. He must conceive himself as prepared to obey without promise of reward or threat of punishment. Moreover, it is not pretended that this justice will accomplish itself within the limits of human life on this earth, but in a future life and in another world whose existence must be taken on faith. Here then we have an image of a world in which a categorical imperative in the form of a decalogue is possible, and not only is possible, but has exactly the relations to purpose and to happiness that Kant required of such an imperative. Duty may serve a purpose; but the assurance we have of this is no part of the authority duty has for us. The performance of duty may bring happiness; but duty would remain authoritative if we knew nothing of any happiness it would bring.

This world, we might call it the Old Testament World, is then exactly the kind of a world in which morality as Kant defines morality could and would exist. Moreover Kant is prepared to show that it is the only kind of a world in which true morality could exist. If we are to have such a thing as a command of duty, we must have the three things characteristic of our Old Testament world-image: the freedom of man, the immortality of the soul, the ruling power of God. If we take these, as well we may, to be the essential beliefs of religion, then it appears that for Kant morality is inseparable from religion.

I say that Kant is prepared to prove that without these three assumptions, God, freedom and immortality, no categorical imperative is possible; but I am far from asserting that a conscientious thinker will be prepared to follow Kant in every step of this proof. It is in most parts a tortured process of reasoning at once over subtle and over simple, and back of it all, one feels that Kant’s deepest motives for arriving at his conclusions are the instinctive demands of his heart, which demands a marvelous intellect is made to serve as best it may.

However, the first step is obvious enough: unless there is a sense in which the being on whom a duty is laid is free to follow or not to follow its command, there is no sense in which duty is possible. This ought ye to do; but alas you cannot! This ought ye to do, and besides you can’t help doing it! These expressions equally rob the ought of meaning. We can quite see that without freedom, duty is meaningless. Yet the beings on whom the commands of duty are laid are men like you and me, and in such beings we notice that what freedom they have is limited in a peculiar way. We are in the habit of attributing to each a certain nature or character that we try to regard as working itself out--if not in all--yet in many and various situations. But in this attempt to explain conduct in terms of character and its expression, we are constantly baffled by what seems to us a duality or even multiplicity of characters in the same individual. In this man we explain a certain part of his conduct as the outcome of a strong imperious animality; but another part shows his passion restrained by motives of honor, kindness, sympathy. Two natures are at war in him, and as we are likely to think of one of these as more really his than the other, we represent him as struggling to conquer himself.

Well, this warfare of a man with himself is one of the commonest things in life, and life itself shows that a higher or better self may often enough win the victory over and free itself from a baser and lower disposition. But life shows too that the struggle is long and bitter, so long that a lifetime is too short a span in which to secure a complete victory. Just in proportion as the higher self is high, does the struggle grow hard and lengthen itself out. If we conceive the self whose struggles we are watching to be the moral self as Kant describes it, all the love and lust of life seem to be arrayed against it. If it is to free itself, that is if we are to become completely moral agents, not a lifetime, nor a century, nor a million years, but the whole of eternity must be allowed us for our battling. But this means that the actor must be immortal, and so it is that for Kant the possibility of a completely moral being, free to act out his moral nature, presupposes immortality.

The existence of a moral being then involves the acceptance of him as a free immortal being. But though these are important traits of the Old Testament world image which Kant is trying to show to be the only image that makes morality possible, yet the recognition of a man’s freedom and immortality is not peculiar to it, but may be found in many philosophies. Both, for example, have a place in Spinoza’s system which is as far as possible from giving us an Old Testament account of reality.

When we add a third condition, the ruling power of God, we have a difference indeed, but also a difficulty in understanding the necessity of the assumption. To be sure, if we add the idea of justice to that of moral worth, if we require that worth should be rewarded with proportional happiness, then indeed we should have to go beyond experience to convince ourselves that such justice obtains, and we might very well identify the ideal of justice with the idea of a God-governed world. But Kant has insisted throughout that the idea of right and the idea of reward are independent, why then are they not separable? Why in order that there may be a thing that we ought to do, must there be an assurance that we shall be happy in the doing or because of the doing of it?

It is easy to give Kant’s answer to this question--it is difficult to make sure that one has understood it. His answer is simply that while morality may be the highest desire of the human heart, it cannot be its whole desire. It must desire happiness as well as virtue.

Kant defines the happy man as one whose desires are satisfied. But if we think of this desire as being directed toward a type of object, any attempt to interpret Kant’s motives for introducing a God into his system must meet the obvious difficulty that since morality is the highest type of desire and since it is admitted that all are free to be moral, then the Stoic happiness in virtue is assured quite without reference to a divine government of the world.

The only way we can hope to explain in what sense the will to do one’s duty cannot be a complete definition of the object of human desire is to understand that happiness depends upon our obtaining, not a type of thing,--morality or wealth or power or science--but an individual thing. Our demand for moral satisfaction may be realized in one situation as well as another. “To tell the truth,” if that be all we want, lays no conditions on the particular circumstances under which we tell the truth. We want to follow a principle, and principles are abstract enough. But is it not true that the kind of desire of which finite beings have the deepest experience is bent on just those things that cannot be generalized nor made abstract? What we want in them, and that on which our happiness depends, seems to be offered but this once in all possible life, and nothing like it could be imagined that would meet our desires just as well.

For example, when desire is for the love of a woman, it is for the love of this woman, not of some woman. Ask such love what it sees to love in this individual that could not just as well be found in another, and the lover will laugh you out. You are not speaking his language. You are looking for qualities, types, principles--what he wants with all his soul is not a kind of a woman but just his woman. And to her he sings,

Who is it says the most? which can say more Than this rich praise,--that you alone are you?

Or do you ask as the thing on which all your happiness hangs that death keep his hands off just this child? Then what meaning would it have for you if a condoling friend were to point out that you had other children far more remarkable? It was not for his qualities you cared when you cared for him, nor yet for his value as a unit in counting your offspring.

I don’t pretend to explain why this is, or what it all means; but when Kant maintains that to will a principle and nothing but a principle is not what we mean by willing, these instances of objects of desire that are purely individual and can not be reduced to principle naturally present themselves as facts of experience that may help us to catch Kant’s meaning.

Of all principles of willing, the moral principle is the highest; but the willing of individual human beings cannot from its very nature be completely defined by principle. The only world in which will can have an object; i.e., the only world in which there can be such a thing as will, must be a world of individual things. If it is to be a moral world, it must be possible to struggle for these individual things without disobeying the law of duty.