comprehension of motives is what is commonly, but very accurately and significantly, called "moral insight". A consideration of the meaning of moral insight will help also to answer our next question. For I may be asked whether the attitude which I have described as "naturalistic" does not involve a coolly supercilious and self-conceited treatment of one's fellows as "specimens", and thus an immoral attitude in the moralist himself. Not, I should reply, in one who studies them with moral insight. The factor of moral insight introduces into the relations between the student of human nature and the object of his study exceedingly perplexing questions. I am inclined to say indeed that he who can explain just how I know my neighbor will have answered the last question in metaphysics. Thus much, however, seems clear: one who studies the ways and points of view of men comprehendingly can hardly be coolly supercilious, much less self-conceited, however naturalistic and critical. There is no incompatibility between the critical attitude and personal interest and affection. It may even be said that each implies the other and that those whom we question most curiously we love most warmly. Nor between personal affection and a sense of humor. We love the little children just in the fact that they delight and amuse us. And as for the "bitter humor" with which we annihilate an enemy-this seems to contain an element of paradox. For to make it effective, and really annihilating, it seems necessary first to control and cool, perhaps also to conceal, the bitterness; while if you really loathe the person in question you may fear to condescend to humor. Humor is too compromising. In any case it seems that the study of man introduces considerations hardly contemplated in the study of nature. The sea-anemone, however curious and beautiful, is disposed of when he is described and named. He has nothing to say in reply. To stamp your fellow's point of view— as "oriental", for example is only to learn that the oriental view has something to say about the meaning of life for you and me. Hence for those who choose study as a reposeful avocation it is wiser to study sea-anemones than to study men. The next question is more technical. Naturalistic ethics, it will be asked,-what is this but plain psychology? In other words, if the moralist is the "student of human nature" why not call him a psychologist? My instinctive reply would be that I don't care what you name him. For I greatly suspect that these distinctions of disciplines -between ethics and psychology, ethics and politics, ethics and economics, psychology and logic, psychology and philosophy, logic and epistemology, etc., etc.—without a laborious chapter on which no Teutonic treatise can get under way-are but so many legal fictions, or academic fences, set up by each professor to prevent a neighboring professor from borrowing his chair. But since a failure to answer might leave an ambiguity I will put it thus: I am quite ready to abandon the distinction between psychology and moral philosophy (but not to allow moral philosophy to be "reduced" to psychology), if only the psychologist will assume the responsibility of cultivating moral insight and undertake to use it as a method of psychology. The offer is not likely to be accepted. Stated more formally, the issue is as follows. The traditional distinction between psychology and ethics is by what that, while both are (say) studies of men, psychology studies a man for what he is, ethics for what he ought to standard be, But now, what do you mean by what a man is? What a sea-anemone is, it seems that we can state clearly enough; since we are careful not to endow the seaanemone with imagination. Hence it is just what it is, a determinate present fact and nothing more. But when we ask what a man is we discover (if we use moral insight) that he never is just what he is as a present determinate fact. Every man not absolutely dead is endowed with some imagination; and this means that what he does now and what he is now, is guided more or less by what he judges it worth while to do and worth while to be, i. e., by what he is trying to be and ought to be. And thus the "is" and the "ought to be", the psychological and the moral, are so vitally connected that neither can even be stated apart from the other. I may put the point differently by saying that, in contrast to the sea-anemone, the man more or less knows what he is; and this knowing ought to be a vital part of the man for any study that calls itself "psychology". Say, then, that A is a liar; and add to this that A knows that he is a liar. What is A now? What is a liar who knows that he is a liar? Or (in terms of "fact") what can you predict of him when he finds out and "comes to himself"? This is precisely what no one knows, least of all the scientific psychologist. And this is precisely the moral fact, an indeterminate sort of fact which does not readily meet the requirements of fact. In the light of this we can see perhaps why what is now called psychology was numbered a few generations ago among "the moral sciences", and why this phrase was used then to cover all those studies of man, or of human nature, which we now call, less aptly, as it seems to me, "the social sciences". And on the other hand it is doubtless a realization of the indeterminately "moral" quality of the conscious fact that has led the more advanced of scientific psychologists to abandon "psychology" and content themselves with a description of human "behavior". The new science of behaviorism will treat the man precisely as we treat the sea-anemone, the assumption being that there is as little imagination, or of "trying to be", in one case as in the other. Finally it may be objected that the naturalistic preoccupation with the variety of human nature tends to blur the distinction of good and bad and to make any man as good as any other. But hardly, I might reply, if morality is to be identified with the intelligent, or critical, life—unless indeed we are to assume that all men are equally intelligent. Yet this will still mean that the intelligence of each is to be judged according to what he in particular is trying to do, according to his particular conception of life, or kind of human nature; and as for the kinds of human nature, none is better than another. Such is my answer. But I must confess that the question of who is the better man does not now strongly appeal to me and I even suspect it to be immoral. Why should one wish to know? I doubt if my reader would care to admit even to himself that it is any part of his interest in morality to learn to which and to how many of his fellows he is entitled to say, "I am holier than thou." Nor could he feel it less incumbent upon him to be all that he ought to be because he is already better than some of his fellows. It may be |