view morality is not positive but problematic. "Positive morality" is valuable mainly for childhood and youth. It would more fitly be presented under the title of "The Rules of Practical Wisdom". These rules-against the commission (e. g.) of lying, theft, adultery, and murder -may easily be taught, but so may the rules of grammar. And they bear the same relation to morality that the rules of grammar bear to the expression of meaning. Namely, the meaning to be expressed (for example, in the use of the subjunctive in Latin or German) emerges only when we contemplate the exceptions; and the more immediately language is alive with meaning, as for example in poetry, the more freely do the exceptions make light of the rules. For those not yet prepared to attack the problem of life on their own responsibility the rules of practical wisdom are safe rules. But the safer they are, the more noncommittal and meaningless. The youth emerging into manhood discovers, perhaps with a shock, that none of these rules is intended, even by the orthodox, to be taken quite literally and absolutely. The rule against lying, if this be taken to stand for absolute openness and sincerity, is violated by good men every hour of the day; for no man, however honorable, fails to make some distinction between those who, by virtue of their relation to him, are entitled to have the truth from him and those who are not. And the attempt to systematize the rules leads only to endless casuistry.1 Casuistry is only the legitimate refinement of orthodox ethics.

1 Some persons find comfort in the distinction between concealing the truth and telling a falsehood-as if there were any object in concealing the truth except to mislead! Others find a curious satisfaction in preserving the form of honesty while parting with the substance. They think that somehow, while sinning in fact, they have preserved respect for the ideal. I wonder if they have done so. At any rate, I may recommend to them a study of the de

When, now, the young man, come to himself, so to speak, questions the meaning of these rules, he discovers that the meaning of the same rules is different for different men, and also that different men prefer different rules. One man prefers honesty at the cost of brutality, another carries considerateness to the point of deceit. For each the significance of the rules, like that of the rules of grammar or of the words in the dictionary, lies in their use in expressing the meaning of life for himself. And for each the meaning of life is a problem, a personal problem, calling for an original solution.

This means that the moral life is an art rather than an applied science. It is a creation. And morality can then be "taught", or not, in just the sense in which art can be taught. One cannot be taught to create. One may, as I have pointed out, be taught certain rules of literary or musical composition, or certain laws of physics; but no one can be taught to be a new Shakespeare or Beethoven, to write novels equal to Thackeray's, or even to devise a really new machine. On the other hand no artist creates in vacuo. Beethoven's creations were based upon a study of the forms of composition used by those before him. The artist learns to create by studying the great masters: he becomes an artist when he ceases to imitate them. great masters in morality-it would be difficult indeed to name them. They are not specifically the moralists. They are often for each of us those whom we have known most intimately. They include, in the end, all who, in

The

lightful Samuel Pepys, who somewhere in his "Diary" records that, having received a bribe from a captain in the navy in the form of a packet of sovereigns, he was careful, in emptying the packet into the drawer of his desk, to close his eyes, so that he could afterwards say, "I did not see any sovereigns in the packet."

history, art, literature, or philosophy, have had any important experience to reveal regarding the significance of human life and human nature.

But the masters of life are never "authorities". Their conceptions of life are not "standards". As a mode of expressing the attitude towards them of a morally responsible agent I find the sentence curiously fitting which Aristippus, not perhaps the most moral of the moralists, applied to the pleasures of life (having applied it in the first instance to his mistress, Lais): "Exw, ovк exoμai. "I possess, I am not possessed." I will enjoy the pleasures of life, I will not be dominated by them. And thus I may in the true and proper sense enjoy the moralities presented by the various experiences of mankind. I will understand them all, I will make them all my own: I will be in bondage to none.

CHAPTER V

THE MOTIVE OF AUTHORITY

§ 14. The categorical imperative. § 15. The basis of authority. § 16. The authoritarian tradition. § 17. Austere morality. § 18. Authority vs. morality. § 19. The sentiment of reverence.

O

§ 14

RTHODOX morality has just been treated as standardized morality. In this chapter and the next I shall develop its implications as the morality of authority.

By the morality of authority I mean morality formulated in terms of duty. Among moral philosophers the most uncompromising exponent of this conception is Immanuel Kant; for whom it seems that the one necessary, sufficient, and all-inclusive criterion of morality is that morality commands.1 Now for Kant this means that no merely utilitarian morality can ever be moral. The utilitarian says, Be good and you will be happy. But this, says Kant, is mere advice. It means only, Be good if you wish to be happy; and it is open to the reply, But I don't wish to be happy. The utilitarian imperative (Kant can speak only in terms of "imperatives") is thus a hypothetical imperative, while the imperative of morality is always a categori

1 This in spite of Kant's no less positive insistence that morality is also freedom. Of this Professor Dewey remarks (The Influence of Darwin and Other Essays, p. 65) that "The marriage of freedom and authority was then celebrated with the understanding that sentimental primacy went to the former and practical control to the latter." I question "the understanding", but this neatly describes the result.

cal imperative. Morality offers no advice. Morality cares not to persuade you of the wisdom, or profit, or beauty of goodness. Morality is interested only in the authority of goodness. And therefore morality speaks exclusively in terms of "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not".

For Kant, then, the issue of morality takes the form of authority vs. utility. And his vindication of morality is a laborious defence of this distinction. It is my purpose in the presentation of authoritarian morality to show that the distinction is false; and that not only is authority based upon utility, but that among the several elements involved in the assertion of authority utility is morally the most respectable.

§ 15

Although Kant wrote nearly a century and half ago, his scholastic formulation is valid today as an expression of the popular idea of morality. Even by those who propose to take their duty lightly, morality is commonly conceived as duty. But morality has not always been viewed as duty. In the ethical literature of the Greeks the conception is at least not prominent; and the modern reader of Greek ethics, at least the reader bred in the protestant religious tradition, has the sense that a certain undefined but familiar element is missing. Greek ethics is cast mainly in the form of a discussion of "the good". This suggests a very different picture from that to which we are accustomed. Instead of the child being admonished by his parents, or the soldier receiving orders from his superior officer, we have before us the picture of a youth to whom the various possibilities of life are being unfolded and who is now invited to choose for himself that which is most lovely and