The Principles of Ethics: In Two Volumes

14. Summary of Inductions

Ethics_V1_451-500.indd 47 1/16/12 9:32 AM CHAPTER 14 Summary of Inductions 188. where the data are few and exact, definite conclusions can be drawn; but where they are numerous and inexact, the conclusions drawn must be proportionately indefinite. Pure mathematics exemplifies the one extreme, and sociology the other. The phenomena pres~nted by individual life are highly complex, and still more complex are the phenomena presented by the life of aggregated individuals; and their great complexity is rendered still greater by the multiformity and variability of surrounding conditions. To the difficulties in the way of generalization hence arising, must be added the difficulties arising from uncertainty of the evidence-the doubtfulness, incompleteness, and conflicting natures, of the statements with which we have to deal. Not all travelers are to be trusted. Some are bad observers, some are biased by creed or custom, some by personal likings or dislikings ; and all have but imperfect opportunities of getting at the truth. Similarly with historians. Very little of what they narrate is from immediate observation. The greater part of it comes through channels which color, and obscure, and distort ; while everywhere party feeling, religious bigotry, and the sentiment of patriotism, cause exaggerations and suppressions . Testimonies concerning moral traits are hence liable to perversion. 497 Ethics_V1_451-500.indd 48 1/16/12 9:32 AM 498 The Inductions of Ethics Many of the peoples grouped under the same name present considerable diversities of character: instance the Australians, of whom it is remarked that some tribes are quiet and tractable while others are boisterous and difficult to deal with. Further, the conduct, sentiments, and ideas of native peoples often undergo such changes that travelers between whose visits many years have elapsed, give quite different accounts. The original feelings and beliefs are frequently obscured by missionary influences, and, in a still greater degree, by contact with white traders and settlers. From all parts of the world we get proofs that aborigines are degraded by intercourse with Europeans. Here, then, are further causes which distort the evidence. Yet again there are the complications consequent on changes of habitats and occupations. In this place tribes are forced into antagonism with their neighbors, and in that place they are led into quiet lives: one of the results being that conceptions and feelings appropriate to an antecedent state, surviving for a long time in a subsequent state, appear incongruous with it. Thus we must expect to meet with anomalies, and must be content with conclusions which hold true on the average. 189. Before we can fully understand the significance of the inductions drawn, we must reconsider the essential nature of social cooperation. As we pointed out in section 48, from the sociological point of view, "ethics becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of conduct that are fitted to the associated state"; and in subsequent sections it was made clear that, rising above those earliest groups in which the individuals simply live in contiguity, without mutual interference and without mutual aid, the associated state can be maintained only by effectual cooperation: now for external defense, now for internal sustentation. That is to say, the prosperity of societies depends, other things equal, on the extents to which there are fulfilled in them the conditions to such cooperation. Whence, through survival of the fittest, it Ethics_V1_451-500.indd 49 1/16/12 9:32 AM Summary of Inductions 499 follows that principles of conduct implying observance of these conditions, and sentiments enlisted in support of such principles, become dominant; while principles of conduct which concern only such parts of the lives of individuals as do not obviously affect social cooperation, do not acquire sanctions of such pronounced and consistent kinds. This appears to be the explanation of the fact which must have struck many readers of the last two chapters, that the ideas and sentiments respecting temperance and chastity, display less intelligible relations to social type and social development , than do the ideas and sentiments concerning cooperative conduct, internal and external. For if, scattered throughout the community, there are men who eat or drink to excess, such evils as are entailed on the community are indirect . There is, in the first place, no direct interference with military efficiency, so long as within the armed force there is no such drunkenness or gluttony as sensibly affects discipline . And in the second place, there is...