Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog
After we have eaten we are no longer hungry. But we grow hungry again, and then the desire for food is as intense as ever.
Dick Swiveller goes to a bachelor party, and the desire for the convivial glass is strong within him. He drinks too much, and the next morning calls himself a fool for drinking. He is ashamed of his excess, and he has the headache, and the temptation is now absent. But when he is well again, and at another party, the old desire comes back with the old power. So Dick once more indulges too freely in "the rosy," and has another sick head in consequence. And then the social instincts rise up and reproach him, and the sated appetite, being weak, appears to him contemptible.
The social instinct is constant: the selfish desire is intermittent. The passion is like a tide which leaps the moral wall and then falls back to low water. The wall remains: it may be sullied or shaken, but it is still a moral wall, and only a long succession of such tides can break it down. When passion has broken down the moral wall the man is at the mercy of his passions. They flood the dwelling of his soul again and again until he is a ruin.
This, I think, explains Darwin's idea of the struggle between the social and selfish instincts.
In "Adam Bede" George Eliot blames the seducer of Hettie Sorrel for doing a terrible wrong for the sake of a brief selfish indulgence. But that charge is unfair. It implies that the deed was planned and done in cold blood. But the fact was that both Hettie and Arthur were carried away by a rush of passion. The great tide of desire, a desire made terribly strong by Nature, had overleapt the walls of morality and prudence.
Anger has been called a brief madness. The same kind of thing might be said of all the passions. It is as easy to be virtuous after the temptation as to be wise after the event We can all be brave in the absence of the enemy. The result of a struggle between the sea and a wall depends upon the force of the tide and the strength of the wall. It behoves us all to see that moral walls are builded strong and kept in good repair.
Let us go back to the action of the memory in the making of morals. Dr. C. W. Saleeby, who is doing good work in this field, gives us clear light in his book, "The Cycle of Life." He says:
Memory means a change impressed more or less deeply on the grey surface of the brain.
A change. Those "images" which Darwin tells us are continually passing through the mind have actually made a change in the brain. That is to say, they have made a change in the mind: they have made a change in the personality.
After showing how a singer learns to produce a note properly by practice until he is almost incapable of producing it improperly, and until its proper production has become mechanical, Dr. Saleeby says:
The effect of practice, as in any other art, mechanical, mental, or both, has been so to alter the constitution of the nerve cells as to produce a new mode of action.
The nerve cells have been re-arranged, and the habit of the person has been altered. He is no longer quite the same person. He now acts and thinks differently.
Now, these changes in the arrangement of the brain cells and fibres may be looked upon as the building up of the moral wall. And the desires and aversions are like the rising and falling tide.
And the tide of our desires is a tide of nature. Because our desires and aversions seem to work by reflex action. What is reflex action?
Reflex action, as I use the term here, is the mechanical action of the nerves. We do not grow hungry, or thirsty, or angry, or compassionate on purpose: we do not fall in love on purpose. The stomach, working, like the heart and lungs, by reflex action, without our knowledge or direction, uses up the food, and our nerves demand more. The desire for food, for love, for revenge, is due to reflex action. The desire makes itself felt first without our asking, and we have to refuse or to grant its request after it is made.
We do not say: "Behold, there is a pretty face: I will be attracted by it." We cannot help being attracted by the face that attracts us, any more than we can help being hungry. The face attracts us, more or less, and we decide to seek out its owner, according to the strength of the attraction and of the reason for resisting the attraction. We see a diamond. We do not say: "There is a diamond. I will not think it beautiful." We cannot think it anything but beautiful; but whether or not we shall buy it or steal it depends upon the strength of our desire and the strength of the reasons against gratifying that desire.
Now, let us see how these conflicting ideas act. A man sees a beautiful woman, and desires to see more of her. But he fears if he sees much of her he will fall in love with her. And he is engaged to marry another woman. What goes on in his mind? Memory reminds him that he is engaged, and that it would be "wrong" to follow his desire. And every time the temptation draws him to follow his desire he calls up the "image" of the other woman, and he calls up the images of old lessons, of old thoughts, of old opinions read and heard by him. And the stronger the temptation grows the more earnestly does he invoke these images. Now, what does all this show? It shows the contest between the reflex action of desire, backed by the memories of love's pleasures, on the one part; and, on the other part, of the moral feelings of memories of what he has learnt or thought to be right and wrong. It is then a battle between memory and desire.
A man is never tempted by a woman who does not attract him.
He never steals a thing he does not want. He does not drink a liquor he does not like. The desire must be there before his will is put to the test. And the desire is independent of his will.
A child has no morals. It has only desires. If it likes sugar it will take sugar. If it is angry it will strike. It is only when it is told that to steal sugar or strike its nurse is "naughty" that it begins to have a moral sense. And its moral sense consists entirely of what it learns– that is to say, its moral sense is memory. And its memory is a change in the arrangement of the cells of the grey matter of the brain. And these changes make the brain into a different kind of brain: make the child into a different kind of child.
Now, the child does not teach itself these moral lessons. It does not know them. It has to be taught by those who do know. And its moral sense depends upon what it is taught. And its conscience depends upon what it is taught.
And, that being so, is it not quite evident that the conscience is not the voice of God; that the conscience is not an innate knowledge of right and wrong born with the child; but it is nothing more nor less than the action of the memory?
The whole of this subject is ably and exhaustively treated by Luys in "The Brain and Its Functions," but I have not room here to go into it fully. Briefly put, the scientific explanation may be expressed thus: The brain cells have power to receive and to repeat impressions. When a new sensory impulse arises it awakens these impressions by means of the fibres of association. It is as though the brain were a phonographic "record." Upon this "record" there is printed, let us say, some moral lesson, as "Look not upon the wine when it is red in the cup." On the word "wine" being heard the association fibre which links the idea of wine to the moral idea of temperance sets the "record" in motion, and memory recalls the caution, "Look not upon the wine in the cup." It is as if a "record" on which is printed a song by Dan Leno were joined up with a battery which, upon hearing the word "Leno," would start the "record" to repeat the song.
I hope I have made that clear. I will now conclude by quoting from Dr. Saleeby a passage dealing with the important subject of "association." I take it from "The Cycle of Life":
Nerve cells are significantly incapable of division and reproduction… All the experience of living merely modifies, the state of the cells already present. The modification is memory.
But though a nerve-cell cannot divide, it can send forth new processes, or nerve-fibres from itself – what we call a nerve being simply a collection of processes from a nerve-cell. Throughout the brain and spinal cord we find great numbers of nerve processes which simply run from one set of nerve-cells to another, instead of running to a sense-organ, or a muscle, or a gland. Such fibres are called association fibres, their business being to associate different sets of nerve-cells.
It is conceivable that an exceptional development of such fibres may account for the possession of a good memory, or, at any rate, for the power easily to learn such co-ordinations as are implied in violin-playing, billiards, cricket, or baseball. Granting the power of nerve-cells, even when adult, to form new processes, it might be supposed that the exercise of this power accounts for the acquirement of certain habits of thought or action.
Now, whether or not nerve-cells have power to form new association fibres late in life, it is important to notice that the association fibres which exist at birth or form in childhood are the means by which one idea suggests another; and the means by which, as I said just now, upon the utterance of the word "wine" all we have remembered to have read or heard about wine is repeated by the memory "record."
And, just as a phonograph record can only repeat the song or speech that is printed upon it, so the memory can only repeat what it contains, and it contains nothing that has not been printed there through the medium of the senses.
That is why the word "marriage" carries with it no moral revulsion against polygamy in the mind of a Turk. The brain of a Turk has no "record" on its grey matter of any moral teaching against polygamy. And the "still small voice" does not make good the absence of the "record," and tell him that polygamy is wrong. This being so, what becomes of the theory that conscience is a mysterious agent of God implanted in the mind of man to guide him to do right and to shun wrong?
A cannibal chief was told by a missionary that it was wicked to have two wives. He went away and ate one wife. The missionary had printed on his brain "record" the lesson that to have two wives was wrong; but there was no "record" there to tell him he must not kill one wife and eat her.
Where was the "still small voice," the "divine guide to right conduct"?
CHAPTER TEN – FREE WILL
THE free will delusion has been a stumbling block in the way of human thought for thousands of years. Let us try whether common sense and common knowledge cannot remove it.
Free will is a subject of great importance to us in this case; and it is one we must come to with our eyes wide open and our wits wide awake; not because it is very difficult, but because it has been tied and twisted into a tangle of Gordian knots by twenty centuries full of wordy but unsuccessful philosophers, The free will party claim that man is responsible for his acts, because his will is free to choose between right and wrong.
We reply that the will is not free; and that if it were free man could not know right from wrong until he was taught.
As to the knowledge of good and evil the free will party will claim that conscience is an unerring guide. But I have already proved that conscience does not and cannot tell us what is right and what is wrong: it only reminds us of the lessons we have learnt as to right and wrong.
The "still small voice" is not the voice of God: it is the voice of heredity and environment.
And now to the freedom of the will.
When a man says his will is free, he means that it is free of all control or interference: that it can over-rule heredity and environment.
We reply that the will is ruled by heredity and environment.
The cause of all the confusion on this subject may be shown in a few words.
When the free will party say that man has a free will, they mean that he is free to act as he chooses to act.
There is no need to deny that. But what causes him to choose?
That is the pivot upon which the whole discussion turns.
The free will party seem to think of the will as something independent of the man, as something outside him. They seem to think that the will decides without the control of the man's reason.
If that were so, it would not prove the man responsible. "The will" would be responsible, and not the man. It would be as foolish to blame a man for the act of a "free" will, as to blame a horse for the action of its rider.
But I am going to prove to my readers, by appeals to their common sense and common knowledge, that the will is not free; and that it is ruled by heredity and environment.
To begin with, the average man will be against me. He knows that he chooses between two courses every hour, and often every minute, and he thinks his choice is free. But that is a delusion: his choice is not free. He can choose, and does choose. But he can only choose as his heredity and his environment cause him to choose. He never did choose and never will choose except as his heredity and his environment – his temperament and his training – cause him to choose. And his heredity and his environment have fixed his choice before he makes it.
The average man says "I know that I can act as I wish to act."
But what causes him to wish?
The free will party say, "We know that a man can and does choose between two acts." But what settles the choice?
There is a cause for every wish, a cause for every choice; and every cause of every wish and choice arises from heredity, or from environment.
For a man acts always from temperament, which is heredity, or from training, which is environment.
And in cases where a man hesitates in his choice between two acts, the hesitation is due to a conflict between his temperament and his training, or, as some would express it, "between his desire and his conscience."
A man is practising at a target with a gun, when a rabbit crosses his line of fire. The man has his eye and his sights on the rabbit, and his finger on the trigger. The man's will is free. If he press the trigger the rabbit will be killed.
Now, how does the man decide whether or not he shall fire? He decides by feeling, and by reason.
He would like to fire, just to make sure that he could hit the mark. He would like to fire, because he would like to have the rabbit for supper. He would like to fire, because there is in him the old, old hunting instinct, to kill.
But the rabbit does not belong to him. He is not sure that he will not get into trouble if he kills it. Perhaps – if he is a very uncommon kind of man – he feels that it would be cruel and cowardly to shoot a helpless rabbit.
Well. The man's will is free. He can fire if he likes: he can let the rabbit go if he likes. How will he decide? On what does his decision depend?
His decision depends upon the relative strength of his desire to kill the rabbit, and of his scruples about cruelty, and the law. Not only that, but, if we knew the man fairly well, we could guess how his free will would act before it acted. The average spoiling Briton would kill the rabbit. But we know that there are men who would on no account shoot any harmless wild creature.
Broadly put, we may say that the sportsman would will to fire, and that the humanitarian would not will to fire.
Now, as both their wills are free, it must be something outside the wills that makes the difference.
Well. The sportsman will kill, because he is a sportsman: the humanitarian will not kill, because he is a humanitarian.
And what makes one man a sportsman and another a humanitarian? Heredity and environment: temperament and training.
One man is merciful, another cruel, by nature; or one is thoughtful and the other thoughtless, by nature. That is a difference of heredity.
One may have been taught all his life that to kill wild things is "sport"; the other may have been taught that it is inhuman and wrong: that is a difference of environment.
Now, the man by nature cruel or thoughtless, who has been trained to think of killing animals as sport, becomes what we call a sportsman, because heredity and environment have made him a sportsman.
The other man's heredity and environment have made him a humanitarian.
The sportsman kills the rabbit, because he is a sportsman, and he is a sportsman because heredity and environment have made him one.
That is to say the "free will" is really controlled by heredity and environment.
Allow me to give a case in point. A man who had never done any fishing was taken out by a fisherman. He liked the sport, and for some months followed it eagerly. But one day an accident brought home to his mind the cruelty of catching fish with a hook, and he instantly laid down his rod, and never fished again.
Before the change he was always eager to go fishing if invited: after the change he could not be persuaded to touch a line. His will was free all the while. How was it that his will to fish changed to his will not to fish? It was the result of environment. He had learnt that fishing was cruel. This knowledge controlled his will.
But, it may be asked, how do you account for a man doing the thing he does not wish to do?
No man ever did a thing he did not wish to do. When there are two wishes the stronger rules.
Let us suppose a case. A young woman gets two letters by the same post; one is an invitation to go with her lover to a concert, the other is a request that she will visit a sick child in the slums. The girl is very fond of music, and is rather afraid of the slums. She wishes to go to the concert, and to be with her lover; she dreads the foul street and the dirty home, and shrinks from the risk of measles or fever. But she goes to the sick child, and she foregoes the concert. Why?
Because her sense of duty is stronger than her self-love.
Now, her sense of duty is partly due to her nature – that is, to her heredity – but it is chiefly due to environment. Like all of us, this girl was born without any kind of knowledge, and with only the rudiments of a conscience. But she has been well taught, and the teaching is part of her environment.
We may say that the girl is free to act as she chooses, but she does act as she has been taught that she ought to act. This teaching, which is part of her environment, controls her will.
We may say that a man is free to act as he chooses. He is free to act as he chooses, but he will choose as heredity and environment cause him to choose. For heredity and environment have made him that which he is.
A man is said to be free to decide between two courses. But really he is only free to decide in accordance with his temperament and training.
Brown is a Member of Parliament. He is given to understand that by suppressing his principles he may get a seat in the next Cabinet.
Brown is very anxious to get into the Cabinet. He is ambitious. His wife is ambitious. He wants to make a name; he wants to please his wife. But he has been taught that to sacrifice one's principles for a bribe is disgraceful.
Now, his ambition is part of his heredity; the things he has been taught are part of his environment.
The conflict in his mind is a conflict between the old Adam and the new; between the older egotism and the newer altruism. It is a conflict between good heredity and bad heredity; between heredity and environment; and the victory will be to the stronger.
If Brown is very ambitious, and not very conscientious, he will take the bribe. If his conscience is stronger than his ambition, he will refuse it. But to say that he is free to choose is a misuse of terms: he is only free to decide as the stronger of the two motives compels him to decide. And the motives arise from heredity and environment.
Macbeth was ambitious; but he had a conscience. He wanted Duncan's crown; but he shrank from treason and ingratitude. Ambition pulled him one way, honour pulled him the other way. The opposing forces were so evenly balanced that he seemed unable to decide. Was Macbeth free to choose? To what extent was he free? He was so free that he could arrive at no decision, and it was the influence of his wife that turned the scale to crime.
Was Lady Macbeth free to choose? She did not hesitate. Because her ambition was so much stronger than her conscience that she never was in doubt. She chose as her over-powering ambition compelled her to choose.
And most of us in our decisions resemble either Macbeth or his wife. Either our nature is so much stronger than our training, or our training is so much stronger than our nature, that we decide for good or evil as promptly as a stream decides to run down hill; or our nature and our training are so nearly balanced that we can hardly decide at all.
In Macbeth's case the contest is quite clear and easy to follow. He was ambitious, and his environment had taught him to regard the crown as a glorious and desirable possession. But environment had also taught him that murder, and treason, and ingratitude were wicked and disgraceful.
Had he never been taught these lessons, or had he been taught that gratitude was folly, that honour was weakness, and murder excusable when it led to power, he would not have hesitated at all. It was his environment that hampered his will.
We may say that Wellington was free to take a bribe. But his heredity and environment had only left him free to refuse one. Everyone who knew the Iron Duke knew how his free will would act if a bribe were offered him.
We may say that Nelson was free to run away from an enemy. But we know that Nelson's nature and training had left him free only to run after an enemy. All the world knew before the event how Nelson's free will would act when a hostile fleet hove into view. Heredity and environment had settled the action of Nelson's free will in that matter before the occasion to act arose.
We may say that Nelson's will was free in the case of Lady Hamilton. But it seems only to have been free to do as Lady Hamilton wished.
When Nelson met an enemy's fleet, he made haste to give them battle; when he met Lady Hamilton he struck his flag. Some other man might have been free to avoid a battle; some other man might have been free to resist the fascinations of a friend's wife. Horatio Nelson was only free to act as his nature and his training compelled him to act. To Nelson honour was dearer than life; but Lady Hamilton was dearer than honour.
Nelson's action in Lady Hamilton's case was largely due to the influence of environment. To hesitate in war was universally regarded as shameful. But, in Nelson's environment, a love intrigue was condoned as an amiable human weakness. Hence the failure of Nelson's will and conscience to resist the blandishments of the handsome Emma.
We may say that Jack Sheppard and Cardinal Manning were free to steal, or to refrain from stealing. But we know that the heredity and environment of the thief had made robbery, for him, a proof of prowess, and a question of the value of the spoil; and we know that the Cardinal would not have stolen the Crown jewels if he could; that he did not want them, and would not have taken them if he had wanted them.
We say that a drunkard and a lifelong abstainer are free to drink or to refuse a glass of whisky. But we know that in both cases the action of the free will is a foregone conclusion.
In all cases the action of the will depends upon the relative strength of two or more motives. The stronger motive decides the will; just as the heavier weight decides the balance of a pair of scales.
In Macbeth's case the balance seemed almost even: Lady Macbeth's persuasion brought down the scale on the wrong side.
If the will were free, it would be independent of the temperament and training, and so would act as freely in one case as in another. So that it would be as easy for the drunkard as for the lifelong abstainer to refuse to drink; as easy for the thief as for the Cardinal to be honest; as easy for Macbeth as for Lady Macbeth to seal the fate of Duncan.
But we all know that it is harder for one man than for another to be sober, or honest, or virtuous; and we all know that the sobriety, or honesty, or virtue of any man depends upon his temperament and training; that is to say, upon his heredity and his environment.
