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SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES




_The Volumes of the Series already Published are_:--


     +Civilisation of Christendom, and other Studies.+ By BERNARD
     BOSANQUET, M.A. (Oxon.), Hon. LL.D. (Glasgow). 4s. 6d.

     +Short Studies in Character.+ By SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc. (Lond.). 4s.
     6d.

     +Social Rights and Duties.+ By LESLIE STEPHEN. 2 vols., 9s.


Other Volumes to follow by--

Professor A. SIDGWICK, Professor D. G. RITCHIE, and
J. H. MUIRHEAD, Esq. (the Editor).




The Ethical Library

SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES

ADDRESSES TO ETHICAL SOCIETIES

LESLIE STEPHEN

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II.

[Illustration: Logo]

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.
1896


ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.




NOTE.


The following chapters are chiefly a republication of addresses
delivered to the Ethical Societies of London. Some have previously
appeared in the _International Journal of Ethics_, the _National
Review_, and the _Contemporary Review_. The author has to thank the
proprietors of these periodicals for their consent to the republication.

L. S.




CONTENTS.


                                  PAGE
HEREDITY,                            1

PUNISHMENT,                         55

LUXURY,                             95

THE DUTIES OF AUTHORS,             137

THE VANITY OF PHILOSOPHISING,      183

FORGOTTEN BENEFACTORS,             225




HEREDITY.


I found, the other day, that an address upon Heredity had been
announced, of which I was to be the deliverer. I admit that I was fully
responsible for the statement, although, for reasons with which I need
not trouble you, I was not quite prepared for it in this form. I mention
this fact in order simply to say that the title may possibly give rise
to false expectations. I am quite incompetent to express any opinion of
the slightest scientific value upon certain problems suggested by that
rather ugly word "heredity". The question as to the precise relationship
between any organism and its parents or remoter ancestors, is one of the
highest interest. The solution, for example, of the problem, whether is
it possible for a living being to transmit to its descendants qualities
which have only been acquired during its own lifetime, has an important
bearing upon the general theory of evolution. But I have nothing
whatever to suggest in regard to that problem. I simply take it for
granted that there is some relation between parents and children: and a
relation, speaking in the most general way, such that the qualities
with which we start in life, resemble more or less closely those of our
ancestors. I may also assume that, in some form or other, the doctrine
of evolution must be accepted: and that all living things now in the
world are the descendants, more or less modified, of the population
which preceded them. I proceed to ask whether, as some people appear to
believe, the acceptance of this doctrine in the most unqualified form,
would introduce any difficulty into our primary ethical conceptions. I
will also at once give my answer. I do not believe that it introduces
any difficulty whatever. I do believe that the general theory of
evolution tends in very important ways to give additional distinctness
to certain ethical doctrines; although, to go at all fully into the how
and the why would take me beyond my present purpose. All that I have to
argue to-day is, that a belief in "heredity" need not be a
stumbling-block to any reasonable person.

I cannot doubt that the popular mind is vaguely alarmed by the doctrine.
I read, the other day, a novel by a well-known author, of which, so far
as I can remember, the main substance was as follows: A virtuous doctor
(his virtue had some limitations) studied the problem of heredity, and
had read Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and Weissmann, and all the proper
authorities. His own researches are carefully described, with the
apparent assumption that they were both profound and of tremendous
significance. He had, it appears, accumulated a vast amount of material;
and his method was to cut out slips from newspapers, whenever they
recorded any events in his own family history, and to preserve them in a
mysterious cabinet. These investigations proved that there was a decided
family likeness running through the descendants of a common ancestor. As
a general rule, they had all belonged to the class "blackguard". From
this result he inferred that there was no God and no soul. His relations
were dreadfully scandalised: one was converted to his views; but the
others contrived diabolical plots for setting fire to these marvellous
collections and so stopping the contagion of these dreadful doctrines at
their source. It struck me, I confess, that instead of burning the
collections, they would have done better to ask him what was the
connection between his premisses and his conclusions. What was this
terrible, heart-paralysing truth which the poor man had discovered? Has
any human being ever doubted, since mothers were invented, that children
are apt to resemble their parents? I do not personally remember the
fact, but I should be prepared to bet, if the point could be settled,
that, before I was a month old,--and in those days neither Darwin nor
Weissmann had published a line,--my nurse and my mother had affirmed
that the baby was like his papa. That, at any rate, is a remark, the
omission of which would show more originality than the assertion. If I
desired, again, to produce classical authority for the importance of
race, I should not have to extend my researches beyond the Latin
Grammar. If, once more, we look into the writings of famous theologians,
we meet it everywhere. I take the first that comes to hand. "Good men,"
says Calvin, "and beyond all others, Augustine, have laboured to
demonstrate, that we are not corrupted by any adventitious means but
that we derive an innate depravity from our very birth." The denial of
this was an instance of consummate impudence--reserved, as Calvin shows,
for such wicked heretics as Pelagius. The doctrine of heredity, in
short, in a theological version, is essentially involved in the dogmatic
foundations of the orthodox creed. I have no doubt that an investigation
of the reasonings of Augustine and others would exhibit much affinity to
modern controversy, though in a very different terminology. Whatever we
may think of its merits, the doctrine of original sin implies that a
depraved nature may have been transmitted to the whole human race; and,
if the commonly alleged cause of the original depravity strikes us as
insufficient, it is, at least, a very familiar argument of divines,
that the doctrine corresponds to undeniable facts. Why should it startle
us in a scientific dress? If we can transmit depravity, why not genius
and bodily health? In one respect, modern theories tend rather to limit
than to extend the applicability of the principle. No one ever doubted,
nor could doubt, that the child of a monkey is always a monkey; and that
the child of a <DW64>, or even of a Mongol, has certain characteristics
which distinguish it from the child of a European. But the difference is
that, whereas it used to be held that there was an impassable barrier
between the monkey and the man, it is now widely believed that both may
be descendants from a common ancestor. Should this belief establish
itself, we shall have to admit that, in spite of heredity, organic forms
are capable of much wider variation than was believed by our fathers to
be even conceivable.

Let us try, then, to discover some more plausible explanation of the
fear excited by the doctrine. Now, I wish to give as wide a berth as
possible to that freewill controversy which perplexes so many minds, and
is apt to intrude at this point. I will try to assume,--though it is not
my own position,--the doctrine of the freedom of the will in the widest
sense that any reasonable person can devise. No such person will deny
that there is a close connection--the terms of which have not yet been
defined--between the physical constitution and the moral or intellectual
character. The man plainly grows out of the baby. If the baby's skull
has a certain conformation it can only be an idiot; with another skull
and brain it may be developed into a Shakespeare or a Dante. The
possibilities ranging between those limits are immovably fixed at birth.
And what determines the constitution with which the child is born?
Surely it can be nothing but the constitution and circumstances of its
parents. Whether I can be a great man, or cannot be more than a
commonplace man, or a fool,--nay, whether I shall be man or monkey or an
oak,--is settled before I have had any power of volition at all. Now, it
is curious how, even at this early period, we are led to use delusive
language. The difficulty is quaintly indicated in a remark by Jonathan
Swift. The dean "hath often been heard to say" (says a fragment of
autobiography) "that he felt the consequences of his parents' marriage,
not only through the whole course of his education, but during the
greater part of his life". If they had not married, he apparently
implies, he would have been born of other parents, and certainly would
have felt it for life. What the word "he" means in that connection, is a
puzzle for logicians. I fell into the difficulty myself, the other day,
when I had occasion to say that a man's character had been influenced,
both by his inheritance of certain qualities and by the later
circumstances of his education. Having said this, which, I think, aimed
at a real meaning, it occurred to me that the phrase was grossly
illogical, and I shall be still obliged if any one will put it straight
for me. The difficulty was, that I had used the same form of words to
indicate the influence of a separable accident, and to describe one
aspect of the essential character. To say that a man is influenced by
his education is to say that he would have been different had he gone,
for example, to another school. That is intelligible. But to say that
"he" would have been different if he had been born of other parents is
absurd, for "he" would not have been "he". He would not have existed at
all. "He" means the man who has grown out of the baby with all its
innate qualities; and not some, but all those qualities, the very
essence of the man himself, is, of course, the product of his
progenitors. Such phrases, in short, suggest the fancy that a man had a
pre-existence somewhere, and went about like Er the Pamphylian in
Plato's myth, selecting the conditions of his next stay upon earth. In
that case, no doubt, there might be some meaning in the doctrine. The
character of the future incarnation would depend upon the soul's choice
of position. But as we know nothing about any pre-existent soul, we must
agree that each of us starts as the little lump of humanity, every
characteristic of which is determined by the characteristics of the
parents, however much its later career may be affected by the
independent powers of thought and volition which it develops. So much,
it seems to me, must be granted on all hands, and is perhaps implicitly
denied by no one.

But granting this very obvious remark, what harm does "heredity" do us?
It is the most familiar of all remarks that you and I and all of us
depend upon our brains in some sense. If they are pierced, we die; if
they are inflamed, we go mad; and their constitution determines the
whole of our career. A grain of sand in the wrong place, as the old
epigrams have told us,--in Caesar's eye, for example,--may change the
course of history. That unlucky fly, which, as Fuller remarks, could
find no other place to creep into in the whole patrimony of St. Peter
except the Pope's throat, choked the unlucky man, and, for the time at
least, altered the ecclesiastical order of Christendom. In other words,
we are dependent at every instant upon elements in the outside
world,--bacteria, for instance,--and the working of our own physical
organism. But, that being so, what conceivable difference does it make
whether the brain, which we certainly did not ourselves make, has a
fixed resemblance to that of our parents, or be, if it be possible, the
product of some other series of processes? It is important, no doubt, to
recognise the fact; it would be of the highest importance if we could
define the exact nature of the fact; but the influence upon any