Revival: Ethics: An Investigation of the Facts and Laws of Moral Life (1914)

Volume III: The Principles of Morality and the Sphere of their Validity

Wilhelm Wundt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351343084
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

It has been my object in the present work to investigate the problems of ethics in the light of an examination of the facts of moral life. One reason for this procedure is my desire to conduct the reader by the same path that I myself have followed in approaching ethical questions.

Chapter I.

The Moral Will

1. Will and Consciousness

(a) The Fact of Consciousness

A LONG course of physiological experiment and logical reflection has gradually made us aware that Qur conception of the external world is influenced in many and various ways by the nature of our sense organs, the structure of our nervous system, and, finally, by the peculiarities of our modes of representation and thought But that our perception of the inner world is influenced in the opposite way, that our tendency is ever to transfer into the system of inner experiences the images produced in us by the course of events in external nature—this is a fact which, as a rule, we tend to overlook. Yet it is well adapted to have a disturbing effect on the accuracy with which we observe our inner life, not only because it makes us confuse our own conceptions with their objects, but because these conceptions themselves become intermingled with foreign elements.

Since in the case of external objects the conditions under which we know the outer world have led us to abstract from the feelings that accompany the representation of those objects, we think we can do the same thing when we are considering these representations as purely subjective states in our own minds. Further, since we combine with the external object of a representation the notion of a permanently persisting thing, we are led to transfer this notion also to the representation as it exists in us; to think of it as appearing and disappearing, like external things, independently of ourselves. Finally, these supposed changes on the part of objects need a stage on which to take place; and so we create the notion of an internal space, which we call consciousness, analogous to the external space in which the drama of external nature is played. Feelings, desires, and volitions do not, of course, have external objects corresponding to them, as representations do. Hence in their case, we give up the attempt to regard each individual process as an independent thing. Instead, each class of these inner states is made an independent existence, influenced in its behaviour by representations, and occasionally exerting influence upon them in its turn.

All these fictions vanish if, instead of dealing with abstractions derived from the objects of external perception, we reverse the procedure and leave the relation of inner perceptions to external things wholly out of account at the outset. Representations will then be not objects but processes, phenomena belonging to a ceaseless inner stream of events. Feelings, desires and volitions will be parts of this stream, inseparable in actuality from representations, and, like them, the expressions of no independent existences or forces; rather possessing reality only as individual feelings, desires or volitions. Nay, the distinctions between these processes themselves are ill-defined; we call a certain stirring of our inward nature Feeling, when the active element that characterises our conception of will remains in the background; we call it Desire, when this active element becomes noticeable, but exerts as yet no direct power to change the course of inner events; we speak of a Volition, when to our inner state there is added the perception of self-activity, and the influence which this exercises in changing either our internal processes or such of our mental states as have outward reference. Finally, from this point of view consciousness is an abstraction, without even the shadow of independent reality. When we abstract from the particular processes of our inner experience, which are its only real elements, and reflect upon the bare fact that we do perceive activities and processes in ourselves, we call this abstraction Consciousness. The term thus expresses merely the fact that we have an inner life; it no more represents anything different from the individual processes of this life than physical life is a special force over and above the sum of physiological processes. As a matter of fact, the hypostatised notion of consciousness stands on a par with the ‘vital force’ of the older physiology. This is not to deny that we may continue to make good use of the rectified conception; just as physiology would find it difficult to get on without the notion of life.

(b) The Conception of Will

The attempt to erect into substantial entities not merely our inner perceptions themselves, but even the various aspects which they offer to our conceptual thought, has nowhere wrought more confusion than in the conception of will. A division of the feelings into certain classes was suggested by their obvious relation to ideas. But in the case of the will there was not even this motive for adopting an individualising method of treatment. On the contrary, the fact that all distinctions between volitions might be successfully referred to the accompanying feelings and desires gave the more warrant for the view that the will itself was a substantial force, which at most presented occasional differences in intensity, but in general stood distinct from the varied residue of conscious content as one and the same Deus ex ntachina. Even such vague differences as that of pleasantness and unpleasantness were lost in the case of will. True, the will might occasionally be accompanied by a feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness, by a desire or aversion, but in its essence it remained indifferent to these extraneous accompaniments. Whether its decisions were impelled by pleasure and passion, whether it was a cold spectator, or whether, as Kant required, it acted in direct opposition to inclination, it was still the same will, the pure abstraction of activity substantialised into a real force.

If we discard prejudice and make up our minds to consider the facts as they show themselves to be, apart from any conceptual scheme, these creations of an imaginative power that gives life to the abstractions of its own thought will vanish. They assume the form which they may rightfully claim—that of points of view chosen with more or less regard to their practical utility, from which we may look at the series of inner events; or, if one prefers the expression, that of various aspects which this series furnishes to our consideration. Every act of will presupposes a feeling with a definite and peculiar tone: it is so closely bound up with this feeling that, apart from it, the act of will has no reality at all. The two share throughout that concrete and definite character which in strictness makes every single act of our psychical life different from every other. On the other hand, all feeling presupposes an act of will; the quality of the feeling indicates the direction in which the will is stimulated by the object with which the feeling is connected. We speak of effort or desire when the transition from will to. action is checked by some kind of internal resistance; for example, by opposing impulses. Thus will becomes desire when such resistance arises; desire becomes will when the resistance disappears. Hence these distinctions are purely conceptual: the flow of conscious life is not concerned with them. Not infrequently it is less the fact itself than the way in which we choose to look at the fact that decides what term we shall use. Voluntary activity, however, is always present when a feeling is followed by an alteration in conscious content corresponding to the direction of the feeling, and, under certain conditions, by the associated external act It is thus the feeling, which precedes and stands in immediate relation to the given change in consciousness, that alone distinguishes voluntary activity from other conscious processes. Precisely on account of its dependence upon subjective excitation, we regard an alteration in the course of our ideas, occasioned by a feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness, as the characteristic expression of self-activity. We call such a process active, spontaneous, or willed, terms which have exactly the same meaning; and we contrast with these active processes all others as merely passive experiences.¹

So far as we know them in introspection and can infer them from external perception, consciousness and will are inseparably united. But will is not merely a function which sometimes accrues to consciousness and is sometimes lacking: it is an integral property of consciousness. Thus, will has its share in the development of consciousness. Perhaps it would be better to say that this development is in its most essential parts a development of will. Hence a principal manifestation of the growing wealth of inner experience is to be found in the forms of voluntary activity. Thereby the will gains an ever greater complexity of internal structure. Various currents of volitional excitation run side by side and intermingle, and so the act of will itself becomes an increasingly complex product of elementary processes alike in kind. Earlier impressions, which, under the form of ideas, have lost their power to affect consciousness, can still exert an influence upon the voluntary act, especially if they are combined with other elements that belong to the immediate present. Such excitants of the will as these, which fail to reach their full effectiveness, but which precede and accompany the individual action, remain in the stage of feeling. Since, however, even those stimuli which pass over into an active alteration of consciousness are perceptible as feelings before they bring about their result, the feelings may be treated as, generally speaking, the most immediate conditions of voluntary activity. In so far as they anticipate the voluntary act by their general quality and direction, they serve as the immediate motives of volition. The only way in which any other kind of conscious state can operate on the will is by becoming a state of feeling: in itself it may be a mediate but not a direct motive of volition. Every feeling is, on the other hand, an immediate motive; every feeling of pleasure marks a striving towards the object that excites the pleasure; every unpleasant feeling a striving against its object, and the effort towards or away from the object becomes voluntary activity whenever it is not checked by opposing feelings. This direct relation between feeling and action seems, at first sight, less clear in the case of many feelings, such as those belonging to the intellectual and æsthetic classes. Really, however, it is only more easily overlooked here because of the forms assumed by the voluntary act under such circumstances. A person lost in contemplation of a work of art is striving to preserve his perception of it, and his will offers a powerful resistance to other and distracting impressions. Intellectual activity requires a very high degree of internal tension on the part of the will, and this tension is brought about through the strong affective motives of interest and satisfaction.

(c) The Motives and Causes of Will

Since our introspection shows us that an affective motive is the indispensable antecedent of the voluntary act, it is natural to assume that the causal determination of will is wholly comprehended in this relation to the feelings that precede or accompany volition. The very terms ‘motive’ and ‘ground of action’ indicate an assumption of this sort, which, moreover, finds support in the notion, described above, of psychical activities as separated and split off from each other. Such a conception makes it peculiarly difficult to understand how psychical forces that are wholly different in nature can operate on each other; and this difficulty is, as a rule, a welcome opportunity to the upholders of a substantial will. “Of course,” we are now told, “motives cannot be the determining causes of will, for only things of the same kind can stand in a true causal connection. It follows that motives are merely the conditions under which the decision of the will occurs; the cause of this decision can be nothing but the will itself.” We shall meet this truly scholastic course of reasoning again when we come to consider the problem of freedom. It is so evidently an ontological artifice that we need not pause long over it. The abstraction of a will without content and separated from all its real relations is first transformed into a substantial thing, and then it is discovered that the thing is in reality as empty as the concept to which it corresponds. To allow this would involve too glaring a contradiction of experience; and so the theory ends by admitting, under the name of conditions, as much as is necessary of the real relations in which the will exists, and separating off, under the title of true causes, as much as seems desirable for other reasons.

However, if such ontological inventions as the one just described do not suffice to free the will from the empirical causality of the feelings, there is another and a weightier reason why we should not regard the immediate affective motives as the true or complete causal determinants of the will. This reason is found in the very fact that the will is not, as the above theory represents it, something foreign and opposed to the feelings, but forms with them a single coherent process, and cannot be separated from them except by a process of abstraction that is not even always definite as regards its limits. If, as we have seen, the feelings are themselves merely undeveloped volitions, they can be said to share in causing the will only as each stage in the course of any process depends upon the preceding stage. Hence, in the total complex of the causal conditions of will, the immediate affective motives are effects far more than they are causes. This is especially true of those decisive motives which really determine the action in accordance with their quality and direction. In so far as they precede the decision of the will and are among the forces most active in the strife between various motives, they form, it is true, a specially important part of the causes of volitions. In so far, however, as they accompany the action, or even its results, they are integral parts of the effect itself. But all the feelings that motivate an action presuppose other causal conditions just as much as the motives that finally decide it. Feelings and desires are thus simply the last members of a causal series that is only to a very limited extent accessible to our introspection, since it ends by taking in the whole previous history of the individual consciousness and the sum total of the conditions which originally determined the latter. And so we see that every voluntary act, even the simplest, is the end of an infinite series, of which the last links alone are open to our observation.

But the term motive in its wider significance means not merely the feelings that immediately indicate the direction and quality of the voluntary act which they precede: it includes the ideas with which these feelings are associated. Although, when considered in their true nature, feeling and idea form inseparable parts of one and the same process, in the present instance the feeling element seems to become more intense in proportion as it assumes the character of a force acting on the will. Thus the less powerful motives are those which are weaker in feeling-tone: the element of will is there, but it is too weak to prevail over other and stronger motives.

From this point of view we are led to draw certain distinctions which have their importance in the consideration of voluntary actions. Those motives which actually operate upon the will we shall call actual motives; those which as conscious elements of weaker feeling-tone remain ineffective we shall designate as potential motives. When an actual motive involves the idea of the effect of the corresponding action it is a purpose or final motive. And if the final motive anticipates in idea the ultimate result of the action it is the leading motive, as distinguished from incidental motives, which involve ideas of effects that either precede the most important result of the act or form inessential accompanying features. If, in the former case, the incidental results are regarded as conditions of the ultimate result, they are called means. Such incidental and auxiliary results may, especially in the case of the more complex voluntary acts, have an influence on the nature of the action not less important than that of the final result itself. They may vary, however, while the latter remains identical. Any given leading motive may be accompanied by different combinations of incidental motives, and the total purpose or aim of the action is determined by the sum of all these motives. But since motives form only a part of the causal determinants of will; since, moreover, external influences may intervene in the course of the action, to help or hinder, it is self-evident that the total effect of an act does not necessarily coincide with its total purpose. Especially in cases where there is but a single aim in view, and where in consequence the distinction between leading and incidental motives lapses, effect and purpose necessarily fail to coincide. In such a case none of the incidental effects of the action are included in the motivation of the act. But when these effects have a considerable importance it may easily happen that the main purpose is injured or wholly frustrated by them. Motive and effect are then wholly diverse; the will strives for something that it does not attain, and attains something for which it does not strive.

(d) The Development of Will: Heterogenetic and Autogenetic Theories.

The distinctions just discussed derive their great importance for the estimation of voluntary actions chiefly from their bearing on the development of the will. Two views have been held as to the solution of this problem, which represent diametrically opposed positions; we may call the one the heterogenetic, the other the autogenetic theory of will. The first regards the will as a function originating in consciousness out of other conscious elements, more particularly out of ideas. The second regards it as an original property given together with consciousness. Although we have already laid stress on the impossibility of separating consciousness from its functions, or the latter from one another, so long as we are dealing with direct introspective analysis, yet this does not wholly exclude the supposition that certain aspects of our inner life, which form for us at the present time integral parts of that life, have not always been such; that elements which our abstraction distinguishes in the developed consciousness were lacking in its original state. But the heterogenetic theory of will is unable to explain the very point upon which it rests, namely, how the will originates from psychical elements of a different nature. In its attempt to do so it reasons in a circle, assuming what it should explain. Consciousness is supposed to discover that certain movements are adapted to the production of certain results, and accordingly these movements, originally involuntary, gradually come to be performed with the co-operation of the will. But unless the will were there at the outset, unless the effect of will on movement were already present to consciousness, such an application of involuntary reflex and automatic movements would be impossible; they would be for consciousness as wholly passive as any processes in the external world. Besides, the fact that involuntary, purely mechanical movements are adapted to ends, a fact which this theory looks upon as conditioning the development of purposive, voluntary action, is itself, on the contrary, to be explained by the assumption that such movements develop out of actions which presuppose purpose, hence out of voluntary actions: a sequence of processes that accords with our observations of the lowest forms of animal life, where movements of an unmistakably voluntary character can be traced before any distinctly adaptive reflexes are developed.¹

The autogenetic theory of will also assumes that the complex voluntary activities have been developed. But it supposes that in this development the complex result has proceeded from simple elements of a like nature with the result itself. This theory dwells especially upon two points, which the heterogenetic view tends more or less completely to overlook. The first is the fact that every external ac...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• title
• copy
• fmchapter
• fmchapter
• fmchapter
• Part 3 The Principles of Morality
• 1 The Moral Will
• 2 Moral Ends
• 3 Moral Motives
• 4 The Moral Norms
• Part 4 The Departments of the Moral Life
• 1 The Individual Personality
• 2 Society
• 3 The State
• 4 Humanity