My Dear Friend,
If one has the capacity for substantial reflective thought beyond the most obvious facts of one's
existence in a simple physical environment and has, too, the urge to exercise that capacity, one soon
discerns the astounding artificiality and downright immorality of many rules that are taught as the
highest and indeed (by some persons) divinely revealed or approved moral code.
The conclusion is inescapable that a reconstruction of morals is sorely needed and long overdue.
Only Alice in Wonderland, or persons like her of both sexes, could view our conventional morality
without detecting, at least fleetingly and vaguely, its incongruous relation to natural man and the
natural world.
Human nature, we are often told, must be controlled.
What, then, is the nature of this control; by whom have moral rules been made; what has been the
purpose of them, not only ostensibly as revealed by orthodox explanations, but actually as revealed
by the purpose of them, not only ostensibly as revealed by orthodox explanations, but actually as
revealed by the purposes and interests they have served in the course of their working in human
lives and human affairs?
We are confronted in the very beginning of our analysis by two fundamental facts that lift the fog,
making possible a clearer view and a deeper understanding.
(1) Man has been, and continues to be, divided into superior and inferior social and economic
classes.
(2) The socially approved, conventional morality has been, and remains today, the -superior-
social classes; and these superior -social- classes have been, and in modern capitalist social orders
continue to be, the superior -economic classes.
Prescribed morality has thus become, not rules consistent with man's physiology and psychology
and the facts of the natural environment in which he must live and have his being, but rules
formulated by ruling classes and conforming to their conception of how man -ought- to act and
-ought- to think.
A child or an adult is normally acceptable or morally good if his conduct and ideas conform to what
a ruling group thinks his conduct and ideas -ought- to be.
A child is good if he comports himself as his parents or teachers think proper.
An adult is good if he acts, thinks, talks, and writes as priest or preacher, landlord, businessman,
or other representative citizen of the dominant economic and social classes thinks is fit and proper.
The moral views of these dominant classes are diffused among the general population and became
-mores- that are entertained uncritically and often dogmatically and fanatically.
If these moral standards are questioned at all, the questioning tends to occur, for the average person,
only when their impracticality in his experience becomes glaringly apparent and the accruing results
extremely unsatisfying to the organism. Then, with mental equilibrium destroyed, with an urgent
problem pressing for solution, the moral rule may be examined by reflective, critical intelligence.
Only then is there likely to be progress toward a more realistic morality in the life of man or woman.
To be sure, one may still accept the conventionally approved standard as being morally correct while
actually violating it in daily living. In this case blame may be projected to a personal devil, to Adam
and Eve and their original sin, to the frailties of the flesh. For these folk, Protestantism offers prayer
and salvation through faith and Catholicism offers, among many aids, indulgences...
It is no accident, surely, that socialists and, latterly, socialists of communist persuasion particularly,
have been painted as morally reprehensible in a full, complete sense. If such a person does not accept
established, conventional morality in economic affairs, it is but a step to the belief that he is morally
wrong in other respects as well.
The conclusion to which an honest thinker is logically led is that the social division of man into super
superior and inferior classes results in a morality inconsistent with the facts of human physiology
and psychology and the real environment. This inconsistency creates in men and women a
restlessness, an uncertainty, poor mental hygiene, personal maladjustment and tragedy, a realization,
forfor the most part unconscious, that the individual is led by false priests and praying to false gods.
This unfortunate situation induces hypocrisy and distrust of all moral standards.
Of course it is not true that moral rules can be explained wholly as the conscious effort of ruling
classes to dominate the mass of humanity in the interest of these numerically small superior classes;
when mechanistic and human forces have created a given society, the morality inevitably tends
to freeze into mores that will work toward the perpetuation of that society.
The truth would appear to be that the relationship is a reciprocal one; that moral rules tend to create
and perpetuate a given social and economic order and that a given social and economic order and
that a given social and economic order tends to create and perpetuate a morality congenial to it.
To say that a person of the so-called superior classes does not consciously understand why he holds
passionately to a prevailing morality is not to deny the efficacy of that morality or the purely material
increments it helps to insure for him and his class.
When morals are thought to be confined to an inner realm apart from human nature, two opposed
schools of social reform naturally arise.
First, there is the view that, since morals are a special faculty within man, distinct from human
nature and the environment and independent of them, man's moral faculty must be improved and
strengthened before we may hope for a better, more equitable social system. Then man has thus truly
had a change of heart, his improved moral status will automatically be reflected in a better society.
This theory stems from Plato's notion of faculty psychology.
Second, there is the alternative, the view that man is wholly a creature of his heredity and
environment, that his moral nature is shaped by the social institutions under which he lives.
Consequently, an improved moral tone in man can come only when better institutions under which
he lives. Consequently, an improved moral tone in man can come only when better institutions make
this possible. The institutions themselves will be changed by mechanistic forces inherent in them and
their operations. Institutions shape man, not man, institutions....an explanation that does not
recognize free-will or freedom of choice.
Undoubtedly both views contain much truth, the error being in the absence of a synthesizing
approach. Man influences and shapes society; society influences and shapes man. But the concept
faculy psychology is faulty: there is no separate moral faculty; the human organism is, and acts as, a
unity. Moral values are generated and become meaningful in a social setting, when the organism
upon, and is itself acted upon by, a social environment.
A morality based on the study of human nature integrates man and his activities with the environment
in which he lives. He is seen to be, not a being separate or essentially different from other
manifestations of life, but a product and essential part of the environment in which he lives, an
organism whose well-being and continued existence depend on its success in preserving its
biological integrity.
There are constant organic states the integrity of which must be respected if the organism is to be
healthy and indeed if it is to endure. Nature tolerates a certain limited, temporary violation of them,
it is true; but effort is always directed toward realization and maintenance of them in their full
integrity, toward the reestablishment of a biological equilibrium.
When morals are thought of in terms of the facts of man's organic nature and the facts of his
environment...when morality is founded on natural science..theory corresponds with practice, and
there is no longer a duality in experience..no longer, on the one hand, an unreal morality entertained
in a non-existent moral faculty of the organism and, on the other hand, a practical world of events in
which expediency and unmoral behavior take precedence over the unreality and vapidity of morals
divorced from nature and scientific facts of the environment.
Then failure is truly a source of instruction; for moral rules are reconsidered and reevaluated in the
real world of men and events. The causes of failure can be looked for where scientific method
indicates them to be; the facts of the organism are related to the facts of that organism's experience.
Moral standards are generated, tested, revised, rejected by a laboratory technique practiced in day to
day living.
morals become experimental, tentative, pragmatic, relative.
When morals ar built upon a regard for human nature and not a disregard for it, ethics, too, can
become pragmatic and experimental and be integrated with and grow from physics and biology. A
pragmatic, naturalistic ethics emerges from and helps to shape the social and economic arrangements
by which people live. it is not of a separate, isolated realm.
A morality that is not rooted in human nature is negativistic, prohibitive. It expresses itself in a list of
don'ts in rigid prohibitions. It does not generate in actual ex perience, is not relative or pragmatic but
a moral absolutism that disregards the facts of human physiology, psychology, and experience.
When we say that habits are arts, we are emphasizing primarily the thought that habits are not
independent personal abilities or reactions, self-generating and self-inclosed within the individual,
but responses of an organism to objective circumstances of its environment, to objects and relation-
ships in or concerned with a world external to itself. One's habits, as thus conceived, are conditioned
by the objective circumstances of one's life no less than by one's organic structures themselves.
Habits are formed by interaction between the organism and the facts and conditions of its
environment.
Yet professional moralists have fatuously taught that morals are essentially subjective,
individualistic, the province of a special faculty within man. Morality has been a personal matter,
concerned with a self. To elevate one's moral tone, one should, in this view, listen with decorous
respect to the moral precepts of professional moral guides who have certain knowledge of what
constitutes good morality. Moral rules are thus absolutist and pure--a code to be learned and
practiced because it is authoritarian. Morality is not to generate in actual contact of an organism
with the factors of its environment.
Contrarily, morality scientifically understood comprises "working adaptations of personal capacities
with environing forces".
Morality can in fact not exist apart from a physical and social environment. Only in such a setting
can events take on moral meaning.
There is, consequentinly, no evil per se, no absoute force of wickedness that inheres in man as an
element of his nature.
Evil or morally wrong actions result, not solely from an organism, but from an organism and its
association with physical and biological objects of its environment. The evil is socially created, and
responsibility for it must be socially shared.
An organism's moral predispositions are formed in an identical manner, and responsibility for them is
also clearly social.
No basis exists for the belief, commonly held, that there is a fixed area of wickedness, that morality
is an absolute. The moral and the immoral are socially determined in the course of man's living
among his fellows in a given environment. So far as moral are rational, activities of an organism are
if they preserve its biological integrity and promote its happiness and well being without having
a deleterious effect on others.
Nor are moral values constant, as traditional authoritarianism teaches. The moral and the immoral
do not have precisely the same content at all the same content at all times and for all persons.
In our own day, the morally good may in many respects be variable for different peoples in widely
separated parts of he world, where social, economic, and other environmental conditions differ.
In past ages, conduct that would be frowned upon today might be morally justified. Finally, in a
vitally important sense it is true that morals now, as in fact always, must be thought of in terms of a
given situation. Morals are thus seen to be, not rules that are universally applicable to all human
organisms in all environments, but rules that become moral for a given organism in a given
situation only when they serve moral ends for that organism in that situation.
In a word, we have done with absolutes.
Morally we of today stand between the past and the future, as in truth we do in all other phases of life
also. Our morality is today's morality, applicable to our time and conditions. It has grown out of
yesterday's, and out of it itself will emerge tomorrow's. Morals, too, are subject to evolution.
Civilization is inseparable from history and social environment. The present cannot be understood,
nor the future intelligently planned, unless we have the knowledge of the past that history gives.
There is no progress save through the growth, integration, and reconstruction of habits among men
and women in a social setting. The individual organism fades and dies, but its contribution to
habits is immortal. This is another way of expressing the immortality of influence. The habits of
yesterday are modified, integrated, and reconstructed to form the habits of the present; the habits of
the present become similarly the habits of tomorrow. Thus civilization, always dependent on the
past, progresses to fuller realiztion of the potentialities of nature. The men and women who have
played their parts since man first appeared on the world's stage hundreds of thousands of years ago
have gone the way of all flesh; but nevertheless they live on among us, and will forever live, in the
habits and intellectual and cultural life of the present-- in the human lives of today and tomorrow.
Nothing in nature is static. As we live the habits of today, we reconstruct them toward the habits of
tomorrow.
Many examples of the development of conduct through interaction of an organism's biological
capacities and the factors of the organism's environments come to one's mind. Fiction is rich with
them, the newspapers report a goodly number daily, our juvenile court files are veritable storehouses.
Such cases came to my attention when I was employed in psychometric and probation work for the
Juvenile Court of the most populous County of my home State.
However, I shall make only one specific reference--to Clifford Shaw's THE JACK-ROLLER, a book
that is especially illustrative--and then pass on to other considerations.
If it is asserted, as it often is, that, though people have the ability to change the present economic
order, it is not desirable to make the attempt to change it, one may properly answer by saying that no
economic order has metaphysical sanctions for its continued existence; none is divinely ordained;
none is changeless, permanent, or eternal, however much its special beneficiaries may desire it to be;
the only test that may be applied is the purely pragmatic one: does the economic order promote the
ideals and provide the material goods and services that we want and that scientific study shows our
present abilities, skills, knowledge, and external aids can insure when sanely directed toward these
ends?
In earlier writing, I have emphasized for many years the following two ideals or principles as basic
and enduring:
(1) The preservation and progressive development of economic security and well-being.
(2) The preservation and progressive development of the integrity of the individual human personality.
Principle (2) cannot eventuate in the modern industrial society unless Principle (1) has been
antecedently realized. This is to say that our other personal rights that are cherished in a truly
democratic society cannot be insured if they are not rooted in economic rights inherent in the
freedom and security of a genuine economic democracy.
It may fairly be submitted that an economic order that does not provide and progressively develop
these fundamental principles does not deserve to survive today among intelligent people, particularly
where industrialism has existed for many years.
As for the risks incurred in promotiong such a change, they are as nothing compared to the risks
that inevitably appear and lead to tragedy and disaster when lethargy, the selfishness of special
beneficiaries of the established order, ignorance, stupidity, inertia, and other factors prevent
consummation of changes in our economic arrangements till they are long overdue.
Through interaction of human and environmental elements these changes must be brought about
smoothly when needed if we are to remain on the road that leads toward the goal we cherish. It is
the function of intelligence to readjust our habits in the way--to habituate us to new ways of life
the will insure the preservation and progressive realization of the ideals to which we are devoted.
When this does not occur--when the reactionary or rigidly conservative attitude prevails-- there
develops a social lag that produces economic and social maladjustments and much suffering and
tragedy among individual members of the social order. In recent times the parts of the world where
people live by those economic arrangements known as capitalism experienced, from 1930 to the
Second World War, poverty, misery, deprivation, frustration, worry, and death while machinery,
technical knowledge and skills, and a competent, willing labor force were not permitted to produce
the rich, full life for all that they could surely provide if used under saner arrangements. The shift to
a war economy in 1940 and, in some countries, several years earlier, has revived trade and commerce
and hence has brought a measure of prosperity or, if not this in all cases, at least absence of grave
economic need (again there are exceptions today in several of the European nations); but it has
unleashed all the horrors of war and created for the post-war years a problem that will be utterly
insoluble short of complete, rapid transition to a socialist society-- a transition that must be
consummated within the democratic process if temporary abrogation of important personal rights is
to be avoided. Here is a challenge to all that is finest in the youth of today.
The argument could be implemented with a mass of factual detail, but the answer in its skeletal
essentials has been given. In subsequent letters I shall refer again to these problems, for
contemporary philosophy is less than nothing and futile if it is not concerned with the actualities--
yes, the bread-and-butter facts----of the world in which we live and seek to shape our fortunes.
May I suggest that (1) the socialist and even the communist does not eschew education and political
action; (2) the class struggle, as socialists and communists conceive it, is not something to be
created by agitators but rather a factual social phenomenon that inevitably operates in capitalist
society; and (3) economic determination, as socialists and communists understand and teach it,
does not exclude the forces of idealism, ethics, and human desire--the influence of a creative
organism acting upon its environment. But they would explain that these personal factors are
themselves the result of antecedent causation, one important element of which is environing forces
external to the organism, and another the nature of that organism's inherited and environmentally
modified biological structure. External forces are of course most potent for the socialist and
communist, as they are for many other scholars and thinkers. Referring to the class struggle once
more, it is relevant to say that socialists and communists emphasize this idea so that working people
will understand the dynamics of history and social change, the deeper meanings of events in their
employment and in current industrial, economic, and social life generally. Their intention is thus
seen to be to create, not class hate, but understanding, as a basis of intelligent social engineering
toward formation of a classless society. Their desire is not to make class antagonisms, but to
explain those that inevitably exist and operate. They wish to remove these antagonisms in the
only way possible---by replacing the system that makes them by a system in which they cannot exist.
We should recall, too, that no one is more devoted to education than the socialist or communist, who
practices it always. In fact, plitical campaigns are for them, not mere periodic, sporadic actifity, but
parts of a continuous educational campaign intended to create, or help in the creation of a new
society. And even the revolutionary who expects that forces other than the parliamentary will be
finally decisive and gives precedence to non-olitical factors in social change does not minimize the
value of education or specifically of the educational value of political campaigns.
In dealing with moral problems, our emphasis quite naturall falls on the future; for the past is over
and done, and, if a specific action in the past has been immoral, the problem becomes, not
principally to establish resonsibility and inflict punishment, but so to reconstruct the environmen
that moral actions will henceforth replace the immoral.
For example, in the case of a criminal, or purpose should be to recontruct his environing conditions
in a manner most likely to result in the substitution of morally good habits for those that have been
morally bad. The matter of retributive "justice" (I shall have something to say about "justice" in one
of my letters) is at most only secondary and really may be prejudicial to attainment of the
reconstructed habits we desire. Punishment as traditionslly conceived is psychologically,
ethically, and morally indefensible.
Yesterday someone referred to Clarence Darrow's strictures against society, in which the late
Chicago lawyer, one of the great men of the modern age, charges the social order with complete
responsibility for a criminal's wrong-doing.
I have read a good deal of Darrow's work and am familiar with the chief facts of his life. Though I
cannot accept the philosophical pessimism for which he argues, there is in his position, I am sure
much truth.
Apropos of social responsibility for crime and the criminal, I am convinced that it is by far the major
factor of antecedent causation.
I think we shall at least agree that Darrow was blessed with a deeper insight than most thinkers attain.
Someone-- I tink Lincoln Steffens-- has written that people have told of seeing Darrow wince from
the mere thought of the suffering another person had undergone or was presently enduring.
Darrow does not believe in free-will.
While my position is not identical with his in this respect, tere is a sense in which all human response
is, in my opinion, determined by forces beyond the individual's control.
Let us think of a child who has just been born. What are his resources, and whence have they come?
He brings with him into the light of day only organic structral predispositions that have been
inherited and for which he is not at all responsible.
Now, if we proceed from that point and consider what happens, we see that the organism necessarily
acts upon, and is itself acted upon by, conditions and objects of a social setting.
It is conventionally assumed that in responding to the factors of its environment the organism is
exercising freedom of choice-- free-will.
There is an important sense in which this could never be true.
When the organism responds in a given way in a given complex of circumstances, it does so because
of what it is; and the organism is what it is because of its inherited biological predispositions and the
environing factors that in acting upon these biological structural predispositions have altered them.
Considered from this point of view, free-will hardly enters the picture.
Or, to put the matter a little differently, a decision reached by a man or woman is determined,
regardless of how intelligent the person may be, by the factors of his or her heredity and
environments.
It is extremely difficult for the simon-pure advocate of free-will to get around the horns of this
dilemma.
Nor is much foundation left for the doctrine of personal responsibility unless we charge the organism
with responsibility for it heredity--a position that is scientifically untenable.
Emphasis is on the future when the morality of a social system as such is considered, also. The
history of that system is important to an understanding of the forces that are causing social
maladjustment and decay; but the moral problem is of the future, not the past-- how the system can
be satisfactorily changed or successfully abandoned for a new one, with a minimum of strife and
confusion during transition.
In our present is all the heritage of our past. We cannot live this present at its potential best if we do
not understand our heritage and rethink it for use in the modern social setting. The potential richness
of the future cannot take shape unless intelligence can control impulse, reshaping present habits to fit
changing objective circumstances.
If there is to be no serious cultural lag, morals must be experimental, relative, pragmatic.
They must not stifle the individual human personality by insisting upon a colorless, drab,
unimaginative sameness or uniformity that does not recognize individual differences in biological
structural predispositions.
Model T Fords are preferable to Model T morals.
If intelligence is freely operative, the full richness of our heritage can be lived in the present day, and
the future becomes an ever-widening, ever-brightening horizen.
Very sincerely yours,
Colin McEwen
Surrey, Bristish Columbia
November, 1943
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