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The Nature of Goodness

Book: George Herbert Palmer
Review: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi
THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS

When we take a walk, read a book, make a dress, hire a servant, visit a friend, attend a concert, choose a
wife, cast a vote, enter into business, we always do it in the hope of attaining something good. The clue of
goodness is accordingly a veritable guide of life.

Acquaintance with the structure of the eye does not help seeing. To determine beforehand just how polite
we should be would not facilitate human intercourse. And possibly a completed scheme of goodness
would rather confuse than ease our daily actions.

Science does not readily connect with life. For most of us all the time, and for all of us most of the
time, instinct is the better prompter.

In considering what we mean by goodness, we are apt to imagine that the term applies especially,
possibly entirely, to persons. It seems as if persons alone are entitled to be called good. But a little
reflection shows that this is by no means the case. There are about as many good things in the world as
good persons, and we are obliged to speak of them about as often.

"Nothing I see is good without respect."
- Shakespeare

The respects or ends in reference to which goodness is calculated are often, it is true, obscure and
difficult to seize if one is unfamiliar with the currents of men's thoughts.

Extrinsic goodness signifies the adjustment of an object to something which lies outside itself; Intrinsic
goodness says that the many powers of an object are so adjusted to one another that they cooperate to
render the object a firm totality.

By an Organism, Kant says, we mean that assemblage of active and differing parts in which each part is
both means and end. In an organic whole each part has its own function to perform, is active; and all
must differ from one another, or there would be mere repetition and aggregation instead of organic
supplementation of end by means. Intrinsic goodness is the expression of the fullness of function in the
construction of an organism.

MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS

We as persons affect one another quite as decidedly through the wholeness of our characters as we do
through any interlocking of single traits. The two phases of goodness are thus seen to be mutually
dependent. Extrinsic goodness or serviceability, that where an object employs an already constituted
wholeness to further the wholeness of another cannot proceed except through intrinsic goodness or that
where fullness and adjustment of functions are expressed in the construction of an organism. Nor can
intrinsic goodness be supposed to exist shut up to itself and parted from extrinsic influence.

Wealth and order are everywhere the double traits of goodness and a chief test of the worth of any
organism will be the diversity of the powers it includes.

The deep opposition between these contrasted sides of goodness is mirrored in the conflicting moral
ideals of conservatism and radicalism, of socialism and individualism, which have never been absent from
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the societies of men, nor even, from those of animals. Conservatism insists on unity and order; radicalism
on wealthy life, diversified powers, particular independence. Either, left to itself, would crush society, one
by emptying it of initiative, the other by splitting it into a company of warring atoms.

Richness of character is as important as correctness. The world's benefactors have often been
one-sided and faulty men. None of us can be complete; and we had better not be much disturbed
over the fact, but rather set ourselves to grow strong enough to carry off our defects.

Goodness of a person or thing consists in its being as richly diversified as is possible up to the
limit of harmonious, working, and also in being orderly up to the limit of repression of powers.
Beyond either of these limits evil begins.

Whatever contributes to the solidity and wealth of an organism is, from the point of view of that
organism, good. Goodness is the expression of the largest organization. Its aim is everywhere to
bring object and environment into fullest cooperation.

A good act is the expression of selfhood as service.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

No doubt we usually recognize a human being by his form and motions, but we assume that certain inner
traits regularly attend these outward matters, and that in these traits the real ground of difference between
person and thing is to be found. How many such distinguishing differences exist? Obviously a multitude;
but these are merely various manifestations of a few fundamental characteristics. Probably all can be
reduced to four: Self-consciousness, Self-direction, Self-development, and Self-sacrifice. Wherever
these four traits are found, we feel at once that the being who has them is a person. Whatever creature
lacks them is but a thing, and requires no personal attention.

In our body we come upon unconscious sections. This body seems to have some connection with myself;
yet of its large results only, and not of its minuter operations, can I be distinctly aware. In like manner it is
held that within the mind processes cumulate and rise to a certain height before they cross the threshold
of consciousness. Below that threshold, though actual processes, they are unknown to us. The teaching
of modern psychology is that all mental action is at the start unconscious, requiring a certain bulk of
stimulus in order to emerge into conditions where we become aware of it.

Matthew Arnold has declared conduct to be three fourths of life. If we mean by conduct consciously
directed action, it is not even one fourth. Yet however fragmentary, it is that which renders all the rest
significant.

Probably at birth man has as many instincts as any other animal. And though as consciousness awakes
and takes control, some of these become unnecessary and fall away, new ones are continually
established, and by them the heavy work of life is for the most part performed.

But higher in the personal life than unconsciousness, higher than the reflex instincts, are the conscious
experiences. By these, we for the first time became aware of what is going on within us and without.

To be able to throw off the bondage of the moment is the distinctive characteristic of a person. When
Shelley watches the skylark, he envies him his power of whole-heartedly seizing a momentary joy. Then
turning to himself, and feeling that his own condition, if broader, is on that very account more liable to
sorrow, he cries,--

"We look before and after,
And pine for what is not."

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This is the mark of man. He looks before and after. This is the mark of the wise man, not merely
marking off person from brute, but person from person according to the degree of personality
attained.

We like to think that man possesses full self-consciousness, while other creatures have none. Our minds
are disposed to part off things with sharpness, but nature cares less about sharp divisions and seems on
the whole to prefer subtle gradations and unstable varieties. So the self has all degrees of vividness.
When we call self-consciousness the prerogative of man we do not mean that he fully possesses it, but
only that he may possess it, may possess it more and more; and that in it, rather than in the merely
conscious life, the significance of his being is found.

The knowledge that I am an I cannot be conveyed to me by another human being, nor can I
perceive anything similar in him. Each must ascertain it for himself. The meaning of this word
cannot be taught. Everything else may be.

Self-consciousness appears and disappears. Our life is glorified by its presence, and from it
obtains its whole significance. Whatever we are convinced possesses it we certainly declare to be
a person. Yet it is a gradual acquisition, and must be counted rather a goal than a possession.

SELF-DIRECTION

Goodness which is distinctively personal must in some way express the formation and maintenance of a
self-conscious life.

In the total process of self-direction there are evidently two main divisions,--a mental purpose must be
formed, and then this purpose must be sent forth into the outer world.

A person has imagination. He contemplates future events as possible before they occur, and this
contemplation is one of the very factors which bring them about.

Intelligent, purposeful, moral conduct, however, is everywhere shaped by the hope of improving the
condition of him who acts. We do not act till we find something within or about us unsatisfactory. Desire is
the second state in the formation of a purpose, for desire is precisely this sense of disparity between our
actual self and that possible bettered self depicted in the ideal.

The richer a man's imagination, and the more abundant his pictures of possible futures, the more
resourceful he becomes.

But to decide for anything is to decide against a multitude of other things. Taking is still more largely
leaving. The full extent of this negative decision often escapes our notice, and through the very fact of
choosing a good we blindly neglect a best.

It is now believed that volition is entirely a mental affair, and is confined to the single act of
attention. We cannot, then, exercise our will with a wandering mind. So long as several ideas are
conflictingly attended to, they hinder each other.

Of real connection between body and mind we know nothing. We can only say that such parallelism
exists that physical action occurs on occasion of complete mental vision.

We cannot speak a word, or raise a hand, perhaps even draw a breath, without something of a glad
sense of life. It may be intense, it may be slight or middling; but in some degree it is always there. For
through action we realize our powers. And in the sense of self-directed power we find a satisfaction, great
or small according to the magnitude of our undertaking.

In reality each of these simultaneous processes gets its meaning through connection with all the
others.
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SELF-DEVELOPMENT

A being capable of self-direction ordinarily has capacities imperfectly realized. Changing other things, he
also changes himself; and it becomes a part of his aim in action to make these changes advantageous,
and each act helpfully reactive. Accordingly the aim at self-development regularly attends self-direction.

Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher of the Greeks, discovered this fact five hundred years before Christ.
"Nothing abides," he said, "all is fleeting." We stand in a moving tide, unable to bathe twice in the same
stream; before we can stoop a second time the flood is gone. In every age this is the common theme of
lamentation for poet, moralist, common man and woman. All other causes of sadness are secondary to it.
As soon as we have comprehended anything, have fitted it to our lives and learned to love it, it is gone.

In the case of development the future, so far from annihilating the past, is its exhibition on a larger scale.
The full significance of any single stage is not manifest until the final one is reached.

Development is movement toward a mark. In self-development the mark to be reached is in the conscious
keeping of him who is to reach it. Toward it he may more or less fully direct his course.

On coming into the world we are only sketched out. Of each of us there is a ground plan of which we
progressively become aware. Hidden from us in our early years, it resides in the minds of our parents, just
as the plan of the tree's structure is in the keeping of nature. Gradually through our advancing years and
the care of those around us we catch sight of what we might be. Detecting in ourselves possibilities, we
make out their relation to a plan not yet realized.

We must contrast the poverty of the present with the fullness of a possible future, or we should not incline
to turn from that present. Yet our grand driving force is that sense of limitation, of want or need. And our
aim is rather at a better than at a best, at the removal of some small distinct hindrance than at arrival at a
completed goal. We come upon excellence piecemeal, and do not, like the architect, look upon it in its
entirety at the outset.

Becoming aware of our imperfections, we by that very fact continually lay hold on whatever
perfect is within our reach. Only those aims which do thus contain an infinite element and are,
strictly speaking, unattainable, move mankind to passionate pursuit.

Goodness, to be personal, must express perpetual self-development. All the moral aims of life
may be summed up in the single word, self- realization.

SELF-SACRIFICE

But when we thus accept self-realization as our supreme aim, we bring ourselves into seeming conflict
with one of our profoundest moral instincts. It is self-sacrifice that calls forth from all mankind, as nothing
else does, the distinctively moral response of reverence. We acknowledge self-sacrifice to be the very
culmination of the moral life.

Society is nothing but the larger individual; so that he alone realizes himself who enters most fully into
social relations, making the well-being of society his own.

Our commonest acceptance of society involves self-sacrifice, and in all our trivial intercourse we expect to
put ourselves to unrewarded inconvenience for the sake of others.

Self-sacrifice is not something exceptional, something occurring at crises of our lives, something for which
we need perpetually to be preparing ourselves, so that when the great occasion comes we may be ready
to lay ourselves upon its altar. Such romanticism distorts and obscures. Self-sacrifice is an everyday
affair. By it we live. It is the very air of our moral lungs. Without it society could not go on for an hour. And
that is precisely why we reverence it so--not for its rarity, but for its importance. Nothing else so instantly
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calls on the beholder for a bowing of the head. Even a slight exhibit of it sends through the sensitive
observer a thrill of reverent abasement. Other acts we may admire; others we may envy; this we adore.

Self-sacrifice, by definition, is any diminution of ones own possessions, pleasures, or powers, in order to
increase those of others. The greatest conceivable self-sacrifice is when someone gives himself: when,
one in some way allows his own powers to be narrowed in order that those of someone else may be
enlarged. All over the country devoted mothers, gallant sons, loyal husbands, are limiting their own range
of existence for the sake of broadening that of those whom they hold dear.

Each person must be conceived as tied in with all his fellows. If we try for a moment to conceive a person
as single and detached, we shall find he would have no powers to exercise. No emotions would be his,
whether of love or hate, for they imply objects to arouse them, no occupations of civilized life, for these
involve mutual dependency. From speech he would be cut off, if there were nobody to speak to; nor
would any such instrument as language be ready for his use, if ancestors had not cooperated in its
construction. His very thoughts would become a meaningless series of impressions if they indicated no
reality beside themselves. So empty would be that fiction, the single and isolated individual.

The real creature, rational and conjunct man, is he who stands in living relationship with his
fellows, they being a veritable part of him and he of them.

The consequences of self-sacrifice can never be certain, foreseen, calculable. There must be risk. Omit it,
and the sacrifice disappears. Indeed nothing in life which calls forth high admiration is free from this touch
of faith and courage, this movement into the unknown. It is at the very heart of self-sacrifice.

Perhaps the most admirable case of self-sacrifice is that in which no single person appears who is
profited by our loss. The scholar, the artist, the scientific man dedicate themselves to the interests of
undifferentiated humanity. They serve their undecipherable race, not knowing who will obtain gains
through their toils. In their sublime benefactions they study the wants of no individual person, not even of
themselves. In such service of the absolute is found the highest expression of self-sacrifice, of social
service, of self-realization.

[Sage Shukdev says in Shrimad-Bhagavata:

Whatever a man does by actions, thoughts and words in his own or his own off-springs interest,
treating himself and his family as a separate entity, is not a noble work. Whatever he does with a
feeling of in-separateness with all (considering the interest of all) is really a noble work and serves
everyone, as watering the roots of a tree makes the whole tree prosper. [Shrimad-Bhagavata
8.9.29]]

NATURE AND SPIRIT

While goodness is everywhere expressive of organization, personal conduct is good only when
consciously organized, guided, and aimed at the development of a social self.

Most of us in listening to music forget ourselves under its lulling charms, abandon ourselves to its spell,
and by it are swept away, perhaps to the infinite, perhaps to an obliteration of all clear thought.

More and more it is believed that we cannot adequately explore a person without probing beneath
consciousness. Rousseau warns us that the conscious constructions of man are full of artifice and deceit,
and lead to corruption and pain. Conscious guidance should, consequently, be banished, and man should
return to the peace, the ease, and the certainty of nature.
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The great organic processes both of mind and body are only indirectly, or to a partial extent, under the
control of consciousness. Though it is true that we can control our breathing, and that we occasionally do
so, this also in general we wisely leave to natural processes. The association of ideas that curious
process by which one thought sticks to another and through being thus linked draws after it material for
use in all our intellectual constructions, goes on for the most part unguided. Nature must be admitted as a
partner in the control of our lives, and her share in that partnership the present age believes to be a large
one.

"It is the unintelligent me," writes Dr. O. W. Holmes, "stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a thousand
times before he can do it and then never knows how he does it, that at last does it well. We have to
educate ourselves through the pretentious claims of intellect into the humble accuracy of instinct; and we
end at last by acquiring the dexterity, the perfection, the certainty which those masters of arts, the bee
and the spider, inherit from nature."

THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS

Self-consciousness is the indisputable prerogative of persons. Only so far as we possess it and apply it in
action do we rise above the impersonal world around.

Human life is a complex and demanding affair, requiring for its ever-enlarging good whatever strength can
be summoned from every side. The complete ideal, at any rate, of good conduct unites the swiftness,
certainty, and ease of natural action with the selective progressiveness of spiritual.

Conduct has three stages:
1. At the beginning of life we are at the beck and call of every impulse, not having yet attained
reflective command of ourselves. (Unconsciousness)
2. Then reflection is aroused; we become aware of what we are doing. The many details of each act
and the relations which surround it come separately into conscious attention for assessment,
approval, or rejection (Consciousness).
3. The stage when action runs swiftly to its intended end, but with little need of conscious
supervision (Negative Consciousness).

In Negative consciousness consciousness is not employed as a positive guiding force, but the moment
inhibition or check is required for reaching the intended result, consciousness is ready and asserts itself.

When we say that a man has acquired character, we mean that he has consciously surveyed certain
large tracts of life, and has decided what in those regions it is best to do. There, at least, he will no longer
need to deliberate about action. Thus his consciousness is set free to busy itself with other affairs.

Before goodness can reach excellence, it must be rendered habitual.

The cure for self-consciousness is not suppression, but the turning of it upon something more significant.
So long as they run in the right direction, instincts are better than intentions. But repeatedly we need to
study results,--and see if we are arriving at the goal where we would be. If not, then habit requires
readjustment. No one can be thoroughly good who is not a flexible person, capable of drawing back his
trains, reexamining them, and bringing them into better adjustment to his purposes.

If are willing to enter sympathetically the inner life of our struggling and imperfect comrades, we should
bestow Praise more liberally. None of us ever quite passes beyond the deliberate, conscious, and
praise-deserving line. In some parts of our being we are farther advanced, and may there be experiencing
the peace and assurance of a considerable second nature. But there too perpetual verification is
necessary. And so many tracts remain unsubdued or capable of higher cultivation that throughout our
lives, perhaps on into eternity, effort will still find room for work, and suitable praises may attend it.

Review: Satyendra Nath Dwivedi