The Scientific Basis of Morals, and Other Essays: Viz.: Right and Wrong, The Ethics of Belief, The Ethics of ReligionClifford, William Kingdon
Philosophy
The Scientific Basis of Morals, and Other Essays: Viz.: Right and Wrong, The Ethics of Belief, The Ethics of Religion
Clifford, William Kingdon
Ethics
Here a helping cause comes in. The tribe, quâ tribe, has to exist,
and it can only exist by aid of such an organic artifice as the
conception of the tribal self in the minds of its members. Hence the
natural selection of those races in which this conception is the most
powerful and most habitually predominant as a motive over immediate
desires. To such an extent has this proceeded that we may fairly
doubt whether the selfhood of the tribe is not earlier in point of
development than that of the individual. In the process of time it
becomes a matter of hereditary transmission, and is thus fixed as
a specific character in the constitution of social man. With the
settlement of countries, and the aggregation of tribes into nations,
it takes a wider and more abstract form; and in the highest natures the
tribal self is incarnate in nothing less than humanity. Short of these
heights, it places itself in the family and in the city. I shall call
that quality or disposition of man which consists in the supremacy
of the family or tribal self as a mark of reference for motives by
its old name Piety. And I have now to consider certain feelings and
conceptions to which the existence of piety must necessarily give rise.
Before going further, however, it will be advisable to fix as
precisely as may be the sense of the words just used. Self, then, in
the ethical sense, is a conception in the mind of the individual which
serves as a peg on which remote desires are hung and by which they are
rendered immediate. The individual self is such a peg for the hanging
of remote desires which affect the individual only. The tribal self
is a conception in the mind of the individual which serves as a peg
on which those remote desires are hung which were implanted in him
by the need of the tribe as a tribe. We must carefully distinguish
the tribal self from society, or the 'common consciousness;' it is
something in the mind of each individual man which binds together
his gregarious instincts.
The word tribe is here used to mean a group of that size which in the
circumstances considered is selected for survival or destruction as
a group. Self-regarding excellences are brought out by the natural
selection of individuals; the tribal self is developed by the natural
selection of groups. The size of the groups must vary at different
times; and the extent of the tribal self must vary accordingly.
Approbation and Conscience.--The tribe has to exist. Such tribes
as saw no necessity for it have ceased to live. To exist, it must
encourage piety; and there is a method which lies ready to hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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