II. Activity

CHAPTER II. ACTIVITY .. § 199. In a systematic treatise the express statement of certain commonplaces is inevitable. A coherent body of geometrical theorelns, for instance, has to be preceded by self-evident axioms. This Inust be the excuse for here setting down certain farrliliar truths. The infant at first feebly moves about its little limbs; by and by itcra-wls on the •. floor; .presently it walks, and after a time runs. As it develops, its activities display themselves in games, in races, in long walks: the range of its excursions being gradually extended, as it approaches adult existence. lilanhood brings the ability to make tours and exploring expeditions; including passages from continent to continent, and occasionally round the world. When middle life is passed and vigour begins to decline, these extreme manifestations of activities become fewer. Journeys are shortened; .and presently they do not go beyond visits to the country or to the seaside. AR old age advances, the movements become linlited to the village and the surrounding fields; afterwards to the garden; later still to the house; presently to the room; finally to the bed; and at last, when the power to move, gradually decreasing, has ceased, the motions of the lungs and heart come to an end. Taken in its ensemble, life presents itself in the shape of movements which begin feebly, gradually increase up to maturity, and then culrninating, decrease until they end as feebly as they began.

486 '-'HE ETHICS OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. Thus life is activity; and the complete cessation of activity is death. Hence arises the general implication that since the ITlOSt highly-evolved conduct is that which achieves the most cOlnplete life, activity obtains an ethical sanction, and inactivity an ethical condelnnation. This is a conclusion universally accepted and needing no enforcement. Even from those who habitually evade useful activities, there comes reprobation for such of their class as are too inert even to amuse themselves; absolute sloth is frowned on by all. § 200. The kind of activity with which we are here chiefly concerned, is the activity directed primarily to self sustentation, and secondarily to· sllste-:.1tationof fanlily. In the order of Nature the imperativeness of such activity effectually asserts itself. Alnong all sub-human creatures (excepting Inost parasites) individuals which lack it die, and after theln their offspring, if they have any. Those only survive which are adequately active; and, alnong such, a certain advantage in self-sustentation and sustenta tion of offspring is gained by those in \vhich activity is greater than usual: the general effect being to raise the activity to that limit beyond which disadvantage to the species is greater than advantage. Up to the time when men passed into the associated state, this la'v held of thelll as of the lower animals; and it held of them also through out early social stages. Before the Inaking of slaves began, no family could escape from the relation between labour and the necessaries of life. And the ethical sanc tion for this relation in primitive societies is implied in the fact that extreme inequality in the distribution of efforts and benefits between the sexes, must always have resulted in deterioration and eventual extinction.

Though, in the course of social evolution, there have arisen n1ultiplied possibilities of evading the normal relation between efforts and benefits, so as to get the benefits ACTIVITY. 487 without the· efforts; yet, bearing in mind the foregoing general law of life, we nlust infer that the evasions call for reprobation more or less decided, according to circum stances. Being here directly concerned only with the ethics of individual life, we need not take account of the inlplied relation. between the idle individual and the society in which he exists. Ignoring all other cases,·we may limit ourselves to those cases in which property equitablyac quired .by a parent, without undue tax on his energies, serves, when bequeathed, to support a son in idleness: cases in which there is no implied trespass on fellow citizens. On each of such cases the verdict is that though it is possible for the individual to fulfil the law of life, in so far as physical activities are concerned, by devoting· himself to sports and games,.and in so far as certain kinds of mental activities are concerned, by useless occupations; yet· there lack those mental activities, emotional arid intellectual,which should form part of his life as a social being; and in so far his life becomes an abnormal one.

§201. The chief question for us, however, is-What are the ethical aspects of labour considered in its immediate relations to pleasure and pain? From this point of view of absolute ethics, actions are right only when, besides being conducive to the future happiness of self, or others, or both, they are also·· immediately pleasurable. What t!len are .. we to say of necessary labour; most of which is acco111paniedby disagreeable feelings? Such labour· is warranted, or rather demanded, by the requirements of that relative ethics which is concerned not with the absolute right but with the least wrong. During the present transitional state of hUlnanity, submis sion to suchdispleasurable feeling as labour involves, is warranted as a Ineans of escaping from feelings which are 488 THE ETHICS OF INDIVIDU AI.. I.IFE. still more displeasurable-a smaller pain to avoid a greater pain, or to achieve a pleasure, or both.

The state necessitating this compromise is the state of inlperfect adaptation to social life. The change from the irregular acti vities of the savage man to the regular activities of the civilized man, implies a re-moulding-a repression of some powers vvhich crave for action, and a taxing of other powers beyond the pleasurable linlit: the capacity for persistent effort and persistent attention, being one especially called for, and one at present deficient. This adaptation has to be undergone, and the accompanying sufferings have to be borne. And here seenlS a fit place for commenting on the vary ing amounts of displeasurable feeling, often rising to posi tive pain, necessitated by fulfilrnent of the obligation to work. The majority of people speak of effort, bodily or mental, as if the cost of it were the same to all. Though personal experience proves to thtln that 'when well and fresh, they put forth with ease a lTIuscular force which, when prostrate with illness or exhausted by toil, it is painful to put forth-though they find, too, that vvhen the mental energies are high they think nothing of a con tinuous attention which, when enfeebled, they are quite unequal to; yet they do not see that these temporary contrasts between their own states, are paralleled by per manent contrasts between states of different persons.

Ethical judgments must take account of the fact that the effort, bodily or mental, ~Thich is easy to one is labor ious to another. § 202. We come now to a question of special interest to us-Can the human constitution be so adapted to its pres ent conditions, that the needful alDount of labour to be gone through will be agreeable ~ An affirmative answer will, to most people, seem absurd. Limiting their observations to facts around, or at most ACTIVITY. 489 extending them to such further facts as the records of civiIized people furnish, they cannot believe in the required change of nature. Such evidence as that which, in the first part of this work (§§ 63-67), was assigned to prove that pleasures and pains are relative to the constitution of the organism, and that in virtue of the unlimited modi fiability of constitution, actions originally painful may become pleasurable, does not weigh witJl them. Though' they probably know some who so love work that it is diffi- ..

cult to restrain thenl,-though here and there they meet one who complains that a holiday is a weariness; yet it does not seem to theln reasonable to suppose that the due tendency to continuous labour, which is now an excep tional trait, may become a universal trait. It is undeniable that there are various expenditures of energy, bodily and mental-often extreme expenditures which are willingly entered upon and continued eagerly: witness field-sports, games, and the intellectual efforts made during social intercourse. In these cases the energy expended is often far greater than that expended in daily avocations. What constitutes the difference? In the one class of actions emulation makes possible the pleasurable consciousness which accompanies proved. efficiency, and the· pleasurable consciousness of the admiration given to efficiency; while, in the other class, the absence of emula tion, or at any rate of direct visible emulation, implies the absence of a large proportion of this pleasurable conscious ness. Nevertheless, what remains may become a power ful stimulus, making continuous application agreeable.

Hobbies exenlplify this truth. I can nalne two cases in which occupations of this kind are, without need, pursued so eagerly as scarcely to leave time for meals. Though in these cases the pleasurable exercise of skill is .a large factor, and though in many occupations there seems but small scope for this, yet, nearly everywhere, the satisfac tion attendant· on the doing of work in the most perfect 490 THE ETHIOS OF INDIVIDU.AL LIFE. manner, may be sufficient to render the ,vork agreeable, when joined with that overflowing energy which is to be anticipated as the concomitant of a norlnally developed nature. § 203.···It r.emains to consider whether, concluding that labour up to a certain lirnit is obligatory, there is any reason for concluding that beyond that limit it is the reverse of obligatory. The present phase of hunlan progress fosters the belief that the nlore work the more virtue; but this is an unwarranted belief.

Absolute ethics does not dictate more work than is re quisite for efficient self-sustentation, efficient nurture of dependents, and discharge of a due share of social duties. As in the lowest creatures, so in the highest, survival is the primary end to be achieved by actions; and though, in an increasing degree as we ascend, actions themselves with their associated feelings becolne secondary ends, yet pursued to the detriment of the primary end in all its ful ness-the leading of a life complete, not· in length only, but in breadth and depth. The hedonistic view, which is invol ved in the evolutionary view, implies an ethical sanction for that forln of conduct which conduces in the highest degree to self-happiness and the happiness of others; and it follows that labour which taxes the energies beyond the normal limit, or diminishes more than is needful the titne available for other ends, or both, receives no ethical sanction.

If adaptation to the social state Inust in time produce a nature such that the needful labour will be pleasurable, a concomitant conclusion is that it ,vill not produce a capacity for labour beyond this lilnit. Hence labour in ex cess of this limit will be abnormal and improper. For as labour inevitably' entails physical cost-as the waste involved by it has to be made good out of the total supply which the organic actions furnish ~ then superfluous labour, deducting ACTIVITY. 491 from this supply more than is. necessary, diminishes the amount available for life at large-diminishes the extent or the intensity of that life. Obviously, however, this reasoning refers to that fully evolved forlll of life which absolute ethics contemplates, rather than to the present form, which has to be guided· by relative ethics. In our transitional state, with its unde -veloped capacity for ,vork, frequent over-stepping of the limit is requisite, and must be regarded as incident to the further development of the capacity~ All ,,~e may fairly say is that, at present, the limit should not be so transgressed as to cause physical deterioration, and that it should be respected where there exists no weighty reason for going beyond it.

§ 204. Connected as each ulan's actions are with the ac tions of others in multitudinous ,vays, it follows that the ethics of individual life cannot be completely separated from the ethics of social life. Conduct of which the pri mary results are purely personal, has often secondary results which are social. Hence ,,"'e must in each case consider the ways in which acts that directly concern self indirectly con cern others. In the present case it scarcely needs saying that beyond that obligation to labour which is deducible from the laws of individual life, there is a social obligation reinforcing it. Though, in a primitive comulunity, it is possible for an indi vidual to take upon himself all the results of his inactivity; yet, in an advanced community, consisting of citizens not devoid of sympathy, it becomes difficult to let the idle individual suffer in full the results of his idleness, and still more difficult to let his offspring do this. Even should it be decided by fellow-citizens that the extreme consequences of idleness shall be borne, yet this decision must be at the cost of sylupathetic pain. In any case, therefore, evil is inflicted on others as well as on self, and the conduct 492 THE ETHICS· OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

inflicting it is, for this further reason, to be ethically repro bated. Reprobation, though quite of another quality, is also de served by conduct of the opposite kind-by the carrying of labour to such extreme as to cause illness, prostration, and incapacity. For by this conduct, too, burdens and pains are entailed on others. Hence altruistic nlotives join egoistic motives in prompting labour up to a certain liInit, but not beyond that limit.