CHAPTER VIII

MAN'S NATURE


21. THE BACKGROUND OF ACTIONS.--In estimating human actions we take into
consideration both the doer and the circumstances under which the deed
was done. Actions may be desirable or undesirable, good or bad, according
to their setting. How shall we judge of the blow that takes away human
life? It may be the involuntary reaction of a man startled by a shock; it
may be a motion of justifiable self-defence; it may be one struck at the
command of a superior and in the defence of one's country; it may be the
horrid outcome of cruel rapacity or base malevolence.

Nor are the emotions, torn out of their context, more significant than
actions without a background. They are mental phenomena to be observed
and described by the psychologist; to the moralist they are, taken alone,
as unmeaning as the letters of the alphabet, but, like them, capable in
combination of carrying many meanings. Anger, fear, wonder, and all the
rest are, as natural emotions, neither good nor bad; they are colors,
which may enter into a picture and in it acquire various values.

In morals, when men have attained to the stage of enlightenment at which
moral estimation is a possible process, they always consider emotions,
intentions, and actions in the light of their background. We do not
demand a moral life of the brutes; we do not look for it in the
intellectually defective and the emotionally insane; nor do we expect a
savage caught in the bush to harbor the same emotions, or to have the
same ethical outlook, as the missionary with whom we may confront him.
The concepts of moral responsibility, of desert, of guilt, are emptied of