In Cicero, Nature becomes fairly garrulous to man
on all matters of deportment: “Let us follow
Nature, and refrain from whatever lacks the approval
of eye and ear. Let attitude, gait, mode of sitting,
posture at table, countenance, eyes, movement of the
hands, preserve the becomingness of which I speak.”
[Footnote: De Officiis, i, 35, translated
by Peabody,]
118. THE APPEAL TO NATURE AND INTUITIONISM.—The
moralists who urge us to follow nature, whether human
nature or Nature in a wider sense, we may, hence,
regard as intuitionists of a sort. Those who emphasize
human nature evidently depend upon their moral intuitions
to give them information as to its characteristics.
It is intuition that paints for them their pattern.
They do not take man as they actually find him; they
call for the suppression of some traits, and the exaggeration
of others.
Nor are those who appeal to Nature in a wider sense
less guided by moral intuitions. The appeal is
never made without restrictions and limitations.
No one dreams that the bird, the ant, the spider, the
bee, can be regarded as satisfactory teachers of morals
to human beings. Each may be occupied in putting
in order its corner of the universe; but the order
attained is not a human order, and there is in it much
that is revolting to the moral judgments of mankind.
Man must have a standard of his own. He listens
to Nature only when she tells him what he already
approves.
As a form of intuitionism the doctrine of following..
nature may be criticised in much the same way as other
forms. One great merit it has. It calls
attention to the fact that ethics is a discipline which
has no significance abstracted from the nature of
man. It appears absurd to say that man ought
to do what it is not in man, under any conceivable
circumstances, to do. And, like other forms of
intuitionism, it has the merit of avoiding that short-circuiting
which may easily prove seductive to the egoist or
the utilitarian. He who accepts as his end either
his own happiness or that of men generally may easily
be induced to take short cuts to that end, and pay
little attention to moral maxims as such. He
may treat lightly that great system of rules and observances
by which men are guided in their relations with one
another, and which prevent human societies from relapsing
into a chaos.
On the other hand, the follower of nature, like other
intuitionists, may easily be thrown into perplexity
by the fact that what seems to him natural, and, hence,
right, may not be approved by other men. He cannot
prove that he is right and they are wrong.
He appears condemned to take refuge in subjective
conviction, that is, in mere dogmatism.
