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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ethics, by John Dewey and James Hayden Tufts
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Ethics
+
+
+Author: John Dewey and James Hayden Tufts
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2012 [eBook #39551]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ETHICS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
+available by Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+ Internet Archive. See
+ http://archive.org/details/ethicsdew00deweuoft
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+ Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+ Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
+
+ To indicate macron above a vowel, the vowel has been
+ enclosed within square brackets with equal sign just
+ before it. For example, [=o] is used to represent letter
+ "o" with macron above it.
+
+
+
+
+
+American Science Series
+
+ETHICS
+
+by
+
+JOHN DEWEY
+Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University
+
+and
+
+JAMES H. TUFTS
+Professor of Philosophy in the University of Chicago
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York
+Henry Holt and Company
+London: George Bell and Sons
+1909
+
+Copyright, 1908,
+by
+Henry Holt and Company
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The significance of this text in Ethics lies in its effort to awaken
+a vital conviction of the genuine reality of moral problems and the
+value of reflective thought in dealing with them. To this purpose
+are subordinated the presentation in Part I. of historic material;
+the discussion in Part II. of the different types of theoretical
+interpretation, and the consideration, in Part III., of some typical
+social and economic problems which characterize the present.
+
+Experience shows that the student of morals has difficulty in getting
+the field objectively and definitely before him so that its problems
+strike him as real problems. Conduct is so intimate that it is not easy
+to analyze. It is so important that to a large extent the perspective
+for regarding it has been unconsciously fixed by early training. The
+historical method of approach has proved in the classroom experience of
+the authors an effective method of meeting these difficulties. To follow
+the moral life through typical epochs of its development enables
+students to realize what is involved in their own habitual standpoints;
+it also presents a concrete body of subject-matter which serves as
+material of analysis and discussion.
+
+The classic conceptions of moral theory are of remarkable importance in
+illuminating the obscure places of the moral life and in giving the
+student clues which will enable him to explore it for himself. But there
+is always danger of either dogmatism or a sense of unreality when
+students are introduced abruptly to the theoretical ideas. Instead of
+serving as tools for understanding the moral facts, the ideas are
+likely to become substitutes for the facts. When they are proffered
+ready-made, their theoretical acuteness and cleverness may be admired,
+but their practical soundness and applicability are suspected. The
+historical introduction permits the student to be present, as it were,
+at the social situations in which the intellectual instruments were
+forged. He appreciates their relevancy to the conditions which provoked
+them, and he is encouraged to try them on simple problems before
+attempting the complex problems of the present. By assisting in their
+gradual development he gains confidence in the ideas and in his power to
+use them.
+
+In the second part, devoted more specifically to the analysis and
+criticism of the leading conceptions of moral theory, the aim
+accordingly has not been to instill the notions of a school nor to
+inculcate a ready-made system, but to show the development of theories
+out of the problems and experience of every-day conduct, and to suggest
+how these theories may be fruitfully applied in practical exigencies.
+Aspects of the moral life have been so thoroughly examined that it is
+possible to present certain principles in the confidence that they will
+meet general acceptance. Rationalism and hedonism, for example, have
+contributed toward a scientific statement of the elements of conduct,
+even though they have failed as self-inclosed and final systems. After
+the discussions of Kant and Mill, Sidgwick and Green, Martineau and
+Spencer, it is possible to affirm that there is a place in the moral
+life for reason and a place for happiness,--a place for duty and a place
+for valuation. Theories are treated not as incompatible rival systems
+which must be accepted or rejected _en bloc_, but as more or less
+adequate methods of surveying the problems of conduct. This mode of
+approach facilitates the scientific estimation and determination of the
+part played by various factors in the complexity of moral life. The
+student is put in a position to judge the problems of conduct for
+himself. This emancipation and enlightenment of individual judgment is
+the chief aim of the theoretical portion.
+
+In a considerable part of the field, particularly in the political and
+economic portions of Part III., no definitive treatment is as yet
+possible. Nevertheless, it is highly desirable to introduce the student
+to the examination of these unsettled questions. When the whole
+civilized world is giving its energies to the meaning and value of
+justice and democracy, it is intolerably academic that those interested
+in ethics should have to be content with conceptions already worked out,
+which therefore relate to what is least doubtful in conduct rather than
+to questions now urgent. Moreover, the advantages of considering theory
+and practice in direct relation to each other are mutual. On the one
+hand, as against the _a priori_ claims of both individualism and
+socialism, the need of the hour seems to us to be the application of
+methods of more deliberate analysis and experiment. The extreme
+conservative may deprecate any scrutiny of the present order; the ardent
+radical may be impatient of the critical and seemingly tardy processes
+of the investigator; but those who have considered well the conquest
+which man is making of the world of nature cannot forbear the conviction
+that the cruder method of trial and error and the time-honored method of
+prejudice and partisan controversy need not longer completely dominate
+the regulation of the life of society. They hope for a larger
+application of the scientific method to the problems of human welfare
+and progress. Conversely, a science which takes part in the actual work
+of promoting moral order and moral progress must receive a valuable
+reflex influence of stimulus and of test. To consider morality in the
+making as well as to dwell upon values already established should make
+the science more vital. And whatever the effect upon the subject-matter,
+the student can hardly appreciate the full force of his materials and
+methods as long as they are kept aloof from the questions which are
+occupying the minds of his contemporaries.
+
+Teachers who are limited in time will doubtless prefer to make their own
+selections of material, but the following suggestions present one
+possible line of choice. In Part I., of the three chapters dealing with
+the Hebrew, Greek, and modern developments, any one may be taken as
+furnishing an illustration of the method; and certain portions of
+Chapter IX. may be found more detailed in analysis than is necessary for
+the beginner. In Part II., Chapters XI.-XII. may be omitted without
+losing the thread of the argument. In Part III., any one of the specific
+topics--viz., the political state, the economic order, the family--may
+be considered apart from the others. Some teachers may prefer to take
+Parts in their entirety. In this case, any two may be chosen.
+
+As to the respective shares of the work for which the authors are
+severally responsible, while each has contributed suggestions and
+criticisms to the work of the other in sufficient degree to make the
+book throughout a joint work, Part I. has been written by Mr. Tufts,
+Part II. by Mr. Dewey, and in Part III., Chapters XX. and XXI. are by
+Mr. Dewey, Chapters XXII.-XXVI. by Mr. Tufts.
+
+It need scarcely be said that no attempt has been made in the
+bibliographies to be exhaustive. When the dates of publication of the
+work cited are given, the plan has been in general to give, in the case
+of current literature, the date of the latest edition, and in the case
+of some classical treatises the date of original publication.
+
+In conclusion, the authors desire to express their indebtedness to their
+colleagues and friends Dr. Wright, Mr. Talbert, and Mr. Eastman, who
+have aided in the reading of the proof and with other suggestions.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAPTER PAGE
+
+ I. INTRODUCTION 1
+
+ Sec. 1. _Definition and Method_:--Ethical and moral, specific
+ problem, 1; importance of genetic study, 3. Sec. 2. _Criterion
+ of the moral_:--The moral in cross section, the "what" and
+ the "how," 5; the moral as growth, 8. Sec. 3. _Divisions of the
+ treatment_, 13.
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE BEGINNINGS AND GROWTH OF MORALITY
+
+ II. EARLY GROUP LIFE 17
+
+ Sec. 1. _Typical facts of group life_:--Primitive unity and
+ solidarity, 17. Sec. 2. _Kinship and household groups_:--The
+ kinship group, 21; the family or household group, 23.
+ Sec. 3. _Kinship and family groups as economic and industrial
+ units_:--The land and the group, 24; movable goods, 25.
+ Sec. 4. _Kinship and family groups as political bodies_:--Their
+ control over the individual, 26; rights and responsibility, 27.
+ Sec. 5. _The kinship or household as a religious unit_:--Totem
+ groups, 30; ancestral religion, 31. Sec. 6. _Age and sex groups_,
+ 32. Sec. 7. _Moral significance of the group_, 34.
+
+ III. THE RATIONALIZING AND SOCIALIZING AGENCIES IN EARLY SOCIETY 37
+
+ Sec. 1. _Three levels of conduct_:--Conduct as instinctive and
+ governed by primal needs, regulated by society's standards,
+ and by personal standards, 37. Sec. 2. _Rationalizing agencies_:
+ Work, 40; arts and crafts, 41; war, 42. Sec. 3. _Socializing
+ agencies_:--Cooperation, 42; art, 45. Sec. 4. _Family life
+ as idealizing and socializing agency_, 47. Sec. 5. _Moral
+ interpretation of this first level_, 49.
+
+ IV. GROUP MORALITY--CUSTOMS OR MORES 51
+
+ Sec. 1. _Meaning, authority, and origin of customs_, 51.
+ Sec. 2. _Means of enforcing custom_:--Public approval, taboos,
+ rituals, force, 54. Sec. 3. _Conditions which render group
+ control conscious_:--Educational customs, 57; law and
+ justice, 59; danger or crisis, 64. Sec. 4. _Values and defects
+ of customary morality_:--Standards, motives, content,
+ organization of character, 68.
+
+ V. FROM CUSTOM TO CONSCIENCE; FROM GROUP MORALITY TO PERSONAL
+ MORALITY 73
+
+ Sec. 1. _Contrast and collision_, 73. Sec. 2. _Sociological
+ agencies in the transition_:--Economic forces, 76; science
+ and the arts, 78; military forces, 80; religious forces,
+ 81. Sec. 3. _Psychological agencies_:--Sex, 81; private
+ property, 83; struggles for mastery and liberty, 84; honor
+ and esteem, 85. Sec. 4. _Positive reconstruction_, 89.
+
+ VI. THE HEBREW MORAL DEVELOPMENT 91
+
+ Sec. 1. _General character and determining principles_:--The
+ Hebrew and the Greek, 91; Political and economic factors, 92.
+ Sec. 2. _Religious agencies_:--Covenant, 94; personal law-giver,
+ 95; cultus, 97; prophets, 99; the kingdom, 100. Sec. 3. _Moral
+ conceptions attained_:--Righteousness and sin, 102;
+ responsibility, 104; purity of motive, 105; the ideal of
+ "life," 107; the social ideal, 108.
+
+ VII. THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS 111
+
+ Sec. 1. _The fundamental notes_:--Convention versus nature, 111;
+ measure, 112; good and just, 113. Sec. 2. _Intellectual forces of
+ individualism_:--The scientific spirit, 114. Sec. 3. _Commercial
+ and political individualism_:--Class interests, 119; why obey
+ laws? 122. Sec. 4. _Individualism and ethical theory_:--The
+ question formulated, 124; individualistic theories, 126. Sec. 5.
+ _The deeper view of nature and the good, of the individual and
+ the social order_:--Aristotle on the natural, 127; Plato's
+ ideal state, 129; passion or reason, 131; eudaemonism and the
+ mean, 134; man and the cosmos, 135. Sec. 6. _The conception of
+ the ideal_:--Contrast with the actual, 136; ethical
+ significance, 138. Sec. 7. _The conception of the self, of
+ character and responsibility_:--The poets, 138; Plato and the
+ Stoics, 140.
+
+ VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD 142
+
+ Sec. 1. _The mediaeval ideals_:--Groups and class ideals, 143;
+ the church ideal, 145. Sec. 2. _Main lines of modern
+ development_, 147. Sec. 3. _The old and new in the beginnings
+ of individualism_, 149. Sec. 4. _Individualism in the progress
+ of liberty and democracy_:--Rights, 151. Sec. 5. _Individualism
+ as affected by the development of industry, commerce, and
+ art_:--Increasing power and interests, 153; distribution of
+ goods, 157; industrial revolution raises new problems,
+ 159. Sec. 6. _The individual and the development of
+ intelligence_:--The Renaissance, 163; the Enlightenment, 165;
+ the present significance of scientific method, 167.
+
+ IX. A GENERAL COMPARISON OF CUSTOMARY AND REFLECTIVE MORALITY 171
+
+ Sec. 1. _Elements of agreement and continuity_:--Regime
+ of custom, 172; persistence of group morality, 173;
+ origin of ethical terms, 175. Sec. 2. _Elements of
+ contrast_:--Differentiation of the moral, 177; observing
+ _versus_ reflecting, 178; the higher law, 181; deepening of
+ meaning, 182. Sec. 3. _Opposition between individual and social
+ aims and standards_:--Withdrawal from the social order, 184;
+ individual emancipation, 186. Sec. 4. _Effects upon the
+ individual character_:--Increased possibilities of evil as well
+ as of good, 187. Sec. 5. _Moral differentiation and the social
+ order_:--Effects on the family, 193; on industry and government,
+ 194; on religion, 195; general relation of religion to morality,
+ 197.
+
+
+PART II
+
+THEORY OF THE MORAL LIFE
+
+ X. THE MORAL SITUATION 201
+
+ Distinguishing marks of the moral situation, 201; Traits of
+ voluntary activity, 202; The good and bad in non-voluntary
+ behavior, 203; Indifferent voluntary conduct, 205; The moral
+ is introduced when ends have conflicting values, 207;
+ Selection then depends upon, and influences, the nature
+ of the self, 209.
+
+ XI. PROBLEMS OF MORAL THEORY 212
+
+ Theory grows from practical problems, 212; Three typical
+ problems of reflective practice, 213; Corresponding problems
+ of theory, 214; Their historical sequence, 215; Growth of
+ individualism, 220; The two types of individualism, 221.
+
+ XII. TYPES OF MORAL THEORY 224
+
+ Sec. 1. _Typical divisions of theories_:--Teleological and
+ jural, 224; individual and institutional, 225; empirical and
+ intuitional, 226. Sec. 2. _Division of voluntary activity into
+ Inner and Outer_:--The "how" and the "what," 227; attitude
+ and consequences, 228; different types of each theory, 229;
+ bearing of each theory upon problems of knowledge and
+ of control, 231. Sec. 3. _General interpretation of these
+ theories_:--Ordinary view of disposition and of consequences,
+ 232; advantages claimed for emphasis upon consequences, 234;
+ for emphasis upon disposition or attitude, 236; necessity of
+ reconciliation of these theories, 237.
+
+ XIII. CONDUCT AND CHARACTER 240
+
+ Problem of their relation, 240. Sec. 1. _The good will of
+ Kant_:--Emphasis upon motive, 241; motive with or without
+ consequences, 242; necessity of effort, 243; overt action
+ required to prove motive, 245. Sec. 2. _The "Intention" of the
+ Utilitarians_:--Emphasis upon consequences, 246; distinction
+ of intention from motive, 247; they are really identical,
+ 248; motive as blind and as intelligent, 249; practical
+ importance of insistence upon consequences, 251; foresight
+ of consequences depends upon motive, 252. Sec. 3. _Conduct and
+ character_:--The nature of disposition, 254; partial and
+ complete intention, 256; complexity of motives, 257. Sec. 4.
+ _Morality of acts and of agents_:--Subjective and objective
+ morality, 259; the doer and his deed, 260; summary, 261.
+
+ XIV. HAPPINESS AND CONDUCT: THE GOOD AND DESIRE 263
+
+ Residence and nature of goodness, 263; happiness as the
+ good, 264; love of happiness as the evil, 265; ambiguity in
+ conception of happiness, 266. Sec. 1. _The Object of
+ Desire_:--Is it pleasure? 269; desire presupposes instinctive
+ appetites, 270; and objects of thought, 271; happiness and
+ desire, 272; need for standard, 274. Sec. 2. _The Conception
+ of Happiness as a Standard_:--Utilitarian method, 275;
+ Difficulty of measuring pleasure, 276; character determines
+ the value of a pleasure, 277; Mill's introduction of
+ quality of pleasure, 279. Sec. 3. _The constitution of
+ happiness_:--Pleasures depend upon objects, 281; they are
+ qualitative, 282; they vary with disposition, 283; happiness
+ as the moral good, 284.
+
+ XV. HAPPINESS AND SOCIAL ENDS 286
+
+ Utilitarianism aims at social welfare, 286; value as a theory
+ of social reform, 287; its aim conflicts with its hedonistic
+ theory of motive, 289; Bentham's method of reconciling
+ personal and general happiness, 291; Mill's method, 293;
+ sympathy and the social self, 298; the distinctively moral
+ interest, 300; equation of virtue and happiness, 301; moral
+ democracy, 303.
+
+ XVI. THE PLACE OF REASON IN THE MORAL LIFE: MORAL KNOWLEDGE 306
+
+ Sec. 1. _Problem of reason and desire_:--Nature of a reasonable
+ act, 306; theories about moral knowledge, 307. Sec. 2. _Kant's
+ theory of practical reason_:--Traits of morality, 309; reason
+ as _a priori_ and formal, 310; true meaning of generalization,
+ 313; the general and the social, 314. Sec. 3. _Moral sense
+ intuitionalism_:--Function of reason, 317; habit and sense,
+ 319; invalid intuitions, 321; deliberation and intuition, 322;
+ the good man's judgment, 324. Sec. 4. _The place of general
+ rules_:--Their value, 325; casuistry, 326; and its dangers,
+ 327; secondary ends of utilitarianism, 329; empirical rules
+ and customs, 330; distinction of rules and principles, 333;
+ sympathy and reasonableness, 334.
+
+ XVII. THE PLACE OF DUTY IN THE MORAL LIFE: SUBJECTION TO
+ AUTHORITY 337
+
+ Conflict of the rational with the attractive end, 337. Sec. 1.
+ _The subjection of desire to law_, 339; cause of conflict of
+ desire and thought, 342; demand for transformation of desire,
+ 343; social character of duties, 345; the social self is the
+ "universal" self, 346. Sec. 2. _Kantian theory_:--Accord with
+ duty versus from duty, 346; the two-fold self of Kant, 347;
+ criticism of Kant, 348; emphasis falls practically on
+ political authority, 351; "Duty for duty's sake," 351.
+ Sec. 3. _The Utilitarian theory of duty_:--The hedonistic
+ problem, 353; Moral sanctions, 354; they are too external,
+ 355; Bain's account, 356; Spencer's account, 358; such
+ views set up a fictitious non-social self, 361. Sec. 3. _Final
+ statement_:--Growth requires disagreeable readjustments, 362.
+
+ XVIII. THE PLACE OF THE SELF IN THE MORAL LIFE 364
+
+ Problems regarding the self, 364. Sec. 1. _The doctrine of
+ self-denial_:--Explanation of its origin, 365; four objections
+ to doctrine, 366. Sec. 2. _Self-assertion_:--Ethical dualism,
+ 369; "naturalistic" ethics, 369; false biological basis, 371;
+ misinterprets nature of efficiency, 373. Sec. 3. _Self-love
+ and benevolence; or egoism and altruism_:--The "crux"
+ of ethical speculation, 375; are all motives selfish? 376;
+ ambiguity of term selfish, 377; are results selfish? 379;
+ self-preservation, 380; rational regard for self, 382;
+ regard for others, 384; the existence of "other-regarding"
+ impulses, 385; altruism may be immoral, 387; social
+ justice necessary to moral altruism, 389. Sec. 4. _The
+ good as self-realization_:--Self-realization an ambiguous
+ idea, 391; true and false consideration of the self, 393;
+ equation of personal and general happiness, 395.
+
+ XIX. THE VIRTUES 399
+
+ Introductory--virtue defined, 399; natural ability and
+ virtue, 400; evolution of virtues, 401; responsibility
+ for moral judgment, 402; futility of cataloguing virtues,
+ 402; their cardinal aspects, 403. Sec. 1. _Temperance_:--Greek,
+ Roman, and Christian conceptions, 405; negative and positive
+ aspects, 407; pleasure and excitement, 408. Sec. 2. _Courage
+ or persistent vigor_:--Dislike of the disagreeable, 410;
+ "dimensions" of courage, 411; optimism and pessimism, 412.
+ Sec. 3. _Justice_:--Three meanings of, 414; justice and
+ love, 415; justice and punishment, 416. Sec. 4. _Wisdom or
+ conscientiousness_:--Importance of intelligent interest, 418;
+ Greek and modern ideas of moral wisdom, 419; ideals and
+ thoughtfulness, 420; ideals and progress, 422.
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE WORLD OF ACTION
+
+ XX. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL 427
+
+ Object of discussion, 427. Sec. 1. _Growth of individuality
+ through social organizations_:--Emancipation from custom,
+ 428; double movement towards individuality and complex
+ associations, 429; morality and legality, 432; two-fold
+ contribution of social environment to individual morality,
+ 433; moral value of the state, 434. Sec. 2. _Responsibility
+ and freedom_:--Liability, 436; freedom as exemption and as
+ power, 437; legal and moral freedom, 438. Sec. 3. _Rights and
+ obligations_:--Their definition, 439; they are correlative,
+ 440; physical rights, 442; limitations put upon them by war
+ and punishment, 443; by poverty, 444; mental rights, 445;
+ limitations to freedom of thought and expression, 446;
+ education, 448.
+
+ XXI. CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE POLITICAL STATE 451
+
+ Sec. 1. _Civil rights and obligations_:--Their definition, 451;
+ their classes, 452; significance of established remedies for
+ wrongs, 454. Sec. 2. _Development of civil rights_:--Contrast
+ with savage age justice, 456; social harm versus metaphysical
+ evil, 457; recognition of accident and intent, 459; of
+ character and circumstances, 460; of mental incapacity, 462;
+ significance of negligence and carelessness, 464; conflict of
+ substantial and technical justice, 465; relations of the legal
+ and moral, 467; reform of criminal procedure necessary, 468;
+ also of punitive methods, 470; and of civil administration,
+ 471. Sec. 3. _Political rights and obligations_:--Significance
+ of the state, 473; distrust of government, 474; indifference to
+ politics, 476; political corruption, 477; reform of partisan
+ machinery, 478; of governmental machinery, 479; constructive
+ social legislation, 480; a federated humanity, 481. Sec. 4. _The
+ moral criterion of political activity_:--Its statement, 482;
+ the individualistic formula, 483; the collectivistic formula,
+ 484.
+
+ XXII. THE ETHICS OF THE ECONOMIC LIFE 486
+
+ Sec. 1. _General analysis_:--The economic in relation to
+ happiness, 487; relation to character, 488; social aspects,
+ 491. Sec. 2. _The problem set by the new economic
+ order_:--Collective and impersonal organizations, 495;
+ readjustments required, 496. Sec. 3. _The agencies for carrying
+ on commerce and industry_:--Early agencies, 497; the business
+ enterprise, 498; the labor union, 499; reversion to group
+ morality, 500; members and management, 500; employer and
+ employed, 501; relations to the public, 502; to the law, 503.
+ Sec. 4. _The methods of production, exchange, and
+ valuation_:--The machine, 507; basis of valuation, 508. Sec. 5.
+ _The factors which aid ethical reconstruction_:--Principles
+ more easily seen, 511.
+
+ XXIII. SOME PRINCIPLES IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER 514
+
+ 1. Wealth subordinate to personality, 514. 2. Wealth and
+ activity, 514. 3. Wealth and public service, 515. 4. A change
+ demanded from individual to collective morality, 517. 5.
+ Personal responsibility, 519. 6. Publicity and legal control,
+ 520. 7. Democracy and distribution, 521.
+
+ XXIV. UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER 523
+
+ Sec. 1. _Individualism and socialism_:--General statement, 523;
+ equal opportunity, 526. Sec. 2. _Individualism or free contract
+ analyzed; its values_:--Efficiency, 527; initiative, 527;
+ regulation of production, 528. Sec. 3. _Criticisms upon
+ individualism_:--It does not secure real freedom, 528; nor
+ justice, 530; competition tends to destroy itself, 531;
+ position of the aristocratic individualists, 532.
+
+ XXV. UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER (CONTINUED) 536
+
+ Sec. 4. _The theory of public agency and control_, 536. Sec.
+ 5. _Society as agency of production_:--Charges against private
+ management, 537; corruption, 538; conditions of labor, 540;
+ collective agency not necessarily social, 544. Sec. 6.
+ _Theories of just distribution_:--Individualistic theory, 546;
+ equal division, 547; a working programme, 548. Sec. 7.
+ _Ownership and use of property_:--Defects in the present
+ system, 551. Sec. 8. _Present tendencies_:--Individualistic
+ character of the Constitution, 554; increased recognition of
+ public welfare, 555; social justice through economic, social,
+ and scientific progress, 557. Sec. 9. _Three special
+ problems_:--The open versus the closed shop, 559; the
+ capitalization of corporations, 561; the unearned increment,
+ 564. Appendix: Prof. Seager's programme of social legislation,
+ 566.
+
+ XXVI. THE FAMILY 571
+
+ Sec. 1. _Historical antecedents of the modern family_:--Maternal
+ type, 572; paternal type, 572; influence of the church, 576.
+ Sec. 2. _The psychological basis of the family_:--Emotional and
+ instinctive basis, 578; common will, 580; parenthood, 581;
+ social and religious factors, 582; the children, 582. Sec. 3.
+ _General elements of strain in family relations_:--Differences
+ between the sexes in temperament and occupation, 584; in
+ attitude toward the family, 587; differences between parents
+ and children, 589. Sec. 4. _Special conditions which give rise to
+ present problems_:--The economic factors, 590; cultural and
+ political factors, 593. Sec. 5. _Unsettled problems_:--Economic
+ problems, 594; the dilemma between the domestic life and
+ occupations outside the home, 595; the family as consumer,
+ 598. Sec. 6. _Unsettled problems_:--Political problems, authority
+ within the family, 599; equality or inequality, 600; isolation
+ not the solution, 602; authority over the family, divorce,
+ 603; general law of social health, 605; conclusion, 605.
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+ETHICS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Sec. 1. DEFINITION AND METHOD
+
+=Provisional Definition.=--The place for an accurate definition of a
+subject is at the end of an inquiry rather than at the beginning, but a
+brief definition will serve to mark out the field. Ethics is the science
+that deals with conduct, in so far as this is considered as right or
+wrong, good or bad. A single term for conduct so considered is "moral
+conduct," or the "moral life." Another way of stating the same thing is
+to say that Ethics aims to give a systematic account of our judgments
+about conduct, in so far as these estimate it from the standpoint of
+right or wrong, good or bad.
+
+=Ethical and Moral.=--The terms "ethics" and "ethical" are derived from
+a Greek word _ethos_ which originally meant customs, usages, especially
+those belonging to some group as distinguished from another, and later
+came to mean disposition, character. They are thus like the Latin word
+"moral," from _mores_, or the German _sittlich_, from _Sitten_. As we
+shall see, it was in customs, "ethos," "mores," that the moral or
+ethical began to appear. For customs were not merely habitual ways of
+acting; they were ways approved by the group or society. To act contrary
+to the customs of the group brought severe disapproval. This might not
+be formulated in precisely our terms--right and wrong, good and
+bad,--but the attitude was the same in essence. The terms ethical and
+moral as applied to the conduct of to-day imply of course a far more
+complex and advanced type of life than the old words "ethos" and
+"mores," just as economics deals with a more complex problem than "the
+management of a household," but the terms have a distinct value if they
+suggest the way in which the moral life had its beginning.
+
+=Two Aspects of Conduct.=--To give a scientific account of judgments
+about conduct, means to find the principles which are the basis of these
+judgments. Conduct or the moral life has two obvious aspects. On the one
+hand it is a life of purpose. It implies thought and feeling, ideals and
+motives, valuation and choice. These are processes to be studied by
+psychological methods. On the other hand, conduct has its outward side.
+It has relations to nature, and especially to human society. Moral life
+is called out or stimulated by certain necessities of individual and
+social existence. As Protagoras put it, in mythical form, the gods gave
+men a sense of justice and of reverence, in order to enable them to
+unite for mutual preservation.[1] And in turn the moral life aims to
+modify or transform both natural and social environments, to build a
+"kingdom of man" which shall be also an ideal social order--a "kingdom
+of God." These relations to nature and society are studied by the
+biological and social sciences. Sociology, economics, politics, law, and
+jurisprudence deal particularly with this aspect of conduct. Ethics must
+employ their methods and results for this aspect of its problem, as it
+employs psychology for the examination of conduct on its inner side.
+
+=The Specific Problem of Ethics.=--But ethics is not merely the sum of
+these various sciences. It has a problem of its own which is created by
+just this twofold aspect of life and conduct. It has to relate these two
+sides. It has to study the inner process _as determined by the outer
+conditions or as changing these outer conditions_, and the outward
+behavior or institution _as determined by the inner purpose, or as
+affecting the inner life_. To study choice and purpose is psychology; to
+study choice as affected by the rights of others and to judge it as
+right or wrong by this standard is ethics. Or again, to study a
+corporation may be economics, or sociology, or law; to study its
+activities as resulting from the purposes of persons or as affecting the
+welfare of persons, and to judge its acts as good or bad from such a
+point of view, is ethics.
+
+=Genetic Study.=--When we deal with any process of life it is found to
+be a great aid for understanding the present conditions if we trace the
+history of the process and see how present conditions have come about.
+And in the case of morality there are four reasons in particular for
+examining earlier stages. The first is that we may begin our study with
+a simpler material. Moral life at present is extremely complex.
+Professional, civic, domestic, philanthropic, ecclesiastical, and social
+obligations claim adjustment. Interests in wealth, in knowledge, in
+power, in friendship, in social welfare, make demand for recognition in
+fixing upon what is good. It is desirable to consider first a simpler
+problem. In the second place, this complex moral life is like the human
+body in that it contains "rudiments" and "survivals." Some of our
+present standards and ideals were formed at one period in the past, and
+some at another. Some of these apply to present conditions and some do
+not. Some are at variance with others. Many apparent conflicts in moral
+judgments are explained when we discover how the judgments came to be
+formed in the first instance. We cannot easily understand the moral life
+of to-day except in the light of earlier morality. The third reason is
+that we may get a more objective material for study. Our moral life is
+so intimate a part of ourselves that it is hard to observe impartially.
+Its characteristics escape notice because they are so familiar. When we
+travel we find the customs, laws, and moral standards of other peoples
+standing out as "peculiar." Until we have been led by some such means to
+compare our own conduct with that of others it probably does not occur
+to us that our own standards are also peculiar, and hence in need of
+explanation. It is as difficult scientifically as it is personally "to
+see ourselves as others see us." It is doubtless true that to see
+ourselves merely as others see us would not be enough. Complete moral
+analysis requires us to take into our reckoning motives and purposes
+which may perhaps be undiscoverable by the "others." But it is a great
+aid to this completer analysis if we can sharpen our vision and awaken
+our attention by a comparative study. A fourth reason for a genetic
+study is that it emphasizes the dynamic, progressive character of
+morality. Merely to examine the present may easily give the impression
+that the moral life is not a life, a moving process, something still in
+the making--but a changeless structure. There is moral progress as well
+as a moral order. This may be discovered by an analysis of the very
+nature of moral conduct, but it stands out more clearly and impressively
+if we trace the actual development in history. Before attempting our
+analysis of the present moral consciousness and its judgments, we shall
+therefore give an outline of the earlier stages and simpler phases.
+
+=Theory and Practice.=--Finally, if we can discover ethical principles
+these ought to give some guidance for the unsolved problems of life
+which continually present themselves for decision. Whatever may be true
+for other sciences it would seem that ethics at least ought to have some
+practical value. "In this theater of man's life it is reserved for God
+and the angels to be lookers on." Man must act; and he must act well or
+ill, rightly or wrongly. If he has reflected, has considered his conduct
+in the light of the general principles of human order and progress, he
+ought to be able to act more intelligently and freely, to achieve the
+satisfaction that always attends on scientific as compared with
+uncritical or rule-of-thumb practice. Socrates gave the classic
+statement for the study of conduct when he said, "A life unexamined,
+uncriticized, is not worthy of man."
+
+
+Sec. 2. CRITERION OF THE MORAL
+
+It is not proposed to attempt at this point an accurate or minute
+statement of what is implied in moral conduct, as this is the task of
+Part II. But for the purposes of tracing in Part I. the beginnings of
+morality, it is desirable to have a sort of rough chart to indicate to
+the student what to look for in the earlier stages of his exploration,
+and to enable him to keep his bearings on the way.
+
+Certain of the characteristics of the moral may be seen in a
+cross-section, a statement of the elements in moral conduct at a given
+time. Other characteristics come out more clearly by comparing later
+with earlier stages. We give first a cross-section.
+
+=1. Characteristics of the Moral Life in Cross-section.=--In this
+cross-section the first main division is suggested by the fact that we
+sometimes give our attention to _what_ is done or intended, and
+sometimes to _how_ or _why_ the act is done. These divisions may turn
+out to be less absolute than they seem, but common life uses them and
+moral theories have often selected the one or the other as the important
+aspect. When we are told to seek peace, tell the truth, or aim at the
+greatest happiness of the greatest number, we are charged to do or
+intend some definite act. When we are urged to be conscientious or pure
+in heart the emphasis is on a kind of attitude that might go with a
+variety of acts. A newspaper advocates a good measure. So far, so good.
+But people may ask, what is the motive in this? and if this is believed
+to be merely selfish, they do not credit the newspaper with having
+genuine interest in reform. On the other hand, sincerity alone is not
+enough. If a man advocates frankly and sincerely a scheme for enriching
+himself at the public expense we condemn him. We say his very frankness
+shows his utter disregard for others. One of the great moral
+philosophers has indeed said that to act rationally is all that is
+necessary, but he at once goes on to claim that this implies treating
+every man as an end and not merely a means, and this calls for a
+particular kind of action. Hence we may assume for the present purpose a
+general agreement that our moral judgments take into account both what
+is done or intended, and how or why the act is done. These two aspects
+are sometimes called the "matter" and the "form," or the "content" and
+the attitude. We shall use the simpler terms, the What and the How.
+
+=The "What" as a Criterion.=--If we neglect for the moment the How and
+think of the What, we find two main standpoints employed in judging: one
+is that of "higher" and "lower" within the man's own self; the other is
+his treatment of others.
+
+The distinction between a higher and lower self has many guises. We
+speak of a man as "a slave to his appetites," of another as possessed by
+greed for money, of another as insatiately ambitious. Over against these
+passions we hear the praise of scientific pursuits, of culture, of art,
+of friendship, of meditation, or of religion. We are bidden to think of
+things [Greek: semna], nobly serious. A life of the spirit is set off
+against the life of the flesh, the finer against the coarser, the nobler
+against the baser. However misguided the forms in which this has been
+interpreted, there is no doubt as to the reality of the conflicting
+impulses which give rise to the dualism. The source is obvious. Man
+would not be here if self-preservation and self-assertion and sex
+instinct were not strongly rooted in his system. These may easily
+become dominant passions. But just as certainly, man cannot be all that
+he may be unless he controls these impulses and passions by other
+motives. He has first to create for himself a new world of ideal
+interests before he finds his best life. The appetites and instincts may
+be "natural," in the sense that they are the beginning; the mental and
+spiritual life is "natural," as Aristotle puts it, in the sense that
+man's full nature is developed only in such a life.
+
+The other aspect of the What, the treatment of others, need not detain
+us. Justice, kindness, the conduct of the Golden Rule are the right and
+good. Injustice, cruelty, selfishness are the wrong and the bad.
+
+=Analysis of the How: the Right and the Good.=--We have used right and
+good as though they might be used interchangeably in speaking of
+conduct. Perhaps this may in the end prove to be true. If an act is
+right, then the hero or the saint may believe that it is also good; if
+an act is good in the fullest sense, then it will commend itself as
+right. But right and good evidently approach conduct from two different
+points of view. These might have been noted when speaking of the content
+or the What, but they are more important in considering the How.
+
+It is evident that when we speak of conduct as _right_ we think of it as
+before a judge. We bring the act to a standard, and measure the act. We
+think too of this standard as a "moral law" which we "ought" to obey. We
+respect its authority and hold ourselves responsible. The standard is
+conceived as a control over our impulses and desires. The man who
+recognizes such a law and is anxious to find and to do his duty, we call
+conscientious; as governing his impulses, he has self-control; as
+squaring his conduct strictly by his standard, he is upright and
+reliable.
+
+If I think of "_good_," I am approaching conduct from the standpoint of
+value. I am thinking of what is desirable. This too is a standard, but
+it is a standard regarded as an end to be sought rather than as a law. I
+am to "choose" it and identify myself with it, rather than to control
+myself by it. It is an "ideal." The conscientious man, viewed from this
+standpoint, would seek to discover the true good, to value his ends, to
+form ideals, instead of following impulse or accepting any seeming good
+without careful consideration. In so far as impulses are directed by
+ideals the thoroughly good man will be straightforward, "sincere": that
+is, he will not be moved to do the good act by fear of punishment, or by
+bribery, just as the upright man will be "governed by a sense of duty,"
+of "respect for principles."
+
+=Summary of the Characteristics of the Moral.=--To sum up the main
+characteristics of the moral life viewed in cross-section, or when in
+full activity, we may state them as follows:
+
+On the side of the "what," there are two aspects:
+
+(a) The dominance of "higher," ideal interests of knowledge, art,
+freedom, rights, and the "life of the spirit."
+
+(b) Regard for others, under its various aspects of justice, sympathy,
+and benevolence.
+
+On the side of the "how" the important aspects are:
+
+(a) The recognition of some standard, which may arise either as a
+control in the guise of "right" and "law," or as measure of value in the
+form of an ideal to be followed or good to be approved.
+
+(b) A sense of duty and respect for the law; sincere love of the good.
+
+(a) and (b) of this latter division are both included under the
+"conscientious" attitude.
+
+=2. The Moral as a Growth.=--The psychologists distinguish _three
+stages_ in conduct: (a) Instinctive activity. (b) Attention; the stage
+of conscious direction or control of action by imagery; of
+deliberation, desire, and choice. (c) Habit; the stage of unconscious
+activity along lines set by previous action. Consciousness thus
+"occupies a curious middle ground between hereditary reflex and
+automatic activities upon the one hand and acquired habitual activities
+upon the other." Where the original equipment of instincts fails to meet
+some new situation, when there are stimulations for which the system has
+no ready-made response, consciousness appears. It selects from the
+various responses those which suit the purpose, and when these responses
+have become themselves automatic, habitual, consciousness "betakes
+itself elsewhere to points where habitual accommodatory movements are as
+yet wanting and needed."[2] To apply this to the moral development we
+need only to add that this process repeats itself over and over. The
+starting-point for each later repetition is not the hereditary instinct,
+but the habits which have been formed. For the habits formed at one age
+of the individual's life, or at one stage of race development, prove
+inadequate for more complex situations. The child leaves home, the
+savage tribe changes to agricultural life, and the old habits no longer
+meet the need. Attention is again demanded. There is deliberation,
+struggle, effort. If the result is successful new habits are formed, but
+upon a higher level. For the new habits, the new character, embody more
+intelligence. The first stage, purely instinctive action, we do not call
+moral conduct. It is of course not _im_moral; it is merely _un_moral.
+The second stage shows morality in the making. It includes the process
+of transition from impulse, through desire to will. It involves the
+stress of conflicting interests, the processes of deliberation and
+valuation, and the final act of choice. It will be illustrated in our
+treatment of race development by the change from early group life and
+customs to the more conscious moral life of higher civilization. The
+third stage, well-organized character, is the goal of the process. But
+it is evidently only a relative point. A good man has built up a set of
+habits; a good society has established certain laws and moral codes. But
+unless the man or society is in a changeless world with no new
+conditions there will be new problems. And this means that however good
+the habit was for its time and purpose there must be new choices and new
+valuations. A character that would run automatically in every case would
+be pretty nearly a mechanism. It is therefore the second stage of this
+process that is the stage of active moral consciousness. It is upon this
+that we focus our attention.
+
+Moral growth from the first on through the second stage may be described
+as a process in which man becomes more _rational_, more _social_, and
+finally more _moral_. We examine briefly each of these aspects.
+
+=The Rationalizing or Idealizing Process.=--The first need of the
+organism is to live and grow. The first instincts and impulses are
+therefore for food, self-defence, and other immediate necessities.
+Primitive men eat, sleep, fight, build shelters, and give food and
+protection to their offspring. The "rationalizing" process will mean at
+first greater use of intelligence to satisfy these same wants. It will
+show itself in skilled occupations, in industry and trade, in the
+utilizing of all resources to further man's power and happiness. But to
+rationalize conduct is also to introduce new ends. It not only enables
+man to get what he wants; it changes the kind of objects that he wants.
+This shows itself externally in what man makes and in how he occupies
+himself. He must of course have food and shelter. But he makes temples
+and statues and poems. He makes myths and theories of the world. He
+carries on great enterprises in commerce or government, not so much to
+gratify desires for bodily wants as to experience the growth of power.
+He creates a family life which is raised to a higher level by art and
+religion. He does not live by bread only, but builds up gradually a
+life of reason. Psychologically this means that whereas at the beginning
+we want what our body calls for, we soon come to want things which the
+mind takes an interest in. As we form by memory, imagination, and reason
+a more continuous, permanent, highly-organized self, we require a far
+more permanent and ideal kind of good to satisfy us. This gives rise to
+the contrast between the material and ideal selves, or in another form,
+between "the world" and "the spirit."
+
+=The Socializing Process.=--The "socializing" side of the process of
+development stands for an increased capacity to enter into relations
+with other human beings. Like the growth of reason it is both a means
+and an end. It has its roots in certain instincts--sex, gregariousness,
+parental instincts--and in the necessities of mutual support and
+protection. But the associations thus formed imply a great variety of
+activities which call out new powers and set up new ends. Language is
+one of the first of these activities and a first step toward more
+complete socialization. Cooperation, in all kinds of enterprises,
+interchange of services and goods, participation in social arts,
+associations for various purposes, institutions of blood, family,
+government, and religion, all add enormously to the individual's power.
+On the other hand, as he enters into these relations and becomes a
+"member" of all these bodies he inevitably undergoes a transformation in
+his interests. Psychologically the process is one of building up a
+"social" self. Imitation and suggestion, sympathy and affection, common
+purpose and common interest, are the aids in building such a self. As
+the various instincts, emotions, and purposes are more definitely
+organized into such a unit, it becomes possible to set off the interests
+of others against those interests that center in my more individual
+good. Conscious egoism and altruism become possible. And in a way that
+will be explained, the interests of self and others are raised to the
+plane of rights and justice.
+
+=What is Needed to Make Conduct Moral.=--All this is not yet moral
+progress in the fullest sense. The progress to more rational and more
+social conduct is the indispensable condition of the moral, but not the
+whole story. What is needed is that the more rational and social conduct
+should itself be valued as good, and so be chosen and sought; or in
+terms of control, that the law which society or reason prescribes should
+be consciously thought of as right, used as a standard, and respected as
+binding. This gives the contrast between the higher and lower, as a
+conscious aim, not merely as a matter of taste. It raises the collision
+between self and others to the basis of personal rights and justice, of
+deliberate selfishness or benevolence. Finally it gives the basis for
+such organization of the social and rational choices that the progress
+already gained may be permanently secured, while the attention, the
+struggle between duty and inclination, the conscious choice, move
+forward to a new issue. Aristotle made these points clear:
+
+ "But the virtues are not in this point analogous to the arts. The
+ products of art have their excellence in themselves, and so it is
+ enough if when produced they are of a certain quality; but in the
+ case of the virtues, a man is not said to act justly or
+ temperately (or like a just or temperate man) if what he does
+ merely be of a certain sort--he must also be in a certain state of
+ mind when he does it: i.e., first of all, he must know what he is
+ doing; secondly, he must choose it, and choose it for itself; and,
+ thirdly, his act must be the expression of a formed and stable
+ character."
+
+=Summary of the Characteristics of the Moral as Growth.=--The full cycle
+has three stages:
+
+(a) Instinctive or habitual action.
+
+(b) Action under the stress of attention, with conscious intervention
+and reconstruction.
+
+(c) Organization of consciously directed conduct into habits and a self
+of a higher order: Character.
+
+The advance from (a) to and through (b) has three aspects.
+
+(a) It is a rationalizing and idealizing process. Reason is both a means
+to secure other ends, and an element in determining what shall be
+sought.
+
+(b) It is a socializing process. Society both strengthens and transforms
+the individual.
+
+(c) It is a process in which finally conduct itself is made the
+conscious object of reflection, valuation, and criticism. In this the
+definitely moral conceptions of right and duty, good and virtue appear.
+
+
+Sec. 3. DIVISIONS OF THE TREATMENT
+
+PART I., after a preliminary presentation of certain important aspects
+of group life, will first trace the process of moral development in its
+general outlines, and then give specific illustrations of the process
+taken from the life of Israel, of Greece, and of modern civilization.
+
+PART II. will analyze conduct or the moral life on its inner, personal
+side. After distinguishing more carefully what is meant by moral action,
+and noting some typical ways in which the moral life has been viewed by
+ethical theory, it will examine the meaning of right and good, of duty
+and virtue, and seek to discover the principles underlying moral
+judgments and moral conduct.
+
+PART III. will study conduct as action in society. But instead of a
+general survey, attention will be centered upon three phases of conduct
+which are of especial interest and importance. Political rights and
+duties, the production, distribution, and ownership of wealth, and
+finally the relations of domestic and family life, all present unsettled
+problems. These challenge the student to make a careful examination, for
+he must take some attitude as citizen on the issues involved.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+The literature on specific topics will be found at the beginning of each
+Part, and at the close of the several chapters. We indicate here some of
+the more useful manuals and recent representative works, and add some
+specific references on the scope and methods of ethics. Baldwin's
+_Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_ has selected lists (see
+especially articles, _Ethical Theories_, _Ethics_, _Worth_) and general
+lists (Vol. III.). Runze, _Ethik_, 1891, has good bibliographies.
+
+ELEMENTARY TEXTS: Mackenzie, _Manual of Ethics_, 3rd ed., 1900;
+Muirhead, _Elements of Ethics_, 1892; Seth, _A Study of Ethical
+Principles_, 6th ed., 1902; Thilly, _Introduction to Ethics_, 1900.
+
+REPRESENTATIVE BOOKS AND TREATISES IN ENGLISH: Green, _Prolegomena to
+Ethics_, 1883 (Idealism); Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_, 1885,
+3rd ed., 1891 (Intuitionism); Sidgwick's _Methods of Ethics_, 1874, 6th
+ed., 1901 (Union of Intuitionist and Utilitarian Positions with careful
+analysis of common sense); Spencer, _The Principles of Ethics_, 1892-3
+(Evolution); Stephen's _Science of Ethics_, 1882; The comprehensive work
+of Paulsen (_System der Ethik_, 1889, 5th ed., 1900) has been translated
+in part by Thilly, 1899; that of Wundt (_Ethik_, 1886, 3rd ed., 1903),
+by Titchener, Gulliver, and Washburn, 1897-1901. Among the more recent
+contributions, either to the whole field or to specific parts, may be
+noted: Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_, 1889; 2nd ed., 1891;
+Dewey, _Outlines of Ethics_, 1891, and _The Study of Ethics, A
+Syllabus_, 1894; Fite, _An Introductory Study of Ethics_, 1903;
+Hoeffding, _Ethik_ (German tr.), 1887; Janet, _The Theory of Morals_
+(Eng. tr.), 1884; Ladd, _The Philosophy of Conduct_, 1902; Mezes,
+_Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory_, 1900; Moore, _Principia Ethica_,
+1903; Palmer, _The Field of Ethics_, 1902, _The Nature of Goodness_,
+1903; Taylor, _The Problem of Conduct_, 1901; Rashdall, _The Theory of
+Good and Evil_, 1907; Bowne, _The Principles of Ethics_, 1892; Rickaby,
+_Moral Philosophy_, 1888.
+
+HISTORIES OF ETHICS: Sidgwick, _History of Ethics_, 3rd ed., 1892;
+Albee, _A History of English Utilitarianism_, 1902; Stephen, _The
+Utilitarians_, 1900; Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_; Whewell,
+_Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England_, 1852, 1862;
+Koestlin, _Geschichte der Ethik_, 2 vols., 1881-92 (ancient theories);
+Jodl, _Geschichte der Ethik_, 2 vols., 1882-89 (modern); Wundt, _Ethik_,
+Vol. II.; the histories of philosophy by Windelband, Hoeffding, Erdmann,
+Ueberweg, Falckenberg.
+
+SCOPE AND METHOD OF ETHICS: See the opening chapters in nearly all the
+works cited above, especially Palmer (_Field of Ethics_), Moore,
+Stephen, Spencer, Paulsen, and Wundt (_Facts of the Moral Life_); see
+also Ritchie, _Philosophical Studies_, 1905, pp. 264-291; Wallace,
+_Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics_, 1898, pp. 194 ff.;
+Dewey, _Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality_
+(_University of Chicago Decennial Publications_, 1903); Stuart, _The
+Logic of Self-realization_, in University of California Publications:
+_Philosophy_, I., 1904; Small, _The Significance of Sociology for
+Ethics_, 1902; Hadley, Article _Economic Theory_ in Baldwin's _Dict._
+
+RELATION OF THEORY TO LIFE: Green, _Prolegomena_, Book IV.; Dewey,
+_International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. I., 1891, pp. 186-203; James,
+same journal, Vol. I., 330-354; Mackenzie, same journal, Vol. IV., 1894,
+pp. 160-173.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Plato, _Protagoras_, 320 ff.
+
+[2] Angell, _Psychology_, p. 59.
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE BEGINNINGS AND GROWTH OF MORALITY
+
+
+GENERAL LITERATURE FOR PART I
+
+Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, 2 vols., 1906.
+
+Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, Vol. I., 1906.
+
+Sutherland, _The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, 2 vols.,
+1898.
+
+Wundt, _Facts of the Moral Life_, 1902; also _Ethik_, 3rd ed., 1903,
+Vol. I., pp. 280-523.
+
+Paulsen, _A System of Ethics_, 1899, Book I.
+
+Sumner, _Folkways_, 1907.
+
+Bergmann, _Ethik als Kulturphilosophie_, 1904.
+
+Mezes, _Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory_, Part I.
+
+Dewey, _The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality_, Philos. Review,
+XI., 1902, pp. 107-124, 353-371.
+
+Adam Smith, _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, 1759.
+
+Baldwin, _Social and Ethical Interpretations_, 1902.
+
+Taylor, _The Problem of Conduct_, 1901, chap. iii.
+
+Spencer, _Data of Ethics_, 1879; _Psychology_, 1872, Part IX., chs.
+v.-viii.
+
+Ihering, _Der Zweck im Recht_, 3rd ed., 1893.
+
+Steinthal, _Allgemeine Ethik_, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EARLY GROUP LIFE
+
+
+To understand the origin and growth of moral life, it is essential to
+understand primitive society. And while there is much that is uncertain,
+there is one fact of capital importance which stands out clearly. This
+is _the dominant influence of group life_. It is not asserted that all
+peoples have had precisely the same type of groups, or the same degree
+of group solidarity. It is beyond question that the ancestors of modern
+civilized races lived under the general types of group life which will
+be outlined, and that these types or their survivals are found among the
+great mass of peoples to-day.
+
+
+Sec. 1. TYPICAL FACTS OF GROUP LIFE
+
+Consider the following incident as related by Dr. Gray:
+
+ "A Chinese aided by his wife flogged his mother. The imperial
+ order not only commanded that the criminals should be put to
+ death; it further directed that the head of the clan should be put
+ to death; that the immediate neighbors each receive eighty blows
+ and be sent into exile; that the head or representatives of the
+ graduates of the first degree (or B.A.) among whom the male
+ offender ranked should be flogged and exiled; that the granduncle,
+ the uncle, and two elder brothers should be put to death; that the
+ prefect and the rulers should for a time be deprived of their
+ rank; that on the face of the mother of the female offender four
+ Chinese characters expressive of neglect of duty towards her
+ daughter should be tattooed, and that she be exiled to a distant
+ province; that the father of the female offender, a bachelor of
+ arts, should not be allowed to take any higher literary degrees,
+ and that he be flogged and exiled; that the son of the offenders
+ should receive another name, and that the lands of the offender
+ for a time remain fallow." (J. H. GRAY, _China_, Vol. I., pp.
+ 237 f.)
+
+Put beside this the story of Achan:
+
+ Achan had taken for his own possession certain articles from the
+ spoil of Jericho which had been set apart or "devoted" to Jehovah.
+ Israel then suffered a defeat in battle. When Achan's act became
+ known, "Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of
+ Zerah, and the mantle, and the wedge of gold, and his sons and his
+ daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his
+ tent, and all that he had.... And all Israel stoned him with
+ stones; and they burned them with fire and stoned them with
+ stones." (JOSHUA vii: 24, 25.)
+
+The converse of these situations is brought out in the regulations of
+the Kumi, a Japanese local institution comprising five or more
+households:
+
+ "As members of a Kumi we will cultivate friendly feelings even
+ more than with our relatives, and will promote each other's
+ happiness as well as share each other's grief. If there is an
+ unprincipled or lawless person in a Kumi, we shall all share the
+ responsibility for him." (SIMMONS and WIGMORE, _Transactions,
+ Asiatic Society of Japan_, xix., 177 f.)
+
+For another aspect of the group take Caesar's description of landholding
+among the Germans:
+
+ "No one possesses privately a definite extent of land; no one has
+ limited fields of his own; but every year the magistrates and
+ chiefs distribute the land to the clans and the kindred groups
+ (_gentibus cognationibusque hominum_) and to those (_other_
+ groups) who live together." (_De Bell. Gall._, VI., 22.)
+
+Of the Greeks, our intellectual ancestors, as well as fellow Aryans, it
+is stated that in Attica, even to a late period, the land remained to a
+large degree in possession of ideal persons, gods, phylae (tribes) or
+phratries, kinships, political communities. Even when the superficies of
+the land might be regarded as private, mines were reserved as
+public.[3] The basis on which these kinship groups rested is thus stated
+by Grote:[4]
+
+ "All these phratric and gentile associations, the larger as well
+ as the smaller, were founded upon the same principles and
+ tendencies of the Grecian mind--a coalescence of the idea of
+ worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in certain special
+ religious rites with communion of blood, real or supposed."
+ "The god or hero, to whom the assembled members offered their
+ sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor to whom they
+ owed their origin."
+
+Coulanges gives a similar statement as to the ancient family group:[5]
+
+ "The members of the ancient family were united by something more
+ powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the
+ religion of the sacred fire, and of dead ancestors. This caused
+ the family to form a single body both in this life and in the
+ next."
+
+Finally, the following passage on clanship among the Kafirs brings out
+two points: (1) That such a group life implies feelings and ideas of a
+distinctive sort; and (2) that it has a strength rooted in the very
+necessities of life.
+
+ "A Kafir feels that the 'frame that binds him in' extends to the
+ clan. The sense of solidarity of the family in Europe is thin and
+ feeble compared to the full-blooded sense of corporate union of
+ the Kafir clan. The claims of the clan entirely swamp the rights
+ of the individual. The system of tribal solidarity, which has
+ worked so well in its smoothness that it might satisfy the utmost
+ dreams of the socialist, is a standing proof of the sense of
+ corporate union of the clan. In olden days a man did not have any
+ feeling of personal injury when a chief made him work for white
+ men and then told him to give all, or nearly all of his wages to
+ his chief; the money was kept within the clan, and what was the
+ good of the clan was the good of the individual and _vice versa_.
+ The striking thing about this unity of the clan is that it was
+ not a thought-out plan imposed from without by legislation upon an
+ unwilling people, but it was a _felt-out_ plan which arose
+ spontaneously along the line of least resistance. If one member of
+ the clan suffered, all the members suffered, not in sentimental
+ phraseology, but in real fact." (DUDLEY KIDD, _Savage Childhood_,
+ pp. 74 f.)
+
+The above passages refer to Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian, and Kafir
+peoples. They could be matched by similar statements concerning nearly
+every people. They suggest a way of living, and a view of life very
+different from that of the American or of most Europeans.[6] The
+American or European belongs to groups of various kinds, but he "joins"
+most of them. He of course is born into a family, but he does not stay
+in it all his life unless he pleases. And he may choose his own
+occupation, residence, wife, political party, religion, social club, or
+even national allegiance. He may own or sell his own house, give or
+bequeath his property, and is responsible generally speaking for no
+one's acts but his own. This makes him an "individual" in a much fuller
+sense than he would be if all these relations were settled for him. On
+the other hand, the member of such groups as are referred to in our
+examples above, has all, or nearly all, his relations fixed when he is
+born into a certain clan or family group. This settles his occupation,
+dwelling, gods, and politics. If it doesn't decide upon his wife, it at
+least usually fixes the group from which she must be taken. His
+conditions, in the words of Maine, are thus of "status," not of
+"contract." This makes a vast difference in his whole attitude. It will
+help to bring out more clearly by contrast the character of present
+morality, as well as to see moral life in the making, if we examine more
+carefully this group life. We shall find, as brought out in the
+passages already quoted, that the most important type of group is at
+once a kindred or family, an economic, a political, a religious, and a
+moral unit. First, however, we notice briefly the most important types
+of groups.
+
+
+Sec. 2. KINSHIP AND HOUSEHOLD GROUPS
+
+=1. The Kinship Group.=--The kinship group is a body of persons who
+conceive of themselves as sprung from one ancestor, and hence as having
+in their veins one blood. It does not matter for our study whether each
+group has actually sprung from a single ancestor. It is highly probable
+that the contingencies of food-supply or of war may have been an
+original cause for the constitution of the group, wholly or in part. But
+this is of no consequence for our purpose. The important point is that
+the members of the group regard themselves as of one stock. In some
+cases the ancestor is believed to have been an animal. Then we have the
+so-called totem group, which is found among North American Indians,
+Africans, and Australians, and was perhaps the early form of Semitic
+groups. In other cases, some hero or even some god is named as the
+ancestor. In any case the essential part of the theory remains the same:
+namely, that one blood circulates in all the members, and hence that the
+life of each is a part of the common life of the group. There are then
+no degrees of kindred. This group, it should be noted, is not the same
+as the family, for in the family, as a rule, husband and wife are of
+different kinship groups, and continue their several kinship relations.
+Among some peoples marriage ceremonies, indeed, symbolize the admission
+of the wife into the husband's kinship, and in this case the family
+becomes a kinship group, but this is by no means universally the case.
+
+The feeling that one is first and foremost a member of a group, rather
+than an individual, is furthered among certain kin groups by a scheme of
+class relationship. According to this system, instead of having one
+definite person whom I, and I alone, regard and address as father or
+mother, grandfather, uncle, brother, sister, I call any one of a given
+group or class of persons mother, grandfather, brother, sister. And any
+one else who is in the same class with me calls the same persons,
+mother, grandfather, brother, or sister.[7] The simplest form of such a
+class system is that found among the Hawaiians. Here there are five
+classes based upon the generations corresponding to what we call
+grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, children, and
+grandchildren, but the words used to designate them do not imply any
+such specific parentage as do these words with us. Bearing this in mind,
+we may say that every one in the first class is equally grandparent to
+every one in the third; every one in the third is equally brother or
+sister to every other in the third, equally father or mother to every
+one in the fourth, and so on. In Australia the classes are more numerous
+and the relationships far more intricate and complicated, but this does
+not, as might be supposed, render the bond relatively unimportant; on
+the contrary, his relationship to every other class is "one of the most
+important points with which each individual must be acquainted"; it
+determines marital relations, food distribution, salutations, and
+general conduct to an extraordinary degree. A kinship group was known as
+"tribe" or "family" (English translation) among the Israelites; as
+genos, phratria, and phyle among the Greeks, gens and curia among the
+Romans; clan in Scotland; sept in Ireland; Sippe in Germany.
+
+=2. The Family or Household Group.=--Two kinds of families may be noted
+as significant for our purpose. In the _maternal family_ the woman
+remains among her own kin, and the children are naturally reckoned as
+belonging to the mother's kin. The husband and father is more or less a
+guest or outsider. In a blood feud he would have to side with his own
+clan and against that of his wife if his clan quarreled with hers. Clan
+and family are thus seen to be distinct. In the _paternal_, which easily
+becomes the _patriarchal_ family the wife leaves her relatives to live
+in her husband's house and among his kin. She might then, as at Rome,
+abjure her own kindred and be formally adopted into her husband's gens
+or clan. The Greek myth of Orestes is an illustration of the clashing of
+these two conceptions of father kin and mother kin, and Hamlet's sparing
+of his mother under similar circumstances, shows a more modern point of
+view.
+
+It is evident that with the prevalence of the paternal type of family,
+clan and household ties will mutually strengthen each other. This will
+make an important difference in the father's relation to the children,
+and gives a much firmer basis for ancestral religion. But in many
+respects the environing atmosphere, the pressure and support, the group
+sympathy and group tradition, are essentially similar. The important
+thing is that every person is a member of a kindred, and likewise, of
+some family group, and that he thinks, feels, and acts accordingly.[8]
+
+
+Sec. 3. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS ARE ALSO ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL
+UNITS
+
+=1. The Land and the Group.=--In land, as a rule, no individual
+ownership in the modern sense was recognized. Among hunting and pastoral
+peoples there was, of course, no "ownership" by any group in the strict
+sense of modern law. But none the less, the group, large or small, had
+its fairly well-defined territory within which it hunted and fished; in
+the pastoral life it had its pasture range and its wells of water. With
+agriculture a more definite sense of possession arose. But possession
+was by the tribe or gens or household, not by the individual:
+
+ "The land belonged to the clan, and the clan was settled upon the
+ land. A man was thus not a member of the clan, because he lived
+ upon, or even owned, the land; but he lived upon the land, and had
+ interests in it, because he was a member of the clan."[9]
+
+Greek and German customs were quoted at the outset. Among the Celts the
+laws of ancient Ireland show a transitional stage. "The land of the
+tribe consisted of two distinct allotments, the 'fechfine' or tribeland,
+and the 'orta' or inheritance land. This latter belonged as individual
+property to the men of the chieftain groups."[10] The Hindoo
+joint-family and the house-community of the Southern Slavonians are
+present examples of group ownership. They are joint in food, worship,
+and estate. They have a common home, a common table. Maxims of the Slavs
+express their appreciation of community life: "The common household
+waxes rich"; "The more bees in the hive, the heavier it weighs." One
+difficulty in the English administration of Ireland has been this
+radical difference between the modern Englishman's individualistic
+conception of property and the Irishman's more primitive conception of
+group or clan ownership. Whether rightly or not, the Irish tenant
+refuses to regard himself as merely a tenant. He considers himself as a
+member of a family or group which formerly owned the land, and he does
+not admit the justice, even though he cannot disprove the legality, of
+an alienation of the group possession. For such a clan or household as
+we have described is not merely equivalent to the persons who compose it
+at a given time. Its property belongs to the ancestors and to the
+posterity as well as to the present possessors; and hence in some groups
+which admit an individual possession or use during life, no right of
+devise or inheritance is permitted. The property reverts at death to the
+whole gens or clan. In other cases a child may inherit, but in default
+of such an heir the property passes to the common possession. The right
+to bequeath property to the church was long a point on which civil law
+and canon law were at variance. The relations of the primitive clan or
+household group to land were therefore decidedly adapted to keep the
+individual's good bound up with the good of the group.
+
+=2. Movable Goods.=--In the case of movable goods, such as tools,
+weapons, cattle, the practice is not uniform. When the goods are the
+product of the individual's own skill or prowess they are usually his.
+Tools, weapons, slaves or women captured, products of some special craft
+or skill, are thus usually private. But when the group acts as a unit
+the product is usually shared. The buffalo and salmon and large game
+were thus for the whole Indian group which hunted or fished together;
+and in like manner the maize which was tended by the women belonged to
+the household in common. Slavic and Indian house communities at the
+present day have a common interest in the household property. Even women
+and children among some tribes are regarded as the property of the
+group.
+
+
+Sec. 4. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS WERE POLITICAL BODIES
+
+In a modern family the parents exercise a certain degree of control over
+the children, but this is limited in several respects. No parent is
+allowed to put a child to death, or to permit him to grow up in
+ignorance. On the other hand, the parent is not allowed to protect the
+child from arrest if a serious injury has been done by him. The _State_,
+through its laws and officers, is regarded by us as the highest
+authority in a certain great sphere of action. It must settle
+conflicting claims and protect life and property; in the opinion of many
+it must organize the life of its members where the cooperation of every
+member is necessary for some common good. In early group life there may
+or may not be some political body over and above the clan or family, but
+in any case the _kin or family is itself a sort of political State_. Not
+a State in the sense that the political powers are deliberately
+separated from personal, religious, and family ties; men gained a new
+conception of authority and rose to a higher level of possibilities when
+they consciously separated and defined government and laws from the
+undifferentiated whole of a religious and kindred group. But yet this
+primitive group was after all a State, not a mob, or a voluntary
+society, or a mere family; for (1) it was a more or less permanently
+organized body; (2) it exercised control over its members which they
+regarded as rightful authority, not as mere force; (3) it was not
+limited by any higher authority, and acted more or less effectively for
+the interest of the whole. The representatives of this political aspect
+of the group may be chiefs or sachems, a council of elders, or, as in
+Rome, the House Father, whose _patria potestas_ marks the extreme
+development of the patriarchal family.
+
+The control exercised by the group over individual members assumes
+various forms among the different peoples. The more important aspects
+are a right over life and bodily freedom, in some cases extending to
+power of putting to death, maiming, chastising, deciding whether newly
+born children shall be preserved or not; the right of betrothal, which
+includes control over the marriage portion received for its women; and
+the right to administer property of the kin in behalf of the kin as a
+whole. It is probable that among all these various forms of control, the
+control over the marriage relations of women has been most persistent.
+One reason for this control may have been the fact that the group was
+bound to resent injuries of a member of the group who had been married
+to another. Hence this responsibility seemed naturally to involve the
+right of decision as to her marriage.
+
+=It is Membership in the Group Which Gives the Individual Whatever
+Rights He Has.=--According to present conceptions this is still largely
+true of legal rights. A State may allow a citizen of another country to
+own land, to sue in its courts, and will usually give him a certain
+amount of protection, but the first-named rights are apt to be limited,
+and it is only a few years since Chief Justice Taney's dictum stated the
+existing legal theory of the United States to be that the negro "had no
+rights which the white man was bound to respect." Even where legal
+theory does not recognize race or other distinctions, it is often hard
+in practice for an alien to get justice. In primitive clan or family
+groups this principle is in full force. Justice is a privilege which
+falls to a man as belonging to some group--not otherwise. The member of
+the clan or the household or the village community has a claim, but the
+stranger has no standing. He may be treated kindly, as a guest, but he
+cannot demand "justice" at the hands of any group but his own. In this
+conception of rights within the group we have the prototype of modern
+civil law. The dealing of clan with clan is a matter of war or
+negotiation, not of law; and the clanless man is an "outlaw" in fact as
+well as in name.
+
+=Joint Responsibility= and mutual support, as shown in the blood feud,
+was a natural consequence of this fusion of political and kindred
+relations. In modern life States treat each other as wholes in certain
+respects. If some member of a savage tribe assaults a citizen of one of
+the civilized nations, the injured party invokes the help of his
+government. A demand is usually made that the guilty party be delivered
+up for trial and punishment. If he is not forthcoming a "punitive
+expedition" is organized against the whole tribe; guilty and innocent
+suffer alike. Or in lieu of exterminating the offending tribe, in part
+or completely, the nation of the injured man may accept an indemnity in
+money or land from the offender's tribe. Recent dealings between British
+and Africans, Germans and Africans, France and Morocco, the United
+States and the Filipinos, the Powers and China, illustrate this. The
+State protects its own members against other States, and avenges them
+upon other States. Each opposes a united body to the other. The same
+principle carried out through private citizens as public agents, and
+applied to towns, is seen in the practice which prevailed in the Middle
+Ages. "When merchants of one country had been defrauded by those of
+another, or found it impossible to collect a debt from them, the former
+country issued letters of marque and reprisal, authorizing the plunder
+of any citizens of the offending town until satisfaction should be
+obtained." Transfer the situation to the early clan or tribe, and this
+solidarity is increased because each member is related to the rest by
+blood, as well as by national unity. The Arabs do not say "The blood of
+M. or N. has been spilt," naming the man; they say, "Our blood has been
+spilt."[11] The whole group, therefore, feels injured and regards every
+man in the offender's kin as more or less responsible. The next of kin,
+the "avenger of blood," stands first in duty and privilege, but the rest
+are all involved in greater or less degree.
+
+=Within the Group= each member will be treated more or less fully as an
+individual. If he takes his kinsman's wife or his kinsman's game he will
+be dealt with by the authorities or by the public opinion of his group.
+He will not indeed be put to death if he kills his kinsman, but he will
+be hated, and may be driven out. "Since the living kin is not killed for
+the sake of the dead kin, everybody will hate to see him."[12]
+
+When now a smaller group, like a family, is at the same time a part of a
+larger group like a phratry or a tribe, we have the phase of solidarity
+which is so puzzling to the modern. We hold to solidarity in war or
+between nations; but with a few exceptions[13] we have replaced it by
+individual responsibility of adults for debts and crimes so far as the
+civil law has jurisdiction. In earlier times the higher group or
+authority treated the smaller as a unit. Achan's family all perished
+with him. The Chinese sense of justice recognized a series of degrees in
+responsibility dependent on nearness of kin or of residence, or of
+occupation. The Welsh system held kinsmen as far as second cousins
+responsible for insult or injury short of homicide, and as far as fifth
+cousins (seventh degree of descent) for the payment in case of homicide.
+"The mutual responsibility of kinsmen for _saraal_ and _galanas_ (the
+Wergild of the Germans), graduated according to nearness of kin to the
+murdered man and to the criminal, reveals more clearly than anything
+else the extent to which the individual was bound by innumerable meshes
+to his fixed place in the tribal community."[14]
+
+
+Sec. 5. THE KINSHIP OR HOUSEHOLD GROUP WAS A RELIGIOUS UNIT
+
+The kinship or household group determined largely both the ideas and the
+cultus of primitive religion; conversely religion gave completeness,
+value, and sacredness to the group life. Kinship with unseen powers or
+persons was the fundamental religious idea. The kinship group as a
+religious body _simply extended the kin to include invisible as well as
+visible members_. The essential feature of religion is not unseen beings
+who are feared, or cajoled, or controlled by magic. It is rather
+_kindred_ unseen beings, who may be feared, but who are also reverenced
+and loved. The kinship may be physical or spiritual, but however
+conceived it makes gods and worshippers members of one group.[15]
+
+=1. Totem Groups.=--In totem groups, the prevailing conception is that
+one blood circulates in all the members of the group and that the
+ancestor of the whole group is some object of nature, such as sun or
+moon, plant or animal. Perhaps the most interesting and intelligible
+account of the relation between the animal ancestor and the members of
+the group is that which has recently been discovered in certain
+Australian tribes who believe that every child, at its birth, is the
+reincarnation of some previous member of the group, and that these
+ancestors were an actual transformation of animals and plants, or of
+water, fire, wind, sun, moon, or stars. Such totem groups cherish that
+animal which they believe to be their ancestor and ordinarily will not
+kill it or use it for food. The various ceremonies of religious
+initiation are intended to impress upon the younger members of the group
+the sacredness of this kindred bond which units them to each other and
+to their totem. The beginnings of decorative art frequently express the
+importance of the symbol, and the totem is felt to be as distinctly a
+member of the group as is any of the human members.
+
+=2. Ancestral Religion.=--At a somewhat higher stage of civilization,
+and usually in connection with the patriarchal households or groups in
+which kinship is reckoned through the male line, the invisible members
+of the group are the _departed ancestors_. This ancestor worship is a
+power to-day in China and Japan, and in the tribes of the Caucasus. The
+ancient Semites, Romans, Teutons, Celts, Hindoos, all had their kindred
+gods of the household. The Roman genius, lares, penates, and manes,
+perhaps the Hebrew teraphim,--prized by Laban and Rachel, kept by David,
+valued in the time of Hosea,--were loved and honored side by side with
+other deities. Sometimes the nature deities, such as Zeus or Jupiter,
+were incorporated with the kinship or family gods. The Greek Hestia and
+Roman Vesta symbolized the sacredness of the hearth. The kinship tie
+thus determined for every member of the group his religion.
+
+=Religion Completes the Group.=--Conversely, this bond of union with
+unseen, yet ever present and powerful kindred spirits completed the
+group and gave to it its highest authority, its fullest value, its
+deepest sacredness. If the unseen kin are nature beings, they symbolize
+for man his dependence upon nature and his kinship in some vague fashion
+with the cosmic forces. If the gods are the departed ancestors, they are
+then conceived as still potent, like Father Anchises, to protect and
+guide the fortunes of their offspring. The wisdom, courage, and
+affection, as well as the power of the great heroes of the group, live
+on. The fact that the gods are unseen enhances tremendously their
+supposed power. The visible members of the group may be strong, but
+their strength can be measured. The living elders may be wise, yet they
+are not far beyond the rest of the group. But the invisible beings
+cannot be measured. The long-departed ancestor may have inconceivable
+age and wisdom. The imagination has free scope to magnify his power and
+invest him with all the ideal values it can conceive. The religious bond
+is, therefore, fitted to be the bearer, as the religious object is the
+embodiment in concrete form, of the higher standards of the group, and
+to furnish the sanction for their enforcement or adoption.
+
+
+Sec. 6. GROUPS OR CLASSES ON THE BASIS OF AGE AND SEX
+
+While the kindred and family groups are by far the most important for
+early morality, other groupings are significant. The division by ages is
+widespread. The simplest scheme gives three classes: (1) children, (2)
+young men and maidens, (3) married persons. Puberty forms the bound
+between the first and second; marriage that between the second and
+third. Distinct modes of dress and ornament, frequently also different
+residences and standards of conduct, belong to these several classes. Of
+groups on the basis of sex, the _men's clubs_ are especially worthy of
+note. They flourish now chiefly in the islands of the Pacific, but there
+are indications, such as the common meals of the Spartans, of a wide
+spread among European peoples in early times. The fundamental idea[16]
+seems to be that of a common house for the unmarried young men, where
+they eat, sleep, and pass their time, whereas the women, children, and
+married men sleep and eat in the family dwelling. But in most cases all
+the men resort to the clubhouse by day. Strangers may be entertained
+there. It thus forms a sort of general center for the men's activities,
+and for the men's conversation. As such, it is an important agency for
+forming and expressing public opinion, and for impressing upon the young
+men just entering the house the standards of the older members. Further,
+in some cases these houses become the center of rites to the dead, and
+thus add the impressiveness of religious significance to their other
+activities.
+
+Finally, _secret societies_ may be mentioned as a subdivision of sex
+groups, for among primitive peoples such societies are confined in
+almost all cases to the men. They seem in many cases to have grown out
+of the age classes already described. The transition from childhood to
+manhood, mysterious in itself, was invested with further mysteries by
+the old men who conducted the ceremonies of initiation. Masks were worn,
+or the skulls of deceased ancestors were employed, to give additional
+mystery and sanctity. The increased power gained by secrecy would often
+be itself sufficient to form a motive for such organization, especially
+where they had some end in view not approved by the dominant
+authorities. Sometimes they exercise strict authority over their
+members, and assume judicial and punitive functions, as in the Vehm of
+the Middle Ages. Sometimes they become merely leagues of enemies to
+society.
+
+
+Sec. 7. MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KINDRED AND OTHER GROUPS
+
+The moral in this early stage is not to be looked for as something
+distinct from the political, religious, kindred, and sympathetic aspects
+of the clan, family, and other groups. The question rather is, _How far
+are these very political, religious, and other aspects implicitly
+moral_? If by moral we mean a conscious testing of conduct by an inner
+and self-imposed standard, if we mean a freely chosen as contrasted with
+a habitual or customary standard, then evidently we have the moral only
+in germ. For the standards are group standards, rather than those of
+individual conscience; they operate largely through habit rather than
+through choice. Nevertheless they are not set for the individual by
+outsiders. They are set by a group of which he is a member. They are
+enforced by a group _of which he is a member_. Conduct is praised or
+blamed, punished or rewarded by the group of which he is a member.
+Property is administered, industry is carried on, wars and feuds
+prosecuted for the common good. What the group does, each member joins
+in doing. It is a reciprocal matter: A helps enforce a rule or impose a
+service on B; he cannot help feeling it fair when the same rule is
+applied to himself. He has to "play the game," and usually he expects to
+play it as a matter of course. Each member, therefore, is practicing
+certain acts, standing in certain relations, maintaining certain
+attitudes, just because he is one of the group which does these things
+and maintains these standards. And he does not act in common with the
+group without sharing in the group emotions. It is a grotesque
+perversion to conceive the restraints of gods and chiefs as purely
+external terrors. The primitive group could enter into the spirit
+implied in the words of the Athenian chorus, which required of an alien
+upon adoption
+
+ "To loathe whate'er our state does hateful hold,
+ To reverence what it loves."[17]
+
+The gregarious instinct may be the most elemental of the impulses which
+bind the group together, but it is reinforced by sympathies and
+sentiments growing out of common life, common work, common danger,
+common religion. The morality is already implicit, it needs only to
+become conscious. The standards are embodied in the old men or the gods;
+the rational good is in the inherited wisdom; the respect for sex, for
+property rights, and for the common good, is embodied in the system--but
+it is there. Nor are the union and control a wholly objective affair.
+"The corporate union was not a pretty religious fancy with which to
+please the mind, but was so truly felt that it formed an excellent basis
+from which the altruistic sentiment might start. Gross selfishness was
+curbed, and the turbulent passions were restrained by an impulse which
+the man felt welling up within him, instinctive and unbidden. Clannish
+camaraderie was thus of immense value to the native races."[18]
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+The works of Hobhouse, Sumner, Westermarck contain copious references to
+the original sources. Among the most valuable are:
+
+FOR SAVAGE PEOPLE: Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvoelker_, 1859-72;
+Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 1903; Spencer and Gillen, _The Native Tribes
+of Central Australia_, 1899, and _The Northern Tribes of Central
+Australia_, 1904; Howitt and Fison, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 1880;
+Howitt, _The Native Tribes of S. E. Australia_, 1904; N. Thomas,
+_Kinship, Organization and Group Marriages in Australia_, 1906; Morgan,
+_Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines_, 1881, _The League of
+the Iroquois_, 1851, _Systems of Consanguinity, Smithsonian
+Contributions_, 1871, _Ancient Society_, 1877. Many papers in the
+_Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, especially by Powell in 1st,
+1879-80; Dorsey in 3rd, 1881-82, Mendeleff in 19th, 1893-94.
+
+FOR INDIA, CHINA, AND JAPAN: Lyall, _Asiatic Studies, Religious and
+Social_, 1882; Gray, _China_, 1878; Smith, _Chinese Characteristics_,
+1894; _Village Life in China_, 1899; Nitobe, _Bushido_, 1905; L. Hearn,
+_Japan_, 1904.
+
+FOR SEMITIC AND INDO-GERMANIC PEOPLES: W. R. Smith, _Kinship and
+Marriage in Early Arabia_, 1885; _The Religion of the Semites_, 1894; W.
+Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, 1879; Coulanges, _The Ancient City_, 1873;
+Seebohm, _The Tribal System in Wales_, 1895, and _Tribal Custom in
+Anglo-Saxon Law_, 1902; Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Suedslaven_, 1885.
+
+GENERAL: Grosse, _Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der
+Wirthschaft_, 1896; Starke, _The Primitive Family_, 1889; Maine,
+_Ancient Law_, 1885; McLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, 1886;
+Rivers, _On the Origin of the Classificatory System of Relationships_,
+in Anthropological Essays, presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907; Ratzel,
+_History of Mankind_, 1896-98; Kovalevsky, _Tableau des origines et de
+l'Evolution de la Famille et de la Propriete_, 1890; Giddings,
+_Principles of Sociology_, 1896, pp. 157-168, 256-298; Thomas, _Relation
+of Sex to Primitive Social Control_ in Sex and Society, 1907; Webster,
+_Primitive Secret Societies_, 1908; Simmel, _The Sociology of Secrecy
+and of Secret Societies_, American Journal Sociology, Vol. XI., 1906,
+pp. 441-498. See also the references at close of Chapters VI., VII.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, _Aristotle und Athen_, II. 93, 47.
+
+[4] _History of Greece_, III., 55.
+
+[5] _The Ancient City_, p. 51.
+
+[6] Russian mirs, South Slavonian "joint" families, Corsican clans with
+their vendettas, and tribes in the Caucasus still have the group
+interest strong, and the feuds of the mountaineers in some of the border
+states illustrate family solidarity.
+
+[7] "In all the tribes with whom we are acquainted all the terms
+coincide without any exception in the recognition of relationships, all
+of which are dependent on the existence of a classificatory system, the
+fundamental idea of which is that the women of certain groups marry the
+men of others. Each tribe has one term applied indiscriminately to the
+man or woman whom he actually marries and to all whom he might lawfully
+marry, that is, who belong to the right group: One term to his actual
+mother and to all the women whom his father might lawfully have
+married."--SPENCER and GILLEN, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
+57.
+
+[8] The fact that primitive man is at once an individual and a member of
+a group--that he has as it were two personalities or selves, an
+individual self and a clan-self, or "tribal-self," as Clifford called
+it,--is not merely a psychologist's way of stating things. The Kafir
+people, according to their most recent student, Mr. Dudley Kidd, have
+two distinct words to express these two selves. They call one the
+_idhlozi_ and other the _itongo_. "The _idhlozi_ is the individual and
+personal spirit born with each child--something fresh and unique which
+is never shared with any one else--while the _itongo_ is the ancestral
+and corporate spirit which is not personal but tribal, or a thing of the
+clan, the possession of which is obtained not by birth but by certain
+initiatory rites. The _idhlozi_ is personal and inalienable, for it is
+wrapped up with the man's personality, and at death it lives near the
+grave, or goes into the snake or totem of the clan; but the _itongo_ is
+of the clan, and haunts the living-hut; at death it returns to the
+tribal _amatongo_ (ancestral spirits). A man's share in this clan-spirit
+(_itongo_) is lost when he becomes a Christian, or when he is in any way
+unfaithful to the interests of the clan, but a man never loses his
+_idhlozi_ any more than he ever loses his individuality."--_Savage
+Childhood_, pp. 14 f.
+
+[9] Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, p. 212.
+
+[10] MacLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 381.
+
+[11] Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 23.
+
+[12] Cited from the Gwentian Code. Seebohm, _The Tribal System in
+Wales_, p. 104.
+
+[13] E.g., certain joint responsibilities of husband and wife.
+
+[14] Seebohm, _The Tribal System in Wales_, pp. 103 f.
+
+[15] "From the earliest times, religion, as distinct from magic or
+sorcery, addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed
+be angry with their people for a time, but are always placable except to
+the enemies of their worshippers or to renegade members of the
+community. It is not with a vague fear of unknown powers, but with a
+loving reverence for known gods who are knit to their worshippers by
+strong bonds of kinship, that religion in the only true sense of the
+word begins."--ROBERTSON SMITH, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 54.
+
+[16] Schurtz, _Altersklassen und Maennerbuende_.
+
+[17] _Oedipus at Colonus_, vv. 186 f.
+
+[18] Dudley Kidd, _Savage Childhood_, pp. 74 f.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE RATIONALIZING AND SOCIALIZING AGENCIES IN EARLY SOCIETY
+
+
+Sec. 1. THREE LEVELS OF CONDUCT
+
+A young man may enter a profession thinking of it only as a means of
+support. But the work requires foresight and persistence; it broadens
+his interests; it develops his character. Like Saul, he has gone to
+search for asses, he has found a kingdom. Or he may marry on the basis
+of emotional attraction. But the sympathies evoked, the cooperation made
+necessary, are refining and enlarging his life. Both these cases
+illustrate agencies which are moral in their results, although not
+carried on from a consciously moral purpose.
+
+Suppose, however, that children are born into the family. Then the
+parent consciously sets about controlling their conduct, and in
+exercising authority almost inevitably feels the need of some standard
+other than caprice or selfishness. Suppose that in business the partners
+differ as to their shares in the profits, then the question of fairness
+is raised; and if one partner defaults, the question of guilt. Or
+suppose the business encounters a law which forbids certain operations,
+the problem of justice will come to consciousness. Such situations as
+these are evidently in the moral sphere in a sense in which those of the
+preceding paragraph are not. They demand some kind of judgment, some
+approval or disapproval. As Aristotle says, it is not enough to do the
+acts; it is necessary to do them in a certain way,--not merely to get
+the result, but to intend it. The result must be thought of as in some
+sense good or right; its opposite as in some sense bad or wrong.
+
+But notice that the judgments in these cases may follow either of two
+methods: (1) The parent or business man may teach his child, or practice
+in business, what tradition or the accepted standard calls for; or (2)
+he may consider and examine the principles and motives involved. Action
+by the first method is undoubtedly moral, in one sense. It is judging
+according to a standard, though it takes the standard for granted.
+Action by the second method is moral in a more complete sense. It
+examines the standard as well. The one is the method of "customary"
+morality, the other that of reflective morality, or of conscience in the
+proper sense.
+
+=The Three Levels and Their Motives.=--We may distinguish then three
+levels of conduct.
+
+1. Conduct arising from instincts and fundamental needs. To satisfy
+these needs certain conduct is necessary, and this in itself involves
+ways of acting which are more or less rational and social. The conduct
+may be _in accordance with_ moral laws, though not directed by moral
+judgments. We consider this level in the present chapter.
+
+2. Conduct regulated by _standards of society_, for some more or less
+conscious end involving the social welfare. The level of custom, which
+is treated in Chapter IV.
+
+3. Conduct regulated by a standard which is both social and rational,
+which is examined and criticized. The level of conscience. Progress
+toward this level is outlined in Chapters V. to VIII.
+
+The motives in these levels will show a similar scale. In (1) the
+motives are external to the end gained. The man seeks food, or position,
+or glory, or sex gratification; he is forced to practice sobriety,
+industry, courage, gentleness. In (2) the motive is to seek some good
+which is social, but the man acts for the group mainly because he is
+_of_ the group, and does not conceive his own good as distinct from
+that of the group. His acts are only in part guided by intelligence;
+they are in part due to habit or accident. (3) In full morality a man
+not only intends his acts definitely, he also values them as what he can
+do "with all his heart." He does them _because_ they are right and good.
+He chooses them freely and intelligently. Our study of moral development
+will consider successively these three levels. They all exist in present
+morality. Only the first two are found in savage life. If (1) existed
+alone it was before the group life, which is our starting-point in this
+study. We return now to our consideration of group life, and note the
+actual forces which are at work. We wish to discover the process by
+which the first and second levels prepare the way for the third.
+
+=The Necessary Activities of Existence Start the Process.=--The prime
+necessities, if the individual is to survive, are for food, shelter,
+defense against enemies. If the stock is to survive, there must be also
+reproduction and parental care. Further, it is an advantage in the
+struggle if the individual can master and acquire, can outstrip rivals,
+and can join forces with others of his kind for common ends. To satisfy
+these needs we find men in group life engaged in work, in war or blood
+feuds, in games and festal activities, in parental care. They are
+getting food and booty, making tools and houses, conquering or enslaving
+their enemies, protecting the young, winning trophies, and finding
+emotional excitement in contests, dances, and songs. These all help in
+the struggle for existence. But the workmen, warriors, singers, parents,
+are getting more. They are forming certain elements of character which,
+if not necessarily moral in themselves, are yet indispensable requisites
+for full morality. We may say therefore that nature is doing this part
+of moral evolution, without the aid of conscious intention on man's
+part. To use the terms of Chapter I., we may call this a rationalizing
+and socializing process, though not a conscious moral process. We notice
+some of the more important agencies that are operative.
+
+
+Sec. 2. RATIONALIZING AGENCIES
+
+=1. Work.=--The earlier forms of occupation, hunting and fishing, call
+for active intelligence, although the activity is sustained to a great
+degree by the immediate interest or thrill of excitement, which makes
+them a recreation to the civilized man. Quickness of perception,
+alertness of mind and body, and in some cases, physical daring, are the
+qualities most needed. But in the pastoral life, and still more with the
+beginning of agriculture and commerce, the man who succeeds must have
+foresight and continuity of purpose. He must control impulse by reason.
+He must organize those habits which are the basis of character, instead
+of yielding to the attractions of various pleasures which might lead him
+from the main purpose. To a certain extent the primitive communism acted
+to prevent the individual from feeling the full force of improvidence.
+Even if he does not secure a supply of game, or have a large enough
+flock to provide for the necessities of himself and his immediate
+family, the group does not necessarily permit him to starve. The law
+"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap" does not press upon
+him with such relentless grasp as in the modern individualistic struggle
+for existence. Nevertheless it would be an entirely mistaken view of
+primitive group life to suppose that it is entirely a lazy man's
+paradise, or happy-go-lucky existence. The varying economic conditions
+are important here as measuring the amount of forethought and care
+required. It is the shepherd Jacob whose craft outwits Esau the hunter;
+and while the sympathy of the modern may be with Esau, he must remember
+that forethought like other valuable weapons may be used in a social as
+well as a selfish fashion. The early Greek appreciation of craft is
+probably expressed in their deification of theft and deception in
+Hermes. Agriculture and commerce, still more than preceding types of
+occupation, demand thoughtfulness and the long look ahead.
+
+The _differentiation of labor_ has been a powerful influence for
+increasing the range of mental life and stimulating its development. If
+all do the same thing, all are much alike, and inevitably remain on a
+low level. But when the needs of men induce different kinds of work,
+slumbering capacities are aroused and new ones are called into being.
+The most deeply-rooted differentiation of labor is that between the
+sexes. The woman performs the work within or near the dwelling, the man
+hunts or tends the flocks or ranges abroad. This probably tends to
+accentuate further certain organic differences. Among the men, group
+life in its simplest phases has little differentiation except "for
+counsel" or "for war." But with metal working and agricultural life the
+field widens. At first the specializing is largely by families rather
+than by individual choice. Castes of workmen may take the place of mere
+kinship ties. Later on the rules of caste in turn become a hindrance to
+individuality and must be broken down if the individual is to emerge to
+full self-direction.
+
+=2. The Arts and Crafts.=--Aside from their influence as work, the arts
+and crafts have a distinctly elevating and refining effect. The
+textiles, pottery, and skilfully made tools and weapons; the huts or
+houses when artistically constructed; the so-called free or fine arts of
+dance and music, of color and design--all have this common element: they
+give some visible or audible embodiment for order or form. The artist or
+craftsman must make definite his idea in order to work it out in cloth
+or clay, in wood or stone, in dance or song. When thus embodied, it is
+preserved, at least for a time. It is part of the daily environment of
+the society. Those who see or hear are having constantly suggested to
+them ideas and values which bring more meaning into life and elevate its
+interests. Moreover, the order, the rational plan or arrangement which
+is embodied in all well-wrought objects, as well as in the fine arts in
+the narrow sense, deserves emphasis. Plato and Schiller have seen in
+this a valuable preparation for morality. To govern action by law is
+moral, but it is too much to expect this of the savage and the child as
+a conscious principle where the law opposes impulse. In art as in play
+there is direct interest and pleasure in the act, but in art there is
+also order or law. In conforming to this order the savage, or the child,
+is in training for the more conscious control where the law, instead of
+favoring, may thwart or oppose impulse and desire.
+
+=3. War.=--War and the contests in games were serving to work out
+characteristics which received also a definite social reenforcement:
+namely, courage and efficiency, a sense of power, a consciousness of
+achievement. All these, like craft, may be used for unmoral or even
+immoral ends, but they are also highly important as factors in an
+effective moral personality.
+
+
+Sec. 3. SOCIALIZING AGENCIES
+
+=Cooperation and Mutual Aid.=[19]--Aside from their effects in promoting
+intelligence, courage, and ideality of life, industry, art, and war have
+a common factor by which they all contribute powerfully to the social
+basis of morality. They all require cooperation. They are socializing as
+well as rationalizing agencies. Mutual aid is the foundation of
+success. "Woe to him who stands alone, e'en though his platter be never
+so full," runs the Slav proverb. "He that belongs to no community is
+like unto one without a hand." Those clans or groups which can work
+together, and fight together, are stronger in the struggle against
+nature and other men. The common activities of art have value in making
+this community of action more possible. Cooperation implies a common
+end. It means that each is interested in the success of all. This common
+end forms then a controlling rule of action, and the mutual interest
+means sympathy. Cooperation is therefore one of nature's most effective
+agencies for a social standard and a social feeling.
+
+=1. Cooperation in Industry.=--In industry, while there was not in
+primitive life the extensive exchange of goods which expresses the
+interdependence of modern men, there was yet much concerted work, and
+there was a great degree of community of property. In groups which lived
+by hunting or fishing, for instance, although certain kinds of game
+might be pursued by the individual hunter, the great buffalo and deer
+hunts were organized by the tribe as a whole. "A hunting bonfire was
+kindled every morning at daybreak at which each brave must appear and
+report. The man who failed to do this before the party set out on the
+day's hunt was harassed by ridicule."[20] Salmon fishery was also
+conducted as a joint undertaking. Large game in Africa is hunted in a
+similar fashion, and the product of the chase is not for the individual
+but for the group. In the pastoral life the care of the flocks and herds
+necessitates at least some sort of cooperation to protect these flocks
+from the attacks of wild beasts and from the more dreaded forays of
+human robbers. This requires a considerable body of men, and the
+journeying about in company, the sharing together of watch and ward, the
+common interest in the increase of flocks and herds, continually
+strengthens the bonds between the dwellers in tents.
+
+In the agricultural stage there are still certain forces at work which
+promote the family or tribal unity, although here we begin to find the
+forces which make for individuality at work until they result in
+individual ownership and individual property. Just as at the pastoral
+stage, so in this, the cattle and the growing grain must be protected
+from attacks by man and beast. It is only the group which can afford
+such protection, and accordingly we find the Lowland farmer always at
+the mercy of the Highland clan.
+
+=2. Cooperation in War.=--War and the blood feud, however divisive
+between groups, were none the less potent as uniting factors within the
+several groups. The members must not only unite or be wiped out, when
+the actual contest was on, but the whole scheme of mutual help in
+defense or in avenging injuries and insults made constant demand upon
+fellow feeling, and sacrifice for the good of all. To gain more land for
+the group, to acquire booty for the group, to revenge a slight done to
+some member of the group, were constant causes for war. Now although any
+individual might be the gainer, yet the chances were that he would
+himself suffer even though the group should win. In the case of blood
+revenge particularly, most of the group were not individually
+interested. Their resentment was a "sympathetic resentment," and one
+author has regarded this as perhaps the most fundamental of the sources
+of moral emotion. It was because the tribal blood had been shed, or the
+women of the clan insulted, that the group as a whole reacted, and in
+the clash of battle with opposing groups, was closer knit together.
+
+ "Ally thyself with whom thou wilt in peace, yet know
+ In war must every man be foe who is not kin."
+
+"Comrades in arms" by the very act of fighting together have a common
+cause, and by the mutual help and protection given and received become,
+for the time at least, one in will and one in heart. Ulysses counsels
+Agamemnon to marshal his Greeks, clan by clan and "brotherhood (phratry)
+by brotherhood," that thus brother may support and stimulate brother
+more effectively; but the effect is reciprocal, and it is indeed very
+probable that the unity of blood which is believed to be the tie binding
+together the members of the group, is often an afterthought or pious
+fiction designed to account for the unity which was really due
+originally to the stress of common struggle.
+
+=3. Art as Socializing Agency.=--Cooperation and sympathy are fostered
+by the activities of art. Some of these activities are spontaneous, but
+most of them serve some definite social end and are frequently organized
+for the definite purpose of increasing the unity and sympathy of the
+group. The hunting dance or the war dance represents, in dramatic form,
+all the processes of the hunt or fight, but it would be a mistake to
+suppose that this takes place purely for dramatic purposes. The dance
+and celebration after the chase or battle may give to the whole tribe
+the opportunity to repeat in vivid imagination the triumphs of the
+successful hunter or warrior, and thus to feel the thrill of victory and
+exult in common over the fallen prey. The dance which takes place before
+the event is designed to give magical power to the hunter or warrior.
+Every detail is performed with the most exact care and the whole tribe
+is thus enabled to share in the work of preparation.
+
+In the act of song the same uniting force is present. To sing with
+another involves a contagious sympathy, in perhaps a higher degree than
+is the case with any other art. There is, in the first place, as in the
+dance, a unity of rhythm. Rhythm is based upon cooperation and, in turn,
+immensely strengthens the possibility of cooperation. In the
+bas-reliefs upon the Egyptian monuments representing the work of a large
+number of men who are moving a stone, we find the sculptured figure of a
+man who is beating the time for the combined efforts. Whether all rhythm
+has come from the necessities of common action or whether it has a
+physiological basis sufficient to account for the effect which rhythmic
+action produces, in any case when a company of people begin to work or
+dance or sing in rhythmic movement, their efficiency and their pleasure
+are immensely increased. In addition to the effect of rhythm we have
+also in the case of song the effect of unity of pitch and of melody, and
+the members of the tribe or clan, like those who to-day sing the
+Marseillaise or chant the great anthems of the church, feel in the
+strongest degree their mutual sympathy and support. For this reason, the
+Corroborees of the Australian, the sacred festivals of Israel, the
+Mysteries and public festivals of the Greeks, in short, among all
+peoples, the common gatherings of the tribe for patriotic or religious
+purposes, have been attended with dance and song. In many cases these
+carry the members on to a pitch of enthusiasm where they are ready to
+die for the common cause.
+
+Melodic and rhythmic sound is a unifying force simply by reason of form,
+and some of the simpler songs seem to have little else to commend them,
+but at very early periods there is not merely the song but the recital,
+in more or less rhythmic or literary form, of the history of the tribe
+and the deeds of the ancestors. This adds still another to the unifying
+forces of the dance and song. The kindred group, as they hear the
+recital, live over together the history of the group, thrill with pride
+at its glories, suffer at its defeats; every member feels that the
+clan's history is his history and the clan's blood his blood.
+
+
+Sec. 4. FAMILY LIFE AS AN IDEALIZING AND SOCIALIZING AGENCY
+
+Family life, so far as it is merely on the basis of instinct, takes its
+place with other agencies favored by natural selection which make for
+more rational and social existence. Various instincts are more or less
+at work. The sex instinct brings the man and the woman together. The
+instinct of jealousy, and the property or possessing instinct, may
+foster exclusive and permanent relations. The parental instinct and
+affection bind the parents together and thus contribute to the formation
+of the social group described in the preceding chapter. Considering now
+the more immediate relations of husband and wife, parents and children,
+rather than the more general group relations, we call attention to some
+of the most obvious aspects, leaving fuller treatment for Part III. The
+idealizing influences of the sex instinct, when this is subject to the
+general influences found in group life, is familiar. Lyric song is a
+higher form of its manifestation, but even a mute lover may be
+stimulated to fine thoughts or brave deeds. Courtship further implies an
+adaptation, an effort to please, which is a strong socializing force. If
+"all the world loves a lover," it must be because the lover is on the
+whole a likable role. But other forces come in. Sex love is intense, but
+so far as it is purely instinctive it may be transitory. Family life
+needed more permanence than sex attraction could provide, and before the
+powerful sanctions of religion, society, and morals were sufficient to
+secure permanence, it is probable that the property interest of the
+husband was largely effective in building up a family life, requiring
+fidelity to the married relation on the part of the wife.
+
+But the most far-reaching of the forces at work in the family has been
+the parental instinct and affection with its consequences upon both
+parents and children. It contributes probably more than any other
+naturally selected agency to the development of the race in sympathy; it
+shares with work in the development of responsibility. It is indeed one
+of the great incentives to industry throughout the higher species of
+animals as well as in human life. The value of parental care in the
+struggle for existence is impressively presented by Sutherland.[21]
+Whereas the fishes which exercise no care for their eggs preserve their
+species only by producing these in enormous numbers, certain species
+which care for them maintain their existence by producing relatively
+few. Many species produce hundreds of thousands or even millions of
+eggs. The stickleback, which constructs a nest and guards the young for
+a few days, is one of the most numerous of fishes, but it lays only from
+twenty to ninety eggs. Birds and mammals with increased parental care
+produce few young. Not only is parental care a valuable asset, it is an
+absolute necessity for the production of the higher species. "In the
+fierce competition of the animated forms of earth, the loftier type,
+with its prolonged nervous growth, and consequently augmented period of
+helplessness, can never arise but with concomitant increases of parental
+care." Only as the emotional tendency has kept pace with the nerve
+development has the human race been possible. The very refinements in
+the organism which make the adult a victor would render the infant a
+victim if it were without an abundance of loving assistance.[22]
+
+Whether, as has been supposed by some, the parental care has also been
+the most effective force in keeping the parents together through a
+lengthened infancy, or whether other factors have been more effective in
+this particular, there is no need to enlarge upon the wide-reaching
+moral values of parental affection. It is the atmosphere in which the
+child begins his experience. So far as any environment can affect him,
+this is a constant influence for sympathy and kindness. And upon the
+parents themselves its transforming power, in making life serious, in
+overcoming selfishness, in projecting thought and hope on into the
+future, cannot be measured. The moral order and progress of the world
+might conceivably spare some of the agencies which man has devised; it
+could not spare this.
+
+
+Sec. 5. MORAL INTERPRETATION OF THIS FIRST LEVEL
+
+On this first level we are evidently dealing with forces and conduct,
+not as moral in purpose, but as valuable in result. They make a more
+rational, ideal, and social life, and this is the necessary basis for
+more conscious control and valuation of conduct. The forces are
+biological or sociological or psychological. They are not that
+particular kind of psychological activities which we call moral in the
+proper sense, for this implies not only getting a good result but aiming
+at it. Some of the activities, such as those of song and dance, or the
+simpler acts of maternal care, have a large instinctive element. We
+cannot call these moral in _so far as_ they are purely instinctive.
+Others imply a large amount of intelligence, as, for example, the
+operations of agriculture and the various crafts. These have purpose,
+such as to satisfy hunger, or to forge a weapon against an enemy. But
+the end is one set up by our physical or instinctive nature. So long as
+this is merely _accepted_ as an end, and not compared with others,
+valued, and _chosen_, it is not properly moral.
+
+The same is true of emotions. There are certain emotions on the
+instinctive level. Such are parental love in its most elemental form,
+sympathy as mere contagious feeling, anger, or resentment. So far as
+these are at this lowest level, so far as they signify simply a bodily
+thrill, they have no claim to proper moral value. They are tremendously
+important as the source from which strong motive forces of benevolence,
+intelligent parental care, and an ardent energy against evil may draw
+warmth and fire.
+
+Finally, even the cooperation, the mutual aid, which men give, so far as
+it is called out purely by common danger, or common advantage, is not in
+the moral sphere in so far as it is instinctive, or merely give and
+take. To be genuinely moral there must be some thought of the danger as
+touching others and _therefore_ requiring our aid; of the advantage as
+being common and _therefore_ enlisting our help.
+
+But even although these processes are not consciously moral they are
+nevertheless fundamental. The activities necessary for existence, and
+the emotions so intimately bound up with them, are the "cosmic roots" of
+the moral life. And often in the higher stages of culture, when the
+codes and instruction of morality and society fail to secure right
+conduct, these elementary agencies of work, cooperation, and family life
+assert their power. Society and morality take up the direction of the
+process and carry it further, but they must always rely largely on these
+primary activities to afford the basis for intelligent, reliable, and
+sympathetic conduct.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Bagehot, _Physics and Politics_, 1890; Buecher, _Industrial Evolution_,
+Eng. tr., 1901, _Arbeit und Rythmus_, 3rd ed., 1901; Schurtz,
+_Urgeschichte der Kultur_, 1900; Fiske, _Cosmic Philosophy_, Vol. II.,
+_The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-sacrifice_ in Through Nature to God,
+1899; Dewey, _Interpretation of the Savage Mind_, Psychological Review,
+Vol. IX., 1892, pp. 217-230; Durkheim, _De la Division du Travail
+Social_, 1893; P. Kropotkin, _Mutual Aid, a Factor in Evolution_, 1902;
+ROSS, _Foundations of Society_, 1905, Chap. VII.; Baldwin, Article
+_Socionomic Forces_ in his Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology;
+Giddings, _Inductive Sociology_, 1901; Small, _General Sociology_, 1906;
+Tarde, _Les Lois de l'Imitation_, 1895; W. I. Thomas, _Sex and Society_,
+1907, pp. 55-172; Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_, 1901; Hirn, _The
+Origin of Art_, 1900.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[19] P. Kropotkin, _Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution_; Bagehot, _Physics
+and Politics_.
+
+[20] Eastman, _Indian Boyhood_.
+
+[21] _The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, Chs. II.-V.
+
+[22] _Ibid._, p. 99.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GROUP MORALITY--CUSTOMS OR MORES
+
+
+We have seen how the natural forces of instinct lead to activities which
+elevate men and knit them together. We consider next the means which
+society uses for these purposes, and the kind of conduct which goes
+along with the early forms of society's agencies. The organization of
+early society is that of group life, and so far as the individual is
+merged in the group the type of conduct may be called "group morality."
+Inasmuch as the agencies by which the group controls its members are
+largely those of custom, the morality may be called also "customary
+morality." Such conduct is what we called at the opening of the previous
+chapter "the second level." It is "ethical" or "moral" in the sense of
+conforming to the _ethos_ or _mores_ of the group.
+
+
+Sec. 1. MEANING, AUTHORITY, AND ORIGIN OF CUSTOMS
+
+=Meaning of Customs or Mores.=--Wherever we find groups of men living as
+outlined in Chapter II., we find that there are certain ways of acting
+which are common to the group--"folkways." Some of these may be due
+merely to the fact that the members are born of the same stock, just as
+all ducks swim. But a large part of human conduct, in savage as truly as
+in civilized life, is not merely instinctive. There are _approved_ ways
+of acting, common to a group, and handed down from generation to
+generation. Such approved ways of doing and acting are customs, or to
+use the Latin term, which Professor Sumner thinks brings out more
+clearly this factor of approval, they are _mores_.[23] They are
+habits--but they are more. They imply the judgment of the group that
+they are to be followed. The welfare of the group is regarded as in some
+sense imbedded in them. If any one acts contrary to them he is made to
+feel the group's disapproval. The young are carefully trained to observe
+them. At times of special importance, they are rehearsed with special
+solemnity.
+
+=Authority Behind the Mores.=--The old men, or the priests, or medicine
+men, or chiefs, or old women, may be the especial guardians of these
+customs. They may modify details, or add new customs, or invent
+explanations for old ones. But the authority back of them is the group
+in the full sense. Not the group composed merely of visible and living
+members, but the larger group which includes the dead, and the kindred
+totemic or ancestral gods. Nor is it the group considered as a
+collection of individual persons. It is rather in a vague way the whole
+mental and social world. The fact that most of the customs have no known
+date or origin makes them seem a part of the nature of things. Indeed
+there is more than a mere analogy between the primitive regard for
+custom and that respect for "Nature" which from the Stoics to Spencer
+has sought a moral standard in living "according to nature." And there
+is this much in favor of taking the world of custom as the standard: the
+beings of this system are like the person who is expected to behave like
+them; its rules are the ways in which his own kin have lived and
+prospered, and not primarily the laws of cosmic forces, plants, and
+animals.
+
+=Origin of Customs; Luck.=--The origin of customs is to be sought in
+several concurrent factors. There are in the first place the activities
+induced by the great primitive needs and instincts. Some ways of acting
+succeed; some fail. Man not only establishes habits of acting in the
+successful ways; he remembers his failures. He hands successful ways
+down with his approval; he condemns those that fail.
+
+This attitude is reenforced by the views about good luck and bad luck.
+Primitive man--and civilized man--is not ruled by a purely rational
+theory of success and failure. "One might use the best known means with
+the greatest care, yet fail of the result. On the other hand, one might
+get a great result with no effort at all. One might also incur a
+calamity without any fault of his own."[24] "Grimm gives more than a
+thousand ancient German apothegms, dicta, and proverbs about
+'luck.'"[25] Both good and bad fortune are attributed to the unseen
+powers, hence a case of bad luck is not thought of as a mere chance. If
+the ship that sailed Friday meets a storm, or one of thirteen falls
+sick, the inference is that this is sure to happen again. And at this
+point the conception of the group welfare as bound up with the acts of
+every member, comes in to make individual conformity a matter for group
+concern--to make conduct a matter of mores and not merely a private
+affair. One most important, if not the most important, object of early
+legislation was the enforcement of lucky rites to prevent the individual
+from doing what might bring ill luck on all the tribe. For the
+conception always was that the ill luck does not attach itself simply to
+the doer, but may fall upon any member of the group. "The act of one
+member is conceived to make all the tribe impious, to offend its
+particular god, to expose all the tribe to penalties from heaven. When
+the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the Athenians were
+frightened and furious; they thought they should all be ruined because
+some one had mutilated a god's image and so offended him."[26] "The
+children were reproved for cutting and burning embers, on the ground
+that this might be the cause for the accidental cutting of some member
+of the family."[27] In the third place, besides these sources of custom,
+in the usefulness or lucky character of certain acts, there is also the
+more immediate reaction of individuals or groups to certain ways of
+acting according "as things jump with the feelings or displease
+them."[28] An act of daring is applauded, whether useful or not. The
+individual judgment is caught up, repeated, and plays its part in the
+formation of group opinion. "Individual impulse and social tradition are
+thus the two poles between which we move." Or there may even be a more
+conscious discussion analogous to the action of legislatures or
+philosophic discussion. The old men among the Australians deliberate
+carefully as to each step of the initiation ceremonies. They make
+customs to be handed down.
+
+
+Sec. 2. MEANS OF ENFORCING CUSTOMS
+
+The most general means for enforcing customs are public opinion, taboos,
+ritual or ceremony, and physical force.
+
+=Public Approval= uses both language and form to express its judgments.
+Its praise is likely to be emphasized by some form of art. The songs
+that greet the returning victor, the decorations, costumes, and tattoos
+for those who are honored, serve to voice the general sentiment. On the
+other hand ridicule or contempt is a sufficient penalty to enforce
+compliance with many customs that may be personally irksome. It is very
+largely the ridicule of the men's house which enforces certain customs
+among the men of peoples which have that institution. It is the ridicule
+or scorn of both men and women which forbids the Indian to marry before
+he has proved his manhood by some notable deed of prowess in war or
+chase.
+
+=Taboos.=--Taboos are perhaps not so much a means for enforcing custom,
+as they are themselves customs invested with peculiar and awful
+sanction. They prohibit or ban any contact with certain persons or
+objects under penalty of danger from unseen beings. Any events supposed
+to indicate the activity of spirits, such as birth and death, are likely
+to be sanctified by taboos. The danger is contagious; if a Polynesian
+chief is taboo, the ordinary man fears even to touch his footprints. But
+the taboos are not all based on mere dread of the unseen.
+
+ "They include such acts as have been found by experience to
+ produce unwelcome results.--The primitive taboos correspond to the
+ fact that the life of man is environed by perils: His food quest
+ must be limited by shunning poisonous plants. His appetite must be
+ restrained from excess. His physical strength and health must be
+ guarded from dangers. The taboos carry on the accumulated wisdom
+ of generations which has almost always been purchased by pain,
+ loss, disease, and death. Other taboos contain inhibitions of what
+ will be injurious to the group. The laws about the sexes, about
+ property, about war, and about ghosts, have this character. They
+ always include some social philosophy." (SUMNER, _Folkways_, pp.
+ 33 f.)
+
+They may be used with conscious purpose. In order to have a supply of
+cocoanuts for a religious festival the head men may place a taboo upon
+the young cocoanuts to prevent them from being consumed before they are
+fully ripe. The conception works in certain respects to supply the
+purpose which is later subserved by ideas of property. But it serves
+also as a powerful agency to maintain respect for the authority of the
+group.
+
+=Ritual.=--As taboo is the great negative guardian of customs, ritual is
+the great positive agent. It works by forming habits, and operates
+through associations formed by actually doing certain acts, usually
+under conditions which appeal to the emotions. The charm of music and
+of orderly movement, the impressiveness of ordered masses in
+processions, the awe of mystery, all contribute to stamp in the meaning
+and value. Praise or blame encourages or inhibits; ritual secures the
+actual doing and at the same time gives a value to the doing. It is
+employed by civilized peoples more in the case of military or athletic
+drill, or in training children to observe forms of etiquette, so that
+these may become "second nature." Certain religious bodies also use its
+agency. But in primitive life it is widely and effectively used to
+insure for educational, political, and domestic customs obedience to the
+group standards, which among us it secures to the codes of the army, or
+to those of social etiquette. Examples of its elaborate and impressive
+use will be given below under educational ceremonies.
+
+=Physical Force.=--When neither group opinion, nor taboo, nor ritual
+secures conformity, there is always in the background physical force.
+The chiefs are generally men of strength whose word may not be lightly
+disregarded. Sometimes, as among the Sioux, the older braves constitute
+a sort of police. Between different clans the blood feud is the accepted
+method of enforcing custom, unless a substitute, the wergeld, is
+provided. For homicide within a clan the remaining members may drive the
+slayer out, and whoever meets such a Cain may slay him. If a man
+murdered his chief of kindred among the ancient Welsh he was banished
+and "it was required of every one of every sex and age within hearing of
+the horn to follow that exile and to keep up the barking of dogs, to the
+time of his putting to sea, until he shall have passed three score hours
+out of sight."[29] It should be borne in mind, however, that physical
+pains, either actual or dreaded, would go but a little way toward
+maintaining authority in any such group as we have regarded as typical.
+Absolutism, with all its cruel methods of enforcing terror, needs a more
+highly organized system. In primitive groups the great majority support
+the authority of the group as a matter of course, and uphold it as a
+sacred duty when it is challenged. Physical coercion is not the rule but
+the exception.
+
+
+Sec. 3. CONDITIONS WHICH BRING OUT THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUP STANDARDS AND
+RENDER GROUP CONTROL CONSCIOUS
+
+Although customs or mores have in them an element of social approval
+which makes them vehicles of moral judgment, they tend in many cases to
+sink to the level of mere habits. The reason--such as it was--for their
+original force--is forgotten. They become, like many of our forms of
+etiquette, mere conventions. There are, however, certain conditions
+which center attention upon their importance and lift them to the level
+of conscious agencies. These conditions may be grouped under three
+heads. (1) The education of the younger, immature members of the group
+and their preparation for full membership. (2) The constraint and
+restraint of refractory members and the adjustment of conflicting
+interests. (3) Occasions which involve some notable danger or crisis and
+therefore call for the greatest attention to secure the favor of the
+gods and avert disaster.
+
+=1. Educational Customs.=--Among the most striking and significant of
+these are the initiation ceremonies which are so widely observed among
+primitive peoples. They are held with the purpose of inducting boys into
+the privileges of manhood and into the full life of the group. They are
+calculated at every step to impress upon the initiate his own ignorance
+and helplessness in contrast with the wisdom and power of the group; and
+as the mystery with which they are conducted imposes reverence for the
+elders and the authorities of the group, so the recital of the
+traditions and performances of the tribe, the long series of ritual
+acts, common participation in the mystic dance and song and decorations,
+serve to reenforce the ties that bind the tribe.
+
+Initiation into the full privileges of manhood among the tribes of
+Central Australia, for instance, includes three sets of ceremonies which
+occupy weeks, and even months, for their completion. The first set,
+called "throwing up in the air," is performed for the boy when he has
+reached the age of from ten to twelve. In connection with being thrown
+up in the air by certain prescribed members of his tribe, he is
+decorated with various totem emblems and afterward the septum of his
+nose is bored for the insertion of the nose-bone. At a period some three
+or four years later a larger and more formidable series of ceremonies is
+undertaken, lasting for ten days. A screen of bushes is built, behind
+which the boy is kept during the whole period, unless he is brought out
+on the ceremonial ground to witness some performance. During this whole
+period of ten days, he is forbidden to speak except in answer to
+questions. He is decorated with various totem emblems, for which every
+detail is prescribed by the council of the tribal fathers and tribal
+elder brothers. He is charged to obey every command and never to tell
+any woman or boy what he may see. The sense that something out of the
+ordinary is to happen to him helps to impress him strongly with a
+feeling of the deep importance of compliance with the tribal rules, and
+further still, with a strong sense of the superiority of the older men
+who know and are familiar with the mysterious rites of which he is about
+to learn the meaning for the first time. At intervals he watches
+symbolic performances of men decorated like various totem animals, who
+represent the doings of the animal ancestors of the clan; he hears
+mysterious sounds of the so-called bull-roarers, which are supposed by
+the women and uninitiated to be due to unseen spirits; and the whole
+ends with the operation which symbolizes his induction into young
+manhood. But even this is not all; when the young man has reached the
+age of discretion, when it is felt that he can fully comprehend the
+traditions of the tribe, at the age of from twenty to twenty-five, a
+still more impressive series of ceremonies is conducted, which in the
+instance reported lasted from September to January. This period was
+filled up with dances, "corroborees," and inspection of the churinga or
+sacred emblems--stones or sticks which were supposed to be the dwellings
+of ancestral spirits and which are carefully preserved in the tribe,
+guarded from the sight of women and boys, but known individually to the
+elders as the sacred dwelling-place of father or grandfather. As these
+were shown and passed around, great solemnity was manifest and the
+relatives sometimes wept at the sight of the sacred object. Ceremonies
+imitating various totem animals, frequently of the most elaborate sort,
+were also performed. The young men were told the traditions of the past
+history of the tribe, and at the close of the recital they felt added
+reverence for the old men who had been their instructors, a sense of
+pride in the possession of this mysterious knowledge, and a deeper unity
+because of what they now have in common. One is at a loss whether to
+wonder most at the possibility of the whole tribe devoting itself for
+three months to these elaborate functions of initiation, or at the
+marvelous adaptability of such ceremonies to train the young into an
+attitude of docility and reverence. A tribe that can enforce such a
+process is not likely to be wanting in one side, at least, of the moral
+consciousness, namely, reverence for authority and regard for the social
+welfare.[30]
+
+=2. Law and Justice.=--The occasions for some control over refractory
+members will constantly arise, even though the conflict between group
+and individual may need no physical sanctions to enforce the authority
+of the group over its members. The economic motive frequently prompts an
+individual to leave the tribe or the joint family. There was a constant
+tendency, Eastman states, among his people, when on a hunting expedition
+in the enemy's country, to break up into smaller parties to obtain food
+more easily and freely. The police did all they could to keep in check
+those parties who were intent on stealing away. Another illustration of
+the same tendency is stated by Maine with reference to the joint
+families of the South Slavonians:
+
+ "The adventurous and energetic member of the brotherhood is always
+ rebelling against its natural communism. He goes abroad and makes
+ his fortune, and as strenuously resists the demands of his
+ relatives to bring it into the common account. Or perhaps he
+ thinks that his share of the common stock would be more profitably
+ employed by him as capital in a mercantile venture. In either case
+ he becomes a dissatisfied member or a declared enemy of the
+ brotherhood."[31]
+
+Or covetousness might lead to violation of the ban, as with Achan. Sex
+impulse may lead a man to seek for his wife a woman not in the lawful
+group. Or, as one of the most dangerous offenses possible, a member of
+the group may be supposed to practice witchcraft. This is to use
+invisible powers in a selfish manner, and has been feared and punished
+by almost all peoples.
+
+In all these cases it is of course no abstract theory of crime which
+leads the community to react; it is self-preservation. The tribe must be
+kept together for protection against enemies. Achan's sin is felt to be
+the cause of defeat. The violation of sex taboos may ruin the clan. The
+sorcerer may cause disease, or inflict torture and death, or bring a
+pestilence or famine upon the whole group. None the less all such cases
+bring to consciousness one aspect of moral authority, the social
+control over the individual.
+
+And it is a _social_ control--not an exercise of brute force or a mere
+terrorizing by ghosts. For the chief or judge generally wins his
+authority by his powerful service to his tribesmen. A Gideon or Barak or
+Ehud or Jephthah judged Israel because he had delivered them. "Three
+things, if possessed by a man, make him fit to be a chief of kindred:
+That he should speak on behalf of his kin and be listened to, that he
+should fight on behalf of his kin and be feared, and that he should be
+security on behalf of his kin and be accepted."[32] If, as is often the
+case, the king or judge or chief regards himself as acting by divine
+right, the authority is still _within the group_. It is the group
+judging itself.
+
+In its _standards_ this primitive court is naturally on the level of
+customary morality, of which it is an agent. There is usually neither
+the conception of a general principle of justice (our Common Law), nor
+of a positive law enacted as the express will of the people. At first
+the judge or ruler may not act by any fixed law except that of upholding
+the customs. Each decision is then a special case. A step in advance is
+found when the heads or elders or priests of the tribe decide cases, not
+independently of all others, but in accordance with certain precedents
+or customs. A legal tradition is thus established, which, however
+imperfect, is likely to be more impartial than the arbitrary caprice of
+the moment, influenced as such special decisions are likely to be by the
+rank or power of the parties concerned.[33] A law of precedents or
+tradition is thus the normal method at this level. The progress toward a
+more rational standard belongs under the next chapter, but it is
+interesting to note that even at an early age the myths show a
+conception of a divine judge who is righteous, and a divine judgment
+which is ideal. Rhadamanthus is an embodiment of the demand for justice
+which human collisions and decisions awakened.
+
+The conscious authority of the group is also evoked in the case of feuds
+or disputes between its members. The case of the blood feud, indeed,
+might well be treated as belonging under war and international law
+rather than as a case of private conflict. For so far as the members of
+the victim's clan are concerned, it is a case of war. It is a patriotic
+duty of every kinsman to avenge the shed blood. The groups concerned
+were smaller than modern nations which go to war for similar reasons,
+but the principle is the same. The chief difference in favor of modern
+international wars is that since the groups are larger they do not fight
+so often and require a more serious consideration of the possibility of
+peaceable adjustment. Orestes and Hamlet feel it a sacred duty to avenge
+their fathers' murders.
+
+But the case is not simply that of clan against clan. For the smaller
+group of kin, who are bound to avenge, are nearly always part of a
+larger group. And the larger group may at once recognize the duty of
+vengeance and also the need of keeping it within bounds, or of
+substituting other practices. The larger group may see in the murder a
+pollution, dangerous to all;[34] the blood which "cries from the
+ground"[35] renders the ground "unclean" and the curse of gods or the
+spirits of the dead may work woe upon the whole region. But an unending
+blood feud is likewise an evil. And if the injured kin can be appeased
+by less than blood in return, so much the better. Hence the wergeld, or
+indemnity, a custom which persisted among the Irish until late, and
+seemed to the English judges a scandalous procedure.
+
+For lesser offenses a sort of regulated duel is sometimes allowed. For
+example, among the Australians the incident is related of the treatment
+of a man who had eloped with his neighbor's wife. When the recreant
+parties returned the old men considered what should be done, and finally
+arranged the following penalty. The offender stood and called out to the
+injured husband, "I stole your woman; come and growl." The husband then
+proceeded to throw a spear at him from a distance, and afterwards to
+attack him with a knife, although he did not attempt to wound him in a
+vital part. The offender was allowed to evade injury, though not to
+resent the attack. Finally the old men said, "Enough." A curious form of
+private agencies for securing justice is also found in the Japanese
+custom of hara-kiri, according to which an injured man kills himself
+before the door of his offender, in order that he may bring public odium
+upon the man who has injured him. An Indian custom of Dharna is of
+similar significance, though less violent. The creditor fasts before the
+door of the debtor until he either is paid, or dies of starvation. It
+may be that he thinks that his double or spirit will haunt the cruel
+debtor who has thus permitted him to starve to death, but it also has
+the effect of bringing public opinion to bear.
+
+In all these cases of kindred feuds there is little personal
+responsibility, and likewise little distinction between the accidental
+and intentional. These facts are brought out in the opening quotations
+in Chapter II. The important thing for the student to observe is that
+like our present practices in international affairs they show a _grade_
+of morality, a limited social unity, whether it is called kinship
+feeling or patriotism; complete morality is not possible so long as
+there is no complete way of settling disputes by justice instead of
+force.[36]
+
+=3. Occasions Which Involve Some Special Danger or Crisis.=--Such
+occasions call for the greatest attention to secure success or avoid
+disaster. Under this head we note as typical (a) the occasions of birth,
+marriage, death; (b) seed time and harvest, or other seasons important
+for the maintenance of the group; (c) war; (d) hospitality.
+
+=(a) Birth and Death Customs.=--The entrance of a new life into the
+world and the disappearance of the animating breath (_spiritus_,
+_anima_, _psyche_), might well impress man with the mysteries of his
+world. Whether the newborn infant is regarded as a reincarnation of an
+ancestral spirit as with the Australians, or as a new creation from the
+spirit world as with the Kafirs, it is a time of danger. The mother must
+be "purified,"[37] the child, and in some cases the father, must be
+carefully guarded. The elaborate customs show the group judgment of the
+importance of the occasion. And the rites for the dead are yet more
+impressive. For as a rule the savage has no thought of an entire
+extinction of the person. The dead lives on in some mode, shadowy and
+vague, perhaps, but he is still potent, still a member of the group,
+present at the tomb or the hearth. The preparation of the body for
+burial or other disposition, the ceremonies of interment or of the pyre,
+the wailing, and mourning costumes, the provision of food and weapons,
+or of the favorite horse or wife, to be with the dead in the unseen
+world, the perpetual homage paid--all these are eloquent. The event, as
+often as it occurs, appeals by both sympathy and awe to the common
+feeling, and brings to consciousness the unity of the group and the
+control exercised by its judgments.
+
+The regulations for marriage are scarcely less important; indeed, they
+are often seemingly the most important of the customs. The phrases
+"marriage by capture" and "marriage by purchase," are quite misleading
+if they give the impression that in early culture any man may have any
+woman. It is an almost universal part of the clan system that the man
+must marry out of his own clan or totem (exogamy), and it is frequently
+specified exactly into what other clan he must marry. Among some the
+regulations are minute as to which of the age classes, as well as to
+which of the kin groups, a man of specific group must choose from. The
+courtship may follow different rules from ours, and the relation of the
+sexes in certain respects may seem so loose as to shock the student, but
+the regulation is in many respects stricter than with us, and punishment
+of its violation often severer. There can be no doubt of the meaning of
+the control, however mistaken some of its features. Whether the
+regulations for exogamy, which provide so effectually for avoiding
+incest, are reinforced by an instinctive element of aversion to sex
+relations with intimates, is uncertain; in any case, they are enforced
+by the strongest taboos. Nor does primitive society stop with the
+negative side. The actual marriage is invested with the social values
+and religious sanctions which raise the relation to a higher level. Art,
+in garments and ornament, in dance and epithalamium, lends ideal values.
+The sacred meal at the encircled hearth secures the participation of the
+kindred gods.
+
+=(b) Certain Days or Seasons Important for the Industrial Life.=--Seed
+time and harvest, the winter and summer solstices, the return of spring,
+are of the highest importance to agricultural and pastoral peoples, and
+are widely observed with solemn rites. Where the rain is the center of
+anxiety, a whole ritual may arise in connection with it, as among the
+Zuni Indians. Ceremonies lasting days, involving the preparation of
+special symbols of clouds and lightning, and the participation of
+numerous secret fraternities, constrain the attention of all. Moreover,
+this constraint of need, working through the conception of what the
+gods require, enforces some very positive moral attitudes:
+
+ "A Zuni must speak with one tongue (sincerely) in order to have
+ his prayers received by the gods, and unless his prayers are
+ accepted no rains will come, which means starvation. He must be
+ gentle, and he must speak and act with kindness to all, for the
+ gods care not for those whose lips speak harshly. He must observe
+ continence four days previous to, and four days following, the
+ sending of breath prayers through the spiritual essence of plume
+ offerings, and thus their passions are brought under control."
+ (MRS. M. C. STEVENSON in 23d Report, _Bureau of Ethnology_.)
+
+Phases of the moon give other sacred days. Sabbaths which originally are
+negative--the forbidding of labor--may become later the bearers of
+positive social and spiritual value. In any case, all these festivals
+bring the group authority to consciousness, and by their ritual promote
+the intimate group sympathy and consciousness of a common end.
+
+=(c) War.=--War as a special crisis always brings out the significance
+and importance of certain customs. The deliberations, the magic, the war
+paint which precede, the obedience compelled by it to chiefs, the
+extraordinary powers exercised by the chief or heads at such crises, the
+sense of danger which strains the attention, all insure attention. No
+carelessness is permitted. Defeat is interpreted as a symbol of divine
+anger because of a violated law or custom. Victory brings all together
+to celebrate the glory of the clan and to mourn in common the warriors
+slain in the common cause. Excellence here may be so conspicuous in its
+service, or in the admiration it calls out, as to become a general term
+for what the group approves. So the _aret[=e]_ of the Greeks became
+their general term, and the Latin _virtus_, if not so clearly military,
+was yet largely military in its early coloring. The "spirit of Jehovah,"
+the symbol of divine approval and so of group approval, was believed to
+be with Samson and Jephthah in their deeds of prowess in Israel's
+behalf.
+
+=(d) Hospitality.=--To the modern man who travels without fear and
+receives guests as a matter of almost daily practice, it may seem
+strained to include hospitality along with unusual or critical events.
+But the ceremonies observed and the importance attached to its rites,
+show that hospitality was a matter of great significance; its customs
+were among the most sacred.
+
+ "But as for us," says Ulysses to the Cyclops, "we have lighted
+ here, and come to these thy knees, if perchance they will give us
+ a stranger's gift, or make any present, as is the due of
+ strangers. Nay, lord, have regard to the gods, for we are thy
+ suppliants, and Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and sojourners,
+ Zeus, the god of the stranger, who fareth in the company of
+ reverend strangers."
+
+The duty of hospitality is one of the most widely recognized.
+Westermarck has brought together a series of maxims from a great variety
+of races which show this forcibly.[38] Indians, Kalmucks, Greeks,
+Romans, Teutons, Arabs, Africans, Ainos, and other peoples are drawn
+upon and tell the same story. The stranger is to be respected sacredly.
+His person must be guarded from insult even if the honor of the daughter
+of the house must be sacrificed.[39] "Jehovah preserveth the
+sojourners," and they are grouped with the fatherless and the widow in
+Israel's law.[40] The Romans had their _dii hospitales_ and the "duties
+toward a guest were even more stringent than those toward a
+relative"--_primum tutelae_, _delude hospiti_, _deinde clienti_, _tum
+cognato_, _postea affini_.[41] "He who has a spark of caution in him,"
+says Plato, "will do his best to pass through life without sinning
+against the stranger." And there is no doubt that this sanctity of the
+guest's person was not due to pure kindness. The whole conduct of group
+life is opposed to a general spirit of consideration for those outside.
+The word "guest" is akin to _hostis_, from which comes "hostile." The
+stranger or the guest was looked upon rather as a being who was
+specially potent. He was a "live wire." He might be a medium of
+blessing, or he might be a medium of hurt. But it was highly important
+to fail in no duty toward him. The definite possibility of entertaining
+angels unawares might not be always present to consciousness, but there
+seems reason to believe that the possibility of good luck or bad luck as
+attending on a visitor was generally believed in. It is also plausible
+that the importance attached to sharing a meal, or to bodily contact, is
+based on magical ideas of the way in which blessing or curse may be
+communicated. To cross a threshold or touch a tent-rope or to eat
+"salt," gives a sacred claim. In the right of asylum, the refugee takes
+advantage of his contact with the god. He lays hold of the altar and
+assumes that the god will protect him. The whole practice of hospitality
+is thus the converse of the custom of blood revenge. They are alike
+sacred--or rather the duty of hospitality may protect even the man whom
+the host is bound to pursue. But, whereas the one makes for group
+solidarity by acts of exclusive and hostile character, the other tends
+to set aside temporarily the division between the "we-group" and the
+"others-group." Under the sanction of religion it keeps open a way of
+communication which trade and other social interchange will widen. It
+adds to family and the men's house a powerful agency in maintaining at
+least the possibility of humaneness and sympathy.
+
+
+Sec. 4. VALUES AND DEFECTS OF CUSTOMARY MORALITY
+
+These have been suggested, in the main, in the description of the nature
+of custom and its regulation of conduct. We may, however, summarize
+them as a preparation for the next stage of morality.
+
+=1. The Forming of Standards.=--There is a standard, a "good," a
+"right," which is to some degree rational and to some degree social. We
+have seen that custom rests in part on rational conceptions of welfare.
+It is really nothing against this that a large element of luck enters
+into the idea of welfare. For this means merely that the actual
+conditions of welfare are not understood. The next generation may be
+able to point out as equally absurd our present ignorance about health
+and disease. The members of the group embodied in custom what they
+thought to be important; they were approving some acts and forbidding or
+condemning others; they were using the elders, and the wisdom of all the
+past, in order to govern life. So far, then, they were acting morally.
+They were also, to a degree, using a rational and social standard when
+they made custom binding on all, and conceived its origin as immemorial.
+When further they conceived it as approved by the gods, they gave it all
+the value they knew how to put into it.
+
+The standards and valuations of custom are, however, only partly
+rational. Many customs are irrational; some are injurious. But in them
+all the habitual is a large, if not the largest, factor. And this is
+often strong enough to resist any attempt at rational testing. Dr.
+Arthur Smith tells us of the advantage it would be in certain parts of
+China to build a door on the south side of the house in order to get the
+breeze in hot weather. The simple and sufficient answer to such a
+suggestion is, "We don't build doors on the south side."
+
+An additional weakness in the character of such irrational, or partly
+rational standards, is the misplaced energy they involve. What is merely
+trivial is made as important and impressive as what has real
+significance. Tithing mint, anise, and cummin is quite likely to
+involve neglect of the weightier matters of the law. Moral life
+requires men to estimate the value of acts. If the irrelevant or the
+petty is made important, it not only prevents a high level of value for
+the really important act, it loads up conduct with burdens which keep it
+back; it introduces elements which must be got rid of later, often with
+heavy loss of what is genuinely valuable. When there are so many ways of
+offending the gods and when these turn so often upon mere observance of
+routine or formula, it may require much subsequent time and energy to
+make amends. The morals get an expiatory character.
+
+=2. The Motives.=--In the motives to which it appeals, custom is able to
+make a far better showing than earlier writers, like Herbert Spencer,
+gave it credit for. It doubtless employs fear in its taboos; it
+doubtless enlists the passion of resentment in its blood feuds. Even
+these are modified by a social environment. For the fear of violating a
+taboo is in part the fear of bringing bad luck on the whole group, and
+not merely on the violator. We have, therefore, a quasi-social fear, not
+a purely instinctive reaction. The same is true in perhaps a stronger
+degree of the resentments. The blood revenge is in a majority of cases
+not a personal but a group affair. It is undertaken at personal risk and
+for others' interest--or rather for a common interest. The resentment is
+thus a "_sympathetic resentment_."[42] Regarded as a mere reaction for
+self-preservation this instinctive-emotional process is unmoral. As a
+mere desire to produce pain it would be immoral. But so far as it
+implies an attitude of reacting from a general point of view and to aid
+others, it is moral. Aside from the passions of fear and resentment,
+however, there is a wide range of motives enlisted. Filial and parental
+affection, some degree of affection between the sexes over and above sex
+passion, respect for the aged and the beings who embody ideals however
+crude, loyalty to fellow clansmen,--all these are not only fostered but
+actually secured by the primitive group. But the motives which imply
+reflection--reverence for duty as the imperious law of a larger life,
+sincere love of what is good for its own sake--cannot be brought to full
+consciousness until there is a more definite conception of a moral
+authority, a more definite contrast between the one great good and the
+partial or temporary satisfactions. The development of these conceptions
+requires a growth in individuality; it requires conflicts between
+authority and liberty, and those collisions between private interests
+and the public welfare which a higher civilization affords.
+
+=3. The Content.=--When we consider the "what" of group and customary
+morality we note at once that the factors which make for the idealizing
+and expansion of interests are less in evidence than those which make
+for a common and social interest and satisfaction. There is indeed, as
+we have noted, opportunity for memory and fancy. The traditions of the
+past, the myths, the cultus, the folk songs--these keep up a mental life
+which is as genuinely valued as the more physical activities. But as the
+mode of life in question does not evoke the more abstractly rational
+activities--reasoning, selecting, choosing--in the highest degree, the
+ideals lack reach and power. It needs the incentives described in the
+following chapters to call out a true life of the spirit. The social
+aspects of the "what," on the other hand, are well rooted in group
+morality. It is unnecessary to repeat what has been dwelt upon in the
+present and preceding chapters so fully. We point out now that while the
+standard is social, it is unconsciously rather than consciously social.
+Or perhaps better: it is a standard of society but not a standard which
+each member deliberately makes his own. He takes it as a matter of
+course. He is in the clan, "with the gang"; he thinks and acts
+accordingly. He cannot begin to be as selfish as a modern
+individualist; he simply hasn't the imagery to conceive such an
+exclusive good, nor the tools with which to carry it out. But he cannot
+be as broadly social either. He may not be able to sink so low as the
+civilized miser, or debauchee, or criminal, but neither can he conceive
+or build up the character which implies facing opposition. The moral
+hero achieves full stature only when he pits himself against others,
+when he recognizes evil and fights it, when he "overcomes the world."
+
+=4. Organization of Character.=--In the organization of stable character
+the morality of custom is strong on one side. The group trains its
+members to act in the ways it approves and afterwards holds them by all
+the agencies in its power. It forms habits and enforces them. Its
+weakness is that the element of habit is so large, that of freedom so
+small. It holds up the average man; it holds back the man who might
+forge ahead. It is an anchor, and a drag.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Much of the literature at the close of Chapters II. and III.,
+particularly the works of Spencer and Gillen and Schurtz, belongs here
+also. Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, 1851-57; Eastman, _Indian Boyhood_,
+1902. Papers on various cults of North American Indians in reports of
+the _Bureau of Ethnology_, by Stevenson, 8th, 1886-87; Dorsey, 11th,
+1889-90; Fewkes, 15th, 1893-94, 21st, 1899-1900; Fletcher, 22nd,
+1900-01; Stevenson, 23d, 1901-02; Kidd, _Savage Childhood_, 1906; _The
+Essential Kaffir_, 1904; Skeat, _Malay Magic_, 1900; N. W. Thomas,
+general editor of Series, _The Native Races of the British Empire_,
+1907-; Barton, _A Sketch of Semitic Origins_, 1902; Harrison,
+_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, 1903; Reinach, _Cultes,
+Mythes et Religions_, 2 vols., 1905; Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, 3
+vols., 1900; Marett, _Is Taboo Negative Magic?_ in Anthropological
+Essays, presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907; Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_,
+1902; Spencer, _Sociology_, 1876-96; Clifford, _On the Scientific Basis
+of Morals_ in Lectures and Essays, 1886; Maine, _Early History of
+Institutions_, 1888; _Early Law and Custom_, 1886; Post, _Die Grundlagen
+des Rechts und die Grundzuege seiner Entwicklungsgeschichte_, 1884;
+_Ethnologische Jurisprudenz_, 1894-95; Pollock and Maitland, _History of
+English Law_, 1899; Steinmetz, _Ethnologische Studien zur ersten
+Entwicklung der Strafe_, 1894.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[23] W. G. Sumner, _Folkways_.
+
+[24] Sumner, _Folkways_, p. 6.
+
+[25] _Ibid._, p. 11.
+
+[26] Bagehot, _Physics and Politics_, p. 103.
+
+[27] Eastman, _Indian Boyhood_, p. 31.
+
+[28] Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, Part I., p. 16. Hume pointed out
+this twofold basis of approval.
+
+[29] Seebohm, _The Tribal System of Wales_, p. 59.
+
+[30] The account is based on Spencer and Gillen, _The Native Tribes of
+Central Australia_, chs. vii.-ix.
+
+[31] Maine's _Early Law and Custom_, p. 264.
+
+[32] _Welsh Triads_, cited by Seebohm, op. cit., p. 72.
+
+[33] Post, _Grundlagen des Rechts_, pp. 45 ff.
+
+[34] Deuteronomy 21:1-9; Numbers 35:33, 34.
+
+[35] Genesis 4:10-12; Job 16:18.
+
+[36] On the subject of early justice Westermarck, _The Origin and
+Development of Moral Ideas_, ch. vii. ff.; Hobhouse, _Morals in
+Evolution_, Part I., ch. ii.; Pollock and Maitland, _History of English
+Law_.
+
+[37] Leviticus, ch. xii.
+
+[38] "The Influence of Magic on Social Relationships" in _Sociological
+Papers_, II., 1905. Cf. also Morgan, _House-life_.
+
+[39] Genesis 19:8; Judges 19:23, 24.
+
+[40] Psalms 146:9; Deuteronomy 24:14-22.
+
+[41] Gellius, in Westermarck, op. cit., p. 155.
+
+[42] Westermarck regards this as one of the fundamental elements in the
+beginnings of morality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+FROM CUSTOM TO CONSCIENCE; FROM GROUP MORALITY TO PERSONAL MORALITY
+
+
+Sec. 1. CONTRAST AND COLLISION
+
+=1. What the Third Level Means.=--Complete morality is reached only when
+the individual recognizes the right or chooses the good freely, devotes
+himself heartily to its fulfillment, and seeks a progressive social
+development in which every member of society shall share. The group
+morality with its agencies of custom set up a standard, but one that was
+corporate rather than personal. It approved and disapproved, that is it
+had an idea of good, but this did not mean a good that was personally
+valued. It enlisted its members, but it was by drill, by pleasure and
+pain, and by habit, rather than by fully voluntary action. It secured
+steadiness by habit and social pressure, rather than by choices built
+into character. It maintained community of feeling and action, but of
+the unconscious rather than the definitely social type. Finally it was
+rather fitted to maintain a fixed order than to promote and safeguard
+progress. Advance then must (1) substitute some rational method of
+setting up standards and forming values, in place of habitual passive
+acceptance; (2) secure voluntary and personal choice and interest,
+instead of unconscious identification with the group welfare, or
+instinctive and habitual response to group needs; (3) encourage at the
+same time individual development and the demand that all shall share in
+this development--the worth and happiness of the person and of _every_
+person.
+
+=2. Collisions Involved.=--Such an advance brings to consciousness two
+collisions. The oppositions were there before, but they were not felt as
+oppositions. So long as the man was fully with his group, or satisfied
+with the custom, he would make no revolt. When the movement begins the
+collisions are felt. These collisions are:
+
+(1) The collision between the authority and interests of the group, and
+the independence and private interests of the individual.
+
+(2) The collision between order and progress, between habit and
+reconstruction or reformation.
+
+It is evident that there is a close connection between these two
+collisions; in fact, the second becomes in practice a form of the first.
+For we saw in the last chapter that custom is really backed and enforced
+by the group, and its merely habitual parts are as strongly supported as
+those parts which have a more rational basis. It would perhaps be
+conceivable that a people should move on all together, working out a
+higher civilization in which free thought should keep full reverence for
+social values, in which political liberty should keep even pace with the
+development of government, in which self-interest should be accompanied
+by regard for the welfare of others, just as it may be possible for a
+child to grow into full morality without a period of "storm and stress."
+But this is not usual. Progress has generally cost struggle. And the
+first phase of this struggle is opposition between the individual and
+the group. The self-assertive instincts and impulses were present in
+group life, but they were in part undeveloped because they had not
+enough stimulus to call them out. A man could not develop his impulse
+for possession to its full extent if there was little or nothing for him
+to possess. In part they were not developed because the group held them
+back, and the conditions of living and fighting favored those groups
+which did keep them back. Nevertheless they were present in some
+degree, always contending against the more social forces. Indeed what
+makes the opposition between group and individual so strong and so
+continuous is that both the social and the individual are rooted in
+human nature. They constitute what Kant calls the _unsocial
+sociableness_ of man. "Man cannot get on with his fellows and he cannot
+do without them."
+
+=Individualism.=--The assertion by the individual of his own opinions
+and beliefs, his own independence and interests, as over against group
+standards, authority, and interests, is known as individualism. It is
+evident that such assertion will always mark a new level of conduct.
+Action must now be personal and voluntary. It is also evident that it
+may be either better or worse than the level of custom and group life.
+The first effect is likely to be, in appearance at least, a change for
+the worse. The old restraints are tossed aside; "creeds outworn" no
+longer steady or direct; the strong or the crafty individual comes to
+the fore and exploits his fellows. Every man does what is "right in his
+own eyes." The age of the Sophists in Greece, of the Renaissance in
+Italy, of the Enlightenment and Romantic movement in western Europe, and
+of the industrial revolution in recent times illustrate different phases
+of individualism. A people, as well as an individual, may "go to pieces"
+in its reaction against social authority and custom. But such one-sided
+individualism is almost certain to call out prophets of a new order;
+"organic filaments" of new structures appear; family, industry, the
+state, are organized anew and upon more voluntary basis. Those who
+accept the new conditions and assume responsibility with their freedom,
+who direct their choices by reason instead of passion, who "aim at
+justice and kindness" as well as at happiness, become moral persons and
+gain thereby new worth and dignity. While, then, the general movement is
+on the whole a movement of individualism, it demands just as
+necessarily, if there is to be moral progress, a _reconstructed
+individual_--a person who is individual in choice, in feeling, in
+responsibility, and at the same time social in what he regards as good,
+in his sympathies, and in his purposes. Otherwise individualism means
+progress toward the immoral.
+
+
+Sec. 2. SOCIOLOGICAL AGENCIES IN THE TRANSITION
+
+The agencies which bring about the change from customary and group
+morality to conscious and personal morality are varied. Just as
+character is developed in the child and young man by various means,
+sometimes by success, sometimes by adversity or loss of a parent,
+sometimes by slow increase in knowledge, and sometimes by a sudden
+right-about-face with a strong emotional basis, so it is with peoples.
+Some, like the Japanese at the present, are brought into sudden contact
+with the whole set of commercial and military forces from without. Among
+others, as with the Greeks, a fermentation starts within, along
+intellectual, economic, political, and religious lines. Or again,
+national calamities may upset all the old values, as with the Hebrews.
+But we may note four typical agencies which are usually more or less
+active.
+
+=1. Economic Forces.=--The action of economic forces in breaking up the
+early kinship group or joint family may be noticed in the history of
+many peoples. The clan flourishes in such conditions of hunting life or
+of simple agriculture as were found among Australians and Indians, or
+among the Celts in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. It cannot survive
+when a more advanced state of agriculture prevails. A certain amount of
+individualism will appear wherever the advantage for the individual lies
+in separate industry and private ownership. If buffalo was to be hunted
+it was better to pool issues, but for smaller game the skilful or
+persistent huntsman or shepherd will think he can gain more by working
+for himself. This is intensified when agriculture and commerce take the
+place of earlier modes of life. The farmer has to work so hard and long,
+his goal is so far in the future, that differences of character show
+themselves much more strongly. Hunting and fishing are so exciting, and
+the reward is so near, that even a man who is not very industrious will
+do his part. But in agriculture only the hard and patient worker gets a
+reward and he does not like to share it with the lazy, or even with the
+weaker. Commerce, bargaining, likewise puts a great premium on
+individual shrewdness. And for a long time commerce was conducted on a
+relatively individual basis. Caravans of traders journeyed together for
+mutual protection but there was not any such organization as later
+obtained, and each individual could display his own cunning or ability.
+Moreover commerce leads to the comparison of custom, to interchange of
+ideas as well as goods. All this tends to break down the sanctity of
+customs peculiar to a given group. The trader as well as the guest may
+overstep the barriers set up by kin. The early Greek colonists, among
+whom a great individualistic movement began, were the traders of their
+day. The parts of Europe where most survives of primitive group life are
+those little touched by modern commerce.
+
+But we get a broader view of economic influences if we consider the
+methods of organizing industry which have successively prevailed. In
+early society, and likewise in the earlier period of modern
+civilization, the family was a great economic unit. Many or most of the
+industries could be advantageously carried on in the household. As in
+the cases cited above (p. 60) the stronger or adventurous member would
+be constantly trying to strike out for himself. This process of constant
+readjustment is, however, far less thoroughgoing in its effects on mores
+than the three great methods of securing a broader organization of
+industry. In primitive society large enterprises had to be carried on by
+the co-operation of the group. Forced labor as used by the Oriental
+civilizations substituted a method by which greater works like the
+pyramids or temples could be built, but it brought with it the overthrow
+of much of the old group sympathies and mutual aid. In Greece and Rome
+slavery did the drudgery and left the citizens free to cultivate art,
+letters, and government. It gave opportunity and scope for the few. Men
+of power and genius arose, and at the same time all the negative forces
+of individualism asserted themselves. In modern times capitalism is the
+method for organizing industry and trade. It proves more effective than
+forced labor or slavery in securing combination of forces and in
+exploiting natural resources. It likewise gives extraordinary
+opportunities for the rise of men of organizing genius. The careers of
+"captains of industry" are more fascinating than those of old-time
+conquerors because they involve more complex situations, and can utilize
+the discoveries and labors of more men. But modern capitalism has been
+as destructive to the morality of the Middle Ages, or even of a hundred
+years ago, as was forced labor or slavery to the group life and mores
+which they destroyed.
+
+=2. The Progress of Science and the Arts.=--The effect of the progress
+of science and intelligence upon the mores is direct. Comparisons of the
+customs of one people with those of another bring out differences, and
+arouse questions as to the reasons for such diversity. And we have seen
+that there is more or less in the customs for which no reason can be
+given. Even if there was one originally it has been forgotten. Or again,
+increasing knowledge of weather and seasons, of plants and animals, of
+sickness and disease, discredits many of the taboos and ceremonials
+which the cruder beliefs had regarded as essential to welfare. Certain
+elements of ritual may survive under the protection of "mysteries," but
+the more enlightened portion of the community keeps aloof. Instead of
+the mores with their large infusion of the accidental, the habitual,
+and the impulsive, increasing intelligence demands some rational rule of
+life.
+
+And science joins with the various industrial and fine arts to create a
+new set of interests for the individual. Any good piece of workmanship,
+any work of art however simple, is twice blest. It blesses him that
+makes and him that uses or enjoys. The division of labor, begun in group
+life, is carried further. Craftsmen and artists develop increasing
+individuality as they construct temples or palaces, fashion statues or
+pottery, or sing of gods and heroes. Their minds grow with what they do.
+Side by side with the aspect of art which makes it a bond of society is
+the aspect which so frequently makes the skilled workman the critic, and
+the artist a law to himself. In the next place note the effect on those
+who can use and enjoy the products of the arts. A new world of
+satisfaction and happiness is opened which each person can enter for
+himself. In cruder conditions there was not much out of which to build
+up happiness. Food, labor, rest, the thrill of hunt or contest, the
+passion of sex, the pride in children--these made up the interests of
+primitive life. Further means of enjoyment were found chiefly in society
+of the kin, or in the men's house. But as the arts advanced the
+individual could have made for him a fine house and elaborate clothing.
+Metal, wood, and clay minister to increasing wants. A permanent and
+stately tomb makes the future more definite. The ability to hand down
+wealth in durable form places a premium on its acquirement. Ambition has
+more stuff to work with. A more definite, assertive self is gradually
+built up. "Good" comes to have added meaning with every new want that
+awakes. The individual is not satisfied any longer to take the group's
+valuation. He wants to get his own good in his own way. And it will
+often seem to him that he can get his own good most easily and surely
+either by keeping out of the common life or by using his fellow men to
+his own advantage. Men of culture have frequently shown their
+selfishness in the first way; men of wealth in the second. An
+aristocracy of culture, or birth, or wealth may come to regard the whole
+process of civilization as properly ministering to the wants of the
+select few. Nearly every people which has developed the arts and
+sciences has developed also an aristocracy. In the ancient world slavery
+was a part of the process. In modern times other forms of exploitation
+may serve the purpose better. Individualism, released from the ties
+which bound up the good of one with the good of all, tends to become
+exclusive and selfish; civilization with all its opportunities for
+increasing happiness and increasing life has its moral risks and
+indirectly, at least, its moral evils.
+
+These evils may appear as the gratification of sense and appetite and
+thus may be opposed to the higher life of the spirit, which needs no
+outer objects or luxuries. Or they may appear as rooted in selfishness,
+in the desire for gratifying the exclusive self of material interests or
+ambition, as over against sympathy, justice, and kindness, which mark a
+broadly human and social life. In both cases serious men have sought to
+overcome by some form of "self-denial" the evils that attend on
+civilization, even if they are not due to it.
+
+=3. Military Forces.=--The kinship group is a protection so long as it
+has to contend only with similar groups. The headlong valor and tribal
+loyalty of German or Scottish clans may even win conflicts with more
+disciplined troops of Rome or England. But permanent success demands
+higher organization than the old clans and tribes permitted.
+Organization means authority, and a single directing, controlling
+commander or king. As Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia show their strength
+the clans of Israel cry, "Nay, but we will have a king over us; that we
+may also be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go
+out before us, and fight our battles."[43] Wars afford the opportunity
+for the strong and unscrupulous leader to assert himself. Like commerce
+they may tend also to spread culture and thus break down barriers of
+ancient custom. The conquests of Babylon and Alexander, the Crusades and
+the French Revolution, are instances of the power of military forces to
+destroy old customs and give individualism new scope. In most cases, it
+is true, it is only the leader or "tyrant" who gets the advantage. He
+uses the whole machinery of society for his own elevation. Nevertheless
+custom and group unity are broken for all. Respect for law must be built
+new from the foundation.
+
+=4. Religious Forces.=--While in general religion is a conservative
+agency, it is also true that a new religion or a new departure in
+religion has often exercised a powerful influence on moral development.
+The very fact that religion is so intimately bound up with all the group
+mores and ideals, makes a change in religion bear directly on old
+standards of life. The collision between old and new is likely to be
+fundamental and sharp. A conception of God may carry with it a view of
+what conduct is pleasing to him. A doctrine as to the future may require
+a certain mode of life. A cultus may approve or condemn certain
+relations between the sexes. Conflicting religions may then force a
+moral attitude in weighing their claims. The contests between Jehovah
+and Baal, between Orphic cults and the public Greek religion, between
+Judaism and Christianity, Christianity and Roman civilization,
+Christianity and Germanic religion, Catholicism and Protestantism, have
+brought out moral issues. We shall notice this factor especially in
+Chapters VI. and VIII.
+
+
+Sec. 3. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AGENCIES
+
+The psychological forces which tend toward individualism have been
+already stated to be the self-assertive instincts and impulses. They are
+all variations of the effort of the living being first to preserve
+itself and then to rise to more complicated life by entering into more
+complex relations and mastering its environment. Spinoza's "_sui esse
+conservare_," Schopenhauer's "will to live," Nietzsche's "will to
+power," the Hebrew's passionate ideal of "life", and Tennyson's "More
+life, and fuller" express in varying degree the meaning of this
+elemental bent and process. Growing intelligence adds to its strength by
+giving greater capacity to control. Starting with organic needs, this
+developing life process may find satisfactions in the physical world in
+the increasing power and mastery over nature gained by the explorer or
+the hunter, the discoverer, the craftsman, or the artist. It is when it
+enters the world of persons that it displays a peculiar intensity that
+marks the passions of individualism _par excellence_. We note four of
+these tendencies toward self-assertion.
+
+=1. Sex.=--The sex instinct and emotion occupies a peculiar position in
+this respect. On the one hand it is a powerful socializing agency. It
+brings the sexes together and is thus fundamental to the family. But on
+the other hand it is constantly rebelling against the limits and
+conventions established by the social group for its regulation. The
+statutes against illicit relations, from the codes of Hammurabi and
+Moses to the latest efforts for stricter divorce, attest the collision
+between the individual's inclination and the will of the group.
+Repeatedly some passion of sex has broken over all social, legal, and
+religious sanctions. It has thus been a favorite theme of tragedy from
+the Greeks to Ibsen. It finds another fitting medium in the romance. It
+has called into existence and maintains in every large city an outcast
+colony of wretched creatures, and the evils which attend are not limited
+in their results to those who knowingly take the risks. It has worked
+repeated changes in the structure of the family authorized by society.
+Its value and proper regulation were points at issue in that
+wide-reaching change of mores attendant upon the Reformation, and
+apparently equilibrium has not yet been reached.
+
+=2. The Demand for Possession and Private Property.=--In the primitive
+group we have seen that there might be private property in tools or
+weapons, in cattle or slaves. There was little private property in land
+under the maternal clan; and indeed in any case, so long as the arts
+were undeveloped, private property had necessary limits. The demand for
+private property is a natural attendant upon individual modes of
+industry. As we have said, it was a common principle that what the group
+produced was owned by the group, and what the individual made or
+captured was treated as his. When individual industry came to count for
+more, the individual claimed more and more as private possession.
+
+The change from the maternal clan to the paternal family or household
+was a reenforcement to the individual control of property. The father
+could hand down his cattle or his house to his son. The joint family of
+India is indeed a type of a paternal system. Nevertheless the tendency
+is much stronger to insist on individual property where the father's
+goods pass to his son than where they go to his sister's children.
+
+The chiefs or rulers were likely to gain the right of private property
+first. Among certain families of the South Slavs to-day, the head has
+his individual eating utensils, the rest share. Among many people the
+chiefs have cattle which they can dispose of as they will; the rest have
+simply their share of the kin's goods. The old Brehon laws of Ireland
+show this stage.
+
+But however it comes about, the very meaning of property is, in the
+first place, exclusion of others from some thing which I have. It is
+therefore in so far necessarily opposed to group unity, opposed to any
+such simple solidarity of life as we find in group morality. As the
+American Indian accepts land in severalty, the old group life, the
+tribal restraints and supports, the group custom and moral unity that
+went with it, are gone. He must find a new basis or go to pieces.
+
+=3. Struggles for Mastery or Liberty.=--In most cases these cannot be
+separated from economic struggles. Masters and slaves were in economic
+as well as personal relations, and nearly all class contests on a large
+scale have had at least one economic root, whatever their other sources.
+But the economic is not their only root. There have been wars for glory
+or for liberty as well as for territory or booty or slaves. As the
+struggle for existence has bred into the race the instinct of
+self-defense with its emotion of anger, the instinct to rivalry and
+mastery, and the corresponding aversion to being ruled, so the progress
+of society shows trials of strength between man and man, kin and kin,
+tribe and tribe. And while, as stated in the preceding chapter, the
+cooperation made necessary in war or feud is a uniting force, there is
+another side to the story. Contests between individuals show who is
+master; contests between groups tend to bring forward leaders. And while
+such masterful men may serve the group they are quite as likely to find
+an interest in opposing group customs. They assert an independence of
+the group, or a mastery over it, quite incompatible with the solidarity
+of the kinship clan, although the patriarchal type of household under a
+strong head may be quite possible. There comes to be one code for rich
+and another for poor, one for Patricians and another for Plebs, one for
+baron and another for peasant, one for gentry and another for the common
+folk. For a time this may be accepted patiently. But when once the rich
+become arrogant, the feudal lord insolent, the bitter truth is faced
+that the customs have become mere conventions. They no longer hold. All
+the old ties are cast off. The demand for freedom and equality rises,
+and the collision between authority and liberty is on.
+
+Or the contest may be for intellectual liberty--for free thought and
+free speech. It is sometimes considered that such liberty meets its
+strongest opponent in the religious or ecclesiastical organization.
+There is no doubt a conservative tendency in religion. As we have
+pointed out, religion is the great conservator of group values and group
+standards. Its ritual is most elaborate, its taboos most sacred.
+Intellectual criticism tends to undermine what is outgrown or merely
+habitual here as elsewhere. Rationalism or free thought has set itself
+in frequent opposition likewise to what has been claimed to be "above
+reason." Nevertheless it would be absurd to attribute all the
+individualism to science and all the conservatism to religion.
+Scientific dogmas and "idols" are hard to displace. Schools are about as
+conservative as churches. And on the other hand the struggle for
+religious liberty has usually been carried on not by the irreligious but
+by the religious. The prophet Amos found himself opposed by the
+religious organization of his day when he urged social righteousness,
+and the history of the noble army of martyrs is a record of appeal to
+individual conscience, or to an immediate personal relation to God, as
+over against the formal, the traditional, the organized religious
+customs and doctrines of their age. The struggle for religious
+toleration and religious liberty takes its place side by side with the
+struggles for intellectual and political liberty in the chapters of
+individualism.
+
+=4. The Desire for Honor, or Social Esteem.=--James, in his psychology
+of the self, calls the recognition which a man gets from his mates his
+"social self." "We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in
+sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves
+noticed, and noticed favorably by our kind. No more fiendish punishment
+could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one
+should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all
+the members thereof."[44] From such a punishment "the cruelest bodily
+tortures would be a relief; for this would make us feel that however bad
+might be our plight, we had not sunk to such depth as to be unworthy of
+attention at all."[45] Honor or fame is a name for one of the various
+"social selves" which a man may build up. It stands for what those of a
+given group may think or say of him. It has a place and a large place in
+group life. Precedence, salutations, decorations in costume and bodily
+ornament, praises in song for the brave, the strong, the cunning, the
+powerful, with ridicule for the coward or the weakling are all at work.
+But with the primitive group the difference between men of the group is
+kept within bounds. When more definite organization of groups for
+military or civil purposes begins, when the feudal chief gathers his
+retainers and begins to rise above the rest of the community in
+strength, finally when the progress of the arts gives greater means for
+display, the desire for recognition has immensely greater scope. It is
+increased by the instinct of emulation; it often results in envy and
+jealousies. It becomes then a powerful factor in stimulating
+individualism.
+
+But while desires for honor and fame provoke individualism, they carry
+with them, like desires for property and power, elements that make for
+reconstruction of the social on a higher level. For honor implies some
+common sentiment to which the individual can make appeal. Group members
+praise or blame what accords with their feeling or desire, but they do
+not act as individuals merely, praising what pleases them as
+individuals. They react more or less completely from the group point of
+view; they honor the man who embodies the group-ideal of courage, or
+other admirable and respected qualities. And here comes the motive which
+operates to force a better ideal than mere desire of praise. No group
+honors the man who is definitely seeking merely its applause rather
+than its approval--at least not after it has found him out. The force of
+public opinion is therefore calculated to elicit a desire to be _worthy_
+of honor, as well as to be honored. This means a desire to act as a true
+social individual, for it is only the true member of the group,--true
+clansman,--true patriot,--true martyr,--who appeals to the other members
+when they judge as members, and not selfishly. When now the group whose
+approval is sought is small, we have class standards, with all the
+provincialism, narrowness, and prejudice that belong to them. As the
+honor-seeker is merely after the opinion of his class, he is bound to be
+only partly social. So long as he is with his kin, or his set, or his
+"gang," or his "party," or his "union," or his "country"--regardless of
+any wider appeal--he is bound to be imperfectly rational and social in
+his conduct. The great possibilities of the desire for honor, and of the
+desire to be worthy of honor, lie then in the constant extension of the
+range. The martyr, the seeker for truth, the reformer, the neglected
+artist, looks for honor from posterity; if misjudged or neglected, he
+appeals to mankind. He is thus forming for himself an ideal standard.
+And if he embodies this ideal standard in a personal, highest possible
+judging companion, his desire to be worthy of approval takes a religious
+form. He seeks "the honor that is from God." Though "the innermost of
+the empirical selves of a man is a self of the _social_ sort, it yet can
+find its only adequate _socius_ in an ideal world."[46]
+
+The moral value of these three forces of individualism was finely stated
+by Kant:
+
+ "The means which nature uses to bring about the development of all
+ the capacities she has given man is their _antagonism_ in society,
+ in so far as this antagonism becomes in the end a cause of social
+ order. Men have an inclination to _associate_ themselves, for in a
+ social state they feel themselves more completely men: i.e., they
+ are conscious of the development of their natural capacities. But
+ they have also a great propensity to _isolate_ themselves, for
+ they find in themselves at the same time this unsocial
+ characteristic: each wishes to direct everything solely according
+ to his own notion, and hence expects resistance, just as he knows
+ that he is inclined to resist others. It is just this resistance
+ which awakens all man's powers; this brings him to overcome his
+ propensity to indolence, and drives him through the lust for
+ honor, power, or wealth to win for himself a rank among his
+ fellowmen. Man's will is for concord, but nature knows better what
+ is good for the species, and she wills discord. He would like a
+ life of comfort and pleasure; nature wills that he be dragged out
+ of idleness and inactive content, and plunged into labor and
+ trouble in order that he may find out the means of extricating
+ himself from his difficulties. The natural impulses which prompt
+ this effort, the sources of unsociableness and of the mutual
+ conflict from which so many evils spring, are then spurs to a more
+ complete development of man's powers."[47]
+
+We have spoken of the "forces" which tend to break down the old unity of
+the group and bring about new organization. But of course these forces
+are not impersonal. Sometimes they seem to act like the ocean tide,
+pushing silently in, and only now and then sending a wave a little
+higher than its fellows. Frequently, however, some great personality
+stands out preeminent, either as critic of the old or builder of the
+new. The prophets were stoned because they condemned the present; the
+next generation was ready to build their sepulchers. Socrates is the
+classic example of the great man who perishes in seeking to find a
+rational basis to replace that of custom. Indeed, this conflict--on the
+one hand, the rigid system of tradition and corporate union hallowed by
+all the sanctions of religion and public opinion; upon the other, the
+individual making appeal to reason, or to his conscience, or to a
+"higher law"--is the tragedy of history.
+
+
+Sec. 4. POSITIVE RECONSTRUCTION
+
+It must not be supposed that the moral process stops at the points
+indicated under the several divisions of this last section. As already
+stated, if the people really works out a higher type of conscious and
+personal morality, it means not only a more powerful individual, but a
+reconstructed individual and a reconstructed society. It means not only
+the disintegration of the old kinship or family group, which is an
+economic, political, and religious unity as well. It means the
+construction of a new basis for the family; new moral principles for
+business; a distinct political state with new means for government, new
+conceptions of authority and liberty; finally, a national or universal
+religion. And the individual must on this higher level choose all these
+voluntarily. More than this: as he chooses in the presence of the new
+conflicting ends presented by individualism, he sets up or adopts a
+standard for himself. He thinks definitely of what is "good" and
+"right." As he recognizes its claim, he is responsible as well as free.
+As he identifies himself heartily with it, he becomes sincerely and
+genuinely moral. Reverence, duty, and love for what is good become the
+quickening emotions. Thoughtfulness, self-control, aspiration toward an
+ideal, courageous venturing in its achievement, kindness and justice,
+become the dominant temper, or at least are recognized as the temper
+that should be dominant. The conception of moral character and moral
+personality is brought to consciousness. The development of the Hebrews
+and Greeks will show how these positive values emerge.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+_Kant's Principles of Politics_, tr. by Hastie, 1891, especially the
+essay _The Idea of a Universal Cosmopolitical History_; Hegel,
+_Philosophy of History_, tr. by Sibree, 1881; Darwin, _The Descent of
+Man_, 1871, 1882-87; Schurman, _The Ethical Import of Darwinism_, 1888;
+Seth, _The Evolution of Morality_, Mind, XIV., 1889, pp. 27-49;
+Williams, _A Review of Systems of Ethics founded on the Theory of
+Evolution_, 1893; Harris, _Moral Evolution_, 1895; Tufts, _On Moral
+Evolution_, in Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (_Garman
+Commemorative Volume_), 1906; Ihering, _Der Kampf ums Recht_; Simcox,
+_Natural Law_, 1877; Sorley, _Ethics of Naturalism_, 1885.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] 1 Sam. 8:19, 20.
+
+[44] _Psychology_, Vol. I., ch. x.
+
+[45] _Ibid._, p. 293 f.
+
+[46] James, _Psychology_, I., 316.
+
+[47] _Idea of a Universal Cosmopolitical History._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HEBREW MORAL DEVELOPMENT
+
+
+Sec. 1. GENERAL CHARACTER AND DETERMINING PRINCIPLES
+
+=1. The Hebrew and the Greek.=--The general character of the Hebrew
+moral development may be brought out by a contrast with that of the
+Greeks.[48] While many phases are common, there is yet a difference in
+emphasis and focus. There were political and economic forces at work in
+Israel, and religious forces in Greece. Nevertheless, the moral life in
+one people kept close to the religious, and in the other found
+independent channels. Conscientious conduct for the Hebrew centered in
+doing the will of God; for the Greek, in finding rational standards of
+good. For the Hebrew, righteousness was the typical theme; for the
+Greek, the ideal lay rather in measure and harmony. For the Greek,
+wisdom or insight was the chief virtue; for the Hebrew, the fear of the
+Lord was the beginning of wisdom. The social ideal of the Hebrews was
+the kingdom of God; of the Greeks, a political State. If we distinguish
+in conscience two aspects, thoughtfulness in discovering what to do and
+hearty desire to do the right when found, then the Greeks emphasize the
+former, the Hebrews the latter. Intellect plays a larger part with the
+Greek; emotion and the voluntary aspect of will with the Hebrew. Feeling
+plays its part with the Greeks largely as an aesthetic demand for measure
+and harmony; with the Hebrews it is chiefly prominent in motivation,
+where it is an element in what is called "the heart," or it functions
+in appreciation of acts performed, as the joy or sorrow felt when God
+approves or condemns. Both peoples are interesting for our study, not
+only as illustrating different kinds of moral development, but also as
+contributing largely to the moral consciousness of western peoples
+to-day.
+
+=2. The Early Morality.=--The accounts of the tribal life and customs in
+the early period after the settlement in Canaan, show the main features
+of group life which are already familiar to us. Clan or kinship loyalty
+was strong on both its good and its defective sides. There were
+fidelity, a jeoparding of lives unto death, honor for group heroes,
+joint responsibility, and blood revenge. There were respect for
+hospitality and regulation of marriage, though not according to later
+standards. A rough measure of justice was recognized in "as I have done,
+so God hath requited me." But there was no public authority to restrain
+the wrongdoer, except when a particularly revolting brutality shocked
+public sentiment. Festivals and sacrificial meals united the members of
+the family or clan more closely to each other and to their god. Vows
+must be kept inviolable even if they involved human sacrifice. The
+interests and ends of life were simple. The satisfaction of bodily
+wants, the love of kin and above all of children, the desire to be in
+right relation of favor and harmony with the unseen deity who protected
+from enemies and sent fruitful seasons,--these made their chief good.
+The line of their progress from these rude beginnings to a lofty moral
+ideal lay through religion. But the religious conceptions were directly
+related to political, social, and economic conditions; hence, both
+aspects must be briefly characterized.
+
+=3. Political Development.=--The political development (a) built up a
+national unity which worked to break down old group units, (b)
+strengthened military ambition and race pride, (c) stimulated the
+prophets to their highest conceptions of the divine majesty and
+universality, but, finally when the national power and hope were
+shattered, (d) compelled the most thoroughgoing reconstruction of all
+the values, ideals, and meaning of life. It is not possible or necessary
+to trace this process in detail, but we may point out here the general
+effect of the political development in bringing into clearer
+consciousness the conceptions of authority and law which were important
+factors in Hebrew morality. The earlier patriarchal head of the clan or
+family exercised certain political power, but there was no explicit
+recognition of this. Government by the "elders" or by the heads of the
+household makes no clear distinction between the common kinship and the
+political and legal authority of the sovereign. The "judges," whose rule
+preceded the kingdom, were military deliverers who owed their authority
+to personal powers rather than to a definite provision. To establish an
+organized political community, a kingdom, was then to bring into clearer
+recognition this element of authority which was merely implicit in the
+tribal organization. It allowed a more distinctly voluntary relationship
+to be differentiated from the involuntary relationship of kinship, or
+the personal relationship of the hero. While, therefore, in the
+formation of the kingdom the earlier prophets saw only a rejection of
+God, the later prophets saw in it the symbol of a higher type of
+relation between God and people. It was given religious sanction and the
+king was regarded as the son of Jehovah. It was thus ready to serve as
+the scheme or setting for the moral unity and order of a people.
+
+=4. The Economic Factors.=--The organization and growing prosperity of
+the political power were attended by economic and social changes. The
+simple agricultural life of the early period had not caused entire loss
+of clan organization and customs. But the growth of trade and commerce
+under Solomon and later kings brought in wealth and shifted the center
+of power and influence from country to city. Wealth and luxury had their
+usual results. Clashing interests asserted their strength. Economic and
+social individualism destroyed the old group solidarity. At the times of
+the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, there were classes of rich and poor.
+Greed had asserted itself in rulers, judges, priests, and "regular"
+prophets. Oppression, land monopoly, bribery, extortion, stirred moral
+indignation. The fact that these were practiced by the most zealous
+observers of ritual and guardians of religion roused in the great
+reformers a demand for a change in religion itself. Not sacrifices but
+justice is the need of the hour and the demand of God.
+
+
+Sec. 2. RELIGIOUS AGENCIES
+
+The interaction between the religious and the moral education of the
+Hebrews was so intimate that it is difficult to distinguish the two, but
+we may abstract certain conceptions or motives in Israel's religion
+which were especially significant. The general conception was that of
+the close personal relation between god and people. Israel should have
+no other god; Jehovah--at least this was the earlier thought--would have
+no other people. He had loved and chosen Israel; Israel in gratitude, as
+well as in hope and fear, must love and obey Jehovah. Priests maintained
+his cultus; prophets brought new commands according to the requirements
+of the hour; the king represented his sovereignty and justice; the
+course of events exhibited his purpose. Each of these elements served to
+provoke or elicit moral reflection or moral conduct.
+
+=1. The "Covenant" Relation was a Moral Conception.=--The usual
+religious conception is that of some blood or kin relation between
+people and deity. This has the same potential meaning and value as that
+of the other relations of group life outlined in Chapter II. But it is
+rather a natural than a "moral"--i.e., conscious and voluntary--tie. To
+conceive of the relation between god and people as due to voluntary
+choice, is to introduce a powerful agency toward making morality
+conscious. Whatever the origin of the idea, the significant fact is that
+the religious and moral leaders present the relation of Israel to
+Jehovah as based on a covenant. On the one hand, Jehovah protects,
+preserves, and prospers; on the other, Israel is to obey his laws and
+serve no other gods. This conception of mutual obligation is presented
+at the opening of the "Ten Commandments," and to this covenant relation
+the prophets again and again make appeal. The obligation to obey the law
+is not "This is the custom," or "Our fathers did so"; it is placed on
+the ground that the people has voluntarily accepted Jehovah as its god
+and lawgiver.
+
+The meaning of this covenant and the symbols by which it was conceived,
+changed with the advance of the social relationships of the people. At
+first Jehovah was "Lord of Hosts," protector in war, and giver of
+prosperity, and the early conceptions of the duty of the people seemed
+to include human sacrifice, at least in extreme cases. But with later
+prophets we find the social and family relationship of husband and
+father brought increasingly into use. Whether by personal experience or
+by more general reflection, we find Hosea interpreting the relationship
+between God and his people in both of these family conceptions. The
+disloyalty of the people takes on the more intimate taint of a wife's
+unfaithfulness, and, conversely, in contrast to the concepts of other
+religions, the people may call Jehovah "my husband" and no longer "my
+master" (Baal). The change from status to contract is thus, in Israel's
+religion, fruitful with many moral results.
+
+=2. The Conception of a Personal Lawgiver.=--The conception of a
+personal lawgiver raises conduct from the level of custom to the level
+of conscious morality. So long as a child follows certain ways by
+imitation or suggestion, he does not necessarily attach any moral
+meaning to them. But if the parent expressly commands or prohibits, it
+becomes a matter of obedience or disobedience. Choice becomes necessary.
+Character takes the place of innocence. So Jehovah's law compelled
+obedience or rebellion. Customs were either forbidden or enjoined. In
+either case they ceased to be merely customs. In the law of Israel the
+whole body of observances in private life, in ceremonial, and in legal
+forms, is introduced with a "Thus saith the Lord." We know that other
+Semitic people observed the Sabbath, practiced circumcision,
+distinguished clean from unclean beasts, and respected the taboos of
+birth and death. Whether in Israel all these observances were old
+customs given new authority by statute, or were customs taken from other
+peoples under the authority of the laws of Jehovah, is immaterial. The
+ethical significance of the law is that these various observances,
+instead of being treated merely as customs, are regarded as personal
+commands of a personal deity.
+
+This makes a vital difference in the view taken of the violation of
+these observances. When a man violates a custom he fails to do the
+correct thing. He misses the mark.[49] But when the observance is a
+personal command, its violation is a personal disobedience; it is
+rebellion; it is an act of will. The evil which follows is no longer bad
+luck; it is punishment. Now punishment must be either right or wrong,
+moral or immoral. It can never be merely non-moral. Hence the very
+conception of sin as a personal offense, and of ill as a personal
+punishment, forces a moral standard. In its crudest form this may take
+the god's commands as right simply because he utters them, and assume
+that the sufferer is guilty merely because he suffers. We find this in
+the penitential psalms of the Babylonians. These express the deepest
+conviction of sin and the utmost desire to please the god, but when we
+try to discover what the penitent has done that wakens such remorse
+within him, we find that he seems merely to feel that in some way he has
+failed to please God, no matter how. He experiences misfortune, whether
+of disease, or ill-luck, or defeat, and is sure that this must be due to
+some offense. He does not know what this may be. It may have been that
+he has failed to repeat a formula in the right manner; it is all one. He
+feels guilty and even exaggerates his own guilt in view of the
+punishment which has befallen him. Job's three friends apply the same
+logic to his case.[50]
+
+But side by side with the conception that the laws of Jehovah must be
+obeyed because they were his commands, there was another doctrine which
+was but an extension of the theory that the people had freely accepted
+their ruler. This was that Jehovah's commands were not arbitrary. They
+were right; they could be placed before the people for their approval;
+they were "life"; "the judge of all the earth" would "do right." We have
+here a striking illustration of the principle that moral standards, at
+first embodied in persons, slowly work free, so that persons are judged
+by them.
+
+=3. The Cultus as Morally Symbolical.=--The elaborate cultus carried on
+by the priests, symbolized, however imperfectly, certain moral ideas.
+The solicitous care for ceremonial "purity" might have no direct moral
+value; the contamination from contact with birth or death or certain
+animals might be a very external sort of "uncleanness." Nevertheless,
+they emphasized in the most forcible manner a constant control over
+conduct by a standard which was set by a divine law. The "holiness" of
+the priests, as set apart to special service of Jehovah, emphasized the
+seriousness of their work; and further, it contributed to that
+distinction between spiritual and material, between higher and lower,
+which is a part of moral life. Moreover, while part of this value
+inheres in all ritual, the contrast between Jehovah's worship and that
+of other deities challenged moral attention. The gods of the land, the
+various Baals, were worshipped "upon every high hill and under every
+green tree." As gods of fertility, they were symbolized by the emblems
+of sex, and great freedom prevailed at their festivals. At certain
+shrines men and women gave themselves for the service of the god. The
+first born children were not infrequently sacrificed.[51] These
+festivals and shrines seem to have been adopted more or less fully by
+Israel from the Canaanites, but the prophets have an utterly different
+idea of Jehovah's worship. The god of Sinai rejects utterly such
+practices. License and drunkenness are not, as the cultus of Baal and
+Astarte implied, the proper symbols of life and deity. The sensual
+cannot fitly symbolize the spiritual.
+
+Moreover, one part of the cultus, the "sin offering," directly implied
+transgression and the need of forgiveness. The "sins" might themselves
+be ceremonial rather than moral, and the method of removing them might
+be external--especially the process of putting the sins upon a scapegoat
+which should "bear upon him all their iniquities into a solitary
+land,"--nevertheless, the solemn confession, and the shedding of the
+blood which was the "life," could not but remind of responsibility and
+deepen reflection. The need of atonement and reconciliation, thus
+impressed, symbolized the moral process of reconstructing, of putting
+away a lower past, and readjusting life to meet an ideal.
+
+=4. The Prophets as a Moral Force.=--The prophets were by far the most
+significant moral agency in Israel's religion. In the first place, they
+came to the people bearing a message from a living source of authority,
+intended for the immediate situation. They brought a present command for
+a present duty. "Thou art the man," of Nathan to David, "Hast thou
+killed, and also taken possession?" of Elijah to Ahab, had personal
+occasions. But the great sermons of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, were no less
+for the hour. A licentious festival, an Assyrian invasion, an Egyptian
+embassy, a plague of locusts, an impending captivity--these inspire
+demand for repentance, warnings of destruction, promises of salvation.
+The prophet was thus the "living fountain." The divine will as coming
+through him "was still, so to speak, fluid, and not congealed into
+institutions."
+
+In the second place, the prophets seized upon the inward purpose and
+social conduct of man as the all-important issues; cultus, sacrifice,
+are unimportant. "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no
+delight in your solemn assemblies," cries Amos in Jehovah's name, "But
+let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream."
+"I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed
+beasts," proclaims Isaiah, "new moons, and sabbaths, the calling of
+assemblies,--I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting." You
+need not ceremonial, but moral, purity. "Wash you, make you clean; put
+away the evil of your doings;--seek justice, relieve the oppressed,
+judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Micah's "Shall I give my
+first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my
+soul?" seized upon the difference once for all between the physical and
+the moral; a completely ethical standpoint is gained in his summary of
+religious duty: "What doth God require of thee, but to do justly, and
+to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And the New Testament
+analogue marks the true ethical valuation of all the external religious
+manifestations, even of the cruder forms of prophecy itself. Gifts,
+mysteries, knowledge, or the "body to be burned"--there is a more
+excellent way than these. For all these are "in part." Their value is
+but temporary and relative. The values that abide, that stand criticism,
+are that staking of oneself upon the truth and worth of one's ideal
+which is faith; that aspiration and forward look which is hope; that sum
+of all social charity, sympathy, justice, and active helpfulness, which
+is love. "But the greatest of these is love."
+
+=5. The Religious View of the Kingdom Gave the Setting for a Social
+Ideal.=--Jehovah was the king of his people. The human ruler in
+Jerusalem was his representative. The kingdom of Israel was under divine
+care and had on the other hand a serious purpose. The expansion and
+glory of the kingdom under Solomon showed the divine favor. Division and
+calamity were not mere misfortunes, or the victory of greater armies;
+they were divine rebukes. Only in righteousness and justice could the
+nation survive. On the other hand, the confidence in Jehovah's love for
+Israel guaranteed that he would never forsake his people. He would
+purify them and redeem them even from the grave. He would establish a
+kingdom of law and peace, "an everlasting kingdom that should not be
+destroyed." Politics in Israel had a moral goal.
+
+=6. Religion Gave the Problem of Evil a Moral Significance.=--The Greek
+treatment of the problem of evil is found in the great tragedies. An
+ancestral curse follows down successive generations, dealing woe to all
+the unhappy house. For the victims there seems to be nothing but to
+suffer. The necessity of destiny makes the catastrophe sublime, but also
+hopeless. Ibsen's _Ghosts_ is conceived in a similar spirit. There is a
+tremendous moral lesson in it for the fathers, but for the children
+only horror. The Greek and the Scandinavian are doubtless interpreting
+one phase of human life--its continuity and dependence upon cosmical
+nature. But the Hebrew was not content with this. His confidence in a
+divine government of the world forced him to seek some moral value, some
+purpose in the event. The search led along one path to a readjustment of
+values; it led by another path to a new view of social interdependence.
+
+The book of Job gives the deepest study of the first of these problems.
+The old view had been that virtue and happiness always went together.
+Prosperity meant divine favor, and therefore it must be the good.
+Adversity meant divine punishment; it showed wrongdoing and was itself
+an evil. When calamity comes upon Job, his friends assume it to be a
+sure proof of his wickedness. He had himself held the same view, and
+since he refuses to admit his wickedness and "holds fast to his
+integrity," it confounds all his philosophy of life and of God. It
+compels a "reversal and revaluation of all values." If he could only
+meet God face to face and have it out with him he believes there would
+be some solution. But come what may, he will not sell his soul for
+happiness. To "repent," as his friends urge, in order that he may be
+again on good terms with God, would mean for him to call sin what he
+believes to be righteousness. And he will not lie in this way. God is
+doubtless stronger, and if he pursues his victim relentlessly, may
+convict him. But be this as it may, Job will not let go his fundamental
+consciousness of right and wrong. His "moral self" is the one anchor
+that holds, is the supreme value of life.
+
+ "As God liveth, who hath taken away my right,
+ And the Almighty who hath vexed my soul;
+ Surely my lips shall not speak unrighteousness.
+ Till I die, I will not put away my integrity from me,
+ My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go."[52]
+
+Another suggestion of the book is that evil comes to prove man's
+sincerity: "Does Job serve God for naught?" and from that standpoint the
+answer is, Yes; he does. "There is a disinterested love of God."[53] In
+this setting, also, the experience of suffering produces a shifting of
+values from the extrinsic to the internal.
+
+The other treatment of the problem of suffering is found in the latter
+half of Isaiah. It finds an interpretation of the problem by a deeper
+view of social interdependence, in which the old tribal solidarity is
+given, as it were, a transfigured meaning. The individualistic
+interpretation of suffering was that it meant personal guilt. "We did
+esteem him stricken of God." This breaks down. The suffering servant is
+not wicked. He is suffering for others--in some sense. "He hath borne
+our griefs and carried our sorrows." The conception here reached of an
+interrelation which involves that the suffering of the good may be due
+to the sin or the suffering of others, and that the assumption of this
+burden marks the higher type of ethical relation, is one of the finest
+products of Israel's religion. As made central in the Christian
+conception of the Cross, it has furnished one of the great elements in
+the modern social consciousness.
+
+
+Sec. 3. THE MORAL CONCEPTIONS ATTAINED
+
+The moral conceptions which were thus worked out may now be brought
+together for convenient summary under the two heads of the "How" and the
+"What" indicated in our introductory chapter. Under the first we specify
+the conceptions resulting (1) from recognition of a standard of right,
+and an ideal of good, (2) from free choice of this ideal. Under the What
+we indicate the content of the ideal on both its personal and its social
+sides.
+
+=1. Righteousness and Sin.=--Righteousness and sin were not exact or
+contradictory opposites. The righteous man was not necessarily sinless.
+Nevertheless, the consciousness of sin, like a dark background, brought
+out more emphatically the conception of righteousness. This conception
+had its two aspects, derived from the civil and the religious spheres of
+life--spheres which were not separate for the Hebrew. On the one hand,
+the just or righteous respected the moral order in human society. The
+unrighteous was unjust, extortionate, cruel. He did not respect the
+rights of others. On the other hand, the righteous man was in "right"
+relation to God. This right relation might be tested by the divine law;
+but as God was conceived as a living person, loving his people,
+"forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin," it might also be measured
+by an essential harmony of spirit with the divine will. There was the
+"righteousness of the law," and the "righteousness of faith." The first
+implies complete obedience; the second implies that in spite of
+transgressions there is room for atonement[54] or reconciliation. As the
+first means ethically the testing of conduct by a moral standard, a
+"moral law," so the second stands for the thought that character is
+rather a matter of spirit and of constant reconstruction than of exact
+conformity once for all to a hard and fast rule. Specific acts may fail
+to conform, but the life is more than a series of specific acts. The
+measurement of conduct by the law has its value to quicken a sense of
+shortcoming, but alone it may also lead either to self-righteous
+complacency or to despair. The possibility of new adjustment, of
+renewal, of "a new birth," means liberation and life. As such it may be
+contrasted with the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, the causality from which
+there is no escape but by the extinction of desire.
+
+"Sin" had likewise its various aspects. It stood for missing the mark,
+for violating the rules of clean and unclean; but it stood also for
+personal disobedience to the divine will, for violation of the moral
+order of Israel. In this latter sense, as identified by the prophets
+with social unrighteousness, it is a significant ethical conception. It
+brings out the point that evil and wrongdoing are not merely individual
+matters, not merely failures; they offend against a law which is above
+the private self, against a moral order which has its rightful demands
+upon us.
+
+=2. Personal Responsibility.=--The transition from group to individual
+responsibility was thoroughly worked out by the prophets, even if they
+were not able to carry full popular assent. In early days the whole kin
+was treated as guilty for the offense of the kinsman. Achan's case has
+already been cited; and in the case of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, "Their
+wives and their sons and their little ones" were all treated alike.[55]
+In like manner, the family of the righteous man shared in the divine
+favor. The later prophets pronounced a radical change. The proverb, "The
+fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on
+edge," is no more to be used, declares Ezekiel, speaking for Jehovah.
+"The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear the
+iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of
+the son;" and it is especially interesting to note that the Lord is
+represented as pleading with the people that this is fair, while the
+people say, "Wherefore doth not the son bear the iniquity of the
+father?" The solidarity of the family resisted the individualism of the
+prophetic conception, and five hundred years after Ezekiel the traces of
+the older conception still lingered in the question, "Who did sin, this
+man or his parents, that he was born blind?"[56] For another aspect of
+responsibility, viz., intent, as distinct from accidental action,[57]
+we have certain transitional steps shown in the interesting "cities of
+refuge"[58] for the accidental homicide in which he might be safe from
+the avenger of blood, provided he was swift enough of foot to reach a
+city of refuge before he was caught. But the fullest development in the
+ethics of responsibility along this line seemed to take the form
+described under the next head.
+
+=3. Sincerity, and Purity of Motive.=--The Hebrew had a philosophy of
+conduct which made it chiefly a matter of "wisdom" and "folly," but the
+favorite term of prophet and psalmist to symbolize the central principle
+was rather "the heart." This term stood for the voluntary disposition,
+especially in its inner springs of emotions and sentiments, affections
+and passions. The Greek was inclined to look askance at this side of
+life, to regard the emotions as perturbations of the soul, and to seek
+their control by reason, or even their repression or elimination. The
+Hebrew found a more positive value in the emotional side of conduct, and
+at the same time worked out the conception of a sincere and
+thoroughgoing interest as lying at the very root of all right life. The
+religious influence was as elsewhere the important agency. "Man looketh
+on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart,"
+"If I regard iniquity in my heart, Jehovah will not hear me," are
+characteristic expressions. A divine vision, which penetrates to the
+deepest springs of purpose and feeling, will not tolerate pretense. Nor
+will it be satisfied with anything less than entire devotion: the
+Israelite must serve Jehovah with all his heart. Outer conformity is
+not enough: "Rend your heart and not your garments." It is the "pure in
+heart" who have the beatific vision. Not external contacts, or
+ceremonial "uncleanness," on which earlier ritual had insisted, defile
+the man, but rather what proceeds from the heart. For the heart is the
+source of evil thoughts and evil deeds.[59] And conversely, the
+interests, the emotions, and enthusiasms which make up the man's deepest
+self do not spring forth in a vacuum; they go with the steadfast purpose
+and bent, with the self of achievement. "Where your treasure is, there
+will your heart be also."
+
+Purity of motive in a full moral consciousness means not only (formal)
+sincerity, but sincere love of good and right. This was not stated by
+the Hebrew in abstract terms, but in the personal language of love to
+God. In early days there had been more or less of external motives in
+the appeals of the law and the prophets. Fear of punishment, hope of
+reward, blessings in basket and store, curses in land and field, were
+used to induce fidelity. But some of the prophets sought a deeper view,
+which seems to have been reached in the bitterness of human experience.
+Hosea's wife had forsaken him, and should not the love of people to
+Jehovah be as personal and sincere as that of wife to husband? She had
+said, "I will go after my lovers _that give me my bread and my water, my
+wood and my flax, my oil and my drink_."[60] Is not serving God for hire
+a form of prostitution?[61] The calamities of the nation tested the
+disinterestedness of its fidelity. They were the challenge of the
+Adversary, "Doth Job fear God for naught?" And a remnant at least
+attested that fidelity did not depend on rewards. The moral maxim that
+virtue is its own reward is put in personal terms by the prophet after
+the exile:
+
+ "For though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be
+ in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields
+ shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and
+ there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the
+ Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."[62]
+
+=4. The Conception of "Life" as an Ideal.=--The content of Israel's
+moral ideal on its individual side was expressed by the term "Life." All
+the blessings that the leader of Israel could offer his people were
+summarized in the phrase, "I have set before you life and death;
+wherefore choose life." The same final standard of value appears in the
+question of Jesus, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world
+and lose his own life?" When we inquire what life meant, so far as the
+early sources give us data for judgment, we must infer it to have been
+measured largely in terms of material comfort and prosperity,
+accompanied by the satisfaction of standing in right relations to the
+god and ruler. This latter element was so closely united with the first
+that it was practically identical with it. If the people were prosperous
+they might assume that they were right; if they suffered they were
+surely wrong. Good and evil were, therefore, in this stage, measured
+largely in terms of pleasure and pain. The end to be sought and the
+ideal to be kept in mind was that of long and prosperous life--"in her
+right hand length of days, in her left hand riches and honor."
+Intellectual and aesthetic interests were not prized as such. The
+knowledge which was valued was the wisdom for the conduct of life, of
+which the beginning and crown was "the fear of the Lord." The art which
+was valued was sacred song or poetry. But the ideal values which came to
+bulk most in the expanding conception of "life" were those of personal
+relation. Family ties, always strong among Oriental peoples, gained in
+purity. Love between the sexes was refined and idealized.[63] National
+feeling took on added dignity, because of the consciousness of a divine
+mission. Above all, personal union with God, as voiced in the psalms and
+prophets, became the desire. He, and not his gifts, was the supreme
+good. He was the "fountain of life." His likeness would satisfy. In his
+light the faithful would see light.
+
+But even more significant than any specific content put into the term
+"life," was _what was involved in the idea itself_. The legalists had
+attempted to define conduct by a code, but there was an inherent
+vitality in the ideal of life, which refused to be measured or bounded.
+The "words of eternal life," which began the new moral movement of
+Christianity, had perhaps little definite content to the fishermen, and
+it is not easy to say just what they meant in moral terms to the writer
+of the Fourth Gospel who uses the phrase so often. With Paul, life as
+the realm of the spirit gets definition as it stands over against the
+"death" of sin and lust. But with all writers of Old or New Testament,
+whatever content it had, life meant above all the suggestion of
+something beyond, the gleam and dynamic power of a future not yet
+understood. It meant to Paul a progress which was governed not by law or
+"rudiments," but by freedom. Such a life would set itself new and higher
+standards; the laws and customs that had obtained were felt to be
+outgrown. The significance of early Christianity as a moral movement,
+aside from its elements of personal devotion and social unity to be
+noticed below, was the spirit of movement, the sense of newly forming
+horizons beyond the old, the conviction that as sons of God its
+followers had boundless possibilities, that they were not the children
+of the bond woman, but of the free.
+
+=5. The Social Ideal of Justice, Love, and Peace.=--We have seen how
+this ideal was framed in the setting of a kingdom of God. At first
+national, it became universal, and with a fraternity which the world is
+far from having realized, it was to know "neither Jew nor Greek, bond
+nor free." At first military, it took on with seer and psalmist the form
+of a reign of peace and justice. After the fierce and crude powers
+typified by the lion and the bear and the leopard had passed, the seer
+saw a kingdom represented by a human form. Such a kingdom it was that
+should not pass away. Such was the kingdom "not of this world" which
+Jesus presented as his message. Membership in this moral kingdom was for
+the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the merciful, the peace-makers,
+the hungerers after righteousness. Greatness in this moral community was
+to depend on service, not on power. The king should not fail till he had
+"set justice in the earth." He should "deliver the needy, and the poor."
+
+Certain features of this ideal order have since found embodiment in
+social and political structures; certain features remain for the future.
+Certain periods in history have transferred the ideal entirely to
+another world, regarding human society as hopelessly given over to evil.
+Such theories find a morality possible only by renouncing society. The
+Hebrews presented rather the ideal of a moral order on earth, of a
+control of all life by right, of a realization of good, and of a
+completeness of life. It was an ideal not dreamed out in ecstatic
+visions of pure fancy, but worked out in struggle and suffering, in
+confidence that moral efforts are not hopeless or destined to defeat.
+The ideal order is to be made real. The divine kingdom is to come, the
+divine will to be done "_on earth_ as it is in heaven."
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+The works of W. R. Smith (_Religion of the Semites_) and Barton (_A
+Sketch of Semitic Origins_) already mentioned. Schultz, _Old Testament
+Theology_, tr. _1892_; Marti, _Religion of the Old Testament_, tr.
+1907; Budde, _Religion of the Old Testament to the Exile_, 1899; H. P.
+Smith, _Old Testament History_, 1903; W. R. Smith, _The Prophets of
+Israel_, 1895; Bruce, _Ethics of the Old Testament_, 1895; Peake,
+_Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament_, 1904; Royce, _The Problem
+of Job_ in Studies of Good and Evil, 1898; Pratt, _The Psychology of
+Religious Belief_, 1907, ch. v.; Harnack, _What is Christianity?_ tr.
+1901; Cone, _Rich and Poor in the New Testament_, 1902; Pfleiderer,
+_Primitive Christianity_, tr. 1906; Matthews, _The Social Teaching of
+Jesus_, 1897; Wendt, _The Teaching of Jesus_, 1899; Pfleiderer,
+_Paulinism_, 1891; Cone, _Paul, The Man, the Missionary, and the
+Teacher_, 1898; Beyschlag, _New Testament Theology_, tr. 1895; The
+_Encyclopedia Biblica_, _The Jewish Encyclopedia_, and Hastings'
+_Dictionary_, have numerous valuable articles.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] M. Arnold, "Hebraism and Hellenism," in _Culture and Anarchy_, ch.
+iv.
+
+[49] The Hebrew and Greek words for sin both mean "to miss."
+
+[50] The general function of punishment as bringing home to the
+individual the consciousness of guilt and thus awakening the action of
+conscience, has an illustration in Shakespere's conception of the prayer
+of Henry Vth before the battle of Agincourt. In ordinary life the bluff
+King Harry devotes little time to meditation upon his own sin or that of
+his father, but on the eve of possible calamity the old crime rises
+fresh before him. Stimulated by the thought of an actual penalty to be
+imposed by a recognized authority, he cried: "Not to-day, O Lord! Oh,
+not to-day! Think not upon the fault my father made in compassing the
+crown."
+
+[51] Recent excavations are held to confirm the prophets on this (Marti,
+_Religion of the Old Testament_, pp. 78 ff.).
+
+[52] Job 27:1-6.
+
+[53] Genung, _Job, The Epic of the Inner Life_.
+
+[54] See _Atonement in Literature and in Life_, by Charles A. Dinsmore.
+Boston, 1906.
+
+[55] Numbers 16, Joshua 7.
+
+[56] John 9:2.
+
+[57] Hammurabi's code showed a disregard of intent which would make
+surgery a dangerous profession: "If a physician operate on a man for a
+severe wound with a bronze lancet and cause the man's death; or open an
+abscess [in the eye] of a man with a bronze lancet and destroy the man's
+eye, they shall cut off his fingers." Early German and English law is
+just as naive. If a weapon was left to be repaired at a smith's and was
+then caught up or stolen and used to do harm, the original owner was
+held responsible.
+
+[58] Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 19, Joshua 20.
+
+[59] Mark 7:1-23.
+
+[60] Hosea 2:5.
+
+[61] H. P. Smith, _Old Testament History_, p. 222.
+
+[62] Habakkuk 3:17, 18.
+
+[63] The Song of Songs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS
+
+
+Sec. 1. THE FUNDAMENTAL NOTES
+
+=Convention versus Nature.=--The Hebrew moral life was developed under
+the relation, first of the people, then of the individuals, to God,--a
+relation at once of union and of conflict. It was out of the relation of
+the individual to social traditions and political order that the Greek
+came to full consciousness of moral law on the one hand, and a moral
+personality on the other. And just as in Jewish life the law and the
+prophets (or, later, the "law and the gospel") stood for the conflicting
+forces, so in Greek life the opposition between the authority of the
+group, embodied in custom and institutions, on the one hand, and the
+urging claims of developing personality, manifest in both intelligence
+and desire, on the other, found expression in contrasted terms. The
+authority of the group embodied in customs and institutions, came to be
+regarded by the radicals as relatively external, artificial, and rigid.
+It was dubbed "convention," or "institution" (_thesis_, what is set up).
+The rapidly developing intelligence challenged the merely customary and
+traditional; the increasing individuality challenged the superior
+authority of the group, especially when this manifested itself
+apparently in a government of force. Personal intelligence and personal
+feeling asserted a more elemental claim, felt themselves rooted in a
+more original source, and called this source "nature" (_physis_). Social
+tradition and authority, individual reason and feeling, thus confronted
+each other as "convention" and "nature." It was a struggle which has its
+analogy in the development of many a young man or young woman who is
+emerging from parental control to self-direction. But in Greek life more
+distinctly than elsewhere we see the steps of the process as a civic and
+not merely an individual development. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
+presented this conflict of the individual with law or destiny as the
+great, oft-repeated tragedy of human life. Aristophanes mocked with
+bitter satire the "new" views. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cynics,
+Cyrenaics, Epicureans, and Stoics took part in the theoretical
+discussions.
+
+=Measure.=--The fundamental note of all Greek life, before, during, and
+after this development, was _Measure_, _Order_, _Proportion_. This note
+found expression in religion, science, art, and conduct. Among their
+gods, the Greeks set Moira, "Destiny," and Themis, "Custom," "Law,"
+"Right." They found order in the universe, which on this account they
+called the "cosmos." They expressed it in their arts, especially in
+architecture, sculpture, the choral dance, and the more highly developed
+tragedy or lyric:
+
+ "And all life is full of them [of form and measure]," says Plato,
+ "as well as every constructive and creative art. And surely the
+ art of the painter and every other creative and constructive art
+ are full of them,--weaving, embroidery, architecture, and every
+ kind of manufacture; also nature, animal and vegetable,--in all of
+ them there is grace or the absence of grace; and if our youth are
+ to do their work in life, must they not make these graces and
+ harmonies their perpetual aim?"
+
+The best people, the "gentlemen," were styled kaloika-gathoi--"fair and
+good." The motto at the Delphic shrine was, "Nothing in excess."
+Insolent disregard of propriety, "hybris," was the quality most
+denounced by the early moralizing poets. Tityus, Tantalus, and Sisyphus,
+the three special subjects of divine punishment, suffered the penalty
+of insatiate desire, or limits overstepped. And after criticism and
+individualism had done their work, Plato's conception of justice,
+Aristotle's doctrine of the "mean," the Stoic maxim of "life according
+to nature," have but discovered a deeper significance for the
+fundamental law of Greek life.
+
+=The Good and the Just.=--The conceptions of the Good and the Just are
+developed from the two notes just presented. The motive for challenge to
+established institutions was the awakening desire of the individual to
+seek his own good and to live his own life. Commerce was bringing a
+great variety of rewards to the shrewd merchant and a great variety of
+goods to evoke and gratify wants. Slavery set free the citizen from the
+need of manual labor and gave him leisure to cultivate his tastes. The
+forces of individualism, described in Chapter V., were all at work to
+bring the process and object of desire to consciousness. Moreover, the
+term "good" was also in use to mark the popular ideal. It was applied to
+what we should call the "successful" men of the day. In present life our
+term "good" has become so definitely moral that probably most young
+persons would hesitate to say that they have it as their ideal to become
+good, although few would hesitate to say that they wish to be capable
+and successful. For social and political recognition seems to be based
+rather on achievement of striking results than upon what is technically
+called "goodness." But in Greece moral goodness was not used to
+designate "character" as contrasted with "results." The "good man" was
+like the "good lawyer" or "good athlete" or "good soldier," the man who
+was efficient and conspicuous. It was in the process which we are to
+trace that the ambiguities and deeper meanings of the term came to
+definition.
+
+The terms Just and Justice were not of course merely synonyms for order
+and measure. They had likewise the social significance coming from the
+courts and the assembly. They stood for the control side of life, as
+Good stood for its aspect of valuation and desire. But as compared with
+the Hebrew conception of righteousness, they meant much less a
+conformity to a law divine or human which had been already set up as
+standard, and much more, an ordering, a regulating, a harmonizing. The
+rational element of measure or order was more prominent than the
+personal note of authority. Hence we shall find Plato passing easily
+back and forth between justice or order in the individual and justice or
+order in the State. On the other hand, the radicals of the day could
+seize upon the legal usage and declare that Justice or the Law was
+purely a matter of self-interest or class interest.
+
+
+Sec. 2. INTELLECTUAL FORCES OF INDIVIDUALISM
+
+=The Scientific Spirit.=--The older standards were embodied in religious
+and political ideas and institutions; the agency which was to
+disentangle and bring into clear consciousness the standards _as such_,
+was the scientific spirit, the knowledge and reflection of an
+intellectual people at a period of extraordinarily rapid development.
+The commercial life, the free intercourse with other peoples and
+civilizations, especially in the colonies, the absence of any generally
+dominating political authority, the architectural problems suggested by
+a beauty-loving people,--all promoted alertness and flexibility of mind.
+
+In a concrete form, this rational character had already found expression
+in the quality of Greek art. Reference has already been made to the
+formal side of Greek art, with its embodiment of rhythm and measure; the
+subject-matter shows the same element. The Greek world, as contrasted
+with the barbarian world, was conceived by the Greek as the realm of
+light contrasted with darkness; the national God, Apollo, embodied this
+ideal of light and reason, and his fitting symbol was the sun. The
+great Pan-Athenaic procession, as reproduced in the Parthenon frieze,
+celebrated the triumph of Greek light and intelligence over barbarian
+darkness. Athena, goddess of wisdom, was a fitting guardian of the most
+Greek of all Greek cities. Greek tragedy, beginning in hymns of worship,
+soon passed over into a portrayal of the all-controlling laws of life,
+as these are brought into stronger relief by a tragic collision with
+human agents.
+
+It was, however, in the realm of science that this intellectual genius
+found field for expression in a clearly conscious manner. Almost all our
+sciences were originated by the Greeks, and they were particularly
+successful in those which called for abstract thinking in the highest
+degree. Euclid's geometry and Aristotle's logic are conspicuous
+illustrations of this ability. The most general conceptions of natural
+science: e.g., the conception of the atom and the whole materialistic
+theory of the universe; the conception of evolution, meaning by this the
+process of change according to an all-controlling law; the conception of
+natural selection, according to which those organisms survive which are
+fitted for their environment,--all these were the product of the keen
+intelligence of the Greeks. Nor was their scientific ability expended
+upon external nature alone. The conception of history as more than a
+series of events, the comparative method in the study of political
+systems, the analysis of literary and artistic effects, attest the same
+clarity of mind and the same eager search for the most general laws of
+every aspect of experience.
+
+=Science and Religion.=--When, now, this scientific mind began to
+consider the practical guidance of life, the older political and
+religious controls presented serious difficulty. The gods were supposed
+to reward the good and punish the evil,[64] but how could this be
+reconciled with their practices? Aeschylus attempted a purifying and
+elevating of the divine ideal, similar to that which Israel's conception
+underwent in the work of the prophets. He magnified the dignity and
+providential government of Zeus, which, though dark, is yet just and
+certain. But the great obstacle was that the earlier and cruder
+conceptions of the gods had been fixed in literary form; the tales of
+Cronos's impiety to Uranos, of Zeus' deceitful messenger and marital
+unfaithfulness, of Aphrodite's amours, and Hermes' gift of theft, were
+all written in Hesiod and Homer. The cruder conceptions of the gods had
+thus become too firmly fixed in the popular imagination to be capable of
+becoming the bearers of advancing ethical ideals, and so not merely the
+irreverent scoffer, but the serious tragedian, Euripides, and the
+religious idealist, Plato, do not hesitate to challenge boldly the older
+conceptions, or to demand a revision of all this literature before it
+comes into the hands of the young.
+
+=Social Standards.=--The social standards of propriety and honorable
+conduct were likewise brought in question by advancing intelligence. The
+word which summed up the early Greek idea of the best type was
+_Kalokagathos_. This word was very nearly the equivalent of our English
+word "gentleman." It combined the elements of birth, ability, and
+refinement, but in the earlier usage the emphasis was upon the fact of
+birth, even as our terms "generous," "noble," "gentle," originally
+referred to membership in a "gens." Socrates investigated the current
+estimates and found that the people who were generally regarded as the
+"respectable," or, as we should say, the "best" people of Athens, were
+not necessarily either "fine" or "good" in person or character; the
+term had come to be one of "convention," without basis in reason. Plato
+goes still further and with a direct application of the rational
+standard to the current estimates, pokes fun at the conventional
+judgment of what constitutes the respectable gentleman.
+
+ "When they sing the praises of family and say that some one is a
+ gentleman because he has had seven generations of wealthy
+ ancestors, he [the philosopher] thinks that their sentiments only
+ betray the dullness and narrowness of vision of those who utter
+ them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to
+ consider that every man has had thousands and thousands of
+ progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and
+ slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, many times over. And when some
+ one boasts of a catalogue of twenty-five ancestors, and goes back
+ to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand his
+ poverty of ideas. Why is he unable to calculate that Amphitryon
+ had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was
+ such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth, and so on? He is
+ amused at the notion that he cannot do a sum, and thinks that a
+ little arithmetic would have got rid of his senseless vanity."
+
+The type of life that is really noble or fine and good is to be found in
+the seeker for true beauty and goodness. External beauty of form and
+appearance has its value in kindling the desire for the higher forms of
+beauty,--beauty of mind, of institutions and laws, of science,--until
+finally the conception of the true beauty is reached. This true beauty,
+as distinct from the particular beauties, and true good, as distinct
+from seeming or partial good, are discovered only by the "philosopher,"
+the seeker for wisdom.
+
+=Popular Morals.=--Nor did the more positively recognized types of moral
+excellence fare better. As recognized in common life, they were courage,
+prudence or moderation, holiness or a certain respect for the serious
+things of life, and justice: but none of these, Plato argues, is really
+an independent excellence, apart from conscious and intelligent action.
+Courage, for example, is not really courage unless one knows and
+foresees the danger in all its strength; otherwise there is merely
+reckless bravery. Prudence or moderation, to be really excellent, must
+be measured by wisdom. Even justice cannot be regarded as at bottom
+distinct from wisdom, the true measure of all the relations of life.
+
+=Science and the Laws.=--The political control was likewise involved in
+question by the same forces of intelligence which had challenged the
+religious authority. The frequent changes of government, and the more or
+less arbitrary measures that were oftentimes adopted, were adapted to
+awaken doubt as to the absolute right and authority of the laws. The
+despot who gained control in many a Greek city was not bound by ties of
+blood to all members of the community, nor did he govern in accordance
+with the ancestral traditions of the tribe. The political authority
+frequently clashed with the instincts and traditions of family and
+kinship. Under such circumstances, the political authority was likely to
+be challenged and its constraining power stretched to the breaking
+point. So in the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, the command of the ruler is
+opposed to the "higher law" of kinship and nature. The law of man is not
+the law of nature or of God. To disobey this conventional law of man is
+to be guilty of "holiest crime." The old standards, both of religion and
+of political life, crumbled before the analysis of the developing
+intelligence, and the demand for some standard could be met only by the
+intelligence itself. To question the old must inevitably seem irreverent
+and anarchical. Some questioned merely to doubt; others, and of these
+Socrates was the leader, questioned in order to find a firmer basis, a
+more authoritative standard. But naturally the popular mind did not
+distinguish between these two classes of questioners, and so Socrates
+perished, not merely as the victim of unjust popular calumny, but as
+the victim of the tragedy of moral progress, of the change from the
+established to the new.
+
+
+Sec. 3. COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL INDIVIDUALISM
+
+A further line of development joined forces with this growth of
+intelligence, to emphasize the problem of moral control, and to set the
+individual with his standards over against the objective standards of
+society. This was the rapidly growing consciousness of individual goods
+and interests. The commercial life, with its possibilities of individual
+property, the rapid changes of political life, with the rise of
+individuals to power and privilege, the increasing opportunities which a
+high civilization brought both men and women for personal enjoyment and
+gratification of rapidly increasing wants, all tended to make the
+individual seek his own good, and to shift the emphasis of life from the
+question, What is proper, or honorable? to the question, What is
+_good_--good for _me_?
+
+=Class Interests.=--The conviction that the authority of government and
+law was largely dictated by the very considerations of private interests
+which they were supposed to overrule and eliminate, made the situation
+more acute. For the Greek States were no longer groups with common
+interests. The growth of capital, the corresponding eagerness for gain,
+the formation of distinct classes, each intent on its interests,
+supplanted the older, more homogeneous State. "The whole development of
+the political life of the Hellenic republics depended ultimately on the
+decision of the question, which of the different social classes--the
+capitalistic minority, the middle class, or the poor--should obtain the
+dominant place." Aristotle defines an oligarchy as a State governed in
+the interest of the rich; a democracy, as a State governed in the
+interest of the poor. Another contemporary writer explains a democracy
+as consulting the interests of the democrats, the "lower classes," and
+considers this a matter of course, "for if the rich had the say, they
+would do what was good for themselves but not for the multitude."
+Naturally such dominance by classes called out vigorous criticisms upon
+the laws and standards so established. The aristocratic minority
+inveighed against "custom" or conventions which would tame the strong to
+the level of the weak. Nature demands rather the "survival of the
+fittest," i.e., of the strong. The enlightened spectator of the game of
+government, on the other hand, declares that all laws are made in the
+interest of ruling classes. The reader of current criticisms on laws and
+courts will see how close is the parallel to present complaints. We have
+to-day the same two classes: One inveighs against governmental
+interference with the right to combine, to contract, and in general to
+get from the earth or from men, women, and children all that superior
+power and shrewdness can possibly extract. The other complains that
+legislatures are owned by wealth, that judges are appointed from
+corporation lawyers, that common law is a survival of ancient
+aristocratic status, and that for these reasons labor can get no
+justice.
+
+Let us first hear the plea for inequality:
+
+ "Custom and nature are generally at variance with one another; ...
+ for by the rule of nature, that only is the more disgraceful which
+ is the greater evil; as, for example, to suffer injustice; but by
+ the rule of custom, to do evil is the more disgraceful. For this
+ suffering of injustice is not the part of a man, but of a slave,
+ who indeed had better die than live; for when he is wronged and
+ trampled upon, he is unable to help himself or any other about
+ whom he cares. The reason, as I conceive, is that the makers of
+ laws are the many weak; and they make laws and distribute praises
+ and censures with a view to themselves and their own interests;
+ and they terrify the mightier sort of men, and those who are able
+ to get the better of them, in order that they may not get the
+ better of them; and they say that dishonesty is shameful and
+ unjust; meanwhile, when they speak of injustice, they desire to
+ have more than their neighbors, for knowing their own
+ inferiority, they are only too glad of equality. And therefore,
+ this seeking to have more than the many is conventionally said to
+ be shameful and unjust, and is called injustice, whereas nature
+ herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than
+ the worse, the more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she
+ shows, among men as well as among animals, and indeed among whole
+ cities and races, that justice consists in the superior ruling
+ over and having more than the inferior. For on what principle of
+ justice did Xerxes invade Hellas, or his father the Scythians?
+ (not to speak of numberless other examples). They, I conceive, act
+ according to nature; yes, and according to the law of nature; not
+ perhaps, according to that artificial law which we frame and
+ fashion, taking the best and strongest of us from their youth
+ upwards, and taming them like young lions, and charming them with
+ the sound of the voice, saying to them that with equality they
+ must be content, and that this is the honorable and the just. But
+ if there were a man who had sufficient force, he would shake off
+ and break through and escape from all this; he would trample under
+ foot all our formulas and spells and charms, and all our laws,
+ sinning against nature; the slave would rise in rebellion and be
+ lord over us, and the light of natural justice would shine forth.
+ And this I take to be the lesson of Pindar, in the poem in which
+ he says that
+
+ "'Law is the King of all, mortals as well as immortals!'
+
+ This, as he says:
+
+ "'Makes might to be right, and does violence with exalted hand; as
+ I infer from the deeds of Heracles, for without buying them----'
+
+ "I do not remember the exact words, but the meaning is, that he
+ carried off the oxen of Geryon without buying them, and without
+ their being given to him by Geryon, according to the law of
+ natural right, and that the oxen and other possessions of the
+ weaker and inferior properly belong to the stronger and superior."
+ (PLATO, _Gorgias_, 482-4.)
+
+The essence of this view is, therefore, that might is right, and that no
+legislation or conventional code ought to stand in the way of the free
+assertion of genius and power. It is similar to the teaching of
+Nietzsche in recent times.
+
+But the other side had its complaint also. The laws are made by the
+"shepherds" of the people, as Homer called them. But who is now so
+simple as to suppose that the "shepherds" fatten or tend the sheep with
+a view to the good of the sheep, and not to their own good? All laws and
+governments really exist for the interest of the ruling class.[65] They
+rest upon convention or "institution," not upon "nature."
+
+=Why Obey Laws?=--And if laws and social codes are but class
+legislation, conventional, why obey them? The older Greek life had felt
+the motives described in Chapter IV., though it had embodied them in
+symbolism and imagery. The Nemesis that followed the guilty, the
+Erinnys, or avenging goddesses, were the personified wrath of outraged
+law; _aid[=o]s_, respect or reverence, _aischyne_, regard for public
+opinion, were the inner feelings. But with the advancing tide of
+intellectual criticism and individual interest, these sanctions were
+discredited; feelings of personal enjoyment demanded recognition, and
+the moralists at first appealed to this. "Parents and tutors are always
+telling their sons and their wards that they are to be just; but only
+not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of character and
+reputation." But if the only reason for justice is reputation, there
+might seem to be no sufficient reason for taking the thorny path, if
+there be an easier. Will not the youth say, in the words of Pindar:
+
+ "Can I by justice, or by crooked ways of deceit, ascend a loftier
+ tower which may be a fortress to me all my days?"[66]
+
+And if I decide that the crooked way is the easier, why shall I not
+follow it? My party, or my "union", or my lawyer will stand by and see
+me through:
+
+ "But I hear some one exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness
+ is often difficult; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy.
+ Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we would be happy,
+ to be the path along which we should proceed. With a view to
+ concealment we will establish secret brotherhoods and political
+ clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who teach the art of
+ persuading courts and assemblies; and so, partly by persuasion and
+ partly by force, I shall make unlawful gains and not be punished.
+ Still I hear a voice saying that the gods cannot be deceived,
+ neither can they be compelled. But what if there are no gods? or,
+ suppose them to have no care of human things, why in either case
+ should we mind about concealment?"[67]
+
+Besides, the greatest prizes, not only in material goods, but even in
+the line of reputation, seemed to fall to the individualist if he could
+only act on a sufficiently large scale. He could then be both prosperous
+and "respectable." If he could steal the government, or, in modern
+phrase, bribe a legislature to elect him to Congress, pass special
+legislation, or grant a franchise, he could not merely escape
+punishment, but be honored by his fellows.
+
+ "I am speaking of injustice on a large scale, in which the
+ advantage of the unjust is most apparent, and my meaning will be
+ most clearly seen in that highest form of injustice, the
+ perpetrator of which is the happiest of men, as the sufferers of
+ these who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable--I mean
+ tyranny which by fraud and force takes away the property of
+ others, not retail but wholesale; comprehending in one things
+ sacred as well as profane, private and public, for any one of
+ which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating them singly,
+ he would be punished and incur great dishonor; for they who are
+ guilty of any of these crimes in single instances are called
+ robbers of temples and man-stealers and burglars and swindlers and
+ thieves. But when a man has taken away the money of the citizens
+ and made slaves of them, then instead of these dishonorable names,
+ he is called happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by
+ all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice.
+ For injustice is censured because the censurers are afraid of
+ suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing
+ injustice. And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when on
+ a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than
+ justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the
+ stronger, whereas injustice is a man's own profit and
+ interest."[68]
+
+
+Sec. 4. INDIVIDUALISM AND ETHICAL THEORY
+
+=The Question Formulated.=--The outcome of this first movement was thus
+twofold: (a) It forced the questions, "What is just?" "What is good?"
+into clear and definite consciousness. The very necessity of comparison
+and of getting a _general standard_, forced the inquirer to disentangle
+the concepts previously embodied in customs and laws. But when the
+essence was thus found and freed, or disembodied, as it were, the custom
+seemed lifeless, merely "convention", and the essence often quite
+opposed to the form. (b) It emphasized the _personal interest_, the
+affective or emotional side of conduct, and made the moral problem take
+the form, "What is the good?"
+
+Furthermore, two positive theses have been established by the very
+forces which have been active in disintegrating the old status. If
+custom no longer suffices, then reason must set the standard; if society
+cannot prescribe the good to the individual, then the individual must
+find some method of defining and seeking it for himself unless he is to
+make shipwreck of his whole venture.
+
+We may bring both aspects of the problem under the conception of
+"nature", as opposed to convention or institution. Convention is indeed
+outgrown, nature is the imperious authority. But granting that nature is
+rightful master, is "nature" to be sought in the primitive beginnings,
+or in the fullest development? in a life of isolation, or in a life of
+society? in the desires and passions, or in reason and a harmonious
+life?
+
+Or, stating the same problem otherwise: granting that reason must fix
+the measure, and the individual must define and seek the good for
+himself, is the good to be found in isolation, or is it to be sought in
+human society with its bonds of family, friendship, and justice? Is the
+end to be pleasure, found in the gratification of desires, irrespective
+of their quality, and is it the business of reason merely to measure one
+gratification with another and get the most? or is wisdom itself a good,
+and is it better to satisfy certain impulses rather than others? i.e.,
+shall reason form the standard as well as apply it?
+
+These contrasting solutions of the problem of life may be stated then
+under the two pairs of antitheses: (1) The Individual _versus_ the
+Social; (2) The Immediate Satisfaction _versus_ an Ideal Standard, at
+once higher and more permanent.
+
+=Typical Solutions.=--Poets, radicals, sensualists, individualists of no
+philosophic school, as well as the historic philosophic schools,
+contributed to the discussion and solution of these problems. All sought
+the "natural" life; but it is noteworthy that all the philosophic
+schools claimed Socrates as their master, and all sought to justify
+their answers by reason, all made the wise man the ideal. The Cynics and
+Cyrenaics, Stoics and Epicureans, Plato and Aristotle represent the
+various philosophic answers to these alternatives. Cynics and Cyrenaics
+both answer (1) by individualism, but diverge on (2), the Cynics placing
+emphasis on independence from wants, the Cyrenaics on gratification of
+wants. Stoics and Epicureans represent broader and more social
+development of the same principles, the Stoics seeking a cosmopolitan
+state, the Epicureans a community of friends; the Stoics emphasizing
+reason or wisdom as the only good; the Epicureans finding for wisdom a
+field in the selection of refined pleasures. Plato and Aristotle, with
+varying emphasis but essential agreement, insist (1) that the good of
+man is found in fulfilling completely his highest possible functions,
+which is possible only in society; (2) that wisdom is not merely to
+apply a standard but to form one; that while neither reason alone nor
+feeling alone is enough for life, yet that pleasure is rather for life
+than life for pleasure. Finally, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, as
+well as the tragic poets, contribute successively to the formation of an
+ideal of responsible character.
+
+=Early Individualistic Theories.=--Cynics and Cyrenaics were alike
+individualists. Society, they held, is artificial. Its so-called goods,
+on the one hand, and its restrictions on the other, are to be rejected
+unless they favor the individual's happiness. Independence was the mark
+of wisdom among the Cynics; Antisthenes, proud of the holes in his
+garment; Diogenes, dwelling in his tent or sleeping in the street,
+scoffing at the current "conventions" of decency, asking from Philip
+only that he would get out of his sunshine--are the characteristic
+figures. The "state of nature" was opposed to the State. Only the
+primitive wants were recognized as natural. "Art and science, family and
+native land, were indifferent. Wealth and refinement, fame and honor,
+seemed as superfluous as those enjoyments of the senses which went
+beyond the satisfaction of the natural wants of hunger and sex."
+
+The Cyrenaics, or hedonists (_h[=e]don[=e]_, pleasure), gave a different
+turn to wisdom. The good is pleasure, and wisdom is found in that
+prudence which selects the purest and most intense. Hence, if this is
+the good, why should a man trouble himself about social standards or
+social obligations? "The hedonists gladly shared the refinement of
+enjoyment which civilization brought with it; they found it convenient
+and permissible that the intelligent man should enjoy the honey which
+others prepared; but no feeling of duty or thankfulness bound them to
+the civilization whose fruits they enjoyed. Sacrifice for others,
+patriotism, and devotion to a general object, Theodorus declared to be
+a form of foolishness which it did not become the wise man to
+share."[69]
+
+
+Sec. 5. THE DEEPER VIEW OF NATURE AND THE GOOD; OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND
+THE SOCIAL ORDER
+
+=Value of a State.=--Plato and Aristotle take up boldly the challenge of
+individualism. It may indeed be granted that existing states are too
+often ruled by classes. There are oligarchies in which the soldier or
+the rich control for their own interests; there are tyrannies in which
+the despot is greed and force personified; there are democracies (Plato
+was an aristocrat) in which the mob bears rule, and those who flatter
+and feed its passions are in authority. But all these do but serve to
+bring out more clearly the conception of a true State, in which the rule
+is by the wisest and best and is not for the interest of a class, but
+for the welfare of all. Even as it was, the State of Athens in Plato's
+day--except when it condemned a Socrates--meant completeness and freedom
+of life. It represented not merely a police force to protect the
+individual, but stood for the complete organization of all the life
+which needs cooperation and mutual support. The State provided
+instruction for the mind and training for the body. It surrounded the
+citizen with an atmosphere of beauty and provided in the tragedy and
+comedy opportunities for every citizen to consider the larger
+significance of life or to join in the contagious sympathy of mirth. In
+festivals and solemn processions it brought the citizen into unity of
+religious feeling. To be an Athenian citizen meant to share in all the
+higher possibilities which life afforded. Interpreting this life,
+Aristotle proclaims that it is not in isolation, but in the State, that
+"the goal of full independence may be said to be first attained."
+
+=The Natural.=--Aristotle goes directly to the heart of the problem as
+to what is natural by asserting that nature is not to be found in the
+crude beginning, but rather in the complete development. "The nature of
+anything, e.g., of a man, a horse, or a house, may be defined to be its
+condition when the process of production is complete." Hence the State
+"in which alone completeness of life is attained" is in the highest
+sense natural:
+
+ "The object proposed or the complete development of a thing is its
+ highest good; but independence which is first attained in the
+ State is a complete development or the highest good and is
+ therefore natural." "For as the State was formed to make life
+ possible, so it exists to make life good."
+
+ "Thus we see that the State is a natural institution, that man is
+ naturally a political animal and that one who is not a citizen of
+ any State, if the cause of his isolation be natural and not
+ accidental, is either a superhuman being or low in the scale of
+ human civilization, as he stands alone like a 'blot' on the
+ backgammon board. The 'clanless, lawless, hearthless man,' so
+ bitterly described by Homer, is a case in point, for he is
+ naturally a citizen of no state and a lover of war."[70]
+
+Nor does Aristotle stop here. With a profound insight into the relation
+of man to society, and the dependence of the individual upon the social
+body, a relation which modern social psychology has worked out in
+greater detail, Aristotle asserts that the State is not merely the goal
+of the individual's development, but the source of his life.
+
+ "Again, in the order of nature the State is prior to the household
+ or individual. For the whole must needs be prior to its part. For
+ instance, if you take away the body which is the whole, there will
+ not remain any such thing as a hand or foot, unless we use the
+ same word in a different sense, as when we speak of a stone hand
+ as a hand. For a hand separated from the body will be a disabled
+ hand; whereas it is the faculty or function of a thing which makes
+ it what it is, and therefore when things lose their function or
+ faculty, it is not correct to call them the same things, but
+ rather homonymous, i.e., different things having the same name.
+ We see, then, the State is a natural institution, and also that it
+ is prior to the individual. For if the individual as a separate
+ unit is not independent, he must be a part and must bear the same
+ relation to the State as the other parts to their wholes; and one
+ who is incapable of association with others or is independent and
+ has no need of such association, is no member of a State; in other
+ words, he is either a brute or a God."[71]
+
+And, moreover, when we look into the nature of the individual, we do not
+find him a being devoid of the sympathies and qualities which find their
+natural expression not only in the State, but in various social and
+friendly relations. There is "an impulse toward the life in common"
+([Greek: philia]) which expresses itself in friendship, but which is
+also so essential to that recognition of others called justice that we
+may say "it is the most just of all just things." There is also a unity
+of disposition and purpose ([Greek: omonoia]) which may be called
+"political friendship."[72]
+
+=Plato's Ideal State.=--How then is the State constituted and governed
+which is to provide for man's full development, his complete good?
+Evidently two principles must control. In the first place, it must be so
+constituted that every man may develop in it the full capacities of his
+nature, and thereby serve at once the perfection of the State and his
+own completeness; and in the second place, the State or social whole
+must be ruled by those best fitted for this work. Not the soldier, nor
+the plutocrat, nor the artisan, but the man who knows, is the suitable
+ruler for our ideal community. The soldier may defend, the artisan may
+support, but the scientific or intelligent man should rule. And it is
+evident that in settling this principle, we have also answered our first
+problem; for the soldier and the artisan will find his full development
+by doing the work which he can do well, not by meddling with a task in
+which he must necessarily fail. In order to guard against the greed
+which was so characteristic of the governments of his day, Plato would
+provide that the rulers and warriors should have no private property,
+and not even private families. Their eye should be single to the good of
+the whole. When asked as to the practicability of a State governed by
+such disinterested rulers, and with such wisdom, he admits indeed its
+difficulty, but he stoutly demands its necessity:
+
+ "Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this
+ world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political
+ greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who
+ pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand
+ aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,--no, nor the
+ human race, as I believe,--and then only will this our State have
+ a possibility of life and behold the light of day."[73]
+
+And yet the question of the actual existence of a perfect State is not
+the question of supreme importance. For Plato has grasped the thought
+that man is controlled not only by what he sees, but by what he images
+as desirable. And if a man has once formed the image of an ideal State
+or city of this kind, in which justice prevails, and life reaches fuller
+and higher possibilities than it has yet attained, this is the main
+thing:
+
+ "In heaven, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he
+ who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in
+ order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in fact,
+ is no matter: for he will live after the manner of that city,
+ having nothing to do with any other."[74]
+
+=The Social as Law of Nature.=--The social nature of man, thus
+vindicated by Plato and Aristotle, remained as the permanent possession
+of Greek thought. Even the Epicureans, who developed further the
+hedonistic theory of life, emphasized the values of friendship as among
+the choicest and most refined sources of pleasure. The Stoics, who in
+their independence of wants took up the tradition of the Cynics, were
+yet far from interpreting this as an independence of society. The
+disintegration of the Greek states made it impossible to find the social
+body in the old city-state, and so we find with the Stoics a certain
+cosmopolitanism. It is the highest glory of man to be a citizen not of
+Athens but of the universe,--not of the city of Cecrops, but of the city
+of Zeus. And through this conception the social nature of man was made
+the basis of a "natural law," which found its expression in the
+principles of Roman and modern jurisprudence.
+
+=Passion or Reason.=--In answering the question as to the true nature of
+man, Plato and Aristotle found the suggestions likewise for the problem
+of individual good. For if the soldier as the seeker for fame and honor,
+the avaricious man embodying the desire for wealth, and still more, the
+tyrant personifying the unbridled expression of every lust and passion,
+are abhorrent, is it not easy to see that an orderly and harmonious
+development of impulses under the guidance and control of reason, is far
+better than that uncramped expression of desires and cravings for which
+some of the radical individualists and sensualists of the day were
+clamoring? As representative of this class, hear Callicles:
+
+ "I plainly assert that he who would truly live ought to allow his
+ desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but
+ when they have grown to their greatest, he should have courage and
+ intelligence to minister to them and to satisfy all his longings.
+ And this I affirm to be natural justice and nobility." The
+ temperate man is a fool. It is only in hungering and eating, in
+ thirsting and drinking, in having all his desires about him, and
+ gratifying every possible desire, that man lives happily.[75]
+
+But even Callicles himself admits that there are certain men, the
+creatures of degraded desire, whose lives are not ideal, and hence
+that there must be some choice of pleasure. And carrying out in the
+individual life the thought above suggested by the State, Plato raises
+the question as to whether man, a complex being, with both noble and
+ignoble impulses, and with the capacity of controlling reason, can be
+said to make a wise choice if he lets the passions run riot and choke
+out wholly his rational nature:
+
+ "Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or
+ rather to the god in man; and the ignoble that which subjects the
+ man to the beast? He can hardly avoid admitting this,--can he now?
+ Not if he has any regard for my opinion. But, if he admits this,
+ we may ask him another question: How would a man profit if he
+ received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave
+ the noblest part of him to the worst? Who can imagine that a man
+ who sold his son or daughter into slavery for money, especially if
+ he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil men, would be the
+ gainer, however large might be the sum which he received? And will
+ any one say that he is not a miserable caitiff who sells his own
+ divine being to that which is most atheistical and detestable and
+ has no pity? Eriphyle took the necklace as the price of her
+ husband's life, but he is taking a bribe in order to compass a
+ worse ruin."[76]
+
+=Necessity of a Standard for Pleasure.=--If, for the moment, we rule out
+the question of what is noble or "kalon," and admit that the aim of life
+is to live pleasantly, or if, in other words, it is urged as above that
+justice is not profitable and that hence he who would seek the highest
+good will seek it by some other than the thorny path, we must recognize
+that the decision as to which kind of pleasure is preferable will depend
+on the character of the man who judges:
+
+ "Then we may assume that there are three classes of men,--lovers
+ of wisdom, lovers of ambition, lovers of gain? Exactly. And there
+ are three kinds of pleasure, which are their several objects?
+ Very true. Now, if you examine the three classes and ask of them
+ in turn which of their lives is pleasantest, each of them will be
+ found praising his own and deprecating that of others; the
+ money-maker will contrast the vanity of honor or of learning with
+ the solid advantages of gold and silver? True, he said. And the
+ lover of honor,--what will be his opinion? Will he not think that
+ the pleasure of riches is vulgar, while the pleasure of learning,
+ which has no need of honor, he regards as all smoke and nonsense?
+ True, he said. But may we not suppose, I said, that philosophy
+ estimates other pleasures as nothing in comparison with knowing
+ the truth, and in that abiding, ever learning, in the pursuit of
+ truth, not far indeed from the heaven of pleasure? The other
+ pleasures the philosopher disparages by calling them necessary,
+ meaning that if there were no necessity for them, he would not
+ have them. There ought to be no doubt about that, he replied.
+ Since, then, the pleasure of each class and the life of each is in
+ dispute, and the question is not which life is most honorable, or
+ better or worse, but which is the more pleasant or painless,--how
+ shall we know? I cannot tell, he said. Well, but what ought to be
+ the criterion? Is any better than experience and wisdom and
+ reason? There cannot be a better, he said. If wealth and gain were
+ the criterion, then what the lover of gain praised and blamed
+ would surely be the truest? Assuredly. Of if honor or victory or
+ courage, in that case the ambitions or contentments would decide
+ best? Clearly. But since experience and wisdom and reason are the
+ judges, the inference of course is, that the truest pleasures are
+ those which are approved by the lover of wisdom and reason."[77]
+
+It is thus evident that even if we start out to find the good in
+pleasure, we need some kind of measuring art. We need a "standard for
+pleasure," and this standard can be found only in wisdom. And this
+forces us to maintain that wisdom is after all _the_ good. Not merely
+intellectual attainment--a life of intellect without feeling would be
+just as little a true human life as would the life of an oyster, which
+has feeling with no intelligence. A life which includes sciences and
+arts, and the pure pleasures of beauty, presided over by wisdom and
+measure and symmetry,--this is Plato's vision of the life of the
+individual, viewed from within.
+
+=Eudaemonism.=--Aristotle's conception of the good is fundamentally the
+same. It is a full development of man's capacities, culminating in a
+rational and harmonious life. If, says Aristotle, we are to find the
+ultimate good, we must try to find, if possible, some one end which is
+pursued as an end in itself, and never as a means to something else, and
+the most general term for this final end is "eudaimonia," or well-being,
+"for we also choose it for itself and never for the sake of something
+else." What is the essence of well-being? This, according to Aristotle,
+is to be found by asking what is the function of man. The life of
+nutrition and growth man has in common with the plants; the life of
+sense in common with the animal. It is in the life of his rational
+nature that we must find his especial function. "The good of man is
+exercise of his faculties in accordance with their appropriate
+excellence." External goods are valuable because they may be instruments
+toward such full activity. Pleasure is to be valued because it "perfects
+the activities, and therefore perfects life, which is the aim of human
+desire"--rather than valued as an end in itself. No one would choose to
+live on condition of having a child's intellect all his life, though he
+were to enjoy in the highest possible degree all the pleasures of a
+child.[78]
+
+=The "Mean."=--The crowning importance of wisdom as the rational measure
+of the ideal life is also illustrated in Aristotle's theory of
+excellence (or virtue) as a "mean". This phrase is somewhat ambiguous,
+for some passages would seem to indicate that it is merely striking an
+average between two kinds of excesses, and finding, as it were, a
+moderate amount of feeling or action; but there is evidently involved
+here just the old thought of measure, and "the mean is what right reason
+prescribes." It is not every one who can find the mean, but only he who
+has the requisite knowledge. The supreme excellence or virtue is,
+therefore, the wisdom which can find the true standard for action.[79]
+
+=The Wise Man.=--Finally the conception of virtue as wisdom is
+illustrated in the ideals of the three prominent schools in later Greek
+thought,--the Sceptics, Epicureans, and Stoics. The wise man among
+Sceptics is he who suspends judgment where it is impossible to be
+certain. The wise man among Epicureans is he who chooses the finest and
+surest and most lasting pleasures. The wise man among Stoics is he who
+overcomes his emotions. But in every case the ideal is expressed in the
+same phrase, "the wise man."
+
+=Man and the Cosmos.=--We see thus how Greek thought, starting out to
+challenge all society's laws and standards and bring them to the bar of
+knowledge, has found a deeper value and higher validity in the true
+social and moral order. The appeal was to the Caesar of reason, and
+reason taken in its full significance carries us beyond the immediate
+and transient to the broader and more permanent good. Nor can reason in
+its search for good be content, urges Plato, with the superficial facts
+of life and society. He who would find and achieve his complete
+function, his full development, must broaden his horizon still further.
+As his own particular life is but a part of the ongoing of the larger
+world, whose forces act upon him, limit him, and determine his
+possibilities, it becomes absolutely necessary to study not merely his
+own end and purpose, but the end and purpose of the universe. Human good
+requires us to know the larger good, _the_ Good, in the full and
+complete sense. And this perfect Good which is, in truth, the very
+essence of the universe, is but another term for God, and Plato often
+uses the two as interchangeable terms.
+
+So the "Nature" which Greek life was seeking gets its deepest
+significance and reinterprets the old religious demand for unity of the
+life of man with the forces of the unseen. And the Stoic later, in his
+maxim "Follow Nature," gives more explicit recognition to the return of
+the circle. For the great work of Greek science had brought out into
+complete clearness the idea of Nature as a system of law. The universe
+is a rational universe, a cosmos, and man, as above all else a rational
+being, finds thus his kinship to the universe. To follow Nature,
+therefore, means to know the all-pervading law of Nature and submit to
+it in calm acceptance or resignation.
+
+"All is harmonious to me that is harmonious to thee, O universe; all is
+fruit to me which thy seasons bring."[80]
+
+
+Sec. 6. THE CONCEPTION OF THE IDEAL
+
+=Contrast of Actual and Ideal.=--The two stages of Greek thought which
+we have sketched did more than to readjust Greek life to deeper views of
+the State and the individual; of the good and of nature. The very
+challenge and process brought into explicit consciousness a new feature
+of the moral life, which is fundamental to true moral consciousness,
+viz., the factor of contrast between the actual and the ideal. We have
+seen that the clash of one-sided interests and political institutions
+and, in the case of Plato, the tragic execution of Socrates, obliged
+Plato and Aristotle to admit that the actual State did not subserve the
+real purpose which they were forced to seek in social organization. Both
+Plato and Aristotle, therefore, draw the picture of a State that should
+serve the complete purposes of human development. And again, in the
+individual life, both the conception of the development of man's highest
+possibilities and the conception of a measure or standard for the
+conflicting desires and purposes lead on to a conception which shall
+embody not merely the existing status but the goal of yet unrealized
+purpose.
+
+=The Ideal as the True Reality.=--Various qualities and aspirations are
+embodied by Plato in this conception, and with characteristic Greek
+genius he has given to this conception of the ideal almost as concrete
+and definite a form as the Greek sculptor of Apollo gave to his ideal of
+light and clarity, or the sculptor of Aphrodite to the conception of
+grace. As contrasted with the flux of transient emotions, or the
+uncertain play of half-comprehended or futile goods, this ideal good is
+conceived as eternal, unchanging, ever the same. It is superhuman and
+divine. As contrasted with various particular and partial goods on which
+the sons of men fix their affections, it is the one universal good which
+is valid for all men everywhere and forever. In his effort to find
+suitable imagery for this conception, Plato was aided by the religious
+conceptions of the Orphic and Pythagorean societies, which had
+emphasized the pre-existence and future existence of the soul, and its
+distinction from the body. In its previous life, said Plato, the soul
+has had visions of a beauty, a truth, and a goodness of which this life
+affords no adequate examples. And with this memory within it of what it
+has looked upon before, it judges the imperfect and finite goods of this
+present world and longs to fly away again and be with God. This thought
+of contrast between ideal and actual, to which Plato in some of his
+writings gave the turn of a contrast between soul and body, passed on
+with increased emphasis into Stoic and later Platonist schools, and
+furnished a philosophic basis for the dualism and asceticism which is
+found in Hellenistic and mediaeval morality.
+
+=Ethical Significance.=--While the true ethical contrast between the
+actual and the ideal was thus shifted over into a metaphysical contrast
+between soul and body, or between what is fixed and what is changing,
+the fundamental thought is highly significant, for it merely symbolizes
+in objective form the characteristic of every moral judgment, viz., the
+testing and valuing of an act by some standard, and what is even more
+important, the forming of a standard by which to do the testing. Even
+Aristotle, who is frequently regarded as the mere describer of what is,
+rather than the idealistic portrayer of what ought to be, is no less
+insistent upon the significance of the ideal. In fact, his isolation of
+reflection or _theoria_ from the civic virtues was used by the mediaeval
+church in its idealization of the "contemplative life." Like Plato, he
+conceives the ideal as a divine element in human nature:
+
+ "Nevertheless, instead of listening to those who advise us as men
+ and mortals not to lift our thoughts above what is human and
+ mortal, we ought rather, as far as possible, to put off our
+ mortality and make every effort to live in the exercise of the
+ highest of our faculties; for though it be but a small part of us,
+ yet in power and value it far surpasses all the rest."[81]
+
+
+Sec. 7. THE CONCEPTION OF THE SELF; OF CHARACTER AND RESPONSIBILITY
+
+=The Poets.=--Out of the fierce competition of individual desires, the
+clashing of individual ambitions, the conflict between the individual
+and the state, and the deepening of the conception of the individual's
+"nature," emerged also another conception of fundamental importance for
+the more highly developed reflective moral life, viz., that of the moral
+personality, its character and its responsibility. We may trace the
+development of this conception through the poets, as well as in the
+philosophers. Aeschylus set man over against the gods, subject to their
+divine laws, but gave little play to human character or conscious
+self-direction. With Sophocles, the tragic situation was brought more
+directly into the field of human character, although the conception of
+destiny and the limitations marked thereby were still the dominant note.
+With Euripides, human emotions and character are brought into the
+foreground. Stout-heartedness, the high spirit that can endure in
+suffering or triumph in death, which shows not merely in his heroes but
+in the women, Polyxena and Medea, Phaedra and Iphigenia, evinces the
+growing consciousness of the self--a consciousness which will find
+further development in the proud and self-sufficient endurance of the
+Stoic. In more directly ethical lines, we find increasing recognition of
+the self in the motives which are set up for human action, and in the
+view which is formed of human character. Conscience in the earlier poets
+and moralists, was largely a compound of Nemesis, the external messenger
+and symbol of divine penalty, on the one hand, and Aidos, the sense of
+respect or reverence for public opinion and for the higher authority of
+the gods, on the other. But already in the tragedians we find
+suggestions of a more intimate and personal conception. Pains sent by
+Zeus in dreams may lead the individual to meditate, and thus to better
+life. Neoptolemus, in Sophocles, says,
+
+ "All things are noisome when a man deserts
+ His own true self and does what is not meet."
+
+and Philoctetes replies,
+
+ "Have mercy on me, boy, by all the gods,
+ And do not shame thyself by tricking me."
+
+The whole _Antigone_ of Sophocles is the struggle between obedience to
+the political rulers and obedience to the higher laws which as "laws of
+reverence" become virtually inner laws of duty:
+
+ "I know I please the souls I ought to please."
+
+=Plato.=--Here, as in the formulation of his conception of the ideal,
+religious imagery helped Plato to find a more objective statement for
+the conception of a moral judgment and a moral character. In the final
+judgment of the soul after death, Plato sees the real self stripped bare
+of all external adornments of beauty, rank, power, or wealth, and
+standing as naked soul before the naked judge, to receive his just
+reward. And the very nature of this reward or penalty shows the
+deepening conception of the self, and of the intrinsic nature of moral
+character. The true penalty of injustice is not to be found in anything
+external, but in the very fact that the evil doers become base and
+wicked:
+
+ "They do not know the penalty of injustice, which above all things
+ they ought to know,--not stripes and death, as they suppose, which
+ evil doers often escape, but a penalty which cannot be escaped.
+
+ THEOD. What is that?
+
+ SOC. There are two patterns set before them in nature; the one
+ blessed and divine, the other godless and wretched; and they do
+ not see, in their utter folly and infatuation, that they are
+ growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil
+ deeds; and the penalty is that they lead a life answering to the
+ pattern which they resemble."[82]
+
+=The Stoics.=--It is, however, in the Stoics that we find the conception
+of inner reflection reaching clearest expression. Seneca and Epictetus
+repeat again and again the thought that the conscience is of higher
+importance than any external judgment,--that its judgment is inevitable.
+In these various conceptions, we see attained the third stage of Adam
+Smith's description of the formation of conscience.[83] Man who read
+his duty at first in the judgments of his fellows, in the customs and
+laws and codes of honor, and in the religious precepts of the gods, has
+again come to find in gods and laws, in custom and authority, the true
+rational law of life; but it is now a law of self. Not a particular or
+individual self, but a self which embraces within it at once the human
+and the divine. The individual has become social and has recognized
+himself as such. The religious, social, and political judgments have
+become the judgments of man upon himself. "Duty," what is binding or
+necessary, takes its place as a definite moral conception.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Besides the writings of Plato (especially, the _Apology_, _Crito_,
+_Protagoras_, _Gorgias_, and _Republic_), Xenophon (_Memorabilia_),
+Aristotle (_Ethics_, _Politics_), Cicero (_On Ends, Laws, Duties_; _On
+the Nature of the Gods_), Epictetus, Seneca, M. Aurelius, Plutarch, and
+the fragments of various Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, the tragedies
+of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes
+(especially the _Clouds_) afford valuable material.
+
+All the histories of philosophy treat the theoretical side; among them
+may be mentioned Gomperz (_Greek Thinkers_, 1900-05), Zeller
+(_Socrates_; _Plato_; _Aristotle_; _Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics_),
+Windelband, Benn (_Philosophy of Greece_, 1898, chs. i., v.).
+
+On the Moral Consciousness: Schmidt, _Ethik der alten Griechen_, 1882.
+On the social conditions and theories: Poehlmann, _Geschichte des antiken
+Kommunismus und Sozialismus_, 1893-1901; Doering, _Die Lehre des Sokrates
+als sociales Reformsystem_, 1895. On the religion: Farnell, _Cults of
+the Greek States_, 3 vols., 1896; Rohde, _Psyche_, 1894.
+
+On Political Conditions and Theory: Newman, Introd. to _Politics of
+Aristotle_, 1887; Bradley, _Aristotle's Theory of the State in
+Hellenica_; Wilamovitz-Moellendorf, _Aristotle und Athen_, 1900.
+
+On Nature and Law of Nature: Ritchie, _Natural Rights_, 1895; Burnet,
+_Int. Journal of Ethics_, vii., 1897, pp. 328-33; Hardy, _Begriff der
+Physis_, 1884; Voigt, _Die Lehre vom jus naturale_, 1856-75.
+
+General: Denis, _Histoire des Theories et des Idees Morales dans
+l'Antiquite_, 1879; Taylor, _Ancient Ideals_, 1900; Caird, _Evolution of
+Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, 1904; Janet, _Histoire de la
+Science Politique dans ses Rapports avec la Morale_, 1887; Grote,
+_History of Greece_, 4th ed., 1872; _Plato and the Other Companions of
+Socrates_, 1888.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[64] Cf. Xenophon's account of the impressive appeal of Clearchus: "For,
+first and greatest, the oaths which we have sworn by the gods forbid us
+to be enemies to each other. Whoever is conscious of having transgressed
+these,--him I could never deem happy. For if one were at war with the
+gods, I know not with what swiftness he might flee so as to escape, or
+into what darkness he might run, or into what stronghold he might
+retreat and find refuge. For all things are everywhere subject to the
+gods, and the gods rule all everywhere with equity."--_Anabasis_, II.,
+v.
+
+[65] _Republic_, I., 343.
+
+[66] _Republic_, II., 365.
+
+[67] _Republic_, II., 365.
+
+[68] _Republic_, I., 343 f.
+
+[69] Windelband, _History of Philosophy_, p. 86.
+
+[70] _Politics_, I., ii. Welldon's translation.
+
+[71] _Politics_, I., ii. Welldon's translation.
+
+[72] _Ethics_, VIII., i.; IX., vi.
+
+[73] _Republic_, V., 473.
+
+[74] _Ibid._, IX., 592.
+
+[75] _Gorgias_, 491 ff.
+
+[76] _Republic_, IX., 589 f.
+
+[77] _Republic_, IX., 581 f.
+
+[78] _Ethics_, X., ii.-iv.
+
+[79] Among the various types of excellence which Aristotle enumerates as
+exemplifying this principle, the quality of high-mindedness ([Greek:
+megalopsychia]) is pre-eminent, and may be taken as embodying the trait
+most prized in an Athenian gentleman. The high-minded man claims much
+and deserves much; lofty in his standard of honor and excellence he
+accepts tributes from good men as his just desert, but despises honor
+from ordinary men or on trivial grounds; good and evil fortune are alike
+of relatively small importance. He neither seeks nor fears danger; he is
+ready to confer favors and forget injuries, slow to ask favors or cry
+for help; fearless in his love and hatred, in his truth and his
+independence of conduct; "not easily moved to admiration, for nothing is
+great to him. He loves to possess beautiful things that bring no profit,
+rather than useful things that pay; for this is characteristic of the
+man whose resources are in himself. Further, the character of the
+high-minded man seems to require that his gait should be slow, his voice
+deep, his speech measured; for a man is not likely to be in a hurry when
+there are few things in which he is deeply interested, nor excited when
+he holds nothing to be of very great importance; and these are the
+causes of a high voice and rapid movements" (_Ethics_, IV., vi.-viii.).
+
+[80] Marcus Aurelius, _Thoughts_, IV., 23.
+
+[81] _Ethics_, X., vii.
+
+[82] _Theaetetus_, 176.
+
+[83] Smith held that we (1) approve or disapprove the conduct of others;
+(2) see ourselves as others see us, judging ourselves from their
+standpoint; (3) finally, form a true social standard, that of the
+"impartial spectator." This is an inner standard--conscience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MODERN PERIOD
+
+
+The moral life of the modern western world differs from both Hebrew and
+Greek morality in one respect. The Hebrews and Greeks were pioneers.
+Their leaders had to meet new situations and shape new conceptions of
+righteousness and wisdom. Modern civilization and morality, on the other
+hand, received certain ideals and standards already worked out and
+established. These came to it partly through the literature of Hebrews,
+Greeks, and Latins, partly through Greek art and Roman civilization, but
+chiefly, perhaps, through two institutions: (1) Roman government and law
+embodied Stoic conceptions of a natural law of reason and of a world
+state, a universal rational society. This not only gave the groundwork
+of government and rights to the modern world; it was a constant
+influence for guiding and shaping ideas of authority and justice. (2)
+The Christian Church in its cathedrals, its cloisters, its ceremonials,
+its orders, and its doctrines had a most impressive system of standards,
+valuations, motives, sanctions, and prescriptions for action. These were
+not of Hebrew origin solely. Greek and Roman philosophy and political
+conceptions were fused with more primitive teaching and conduct. When
+the Germans conquered the Empire they accepted in large measure its
+institutions and its religion. Modern morality, like modern
+civilization, shows the mingled streams of Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and
+German or Celtic life. It contains also conceptions due to the peculiar
+industrial, scientific, and political development of modern times. Thus
+we have to-day such inherited standards as that of "the honor of a
+gentleman" side by side with the modern class standard of business
+honesty, and the labor union ideal of class solidarity. We have the
+aristocratic ideals of chivalry and charity side by side with more
+democratic standards of domestic and social justice. We find the
+Christian equal standard for the two sexes side by side with another
+which sets a high value on woman's chastity, but a trivial value on
+man's. We find a certain ideal of self-sacrifice side by side with an
+ideal of "success" as the only good. We cannot hope to disentangle all
+the threads that enter this variegated pattern, or rather collection of
+patterns, but we can point out certain features that at the same time
+illustrate certain general lines of development. We state first the
+general attitude and ideals of the Middle Ages, and then the three lines
+along which individualism has proceeded to the moral consciousness of
+to-day.
+
+
+Sec. 1. THE MEDIAEVAL IDEALS
+
+The mediaeval attitude toward life was determined in part by the
+character of the Germanic tribes with their bold, barbaric strength and
+indomitable spirit, their clan and other group organizations, their
+customs or mores belonging to such a stock; and in part by the religious
+ideals presented in the church. The presence of these two factors was
+manifest in the strong contrasts everywhere present.
+
+ "Associated with mail-clad knights whose trade is war and whose
+ delight is to combat are the men whose sacred vocation forbids the
+ use of force altogether. Through lands overspread with deeds of
+ violence, the lonely wayfarer with the staff and badge of a
+ pilgrim passes unarmed and in safety. In sight of castles, about
+ whose walls fierce battles rage, are the church and the monastery,
+ within the precincts of which quiet reigns and all violence is
+ branded as sacrilege."[84]
+
+The harsh clashes of the Venus music over against the solemn strains
+from the Pilgrim's Chorus in Tannhaeuser might well symbolize not only
+the specific collision of the opera but the broader range of passions
+opposed to the religious controls and values in this mediaeval society.
+
+=The Group and Class Ideal.=--The early Germans and Celts in general had
+the clan system, the group ideals, and group virtues which belonged to
+other Aryan peoples, but the very fact of the Germanic victories shows a
+military spirit which included both personal heroism and good capacity
+for organization. Group loyalty was strong, and the group valuation of
+strength and courage was unbounded. A high value was also set on woman's
+chastity. These qualities, particularly the loyalty to the clan and its
+head, survived longest in Celtic peoples like the Scots and Irish who
+were not subjected to the forces of political organization. Every reader
+of Scott is familiar with the values and defects of the type; and the
+problems which it causes in modern democracy have been acutely described
+by Jane Addams.[85] Among the Germanic peoples, when the clan and tribal
+systems were followed by the more thoroughgoing demarcation of classes,
+free and serfs, lords and villains, chevalier or knight, and churl, the
+old Latin terms "gentle" and "vulgar" found a fitting application. The
+term "gentle" was indeed given in one of its usages the force of the
+kindred term "kind" to characterize the conduct appropriate within the
+kin, but in the compound "gentleman" it formed one of the most
+interesting conceptions of class morality. The "honor" of a gentleman
+was determined by what the class demanded. Above all else the gentleman
+must not show fear. He must be ready to fight at any instant to prove
+his courage. His word must not be doubted. This seems to have been on
+the ground that such doubt would be a refusal to take the man at his
+own estimate, rather than because of any superlative love of truth, for
+the approved way to prove the point at issue was by fighting, not by any
+investigation. But the class character appears in the provision that no
+insult from one of a lower class need be noticed. Homicide was not
+contrary to the character and honor of a gentleman. Nor did this require
+any such standard in sex relations as a "woman's honor" requires of a
+woman. In conduct toward others, the "courtesy" which expresses in
+ceremony and manner respect for personal dignity was a fine trait. It
+did not always prevent insolence toward inferiors, although there was in
+many cases the feeling, _noblesse oblige_. What was needed to make this
+ideal of gentleman a moral and not merely a class ideal, was that it
+should base treatment of others on personal worth rather than on birth,
+or wealth, or race, and that it should not rate reputation for courage
+above the value of human life. This has been in part effected, but many
+traits of the old conception live on to-day.
+
+=The Ideal of the Church.=--The ideal of life which the church presented
+contained two strongly contrasting elements, which have been frequently
+found in religion and are perhaps inevitably present. On the one hand, a
+spiritual religion implies that man in comparison with God is finite,
+weak, and sinful; he should therefore be of "a humble and contrite
+heart." On the other hand, as a child of God he partakes of the divine
+and is raised to infinite worth. On the one hand, the spiritual life is
+not of this world and must be sought in renouncing its pleasures and
+lusts; on the other hand, if God is really the supreme governor of the
+universe, then this world also ought to be subject to his rule. In the
+mediaeval view of life, the humility and withdrawal from the world were
+assigned to the individual; the sublimity and the ruling authority to
+the church. Ethically this distribution had somewhat the effect of
+group morality in that it minimized the individual and magnified the
+corporate body of which he was a part. Asceticism and humility go hand
+in hand with the power of the hierarchy. Individual poverty--wealth of
+the church; individual meekness and submission--unlimited power and
+authority in the church; these antitheses reflect the fact that the
+church was the heir both of a kingdom of God and of a Roman Empire. The
+humility showed itself in extreme form in the ascetic type of
+monasticism with its vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It was
+reflected in the art which took for its subjects the saints, conceived
+not individually, but typically and according to tradition and
+authority. Their thin attenuated figures showed the ideal prescribed.
+The same humility showed itself in the intellectual sphere in the
+preeminence given to faith as compared with reason, while the mystic
+losing himself in God showed yet another phase of individual
+renunciation. Even charity, with which the church sought to temper the
+hardship of the time, took a form which tended to maintain or even
+applaud the dependent attitude of the recipient. So far as life for the
+individual had a positive value, this lay not in living oneself out, but
+rather in the calm and the support afforded by the church:
+
+ "A life in the church, for the church, through the church; a life
+ which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by
+ the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly
+ recurring stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession,
+ purifying it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of
+ visible objects for contemplation and worship--this was the life
+ which they of the Middle Ages conceived of as the rightful life of
+ man; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all."[86]
+
+On the other side, the church boldly asserted the right and duty of the
+divine to control the world,--the religious symbol of the modern
+proposition that conscience should dominate political and business
+affairs. "No institution is apart from the authority of the church,"
+wrote Aegidius Colonna. "No one can legitimately possess field or vine
+except under its authority or by it. Heretics are not owners, but
+unjustly occupy." Canossa symbolized the supremacy of the spiritual over
+the temporal power, and there is a sublime audacity, moral as well as
+political, in the famous Bull of Boniface VIII., "We declare that every
+human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff."
+
+The church as a corporate society expressed also the _community_ of its
+members. It was indeed no mere collection of individual believers. As a
+divine institution, the "body of Christ on earth," it gave to its
+members rather than received from them. It invested them with new worth,
+instead of getting its own worth from them. Nevertheless, it was not an
+absolute authority; it represented the union of all in a common
+fellowship, a common destiny, and a common cause against the powers of
+evil.
+
+The massive cathedrals which remain as the monuments of the ages of
+faith, are fitting symbols of these aspects of mediaeval life. They
+dominate their cities architecturally, as the church dominated the life
+of the ages which built them. They inspired within the worshipper, on
+the one hand, a sense of finiteness in the presence of the sublime; on
+the other, an elevation of soul as he became conscious of union with a
+power and presence not his own. They awed the worshiping assembly and
+united it in a common service.
+
+
+Sec. 2. MAIN LINES OF MODERN DEVELOPMENT
+
+We have seen that the mediaeval life had two sets of standards and
+values: one set by the tribal codes and the instinct of a warlike
+people; the other set by a church which required renunciation while it
+asserted control. Changes may be traced in both ideals. The group
+morality becomes refined and broadened. The church standards are
+affected in four ways: (a) The goods of the secular life, art, family,
+power, wealth, claim a place in the system of values. (b) Human
+authority asserts itself, at first in sovereign states with monarchs,
+then in the growth of civil liberty and political democracy. (c) Instead
+of faith, reason asserts itself as the agency for discovering the laws
+of nature and of life. (d) As the result of the greater dignity and
+worth of the individual which is worked out in all these lines, social
+virtue tends to lay less value on charity and more on social justice.
+
+It must not be supposed that the movements to be outlined have resulted
+in the displacement or loss of the positive values in the religious
+ideal. The morality of to-day does not ignore spiritual values; it aims
+rather to use them to give fuller meaning to all experience. It does not
+abandon law in seeking freedom, or ignore duty because it is discovered
+by reason. Above all, it is seeking to bring about in more intimate
+fashion that supremacy of the moral order in all human relations for
+which the church was theoretically contending. And in recent times we
+are appreciating more thoroughly that the individual cannot attain a
+full moral life by himself. Only as he is a member of a moral society
+can he find scope and support for full development of will. In concrete
+phrase, it is just as necessary to improve the general social
+environment in which men, women, and children are to live, in order to
+make better individuals, as it is to improve the individuals in order to
+get a better society. This was a truth which the religious conception of
+salvation through the church taught in other terms.
+
+To follow the development of the modern moral consciousness, we shall
+rely not so much on the formal writings of moral philosophers as on
+other sources. What men value most, and what they recognize as right, is
+shown in what they work for and fight for and in how they spend their
+leisure. This is reflected more immediately in their laws, their art and
+literature, their religion, and their educational institutions, although
+it finds ultimate expression in moral theories. The more concrete
+aspects are suggested in this chapter, the theories in Chapter XII.
+
+
+Sec. 3. THE OLD AND NEW IN THE BEGINNINGS OF INDIVIDUALISM
+
+An interesting blending of the class ideal of the warrior and
+"gentleman" with the religious ideals of devotion to some spiritual
+service, and of protection to the weak, is afforded by _chivalry_. The
+knights show their faith by their deeds of heroism, not by renunciation.
+But they fight for the Holy Sepulcher, or for the weak and oppressed.
+Their investiture is almost as solemn as that of a priest. Honor and
+love appear as motives side by side with the quest of the Holy Grail.
+Chevalier Bayard is the gallant fighter for country, but he is also the
+passionate admirer of justice, the knight _sans peur et sans reproche_.
+Moreover, the literature which embodies the ideal exhibits not only
+feats of arms and religious symbolism. Parsifal is not a mere
+abstraction; he has life and character. "And who will deny," writes
+Francke,[87] "that in this character Wolfram has put before us, within
+the forms of chivalrous life, an immortal symbol of struggling, sinning,
+despairing, but finally redeemed, humanity?"
+
+If chivalry represented in some degree a moralizing of the warrior
+class, the mendicant orders represented an effort to bring religion into
+secular life. The followers of St. Dominic and St. Francis were indeed
+ascetic, but instead of maintaining the separate life of the cloister
+they aimed to awaken a personal experience among the whole people.
+Further, the Dominicans adopted the methods and conceptions of Greek
+philosophy to support the doctrines of the church, instead of relying
+solely on faith. The Franciscans on their part devoted an ecstatic type
+of piety to deeds of charity and beneficence. They aimed to overcome the
+world rather than to withdraw from it. A bolder appeal to the
+individual, still within the sphere of religion, was made when Wyclif
+asserted the right of every instructed man to search the Bible for
+himself, and a strong demand for social justice found expression in
+Wyclif's teaching as well as in the vision of Piers Plowman.
+
+In the political world the growing strength of the empire sought
+likewise a religious sanction in its claim of a divine right,
+independent of the church. The claims of the civic life find also
+increasing recognition with the spiritual teachers.
+
+The State had been regarded by Augustine as a consequence of the fall of
+man, but it now comes to claim and receive a moral value: first, with
+Thomas Aquinas, as the institution in which man perfects his earthly
+nature and prepares for his higher destiny in the realm of grace; then,
+with Dante, as no longer subordinate to the church, but coordinate with
+it.
+
+Finally, the rise of the universities shows a most significant
+appearance of the modern spirit under the old sanctions. The range of
+secular studies was limited and the subject-matter to be studied was
+chiefly the doctrine of the Fathers. The teachers who drew thousands of
+eager young men about them were clerics. But the very fact that
+dialectics--the art of reasoning--was the focus of interest, shows the
+dawn of a spirit of inquiry. Such a book as Abelard's _Sic et Non_,
+which marshaled the opposing views of the Fathers in "deadly parallel,"
+was a challenge to tradition and an assertion of reason. And it is not
+without significance that the same bold thinker was the first of the
+mediaeval scholars to treat ethics again as a field by itself. The title
+"_Know Thyself_" suggests its method. The essence of the moral act is
+placed in the intent or resolve of the will; the criterion for judgment
+is agreement or disagreement with conscience.
+
+
+Sec. 4. INDIVIDUALISM IN THE PROGRESS OF LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY
+
+=Rights.=--It is not possible or necessary here to sketch the advance of
+political and civil liberty. Finding its agents sometimes in kings,
+sometimes in cities, sometimes in an aristocracy or a House of Commons,
+and sometimes in a popular uprising, it has also had as its defenders
+with the pen, Churchmen, Protestants, and freethinkers, lawyers,
+publicists, and philosophers. All that can be done here is to indicate
+briefly the moral significance of the movement. Some of its protagonists
+have been actuated by conscious moral purpose. They have fought with
+sword or pen not only in the conviction that their cause was just, but
+because they believed it just. At other times, a king has favored a city
+to weaken the power of the nobility, or the Commons have opposed the
+king because they objected to taxation. What makes the process
+significant morally is that, whatever the motives actuating those who
+have fought its battles with sword or pen, they have nearly always
+claimed to be fighting for "rights." They have professed the conviction
+that they are engaged in a just cause. They have thus made appeal to a
+moral standard, and in so far as they have sincerely sought to assert
+rights, they have been recognizing in some sense a social and rational
+standard; they have been building up a moral personality. Sometimes
+indeed the rights have been claimed as a matter of "possession" or of
+tradition. This is to place them on the basis of customary morality. But
+in such great crises as the English Revolutions of the seventeenth
+century, or the French and American Revolutions of the eighteenth, some
+deeper basis has been sought. A Milton, a Locke, a Rousseau, a
+Jefferson, has but voiced the sentiments of a people in formulating an
+explicitly moral principle. Sometimes this has taken the form of an
+appeal to God-given rights. All men are equal before God; why should one
+man assume to command another because of birth? In this sense the
+Puritans stood for liberty and democracy as part of their creed of life.
+But often the appeal to a moral principle borrowed the conceptions of
+Greek philosophy and Roman law, and spoke of "natural rights" or a "law
+of nature."[88]
+
+=Natural Rights.=--This conception, as we have noted, had its origin in
+Greece in the appeal from custom or convention to Nature. At first an
+appeal to the natural impulses and wants, it became with the Stoics an
+appeal to the rational order of the universe. Roman jurists found in the
+idea of such a law of nature the rational basis for the law of society.
+Cicero had maintained that every man had its principles innate within
+him. It is obvious that here was a principle with great possibilities.
+The Roman law itself was most often used in the interest of absolutism,
+but the idea of a natural law, and so of a natural right more
+fundamental than any human dictate, proved a powerful instrument in the
+struggle for personal rights and equality. "All men naturally were born
+free," wrote Milton. "To understand political power right," wrote Locke,
+"and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men
+are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their
+actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit,
+within the bounds of the law of nature; without asking leave or
+depending on the will of any other man. A state also of equality,
+wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal." These doctrines
+found eloquent portrayal in Rousseau, and appear in the Declaration of
+Independence of 1776. Finally, the effort to find in nature some basis
+for independence and freedom is given a new turn by Herbert Spencer when
+he points to the instinct for liberty in animals as well as in human
+beings as the origin of the law of freedom.
+
+By one of the paradoxes of history, the principle is now most often
+invoked in favor of "vested interests." "Natural" easily loses the force
+of an appeal to reason and to social good, and becomes merely an
+assertion of ancient usage, or precedent, or even a shelter for mere
+selfish interests. Natural rights in property may be invoked to thwart
+efforts to protect life and health. Individualism has been so successful
+in asserting rights that it is now apt to forget that there are no
+rights morally except such as express the will of a good _member of
+society_. But in recognizing possible excesses we need not forget the
+value of the idea of rights as a weapon in the struggle in which the
+moral personality has gradually won its way. The other side of the story
+has been the growth of responsibility. The gain in freedom has not meant
+an increase in disorder; it has been marked rather by gain in peace and
+security, by an increasing respect for law, and an increasing stability
+of government. The external control of force has been replaced by the
+moral control of duty.
+
+
+Sec. 5. INDIVIDUALISM AS AFFECTED BY THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY,
+COMMERCE, AND ART
+
+The development of industry, commerce, and art affects the moral life in
+a variety of ways, of which three are of especial importance for our
+purpose.
+
+(1) It gives new interests, and new opportunities for individual
+activity.
+
+(2) This raises the question of _values_. Are all the activities good,
+and shall one satisfy whatever interest appeals to him, or are some
+better than others?--the old question of "kinds of happiness."
+
+(3) It raises further the question of sharing and distribution. How far
+may one enjoy the goods of life in an exclusive way and how far is it
+his duty to share with others? Do society's present methods of industry,
+commerce, art, and education distribute these goods in a just manner?
+
+The examination of these questions will be made in Part III. It is our
+purpose at this point merely to indicate the trend of the moral
+consciousness with regard to them.
+
+=1. The Increasing Power and Interests of the Individual.=--Power for
+the mediaeval man could be sought in war or in the church; interests were
+correspondingly limited. The Crusades, contact, through them and later
+through commerce, with Arabian civilization, growing acquaintance with
+the literature and art of Greece and Rome, were effective agencies in
+stimulating the modern development. But when once started it needed but
+the opportunities of sufficient wealth and freedom to go on. Art and
+letters have depicted a variety and richness of experience which the
+ancient world did not feel. Shakspere, Rembrandt, Bunyan, Beethoven,
+Goethe, Balzac, Shelley, Byron, Hugo, Wagner, Ibsen, Thackeray, Eliot,
+Tolstoy, to name almost at random, reflect a wealth of interests and
+motives which show the range of the modern man. Commerce and the various
+lines of industry have opened new avenues for power. No one can see the
+palaces or dwellings of Venice or the old Flemish ports, or consider the
+enormous factories, shops, and office buildings of to-day, without a
+sense of the accession to human power over nature and over the
+activities of fellow men which trade and industry have brought with
+them. The use of money instead of a system of personal service--slavery
+or serfdom--has not only made it possible to have men's labor without
+owning the men, it has aided in a vastly more effective system than the
+older method allowed. The industrial revolution of the past century has
+had two causes: one the use of machinery; the other the combination of
+human labor which this makes possible. So far this has greatly increased
+the power of the few leaders, but not of the many. It is the present
+problem to make possible a larger opportunity for individual freedom and
+power.
+
+=2. The Values of Art and Industry.=--Are all these wider interests and
+fuller powers good? The church ideal and the class ideal already
+described gave different answers. The class ideal of gentleman really
+expressed a form of self-assertion, of living out one's powers fully,
+and this readily welcomed the possibilities which art and its enjoyment
+afforded.[89] The gentleman of the Renaissance, the cavalier of England,
+the noblesse of France, were patrons of art and letters. The Romanticist
+urged that such free and full expression as art afforded was higher than
+morality with its control and limitation. The church admitted art in the
+service of religion, but was chary of it as an individual activity. The
+Puritans were more rigorous. Partly because they associated its churchly
+use with what they regarded as "idolatry," partly as a protest against
+the license in manners which the freedom of art seemed to encourage,
+they frowned upon all forms of art except sacred literature or music.
+Their condemnation of the stage is still an element, though probably a
+lessening element, and it is not long since fiction was by many regarded
+with suspicion. On the whole, the modern moral consciousness accepts art
+as having a place in the moral life, although it by no means follows
+that art can be exempt from moral criticism as to its sincerity,
+healthfulness, and perspective.
+
+In the case of industry the church ideal has prevailed. The class ideal
+of gentleman was distinctly opposed to industry, particularly manual
+labor. "Arms" or the Court was the proper profession. This was more or
+less bound up with the fact that in primitive conditions labor was
+mainly performed by women or by slaves. It was the business, the
+"virtue" of men to fight. So far as this class ideal was affected by the
+models of ancient culture, the prejudice was strengthened. The classic
+civilization rested on slave labor. The ideal of the gentleman of Athens
+was the free employment of leisure, not active enterprise. The church,
+on the other hand, maintained both the dignity and the moral value of
+labor. Not only the example of the Founder of Christianity and his early
+disciples, who were for the most part manual laborers, but the intrinsic
+moral value of work, already referred to, entered into the
+appraisal.[90] The Puritans, who have had a wide-reaching influence upon
+the standards of the middle and lower classes of England, and upon the
+northern and western portions of America, were insistent upon industry,
+not merely for the sake of its products,--they were frugal in their
+consumption,--but as expressing a type of character. Idleness and
+"shiftlessness" were not merely ineffective, they were sinful. "If any
+will not work, neither let him eat," commended itself thoroughly to this
+moral ideal. That the laborer brought something to the common weal,
+while the idler had to be supported, was a reenforcement to the motives
+drawn from the relation of work to character. As the middle and lower
+classes became increasingly influential, the very fact that they were
+laborers and traders strengthened the religious ideal by a class motive.
+It was natural that a laboring class should regard labor as "honest,"
+though from the history of the word such a collocation of terms as
+"honest labor" would once have been as absurd as "honest villain."[91] A
+further influence effective in America has been the fluidity of class
+distinctions in a new country. The "influence of the frontier" has been
+all on the side of the value of work and the reprobation of idleness. At
+least this is true for men. A certain tendency has been manifest to
+exempt women of the well-to-do classes from the necessity of labor, and
+even by training and social pressure to exclude them from the
+opportunity of work, and make of them a "leisure class," but this is not
+likely to establish itself as a permanent moral attitude. The woman will
+not be content to live in "The Doll's House" while the man is in the
+real work of the world.
+
+=3. The Distribution of the Goods of Life.=--Mediaeval society made
+provision for both benevolence and justice. Charity, the highest of the
+virtues, had come to mean specifically the giving of goods. The
+monasteries relieved the poor and the infirm. Hospitals were
+established. The gentleman felt it to be not only a religious duty, but
+a tradition of his class to be liberal. To secure justice in the
+distribution of wealth, various restrictions were imposed. Goods were
+not to be sold for whatever they could bring, nor was money to be loaned
+at whatever rate of interest the borrower was willing to pay. Society
+aimed to find out by some means what was a "reasonable price" for
+products. In the case of manufactured goods this could be fixed by the
+opinion of fellow craftsmen. A "common estimation," where buyers and
+sellers met and bargained in an open market, could be trusted to give a
+fair value. A maximum limit was set for victuals in towns. Or, again,
+custom prescribed what should be the money equivalent for payments
+formerly made in kind, or in personal service.[92] Money-lending was
+under especial guard. To ask interest for the use of money, provided the
+principal was returned intact, seemed to be taking advantage of
+another's necessity. It was usury. Class morality added a different
+kind of restrictions. As embodied in the laws, it bound the tenants to
+the soil and forbade the migration of laborers. The significant thing in
+the whole mediaeval attitude was that _society attempted to control
+business and industry by a moral standard_. It did not trust the
+individual to make his own bargains or to conduct his business as he
+pleased.
+
+=Modern Theory: Free Contract.=--The distinctive feature of the modern
+development has been the tendency to abandon moral restrictions and to
+substitute a wage system, freedom of exchange, and free contract. It was
+maintained by the advocates of the new method that it was both more
+efficient and at least as just as the old. It was more efficient because
+it stimulated every one to make the best possible bargain. Surely every
+man is the most interested, and therefore the best promoter of his own
+welfare. And if each is getting the best results for himself, the good
+of the whole community will be secured. For--so ran the theory, when
+individualism had so far advanced--society is simply the aggregate of
+its members; the good of all is the sum of the goods of the members. The
+system also claimed to provide for justice between buyer and seller,
+capitalist and laborer, by the agencies noticed in the next paragraph.
+
+=Competition.=--To prevent extortionate prices on the one hand, or
+unduly low prices or wages on the other, the reliance was on
+_competition_ and the general principle of supply and demand. If a baker
+charges too high for his bread, others will set up shops and sell
+cheaper. If a money-lender asks too high interest, men will not borrow
+or will find a loan elsewhere. If a wage is too low, labor will go
+elsewhere; if too high, capital will not be able to find a profit and so
+will not employ labor--so runs the theory. Without analyzing the moral
+value of the theory at this point, we notice only that, so far as it
+assumes to secure fair bargains and a just distribution, it assumes the
+parties to the free contract to be really free. This implies that they
+are upon nearly equal footing. In the days of hand work and small
+industries this was at least a plausible assumption. But a new face was
+placed upon the situation by the _industrial revolution_.
+
+=Problem Raised by the Industrial Revolution.=--The introduction of
+machinery on a large scale near the end of the eighteenth century
+brought about a change which has had extraordinary economic, social, and
+moral effects. The revolution had two factors: (1) it used steam power
+instead of human muscle; (2) it made possible the greater subdivision of
+labor, and hence it made it profitable to organize large bodies of men
+under a single direction. Both these factors contributed to an enormous
+increase in productive power. But this increase made an overwhelming
+difference in the status of capitalist and laborer. Without discussing
+the question as to whether capital received more than a "fair" share of
+the increased profit, it was obvious that if one "Captain of Industry"
+were receiving even a small part of the profits earned by each of his
+thousand workmen, he would be immeasurably better off than any one of
+them. Like the mounted and armored knight of the Middle Ages, or the
+baron in his castle, he was more than a match for a multitude of poorly
+equipped footmen. There seemed to be in the nineteenth century an
+enormous disproportion between the shares of wealth which fell to
+capitalist and to laborer. If this was the result of "free contract,"
+what further proof was necessary that "freedom" was a mere empty term--a
+name with no reality? For could it be supposed that a man would _freely_
+make an agreement to work harder and longer than any slave, receiving
+scarcely the bare necessities of existence, while the other party was to
+gain enormous wealth from the bargain?
+
+The old class morality was not disturbed by such contrasts. Even the
+religious morality was apt to consider the distinction between rich and
+poor as divinely ordered, or else as insignificant compared with eternal
+destiny of weal or woe. But the individualistic movements have made it
+less easy to accept either the class morality or the religious
+interpretation. The latter lends itself equally well to a justification
+of disease because it is providentially permitted. Moreover, the old
+group morality and religious ideal had this in their favor: they
+recognized an obligation of the strong to the weak, of the group for
+every member, of master for servant. The cash basis seemed to banish all
+responsibility, and to assert the law of "each for himself" as the
+supreme law of life--except so far as individuals might mitigate
+suffering by voluntary kindness. Economic theory seemed to show that
+wages must always tend toward a starvation level.
+
+=Sympathy.=--Such tendencies inevitably called out response from the
+sentiments of benevolence and sympathy. For the spread of civilization
+has certainly made man more sensitive to pain, more capable of sympathy
+and of entering by imagination into the situations of others. It is
+noteworthy that the same Adam Smith who argued so forcibly the cause of
+individualism in trade, made sympathy the basis of his moral system.
+Advance in sympathy has shown itself in the abolition of judicial
+torture, in prison reform, in the improved care of the insane and
+defective; in the increased provision for hospitals, and asylums, and in
+an innumerable multitude of organizations for relief of all sorts and
+conditions of men. Missions, aside from their distinctly ecclesiastical
+aims, represent devotion of human life and of wealth to the relief of
+sickness and wretchedness, and to the education of children in all
+lands. Sympathy has even extended to the animal world. And the notable
+fact in modern sympathy and kindness, as contrasted with the mediaeval
+type, is that the growth in individuality has demanded and evoked a
+higher kind of benevolence. Instead of fostering dependence and
+relieving wants, the best modern agencies aim to promote independence,
+to set the man upon his own feet and enable him to achieve self-respect.
+"Social settlements" have been strong factors in bringing about this
+change of attitude.
+
+=Justice.=--Various movements looking toward greater justice in
+distribution have likewise been called out by the conditions since the
+industrial revolution. Naturally one reaction was to denounce the whole
+individualistic tendency as represented in the "cash-payment" basis.
+This found its most eloquent expositor in Carlyle. His _Past and
+Present_ is a bitter indictment of a system "in which all working horses
+could be well fed, and innumerable workingmen should die starved"; of a
+_laissez-faire_ theory which merely says "impossible" when asked to
+remedy evils supposedly due to "economic laws"; of a "Mammon Gospel"
+which transforms life into a mutual hostility, with its laws-of-war
+named "fair competition." The indictment is convincing, but the remedy
+proposed--a return to strong leaders with a reestablishment of personal
+relations--has rallied few to its support. Another reaction against
+individualistic selfishness has taken the form of communism. Numerous
+experiments have been made by voluntary associations to establish
+society on a moral basis by abolishing private property. "These new
+associations," said Owen, one of the most ardent and generous of social
+reformers, "can scarcely be formed before it will be discovered that by
+the most simple and easy regulations all the natural wants of human
+nature may be abundantly supplied; and the principle of selfishness will
+cease to exist for want of an adequate motive to produce it."
+
+In contrast with these plans for a return to earlier conditions, the two
+most conspicuous tendencies in the thought of the past century have
+claimed to be advancing toward freedom and justice along the lines which
+we have just traced. The one, which we may call "individualistic"
+reform, has sought justice by giving free play to individual action.
+The other, socialism, has aimed to use the power of the State to secure
+more adequate justice and, as it believes, a more genuine freedom. The
+great reform movement in Great Britain during the nineteenth century
+emphasized free trade and free contracts. It sought the causes of
+injustice in the survival of some privilege or vested interest which
+prevents the full working of the principles of free contract and
+competition. Let every man "count as one"; make laws for "the greatest
+good of the greatest number." The trouble is not that there is too much
+individualism, but that there is too little. Tax reformers like Henry
+George have urged the same principle. If land is monopolized by a few
+who can levy a toll upon all the rest of society, how can justice
+obtain? The remedy for injustice is to be found in promoting greater
+freedom of industry and trade. Socialism on the other hand claims that
+individualism defeats itself; it results in tyranny, not freedom. The
+only way to secure freedom is through united action. The merits of some
+of these programs for social justice will be examined in Part III. They
+signify that the age is finding its moral problem set anew by the
+collision between material interests and social good. Greek civilization
+used the industry of the many to set free the higher life--art,
+government, science--of a few. The mediaeval ideal recognized the moral
+value of industry in relation to character. The modern conscience,
+resting back upon a higher appreciation of human dignity and worth, is
+seeking to work out a social and economic order that shall combine both
+the Greek and the mediaeval ideas. It will require work and secure
+freedom. These are necessary for the individual person. But it is
+beginning to be seen that these values cannot be divided so that one
+social class shall perform the labor and the other enjoy the freedom.
+The growth of democracy means that all members of society should share
+in the value and the service of work. It means that all should share
+according to capacity in the values of free life, of intelligence and
+culture. Can material goods be so produced and distributed as to promote
+this democratic ideal?
+
+
+Sec. 6. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE
+
+The development of intelligence in the modern world, as in Greece, has
+two sides: on the one hand, a working-free from the restrictions which
+theology or the State or other social authorities imposed; on the other
+hand, positive progress in knowledge of nature and of human life. Under
+its first aspect it is known as the growth of rationalism; under its
+second aspect, as the growth of science and education. We cannot
+separate the development into two periods, the one negative, the other
+positive, as was convenient in the case of Greece. The negative and the
+positive in the modern world have gone on contemporaneously, although
+the emphasis has sometimes been on one side and sometimes upon the
+other. We may, however, indicate three periods as standing out with
+clearly defined characteristics.
+
+(1) The Renaissance, in which the Greek spirit of scientific inquiry
+found a new birth; in which the discovery of new continents stimulated
+the imagination; and in which new and more fruitful methods of
+investigation were devised in mathematics and the natural sciences.
+
+(2) The period of the Enlightenment, in which the negative aspect of the
+process reached its sharpest definition. The doctrines of revealed
+religion and natural religion were criticised from the standpoint of
+reason. Mysteries and superstition were alike rejected. General
+intelligence made rapid progress. It was the "Age of Reason."
+
+(3) The Nineteenth Century, in which both the natural and social
+sciences underwent an extraordinary development. The doctrine of
+evolution has brought a new point of view for considering the organic
+world and human institutions. Education has come to be regarded as both
+the necessary condition for the safety of society and as the right of
+every human being; Science, in large measure set free from the need of
+fighting for its right to exist, is becoming constructive; it is
+assuming increasingly the duty of preserving human life and health, of
+utilizing and preserving natural resources, of directing political and
+economic affairs.
+
+=1. The Renaissance.=--It would be giving a wrong impression to imply
+that there was no inquiry, no use of reason in the mediaeval world. The
+problems set by the inheritance of old-world religion and politics,
+forced themselves upon the builders of castles and cathedrals,[93] of
+law and of dogma. As indicated above, the universities were centers of
+discussion in which brilliant minds often challenged received opinions.
+Men like Roger Bacon sought to discover nature's secrets, and the great
+scholastics mastered Greek philosophy in the interest of defending the
+faith. But theological interest limited freedom and choice of theme. It
+was not until the expansion of the individual along the lines already
+traced--in political freedom, in the use of the arts, in the development
+of commerce--that the purely intellectual interest such as had once
+characterized Greece awoke. A new world of possibilities seemed dawning
+upon the Italian Galileo, the Frenchman Descartes, the Englishman
+Francis Bacon. The instruments of thought had been sharpened by the
+dialectics of the schools; now let them be used to analyze the world in
+which we live. Instead of merely observing nature Galileo applied the
+experimental method, putting definite questions to nature and thus
+preparing the way for a progress step by step toward a positive
+knowledge of nature's laws. Descartes found in mathematics a method of
+analysis which had never been appreciated before. What seemed the
+mysterious path of bodies in curved lines could be given a simple
+statement in his analytic geometry. Leibniz and Newton carried this
+method to triumphant results in the analysis of forces. Reason appeared
+able to discover and frame the laws of the universe--the "principles" of
+nature. Bacon, with less of positive contribution in method, sounded
+another note which was equally significant. The human mind is liable to
+be clouded and hindered in its activities by certain inveterate sources
+of error. Like deceitful images or obsessions the "idols" of the tribe,
+of the cave, of the market, and of the theater--due to instinct or
+habit, to language or tradition--prevent the reason from doing its best
+work. It needs vigorous effort to free the mind from these idols. But
+this can be done. Let man turn from metaphysics and theology to nature
+and life; let him follow reason instead of instinct or prejudice.
+"Knowledge is power." Through it may rise above the kingdom of nature
+the "kingdom of man." In his _New Atlantis_, Bacon foresees a human
+society in which skill and invention and government shall all contribute
+to human welfare. These three notes, the experimental method, the power
+of rational analysis through mathematics, and the possibility of
+controlling nature in the interests of man, were characteristic of the
+period.
+
+=2. The Enlightenment.=--A conflict of reason with authority went on
+side by side with the progress of science. Humanists and scientists had
+often set themselves against dogma and tradition. The Reformation was
+not in form an appeal to reason, but the clash of authorities stimulated
+men to reasoning upon the respective claims of Catholic and Protestant.
+And in the eighteenth century, under the favoring influence of a broad
+toleration and a general growth of intelligence, the conflict of reason
+with dogma reached its culmination. The French call the period
+"_l'Illumination_"--the illumination of life and experience by the light
+of reason. The Germans call it the _Aufklaerung_, "the clearing-up." What
+was to be cleared up? First, ignorance, which limits the range of man's
+power and infects him with fear of the unknown; then superstition, which
+is ignorance consecrated by wont and emotion; finally, dogma, which
+usually embodies irrational elements and seeks to force them upon the
+mind by the power of authority, not of truth. Nor was it merely a
+question of intellectual criticism. Voltaire saw that dogma was often
+responsible for cruelty. Ignorance meant belief in witchcraft and magic.
+From the dawn of civilization this had beset man's progress and quenched
+many of the brightest geniuses of the past. It was time to put an end
+once for all to the remnants of primitive credulity; it was time to be
+guided by the light of reason. The movement was not all negative. Using
+the same appeal to "nature," which had served so well as a rallying cry
+in the development of political rights, the protagonists of the movement
+spoke of a "natural light" which God had placed in man for his
+guidance--"the candle of the Lord set up by himself in men's minds,
+which it is impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to
+extinguish." A natural and rational religion should take the place of
+supposed revelation.
+
+But the great achievement of the eighteenth century in the intellectual
+development of the individual was that the human mind came to realize
+the part it was itself playing in the whole realm of science and
+conduct. Man began to look within. Whether he called his work an _Essay
+concerning Human Understanding_, or a _Treatise of Human Nature_, or a
+_Theory of Moral Sentiments_, or a _Critique of Pure Reason_, the aim
+was to study human experience. For of a sudden it was dawning upon man
+that, if he was then living upon a higher level of knowledge and conduct
+than the animal or the savage, this must be due to the activity of the
+mind. It appeared that man, not satisfied with "nature," had gone on to
+build a new world with institutions and morality, with art and science.
+This was no creation of instinct or habit; nor could it be explained in
+terms of sense, or feeling, or impulse alone; it was the work of that
+more active, universal, and creative type of intelligence which we call
+reason. Man, as capable of such achievements in science and conduct,
+must be regarded with new respect. As having political rights, freedom,
+and responsibility, man has the dignity of a citizen, sovereign as well
+as subject. As guiding and controlling his own life and that of others
+by the power of ideas, not of force, he has the dignity of a moral
+person, a moral sovereignty. He does not merely take what nature brings;
+he sets up ends of his own and gives them worth. In this, Kant saw the
+supreme dignity of the human spirit.
+
+=3. The Present Significance and Task of Scientific Method.=--In the
+thought that man is able to form ends which have value for all, to set
+up standards which all respect, and thus to achieve worth and dignity in
+the estimation of his fellows, the Individualism of the eighteenth
+century was already pointing beyond itself. For this meant that the
+individual attains his highest reach only as a member of a moral
+society. But it is one thing to point out the need and meaning of a
+moral society, it is another thing to bring such a society into being.
+It has become evident during the past century that this is the central
+problem for human reason to solve. The various social sciences,
+economics, sociology, political science, jurisprudence, social
+psychology, have either come into being for the first time, or have been
+prosecuted with new energy. Psychology has assumed new significance as
+their instrument. Not that the scientific progress of the century has
+seen its greatest triumphs in these fields. The conspicuous successes
+have been rather in such sciences as biology, or in the applications of
+science to engineering and medicine. The social sciences have been
+occupied largely in getting their problems stated and their methods
+defined. But the discoveries and constructions of the nineteenth century
+are none the less indispensable prerequisites for a moral society. For
+the new conditions of city life, the new sources of disease, the new
+dangers which attend every successive step away from the life of the
+savage, demand all the resources of the sciences.[94] And as the natural
+sciences overcome the technical difficulties which obstruct their work
+of aiding human welfare, the demand will be more insistent that the
+social sciences contribute their share toward enabling man to fulfil his
+moral life. Some of the specific demands will become more evident, as we
+study in subsequent chapters the present problems of political,
+economic, and family life.
+
+=Education.=--The importance for the moral life of the modern
+development of science is paralleled by the significance of modern
+education. The universities date from the Middle Ages. The classical
+interest of humanism found its medium in the college or "grammar
+school." The invention of printing and the growth of commerce promoted
+elementary schools. Supposed necessities of popular government
+stimulated a general educational movement in the United States. Modern
+trade and industry have called out the technical school. Germany has
+educated for national defense and economic advance; England has
+concerned itself preeminently for the education of statesmen and
+administrators; and the United States for the education of voters. But,
+whatever the motive, education has been made so general as to constitute
+a new element in the modern consciousness and a new factor to be
+reckoned with. The moral right of every child to have an education,
+measured not by his parents' abilities, but by his own capacity, is
+gaining recognition. The moral value of a possession, which is not, like
+material goods, exclusive, but common, will be more appreciated when we
+have worked out a more social and democratic type of training.[95]
+
+=Theoretical Interpretation of this Period in Ethical Systems.=--While
+the theoretical interpretation of this period is to be treated in Part
+II., we may point out here that the main lines of development which we
+have traced find expression in the two systems which have been most
+influential during the past century. These are the systems of Kant and
+of the Utilitarians. The political and certain aspects of the
+intellectual development are reflected in the system of Kant. He
+emphasized freedom, the power and authority of reason, human dignity,
+the supreme value of character, and the significance of a society in
+which every member is at once sovereign and subject. The Utilitarians
+represent the values brought out in the development of industry,
+education, and the arts. They claimed that the good is happiness, and
+happiness of the greatest number. The demands for individual
+satisfaction and for social distribution of goods are voiced in this
+system.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+The histories of philosophy and of ethics give the theoretical side. In
+addition to those previously mentioned the works of Hoeffding,
+Falckenberg, and Fischer may be named. Stephen, _English Thought in the
+Eighteenth Century_, and _The Utilitarians_; Fichte, _Characteristics of
+the Present Age_ (in _Popular Works_, tr. by Smith); Stein, _Die sociale
+Frage im Lichte der Philosophie_, 1897; Comte, _Positive Philosophy_,
+tr. by Martineau, 1875, Book VI. Tufts and Thompson, _The Individual and
+His Relation to Society as Reflected in British Ethics_, 1896, 1904;
+Merz, _History of European Thought in the 19th Century_, 1904;
+Robertson, _A Short History of Free Thought_, 1899; Bonar, _Philosophy
+and Political Economy in Some of Their Historical Relations_, 1893.
+
+ON THE MEDIAEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ATTITUDE: Lecky, _History of European
+Morals_, 3rd ed., 1877; Adams, _Civilization during the Middle Ages_,
+1895; Rashdall, _The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_, 1895;
+Eicken, _Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_,
+1877; Burckhardt, _The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy_, 1892;
+Draper, _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_, 1876.
+
+ON THE INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL SIDE: Ashley, _English Economic History_;
+Cunningham, _Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects_, 1900; and
+_Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, 3rd ed., 1896-1903; Hobson,
+_The Evolution of Modern Capitalism_, 1894; Traill, _Social England_,
+1894; Rambaud, _Histoire de Civilization Francaise_, 1897; Held, _Zwei
+Buecher zur socialen Geschichte Englands_, 1881; Carlyle, _Past and
+Present_; Ziegler, _Die Geistigen und socialen Stroemungen des
+neunzehnten Jahrhunderts_, 1901.
+
+ON THE POLITICAL AND JURAL DEVELOPMENT: Hadley, _Freedom and
+Responsibility in the Evolution of Democratic Government_, 1903;
+Pollock, _The Expansion of the Common Law_, 1904; Ritchie, _Natural
+Rights_, 1895; _Darwin and Hegel_, 1893, ch. vii.; Dicey, _Lectures on
+the Relation of Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth
+Century_, 1905.
+
+ON THE LITERARY SIDE: Brandes, _The Main Currents in the Literature of
+the Nineteenth Century_, 1905; Francke, _Social Forces in German
+Literature_, 1895; Carriere, _Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der
+Culturentwicklung und die Ideale der Menschheit_, 3rd ed., 1877-86.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[84] Fisher, _History of the Christian Church_, p. 227.
+
+[85] _Democracy and Social Ethics_, pp. 222-77; _Newer Ideals of Peace_,
+ch. v.
+
+[86] Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, p. 367.
+
+[87] _Social Forces in German Literature_, p. 93.
+
+[88] Pp. 130 f., 136.
+
+[89] Tolstoy, _What is Art?_
+
+[90] P. 40.
+
+[91] See p. 176.
+
+[92] Cunningham, _An Essay on Western Civilization_, pp. 77 ff.
+
+[93] The writer is indebted to his colleague Professor Mead for the
+significance of this for the beginnings of modern science.
+
+[94] "Civilized man has proceeded so far in his interference with
+extra-human nature, has produced for himself and the living organisms
+associated with him such a special state of things by his rebellion
+against natural selection and his defiance of Nature's prehuman
+dispositions, that he must either go on and acquire firmer control of
+the conditions or perish miserably by the vengeance certain to fall on
+the half-hearted meddler in great affairs.... We may think of him as the
+heir to a vast and magnificent kingdom who has been finally educated so
+as to fit him to take possession of his property, and is at length left
+alone to do his best; he has wilfully abrogated, in many important
+respects, the laws of his Mother Nature by which the kingdom was
+hitherto governed; he has gained some power and advantage by so doing,
+but is threatened on every hand by dangers and disasters hitherto
+restrained: no retreat is possible--his only hope is to control, as he
+knows that he can, the sources of these dangers and disasters. They
+already make him wince: how long will he sit listening to the
+fairy-tales of his boyhood and shrink from manhood's task?"--RAY
+LANKESTER, _The Kingdom of Man_, 1907, pp. 31 f.
+
+[95] John Dewey, _The School and Society_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A GENERAL COMPARISON OF CUSTOMARY AND REFLECTIVE MORALITY
+
+
+To eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil may
+result in ultimate gain. A more conscious and individualistic attitude
+may result in definite conceptions of duty and rights, of values and
+ideals. At the same time, as humanity's eyes have been opened and its
+wisdom increased, many forms of nakedness unknown in ruder conditions
+have been disclosed. With every increase of opportunity and efficiency
+for good there is a corresponding opportunity for evil. An immensely
+more complex environment gives scope for correspondingly more capable
+and subtle personalities. Some will react to the situation in such a way
+as to rise to a higher moral level, both in personal integrity and in
+public usefulness. Others will find in facilities for gratifying some
+appetite or passion a temptation too strong for their control and will
+become vicious, or will seize the chances to exploit others and become
+unjust in their acquirement and use of power and wealth. There will be a
+Nero as well as an Aurelius, a Caesar Borgia as well as a Savonarola, a
+Jeffreys as well as a Sidney, a Bentham, or a Howard. For an Eliot or a
+Livingston or an Armstrong, there are the exploiters of lower races; and
+for an Elizabeth Fry, the women who trade in the wretchedness of their
+kind. By the side of those who use great abilities and resources
+unselfishly are those who view indifferently the sacrifice of human
+health or life, and pay no heed to human misery. Such contrasts show
+that the "evolution of morality" is also an evolution of weakness,
+wretchedness, evil, and crime. They suggest some general comparisons
+between custom and reflective morality. They require from every age a
+renewed analysis of conduct and the social system. As a preliminary to
+such an analysis, we review in this chapter some of the general
+relations between the morality of custom and the morality of reflection.
+
+
+Sec. 1. ELEMENTS OF AGREEMENT AND CONTINUITY
+
+The moral life shows its continuity in two ways. First, the earlier type
+of group and customary morality persists in part; in the second place,
+when the moral is differentiated from the other spheres of life in which
+it was embedded, it does not have to find entirely new conceptions. It
+borrows its terms from the group life or from the various spheres,
+religious, political, aesthetic, economic, which separate out from the
+older group unity.
+
+The following quotation from Grote will serve as a vivid restatement of
+the regime of custom:
+
+ "This aggregate of beliefs and predispositions to believe,
+ Ethical, Religious, Aesthetical, and Social, respecting what is
+ true or false, probable or improbable, just or unjust, holy or
+ unholy, honorable or base, respectable or contemptible, pure or
+ impure, beautiful or ugly, decent or indecent, obligatory to do or
+ obligatory to avoid, respecting the status and relations of each
+ individual in the society, respecting even the admissible fashions
+ of amusement and recreation--this is an established fact and
+ condition of things, the real origin of which is for the most part
+ unknown, but which each new member of the group is born to and
+ finds subsisting.... It becomes a part of each person's nature, a
+ standing habit of mind, or fixed set of mental tendencies,
+ according to which particular experience is interpreted and
+ particular persons appreciated.... The community hate, despise or
+ deride any individual member who proclaims his dissent from their
+ social creed.... Their hatred manifests itself in different ways
+ ... at the very least by exclusion from that amount of
+ forbearance, good will and estimation without which the life of
+ an individual becomes insupportable.... 'Nomos (Law and Custom),
+ king of all' (to borrow the phrase which Herodotus cites from
+ Pindar) exercises plenary power, spiritual and temporal, over
+ individual minds; moulding the emotions as well as the intellect,
+ according to the local type ... and reigning under the appearance
+ of habitual, self-suggested tendencies."[96]
+
+The important facts brought out are (1) the existence in a social group
+of certain habits not only of acting, but of feeling and believing about
+actions, of valuing or approving and disapproving. (2) The persistent
+forcing of these mental habitudes upon the attention of each new member
+of the group. The newcomer, whether by birth or adoption, is introduced
+into a social medium whose conditions and regulations he can no more
+escape than he can those of his physical environment. (3) Thus the
+mental and practical habits of the newly introduced individual are
+shaped. The current ways of esteeming and behaving in the community
+become a "standing habit" of his own mind; they finally reign as
+"habitual, self-suggested tendencies." Thus he becomes a full member of
+the social group, interested in the social fabric to which he belongs,
+and ready to do his part in maintaining it.
+
+=1. Persistence of Group Morality.=--Comparing this state of affairs
+with what obtains to-day in civilized communities, we find certain
+obvious points of agreement. The social groups with which an individual
+comes in touch are now more numerous and more loosely formed. But
+everywhere there are customs not only of acting, but of thinking and
+feeling about acting. Each profession, each institution, has a _code_ of
+which the individual has to take account. The nature of this code,
+unexpressed as well as formulated, is brought to the attention of the
+individual in countless ways; by the approval and disapproval of its
+public opinion; by his own failures and successes; by his own tendency
+to imitate what he sees about him, as well as by deliberate, intentional
+instruction.
+
+In other words, group morality does not vanish in order that conscious
+and personal morality may take its place. Group and customary morality
+is still the morality of many of us most of the time, and of all of us
+for a good deal of the time. We do not any of us think out all of our
+standards, weigh independently our values, make all our choices in a
+rational manner, or form our characters by following a clearly conceived
+purpose. As children we all start in a family group. We continue in a
+school group and perhaps a church group. We enter an occupation group,
+and later, it may be, family, political, social, and neighborhood
+groups. In every one of these if we are members, we must to a certain
+degree accept standards that are given. We have to play according to the
+rules of the game. As children we do this unconsciously. We imitate, or
+follow suggestions; we are made to conform by all the agencies of group
+morality--group opinion, ritual, pleasure and pain, and even by
+taboos;[97] above all, we act as the others act, and cooperate more or
+less to a common end. We form habits which persist, many of them as long
+as we live. We accept many of the traditions without challenge. Even
+when we pass from the early family group to the new situations and
+surroundings which make us repeat more or less of the experience of the
+race, a large share of our conduct and of our judgments of others is
+determined by the influences of group and custom. And it is fortunate
+for progress that this is true. If every one had to start anew to frame
+all his ideals and make his laws, we should be in as melancholy a plight
+morally as we should be intellectually if we had to build each science
+anew. The fundamental safeguards which the group provides against
+individual impulse and passion, the condition of close association,
+interdependence and mutual sympathy which the group affords, the
+habituation to certain lines of conduct valued by the group--all this is
+a root on which the stem and flower of personal morality may grow.
+Individualism and intellectual activity, however necessary to man's
+progress, would give no morality did they not start out of this deeper
+level of common feeling and common destiny. The rational and personal
+agencies of the "third level" come not to destroy, but to fulfill the
+meaning of the forces and agencies of the first and second levels
+described in Chapters III and IV.
+
+=2. The Moral Conceptions.=--The conceptions for the moral are nearly
+all taken from the group relations or from the jural and religious
+aspects, as these have been gradually brought to clearer consciousness.
+As already noted, the Greek term "ethical," the Latin "moral," the
+German "_sittlich_," suggest this--_ethos_ meant the "sum of the
+characteristic usages, ideas, standards, and codes by which a group was
+differentiated and individualized in character from other groups."[98]
+
+Some specific moral terms come directly from group relations. The "kind"
+man acts as one of the kin. When the ruling or privileged group is
+contrasted with the man of no family or of inferior birth, we get a
+large number of terms implying "superiority" or "inferiority" in birth,
+and so of general value. This may or may not be due to some inherent
+superiority of the upper class, but it means at least that the upper
+class has been most effectual in shaping language and standards of
+approval. So "noble" and "gentle" referred to birth before they had
+moral value; "duty" in modern usage seems to have been principally what
+was due to a superior. Many words for moral disapproval are very
+significant of class feeling. The "caitiff" was a captive, and the
+Italians have their general term for morally bad, "_cattivo_," from the
+same idea. The "villain" was a feudal tenant, the "blackguard" looked
+after the kettles, the "rascal" was one of the common herd, the "knave"
+was the servant; the "base" and "mean" were opposed to the gentle and
+noble. Another set of conceptions reflects the old group _approvals_ or
+combines these with conceptions of birth. We have noted the twofold root
+of _kalokagathia_ in Greek. "Honor" and "honesty" were what the group
+admired, and conversely "_aischros_" and "_turpe_" in Greek and Latin,
+like the English "disgraceful" or "shameful," were what the group
+condemned. "Virtue" was the manly excellence which called out the praise
+of a warlike time, while one of the Greek terms for morally bad
+originally meant cowardly, and our "scoundrel" has possibly the same
+origin. The "bad" was probably the weak or the womanish. The economic
+appears in "merit," what I have earned, and likewise in "duty" and
+"ought," what is due or owed--though duty seems to have made itself felt
+especially, as noted above, toward a superior. Forethought and skill in
+practical affairs provided the conception of "wisdom," which was highest
+of the virtues for the Greeks, and as "prudence" stood high in mediaeval
+systems. The conception of valuing and thus of forming some permanent
+standard of a better and a worse, is also aided, if not created, by
+economic exchange. It appears in almost identical terms in Plato and the
+New Testament in the challenge, "What shall it profit a man if he gain
+the whole world and lose his own life?"[99] From the processes of fine
+or useful arts came probably the conceptions of measure, order, and
+harmony. A whole mode of considering the moral life is jural. "Moral
+law," "authority," "obligation," "responsibility," "justice,"
+"righteousness," bring with them the associations of group control and
+of the more definitely organized government and law. Finally the last
+named terms bear also a religious imprint, and numerous conceptions of
+the moral come from that sphere or get their specific flavor from
+religious usage. The conceptions of the "soul" have contributed to the
+ideal of a good which is permanent, and which is made rather by personal
+companionship, than by sensuous gratification. "Purity" began as a
+magical and religious idea; it came to symbolize not only freedom from
+contamination but singleness of purpose. "Chastity" lends a religious
+sacredness to a virtue which had its roots largely in the conception of
+property. "Wicked" is from witch.
+
+We have indeed certain conceptions drawn from individual experiences of
+instinct, or reflection. From the sense recoil from what was disgusting
+such conceptions as "foul," and from kindred imagery of what suits eye
+or muscular sense come "straightforward," "upright," "steady." From the
+thinking process itself we have "conscience." This word in Greek and
+Latin was a general term for consciousness and suggests one of the
+distinctive, perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the moral.
+For it implies a "conscious" thoughtful attitude, which operates not
+only in forming purposes, but in measuring and valuing action by the
+standards it approves. But it is evident that by far the larger part of
+our ethical terms are derived from social relations in the broad sense.
+
+
+Sec. 2. ELEMENTS OF CONTRAST
+
+=Differentiation of the Moral.=--The most obvious difference between the
+present and the early attitude is that we now make a clear distinction
+between the moral aspect of behavior and other aspects such as the
+conventional, the political, the legal; while in customary morality all
+activities esteemed by society were put upon the same level and enforced
+with the same vigor. Matters which we should regard as purely matters of
+fashion or etiquette, or as modes of amusement, such as styles of
+wearing the hair, were imperative. To mutilate the body in a certain way
+was as exigent as to observe certain marriage customs; to refrain from
+speaking to the mother-in-law as binding as to obey the chieftain; not
+to step over the shadow of the chief was even more important than not to
+murder the member of another tribe. In general we make a clear
+distinction between "manners" and morals, while in customary morality
+manners _are_ morals, as the very words "ethical," "moral" still
+testify.
+
+When Grote speaks of "Ethical, Religious, Aesthetical, and Social"
+beliefs, the term "ethical" belongs with the other terms only from a
+modern standpoint. The characteristic thing about the condition of which
+he is speaking is that the "religious, aesthetical, and social" beliefs
+brought to bear upon the individual _constitute_ the ethical. We make
+the distinction between them as naturally as the regime of custom failed
+to make it. Only by imagining a social set in which failure to observe
+punctiliously the fashions of the set as to the proper style of dress
+makes the person subject to a disparagement which influences his
+feelings and ideas as keenly _and in the same way_ as conviction of
+moral delinquency, can we realize the frame of mind characteristic of
+the ethics of custom.
+
+=Observing versus Reflecting.=--Customs may be "observed." Indeed,
+customary morality made goodness or rightness of character practically
+identical with observing the established order of social estimations in
+all departments. This word _observe_ is significant: it means to note,
+or notice as matter of fact, by perception; and it means to yield
+allegiance, to conform to, in action.[100] The element of intelligence,
+of reason, is thus reduced to a minimum. The moral values are _there_,
+so to speak, palpably, tangibly; and the individual has only to use his
+mind enough to notice them. And since they are forced upon his notice by
+drastic and unrelaxing methods of discipline, little initiative is
+required for even the attitude of attention. But when the moral is
+something which is in customs and habits, rather than those customs
+themselves, the good and right do not stand out in so obvious and
+external fashion. Recognition now demands thought, reflection; the power
+of abstraction and generalization. A child may be shown in a pretty
+direct and physical fashion the difference between _meum_ and _tuum_ in
+its bearing upon his conduct: a fence may be pointed at which divides
+his yard from that of a neighbor and which draws as well the moral line
+between what is permissible and what is forbidden; a whipping may
+intensify the observation. But modern business knows also of
+"intangible" property--good will, reputation, credit. These, indeed, can
+be bought and sold but the detection of their existence and nature
+demands an intelligence which is more than perception. The greater
+number of duties and rights of which present morality consists are of
+just this type. They are relations, not just outward habits. Their
+acknowledgment requires accordingly something more than just to follow
+and reproduce existing customs. It involves power to see _why_ certain
+habits are to be followed, what _makes_ a thing good or bad.
+_Conscience_ is thus substituted for _custom_; _principles_ take the
+place of external _rules_.
+
+This is what we mean by calling present morality reflective rather than
+customary. It is not that social customs have ceased to be, or even have
+been reduced in number. The exact contrary is the case. It is not that
+they have shrunk in importance, or that they have less significance for
+the individual's activity, or claim less of his attention. Again, the
+reverse is the case. But the individual has to grasp the _meaning_ of
+these customs over and above the bare fact of their existence, and has
+to guide himself by their _meaning_ and not by the mere fact noted.[101]
+
+=Custom is Static.=--This difference introduces a second very important
+difference. In customary morality, there is no choice between being
+enmeshed in the net of social rules which control activity, and being an
+outlaw--one beyond the pale, whose hand is against every man's, and
+every man's against him. The extent to which social customs are regarded
+as of divine origin and are placed under the protection of the gods,
+i.e., the tendency of all sanctions to become religious and
+supernatural, is evidence of the binding force of institutions upon the
+individual. To violate them is impiety, sacrilege, and calls down the
+wrath of gods, as well as of men. The custom cannot be questioned. To
+inquire means uncertainty, and hence it is immoral, an attack upon the
+very foundations of the life of the group. The apparent exception, which
+after all exhibits the rule, is the case of great reforming heroes who
+demarcate epochs of history even in customary societies. Such
+individuals meet contemporary opposition and persecution; it is only by
+victory, by signal success over a rival faction at home, over plague and
+famine, or over an enemy abroad, that the hero is justified. Thereby it
+is proved that the gods are with him and sanction his changes--indeed
+that he is their own chosen instrument. Then the modified or new customs
+and institutions have all the binding sacredness and supernatural
+sanction of the old. It is not yet an outgrown story for the fathers to
+kill the prophets, and for the sons to build and adorn their tombs, and
+make them into shrines.
+
+=Reflection Discovers a Higher Law.=--But in so far as the individual's
+activity is directed by his comprehension of the _meaning_ of customs,
+not by his apprehension of their _existence_, so far the notion of moral
+progress or reform in social affairs becomes ethically important and
+greater moral responsibility is put upon the individual just as greater
+practical freedom is secured to him. For (a) the individual may set the
+meaning of a custom _against_ its present form; or (b) he may find the
+meaning of some custom much more commanding in value than that of
+others, and yet find that its realization is hindered by the existence
+of these other customs of less moral importance. On the basis of such
+discrimination, the abolition or, at least, the modification of certain
+social habits is demanded. So far as this sort of situation frequently
+recurs, the individual (c) becomes more or less vaguely aware that he
+_must not accept the current standard_ as justification of his own
+conduct, unless _it also_ justify itself to his own moral intelligence.
+The fact that it exists gives it indeed a certain _prima facie_ claim,
+but no ultimate moral warrant. Perhaps the custom is itself wrong--and
+the individual is responsible for bearing this possibility in mind.
+
+=Consequent Transformation of Custom.=--Of course the plane of customary
+morality still persists; no wholesale divergence of reflective from
+customary morality exists. Practically, for example, many business men
+do not bother themselves about the morality of certain ways of doing
+business. Such and such is the custom of the trade, and if a man is
+going to do business at all he must follow its customs--or get out. Law,
+medicine, the ministry, journalism, family life, present, in
+considerable extent, the same phenomenon. Customary morality persists,
+almost as the core of present morality. But there is still a difference.
+A few, at least, are actively engaged in a moral criticism of the
+custom, in a demand for its transformation; and almost everybody is
+sufficiently affected by the discussions and agitations thus called out
+to have some lingering and uneasy idea of responsibility for his part in
+the maintenance of a questionable custom. The duty of some exercise of
+discriminating intelligence as to existing customs for the sake of
+improvement and progress, is thus a mark of reflective morality--of the
+regime of conscience as over against custom. In the morally more
+advanced members of contemporary society, the need of fostering a habit
+of examination and judgment, of keeping the mind open, sensitive, to the
+defects and the excellences of the existing social order is recognized
+as obligation. To reflect on one's own behavior in relation to the
+existing order is a standing habit of mind.
+
+=Deepening of Meaning.=--While the materials and conceptions of more
+conscious morality are provided by the earlier stages, and taken from
+other spheres of life, we find that these conceptions naturally undergo
+a deepening of meaning when they are used to express the more intimate
+and personal attitude. Take, for example, the conceptions borrowed from
+the jural sphere. It is in the school of government and courts that man
+has learned to talk and think of right and law, of responsibility and
+justice. To make these moral instead of jural terms, the first thing
+that is needed is that we make the whole process an inward one. The
+person must himself set up a standard, recognize it as "law," judge his
+conduct by it, hold himself responsible to himself, and seek to do
+justice. It takes several persons to carry on these processes in the
+realm of government. Legislators, judges, jury, executive officers, all
+represent the State, organized society. That a single person can be
+himself lawgiver, judge, and jury, as well as claimant or defendant,
+shows that he is himself a complex being. He is a being of passions,
+appetites, and individual interests, but he is also a being who has a
+rational and social nature. As a member of society he not only feels his
+individual interest but recognizes social interests. As a rational
+being he not only feels the thrill of passion but responds to the
+authority of a law and obeys the voice of duty. Like a member of a
+democratic State he finds himself in the sphere of conduct, not only a
+subject but a sovereign, and feels the dignity of a _person_. A
+conscientious person is in so far one who has made the law of God or man
+an inward law of life--a "moral law." But the act of making the process
+inward makes possible a deepening of meaning. Governments and courts are
+necessarily limited in purview and fallible in decisions. They are
+sometimes too lenient, sometimes too severe. Conscience implies a
+knowledge of the whole act--purpose, motive, and deed. Its authority
+makes claim for absolute obedience. The laws of the State are felt to be
+binding just because they are believed to be, on the whole, right and
+just as measured by this moral court of appeal. When they conflict, the
+power may be with the political sovereign, but the man whose conscience
+is clear believes that he follows a "higher law." Much of the great
+literature of the world draws its interest from its portrayal of this
+fundamental fact of human experience. "Two things fill the mind with
+ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more
+steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law
+within."
+
+The conceptions taken from the economic sphere show similar deepening.
+In the economic world things are good or have value if people want them.
+It is in the experience of satisfying wants that man has learned the
+language of "good and evil," and to compare one good with another; it is
+doubtless by the progress of science and the arts that objective
+standards of more permanent, rational, and social "goods" are provided.
+When this term is taken up to a higher level and given moral meaning,
+two new factors appear. First the individual begins to consider his
+various goods and values in relation to each other and to his life as a
+whole. In the second place, in thus comparing the various goods and the
+desires they satisfy, he begins to realize that in some way he is
+himself more than the mere sum of his natural instincts and appetites.
+He finds that he can take an interest in certain things, and is not
+merely passive. He _gives_ value as well as measures it. He feels that
+as such an active and organizing judge and creator of value, he himself
+has a higher worth than any of the particular things that gratify
+particular desires. "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
+things that he possesseth." "The life is more than meat." Or, to use the
+phrase which will be explained later, moral good implies purpose,
+character, "good will." In common language, it implies being, and not
+merely having.
+
+The term good where used in our judgments upon others (as in a "good"
+man), may have a different history. As has been noted, it may come from
+class feeling, or from the praise we give to acts as they immediately
+please. It may be akin to noble or fine or admirable. All such
+conceptions undergo a similar transformation as they pass from the
+sphere of class or public opinion to become moral terms. As moral they
+imply in the first place that we consider not merely outward acts, but
+inward purpose and character. They imply in the second place that we who
+judge are ourselves acting not as members of a class, not as merely
+emotional beings, but as social and rational. Our moral judgments in
+this sense are from a general, a universal standard; those of a class
+are partial.
+
+
+Sec. 3. OPPOSITION BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL AIMS AND STANDARDS
+
+=Withdrawal from the Social Order.=--The development of reflection tends
+to set up a moral opposition between the individual and society.
+Sometimes "conscience" goes beyond the need of criticizing, of
+discriminating, of interpreting social customs, of following their
+spirit rather than their letter; it takes the form of an assertion of a
+purely inner, personal morality, so distinct from the conditions of
+social life that the latter are conceived to be totally lacking in
+positive moral significance. The prescriptions of morality are thought
+to be revealed in conscience, as a faculty of pure intuition or
+revelation, receiving neither material nor warrant from social
+conditions. The distinction already spoken of between the moral and the
+economic, legal, or conventional, is conceived as a complete separation;
+customs and institutions are external, indifferent, irrelevant, or even
+hostile to the ideal and personally perceived demands of morality. Such
+a conception of morality is especially likely to arise in a period when
+through the clash of ways and standards of living, all customs, except
+those maintained by force and authority, are disintegrating or relaxing.
+Such a state existed in the early years of the Roman empire when, for
+the first time in history, local boundaries were systematically
+overstepped; when the empire was a seething mixture of alien and unlike
+gods, beliefs, ideals, standards, practices. In the almost universal
+flux and confusion, _external_ order was maintained by the crystallized
+legislation and administration of Rome; but personal aims and modes of
+behavior had to be ascertained by the individual thrown back upon
+himself. Christian, Stoic, Epicurean, alike found the political order
+wholly external to the moral, or in chronic opposition to it. There was
+a withdrawal into the region of personal consciousness. In some cases
+the withdrawal was pushed to the point where men felt that they could be
+truly righteous only by going by themselves into the desert, to live as
+hermits; or by forming separate communities of those who agreed in their
+conceptions of life; mental and moral aloofness from prevailing social
+standards and habitudes was preached by all.
+
+=Individual Emancipation.=--In other cases, what takes place is a
+consciousness of liberation; of assertion of personal rights and
+privileges, claims for new modes of activity and new kinds of enjoyment.
+The individual feels that he is his own end; that the impulses and
+capacities which he finds in himself are sacred, and afford the only
+genuine law for his behavior; that whatever restricts the full exercise
+of these personal powers and hampers the satisfaction of personal
+desires is coercive and morally abnormal. Existing social institutions
+may be practically necessary, but they are morally undesirable; they are
+to be used, or got around in the interests of personal gratifications.
+As some feel that social conditions are hostile to the realization of
+the highest moral _obligations_, so others feel that they are hostile to
+the full possession of their _rights_, of that to which they are
+properly entitled.
+
+=Eventual Transformation of Social Values and Aims.=--In extreme cases,
+the individual may come to believe that, either on the basis of his true
+obligations or his true rights, the very principle of society is morally
+indifferent or even unworthy; that the moral life is eventually or
+intrinsically an individual matter, although it happens to be outwardly
+led under social conditions. But in the main the opposition is not to
+the social relations as such, but to existing institutions and customs
+as inadequate. Then the reaction of the individual against the existing
+social scheme, whether on the ground of ideals too high to be supported
+by it or on the ground of personal claims to which it does not afford
+free play, becomes a means to the reconstruction and transformation of
+social habits. In this way, _reflective morality is a mark of a
+progressive society, just as customary morality is of a stationary
+society_. Reflection on values is the method of their modification.
+
+The monastic Christian in his outward withdrawal from social life, still
+maintained the conception of a perfected society, of a kingdom of God or
+Heaven to be established. This ideal became to some extent the working
+method for changing the existing order. The Stoics, who held in light
+esteem existing community ties, had the conception of a universal
+community, a cosmopolis, ruled by universal law, of which every rational
+being was a member and subject. This notion became operative to some
+extent in the development of judicial and administrative systems much
+more generalized and equitable than the purely local customs, laws, and
+standards which it swept away. The Epicurean had the ideal of friendship
+on the basis of which were formed groups of congenial associates held
+together neither by legal ties, nor by universal laws of reason, nor by
+unity of religious aspiration and belief, but by friendship and
+companionable intercourse. Thus were afforded other centers of social
+reconstruction.
+
+
+Sec. 4. EFFECTS UPON THE INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER
+
+=General Effects.=--The characteristic differences which have been
+pointed out in the preceding section, when taken together with the
+specific conditions of change--liberty of action and thought, incentives
+to private acquisition, facilities for power and pleasure--enable us to
+understand the contrasts referred to at the opening of the chapter. We
+have, on the one hand, the inbred craving for power, for acquisition,
+for excitement, for gratification of sense and appetite, enhanced by
+what it feeds on. We have, on the other hand, the progressive
+differentiation of the moral, tearing the individual loose from the
+bonds of the external moral order and forcing him to stand on his own
+feet--or fall. Note how each of the points brought out in the preceding
+section operates.
+
+(1) To separate out the moral as a distinct element from certain spheres
+of life, allows the less seriously minded and the less sympathetic
+individuals to live complacently a trivial or unscrupulous life.
+Fashion, "social duties," amusements, "culture" emptied of all earnest
+meaning, "business" and "politics" divorced from any humane or public
+considerations, may be regarded as justifiable vocations. A "gentleman"
+who no longer has the occupation of his fighting predecessors as an
+excuse for a distinct type of life, may find the support of a large
+leisure class in declining any useful service to the community and
+devoting himself to "sport"; a "lady" may be so engaged by the
+multifarious demands of "society" as never to notice what an utterly
+worthless round she follows.
+
+(2) The fact that the morality of conscience requires reflection,
+progress, and a deeper meaning for its conception, makes it obvious why
+many fail to grasp any moral meaning at all. They fail to put forth the
+effort, or to break with habit. Under customary morality it was enough
+to "observe" and to continue in the mores. It requires a higher degree
+of insight and a greater initiative to get any moral attitude at all
+when the forms have become mere forms and the habits mere habits. Hence
+when a change in personal environment or in general social and economic
+conditions comes, many fail to see the principles involved. They remain
+completely satisfied with the "old-fashioned virtues" or intrench
+themselves in the "righteousness" and "honesty" of a past generation.
+This habitual and "painless" morality will often mean a "virtue" or
+"righteousness" which involves no conflict with present conditions. A
+man who feels honest because he does not break contracts or defraud in
+old-fashioned ways, may be quite at ease about watering stock or
+adulterating goods. A society which abhors murder with iron and
+explosives in the form of daggers and bombs, may feel quite unconcerned
+about the preventable homicides by iron machinery, or by explosives used
+in coal mines.
+
+(3) The conflict with society which reflective morality requires, works
+to thrust some below the general level, while it raises others above it.
+To criticize the general moral order may make a man a prophet, but it
+may also make him a Pharisee. Practical reaction may make reformers, but
+it is likely to make another set of men dissolute; to make them feel
+superior to the morality of "Philistines" and therefore exempt from
+social restraints.
+
+=Vices Incident to Reflective Stage.=--The vices increase with
+civilization, partly because of increased opportunity, partly because of
+increased looseness in social restraint. There is a further element.
+When any activity of man is cut off from its original and natural
+relations and made the object of special attention and pursuit, the
+whole adjustment is thrown out of balance. What was before a useful
+function becomes pathological. The craving for excitement or stimulation
+is normal within certain limits. In the chase or the battle, in the
+venture of the explorer or the merchant, it functions as a healthy
+incentive. When isolated as an end in itself, taken out of the objective
+social situation, it becomes the spring of gambling or drunkenness. The
+instincts and emotions of sex, possessing power and interest
+necessitated by their place in the continuance of the race, become when
+isolated the spring of passion or of obscenity or lubricity. Avarice and
+gluttony illustrate the same law. The gladiatorial shows at Rome became
+base and cowardly when the Romans were themselves no longer
+fighters.[102] Even the aspiration for what is higher and better may
+become an "otherworldliness" which leaves this world to its misery and
+evil. Such a series of pictures as Balzac has given in his _Comedie
+Humaine_, shows better than any labored description the possibilities of
+modern civilization.
+
+There is, moreover, in civilized society a further most demoralizing
+agency unknown to earlier life. As the vices are specialized and pursued
+they become economic and political interests. Vast capital is invested
+in the business of ministering to the vicious appetites. It is
+pecuniarily desirable that these appetites should be stimulated as
+greatly as possible. It makes "business." The tribute levied by public
+officials upon the illegal pursuits forms a vast fund for carrying
+elections. The multitude engaged in the traffic or dependent upon it for
+favors, can be relied upon to cast their votes as a unit for men who
+will guarantee protection.
+
+=Relations to Fellow Men.=--The motives and occasions for selfishness
+and injustice have been indicated sufficiently perhaps in preceding
+chapters. As the general process of increasing individuality and
+reflection goes on, it is an increasingly easy matter to be indifferent
+or even unjust. When all lead a common life it is easy to enter into the
+situation of another, to appreciate his motives, his needs, and in
+general to "put yourself in his place." The external nature of the
+conduct makes it easy to hold all to a common standard. The game must be
+shared; the property--so far as there is property--respected; the
+religious rites observed. But when standards becomes more inward the
+more intelligent or rigorous may find sympathy less easy. When they
+attempt to be "charitable" they may easily become condescending. The
+pure will not soil their skirts by contact with the fallen. The
+"high-minded citizen" refuses to mix in politics. The scholar thinks the
+business man materialistic. The man of breeding, wealth, and education
+finds the uneducated laborer lacking in courtesy and refinement and
+argues that it is useless to waste sympathy upon the "masses." The class
+terms which have become moral terms are illustrations of this attitude.
+Finally, the moral process of building up freedom and right easily leads
+to a disposition to stand on rights and let other persons look out for
+themselves. Kant's doctrine, that since all morality is personal I can
+do nothing to promote my neighbor's perfection, is a _laissez faire_ in
+ethics which he did not carry out, but it is a not unnatural corollary
+of reflective morality. "Am I my brother's keeper?" is much more likely
+to be the language of reflective, than of customary and group life.
+
+=Reconstructive Forces.=--We have dwelt at length upon the
+disintegrating forces, not because civilization necessarily grows worse,
+but because, having pointed out in earlier chapters the positive
+advances, it becomes necessary to allude also to the other aspect of the
+process. Otherwise it might appear that there is no problem. If the
+evolution were supposed to be all in one direction there would be no
+seriousness in life. It is only in the pressure of constantly new
+difficulties and evils that moral character adds new fiber, and moral
+progress emerges. Individualism, self-seeking, and desire for property
+force the establishment of governments and courts which protect poor as
+well as rich. Luxury and ostentation have not only called out the
+asceticism which renounces the world and sees in all gratification of
+appetite an evil; they have brought into the fore the serious meaning of
+life; they have served to emphasize the demand for social justice. The
+countless voluntary associations for the relief of sickness, misfortune,
+and poverty; for aiding the defective, dependent, and criminal; for
+promoting numberless good causes--enlist a multitude in friendly
+co-operation. The rising demand for legislation to embody the new
+sentiments of justice is part of the process of reconstruction. And now
+when all the arts and goods of civilization are becoming more and more
+fully the work, not of any individual's labor or skill, but rather of
+the combined labor and intelligence of many, when life in cities is
+necessitating greater interdependence, finally when contrasts in
+conditions are brought more forcibly to notice by the very progress of
+knowledge and the means of knowledge,--the more thoroughly social use of
+all that civilization produces becomes more insistent and compelling. It
+is not a matter of sentiment but of necessity. If any one is disposed to
+deny the claim, it becomes increasingly certain that Carlyle's Irish
+widow will prove her sisterhood by infecting the denier with fever;[103]
+that the ignorant, or criminal, or miserable will jeopardize his
+happiness.
+
+
+Sec. 5. MORAL DIFFERENTIATION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER
+
+Two processes went on side by side in the movement we have traced. (1)
+The primitive group, which was at once a kinship or family, an economic,
+a political, a religious, an educational, and a moral unit, was broken
+down and replaced by several distinct institutions, each with its own
+special character. (2) The moral, which was so largely unreflective that
+it could be embodied in every custom and observance, became more
+personal and subjective. The result of this was either that the moral
+was now more consciously and voluntarily _put into_ the social
+relations, thereby raising them all to a higher moral level, or that,
+failing such a leavening of the distinct spheres of the social order,
+the latter were emptied of moral value and lost moral restraints. We
+notice very briefly certain illustrations of this, leaving a fuller
+treatment for Part III.
+
+=The Family.=--When the family was largely determined by status, when it
+was an economic, a political, and a religious unit, it had a strong
+support. But the support was largely external to the true purpose and
+meaning of the family. Only as these other elements were separated, and
+the family placed on a voluntary basis, could its true significance
+emerge. Affection and mutual supplementation of husband and wife, love
+and devotion to offspring, must stand the strains formerly distributed
+over several ties. The best types of family life which have resulted
+from this more moral basis are unquestionably far superior to the older
+form. At the same time the difficulties and perversion or subversion of
+the more voluntary type are manifest. When no personal attachment was
+sought or professed, or when marriage by purchase was the approved
+custom, the marriage contracted under these conditions might have all
+the value which the general state of intelligence and civilization
+allowed. When the essential feature which hallows the union has come to
+be recognized as a union of will and affection, then marriage without
+these, however "solemnized," almost inevitably means moral degradation.
+And if the consent of the parties is regarded as the basis of the tie,
+then it is difficult to make sure that this "consent" has within it
+enough of steadfast, well-considered purpose and of emotional depth to
+take the place of all the older sanctions and to secure permanent
+unions. The more complete responsibility for the children which has been
+gained by the separation of the family, has also proved susceptible of
+abuse as well as of service. For while savages have often practiced
+infanticide for economic reasons, it is doubtful if any savage family
+ever equaled the more refined selfishness and cruelty of the child
+labor which modern families have furnished and modern society has
+permitted.
+
+=The Economic and Industrial.=--The economic lost powerful restraints
+when it became a separate activity divorced from family, religious, and,
+in the view of some, from moral considerations. It has worked out
+certain important moral necessities of its own. Honesty, the keeping of
+contracts, the steadiness and continuity of character fostered by
+economic relations, are important contributions. Modern business, for
+example, is the most effective agency in securing sobriety. It is far
+more efficient than "temperance societies." Other values of the economic
+and industrial process--the increase of production, the interchange of
+services and goods, the new means of happiness afforded by the increase
+of wealth--are obvious. On the other hand, the honesty required by
+business is a most technical and peculiarly limited sort. It does not
+interfere with adulteration of goods under certain conditions, nor with
+corrupt bargains with public officials. The measurement of values on a
+purely pecuniary basis tends to release a large sphere of activity from
+any moral restraints. The maxim "Business is business" may be made the
+sanction for any kind of conduct not excluded by commercial standards.
+Unless there is a constant injection of moral valuation and control,
+there is a tendency to subvert all other ends and standards to the
+purely economic.
+
+=Law and Government.=--To remove these functions from the kinship group
+as such, is at once to bring the important principles of authority and
+duty, and gradually of rights and freedom, to consciousness. Only by
+such separation could the universality and impartiality of law be
+established. And only by universality can the judgment of the society as
+a whole be guaranteed its execution as over against the variations in
+intelligence and right purpose of individual rulers and judges.
+Moreover, the separation of law from morality has likewise its gain or
+loss. On the one hand, to separate off a definite sphere of external
+acts to which alone physical constraints or penalties may attach, is at
+once to free a great sphere of inner thought and purpose and to enable
+purely psychical values and restraints to attain far greater power in
+conduct. Liberty of thought and religious belief, sincerity and thorough
+responsibility, require such a separation. It is also to make possible a
+general law which rises above the conscience of the lower even if it
+does not always reach the level of the most enlightened and just. To
+make a command a "universal law" is itself a steadying and elevating
+influence, and it is only by a measure of abstraction from the
+individual, inner aspect of conduct that this can be achieved. On the
+other hand, the not infrequent contrast between law and justice, the
+substitution of technicality for substantials, the conservatism which
+made Voltaire characterize lawyers as the "conservators of ancient
+barbarous usages," above all the success with which law has been used to
+sanction or even facilitate nearly every form of oppression, extortion,
+class advantage, or even judicial murder, is a constant attestation of
+the twofold possibilities inherent in all institutions. Government in
+other functions exhibits similar possibilities. At first it was tyranny
+against which the subject had to defend himself. Now it is rather the
+use of political machinery for private gain. "Eternal vigilance" is the
+price not only of freedom, but of every moral value.
+
+=The Religious Life.=--When freed from interdependence with kinship,
+economic, and political association, religion has an opportunity to
+become more personal and more universal. When a man's religious attitude
+is not fixed by birth, when worship is not so closely bound up with
+economic interests, when there is not only religious "toleration," but
+religious liberty, the significance of religion as a personal, spiritual
+relation comes to view. The kinship tie is sublimated into a conception
+of divine fatherhood. It becomes credible that Job does serve God "for
+naught." Faith and purity of heart are not secured by magistrates or
+laws.
+
+And the universality of religion is no less a gain. So far as religion
+was of the group it tended to emphasize the boundary between Jew and
+Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, between the "we-group" and the
+"others-group." But when this group religion gave place to a more
+universal religion, the kingdom of Israel could give place to the
+kingdom of God; brotherhood could transcend family or national lines. In
+the fierce struggles of the Middle Ages the church was a powerful agency
+for restraining the powerful and softening the feuds of hostile clans
+and peoples. The "peace of God" was not only a symbol of a far-off
+ideal, but an actual relief. The universality might indeed be sought by
+force in a crusade of Christian against Moslem, or in the horror of a
+thirty years' war between Catholic and Protestant. But as the conception
+of religion as a spiritual relation becomes clearer, the tendency must
+inevitably be to disclose religion as essentially a unifying rather than
+a divisive and discordant force. If any religion becomes universal it
+will be because of its universal appeal. And so far as it does make
+universal appeal, like science, like art, it invites its followers.
+
+The differentiation of the moral from the religious is often difficult
+to trace. For the religious has often been the agency through which
+certain of the characteristics of the moral have been brought about. The
+inward and voluntary aspect of the moral, as compared with the verdicts
+of law or public opinion, has been emphasized. But this is often
+developed by the religious conceptions of an all-seeing God, an all-wise
+judge. "Man looketh on the outer appearance, but the Lord looketh upon
+the heart" has its literary parallels in Xenophon and Plato and
+Shakspere. The distinction between higher and lower values has received
+its most impressive symbol in the conception of "another world," in
+which there is neither pain nor sin, but eternal blessedness and eternal
+life. Ideals of character, when embodied in divine persons, command
+love, reverence, and devotion in supreme degree. A society in which love
+and justice are the law of life has seemed more possible, more potent to
+inspire sacrifice and enthusiasm, when envisaged as the Kingdom of God.
+But in all these illustrations we have, not the religious as distinct
+from the moral, but the religious as modified by the moral and embodying
+the moral in concrete examples and imagery. We can see the two possible
+types of development, however, in the concrete instances of the Hebrews
+and the Greeks. In Israel religion was able to take up the moral ideals
+and become itself more completely ethical. The prophets of religion were
+at the same time the moral reformers. But in Greece, in spite of the
+efforts of some of the great poets, the religious conceptions for the
+most part remained set and hence became superstition, or emotional orgy,
+or ecstasy, while the moral found a distinct path of its own. Religion
+at present is confronting the problem of whether it will be able to take
+up into itself the newer ethical values--the scientific spirit which
+seeks truth, the enhanced value of human worth which demands higher
+types of social justice.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+A brief characterization of the respective standpoints of religion and
+morality may be added, as they both aim to control and give value to
+human conduct. The religious has always implied some relation of man's
+life to unseen powers or to the cosmos. The relation may be the social
+relation of kin or friend or companion, the political of subject to a
+sovereign, the cosmic relation of dependence, or that of seeking in the
+divine completer meaning or more perfect fulfillment for what is
+fragmentary and imperfect. In its aspect of "faith" it holds all these
+ideals of power, wisdom, goodness, justice, to be real and effective.
+The moral, on the other hand, concerns itself, not with unseen beings or
+cosmic reality, but with human purposes and the relations of a man to
+his fellows. For religion, conscience may be the "voice of God"; for
+morality, it must be stated in terms of thought and feeling. The "moral
+law" must be viewed as a law which is capable of being approved, at
+least--and this implies that it may also be criticized--by the mind. The
+difference which religion states as a choice between "God and mammon,"
+between heaven and earth, morality must state in terms of good and evil,
+right and wrong, ideal interests and natural appetites. Instead of
+regarding its standards as laws established once for all by a divine
+authority, morality seeks to reach _principles_. Instead of embodying
+its ideals in persons, the moral seeks to reshape them continually. It
+is for religion to hold that "God reigns," and therefore "All's right
+with the world." The moral as such must be continually overcoming evil,
+continually working out ideals into conduct, and changing the natural
+order into a more rational and social order.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[96] Grote, _Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates_, Vol. I., p.
+249.
+
+[97] Nearly every railway journey or other occasion for observing family
+discipline discloses the prevalence of this agency of savage morality.
+"If you are not quiet I'll give you to the conductor," "the black man
+will get you," "Santa Claus will not give presents to naughty children."
+That persons who in many respects are kindly and decent should aim to
+cultivate morality by a system of deliberate lying and more or less
+brutal cruelty is one of the interesting phenomena of education. The
+savages who used taboos believed what they said.
+
+[98] Sumner, _Folkways_, p. 36.
+
+[99] Plato's wording is given on p. 132.
+
+[100] "Recognition" has the same double sense. So has "acknowledgment,"
+with greater emphasis upon rendering allegiance in action.
+
+[101] Logically, this means that intelligence works conceptually, not
+perceptually alone.
+
+[102] Sumner, _Folkways_, p. 570.
+
+[103] "One of Dr. Alison's Scotch facts struck us much. A poor Irish
+Widow, her husband having died in one of the Lanes of Edinburgh, went
+forth with her three children, bare of all resources, to solicit help
+from the Charitable Establishments of that City. At this Charitable
+Establishment and then at that she was refused; referred from one to the
+other, helped by none; till she had exhausted them all; till her
+strength and heart failed her; she sank down in typhus-fever; died, and
+infected her Lane with fever, so that 'seventeen other persons' died of
+fever there in consequence.... The forlorn Irish Widow applies to her
+fellow creatures, as if saying, 'Behold I am sinking, bare of help; ye
+must help me! I am your sister, bone of your bone; one God made us; ye
+must help me.' They answer, 'No, impossible; thou art no sister of
+ours.' But she proves her sisterhood; her typhus fever kills _them_:"
+(_Past and Present_, Book III., ch. ii.)
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THEORY OF THE MORAL LIFE
+
+
+GENERAL LITERATURE FOR PART II
+
+Among the works which have had the most influence upon the development
+of the theory of morals are: Plato, dialogues entitled _Republic, Laws_,
+_Protagoras_ and _Gorgias_; Aristotle, _Ethics_; Cicero, _De Finibus_
+and _De Officiis_; Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_; Epictetus,
+_Conversations_; Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_; St. Thomas Aquinas
+(selected and translated by Rickaby under title of _Aquinas Ethicus_);
+Hobbes, _Leviathan_; Spinoza, _Ethics_; Shaftesbury, _Characteristics_,
+and _Inquiry concerning Virtue_; Hutcheson, _System of Moral
+Philosophy_; Butler, _Sermons_; Hume, _Essays, Principles of Morals_;
+Adam Smith, _Theory of Moral Sentiments_; Bentham, _Principles of Morals
+and Legislation_; Kant, _Critique of Practical Reason_, and _Foundations
+of the Metaphysics of Ethics_; Comte, Social Physics (in his _Course of
+Positive Philosophy_); Mill, _Utilitarianism_; Spencer, _Principles of
+Ethics_; Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_;
+Selby-Bigge, _British Moralists_, 2 vols. (a convenient collection of
+selections). For contemporary treatises, and histories consult the
+literature referred to in ch. i. of Part I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MORAL SITUATION
+
+
+=Object of Part Two and of Present Chapter.=--From the history of
+morals, we turn to the theoretical analysis of reflective morality. We
+are concerned to discover (1) just what in conduct it is that we judge
+good and evil, right and wrong (conduct being a complicated thing); (2)
+what we mean by good and evil, right and wrong; (3) on what basis we
+apply these conceptions to their appropriate objects in conduct. But
+before we attempt these questions, we must detect and identify the
+_moral situation_, the situation in which considerations of good and
+evil, right and wrong, present themselves and are employed. For some
+situations we employ the ideas of true and false; of beautiful and ugly;
+of skilful and awkward; of economical and wasteful, etc. We may indeed
+apply the terms right and wrong to these same situations; but if so, it
+is to them in some other light. What then are the differentiating
+traits, the special earmarks, presented by the situation which we
+identify as distinctively moral? For we use the term moral in a broad
+sense to designate that which is either moral or immoral: i.e., right or
+wrong in the narrower sense. It is the moral situation in the broad
+sense as distinct from the non-moral, not from the immoral, that we are
+now concerned with.
+
+=The Moral Situation Involves Voluntary Activity.=--It will be admitted
+on all hands that the moral situation is one which, whatever else it may
+or may not be, involves a voluntary factor. Some of the chief traits of
+voluntary activity we have already become acquainted with, as in the
+account by Aristotle, already noted (_ante_, p. 12). The agent must know
+what he is about; he must have some idea of what he is doing; he must
+not be a somnambulist, or an imbecile, or insane, or an infant so
+immature as to have no idea of what he is doing. He must also have some
+wish, some desire, some preference in the matter. A man overpowered by
+superior force might be physically compelled by some ingenious device to
+shoot a gun at another, knowing what he was doing, but his act would not
+be voluntary because he had no choice in the matter, or rather because
+his preference was not to do the act which he is aware he is doing. But
+if he is ordered to kill another and told if he does not he will himself
+be killed, he has _some_ will in the matter. He may do the deed, not
+because he likes it or wishes it in itself, but because he wishes to
+save his own life. The attendant circumstances may affect our judgment
+of the kind and degree of morality attaching to the act; but they do not
+take it entirely out of the moral sphere.[104] Aristotle says the act
+must also be the expression of a disposition (a habit or [Greek:
+hexis]), a more or less settled tendency on the part of the person. It
+must bear some relation to his character. Character is not, we may say,
+a third factor, It is making clear what is implied in deliberation and
+wish. There may be little deliberation in a child's act and little in an
+adult's, and yet we may regard the latter as much more voluntary than
+the child's. With the child, the thought is superficial and casual,
+because of the restricted stage of organization or growth reached (see
+p. 10): his act flows from organic instinct or from accidental
+circumstances--whim, caprice, and chance suggestion, or fancy. The
+adult's act may flow from habitual tendencies and be accompanied by an
+equally small amount of conscious reflection. But the tendencies
+themselves are the outcome of prior deliberations and choices which have
+finally got funded into more or less automatic habits. The child's act
+is to a slight extent the expression of character; the adult's to a
+large extent. In short, we mean by character whatever lies behind an act
+in the way of deliberation and desire, whether these processes be
+near-by or remote.
+
+=Not Everything Voluntary is Morally Judged.=--A voluntary act may then
+be defined as one _which manifests character_, the test of its presence
+being the presence of desire and deliberation; these sometimes being
+present directly and immediately, sometimes indirectly and remotely
+through their effects upon the agent's standing habits. But we do not
+judge all voluntary activity from the moral standpoint. Some acts we
+judge from the standpoint of skill or awkwardness; others as amusing or
+boring; others as stupid or highly intelligent, and so on. We do not
+bring to bear the conceptions of right and wrong. And on the other hand,
+there are many things called good and bad which are not voluntary. Since
+what we are in search of must lie somewhere between these two limits, we
+may begin with cases of the latter sort.
+
+_(1) Not Everything Judged Good or Right is Moral._--We speak, for
+example, of an ill-wind; of a good engine; of a watch being wrong; or of
+a screw being set right. We speak of good and bad bread, money, or soil.
+That is, from the standpoint of value, we judge things as _means_ to
+certain results in themselves desirable or undesirable. A "good" machine
+does efficiently the work for which it is designed; "bad" money does not
+subserve the ends which money is meant to promote; the watch that is
+wrong comes short of telling us time correctly. We have to use the
+notion of value and of contribution to value; that is a positive
+factor. But this contribution to valuable result is not, in inanimate
+objects, something meant or intended by the things themselves. If we
+thought the ill-wind had an idea of its own destructive effect and took
+pleasure in that idea, we should attribute moral quality to it--just as
+men did in early times, and so tried to influence its behavior in order
+to make it "good." Among things that promote favorable or unfavorable
+results a line is drawn between those which just do so as matter of
+fact, and those in which meaning so to do, or intention, plays a part.
+
+=(2) Good in Animal Conduct.=--Let us now consider the case of good and
+bad animal conduct. We speak of a good watch-dog; of a bad saddle-horse,
+and the like. Moreover, we _train_ the dog and the horse to the right or
+desired kind of action. We make, we repair the watch; but we do not
+_train_ it. Training involves a new factor: enlistment of the animal's
+tendencies; of its own conscious attitudes and reactions. We pet, we
+reward by feeding, we punish and threaten. By these means we induce
+animals to exercise in ways that form the habits we want. We modify the
+animal's behavior by modifying its own impulses. But we do not give
+moral significance to the good and bad, for we are still thinking of
+means to ends. We do not suppose that we have succeeded in supplying the
+hunting dog, for example, with _ideas_ that certain results are more
+excellent than others, so that henceforth he acts on the basis of his
+own discrimination of the less and the more valuable. We just induce
+certain habits by managing to make certain ways of acting _feel_ more
+agreeable than do others. Thus James says: "Whether the dog has the
+notion of your being angry or of your property being valuable in any
+such abstract way as _we_ have these notions, is more than doubtful. The
+conduct is more likely an impulsive result of a conspiracy of outward
+stimuli; the beast _feels like_ acting so when these stimuli are
+present, though conscious of no definite reason why"[105]
+(_Psychology_, Vol. II., p. 350, note). Or putting it the other way: if
+the dog has an idea of the results of guarding the house, and is
+controlled in what he does by loyalty to this idea, by the satisfaction
+which he takes in it, then in calling the dog good we mean that in being
+good for a certain result, he is also morally good.
+
+=(3) Non-moral Human Acts.=--There are also acts evoked by an idea of
+value in the results to be reached, which are not judged as coming
+within the moral sphere. "Conduct is three-fourths of life," but in some
+sense it is more: it is four-fourths. All conscious human life is
+concerned with ends, and with selecting, arranging, and employing the
+means, intellectual, emotional, and practical, involved in these ends.
+This makes _conduct_. But it does not follow that all conduct has
+_moral_ import. "As currently conceived, stirring the fire, reading a
+newspaper, or eating a meal, are acts with which morality has no
+concern. Opening the window to air the room, putting on an overcoat when
+the weather is cold, are thought of as having no ethical significance.
+These, however, are all portions of conduct" (Spencer, _Principles of
+Ethics_, Vol. I., p. 5). They all involve the idea of some result worth
+reaching, and the putting forth of energy to reach the result--of
+intelligently selected and adapted means. But this may leave the act
+morally indifferent--innocent.
+
+=Introduction of Moral Factor.=--A further quotation from Spencer may
+introduce discussion of the needed moral qualification:
+
+ "As already said, a large part of the ordinary conduct is
+ indifferent. Shall I walk to the water fall today? or, shall I
+ ramble along the sea shore? Here the ends are ethically
+ indifferent. If I go to the water fall, shall I go over the moor
+ or take the path through the wood? Here the means are ethically
+ indifferent.... But if a friend who is with me has explored the
+ sea shore, but has not seen the water fall, the choice of one or
+ other end is no longer ethically indifferent. Again, if a probable
+ result of making the one excursion rather than the other, is that
+ I shall not be back in time to keep an appointment, or if taking
+ the longer route entails this risk while the shorter does not, the
+ decision in favor of one end or means acquires in another way an
+ ethical character" (Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, pp. 5-6).
+
+This illustration suggests two differing types of conduct; two differing
+ways in which activity is induced and guided by ideas of valuable
+results. In one case the end presents itself directly as desirable, and
+the question is only as to the steps or means of achieving this end.
+Here we have conduct which, although excited and directed by
+considerations of value, is still morally indifferent. Such is the
+condition of things _wherever one end is taken for granted by itself
+without any consideration of its relationship to other ends_. It is then
+a technical rather than a moral affair. It is a question of taste and of
+skill--of personal preference and of practical wisdom, or of economy,
+expediency. There are many different roads to most results, and the
+selection of this path rather than that, on the assumption that either
+path actually leads to the end, is an intellectual, aesthetic, or
+executive, rather than an ethical matter. I may happen to prefer a
+marine view to that of the uplands--that is an aesthetic interest. I may
+wish to utilize the time of the walk for thinking, and may find the moor
+path less distracting; here is a matter of intellectual economy. Or I
+may conclude that I shall best get the exercise I want by going to the
+water fall. Here it is a question of "prudence," of expediency, or
+practical wisdom. Let any one of the ends, aesthetic, intellectual,
+hygienic, stand alone and it is a fit and proper consideration. The
+moral issue does not arise. Or the various ends may be regarded as means
+to a further unquestioned end--say a walk with the maximum of combined
+aesthetic interest and physical exercise.
+
+=(4) Criterion for Moral Factor.=--But let the value of one proposed end
+be felt to be really incompatible with that of another, let it be felt
+to be so opposed as to appeal to a different kind of interest and
+choice, in other words, to different kinds of disposition and agency,
+and we have a moral situation. This is what occurs when one way of
+traveling means self-indulgence; another, kindliness or keeping an
+engagement. There is no longer one end, nor two ends so homogeneous that
+they may be reconciled by both being used as means to some more general
+end of undisputed worth. We have alternative ends so heterogeneous that
+choice has to be made; an end has to be developed out of conflict. The
+problem now becomes what _is_ really valuable. It is the _nature_ of the
+valuable, of the desirable, that the individual has to pass upon.[106]
+
+Suppose a person has unhesitatingly accepted an end, has acquiesced in
+some suggested purpose. Then, starting to realize it, he finds the
+affair not so simple. He is led to review the matter and to consider
+what really constitutes worth for him. The process of attainment calls
+for toil which is disagreeable, and imposes restraints and abandonments
+of accustomed enjoyments. An Indian boy, for example, thinks it
+desirable to be a good rider, a skilful shot, a sagacious scout. Then he
+"naturally," as we say, disposes of his time and energy so as to realize
+his purpose. But in trying to become a "brave," he finds that he has to
+submit to deprivation and hardship, to forego other enjoyments and
+undergo arduous toil. He finds that the end does not mean in actual
+realization what it meant in original contemplation--something that
+often happens, for, as Goldsmith said: "In the first place, we cook the
+dish to our own appetite; in the latter, nature cooks it for us."
+
+This change in apparent worth raises a new question: Is the aim first
+set up of the value it seemed to be? Is it, after all, so important, so
+desirable? Are not other results, playing with other boys, convivial
+companionship, which are reached more easily and pleasantly, really more
+valuable? The labors and pains connected with the means employed to
+reach an end, have thrown another and incompatible end into
+consciousness. The individual no longer "naturally," but "morally,"
+follows the selected end, whichever of the two it be, because it has
+been chosen after conscious valuation of competing aims.
+
+Such competitions of values for the position of control of action are
+inevitable accompaniments of individual conduct, whether in civilized or
+in tribal life. A child, for example, finds that the fulfillment of an
+appetite of hunger is not only possible, but that it is desirable--that
+fulfillment brings, or is, satisfaction, not mere satiety. Later
+on, moved by the idea of this sort of value, he snatches at food.
+Then he is made aware of other sorts of values involved in the act
+performed--values incompatible with just the value at which he aimed. He
+brings down upon himself social disapproval and reproach. He is termed
+rude, unmannerly, greedy, selfish. He acted in accordance with an
+unhesitatingly accepted idea of value. But while reaching one result he
+accomplished also certain other results which he did not intend, results
+in the way of being thought ill of, results which are disagreeable:
+_negative values_. He is taught to raise the question of what, after
+all, in such cases is the _really_ desirable or valuable. Before he is
+free to deliberate upon means, he has to form an estimate of the
+relative worth of various possible ends, and to be willing to forego
+one and select the other. The chapters on Hebrew and Greek moral
+development have shown this same process at work in the life of a
+people.
+
+=Summary and Definition.=--If we sum up the three classes of instances
+thus far considered, we get the following defining traits of a moral
+situation, that is, of one which is an appropriate subject of
+determinations of right and wrong: Moral experience is (1) a matter of
+_conduct_, _behavior_; that is, of activities which are called out by
+_ideas of the worth, the desirability of results_. This evocation by an
+_idea_ discriminates it from the so-called behavior of a pump, where
+there is no recognition of results; and from conduct attributed to the
+lower animals, where there are probably feelings and even dim imagery,
+but hardly ideas of the comparative desirability or value of various
+ends. Moral experience is (2) that kind of conduct in which there are
+ends so discrepant, so incompatible, as to require selection of one and
+rejection of the other. This perception of, and selection from,
+incompatible alternatives, discriminates moral experience from those
+cases of conduct which are called out and directed by ideas of value,
+but which do not necessitate passing upon the _real worth_, as we say,
+of the value selected. It is incompatibility of ends which necessitates
+consideration of the true worth of a given end; and such consideration
+it is which brings the experience into the moral sphere. Conduct as
+moral may thus be defined as _activity called forth and directed by
+ideas of value or worth, where the values concerned are so mutually
+incompatible as to require consideration and selection before an overt
+action is entered upon_.
+
+=End Finally at Issue.=--Many questions about ends are in reality
+questions about means: the artist considers whether he will paint a
+landscape or a figure; this or that landscape, and so on. The general
+character of the end is unchanged: it is to paint. But let this end
+persist and be felt as desirable, as valuable; let at the same time an
+alternative end presents itself as also desirable (say keeping an
+engagement), so that the individual does not find any way of adjusting
+and arranging them into a common scheme (like doing first one and then
+the other), and the person has a moral problem on his hands. Which shall
+he decide for, and why? The appeal is to himself; what does _he_ really
+think the desirable end? What makes the supreme appeal to him? What sort
+of an agent, of a person, shall he be? This is the question finally at
+stake in any genuinely moral situation: What shall the agent _be_? What
+sort of a character shall he assume? On its face, the question is what
+he shall _do_, shall he act for this or that end. But the
+incompatibility of the ends forces the issue back into the question of
+the kinds of selfhood, of agency, involved in the respective ends. The
+distinctively moral situation is then one in which elements of value and
+control are bound up with the processes of deliberation and desire; and
+are bound up in a peculiar way: _viz._, they decide what kind of a
+character shall control further desires and deliberations. When ends are
+genuinely incompatible, no common denominator can be found except by
+deciding what sort of character is most highly prized and shall be given
+supremacy.
+
+=The Moral and Indifferent Situations.=--This criterion throws lights
+upon our earlier discussion of morally indifferent acts. Persons perform
+the greater bulk of their activities without any conscious reference to
+considerations of right and wrong, as any one may verify for himself by
+recollecting the general course of his activity on any ordinary day from
+the time he arises in the morning to the time he goes to bed at night.
+His deliberations and wants are mostly concerned with the ends involved
+in his regular vocation and recreations. But at any time the question of
+his character as concerned with what he is doing may arise for
+judgment. The person may later on realize that the type or kind of
+character which is to prevail in his further activity was involved in
+deeds which were performed without any such thought. He _then_ judges
+them morally, approving or disapproving. On the other hand, a course of
+action which at the time presented a moral crisis even, may afterwards
+come to be followed as a matter of course. There is then no _fixed_ line
+between the morally indifferent and the morally significant. Every act
+is _potential_ subject-matter of moral judgment, for it strengthens or
+weakens some habit which influences whole classes of judgments.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+There are comparatively few distinct analyses of the moral situation,
+the topic generally being treated as a running part of the theory of the
+author, or in connection with an account of character or conduct (see
+references at end of ch. xiii.). See, however, Mezes, _Ethics,
+Descriptive and Explanatory_, ch. ii.; Martineau, _Types of Ethical
+Theory_, Vol. II., pp. 17-54; Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I.;
+_Studies in Logical Theory_, Stuart, essay on Valuation as a Logical
+Process, pp. 237-241, 257-258, 273-275, 289-293; Dewey, _Logical
+Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality_; Mead, _Philosophical
+Basis of Ethics_, International Journal of Ethics, April, 1908; Fite,
+_Introductory Study of Ethics_, chs. ii., xviii., and xix.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[104] Aristotle illustrates by a man who throws his goods overboard in a
+storm at sea. He does not wish absolutely to lose his goods, but he
+prefers losing them to losing the ship or his own life: he wishes it
+_under the circumstances_ and his act is so far voluntary.
+
+[105] Of course, this is also true of a large part of human activity.
+But these are also the cases in which we do not ascribe moral value; or
+at least we do not except when we want to make the agent conscious of
+some reason why.
+
+[106] While we have employed Spencer's example, it should be noted that
+incompatibility of ends is not the criterion of the distinctively moral
+situation which Spencer himself employs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PROBLEMS OF MORAL THEORY
+
+
+We have identified in its framework and main outlines the sort of
+voluntary activity in which the problem of good and evil appears and in
+which the ideas of right and wrong are employed. This task, however, is
+only preliminary to theoretical analysis. For it throws no light upon
+just what we mean by good and bad; just what elements of complex
+voluntary behavior are termed right or wrong; or why they are so termed.
+It does not even indicate what must be discovered before such questions
+can be answered. It only sets forth the limits of the subject-matter
+within which such questions arise and in reference to which they must be
+answered. What are the distinctive problems which must be dealt with in
+the course of such a discussion?
+
+=Growth of Theory from Practical Problems.=--Of one thing we may be
+sure. If inquiries are to have any substantial basis, if they are not to
+be wholly up in the air, the theorist must take his departure from the
+problems which men actually meet in their own conduct. He may define and
+refine these; he may divide and systematize; he may abstract the
+problems from their concrete contexts in individual lives; he may
+classify them when he has thus detached them; but if he gets away from
+them he is talking about something which his own brain has invented, not
+about moral realities. On the other hand, the perplexities and
+uncertainties of direct and personal behavior invite a more abstract and
+systematic impersonal treatment than that which they receive in the
+exigencies of their occurrence. The recognition of any end or authority
+going beyond what is embodied in existing customs, involves some appeal
+to thought, and moral theory makes this appeal more explicit and more
+complete. If a child asks why he should tell the truth, and is answered,
+"because you ought to and that is reason enough"; or, "because it will
+prove profitable for you to do so"; or, "because truth-telling is a
+condition of mutual communication and common aims," the answer implies a
+principle which requires only to be made explicit to be full-fledged
+theory. And when this principle is compared with those employed in other
+cases to see if they are mutually consistent; and if not, to find a
+still more fundamental reconciling principle, we have passed over the
+border into ethical system.
+
+=Types of Theoretical Problems.=--The practical problems which a
+thoughtful and progressive individual must consider in his own conduct
+will, then, give the clue to the genuine problems of moral theory. The
+framework of one is an outline of the other. The man who does not
+satisfy himself with sheer conventional conformity to the customs, the
+_ethos_, of his class will find such problems as the following forced
+upon his attention:--(1) He must consider the _meaning_ of habits which
+have been formed more or less unreflectively--by imitation, suggestion,
+and inculcation from others--and he must consider the meaning of those
+customs about him to which he is invited to conform till they have
+become personal habits. This problem of discovering the meaning of these
+habits and customs is the problem of stating what, after all, is
+_really_ good, or worth while in conduct. (2) The one whose morality is
+of the reflective sort will be faced by the problem of moral advance, of
+progress beyond the level which has been reached by this more or less
+unreflective taking on of the habits and ideas of those about him,
+progress up to the level of his own reflective insight. Otherwise put,
+he has to face the problem of what is to be the place and role in his
+own conduct of ideals and principles generated not by custom but by
+deliberation and insight. (3) The individual must consider more
+consciously the relation between what is currently regarded as good by
+the social groups in which he is placed and in which he has to act, and
+that regarded as good by himself. The moment he ceases to accept
+conformity to custom as an adequate sanction of behavior, he is met by
+discrepancy between his personally conceived goods and those reigning in
+the customs about him. Now while this detachment makes possible the
+birth of higher and more ideal types of morality, and hence of
+systematic effort for social reform and advance; it also makes possible
+(as we have seen on the historical side, p. 189) a more generalized and
+deliberate selfishness; a less instinctive and more intentional pursuit
+of what the individual judges to be good _for himself_ against what
+society exacts as good for itself. The same reflective attitude which
+generates the conscientious moral reformer may generate also a more
+deliberate and resolute anti-social egoism. In any case, the individual
+who has acquired the habit of moral reflection, is conscious of a new
+problem--the relation of public good to individual good. In short, the
+individual who is thoughtfully serious and who aims to bring his habit
+of reflection to bear on his conduct, will have occasion (1) to search
+for the elements of good and bad, of positive and negative, value in the
+situations that confront him; (2) to consider the methods and principles
+by which he shall reach conclusions, and (3) to consider the relations
+between himself, his own capacities and satisfactions, and the ends and
+demands of the social situations in which he is placed.
+
+=The Corresponding Problems of Theory.=--Theory will then have similar
+problems to deal with. (1) What is the Good, the end in any voluntary
+act? (2) How is this good known? Is it directly perceived, and if so,
+how? Or is it worked out through inquiry and reflection? And if so,
+how? (3) When the good is known, how is it _acknowledged_; how does it
+acquire authority? What is the place of _law_, of control, in the moral
+life? Why is it that some ends are attractive of themselves, while
+others present themselves as _duties_, as involving subordination of
+what is naturally attractive? (4) What is the place of selfhood in the
+moral process? And this question assumes two forms: (a) What is the
+relation of the good of the self to the good of others? (b) What is the
+difference between the morally good and the morally bad in the self?
+What are virtues and vices as dispositions of the self? These abstract
+and formal questions will become more concrete if we consider them
+briefly in the order of their development in the history of the moral
+theory.
+
+=Problem of Knowledge of Good Comes First in Theory.=--The clash and
+overlapping of customs once so local as to be isolated, brought to
+Athenian moral philosophers the problem of discovering the underlying
+and final good to which all the conflicting values of customs might be
+referred for judgment. The movement initiated by Socrates was precisely
+the effort to find out what is the real good, the true end, of all the
+various institutions, customs, and procedures current among men. The
+explanation of conflict among men's interests, and of lack of
+consistency and unity in any given person's behavior, of the division of
+classes in the state, of the diverse recommendations of different
+would-be moral teachers, was that they were ignorant of their own ends.
+Hence the fundamental precept is "Know thyself," one's own end, one's
+good and one's proper function. Different followers of Socrates gave
+very different accounts of knowledge, and hence proposed very different
+final aims. But they all agreed that the problem of knowing the good was
+the central problem, and that if this were settled, action in accord
+with good would follow of itself. Could it be imagined that man could
+know his own good and yet not seek it? Ignorance of good is evil and
+the source of evil; insight into the real good will clear up the
+confusion and partiality which makes men pursue false ends and thus
+straighten out and put in order conduct. Control would follow as a
+matter of course from _knowledge_ of the end. Such control would be no
+matter of coercion or external restriction, but of subordination and
+organization of minor ends with reference to the final end.
+
+=Problem of Motive Force.=[107]--The problem of attaining this knowledge
+was seen to be attended, however, by peculiar obstructions and
+difficulties, the growing recognition of which led to a shifting of the
+problem itself. The dilemma, in brief, was this: The man who is already
+good will have no difficulty in knowing the good both in general and in
+the specific clothing under which it presents itself in particular
+cases. But the one who does not yet know the good, does not know _how_
+to know it. His ignorance, moreover, puts positive obstacles in his way,
+for it leads him to delight in superficial and transitory ends. This
+delight increases the hold of these ends upon the agent; and thus it
+builds up an _habitual_ interest in them which renders it impossible for
+the individual to get a glimpse of the final end, to say nothing of a
+clear and persisting view. _Only if the individual is habituated,
+exercised, practiced in good ends so as to take delight in them, while
+he is still so immature as to be incapable of really knowing how and why
+they are good, will he be capable of knowing the good when he is
+mature._ Pleasure in right ends and pain in wrong must operate as a
+motive force in order to give experience of the good, before knowledge
+can be attained and operate as the motor force.
+
+=Division of Problem.=--But the exercise and training requisite to form
+the habits which make the individual rejoice in right activity before he
+knows how and why it is right, presuppose adults who already have
+knowledge of the good. They presuppose a social order capable not merely
+of giving theoretic instruction, but of habituating the young to right
+practices. But where shall such adults be found, and where is the social
+order so good that it is capable of right training of its own immature
+members? Hence the problem again shifts, breaking up into two parts. On
+the one hand, attention is fixed upon the irrational appetites, desires,
+and impulses, which hinder apprehension of the good; on the other, it is
+directed to the political laws and institutions which are capable of
+training the members of the State into a right manner of living. For the
+most part, these two problems went their own way independently of each
+other, a fact which resulted in the momentous breach between the inner
+and "spiritual," and the outer and "physical" aspects of behavior.
+
+=Problem of Control of Affections and Desires.=--If it is the lively
+movements of natural appetites and desires which make the individual
+apprehend false goods as true ones, and which present obstacles to
+knowledge of the true good, the serious problem is evidently to check
+and so far as possible to abolish the power of desire to move the mind.
+Since it is anger, fear, hope, despair, sexual desire which make men
+regard particular things instead of the final end as good, the great
+thing is wholly to free attention and judgment from the influence of
+such passions. It may be impossible to prevent the passions; they are
+natural perturbations. But man can at least prevent his judgment of what
+is good or bad from being modified by them. The Stoic moral philosophers
+most emphasized the misleading influence of desire and passion, and set
+up the ideal of apathy (lack of passion) and "ataraxy" (absence of
+being stirred up). The other moral schools, the Sceptics and Epicureans,
+also made independence of mind from influence of passion the immediate
+and working end; the Sceptics because they emphasized the condition of
+mental detachment and non-committal, which is the state appropriate to
+doubt and uncertainty; the Epicureans because the pleasures of the mind
+are the only ones not at the mercy of external circumstances. Mental
+pleasures are equable, and hence are the only ones which do not bring
+reactions of depression, exhaustion, and subsequent pain. The problem of
+moral theory is now in effect, if not in name, that of _control_, of
+authority and subordination, of checking and restraining desire and
+passion.
+
+=Problem of Control of Private Interests by Law.=--Such views could at
+the best, however, affect only a comparatively small number, the
+philosophers. For the great masses of men in the Roman Empire, the
+problem existed on the other line: by what laws and what administration
+of laws to direct the outward acts of men into right courses, courses at
+least sufficiently right so as to maintain outward peace and unity
+through the vast empire. In the Greek city-state, with its small number
+of free citizens all directly participating in public affairs, it was
+possible to conceive an ideal of a common good which should bind all
+together. But in an Empire covering many languages, religions, local
+customs, varied and isolated occupations, a single system of
+administration and law exercised from a single central source could
+alone maintain the requisite harmony. The problems of legislations,
+codification, and administration were congenial to the Latin mind, and
+were forced by the actual circumstances. From the external side, then,
+as well as from the internal, the problem of control became dominant
+over that of value and the good.
+
+=Problem of Unification.=--It was the province of the moral
+philosophers, of the theologians, of the church to attempt a fusion of
+these elements of inner and outer control. It was their aim to connect,
+to synthesize these factors into one commanding and comprehensive view
+of life. But the characteristic of their method was to suppose that the
+combination could be brought about, whether intellectually or
+practically, only upon a supernatural basis, and by supernatural
+resources. From the side of the natural constitution of both man and the
+State, the various elements of behavior are so hopelessly at war with
+one another that there is no health in them nor help from them. The
+appetites and desires are directed only upon carnal goods and form the
+dominant element in the person. Even when reason gets glimpses of the
+good, the good seen is narrow in scope and temporal in duration; and
+even then reason is powerless as an adequate motive. "We perceive the
+better and we follow the worse." Moreover, it is useless to seek aid
+from the habituation, the education, the discipline and restraint of
+human institutions. They themselves are corrupt. The product of man's
+lower nature cannot be capable of enlightening and improving that
+nature; at most it can only restrain outer action by appealing to fear.
+Only a divine revelation can make known man's true end; and only divine
+assistance, embodied in the ordinances and sacraments of the
+supernaturally founded and directed church, can bring this knowledge
+home to erring individuals so as to make it effectual. In theory the
+conception of the end, the good, was supreme; but man's true good is
+supernatural and hence can be achieved only by supernatural assistance
+and in the next world. In practice, therefore, the important thing for
+man in his present condition is implicit reliance upon and obedience to
+the requirements of the church. This represents on earth the divine
+sovereign, ultimate source of all moral law. In effect, the moral law
+became a net-work of ordinances, prescriptions, commands, rewards,
+penalties, penances, and remissions. The jural point of view was
+completely enthroned.[108] There was no problem; there was a final,
+because a supernatural solution.
+
+=The Problems of Individuality and Citizenship.=--With the Renaissance
+began the revolt against the jural view of life. A sense of the joys and
+delights which attend the free and varied exercise of human capacities
+in this world was reborn. The first results were a demand for natural
+satisfaction; the next a profound reawakening of the antique civic and
+political consciousness. The first in its reaction against the Middle
+Ages was more individualistic than the Greek ideal, to which it was in
+some respects allied. The Greek had emphasized the notion of value, but
+had conceived this as generic, as the fulfillment of the essential
+nature of man as man. But with the moderns, satisfaction, the good,
+meant something direct, specific, personal; something the individual as
+an individual could lay hold of and possess. It was an individual right;
+it was final and inalienable. Nothing had a right to intervene or
+deprive the individual of it.
+
+This extreme individualistic tendency was contemporaneous with a
+transfer of interest from the supernatural church-state over to the
+commercial, social, and political bodies with which the modern man found
+himself identified. The rise of the free cities, and more especially the
+development of national states, with the growth of commerce and
+exchange, opened to the individual a natural social whole. With this his
+connections were direct, in this he gained new outlets and joys, and yet
+it imposed upon him definite responsibilities and exacted of him
+specific burdens. If the individual had gained a new sense of himself as
+an individual, he also found himself enmeshed in national states of a
+power constantly increasing in range and intensity. The problem of the
+moral theorists was to reconcile these two tendencies, the
+individualistic and that of political centralization. For a time, the
+individual felt the social organization in which he was set to be, with
+whatever incidental inconveniences, upon the whole an outlet and
+reenforcement of prized personal powers. Hence in observing its
+conditions, he was securing the conditions of his own peace and
+tranquillity or even of his own freedom and achievement. But the balance
+was easily upset, and the problem of the relation of the individual and
+the social, the private and the public, was soon forced into prominence;
+a problem which in one form or other has been the central problem of
+modern ethical theory.
+
+=Individualistic Problem.=--Only for a short time, during the first
+flush of new achievement and of hopeful adventure, did extreme
+individualism and social interests remain naively combined. The
+individualistic tendency found a convenient intellectual tool in a
+psychology which resolved the individual into an association or series
+of particular states of feeling and sensations; and the good into a like
+collection of pleasures also regarded as particular mental states. This
+psychological atomism made individuals as separate and disconnected as
+the sensations which constituted their selves were isolated and mutually
+exclusive. Social arrangements and institutions were, in theory,
+justifiable only as they could be shown to augment the sum of
+pleasurable states of feeling of individuals. And as, quite independent
+of any such precarious theory, the demand for reform of institutions
+became more and more imperative, the situation was packed by Rousseau
+into a formula that man was naturally both free and good, and that
+institutional life had enslaved and thereby depraved him. At the same
+time, there grew up an enthusiastic and optimistic faith in "Nature," in
+her kindly intentions for the happiness of humanity, and in her potency
+to draw it to perfection when artificial restrictions were once out of
+the way. Individuals, separate in themselves and in their respective
+goods, were thereby brought into a complete coincidence and harmony of
+interests. Nature's laws were such that if the individual obeyed them in
+seeking his own good he could not fail to further the happiness of
+others. While there developed in France (with original initiative from
+England) this view of the internal isolation and external harmony of
+men, a counterpart movement took place in Germany.
+
+=The Rationalistic Problem.=--German thought inherited through both
+Roman law and the natural theology and ethics of the church, the
+conception that man's rational nature makes him sociable. Stoicism, with
+its materialistic idealism, had taught that all true laws are natural,
+while all laws of nature are diffusions and potencies of reason. As they
+bind things together in the world, so they bind men together in
+societies. Moral theory is "Natural Law" conceived in this sense. From
+the laws of reason, regarded as the laws of man's generic and hence
+sociable nature, all the principles of jurisprudence and of individual
+morals may be deduced. But man has also a sensuous nature, an appetitive
+nature which is purely private and exclusive. Since reason is higher
+than sense, the authority of the State is magnified. The juristic point
+of view was reinstated, but with the important change that the law was
+that of a social order which is the realization of man's own rational
+being.[109] If the laws of the State were criticized, the reply was that
+however unworthy the civic regulations and however desirable their
+emendation, still the State is the expression of the idea of reason,
+that is of man in his true generic nature. Hence to attempt to overthrow
+the government is to attack the fundamental and objective conditions of
+moral or rational life. Without the State, the particularistic, private
+side of man's nature would have free sway to express itself. Man's true
+moral nature is within. We are then left, from both the English-French
+and the German sides, with the problem of the relation of the individual
+and the social; of the relation of the inner and outer, of the
+psychological structure of the person and the social conditions and
+results of his behavior.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+See the references on the scope and methods of ethics at the end of ch.
+i. of Part I., and also, Sorley, _Ethics of Naturalism_, ch. i., and his
+_Recent Tendencies in Ethics_; Fite, _An Introductory Study of Ethics_,
+ch. ii.; Bowne, _Principles of Ethics_, ch. i.; Seth, _Ethical
+Principles_, ch. i.; Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. I.,
+Introduction; Hensel, _Problems of Ethics_, in Vol. I. of St. Louis
+Congress of Arts and Science.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[107] On the _practical_ side, this was always, as we have seen, the
+prominent problem of Hebrew thought. But we are concerned here with the
+statement of the problem by Plato and Aristotle from the theoretical
+side.
+
+[108] The Ten Commandments, divided and subdivided into all their
+conceivable applications, and brought home through the confessional,
+were the specific basis.
+
+[109] The idealistic philosophic movement beginning with Kant is in many
+important respects the outgrowth of the earlier _Naturrecht_ of the
+moral philosophers from Grotius on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TYPES OF MORAL THEORY
+
+
+Sec. 1. TYPICAL DIVISIONS OF THEORIES
+
+=Problems and Theories.=--We were concerned in the last chapter with the
+typical _problems_ of moral theory. But it was evident that theories
+themselves developed and altered as now this, now that, problem was
+uppermost. To regard the question of how to know the good as the central
+problem of moral inquiry is already to have one type of theory; to
+consider the fundamental problem to be either the subordination or the
+satisfaction of desire is to have other types. A classification of types
+of theory is rendered difficult, a thoroughly satisfactory
+classification almost impossible, by the fact that the problems arrange
+themselves about separate principles leading to cross-divisions. All
+that we may expect to do is somewhat arbitrarily to select that
+principle which seems most likely to be useful in conducting inquiry.
+
+=(1) Teleological and Jural.=--One of the fundamental divisions arises
+from taking either Value or Duty, Good or Right, as the fundamental
+idea. Ethics of the first type is concerned above all with _ends_; hence
+it is frequently called _teleological_ theory (Greek [Greek: telos],
+end). To the other type of theory, obligations, imperatives, commands,
+law, and authority, are the controlling ideas. By this emphasis, arise
+the _jural_ theories (Latin, _jus_, law). At some point, of course, each
+theory has to deal with the factor emphasized by its rival. If we start
+with Law as central, the good resides in these acts which conform to
+its obligations. The good is obedience to law, submission to its moral
+authority. If we start from the Good, laws, rules, are concerned with
+the means of defining or achieving it.
+
+=(2) Individual and Institutional.=--This fundamental division is at
+once cut across by another, arising from emphasizing the problem of the
+individual and the social. This problem may become so urgent as to force
+into the background the conflict between teleological and jural
+theories, while in any case it complicates and subdivides them. We have
+individualistic and institutional types of theory. Consider, for
+example, the following representative quotations: "No school can avoid
+taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable _state of feeling_ called
+by whatever name--gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure
+somewhere, at some time, _to some being or beings_, is an element of the
+conception";[110] and again,[110] "the good is universally the
+pleasurable." And while the emphasis is here upon the good, the
+desirable, the same type of statement, _as respects emphasis upon the
+individual_, may be made from the side of duty. For example, "it is the
+very essence of moral duty to be imposed by a man on himself."[111]
+Contrast both of these statements with the following: "What a man ought
+to do, or what duties he should fulfill in order to be virtuous, is in
+an ethical community not hard to say. He has to do nothing except what
+is presented, expressed, and recognized in his established
+relations."[112] "The individual has his truth, real existence, and
+ethical status only in being a member of the State. His particular
+satisfactions, activities, and way of life have in this authenticated,
+substantive principle, their origin and result."[113] And in another
+connection: "The striving for a morality of one's own is futile and by
+its very nature impossible of attainment. In respect to morality the
+saying of one of the wisest men of antiquity is the true one. To be
+moral is to live in accord with the moral tradition of one's
+country."[114] Here both the good and the law of the individual are
+placed on a strictly institutional basis.
+
+=(3) Empirical and Intuitional.=--Another cross-division arises from
+consideration of the method of ascertaining and determining the nature
+of moral distinctions: the method of knowledge. From this standpoint,
+the distinction of ethical theories into the _empirical_ ([Greek:
+empeirikos]) and the _intuitional_ (Latin, _intueor_, to look at or
+upon) represents their most fundamental cleavage. One view makes
+knowledge of the good and the right dependent upon recollection of prior
+experiences and their conditions and effects. The other view makes it an
+immediate apprehension of the quality of an act or motive, a trait so
+intrinsic and characteristic it cannot escape being seen. While in
+general the empirical school has laid stress upon the consequences, the
+consequences to be searched for were considered as either individual or
+social. Some, like Hobbes, have held that it was directed upon law; to
+knowledge of the commands of the state. And similarly the direct
+perception or intuition of moral quality was by some thought to apply to
+recognition of differences of value, and by others to acknowledgment of
+law and authority, which again might be divine, social, or personal.
+This division cleaves straight across our other bases of classification.
+To describe a theory definitely, it would then be necessary to state
+just where it stood with reference to each possible combination or
+permutation of elements of all three divisions. Moreover, there are
+theories which attempt to find a deeper principle which will bridge the
+gulf between the two opposites.
+
+=Complexity of Subject-matter and Voluntary Activity.=--This brief
+survey should at least warn us of the complexity of the attempt to
+discriminate types of theory, and put us on our guard against undue
+simplification. It may also serve to remind us that various types of
+theory are not arbitrary personal devices and constructions, but arise
+because, in the complexity of the subject-matter, one element or another
+is especially emphasized, and the other elements arranged in different
+perspectives. As a rule, all the elements are recognized in some form or
+other by all theories; but they are differently placed and accounted
+for. In any case, it is voluntary activity with which we are concerned.
+The problem of analyzing voluntary activity into its proper elements,
+and rightly arranging them, must coincide finally with the problem of
+the relation of good and law of control to each other, with the problem
+of the nature of moral knowledge, and with that of the relation of the
+individual and social aspects of conduct.
+
+
+Sec. 2. DIVISION OF VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY INTO INNER AND OUTER
+
+=The What and How of Activity.=--Starting from the side of the voluntary
+act, we find in it one distinction which when forced into an extreme
+separation throws light upon all three divisions in theory which have
+been noted. This is the relation between desire and deliberation as
+mental or private, and the deed, the doing, as overt and public. Is
+there any intrinsic moral connection between the _mental_ and the
+_overt_ in activity? We may analyze an act which has been accomplished
+into two factors, one of which is said to exist within the agent's own
+consciousness; while the other, the external execution, carries the
+mental into operation, affects the world, and is appreciable by others.
+Now on the face of the matter, these two things, while capable of
+intellectual discrimination, are incapable of real separation. The
+"mental" side, the desire and the deliberation, is for the sake of
+determining what shall be _done_; the overt side is for the sake of
+making real certain precedent mental processes, which are partial and
+inadequate till carried into effect, and which occur for the sake of
+that effect. The "inner" and "outer" are really only the "how" and the
+"what" of activity, neither being real or significant apart from the
+other. (See _ante_, p. 6).
+
+=Separation into Attitude and Consequences.=--But under the strain of
+various theories, this organic unity has been denied; the inner and the
+outer side of activity have been severed from one another. When thus
+divided, the "inner" side is connected exclusively with the will, the
+disposition, the character of the person; the "outer" side is connected
+wholly with the consequences which flow from it, the changes it brings
+about. Theories will then vary radically according as the so-called
+inner or the so-called outer is selected as the bearer and carrier of
+moral distinctions. One theory will locate the moral quality of an act
+in that _from_ which it issues; the other in that _into_ which it
+issues.
+
+The following quotations put the contrast in a nutshell, though
+unfortunately the exact meaning of the second is not very apparent apart
+from its context.
+
+ "A motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure or pain
+ operating in a certain manner. Now pleasure is in itself a good;
+ nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.... It
+ follows, therefore, immediately and incontestably that there is no
+ such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one. If
+ motives are good or bad, it is only on account of their effects"
+ (Bentham, _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. x., Sec. 2).
+ Over against this, place the following from Kant: "Pure reason is
+ practical of itself alone, and gives to man a universal law which
+ we call the Moral Law.... If this law determines the will directly
+ [without any reference to objects and to pleasure or pain] the
+ action conformed to it is good in itself; a will whose principle
+ always conforms to this law is good absolutely in every respect
+ and is the supreme condition of all good."
+
+If now we recur to the distinction between the "what" and the "how" of
+action in the light of these quotations, we get a striking result.
+"What" one does is to pay money, or speak words, or strike blows, and so
+on. The "how" of this action is the spirit, the temper in which it is
+done. One pays money with a hope of getting it back, or to avoid arrest
+for fraud, or because one wishes to discharge an obligation; one strikes
+in anger, or in self-defense, or in love of country, and so on. Now the
+view of Bentham says in effect that the "what" is significant, and that
+the "what" consists ultimately only of the pleasures it produces; the
+"how" is unimportant save as it incidentally affects resulting feelings.
+The view of Kant is that the moral core of every act is in its "how,"
+that is in its spirit, its actuating motive; and that the law of reason
+is the only right motive. _What_ is aimed at is a secondary and (except
+as determined by the inner spirit, the "how" of the action) an
+irrelevant matter. In short the separation of the mental and the overt
+aspects of an act has led to an equally complete separation of its
+initial spirit and motive from its final content and consequence. And in
+this separation, one type of theory, illustrated by Kant, takes its
+stand on the actuating source of the act; the other, that of Bentham, on
+its outcome. For convenience, we shall frequently refer to these types
+of theories as respectively the "attitude" and the "content"; the formal
+and the material; the disposition and the consequences theory. The
+fundamental thing is that _both_ theories separate character and
+conduct, disposition and behavior; which of the two is most emphasized
+being a secondary matter.
+
+=Different Ways of Emphasizing Results.=--There are, however, different
+forms of the consequences or "content" theory--as we shall, for
+convenience, term it. Some writers, like Spencer as quoted, say the only
+consequences that are good are simply pleasures, and that pleasures
+differ only in _intensity_, being alike in everything but degree. Others
+say, pleasure is the good, but pleasures differ in quality as well as
+intensity and that a certain _kind_ of pleasure is the morally good.
+Others say that natural satisfaction is not found in any one pleasure,
+or in any number of them, but in a more permanent mood of experience,
+which is termed _happiness_. Happiness is different from a pleasure or
+from a collection of pleasures, in being an abiding consequence or
+result, which is not destroyed even by the presence of pains (while a
+pain ejects a pleasure). The pleasure view is called Hedonism; the
+happiness view, Eudaimonism.[115]
+
+=Different Forms of the "Attitude" Theory.=--The opposite school of
+theory holds that the peculiar character of "moral" good is precisely
+that it is _not_ found in consequences of action. In this negative
+feature of the definition many different writers agree; there is less
+harmony in the positive statement of just what the moral good is. It is
+an attribute or disposition of character, or the self, not a trait of
+results experienced, and in general such an attribute is called
+_Virtue_. But there are as many differences of opinion as to what
+constitutes virtue as there are on the other side as to what pleasure
+and happiness are. In one view, it merges, in its outcome at least, very
+closely with one form of eudaimonism. If happiness be defined as the
+fulfillment of satisfaction of the characteristic functions of a human
+being, while a certain function, that of reason, is regarded as _the_
+characteristic human trait whose exercise is _the_ virtue or supreme
+excellence, it becomes impossible to maintain any sharp line of
+distinction. Kant, however, attempted to cut under this union of
+happiness and virtue, which under the form of _perfectionism_ has been
+attempted by many writers, by raising the question of _motivation_. Why
+does the person aim at perfection? Is it for the sake of the resulting
+happiness? Then we have only Hedonism. Is it because the moral law, the
+law of reason, requires it? Then we have law morally deeper than the end
+aimed at.
+
+We may now consider the bearing of this discussion upon theories of
+moral knowledge and (2) of moral authority.[116]
+
+=I. Characteristic Theories of Moral Knowledge.=--(1) Those who set
+chief store by the goods naturally experienced, find that past
+experiences supply all the data required for moral knowledge. Pleasures
+and pains, satisfactions and miseries, are recurrent familiar
+experiences. All we have to do is to note them and their occasions (or,
+put the other way, to observe the tendency of some of our impulses and
+acts to bring pleasure as a consequence, of others to effect misery),
+and to make up our ends and aims accordingly. As a theory of moral
+knowledge, Hedonism is thus almost always allied with _empiricism_,
+understanding by empiricism the theory that particular past experiences
+furnish the method of all ideas and beliefs.
+
+(2) The theory that the good is some type of virtuous character requires
+a special organ to give moral knowledge. Virtue is none the less the
+Good, even when it is not attained, when it is not experienced, that is,
+as we experience a pleasure. In any case, it is not good because it is
+experienced, but because it _is_ virtue. Thus the "attitude" theory
+tends to connect itself with some form of Intuitionalism, Rationalism,
+or Transcendentalism, all of these terms meaning that there is something
+in knowledge going beyond the particular experiences. Intuitionalism
+holds there is a certain special faculty which reveals truths beyond the
+scope of experience; Rationalism, that beside the particular elements of
+experience there are universal and necessary conceptions which regulate
+it; Transcendentalism, that within experience there is a factor derived
+from a source transcending experience.[117]
+
+=II. Characteristic Theories of Moral Control.=--The result school tends
+to view authority, control, law, obligation from the standpoint of
+_means to an end_; the moralistic, or virtue, school to regard the idea
+of _law_ as more fundamental than that of the good. From the first
+standpoint, the authority of a given rule lies in its power to regulate
+desires so that after all pleasures--or a maximum of them, and a minimum
+of pains--may be had. At bottom, it is a principle of expediency, of
+practical wisdom, of adjustment of means to end. Thus Hume said: "Reason
+is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions"--that is, the
+principles and rules made known by reason are, at last, only instruments
+for securing the fullest satisfaction of desires. But according to the
+point of view of the other school, no satisfaction is _really_ (i.e.,
+morally) good unless it is acquired in accordance with a law existing
+independently of pleasurable satisfaction. Thus the good depends upon
+the law, not the law upon the desirable end.
+
+
+Sec. 3. GENERAL INTERPRETATION OF THESE THEORIES
+
+=The Opposition in Ordinary Life.=--To some extent, similar oppositions
+are latent in our ordinary moral convictions, without regard to theory.
+Indeed, we tend, at different times, to pass from one point of view to
+the other, without being aware of it. Thus, as against the
+identification of goodness with a _mere_ attitude of will; we say, "It
+is not enough for a man to be good; he must be good for something." It
+is not enough to mean well; one must mean to do well; to excuse a man by
+saying "he _means_ well," conveys a shade of depreciation. "Hell is
+paved with good intentions." Good "resolutions," in general, are
+ridiculed as not modifying overt action. A tree is to be judged by its
+fruits. "Faith without works is dead." A man is said "to be too good for
+this world" when his motives are not effective. Sometimes we say, "So
+and so is a _good_ man," meaning to say that that is about all that can
+be said for him--he does not count, or amount to anything, practically.
+The objection to identifying goodness with inefficiency also tends to
+render suspected a theory which seems to lead logically to such
+identification. More positively we dwell upon goodness as involving
+_service_; "love is the fulfilling of the law," and while love is a
+trait of character, it is one which takes immediate action in order to
+bring about certain definite consequences. We call a man Pharisaical who
+cherishes his own good character as an end distinct from the common good
+for which it may be serviceable.
+
+On the other hand, indicating the supremacy of the voluntary attitude
+over consequences, we have, "What shall a man give in exchange for his
+soul?" "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and
+lose his own life?" "Let us do evil that good may come, whose damnation
+is just." The deep-seated objection to the maxim that the end justifies
+the means is hard to account for, except upon the basis that it is
+possible to attain ends otherwise worthy and desirable at the expense of
+conduct which is immoral. Again, compare Shakspere's "There's nothing
+right or wrong, but thinking makes it so" with the Biblical "As a man
+thinketh in his heart, so is he." And finally we have such sayings as,
+"Take the will for the deed"; "His heart is in the right place"; _Pereat
+mundus, fiat justitia_.
+
+Passing from this popular aspect of the matter, we find the following
+grounds for the "content" theory:
+
+=1. It Makes Morality Really Important.=--Would there be any use or
+sense in moral acts if they did not tend to promote welfare, individual
+and social? If theft uniformly resulted in great happiness and security
+of life, if truth-telling introduced confusion and inefficiency into
+men's relations, would we not consider the first a virtue, and the
+latter a vice?[118] So far as the identification of goodness with mere
+motive (apart from results effected by acts) reduces morality to
+nullity, there seems to be furnished a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the
+theory that results are not the decisive thing.
+
+=(2) It Makes Morality a Definite, Concrete Thing.=--Morality is found
+in consequences; and consequences are definite, observable facts which
+the individual can be made responsible for noting and for employing in
+the direction of his further behavior. The theory gives morality an
+objective, a tangible guarantee and sanction. Moreover, results are
+something objective, common to different individuals because outside
+them all. But the doctrine that goodness consists in motives formed by
+and within the individual without reference to obvious, overt results,
+makes goodness something vague or else whimsical and arbitrary. The
+latter view makes virtue either something unattainable, or else attained
+by merely cultivating certain internal states having no outward results
+at all, or even results that are socially harmful. It encourages
+fanaticism, moral crankiness, moral isolation or pride; obstinate
+persistence in a bad course in spite of its demonstrable evil results.
+It makes morality non-progressive, since by its assumption no amount of
+experience of consequences can throw any light upon essential moral
+elements.
+
+=(3) The Content Theory Not Only Puts Morality Itself upon a Basis of
+Facts, but Also Puts the Theory of Morality upon a Solid Basis.=--We
+know what we mean by goodness and evil when we discuss them in terms of
+results achieved or missed, and can therefore discuss them intelligibly.
+We can formulate concrete ends and lay down rules for their attainment.
+Thus there can be a science of morals just as there can be a science of
+any body of observable facts having a common principle. But if morality
+depends upon purely subjective, personal motives, no objective
+observation and common interpretation are possible. We are thrown back
+upon the capricious individual _ipse dixit_, which by this theory is
+made final. Ethical theory is rendered impossible. Thus Bentham, who
+brings these charges (and others) against the "virtue" theory of
+goodness, says at the close of the preface to his _Principles of Morals
+and Legislation_ (ed. of 1823):
+
+ "Truths that form the basis of political and moral science are not
+ to be discovered but by investigations as severe as mathematical
+ ones, and beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive....
+ They are not to be forced into detached and general propositions,
+ unincumbered with explanations and exceptions. They will not
+ compress themselves into epigrams. They recoil from the tongue and
+ the pen of the declaimer. They flourish not in the same soil with
+ sentiment. They grow among thorns; and are not to be plucked, like
+ daisies, by infants as they run.... There is no _King's Road_ ...
+ to legislative, any more than to mathematical science."[119]
+
+Arguments not unlike, however, may be adduced in favor of the attitude
+theory.
+
+=1. It, and It Alone, Places Morality in the High and Authoritative
+Place Which by Right Characterizes It.=--Morality is not just a means of
+reaching other ends; it is an end in itself. To reduce virtue to a tool
+or instrumentality for securing pleasure is to prostitute and destroy
+it. Unsophisticated common sense is shocked at putting morality upon the
+same level with prudence, policy, and expediency. Morality is morality,
+just because it possesses an absolute authoritativeness which they lack.
+
+=2. The Morally Good Must be Within the Power of the Individual to
+Achieve.=--The amount of pleasure and pain the individual experiences,
+his share of satisfaction, depends upon outward circumstances which are
+beyond his control, and which accordingly have no moral significance.
+Only the beginning, the willing, of an act lies with the man; its
+conclusion, its outcome in the way of consequences, lies with the gods.
+Accident, misfortune, unfavorable circumstance, may shut the individual
+within a life of sickness, misery, and discomfort. They may deprive him
+of external goods; but they cannot modify the moral good, for that
+resides in the attitude with which one faces these conditions and
+results. Conditions hostile to prosperity may be only the means of
+calling forth virtues of bravery, patience, and amiability. Only
+consequences within character itself, the tendency of an act to form a
+habit or to cultivate a disposition, are really of moral significance.
+
+=3. Motives Furnish a Settled and Workable Criterion by Which to Measure
+the Rightness or Wrongness of Specific Acts.=--Consequences are
+indefinitely varied; they are too much at the mercy of the unforeseen to
+serve as basis of measurement. One and the same act may turn out in a
+hundred different ways according to accidental circumstances. If the
+individual had to calculate consequences before entering upon action, he
+would engage in trying to solve a problem where each new term introduced
+more factors. No conclusion would ever be reached; or, if reached, would
+be so uncertain that the agent would be paralyzed by doubt. But since
+the motives are within the person's own breast, the problem of knowing
+the right is comparatively simple: the data for the judgment are always
+at hand and always accessible to the one who sincerely wishes to know
+the right.
+
+=Conclusion.=--The fact that common life recognizes, under certain
+conditions, both theories as correct, and that substantially the same
+claims may be made for both, suggests that the controversy depends upon
+some underlying misapprehension. Their common error, as we shall attempt
+to show in the sequel, lies in trying to split a voluntary act which is
+single and entire into two unrelated parts, the one termed "inner," the
+other, "outer"; the one called "motive," the other, "end." A voluntary
+act is always a disposition, or habit of the agent _passing into an
+overt act_, which, so far as it can, produces certain consequences. A
+"mere" motive which does not do anything, which makes nothing different,
+is not a genuine motive at all, and hence is not a voluntary act. On the
+other hand, consequences which are not intended, which are not
+personally wanted and chosen and striven for, are no part of a voluntary
+act. _Neither the inner apart from the outer, nor the outer apart from
+the inner, has any voluntary or moral quality at all. The former is mere
+passing sentimentality or reverie; the latter is mere accident or luck._
+
+=Tendency of Each Theory to Pass into the Other.=--Hence each theory,
+realizing its own onesidedness, tends inevitably to make concessions,
+and to borrow factors from its competitor, and thus insensibly to bridge
+the gap between them. Consequences are emphasized, but only _foreseen_
+consequences; while to _foresee_ is a mental act whose exercise depends
+upon character. It is disposition, interest, which leads an agent to
+estimate the consequences at their true worth; thus an upholder of the
+"content" theory ends by falling back upon the _attitude_ taken in
+forecasting and weighing results. In like fashion, the representative of
+the motive theory dwells upon the tendency of the motive to bring about
+certain effects. The man with a truly benevolent disposition is not the
+one who indulges in indiscriminate charity, but the one who considers
+the effect of his gift upon its recipient and upon society. While
+lauding the motive as the sole bearer of moral worth, the motive is
+regarded as a force working towards the production of certain _results_.
+When the "content" theory recognizes disposition as an inherent factor
+in bringing about consequences, and the "attitude" theory views motives
+as forces tending to effect consequences, an approximation of each to
+the other has taken place which almost cancels the original opposition.
+It is realized that a complete view of the place of motive in a
+voluntary act will conceive motive as a motor force; as inspiring to
+action which will inevitably produce certain results unless this is
+prevented by superior external force. It is also realized that only
+_those_ consequences are any part of voluntary behavior which are so
+congenial to character as to appeal to it as good and stir it to effort
+to realize them. _We may begin the analysis of a voluntary act at
+whichever end we please, but we are always carried to the other end in
+order to complete the analysis._ The so-called distinction between the
+"inner" and "outer" parts of an act is in reality a distinction between
+the _earlier_ and the _later_ period of its development.
+
+In the following chapter we shall enter upon a direct discussion of the
+relation of conduct and character to one another; we shall then apply
+the results of the discussion, in successive chapters, to the problems
+already raised: The Nature of Good; of Knowledge; of Moral Authority;
+The Relation of the Self to Others and Society; The Characteristics of
+the Virtuous Self.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Many of the references in ch. xi. trench upon this ground. Compare,
+also, Lecky, _History of European Morals_, Vol. I., pp. 1-2, and
+122-130; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, pp. 6-11, 77-88 and 494-507;
+Wundt, _Ethics_, Vol. II., ch. iv.; Mackenzie, _Manual of Ethics_, Book
+II., ch. ii.; Murray, _Introduction to Ethics_, p. 143; Paulsen, _System
+of Ethics_, Introduction, and Book II., ch. i.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[110] Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I., p. 46, and p. 30.
+(Italics not in original.)
+
+[111] Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 354.
+
+[112] Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_, translated by Dyde, Part III., 150
+(p. 159).
+
+[113] Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_, translated by Dyde, Part III., 258
+(p. 241).
+
+[114] _Werke_, Book I., 389.
+
+[115] The Greek words [Greek: edone], pleasure, and [Greek: eudaimonia],
+happiness. The latter conception is due chiefly to Aristotle. Happiness
+is, however, a good translation only when taken very vaguely. The Greek
+term has a peculiar origin which influenced its meaning.
+
+[116] The differences as regards self and society will be considered in
+later chapters.
+
+[117] For similar reasons, the "content" theories tend to ally
+themselves with the positive sciences; the "attitude" theories with
+philosophy as distinct from sciences.
+
+[118] "Suppose that picking a man's pocket excited in him joyful
+emotions, by brightening his prospects, would theft be counted among
+crimes?"--SPENCER.
+
+[119] Mill in his _Autobiography_ has given a striking account of how
+this phase of Utilitarianism appealed to him. (See pp. 65-67 of London
+edition of 1874; see also his _Dissertations and Discussions_, Vol. I.,
+Essay on Bentham, especially pp. 339 and ff.) Bentham "introduced into
+morals and politics those habits of thought, and modes of investigation,
+which are essential to the idea of science; and the absence of which
+made these departments of inquiry, as physics had been before Bacon, a
+field of interminable discussion, leading to no result. It was not his
+_opinions_, in short, but his _method_, that constituted the novelty and
+value of what he did.... Bentham's method may be shortly described as
+the method of _detail_.... Error lurks in generalities."
+
+Mill finally says: "He has thus, it is not too much to say, for the
+first time introduced precision of thought in moral and political
+philosophy. Instead of taking up their opinions by intuition, or by
+ratiocination from premises adopted on a mere rough view, and couched in
+language so vague that it is impossible to say exactly whether they are
+true or false, philosophers are now forced to understand one another, to
+break down the generality of their propositions, and join a precise
+issue in every dispute. This is nothing less than a revolution in
+philosophy." In view of the character of the larger amount of
+discussions in moral and political philosophy still current, Mill
+perhaps took a too optimistic view of the extent to which this
+"revolution" had been accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CONDUCT AND CHARACTER
+
+
+=Problem of Chapter.=--We have endeavored in the preceding chapters (1)
+to identify the sort of situation in which the ideas of good and evil,
+right and wrong, in their moral sense, are employed; (2) to set forth
+the typical problems that arise in the analysis of this situation; and
+(3) to name and describe briefly the types of theory which have
+developed in the course of the history of the problems. We have now to
+return to the moral situation as described, and enter upon an
+independent analysis of it. We shall commence this analysis, as was
+indicated in the last chapter, by considering the question of the
+relation of attitude and consequences to each other in voluntary
+activity,--not that this is the only way to approach the problem, but
+that it is the way which brings out most clearly the points at issue
+among types of moral theory which since the early part of the nineteenth
+century have had the chief currency and influence. Accordingly the
+discussion will be introduced by a statement of the two most extreme
+doctrines that separate the "inner" and the "outer," the "psychical" and
+the "overt" aspects of activity: _viz._, the Kantian, exclusively
+emphasizing the "how," the spirit, and motive of conduct; the
+Utilitarian, dwelling exclusively upon its "what," its effects and
+consequences. Our positive problem is, of course, by means of arraying
+these two extreme views against each other, to arrive at a statement of
+the mutual relations of attitude and act, motive and consequence,
+character and conduct.
+
+We shall begin with Kant as a representative of the attitude theory.
+
+
+Sec. 1. THE GOOD WILL OF KANT
+
+Kant says:
+
+ "Nothing can possibly be conceived, in the world or out of it,
+ which can be called Good without qualification, except a Good
+ Will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the other talents of the
+ mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution,
+ perseverance as qualities of temperament are individually good and
+ desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also
+ become extremely bad and mischievous, if the will which is to make
+ use of them and which, therefore, constitutes what is called
+ character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune.
+ Power, riches, honor, even health ... inspire pride and often
+ presumption if there is not a Good Will to correct the influence
+ of these on the mind. Moderation of the affections and passions,
+ self-control and calm deliberation are not only good in many
+ respects, but even seem to constitute part of the intrinsic worth
+ of the person; but they are far from deserving to be called good
+ without qualification ... for without the principles of a good
+ will they may become extremely bad. The coolness of a villain
+ makes him both more dangerous and more abominable" (Kant: _Theory
+ of Ethics_, tr. by Abbott, pp. 9-10).
+
+=Element of Truth in Statement.=--There can be no doubt that in some
+respects these ideas of Kant meet a welcome in our ordinary convictions.
+Gifts of fortune, talents of mind, qualities of temperament, are
+regarded as desirable, as good, but we qualify the concession. We say
+they are good, if a good use is made of them; but that, administered by
+a bad character, they add to power for evil. Moreover, Kant's statement
+of the _intrinsic_ goodness of the Good Will, "A jewel which shines by
+its own light" (_Ibid._, p. 10), awakens ready response in us. Some
+goods we regard as means and conditions--health, wealth, business, and
+professional success. They afford moral opportunities and agencies, but
+need not possess moral value in and of themselves; when they become
+parts, as they may, of a moral good, it is because of their place and
+context. Personality, character, has a dignity of its own, which forbids
+that it be considered a simple means for the acquisition of other goods.
+The man who makes his good character a simple tool for securing
+political preferment, is, we should say, prostituting and so destroying
+his own goodness.
+
+=Ambiguity of Statement.=--The statement made by Kant, however, is
+ambiguous and open to opposed interpretations. The notion that the Good
+Will is good in and of itself may be interpreted in two different ways:
+(i) We may hold, for example, that honesty is good as a trait of will
+because it tends inevitably to secure a desirable relationship among
+men; it removes obstructions between persons and keeps the ways of
+action clear and open. Every man can count upon straightforward action
+when all act from honesty; it secures for each singleness of aim and
+concentration of energy. (ii) But we may also mean that honesty is
+absolutely good as a trait of character just in and by itself, quite
+apart from any influence this trait of character has in securing and
+promoting desirable ends. In one case, we emphasize its goodness because
+it arranges for and tends towards certain results; in the other case, we
+ignore the factor of tendency toward results.
+
+=Kant's Interpretation of Goodness of Will is Formal.=--Kant's further
+treatment leaves us in no doubt in which of these two senses he uses the
+term Good Will. He goes on (_Ibid._, p. 10):
+
+ "A Good Will is good, not because of what it performs or effects,
+ _not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end_, but
+ simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in
+ itself.... Even if it should happen that, owing to the special
+ disfavor of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly
+ nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its
+ purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve
+ nothing, and there should remain only the Good Will (not, to be
+ sure, a mere wish, but the assuming of all means in our power),
+ then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light as a
+ thing which has its whole value in itself. Its fruitfulness or
+ fruitlessness can neither add nor take away anything from this
+ value."
+
+And again he says:
+
+ "An action ... derives its moral worth not from the _purpose_
+ which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is
+ determined and therefore depends ... merely on the principle of
+ volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to
+ any _object of desire_.... The purposes which we may have in view
+ in our actions or their effect regarded as ends and springs of
+ will cannot give the actions an unconditional or moral worth....
+ It cannot lie anywhere but in the principle of the Will, without
+ regard to the ends which can be attained by the action" (_Ibid._,
+ p. 16).
+
+=Relation of Endeavor and Achievement to Will.=--Here, also, we find a
+certain agreement with our every-day moral experience. It is undoubtedly
+true that in many cases we ascribe moral worth or goodness to acts
+without reference to the results actually attained by them; a man who
+tries to rescue a drowning child is not judged only on the basis of
+success. If he is prevented, because he is crippled, or because the
+current is too rapid for him, we do not refuse hearty moral approbation.
+We do not judge the goodness of the act or of the agent from the
+standpoint of its attained result, which here is failure. We regard the
+man as good because he proposed to himself a worthy end or aim, the
+rescue of another, even at the risk of harm to himself. We should agree
+with Kant in saying that the moral worth does not depend on the
+_realization_ of the object of desire. But we should regard the worth of
+the man to consist precisely in the fact that, so far as he was
+concerned, he _aimed at a good result_. We do not rule out purpose, but
+we approve because the purpose was good. By will we mean tendencies,
+desires, and habits operating to realize results regarded as desirable.
+Will is not the _sole_ condition of reaching a result--that is, of
+making the aim an actual fact. Circumstances need to cooperate to insure
+a successful issue; and if these fail, the best will in the world cannot
+secure the transformation of desire for an end into that end. We know
+that sometimes it is only by accident that the desirable end is not
+effected, but we also know that without the proper disposition it is
+only by accident that the results _are_ achieved. Moreover, we know that
+our own attitude is not only an important condition of securing the
+results, but that it is the only condition _constantly_ under our
+control. What we mean by calling it "ours" is precisely that it is that
+condition whose operation lies with us. Accordingly, it is the key and
+clue to the results, so far as they concern us. So far, given desire and
+endeavor, achievement is not necessary to volition.
+
+="Meaning Well."=--On the other hand, can a man justify himself on the
+ground that he "means well," if the "meaning well" does not _regulate
+the overt acts_ that he performs, and hence the consequences that
+proceed from them? Are we not justified in suspecting a person's good
+faith when his good intentions uniformly bring suffering to others? If
+we do not question his good faith, do we not regard him as needing moral
+enlightenment, and a change of disposition? We distinguish in our
+judgments of good between the fanatic and the thoroughly selfish man,
+but we do not carry this distinction to the point of approving the
+fanatic; of saying, "Let him alone; he means well, he has a good will,
+he is actuated by a sense of duty." On the contrary, we condemn his
+aims; and in so far we censure him for willingly entertaining ans
+approving them. We may, indeed, approve of his character with respect to
+its sincerity, singleness of aim, and its thoroughness of effort, for
+such things, _taken by themselves_, or in the abstract, are good traits
+of character. We esteem them highly, however, just because they have so
+much to do with results; they are, _par excellence_, executive traits.
+But we do not approve of the man's whole character in approving these
+traits. There is something the matter with the man in whom good traits
+are put to a bad use. It is not true in such cases that we approve the
+_agent_ but condemn his _acts_. We approve certain phases of conduct,
+and in so far regard the doer as praiseworthy; we condemn other features
+of acts, and in so far disapprove him.[120]
+
+=Overt Action Proves Will.=--Again, under what circumstances do we
+actually "take the will for the deed"? When do we assume that so far as
+the will was concerned it did aim at the result and aimed at it
+thoroughly, without evasion and without reservation? Only when there is
+_some_ action which testifies to the real presence of the motive and
+aim.[121] The man, in our earlier instance, must have made some effort
+to save the drowning child to justify either us or himself in believing
+that he _meant_ to do it; that he had the right intent. The individual
+who habitually justifies himself (either to others or to himself) by
+insisting upon the rightness of his motives, lays himself open to a
+charge of self-deception, if not of deliberate hypocrisy, if there are
+no outward evidences of effort towards the realization of his pretended
+motive. A habitually careless child, when blamed for some disorder or
+disturbance, seeks to excuse himself by saying he "didn't mean to":
+i.e., he had no intention or aim; the results did not flow morally from
+him. We often reply, in effect, "that is just the trouble; you didn't
+mean at all; you ought to have meant _not_ to do this." In other words,
+if you had thought about what you were doing you would not have done
+this and would not have brought about the undesirable results. With
+adults there is such a thing as culpable carelessness and blameworthy
+negligence. So far as the individual's conscious will was concerned,
+everything he deliberately intended may have been entirely praiseworthy;
+but we blame him because his character was such that the end appropriate
+to the circumstances did not occur to him. We do not disapprove when the
+failure to think of the right purpose is due to inexperience or to lack
+of intellectual development; but we do blame when the man does not
+employ his attained experience and intellectual capacity. Given these
+factors, if the right end is not thought of or is quickly dismissed,
+indisposition is the only remaining explanation. These two facts, that
+we require effort or evidence of sincerity of good will and that the
+character is disapproved for _not_ entertaining certain aims, are
+sufficient to prove that we do not identify will and motive with
+something which has nothing to do with "aptness for attaining ends."
+Will or character _means intelligent forethought of ends and resolute
+endeavor to achieve them_. It cannot be conceived apart from _ends_
+purposed and desired.
+
+
+Sec. 2. THE "INTENTION" OF THE UTILITARIANS
+
+=Emphasis of Utilitarians upon Ends.=--We are brought to the opposite
+type of moral theory, the utilitarian, which finds moral quality to
+reside in consequences, that is to say, in the ends achieved. To the
+utilitarians, motive means simply certain states of consciousness which
+happen to be uppermost in a man's mind as he acts. Not this subjective
+feeling existing only in the inner consciousness, but the external
+outcome, the objective change which is made in the common world, is
+what counts. If we can get the act done which produces the right sort of
+changes, which brings the right kind of result to the various persons
+concerned, it is irrelevant and misleading to bother with the private
+emotional state of the doer's mind. Murder would be none the less murder
+even if the consciousness of the killer were filled with the most
+maudlin sentiments of general philanthropy; the rescue of a drowning man
+would be none the less approvable even if we happened to know that the
+consciousness of the rescuer were irritable and grumpy while he was
+performing the deed. Acts, not feelings, count, and acts mean changes
+actually effected.[122]
+
+=Distinction of Intention from Motive.=--The utilitarians make their
+point by distinguishing between intention and motive, attributing moral
+value exclusively to the former. According to them, intention is _what_
+a man means to do; motive is the personal frame of mind which indicates
+_why_ he means to do it. Intention is the concrete aim, or purpose; the
+results which are foreseen and wanted. Motive is the state of mind which
+renders these consequences, rather than others, interesting and
+attractive. The following quotations are typical. Bentham says
+concerning motives:
+
+ "If they are good or bad, it is only on account of their effects:
+ good, on account of their tendency to produce pleasure, or avert
+ pain: bad, on account of their tendency to produce pain, or avert
+ pleasure. Now the case is, that from one and the same motive, and
+ from every kind of motive, may proceed actions that are good,
+ others that are bad, and others that are indifferent."
+
+Consequently the question of motive is totally irrelevant. He goes on to
+give a long series of illustrations, from which we select one:
+
+ "1. A boy, in order to divert himself, reads an inspiring book;
+ the motive is accounted, perhaps, a good one: at any rate, not a
+ bad one. 2. He sets his top a-spinning: the motive is deemed at
+ any rate not a bad one. 3. He sets loose a mad ox among a crowd:
+ his motive is now, perhaps, termed an abominable one. Yet in all
+ three cases the motive may be the very same: it may be neither
+ more nor less than curiosity."[123] Mill writes to the following
+ effect: "The morality of the action depends entirely upon the
+ _intention_----that is, upon _what_ the agent wills to do. But the
+ motive, that is, the feeling which made him will so to do, when it
+ makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality."[124]
+
+Now if motives were merely inert feelings or bare states of
+consciousness happening to fill a person's mind apart from his desires
+and his ideas, they certainly would not modify his acts, and we should
+be compelled to admit the correctness of this position. But Mill gives
+the whole case away when he says that the motive which makes a man will
+something, "_when it makes no difference in the act_," makes none in its
+morality. Every motive does make a difference in the act; it makes
+precisely the difference between one act and another. It is a
+contradiction in terms to speak of the motive as that _which makes a
+man_ will to do an act or intend to effect certain consequences, and
+then speak of the motive making no difference to the act! How can that
+which makes an intention make no difference to it, and to the act which
+proceeds from it?
+
+=Concrete Identity of Motive and Intention.=--Ordinary speech uses
+motive and intention interchangeably. It says, indifferently, that a
+man's motive in writing a letter was to warn the person addressed or was
+friendliness. According to Bentham and Mill, only so-called states of
+consciousness in which one feels friendly can be called motive; the
+object aimed at, the warning of the person, is intention, not motive.
+Again ordinary speech says either that a doctor's intention was to
+relieve his patient, or that it was kind and proper, although the act
+turned out badly. But the utilitarians would insist that only the first
+usage is correct, the latter confounding intent with motive. In general,
+such large terms as ambition, revenge, benevolence, patriotism, justice,
+avarice, are used to signify both motives and aims; both dispositions
+_from_ which one acts and results _for_ which one acts. It is the gist
+of the following discussion that common speech is essentially correct in
+this interchangeable use of intention and motive. The same set of real
+facts, _the entire voluntary act_, is pointed to by both terms.
+
+=Ambiguity in Term "Feelings."=--There is a certain ambiguity in the
+term "feelings" as employed by Mill and Bentham. It may mean feelings
+apart from ideas, blind and vague mental states unenlightened by
+thought, propelling and impelling tendencies undirected by either memory
+or anticipation. Feelings then mean sheer instincts or impulses. In this
+sense, they are, as Bentham claims, without moral quality. But also in
+this sense there are no intentions with which motives may be contrasted.
+So far as an infant or an insane person is impelled by some blind
+impulsive tendency, he foresees nothing, has no object in view, means
+nothing, in his act; he acts without premeditation and intention.
+"Curiosity" of this sort may be the source of acts which are harmful or
+useful or indifferent. But no consequences were intelligently foreseen
+or deliberately wished for, and hence the acts in question lie wholly
+outside the scope of morals, even according to the utilitarian point of
+view. Morality is a matter of intent, and intent there was none.
+
+=Motive as Intelligent.=--In some cases, then, motives have no moral
+quality whatsoever, and, _in these cases_, it is true that intention has
+no moral quality either, because there is none. Intention and motive
+are morally on the same level, not opposed to one another. But motive
+means not only blind feeling, that is, impulse without thought; it also
+means a tendency which is aware of its own probable outcome when carried
+into effect, and which is interested in the resulting effect. It is
+perhaps conceivable that a child should let loose a bull in a crowd from
+sheer innocent curiosity to see what would happen--just as he might pour
+acid on a stone. But if he were a normal child, the next time the
+impulse presented itself he would recall the previous result: the
+fright, the damage, the injury to life and limb, and would foresee that
+similar consequences are likely to happen if he again performs a like
+act. He now has what Bentham and Mill call an intention. Suppose he
+again lets loose the bull. Only verbally is motive now the same that it
+was before. In fact, curiosity is a very different thing. If the child
+is still immature and inexperienced and unimaginative, we might content
+ourselves with saying that his motive is egoistic amusement; but we may
+also say it is downright malevolence characteristic of a criminal. In no
+case should we call it curiosity. When foresight enters, intent, purpose
+enters also, and with it a change of motive from innocent, because
+blind, impulse, to deliberate, and hence to virtuous or blameworthy
+interest in effecting a certain result. Intention and motive are upon
+the same moral level. Intention is the _outcome_ foreseen and wanted;
+motive, this outcome _as_ foreseen and wanted. But the voluntary act, as
+such, is an _outcome, forethought and desired_, and hence attempted.
+
+This discussion brings out the positive truth for which Bentham and Mill
+stand: _viz._, that _the moral quality of any impulse or active tendency
+can be told only by observing the sort of consequences to which it leads
+in actual practice_. As against those who insist that there are certain
+feelings in human nature so sacred that they do not need to be measured
+or tested by noting the consequences which flow from them, so sacred
+that they justify an act _no matter what its results_, the utilitarians
+are right. It is true, as Bentham says, that if motives are good or bad
+it is on account of their effects. Hence we must be constantly
+considering the effects of our various half-impulsive, half-blind,
+half-conscious, half-unconscious motives, in order to find out what sort
+of things they are--whether to be approved and encouraged, or
+disapproved and checked.
+
+=Practical Importance of Defining Springs to Action by Results.=--This
+truth is of practical as well as of theoretical significance. Many have
+been taught that certain emotions are inherently so good that they are
+absolutely the justification of certain acts, so that the individual is
+absolved from any attention whatsoever to results. Instance "charity,"
+or "benevolence." The belief is engrained that the emotion of pity, of
+desire to relieve the sufferings of others, is intrinsically noble and
+elevating. Hence it has required much discussion and teaching to bring
+home, even partially, the evils of indiscriminate giving. The fact is
+that pity, sympathy, apart from forecast of specific results to be
+reached by acting upon it, is a mere psychological reaction, as much so
+as is shrinking from suffering, or as is a tendency to run away from
+danger; in this blind form it is devoid of any moral quality whatsoever.
+Hence to teach that the feeling is good in itself is to make its mere
+discharge an end in itself. This is to overlook the evil consequences in
+the way of fraud, laziness, inefficiency, parasitism produced in others,
+and of sentimentality, pride, self-complacency produced in the self.
+There is no doubt that the effect of some types of moral training is to
+induce the belief that an individual may develop goodness of character
+simply by cultivating and keeping uppermost in his consciousness certain
+types of feelings, irrespective of the objective results of the acts
+they lead to--one of the most dangerous forms of hypocrisy and of
+weakened moral fiber. The insistence of utilitarianism that we must
+become aware of the moral quality of our impulses and states of mind on
+the basis of the results they effect, and must control them--no matter
+how "good" they feel--by their results, is a fundamental truth of
+morals.
+
+=Existence and Influence of Idea of Consequences Depends upon
+Disposition.=--But the converse is equally true. Behind every concrete
+purpose or aim, as idea or thought of results, lies something, some
+passion, instinct, impulse, habit, interest, which gives it a hold on
+the person, which gives it motor and impelling force; and which confers
+upon it the capacity to operate as motive, as spring to action.
+Otherwise, foreseen consequences would remain mere intellectual entities
+which thought might speculatively contemplate from afar, but which would
+never possess weight, influence, power to stir effort. But we must go
+further. Not only is some active tendency in the constitution of the man
+responsible for the motive power, whether attractive or otherwise, which
+foreseen consequences possess, but it is responsible for the fact that
+this rather than that consequence is suggested. A man of consistently
+amiable character will not be likely to have thoughts of cruelty to
+weigh and to dismiss; a man of greed will be likely to have thoughts of
+personal gain and acquisition constantly present to him. What an
+individual is interested in occurs to him; what he is indifferent to
+does not present itself in imagination or lightly slips away. Active
+tendencies, personal attitudes, are thus in the end the determining
+causes of our having certain intentions in mind, as well as the causes
+of their active or moving influence. As Bentham says, motives _make_
+intentions.
+
+=Influence of Interest on Ideas.=--"Purpose is but the slave of memory."
+We can anticipate this or that only as from past experience we can
+construct it. But recall, re-membering (rearticulation) is selective. We
+pick out certain past results, certain formerly experienced results, and
+we ignore others. Why? Because of our present interests. We are
+interested in this or that, and accordingly it comes to mind and dwells
+there; or it fails to appear in recollection, or if appearing, is
+quickly dismissed. It is important that the things from the past, which
+are relevant to our present activity, should come promptly to mind and
+find fertile lodgment, and character decides how this happens.
+
+Says James:[125]
+
+ "What constitutes the difficulty for a man laboring under an
+ unwise passion acting as if the passion were unwise?... The
+ difficulty is mental; it is that of getting the idea of the wise
+ action to stay before our mind at all. When any strong emotional
+ state whatever is upon us the tendency is for no images but such
+ as are congruous with it to come up. If others by chance offer
+ themselves, they are instantly smothered and crowded out.... By a
+ sort of self-preserving instinct which our passion has, it feels
+ that these chill objects [the thoughts of what is disagreeable to
+ the passion] if they once but gain a lodgment, will work and work
+ until they have frozen the very vital spark from out of all our
+ mood.... Passion's cue accordingly is always and everywhere to
+ prevent their still small voice from being heard at all."
+
+This quotation refers to a strong passion. It is important to note _that
+every interest, every emotion, of whatever nature or strength, works in
+precisely the same way_. Upon this hangs the entertaining of memories
+and ideas about things. Hence interest is the central factor in the
+development of any concrete intention, both as to what it is and as to
+what it is not--that is, what the aim would have been if the emotional
+attitude had been different. Given a certain emotional attitude, and the
+consequences which are pertinent to it are thought of, while other and
+equally probable consequences are ignored. A man of a truly kindly
+disposition is sensitive to, aware of, probable results on other
+people's welfare; a cautious person sees consequences with reference to
+his own standing; an avaricious man feels results in terms of the
+probable increase or decrease of his possessions; and so on. The
+intimate relation of interest and attention forms the inseparable tie of
+intention, _what_ one will, to motive, _why_ he so wills. When Bentham
+says that "Motives are the causes of intentions," he states the fact,
+and also reveals motive as the proper final object of moral judgment.
+
+
+Sec. 3. CONDUCT AND CHARACTER
+
+The discussion enables us to place conduct and character in relation to
+each other. Mill, after the passage already quoted (see above, p. 248),
+to the effect that motive makes no difference to the morality of the
+act, says it "makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the
+_agent_, especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual
+_disposition_--a bent of character from which useful, or from which
+hurtful, actions are likely to arise." To like effect Bentham:
+
+ "Is there nothing, then," he asks,[126] "about a man which can be
+ termed good or bad, when on such or such an occasion, he suffers
+ himself to be governed by such and such a motive? Yes, certainly,
+ his _disposition_. Now disposition is a kind of fictitious
+ entity,[127] feigned for the convenience of discourse, in order
+ to express what there is supposed to be _permanent_ in a man's
+ frame of mind, where, on such or such an occasion, he has been
+ influenced by such or such a motive, to engage in an act, which,
+ as it appeared to him, was of such or such a tendency." He then
+ goes on to say that disposition is good or bad according to its
+ effects. "A man is said to be of a mischievous[128] disposition,
+ when by the influence of no matter what motives, he is _presumed_
+ to be more apt to engage, or form intentions of engaging, in acts
+ which are _apparently_ of a pernicious tendency than in such as
+ are apparently of a beneficial tendency: of a meritorious or
+ beneficent disposition in the opposite case."[129] And again: "It
+ is evident that the nature of a man's disposition must depend upon
+ the nature of the motives he is apt to be influenced by; in other
+ words, upon the degree of his sensibility to the force of such and
+ such motives. For his disposition is, as it were, the sum of his
+ intentions.... Now, intentions, like everything else, are produced
+ by the things that are their causes: _and the causes of intentions
+ are motives_. If, on any occasion, a man forms either a good or a
+ bad intention, it must be by the influence of some motive."[130]
+
+=Role of Character.=--Here we have an explicit recognition of the
+fundamental role of character in the moral life; and also of why it is
+important. Character is that body of active tendencies and interests in
+the individual which make him open, ready, warm to certain aims, and
+callous, cold, blind to others, and which accordingly habitually tend to
+make him acutely aware of and favorable to certain sorts of
+consequences, and ignorant of or hostile to other consequences. A
+selfish man need not consciously think a great deal of himself, nor need
+he be one who, after deliberately weighing his own claims and others'
+claims, consciously and persistently chooses the former. The number of
+persons who after facing the entire situation, would still be
+anti-social enough deliberately to sacrifice the welfare of others is
+probably small. But a man will have a selfish and egoistic character
+who, irrespective of any such conscious balancing of his own and others'
+welfare, is habitually more accessible to the thought of those
+consequences which affect himself than he is to those which bear upon
+others. It is not so much that _after_ thinking of the effect upon
+others he declines to give these thoughts any weight, as that he
+habitually fails to think at all, or to think in a vivid and complete
+way, of the interests of others. As we say, he does not care; he does
+not consider, or regard, others.[131]
+
+=Partial and Complete Intent.=--To Mill's statement that morality
+depends on intention not upon motive, a critic objected that on this
+basis a tyrant's act in saving a man from drowning would be good--the
+intent being rescue of life--although his motive was abominable, namely
+cruelty, for it was the reservation of the man for death by torture.
+Mill's reply is significant. Not so, he answered; there is in this case
+a difference of intention, not merely of motive. The rescue was not the
+whole act, but "only the necessary first step of an act." This answer
+will be found to apply to every act in which a superficial analysis
+would seem to make intent different in its moral significance from
+motive. Take into account the remote consequences in view as well as the
+near, and the seeming discrepancy disappears. The intent of rescuing a
+man and the motive of cruelty are both descriptions of the same act, the
+same moral reality; the difference lying not in the fact, but in the
+point of view from which it is named. Now there is in every one a
+tendency to fix in his mind only a part of the probable consequences of
+his deed; the part which is most innocent, upon which a favorable
+construction may most easily be put, or which is temporarily most
+agreeable to contemplate. Thus the person concentrates his thought, his
+forecast of consequences upon external and indifferent matters, upon
+distribution of commodities, increase of money or material resources,
+and upon positively valuable results, at the expense of other
+changes----changes for the worse in his disposition and in the
+well-being and freedom of others. Thus he causes to stand out in strong
+light all of those consequences of his activity which are beneficial and
+right, and dismisses those of another nature to the dim recesses of
+consciousness, so they will not trouble him with scruples about the
+proper character of his act. Since consequences are usually more or less
+mixed, such half-conscious, half-unconscious, half-voluntary,
+half-instinctive selection easily becomes a habit. Then the individual
+excuses himself with reference to the actual bad results of his behavior
+on the ground that he "meant well," his "intention was good"! Common
+sense disposes of this evasion by recognizing the reality of "willing."
+We say a man is "willing" to have things happen when, in spite of the
+fact that in and of themselves they are objectionable and hence would
+not be willed in their isolation, they are consented to, because they
+are bound up with something else the person wants. And to be "willing"
+to have the harm follow is really to will it. _The agent intends or
+wills all those consequences which his prevailing motive or character
+makes him willing under the circumstances to accept or tolerate._
+
+Exactly the same point comes out from the side of motive. Motives are
+complex and "mixed"; ultimately the motive to an act is that _entire_
+character of an agent on account of which one alternative set of
+possible results appeal to him and stir him. Such motives as pure
+benevolence, avarice, gratitude, revenge, are abstractions; we name the
+motive from the _general trend of the issue_, ignoring contributing and
+indirect causes. All _assigned_ motives are more or less _post-mortem_
+affairs. No _actuating_ motive is ever as simple as reflection
+afterwards makes it. But the justification of the simplification is that
+it brings to light some factor which needs further attention. No one can
+read his own motives, much less those of another, with perfect
+accuracy;--though the more sincere and transparent the character the
+more feasible is the reading. Motives which are active in the depths of
+character present themselves only obscurely and subconsciously. Now if
+one has been trained to think that motive apart from intention, apart
+from view of consequences flowing from an act, is the source and
+justification of its morality, a false and perverse turn is almost sure
+to be given to his judgment. Such a person fosters and keeps uppermost
+in the focus of his perceptions certain states of feeling, certain
+emotions which he has been taught are good; and then excuses his act, in
+face of bad consequences, on the ground that it sprang from a good
+motive. Selfish persons are always being "misunderstood." Thus a man of
+naturally buoyant and amiable disposition may unconsciously learn to
+cultivate superficially certain emotions of "good-feeling" to others,
+and yet act in ways which, judged by consequences that the man might
+have foreseen if he had chosen to, are utterly hostile to the interests
+of others. Such a man may feel indignant when accused of unjust or
+ungenerous behavior, and calling others to account for uncharitableness,
+bear witness in his own behalf that he never entertained any "feelings"
+of unkindness, or any "feelings" except those of benevolence, towards
+the individual in question.[132] Only the habit of reading "motives" in
+the light of persistent, thorough, and minute attention to the
+consequences which flow from them can save a man from such moral error.
+
+
+
+Sec. 4. MORALITY OF ACTS AND OF AGENTS
+
+=Subjective and Objective Morality.=--Finally we may discuss the point
+at issue with reference to the supposed distinction between subjective
+and objective morality--an agent may be good and his act bad or
+_vice-versa_. Both of the schools which place moral quality either in
+attitude or in content, in motive or intent independently of each other,
+agree in making a distinction between the morality of an act and the
+morality of the agent--between objective and subjective morality.[133]
+Thus, as we have seen, Mill says the motive makes a difference in our
+moral estimate of its doer, even when it makes none in our judgment of
+his action. It is a common idea that certain acts are right no matter
+what the motive of the doer, even when done by one with a bad
+disposition in doing them. There can be no doubt that there is a serious
+difficulty in the facts themselves. Men actuated by a harsh and narrow
+desire for industrial power or for wealth produce social benefits,
+stimulate invention and progress, and raise the level of social life.
+Napoleon was doubtless moved by vanity and vainglory to an extent
+involving immense disregard of others' rights. And yet in jurisprudence,
+civil arrangements, and education he rendered immense social service.
+Again, the "conscientious man" is often guilty of bringing great evils
+upon society. His very conviction of his own rightness may only add to
+the intense vigor which he puts into his pernicious acts. Surely, we
+cannot approve the conduct, although we are not entitled morally to
+condemn the conscientious doer, who does "the best he knows"--or
+believes.
+
+=Moral Quality of Doer and Deed Proportionate.=--If we rule out
+irrelevant considerations, we find that we never, without qualification,
+invert our moral judgments of doer and deed. So far as we regard
+Napoleon's actions as _morally_ good (not merely as happening to effect
+certain desirable results) we give Napoleon credit for interest in
+bringing about those results, _and in so far forth_, call him good.
+Character, like conduct, is a highly complex thing. No human being is
+all good or all bad. Even if we were sure that Napoleon was an
+evil-minded man, our judgment is of him as evil _upon the whole_. Only
+if we suppose him to be bad and only bad all the time is there the
+opposition of evil character and good actions. We may believe that even
+in what Napoleon did in the way of legal and civic reform he was
+actuated by mixed motives--by vanity, love of greater, because more
+centralized, power, etc. But these interests in and of themselves could
+not have effected the results he accomplished. He must have had some
+insight into a better condition of affairs, and this insight evidences
+an interest in so far good. Moreover, so far as we judge Napoleon bad as
+to his character and motive in these acts, we are entitled to hold that
+the actions and also the outward results were also partially evil. That
+is, while to some extent, socially beneficial, they would have been
+still more so if Napoleon had been actuated by less self-centred
+considerations. If his character had been simpler, more sincere, more
+straightforward, then certain evil results, certain offsets to the good
+he accomplished, would not have occurred. The mixture of good and evil
+in the results and the mixture of good and evil in the motives are
+proportionate to each other. Such is the conclusion when we recognize
+the complexities of character and conduct, and do not allow ourselves
+to be imposed upon by a fictitious simplicity of analysis.
+
+=Summary.=--The first quality which is the object of judgment primarily
+resides then in intention: in the consequences which are foreseen and
+desired. Ultimately it resides in that disposition or characteristics of
+a person which are responsible for his foreseeing and desiring just such
+consequences rather than others. The ground for judging an act on the
+basis of consequences not foreseen is that the powers of a man are not
+fixed, but capable of modification and redirection. It is only through
+taking into account in _subsequent_ acts consequences of _prior_ acts
+not intended in those prior acts that the agent learns the fuller
+significance of his own power and thus of himself. Every builder builds
+other than he knows, whether better or worse. In no case, can he foresee
+all the consequences of his acts.
+
+In subsequent experience these results, mere by-products of the original
+volition, enter in. "Outer" and non-moral for the original act, they are
+within subsequent voluntary activity, because they influence desire and
+make foresight more accurate in detail and more extensive in range. This
+translation of consequences once wholly unforeseeable into consequences
+which have to be taken in account is at its maximum in the change of
+impulsive into intelligent action. But there is no act so intelligent
+that its actual consequences do not run beyond its foreseen ones, and
+thus necessitate a subsequent revision of intention. Thus the
+distinction of "inner" and "outer" is one involved in the _growth of
+character and conduct_. Only if character were not in process of change,
+only if conduct were a fixed because isolated thing, should we have that
+separation of the inner and the outer which underlies alike the Kantian
+and the utilitarian theories. In truth, there is no separation, but only
+a contrast of the different levels of desire and forethought of earlier
+and later activities. The great need of the moral agent is thus a
+character which will make him as open, as accessible as possible, to the
+recognition of the consequences of his behavior.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+On CONDUCT AND CHARACTER in general, see Paulsen, _System of Ethics_,
+pp. 468-472; Mackenzie, _Manual of Ethics_, Book I., ch. iii.; Spencer,
+_Principles of Ethics_, Part I., chs. i.-viii.; Green, _Prolegomena to
+Ethics_, pp. 110-117, 152-159; Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_,
+pp. 48-52; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, ch. ii.; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch.
+iv.; Seth, _Ethical Principles_, ch. iii.
+
+Upon MOTIVE AND INTENTION consult Bentham, _Principles of Morals and
+Legislation_, chs. viii. and x.; James Mill, _Analysis of Human Mind_,
+Vol. II., chs. xxii. and xxv.; Austin, _Jurisprudence_, Vol. I., chs.
+xviii.-xx.; Green, _Prolegomena_, pp. 315-325; Alexander, _Moral Order
+and Progress_, pp. 36-47; Westermarck, _Origin and Development of the
+Moral Ideas_, chs. viii., xi., and xiii.; Ritchie, _International
+Journal of Ethics_, Vol. IV., pp. 89-94, and 229-238, where farther
+references are given.
+
+Upon FORMAL AND MATERIAL (or subjective and objective) RIGHTNESS see
+Sidgwick, _History of Ethics_, p. 200; Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, p.
+3, pp. 33-40; Bowne, _Principles of Ethics_, pp. 39-40; Brown,
+_Philosophy of Mind_, Vol. III., p. 489 and pp. 499-500; Paulsen,
+_System of Ethics_, pp. 227-233; Green, _Prolegomena_, pp. 317-323;
+Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, pp. 206-207.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[120] When Kant says that the coolness of a villain makes him "more
+dangerous and more abominable," it is suggested that it is more
+abominable _because_ it is more dangerous--surely a statement of the
+value of will in terms of the results it tends to effect.
+
+[121] Kant's distinction between a mere wish, and "assuming all the
+means in our power," appears to recognize this fact, but he does not
+apply the fact in his theory.
+
+[122] But, as we shall see, the utilitarians make finally a distinction
+between ends _achieved_ and ends _attempted_.
+
+[123] Bentham, _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. x., Sec. 3.
+
+[124] Mill, _Utilitarianism_.
+
+[125] _Psychology_, Vol. II., pp. 562-563. The whole passage, pp.
+561-569, should be thoroughly familiar to every ethical student; and
+should be compared with what is said in Vol. I., pp. 284-290, about the
+selective tendency of feelings; and Vol. I., ch. xi., upon attention,
+and Vol. I., pp. 515-522, upon discrimination.
+
+Hoeffding, _Psychology_ (translated), is also clear and explicit with
+reference to the influence of our emotions upon our ideas. (See
+especially pp. 298-307.) The development of this fact in some of its
+aspects is one of the chief traits of the Ethics of Spinoza.
+
+[126] _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, ch. xi., Sec. 1.
+
+[127] Bentham does not mean "unreal" by a fictitious entity. According
+to his logic, all general and abstract terms, all words designating
+relations rather than elements, are "fictitious entities."
+
+[128] By mischievous he means pernicious, bad, vicious, or even depraved
+in extreme cases.
+
+[129] _Ibid._, ch. xi., Sec. 3.
+
+[130] _Ibid._, Secs. 27 and 28.
+
+[131] The fact that common moral experience, as embodied in common
+speech, uses such terms as "think of," "consider," "regard," "pay
+attention to" (in such expressions as he is thoughtful of, considerate
+of, regardful of, mindful of, attentive to, the interests of others) in
+a way implying both the action of intelligence and of the affections, is
+the exact counterpart of the interchangeable use, already mentioned, of
+the terms intention and motive.
+
+[132] In short, the way an individual favors himself in reading his own
+motives is as much an evidence of his egoism as the way he favors
+himself in outward action. Criminals can almost always assign "good"
+motives.
+
+[133] "Formally" and "materially" good or bad are terms also employed to
+denote the same distinction. (See Sidgwick, _History of Ethics_, pp.
+199-200; so Bowne, _Principles of Ethics_, pp. 39-40.) "The familiar
+distinction between the formal and the material rightness of action: The
+former depends upon the attitude of the agent's will towards his ideal
+of right; the latter depends upon the harmony of the act with the laws
+of reality and its resulting tendency to produce and promote
+well-being." Bowne holds that both are necessary, while formal rightness
+is ethically _more_ important, though not all important.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HAPPINESS AND CONDUCT: THE GOOD AND DESIRE
+
+
+We have reached a conclusion as to our first inquiry (p. 201), and have
+decided that the appropriate subject-matter of moral judgment is the
+disposition of the person as manifested in the tendencies which cause
+certain consequences, rather than others, to be considered and
+esteemed--foreseen and desired. Disposition, motive, intent are then
+judged good or bad according to the consequences they tend to produce.
+But what are the consequences by which we determine anything to be good
+or bad? We turn from the locus or residence of the distinctions of good
+and bad to the nature of the distinctions themselves. What do good and
+bad mean as terms of voluntary behavior?
+
+=Happiness and Misery as the Good and Bad.=--There is one answer to this
+question which is at once so simple and so comprehensive that it has
+always been professed by some representative ethical theory: the good is
+happiness, well-being, pleasure; the bad is misery, woe, pain.[134] The
+agreeableness or disagreeableness attending consequences differentiates
+them into good and bad; and it is because some deeds are found to lead
+to pleasure, while others lead to pain, that they are adjudged virtuous
+or vicious. In its modern form, this theory is known as utilitarianism.
+Bentham has given it a sweeping and clear formulation.
+
+ "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign
+ masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what
+ we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do. On the
+ one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the other chain of
+ causes and effects, are fastened to their throne."
+
+ "Strictly speaking nothing can be said to be good or bad but
+ either in itself, which is the case only with pain or pleasure; or
+ on account of its effects, which is the case only with things that
+ are the cause or preventive of pain or pleasure." Again: "By the
+ principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or
+ disapproves of every action whatever according to the tendency it
+ appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party
+ whose interests are in question."[135] Once more: "The greatest
+ happiness of all those whose interest is in question is the right
+ and proper, and the only right and proper and universally
+ desirable end of human action." "Only on the basis of this
+ principle do the words 'right and wrong' and 'ought' have an
+ intelligent meaning as applied to actions; otherwise they have
+ not."
+
+This last statement need not mean, however, that all judgments of right
+and wrong are as matter of fact derived from a consideration of the
+results of action in the way of pain and pleasure, but that upon this
+ground alone _should_ our judgments be formed, since upon this basis
+alone can they be justified.[136]
+
+=Axiomatic Identification of Good with Happiness.=--The principle that
+happiness is the ultimate aim of human action and the ultimate standard
+of the moral value of that action is generally regarded by the
+utilitarians as axiomatic and not susceptible of proof. As Bentham says,
+"that which is used to prove everything else cannot itself be proved. A
+chain of proofs must have their commencement somewhere." So Bain says
+(_Moral Science_, p. 27), "Now there can be no proof offered for the
+position that happiness is the proper end of all human procedures, the
+criterion of all right conduct. It is an ultimate or final assumption to
+be tested by reference to the individual judgments of mankind." Thus
+also Mill (_Utilitarianism_): "The only proof capable of being given
+that an object is visible is that people actually see it. In like manner
+the sole proof that it is possible to produce that anything is desirable
+is that people do actually desire it."[137]
+
+=Extreme Opposition to Happiness Theory.=--In striking contrast to this
+view of the self-evident character of happiness as the all-desirable, is
+the view of those to whom it is equally self-evident that to make
+pleasure the end of action is destructive of all morality. Carlyle is an
+interesting illustration of a violent reaction against utilitarianism.
+His more moderate characterization of it is "mechanical profit and loss"
+theory. It is "an upholstery and cookery conception of morals." It never
+gets above the level of considerations of comfort and expediency. More
+vehemently, it is a "pig philosophy" which regards the universe as a
+"swine trough" in which virtue is thought of as the attainment of the
+maximum possible quantity of "pig's wash." Again, apostrophizing man, he
+says: "Art thou nothing else than a Vulture that flies through the
+Universe seeking after Somewhat to eat; shrieking dolefully because
+Carrion enough is not given thee?" Of the attempt to make general
+happiness the end, he says it proposes the problem of "Given a world of
+Knaves, to produce honesty from their united action," the term "knave"
+referring to the individualistic self-seeking character of pleasure and
+"honesty" to the social outcome desired. As a political theory, he
+thought that utilitarianism subordinated justice to benevolence, and in
+that light he referred to it as a "universal syllabub of philanthrophic
+twaddle."
+
+=Ambiguity in Notion of Happiness.=--If to some it is self-evident that
+happiness is the aim of action, and success in achieving it the test
+both of the act and the disposition from which it proceeds; while to
+others it is equally obvious that such a view means immorality or at
+least a base and sordid morality, it is reasonable to suppose that the
+"happiness" does not mean the same to both parties; that there is some
+fundamental ambiguity in the notion.
+
+=Source of Ambiguity.=--The nature of this ambiguity may be inferred
+from the fact that Bentham himself--and in this he is typical of all the
+utilitarians--combines in his statement two aspects of happiness, or two
+views of pleasure. He says it is for pleasure and pain alone to "_point
+out what we ought to do_," that they are the only basis upon which our
+judgments of right and wrong _ought_ to be formed, or upon which they
+can be justified. Other things _may_ be taken as pointing out what we
+ought to do; other standards of judgment--caprice, sympathy, dogma--are
+employed. But they are not the right and proper ones. Consideration of
+consequences of the act in the way of effect upon the happiness and
+misery of all concerned, furnishes the only proper way of regulating the
+formation of right ends. A certain happiness, that of results, is the
+standard. But this presupposes that, in any case there is some end, and
+one which may be improper because not in accord with the standard. Yet
+this end also must be pleasure. Pleasure and pain "determine what we
+_shall_ do," whether we act for the maximum of pleasures or not. The
+"chain of causes" as well as the "standard of right" is fastened to
+them. We act for pleasure, even when we do not act for the pleasures
+for which we ought to act. Pleasure or happiness thus appears in a
+double role. Only in the case of _right_ ends, is it the same happiness
+which serves as a moving spring and as standard of judgment. In other
+cases, it is one pleasure which is the end in view, and another
+pleasure, one not in view, or at least not influencing action, which
+measures rightness. The essence, so to speak, of a wrong act is
+precisely that the pleasures which produce it are not these pleasures
+which measure its goodness; the agent is not moved to act by those
+pleasures and pains which as consequences settle its moral value, but by
+some pleasure or pain which happens to be strongly felt at the moment of
+action.
+
+=Two Sorts of Good.=--Thus, even from Bentham's point of view, there is
+a difference between real and apparent happiness, between the good which
+moves to action and that which, being the standard, should move. If the
+end of _all_ acts is happiness and yet we require a consideration of
+results to show us _what_ happiness we are justified in seeking, then
+"happiness" is in a highly ambiguous position. While from one
+standpoint, it furnishes the standard of right and wrong; from another,
+it furnishes the moving spring of all wrong action; it is that which so
+solicits and tempts us that we fail to employ the right standard for the
+regulation of our action, and hence go astray. It seems to some (as to
+Carlyle) that this distinction is so fundamental that it is absurd to
+say that one and the same thing can be the standard of all right action
+and the moving spring of all wrong action. Hence they insist upon the
+fundamental opposition of virtue and happiness.
+
+Moreover, from Bentham's own point of view, there is a difference
+between the good which _first_ presents itself, which _first_ stirs
+desire and solicits to action, and the good which being formed _after
+and upon the basis of consideration of consequences_, is the _right_
+good. In calling the latter the _right_, we mean that it has authority
+over the end which first appears; and hence has supreme claim over
+action. So it is again evident that we are using happiness in two quite
+different senses; so that if we call the first end that presents itself
+happiness, the right end will be something else; or if we call the
+consequences which measure the worth of the act happiness, then the
+first end ought to be called something else. If happiness is the
+_natural_ end of all desire and endeavor, it is absurd to say that the
+same happiness ought to be the end. If all objects fall to the ground
+any way, we do not say they ought to fall. If all our acts are moved any
+way by pleasure and pain, this fact, just because it applies equally to
+all acts, throws no lights upon the rightness or wrongness of any one of
+them. Or, on the other hand, if that for which we _should_ act is a kind
+of happiness which involves full consideration of consequences, it is
+misleading to call that happiness from which we act "blindly" or without
+proper forethought.
+
+If happiness is to be the same as the moral good, it must be after the
+right kind of happiness has been distinguished; namely, that which
+commends itself after adequate reflection. Our criticism of Bentham will
+be directed to showing that, so far as he conceives of happiness as
+simply a sum of pleasures alike in quality, but differing only in
+quantity, he cannot make this distinction. As an early critic (Hazlitt)
+of Bentham said: "Pleasure is that which is so in itself. Good is that
+which approves itself on reflection, or the _idea_ of which is a source
+of satisfaction. All pleasure is not, therefore (morally speaking),
+equally a good; for all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting upon."
+We shall further try to show that the reason for Bentham's conceiving
+happiness as simply a sum of pleasures is that he falls into the error
+already discussed, of separating consequences from the disposition and
+capacities or active tendencies of the agent. And that, when we correct
+this error, the proper meaning of happiness turns out to be the
+satisfaction, realization, or fulfillment of some _purpose and power of
+the agent_. Thus we can distinguish between the false and unsatisfactory
+happiness found in the expression of a more or less isolated and
+superficial tendency of the self, and the true or genuine good found in
+the adequate fulfillment of a fundamental and fully related capacity. We
+shall first take up the discussion under the heads just brought out: I.
+Happiness _as the Natural End or Object of Desire_; II. Happiness _as
+Standard of Judgment_.
+
+
+Sec. 1. THE OBJECT OF DESIRE
+
+=Hedonistic Theory of Desire.=--That phase of utilitarianism which holds
+that the object of desire is pleasure, is termed hedonism, or sometimes
+psychological hedonism to distinguish it from ethical hedonism, the
+theory that pleasure is the standard for judging acts. The fundamental
+fallacy of psychological hedonism has been well stated by Green to be
+supposing that a desire can be aroused or created by the anticipation of
+its own satisfaction--i.e., in supposing that the idea of the pleasure
+of exercise arouses desire for it, when in fact the idea of exercise is
+pleasant only if there be already some desire for it (Green,
+_Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 168). Given a desire already in existence,
+the idea of an object which is thought of as satisfying that desire will
+always arouse pleasure, or be thought of as pleasurable. But hedonism
+fails to consider the radical difference between an object's arousing
+pleasure, because it is regarded as satisfying desire, and the thought
+of a pleasure arousing a desire:--although the feeling of agreeableness
+may intensify the movement towards the object. A hungry man thinks of a
+beefsteak as that which would satisfy his appetite; his thought is at
+once clothed with an agreeable tone and the conscious force of the
+appetite is correspondingly intensified; the miser thinks of gold in a
+similar way; the benevolent of an act of charity, etc. But in each case
+the presence of the pleasurable element is dependent upon the thought of
+an object which is not pleasure--the beefsteak, the gold. The thought of
+the object _precedes_ the pleasure and excites it because it is felt to
+promise the satisfaction of a desire.
+
+=Pleasure is the Felt Concomitant of Imagining a Desire Realized in Its
+Appropriate Object.=--The object of desire is not pleasure, but some
+object is pleasurable because it is the congenial terminus of desire.
+The pleasure felt is a _present_ pleasure, the pleasure which _now_
+accompanies the idea of the satisfied desire. It intensifies the desire
+in its present character, through opposition to the disagreeable tone of
+the experienced lack and want.
+
+=1. Pleasures and Original Appetites.=--Biological instincts and
+appetites exist not for the sake of furnishing pleasure, but as
+activities needed to maintain life--the life of the individual and the
+species. Their adequate fulfillment is attended with pleasure. Such is
+the undoubted biological fact. Now if the animal be gifted with memory
+and anticipation, this complicates the process, but does not change its
+nature. The animal in feeling hungry may now consciously anticipate the
+getting of food and may feel pleasure in the idea of food. The pleasure
+henceforth attends not merely upon attained satisfaction of appetite,
+but also upon appetite prior to satisfaction, so far as that anticipates
+its future satisfaction. But desire is still for the object, for the
+food. If the desire is healthy, it will not depend for its origin upon
+the recollection of a prior pleasure; the animal does not happen to
+recall that it got pleasure from food and thus arouse a desire for more
+food. The desire springs up naturally from the state of the organism.
+Only a jaded and unhealthy appetite has to whip itself up by recalling
+previous pleasures. But if there are many obstacles and discouragements
+in the way of getting the object which satisfies want, the anticipation
+of pleasure in its fulfillment may normally intensify the putting forth
+of energy, may give an extra reenforcement to flagging effort. In this
+way, the anticipation of pleasure has a normal place in the effective
+direction of activities. But in any case, the desire and its own object
+are primary; the pleasure is secondary.
+
+=2. Pleasure and Acquired Desires.=--The same point comes out even more
+clearly when we take into account the so-called higher desires and
+sentiments--those which usually enter into distinctively moral
+questions. In these cases it is no longer a matter of the original
+instincts and appetites of the organism. Their place is taken by
+acquired habits and dispositions. The object of a benevolent desire is
+the supplying of another's lack, or the increase of his good. The
+pleasure which accompanies the doing of a kindness to others is not the
+object, for the individual thinks of the kindly act as pleasure-giving
+only because he already has a benevolent character which naturally
+expresses itself in amiable desires. So far as he is not benevolent, the
+act will appear repulsive rather than attractive to him; and if it is
+done, it will be not from a benevolent desire, but from a cowardly or an
+avaricious desire, the pleasure in that case attending the thought of
+some other objective consequence, such as escaping unpopularity. In like
+manner, the aim to behave honestly, or to obey the civil law, or to love
+one's country, leads to dwelling upon the acts and objects in which
+these desires and intents may be fulfilled; and those objects which are
+thought of as affording fulfillment are necessarily put in a favorable
+and attractive light--they are regarded as sources of happiness. To a
+patriot the thought even of possible death may arouse a glow of
+satisfaction as he thinks of this act as strengthening his country's
+existence. But to suppose that this attendant pleasure is the aim and
+object of desire is to put the cart before the horse.
+
+=3. Happiness and Desire.=--All men, then, may be said to desire
+happiness. But this happiness is not dependent upon prior experiences of
+pleasure, which, coming up in memory, arouse desire and rivet attention
+upon themselves. To say that the desire of a man is for happiness is
+only to say that happiness comes in the fulfillment of desire, the
+desires arising on their own account as expressions of a state of lack
+or incompletion in which the person finds himself. Happiness thus
+conceived _is dependent upon the nature of desire and varies with it,
+while desire varies with the type of character_. If the desire is the
+desire of an honest man, then the prosperous execution of some honorable
+intent, the payment of a debt, the adequate termination of a trust, is
+conceived as happiness, as good. If it be the desire of a profligate,
+then entering upon the riotous course of living now made possible by
+inheritance of property is taken as happiness--the one consummation
+greatly to be wished. If we know what any person really finds desirable,
+what he stakes his happiness upon, we can read his nature. In happiness,
+as the anticipation of the satisfaction of desire, there is, therefore,
+no sure or unambiguous quality; for it may be a token of good or of bad
+character, according to the sort of object which appeals to the person.
+The present joy found in the idea of the completion of a purpose cannot
+be the object of desire, for we desire only things absent. But the joy
+is a mark of the congruity or harmony of the thought of the object,
+whatever it be--health, dissipation, miserliness, prodigality, conquest,
+helpfulness--with the character of the agent. It is an evidence of the
+moving force, the influence, the weight, of the conceived end; it
+registers the extent in which the end is not a mere intellectual
+abstraction, but is a _motive_ (see p. 252). But the moral worth of this
+motive depends upon the character of the end in which the person finds
+his satisfaction.
+
+=4. Confusion of Future and Present Pleasure.=--It is the confusion of
+_present_ pleasure, attendant upon the thought of an object as
+satisfying desire, with the pleasure that _will come when the desire is
+satisfied_, that accounts for the persistence of the idea that pleasure
+is the object of desire. The fact that the object of desire is _now_
+pleasurable is distorted into the statement that we _seek_ for an absent
+pleasure.[138] A good illustration of the confusion is seen in the
+following quotation:
+
+ "The love of happiness must express the sole possible motive of
+ Judas Iscariot and of his Master; it must explain the conduct of
+ Stylites on his pillar or Tiberius at Caprae or a Kempis in his
+ cell or of Nelson in the cockpit of the Victory. It must be
+ equally good for saints and martyrs, heroes, cowards, debauches,
+ ascetics, mystics, misers, prodigals, men, women and babes in
+ arms" (Leslie Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, p. 44).
+
+This statement is true, as we have just seen, in the sense that
+different persons find different things good in accordance with their
+different characters or habitually dominant purposes; that each finds
+his happiness in whatever he most sets his affections upon. Where a
+man's heart is, there will his treasure be also, and where that is which
+a man regards as treasure, there also is the heart. A man's character is
+revealed by the objects which make him happy, whether anticipated or
+realized.
+
+=Our Ends are Our Happiness, Not a Means to It.=--But the fallacy is in
+the words "love of happiness." They suggest that all alike are seeking
+for some one and the same thing, some one thing labeled "happiness,"
+identical in all cases, differing in the way they look for it--that
+saints and martyrs, heroes and cowards, all have just the same objective
+goal in view--if they only knew it! In so far as it is true that there
+are certain fundamental conditions of the self which have to be
+satisfied in order that there shall be a _true self and a true
+satisfaction_, happiness is the same for all, and is the ultimate good
+of all. But this holds only of the _standard_ of happiness which makes
+any particular conception of happiness right or wrong, not to the
+conceptions actually entertained. To say that all are consciously and
+deliberately after the same happiness is to pervert the facts. Happiness
+as standard means the genuine fulfillment of whatever is necessary to
+the development and integrity of the self. In this sense, it is what men
+_ought_ to desire; it is what they do desire so far as they understand
+themselves and the conditions of their satisfaction. But as natural or
+psychological end, it means that in which a man happens at a given time
+to find delectation, depending upon his uppermost wishes and strongest
+habits. Hence the objection which almost every one, including the
+hedonists, feels to the statement that happiness is the conscious aim of
+conduct. It suggests that the objects at which we ordinarily aim are not
+sought for themselves, but for some ulterior gratification to ourselves.
+In reality these ends, so far as they correspond to our capacity and
+intention, _are_ our happiness. All men love happiness--yes, in the
+sense that, having desires, they are interested in the objects in which
+the desires may be realized, no matter whether they are worthy or
+degraded. No; if by this be meant that happiness is something other than
+and beyond the conditions in which the powers of the person are brought
+out, and made effective; no, or if it means that all love that which
+really will bring happiness.
+
+=Necessity for Standard.=--As many sorts of character, so many sorts of
+things regarded as satisfactory, as constitutive of good. Not all
+anticipations when realized are what they were expected to be. The good
+in prospect may be apples of Sodom, dust and ashes, in attainment. Hence
+some ends, some forms of happiness, are regarded as unworthy, not as
+"real" or "true." While they appeared to be happiness during the
+expectancy of desire, they are not approved as such in later reflection.
+Hence the demand for some standard good or happiness by which the
+individual may regulate the formation of his desires and purposes so
+that the present and the permanent good, the good in desire and in
+reflection, will coincide--so that the individual will find that to be
+satisfactory in his present view which will also permanently satisfy
+him. From happiness as a conceived good we turn to happiness as
+_rightly_ conceived good; from happiness as result to happiness as
+standard. As before, we begin with the narrower utilitarian conception.
+
+
+Sec. 2. THE CONCEPTION OF HAPPINESS AS A STANDARD
+
+=Utilitarian Method.=--Hedonism means that pleasure is the end of human
+action, because the end of desire. Utilitarianism or universalistic
+hedonism holds that the pleasure of all affected is the standard for
+judging the worth of action,--not that conduciveness to happiness is the
+sole measure actually employed by mankind for judging moral worth, but
+that it is the sole standard that should be employed. Many other tests
+may actually be used, sympathy, prejudice, convention, caprice, etc.,
+but "utility" is the one which will enable a person to judge _truly_
+what is right or wrong in any proposed course of action. The method laid
+down by Bentham is as follows: Every proposed act is to be viewed with
+reference to its probable consequences in (a) _intensity_ of pleasure
+and pains; (b) their duration; (c) their certainty or uncertainty; (d)
+their nearness or remoteness; (e) their fecundity--i.e., the tendency of
+a pleasure to be followed by others, or a pain by other pains; (f) their
+_purity_--i.e., the tendency of a pleasure to be followed by pains and
+_vice versa_; (g) their extent, that is, the number or range of persons
+whose happiness is affected--with reference to whose pleasures and pains
+each one of the first six items ought also in strictness to be
+calculated! Then sum up all the pleasures which stand to the credit side
+of the account; add the pains which are the debit items, or liabilities,
+on the other; then take their algebraic sum, and "the balance of it on
+the side of pleasure will be the good tendency of the act upon the
+whole."
+
+=Circle in Method.=--Bentham's argument depends wholly upon the
+possibility of both foreseeing and accurately measuring the amount of
+future pleasures and pains that will follow from the intention if it is
+carried into effect, and of being able to find their algebraic sum. Our
+examination will be directed to showing that we have here the same
+fallacy that we have just discussed; and that Bentham argues in a
+circle. For the argument purports to measure present disposition or
+intent by summing up future units of pleasure or pain; but there is no
+way of estimating amounts of future satisfaction, the relative intensity
+and weight of future possible pain and pleasure experiences, except upon
+the basis of present tendencies, the habitual aims and interests, of the
+person. (1) The only way to estimate the relative amount (bulk,
+intensity, etc.) of a future "lot" of pleasure or pain, is by seeing how
+agreeable to _present_ disposition are certain anticipated consequences,
+themselves not pleasures or pains at all. (2) The only basis upon which
+we can be sure that there is a _right_ estimate of future satisfactions,
+is that we already have a good character as a basis and organ for
+forming judgment.
+
+=(1) How Pleasures and Pains are Measured.=--If we keep strictly to
+Bentham's own conception of pleasures as isolated entities, all just
+alike in quality, but differing in quantity--in the two dimensions of
+intensity and duration--the scheme he recommends is simply impossible.
+What does it mean to say that one pleasure, as an external and future
+fact, is equal to another? What practical sense is there in the notion
+that a pain may be found which is exactly equal to a pleasure, so that
+it may just offset it or reduce it to zero? How can one weigh the amount
+of pain in a jumping and long-continued toothache against, say, the
+pleasure of some charitable deed performed under conditions which may
+bring on the toothache? What relevancy has the quantitative comparison
+to a judgment of moral worth? How many units of pleasure are contained
+in the fulfillment of the intention to go to war for one's country? How
+many in the fulfillment of the intention to remain at home with one's
+family and secure profitable contracts from the government? How shall
+the pains involved in each set be detected and have their exact
+numerical force assigned them? How shall one set be measured over
+against the other? If a man is already a patriot, one set of
+consequences comes into view and has weight; if one is already a coward
+and a money-grubber, another set of consequences looms up and its value
+is measured on a rule of very different scale.
+
+=Present Congeniality to Character Measures Importance.=--When we
+analyze what occurs, we find that this process of comparing future
+possible satisfactions, to see which is the greater, takes place on
+exactly the opposite basis from that set forth by Bentham. We do not
+compare results in the way of fixed amounts of pleasures and pains, but
+we compare _objective_ results, changes to be effected in ourselves, in
+others, in the whole social situation; during this comparison desires
+and aversions take more definite form and strength, so that we find the
+idea of one result more agreeable, more harmonious, to our present
+character than another. _Then_ we say it is more satisfying, it affords
+more pleasure than another. The satisfaction _now_ aroused in the mind
+at the thought of getting even with an enemy may be stronger than the
+painfulness of the thought of the harm or loss that will come to him or
+than the thought of danger itself,--then the pleasures to follow from
+vengeance are esteemed more numerous, stronger, more lasting, etc., than
+those which would follow from abstinence. Or, to say that satisfactions
+are about equal means that we are _now_ at a loss to choose between
+them. But we are not at a loss to choose because certain future pains
+and pleasures present themselves in and of themselves as fixed amounts
+irrespective of our own wishes, habits, and plans of life. Similarly we
+may speak of satisfactions being added to one another and the total sum
+increased; or of dissatisfaction coming in as offsets and reducing the
+amount of satisfaction. But this does not mean that pains and pleasures
+which we expect to arrive in the future are added and subtracted--what
+intelligible meaning can such a phrase possess? It means that as we
+think first of this result and then of another, the present happiness
+found in the anticipation of one is increased by the anticipation of the
+other; or that the results are so incompatible that the present
+satisfaction, instead of swelling and expanding as from one thought to
+another, is chilled and lessened. Thus we might find the thought of
+revenge sweet (and thus give a high valuation to the units of pleasure
+to result from it), but be checked by the thought of the meanness of the
+act, or of how we would feel if some one else, whose good opinion we
+highly esteem, should hear of it.
+
+=(2) Congeniality to a Good Character the Right Measure.=--The net
+outcome of this discussion is that the practical value of our acts is
+defined to us at any given time by the satisfaction, or displeasure, we
+take in the ideas of changes we foresee in case the act takes place. The
+present happiness or distaste, depending upon the harmony between the
+idea in question and the character, defines for us the value of the
+future consequences: which is the reverse of saying that a calculation
+of future pains and pleasures determines for us the value of the act and
+character. But this applies to any end as it happens to arise, not to
+the end as we ought to form it; we are still without a standard. What
+has been said applies to the criminal as well as to the saint; to the
+miser and the prodigal and the wisely generous alike. The idea of a
+certain result warms the heart of each, his heart being what it is. The
+assassin would not be one if the thought of a murder had not been
+entertained by him and if the thought had not been liked and
+welcomed--made at home. Only upon the supposition that character is
+already good can we trust judgment, first, to foresee all the
+consequences that should be foreseen; and, secondly, to respond to each
+foreseen consequence with the right emotional stamp of like and dislike,
+pleasure and pain. The Greeks said it is the object of a moral education
+to see that the individual finds his pleasure in the thought of noble
+ends and finds his pain in the contemplation of base ends. Again, as
+Aristotle said:
+
+ "The good man wills the real object of intent, but what the bad
+ man desires may be anything; just as physically those in good
+ condition want things that are wholesome, while the diseased may
+ take anything to be healthful; for the good man judges correctly"
+ (_Ethics_, Book III., 4, 4). And again: "The good man is apt to go
+ right about pleasure, and the bad man is apt to go wrong" (Book
+ II., 3, 7), and, finally, "It is only to the good man that the
+ good presents itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us
+ to err about the principle of action" (Book III., 12, 10).
+
+=Principle of Quality of Pleasure as Criterion.=--Mill, still calling
+himself a utilitarian, reaches substantially the same result by (a)
+making the _quality_ of pleasure, not its bulk or intensity, the
+standard; and (b) referring differences in quality to differences in the
+_characters_ which experience them.
+
+ "It is," he says, "quite compatible with the principle of utility
+ to recognize the fact that some _kinds_ of pleasure are more
+ desirable and more valuable than others. Human beings have
+ faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and, when once
+ made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness that
+ does not include their gratification."
+
+The higher the capacity or faculty, the higher in quality the pleasure
+of its exercise and fulfillment, irrespective of bulk. But how do we
+know which faculty _is_ higher, and hence what satisfaction is more
+valuable? By reference to the experience of the man who has had the best
+opportunity to exercise all the powers in question.
+
+ "Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the
+ lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's
+ pleasure; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool,
+ no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling
+ and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should
+ be persuaded that the fool, the dunce or the rascal is better
+ satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs." And again, "It
+ is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are
+ low has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a
+ highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he
+ can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect.... It is
+ better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;
+ better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if
+ the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, it is because he
+ only knows his own side of the question. The other party to the
+ comparison knows both sides."
+
+The net result of our discussion is, then, (1) that happiness consists
+in the fulfillment in their appropriate objects (or the anticipation of
+such fulfillment) of the powers of the self manifested in desires,
+purposes, efforts; (2) true happiness consists in the satisfaction of
+those powers of the self which are of higher quality; (3) that the man
+of good character, the one in whom these high powers are already active,
+is the judge, in the concrete, of happiness and misery. We shall now
+discuss
+
+
+Sec. 3. THE CONSTITUTION OF HAPPINESS
+
+Happiness consists in the agreement, whether anticipated or realized, of
+the objective conditions brought about by our endeavors with our desires
+and purposes. This conception of happiness is contrasted with the notion
+that it is a sum or collection of separate states of sensation or
+feeling.
+
+=1. One View Separates, while the Other Connects, Pleasure and Objective
+Conditions.=--In one case, the agreeable feeling is a kind of psychical
+entity, supposed to be capable of existence by itself and capable of
+abstraction from the objective end of action. The pleasant _thing_ is
+one thing; the pleasure, another; or, rather, the _pleasant thing_ must
+be analyzed into two independent elements, the pleasure as _feeling_ and
+the _thing_ with which it happens to be associated. It is the pleasure
+alone, _when dissociated_, which is the real end of conduct, an object
+being at best an external means of securing it. It is the pleasurable
+feeling which happens to be _associated_ with food, with music, with a
+landscape, that makes it good; health, art, are not good in themselves.
+The other view holds that pleasure has no such existence by itself; that
+it is only a name for the _pleasant object_; that by pleasure is meant
+the agreement or congruity which exists between some capacity of the
+agent and some objective fact in which this capacity is realized. It
+expresses the way some object meets, fits into, responds to, an activity
+of the agent. To say that food is agreeable, means that food satisfies
+an organic function. Music is pleasant because by it certain capacities
+or demands of the person with respect to rhythm of hearing are
+fulfilled; a landscape is beautiful because it carries to fulfillment
+the visual possibilities of the spectator.
+
+=2. Qualities of Pleasure Vary with Objects, and with Springs to
+Action.=--When happiness is conceived as an aggregate of states of
+feeling, these are regarded as homogeneous in quality, differing from
+one another only in intensity and duration. Their qualitative
+differences are not intrinsic, but are due to the different objects with
+which they are associated (as pleasures of hearing, or vision). Hence
+they disappear when the pleasure is taken by itself as an end. But if
+agreeableness is precisely the agreeableness or congruousness of some
+objective condition with some impulse, habit, or tendency of the agent,
+then, of course, pure pleasure is a myth. Any pleasure is qualitatively
+unique, being precisely the harmony of one set of conditions with its
+appropriate activity. The pleasure of eating is one thing; the pleasure
+of hearing music, another; the pleasure of an amiable act, another; the
+pleasure of drunkenness or of anger is still another. Hence the
+possibility of absolutely different moral values attaching to pleasures,
+according to the type or aspect of character which they express. But if
+the good is only a sum of pleasures, any pleasure, so far as it goes, is
+as good as any other--the pleasure of malignity as good as the pleasure
+of kindliness, simply as pleasure. Accordingly Bentham said, the
+pleasure of push-pin (a game) is as good as that of poetry. And as he
+said again, since pleasure is the motive of every act, there is no
+motive which _in itself_, and as far as it goes, is not good--it is bad
+only if it turns out in the end to produce more pain than pleasure. The
+pleasure of malignant gossip is so far as it is pleasure a mitigation of
+the badness of the act. Not so, if happiness is the experience into
+which pleasures enter so far as the tendencies of character that produce
+them are approved of. An act may bring a pleasure and yet that pleasure
+be no part of happiness, but rather a blot and blemish. Such would be
+the case, for example, with the pleasure which one might take in an act
+of charity because one had thereby put himself in a position superior to
+that of the recipient. A good man who caught himself feeling pleasure
+from this phase of the act would not regard this pleasure as a further
+element of good attained, but as detracting from his happiness. A
+pleasure may be accepted or reacted against. So far as not acquiesced in
+it is, from the standpoint of happiness, positively disagreeable.
+Surrender to a pleasure, taking it to be one's happiness, is one of the
+surest ways of revealing or discovering what sort of a man one is. On
+the other hand, the pain which a miserly man feels in his first acts of
+generosity may be welcomed by him as, under the circumstances, an
+element in his good, since it is a sign of and factor in the improvement
+of character.
+
+=3. The Unification of Character.=--Happiness as a sum of pleasures does
+not afford a basis for unifying or organizing the various tendencies and
+capacities of the self. It makes possible at best only a mechanical
+compromise or external adjustment. Take, for example, the satisfaction
+attendant upon acting from a benevolent or a malicious impulse. There
+can be no question that some pleasure is found in giving way to either
+impulse when it is strongly felt. Now if we regard the pleasure as a
+fixed state in itself, and good or happiness as a sum of such states,
+the only moral superiority that can attach to acting benevolently is
+that, upon the whole, _more_ units of pleasure come from it than from
+giving way to the opposite spring of action. It is simply a question of
+greater or less quantity in the long run. Each trait of character, each
+act, remains morally independent, cut off from others. Its only relation
+to others is that which arises when its results in the way of units of
+agreeable or painful feeling are compared, as to bulk, with analogous
+consequences flowing from some other trait, or act. But if the
+fundamental thing in happiness is the relation of the desire and
+intention of the agent to its own successful outlet, there is an
+inherent connection between our different tendencies. The satisfaction
+of one tendency strengthens itself, and strengthens allied tendencies,
+while it weakens others. A man who gives way easily to anger (and finds
+gratification in it) against the acts of those whom he regards as
+enemies, nourishes unawares a tendency to irritability in all directions
+and thus modifies the sources and nature of all satisfaction. The man
+who cherishes the satisfaction he derives from a landscape may increase
+his susceptibility to enjoyment from poetry and pictures.
+
+=The Final Question.=--The final question of happiness, the question
+which marks off true and right happiness from false and wrong
+gratification, comes to this: Can there be found ends of action,
+desirable in themselves, which reenforce and expand not only the motives
+from which they directly spring, but also the other tendencies and
+attitudes which are sources of happiness? Can there be found powers
+whose exercise confirms ends which are stable and weakens and removes
+objects which occasion only restless, peevish, or transitory
+satisfaction, and ultimately thwart and stunt the growth of happiness?
+Harmony, reenforcement, expansion are the signs of a true or moral
+satisfaction. What is the good which while good in direct enjoyment also
+brings with it fuller and more continuous life?
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+For pleasure as the object of desire and the psychology of hedonism, see
+Bain, _Emotions and Will_, Part II., ch. viii.; Rickaby, _Moral
+Philosophy_, pp. 54-61, and _Aquinas Ethicus_, Vol. I., pp. 104-121;
+Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, pp. 34-47, and the whole of Book II., and
+Book III., chs. xiii. and xiv.; Mackenzie, _Manual of Ethics_, Book II.,
+ch. iv.; Muirhead, _Elements of Ethics_, Book III., ch. i.; Gizyeki, _A
+Student's Manual of Ethical Philosophy_; Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_,
+pp. 163-177, 226-240, 374-388; James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol.
+II., pp. 549-559; Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. II., Part
+II., Book II., Branch iv.
+
+For the history of hedonism, see Wallace, _Epicureanism_; Pater, _Marius
+the Epicurean_; Sidgwick, _History of Ethics_, ch. ii., _passim_ and ch.
+iv., Sec. 14-17; Hume, _Treatise of Human Nature_, Book III., and the
+references to Bentham and Mill in the text; Watson, _Hedonistic Theories
+from Aristippus to Spencer_.
+
+For the utilitarian standard, see Lecky, _History of European Morals_,
+Vol. I., ch. i.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, chs. iv. and v.; Spencer,
+_Principles of Ethics_, Part I.; Hoeffding, _Ethik_, ch. vii., and
+_Monist_, Vol. I., p. 529; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 222-286, and
+404-414; Grote, _Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy_; Wilson and
+Fowler, _Principles of Morals_, Vol. I., pp. 98-112; Vol. II., pp.
+262-273; Green, _Prolegomena_, pp. 240-255, 399-415; Martineau, _Types_,
+pp. 308-334; Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_, pp. 204-211; Seth,
+_Principles of Ethics_, pp. 94-111; Sidgwick, _The Ethics of T. H.
+Green, Herbert Spencer and J. Martineau_, Lectures I.-IV. of the
+Criticism of Spencer. Compare the references _sub voce_ Happiness,
+899-903, in Rand's _Bibliography_, Vol. III. of Baldwin's Dictionary of
+Philosophy and Psychology.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[134] Later we shall see reasons for discriminating between happiness
+and pleasure. But here we accept the standpoint of those who identify
+them.
+
+[135] The context shows that this "party" may be either the individual,
+or a limited social group or the entire community. Even the pleasures
+and pains of animals, of the sentient creation generally, may come into
+the account.
+
+[136] These quotations are all taken from Bentham's _Principles of
+Morals and Legislation_; the first, third, and fourth from ch. i.; the
+second from ch. xiii.; and the last from ch. ii.
+
+[137] With these statements may he compared Spencer, _Principles of
+Ethics_, pp. 30-32: Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, pp. 42. Sidgwick, in
+his _Methods of Ethics_, holds that the axiomatic character of happiness
+as an end proves that the position is not empirical but intuitional or
+_a priori_. Only as we base ourselves on certain ultimate deliverances
+of conscience can we he said to know that happiness is the desirable end
+and that the happiness of one is just as intrinsically desirable as the
+happiness of another. (See his _Methods of Ethics_, Book III., chs.
+xiii. and xiv.)
+
+[138] This ambiguity affects the statement quoted from Bentham that
+pleasure and pain determine what we shall do. His implication is that
+pleasure as _object_ of desire moves us; the fact is that _present_
+pleasure, aroused by the idea of some object, influences us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HAPPINESS AND SOCIAL ENDS[139]
+
+
+In form, the true good is thus an inclusive or expanding end. In
+substance, the only end which fulfills these conditions is the social
+good. The utilitarian standard is social consequences. To repeat our
+earlier quotation from Bentham (above, p. 264):
+
+ "The greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question
+ is the right and proper, and the only right and proper and
+ _universally desirable_ end of human action." Mill says, "To do as
+ you would be done by, and to love your neighbor as yourself,
+ constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality." And
+ again: "The happiness which is the Utilitarian standard of what is
+ right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all
+ concerned; as between his own happiness and that of others,
+ Utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a
+ disinterested and benevolent spectator." So Sidgwick (_Methods of
+ Ethics_, p. 379): "By Utilitarianism is here meant the ethical
+ theory, first distinctly formulated by Bentham, that the conduct
+ which under any given circumstances is externally or objectively
+ right is that which produces the greatest amount of happiness _on
+ the whole_; that is taking into account all whose happiness is
+ affected by the conduct. It would tend to clearness if we might
+ call this principle, and the method based upon it, by some such
+ name as Universalistic hedonism." And finally, Bain (_Emotions and
+ Will_, p. 303): "Utility is opposed to the selfish principle, for,
+ as propounded, it always implies the good of society generally and
+ the subordination of individual interests to the general good."
+
+=Social Purpose of Utilitarianism.=--Its aim, then, was the "greatest
+possible happiness of the greatest possible number," a democratic,
+fraternal aim. In the computation of the elements of this aim, it
+insisted upon the principle of social and moral equality: "every one to
+count for one, and only for one." The standard was the well-being of the
+community conceived as a community of individuals, all of whom had equal
+rights and none of whom had special privileges or exclusive avenues of
+access to happiness. In a period in which the democratic spirit in
+England was asserting itself against vested interests and
+class-distinctions, against legalized inequalities of all sorts, the
+utilitarian philosophy became the natural and perhaps indispensable
+adjunct of the liberal and reforming spirit in law, education, and
+politics. Every custom, every institution, was cross-questioned; it was
+not allowed to plead precedent and prior existence as a basis for
+continued existence. It had to prove that it conduced to the happiness
+of the community as a whole, or be legislated out of existence or into
+reform. Bentham's fundamental objection to other types of moral theories
+than his own was not so much philosophic or theoretic as it was
+practical. He felt that every intuitional theory tended to dignify
+prejudice, convention, and fixed customs, and so to consecrate vested
+interests and inequitable institutions.
+
+=Recognition by an Opponent.=--The following remarks by T. H. Green are
+the more noteworthy because coming from a consistent opponent of the
+theory:
+
+ "The chief theory of conduct which in Modern Europe has afforded
+ the conscientious citizen a vantage ground for judging of the
+ competing claims on his obedience, and enabled him to substitute a
+ critical and intelligent for a blind and unquestioning conformity,
+ has no doubt been the Utilitarian. ... Whatever the errors arising
+ from its hedonistic psychology, no other theory has been available
+ for the social or political reformer, combining so much truth with
+ such ready applicability. No other has offered so commanding a
+ point of view from which to criticize the precepts and
+ institutions presented as authoritative."[140]
+
+And again, speaking of the possibility of practical service from theory,
+he says:
+
+ "The form of philosophy which in the modern world has most
+ conspicuously rendered this service has been the Utilitarian,
+ because it has most definitely announced the interest of humanity
+ without distinction of persons or classes, as the end by reference
+ to which all claims upon obedience are ultimately to be
+ measured.... Impartiality of reference to human well-being has
+ been the great lesson which the Utilitarian has had to
+ teach."[141]
+
+=Irreconcilable Conflict of Motive and End.=--But unfortunately the
+assertion that the happiness of all concerned is the "universally
+_desirable_ end," is mixed up by early utilitarianism with an hedonistic
+psychology, according to which the _desired_ object is private and
+personal pleasure. What is _desirable_ is thus so different from what is
+_desired_ as to create an uncrossable chasm between the true end of
+action--the happiness of all,--and the moving spring of desire and
+action--private pleasure. That there is a difference between what is
+_naturally_ desired (meaning by "naturally" what first arouses interest
+and excites endeavor) and what is morally desirable (understanding by
+this the consequences which present themselves in adequate
+deliberation), is certain enough. But the desirable must be _capable of
+becoming_ desired, or else there is such a contradiction that morality
+is impossible. If, now, the object of desire is always private pleasure,
+how can the recognition of the consequences upon the happiness or misery
+of others ever become an effective competitor with considerations of
+personal well-being, when the two conflict?[142]
+
+=Lack of Harmony among Pleasurable Ends.=--If it so happens that the
+activities which secure the personal pleasure also manage to affect
+others favorably, so much the better; but since, by the theory, the
+individual _must_ be moved exclusively by desire for his own pleasure,
+woe betide others if their happiness happens to stand in the way.[143]
+It could only be by accident that activities of a large number of
+individuals all seeking their own private pleasures should coincide in
+effecting the desirable end of the common happiness. The outcome would,
+more likely, be a competitive "war of all against all." It is of such a
+situation that Kant says: "There results a harmony like that which a
+certain satirical poem depicts as existing between a married couple bent
+on going to ruin, 'Oh, marvelous harmony! what he wishes, she wishes
+too'; or like what is said of the pledge of Francis I. to the Emperor
+Charles V., 'What my brother wants, that I want too' (namely
+Milan)."[144] The existence already noted of an unperceived and
+unreconcilable division between happiness _in the form of future
+consequences_, and pleasure _as object of desire and present moving
+spring_, thus becomes of crucial and, for hedonistic utilitarianism, of
+catastrophic importance. We shall first discuss the efforts of
+utilitarianism to deal with the problem.
+
+=Mill's Formal Method.=--We mention first a purely logical or formal
+suggestion of Mill's, not because it is of very much significance one
+way or the other, but because it helps to bring out the problem.
+
+ "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable,
+ except that each person, so far as he believes it to be
+ obtainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a
+ fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but
+ all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good;
+ that each person's happiness is a good to that person; and the
+ general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all
+ persons."[145]
+
+It clearly does not follow that because the good of A and B and C, etc.,
+is _collectively_, or aggregately, a good to A and B and C, etc., that
+therefore the good of A and B and C, etc., or of anybody beyond A
+himself, is regarded as a good by A--especially when the original
+premise is that A seeks his own good. Because all men want to be happy
+themselves, it hardly follows that each wants all to be so. It does
+follow, perhaps, that that would be the _reasonable_ thing to want. If
+each man desires happiness for himself, to an outside spectator looking
+at the matter in the cold light of intelligence, there might be no
+reason why the happiness of one should be any more precious or desirable
+than that of another. From a mathematical standpoint, the mere fact that
+the individual knows he wants happiness, and knows that others are like
+himself, that they too are individuals who want happiness, might commit
+each individual, theoretically, to the necessity of regarding the
+happiness of every other as equally sacred with his own. But the
+difficulty is that there is no chance, upon the hedonistic psychology of
+desire, for this rational conviction to get in its work, even if it be
+intellectually entertained. The intellectual perception and the
+mechanism of human motivation remain opposed. Mill's statement, in other
+words, puts the problem which hedonistic utilitarianism has to solve.
+
+Materially, as distinct from this formal statement, utilitarianism has
+two instrumentalities upon which it relies: one, internal, found in the
+nature of the individual; the other, external, or in social
+arrangements.
+
+=I. Bentham's View of Sympathetic Pleasures.=--In the long list of
+pleasures moving men to action which Bentham drew up, he included what
+he called the social and the semi-social. The social are the pleasures
+of benevolence; the semi-social, the pleasures of amity (peace with
+one's fellows) and of reputation.
+
+ "The pleasures of benevolence are the pleasures resulting from the
+ view of any pleasures supposed to be possessed by the beings who
+ may be the objects of benevolence" (_Principles of Morals and
+ Legislation_). And if it be asked what motives lying within a
+ man's self he has to consult the happiness of others, "in answer
+ to this, it cannot but be admitted that the only interests which a
+ man at all times and upon all occasions is sure to find _adequate_
+ motives for consulting are his own. Notwithstanding this there are
+ no occasions on which a man has not some motives for consulting
+ the happiness of other men. In the first place, he has, on all
+ occasions, the purely social motive of sympathy and benevolence;
+ in the next place, he has, on most occasions, the semi-social
+ motives of amity and love of reputation" (_Ibid._, ch. xix., Sec. 1).
+ So important finally are the sympathetic motives that he says "The
+ Dictates of Utility are neither more nor less than the dictates of
+ the most extensive and enlightened (that is, well advised)[146]
+ benevolence" (_Ibid._, ch. x., Sec. 4).
+
+In short, we are so constituted that the happiness of others gives us
+happiness, their misery creates distress in us. We are also so
+constituted that, even aside from direct penalties imposed upon us by
+others, we are made to suffer more or less by the knowledge that they
+have a low opinion of us, or that we are not "popular" with them. The
+more enlightened our activity, the more we shall see how by sympathy our
+pleasures are directly bound up with others, so that we shall get more
+pleasure by encouraging that of others. The same course will also
+indirectly increase our own, because others will be likely to esteem and
+honor us just in the degree in which our acts conduce to their pleasure.
+A wise or enlightened desire for our own pleasure will thus lead us to
+regard the pleasures of others in our activities.
+
+=Limitations of Doctrine.=--To state the doctrine is almost to criticize
+it. It comes practically to saying that a sensible and prudent self-love
+will make us pay due heed to the effect of our activities upon the
+welfare of others. We are to be benevolent, but the reason is that we
+get more pleasure, or get pleasure more surely and easily, that way than
+in any other. We are to be kind, because upon the whole the net return
+of pleasure is greater that way. This does not mean that Bentham denied
+the existence of "disinterested motives" in man's make-up; or that he
+held that all sympathy is coldly calculating. On the contrary, he held
+that sympathetic reactions to the well-being and suffering of others are
+involved in our make-up. But as it relates to _motives_ for action he
+holds that the sympathetic affections influence us only under the form
+of desire for our own pleasure: they make us rejoice in the rejoicing of
+others, and move us to act that others may rejoice so that we may
+thereby rejoice the more. They do not move us to act as direct interests
+in the welfare of others for their own sake.[147] We shall find that
+just as Mill transformed the utilitarian theory of motives by
+substituting quality of happiness for quantity of pleasures, so he also
+transformed the earlier Benthamite conception of both the internal and
+the external methods for relating the happiness of the individual and
+the welfare of society.
+
+=II. Mill's Criticism.=--Mill charges Bentham with overlooking the
+motive in man which makes him love excellence for its own sake. "Even
+under the head of sympathy," he says:
+
+ "his recognition does not extend to the more complex forms of the
+ feeling--the love of _loving_, the need of a sympathizing support,
+ or of an object of admiration and reverence."[148] "Self culture,
+ the training by the human being himself of his affections and will
+ ... is a blank in Bentham's system. The other and co-equal part,
+ the regulation of his outward actions, must be altogether halting
+ and imperfect without the first; for how can we judge in what
+ manner many an action will affect the worldly interests of
+ ourselves or others unless we take in, as part of the question,
+ its influence on the regulation of our or their affections and
+ desires?"[149]
+
+In other words, Mill saw that the weakness of Bentham's theory lay in
+his supposition that the factors of character, the powers and desires
+which make up disposition, are of value only as moving us to seek
+pleasure; to Mill they have a worth of their own or are _direct_ sources
+and ingredients of happiness. So Mill says:
+
+ "I regard any considerable increase of human happiness, through
+ mere changes in outward circumstances, unaccompanied by changes in
+ the state of desires, as hopeless."[150] And in his
+ _Autobiography_ speaking of his first reaction against Benthamism,
+ he says: "I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the
+ prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of
+ the individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to
+ the ordering of outward circumstances.... The cultivation of the
+ feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and
+ philosophical creed."[151]
+
+=The Social Affections as Direct Interest in Others.=--The importance of
+this changed view lies in the fact that it compels us to regard certain
+desires, affections, and motives as inherently worthy, because intrinsic
+constituent factors of happiness. Thus it enables us to _identify_ our
+happiness with the happiness of others, to find our good in their good,
+not just to seek their happiness as, upon the whole, the most effective
+way of securing our own. Our social affections are direct interests in
+the well-being of others; their cultivation and expression is at one and
+the same time a source of good to ourselves, and, intelligently guided,
+to others. Taken in this light, it is sympathetic emotion and
+imagination which make the standard of general happiness not merely the
+"desirable end," but the desired end, the effectively working object of
+endeavor.
+
+=Intrinsic Motivation of Regard for Others.=--If it is asked _why_ the
+individual should thus regard the well-being of others as an inherent
+object of desire, there is, according to Mill, but one answer: We cannot
+think of ourselves save as to some extent _social_ beings. Hence we
+cannot separate the idea of ourselves and of our own good from our idea
+of others and of their good. The natural sentiment which is the basis of
+the utilitarian morality, which gives the idea of the social good weight
+with us, is the
+
+ "desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures.... The social
+ state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man,
+ that except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of
+ voluntary abstraction, _he never conceives himself otherwise than
+ as a member of a body_.... Any condition, therefore, which is
+ essential to a state of society becomes more and more an
+ inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of
+ things he is born into and which is the destiny of a human being."
+ This strengthening of social ties leads the individual "to
+ identify his _feelings_ more and more with the good" of others.
+ "He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as
+ a being, who, _of course_, pays regard to others. The good of
+ others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be
+ attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our
+ existence." This social feeling, finally, however weak, does not
+ present itself "as a superstition of education, or a law
+ despotically imposed from without, but as an attribute which it
+ would not be well to be without.... Few but those whose mind is a
+ moral blank could _bear_ to lay out their course of life on the
+ line of paying no regard to others except so far as their own
+ private interest compels."[152]
+
+The transformation is tremendous. It is no longer a question of acting
+for the general interest because that brings most pleasure or brings it
+more surely and easily. It is a question of finding one's good in the
+good of others.
+
+=III. The Benthamite External Ties of Private and General
+Interests.=--Aside from sympathy and love of peaceful relations and good
+repute, Bentham relied upon law, changes in political arrangements, and
+the play of economic interests which make it worth while for the
+individual to seek his own pleasure in ways that would also conduce to
+the pleasure of others. Penal law can at least make it painful for the
+individual to try to get his own good in ways which bring suffering to
+others. Civil legislation can at least abolish those vested interests
+and class privileges which inevitably favor one at the expense of
+others, and which make it customary and natural to seek and get
+happiness in ways which disregard the happiness of others. In the
+industrial life each individual seeks his own advantage under such
+conditions that he can achieve his end only by rendering service to
+others, that is, through exchange of commodities or services. The proper
+end of legislation is then to make political and economic conditions
+such that the individual while seeking his own good will at least not
+inflict suffering upon others, and positively, so far as possible, will
+promote their good.[153]
+
+=IV. Mill's Criticism.=--Mill's criticism does not turn upon the
+importance of legislation and of social economic arrangements in
+promoting the identity of individual and general good. On the contrary,
+after identifying (in a passage already quoted, _ante_, p. 286) the
+ideal of utilitarian morality with love of neighbor, he goes on:
+
+ "As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal utility
+ would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should
+ place the happiness of every individual as nearly as possible in
+ harmony with the interest of the whole; and, secondly, that
+ education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human
+ character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of
+ every individual an indissoluble association between his own
+ happiness and the good of the whole."
+
+The criticism turns upon the fact that _unless_ the intrinsic social
+idea, already discussed, be emphasized, any association of private and
+general happiness which law and social arrangements can effect will be
+external, more or less artificial and arbitrary, and hence dissoluble
+either by intellectual analysis, or by the intense prepotency of
+egoistic desire.
+
+=Mill's Transformation.=--If, however, this idea of inherent social ties
+and of oneself as a social being is presupposed, the various external
+agencies have something internal to work upon; and their effect is
+internal, not external. Their effect is not to establish a mere
+_coincidence_ (as with Bentham) between pleasure to oneself and pleasure
+to others, but to protect, strengthen, and foster the sense, otherwise
+intermittent and feeble, of the social aspects and relations of one's
+own being. It is for this reason that Mill lays more stress on
+_education_ than on mere external institutional changes, and, indeed,
+conceives of the ultimate moral value of the institutional arrangements
+as itself educative. Their value to him is not that they are
+contrivances or pieces of machinery for making the behavior of one
+conduce more or less automatically to the happiness of others, but that
+they train and exercise the individual in the recognition of the social
+elements of his own character.
+
+=Summary of Previous Discussion.=--We have carried on our discussion of
+the relation between the common good as the standard for measuring
+rightness, and pleasure as the end and spring of the individual's
+activity, in terms of Mill's development of Bentham's utilitarianism.
+But of course our results are general, and they may be detached not only
+from this particular discussion, but from the truth or falsity of
+utilitarianism as a technical theory. Put positively, our results are
+these: (1) Moral quality is an attribute of character, of dispositions
+and attitudes which express themselves in desires and efforts. (2) Those
+attitudes and dispositions are morally good which aim at the production,
+the maintenance, and development of ends in which the agent and others
+affected alike find satisfaction. There is no difference (such as early
+utilitarianism made) between good as standard and as aim, because _only
+a voluntary preference for and interest in a social good is capable,
+otherwise than by coincidence or accident, of producing acts which have
+common good as their result_. Acts which are not motivated by it as aim
+cannot be trusted to secure it as result; _acts which are motived by it
+as a living and habitual interest are the guarantee, so far as
+conditions allow, of its realization_. Those who care for the general
+good for its own sake are those who are surest of promoting it.
+
+=The Good Moral Character.=--The genuinely moral person is one, then, in
+whom the habit of regarding all capacities and habits of self from the
+social standpoint is formed and active. Such an one forms his plans,
+regulates his desires, and hence performs his acts with reference to the
+effect they have upon the social groups of which he is a part. He is one
+whose dominant attitudes and interests are bound up with associated
+activities. Accordingly he will find his happiness or satisfaction in
+the promotion of these activities irrespective of the particular pains
+and pleasures that accrue.
+
+=Social Interests and Sympathy.=--A genuine social interest is then
+something much broader and deeper than an instinctive sympathetic
+reaction. Sympathy is a genuine natural instinct, varying in intensity
+in different individuals. It is a precious instrumentality for the
+development of social insight and socialized affection; but in and of
+itself it is upon the same plane as any natural endowment. It may lead
+to sentimentality or to selfishness; the individual may shrink from
+scenes of misery just because of the pain they cause him, or may seek
+jovial companions because of the sympathetic pleasures he gets. Or he
+may be moved by sympathy to labor for the good of others, but, because
+of lack of deliberation and thoughtfulness, be quite ignorant of what
+their good really is, and do a great deal of harm. One may wish to do
+unto others as he would they should do unto him, but may err egregiously
+because his conception of what is desirable for himself is radically
+false; or because he assumes arbitrarily that whatever he likes is good
+for others, and may thus tyrannically impose his own standards upon
+them. Again instinctive sympathy is partial; it may attach itself
+vehemently to those of blood kin or to immediate associates in such a
+way as to favor them at the expense of others, and lead to positive
+injustice toward those beyond the charmed circle.[154]
+
+=Transformation of Instinctive Sympathies.=--It still remains true that
+the instinctive affectionate reactions in their various forms (parental,
+filial, sexual, compassionate, sympathetic) are the sole portions of the
+psychological structure or mechanism of a man which can be relied upon
+to work the identification of other's ends with one's own interests.
+What is required is a _blending_, a _fusing_ of the sympathetic
+tendencies with all the other impulsive and habitual traits of the self.
+When interest in power is permeated with an affectionate impulse, it is
+protected from being a tendency to dominate and tyrannize; it becomes an
+interest in _effectiveness of regard for common ends_. When an interest
+in artistic or scientific objects is similarly fused, it loses the
+indifferent and coldly impersonal character which marks the specialist
+as such, and becomes an interest in the adequate aesthetic and
+intellectual development of the conditions of a common life. Sympathy
+does not merely _associate_ one of these tendencies _with_ another;
+still less does it make one a means to the other's end. It so intimately
+permeates them as to transform them both into a single new and moral
+interest. This same fusion protects sympathy from sentimentality and
+narrowness. Blended with interest in power, in science, in art, it is
+liberalized in quality and broadened in range. In short, the fusion of
+affectionate reactions with the other dispositions of the self
+_illuminates, gives perspective and body to the former_, while it _gives
+social quality and direction to the latter_. The result of this
+reciprocal absorption is the disappearance of the natural tendencies in
+their original form _and the generation of moral_, i.e., _socialized
+interests_. It is sympathy transformed into a habitual standpoint which
+satisfies the demand for a standpoint which will render the person
+interested in foresight of all obscure consequences (_ante_, p. 262).
+
+=1. Social Interest and the Happiness of the Agent.=--We now see what is
+meant by a distinctively _moral_ happiness, and how this happiness is
+supreme in quality as compared with other satisfactions, irrespective of
+superior intensity and duration on the part of the latter. It is
+impossible to draw any fixed line between the _content_ of the moral
+good and of natural satisfaction. The end, the right and only right end,
+of man, lies in the fullest and freest realization of powers in their
+appropriate objects. The good consists of friendship, family and
+political relations, economic utilization of mechanical resources,
+science, art, in all their complex and variegated forms and elements.
+There is no separate and rival moral good; no separate empty and rival
+"good will."
+
+=Nature of Moral Interest and Motivation.=--Yet _the interest_ in the
+social or the common and progressive realization of these interests may
+properly be called a distinctive moral interest. The degree of actual
+objective realization or achievement of these ends, depends upon
+circumstances and accidents over which the agent has little or no
+control. The more happily situated individual who succeeds in realizing
+these ends more largely we may call more fortunate; we cannot call him
+morally better. The interest in all other interests, the voluntary
+desire to discover and promote them within the range of one's own
+capacities, one's own material resources, and the limits of one's own
+surroundings, is, however, under one's control: _it is one's moral
+self_. _The nature and exercise of this interest constitutes then the
+distinctively moral quality in all good purposes._ They are morally good
+not so far as objectively accomplished and possessed, but so far as
+cherished in the dominant affections of the person.
+
+=The Moral Interest as Final Happiness.=--Consequently the true or final
+happiness of an individual, the happiness which is not at the mercy of
+circumstance and change of circumstance, lies not in objective
+achievement of results, but in the supremacy within character of an
+alert, sincere, and persistent interest in those habits and institutions
+which forward common ends among men. Mill insisted that quality of
+happiness was morally important, not quantity. Well, that quality which
+is most important is the peace and joy of mind that accompanies the
+abiding and equable maintenance of socialized interests as central
+springs of action. To one in whom these interests live (and they live to
+some extent in every individual not completely pathological) their
+exercise brings happiness because it fulfills his life. To those in whom
+it is the supreme interest it brings supreme or final happiness. It is
+not preferred because it is the greater happiness, but in being
+preferred as expressing the only kind of self which the agent
+fundamentally wishes himself to be, it constitutes a kind of happiness
+with which others cannot be compared. It is unique, final,
+invaluable.[155]
+
+=Identity of the Individual and General Happiness.=--No algebraic
+summing up of sympathetic pleasures, utilities of friendship, advantages
+of popularity and esteem, profits of economic exchange among equals,
+over against pains from legal penalties and disapproving public opinion,
+and lack of sympathetic support by others, can ever make it even
+approximately certain that an individual's own interest, in terms of
+quantity of pleasures and pains, is to regard the interest of
+others.[156] Such a demonstration, moreover, if possible, would not
+support but would weaken the moral life. It would reduce the
+manifestation of character to selecting greater rather than less amounts
+of homogeneous ends. It would degrade reflection and consideration to
+ingenuity in detecting where larger quantities of pleasures lie, and to
+skill in performing sums of addition and subtraction. Even if such a
+scheme could be demonstrated, every one except the most languid and
+phlegmatic of pleasure-seekers would reject a life built upon it. Not
+only the "good," but the more vigorous and hearty of the "bad," would
+scorn a life in which character, selfhood, had no significance, and
+where the experimental discovery and testing of destiny had no place.
+The identity of individual and general happiness is a _moral_ matter; it
+depends, that is, upon the reflective and intentional development of
+that type of character which identifies itself with common ends, and
+which is happy in these ends just because it has made them its own.
+
+=2. Social Ends and the Happiness of Others.=--The same principle holds
+of the happiness of others. Happiness means the expression of the active
+tendencies of a self in their appropriate objects. Moral happiness means
+the satisfaction which comes when the dominant active tendencies are
+made interests in the maintenance and propagation of the things that
+make life worth living. Others, also, can be happy and should be happy
+only upon the same terms. Regard for the happiness of others means
+_regard for those conditions and objects which permit others freely to
+exercise their own powers from their own initiative, reflection, and
+choice_. Regard for their final happiness (i.e., for a happiness whose
+_quality_ is such that it cannot be _externally_ added to or subtracted
+from) demands that these others shall find the controlling objects of
+preference, resolution, and endeavor in the things that are worth while.
+
+=3. Happiness and Common Ends.=--For all alike, in short, the chief
+thing is the discovery and promotion of those activities and active
+relationships in which the capacities of all concerned are effectively
+evoked, exercised, and put to the test. It is difficult for a man to
+attain a point of view from which steadily to apprehend how his own
+activities affect and modify those of others. It is hard, that is, to
+learn to accommodate one's ends to those of others; to adjust, to give
+way here, and fit in there with respect to our aims. But difficult as
+this is, it is easy compared with the difficulty of acting _in such a
+way_ for ends which are helpful to others as will call out and make
+effective their activities.
+
+=Moral Democracy.=--If the vice of the criminal, and of the coarsely
+selfish man is to disturb the aims and the good of others; if the vice
+of the ordinary egoist, and of every man, upon his egoistic side, is to
+neglect the interests of others; the vice of the social leader, of the
+reformer, of the philanthropist and the specialist in every worthy cause
+of science, or art, or politics, is to seek ends which promote the
+social welfare in ways which fail to engage the active interest and
+cooperation of others.[157] The conception of conferring the good upon
+others, or at least of attaining it for them, which is our inheritance
+from the aristocratic civilization of the past, is so deeply embodied in
+religious, political, and charitable institutions and in moral
+teachings, that it dies hard. Many a man, feeling himself justified by
+the social character of his ultimate aim (it may be economic, or
+educational, or political), is genuinely confused or exasperated by the
+increasing antagonism and resentment which he evokes, because he has not
+enlisted in his pursuit of the "common" end the freely cooperative
+activities of others. This cooperation must be the root principle of the
+morals of democracy. It must be confessed, however, that it has as yet
+made little progress.
+
+Our traditional conceptions of the morally great man, the moral hero and
+leader, the exceptionally good social and political character, all work
+against the recognition of this principle either in practice or theory.
+They foster the notion that it is somebody's particular business to
+reach by his more or less isolated efforts (with "following," or
+obedience, or unreflective subordination on the part of others) a needed
+social good. Some genius is to lead the way; others are to adopt and
+imitate. Moreover, the method of awakening and enlisting the activities
+of all concerned in pursuit of the end seems slow; it seems to postpone
+accomplishment indefinitely. But in truth a common end which is not made
+such by common, free voluntary cooperation in process of achievement is
+common in name only. It has no support and guarantee in the activities
+which it is supposed to benefit, because it is not the fruit of those
+activities. Hence, it does not stay put. It has to be continually
+buttressed by appeal to external, not voluntary, considerations; bribes
+of pleasure, threats of harm, use of force. It has to be undone and done
+over. There is no way to escape or evade this law of happiness, that it
+resides in the exercise of the active capacities of a voluntary agent;
+and hence no way to escape or evade the law of a common happiness, that
+it must reside in the congruous exercise of the voluntary activities of
+all concerned. The inherent irony and tragedy of much that passes for a
+high kind of socialized activity is precisely that it seeks a common
+good by methods which forbid its being either common or a good.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+See references upon utilitarianism at end of ch. xiv. For happiness, see
+Aristotle, _Ethics_, Book I., and Book X., chs. vi.-ix.; Dickinson, _The
+Meaning of Good_; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 268-286; Rickaby,
+_Aquinas Ethicus_, Vol. I., pp. 6-39; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch. xv.;
+Santayana, _The Life of Reason_; Rashdall, _The Theory of Good and
+Evil_.
+
+The following histories of utilitarianism bring out the social side of
+the utilitarian theory: Albee, _History of Utilitarianism_; Stephen,
+_The English Utilitarians_; Halevy, _La Formation du Radicalisme
+Philosophique_, especially Vols. I. and II.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[139] The discussion of altruism and egoism in ch. xviii. on the Self,
+considers some aspects of this question from another point of view.
+
+[140] _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 361.
+
+[141] _Ibid._, pp. 365-66. Green then goes on to argue that this service
+has been in spite of its hedonistic factor, and that if the theory were
+generally applied with all the hedonistic implications to personal
+behavior in private life, it would put impediments in the way of moral
+progress.
+
+[142] It will be noted that we have here the same double role of
+pleasure that met us at the outset (see _ante_, p. 267): one sort of
+happiness is the moving spring of action, because object of desire;
+another and incompatible sort is the standard, and hence proper or right
+end.
+
+[143] It is this hedonistic element of the object of desire and moving
+spring which calls forth such denunciations as Carlyle's; on the other
+hand, it is the assertion of the common happiness as the standard which
+calls out the indignant denial of the utilitarians; which, for example,
+leads Spencer to retort upon Carlyle's epithet of "pig-philosophy" with
+a counter charge that Carlyle's epithet is a survival of
+"devil-worship," since it assumes pain to be a blessing. (_Principles of
+Ethics_, Vol. I., pp. 40-41).
+
+[144] Abbott's _Kant's Theory of Ethics_, p. 116.
+
+[145] _Utilitarianism_, third paragraph of ch. iv.
+
+[146] By this phrase Bentham refers to the necessity of controlling this
+spring to activity just as any other is regulated, by reference to its
+consequences.
+
+[147] Bentham himself was not a psychologist, and he does not state the
+doctrine in this extreme form. But those of the Benthamites who were
+psychologists, being hedonistic in their psychology, gave the doctrine
+this form.
+
+[148] _Early Essays_, p. 354. (Reprint by Gibbs, London, 1897.)
+
+[149] _Ibid._, p. 357.
+
+[150] _Ibid._, p. 404.
+
+[151] _Autobiography_, London, 1884, p. 143.
+
+[152] _Utilitarianism_, ch. iii., _passim_.
+
+[153] Some phases of this view as respects legislation, etc., are
+touched upon later in ch. xviii.
+
+[154] Mill in his article on Bentham says of him: "Personal affection,
+he well knew, is as liable to operate to the injury of third parties,
+and requires as much to be kept in check, as any other feeling whatever:
+and general philanthropy ... he estimated at its true value when
+divorced from the feeling of duty, as the very weakest and most unsteady
+of all feelings" (_Op. cit._, p. 356).
+
+[155] "It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by
+caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the
+highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having
+wide thought and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as
+ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it,
+that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose
+before everything else, because our souls see it is good."--GEORGE ELIOT
+in _Romola_.
+
+[156] The recognition of this by many utilitarian hedonists has caused
+them to have recourse to the supernaturally inflicted penalties and
+conferred delights of a future life to make sure of balancing up the
+account of virtue as self-sacrificing action with happiness, its proper
+end.
+
+[157] The recognition of this type of spiritual selfishness is modern.
+It is the pivot upon which the later (especially) of Ibsen's tragedies
+turn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PLACE OF REASON IN THE MORAL LIFE; MORAL KNOWLEDGE
+
+
+Sec. 1. PROBLEM OF REASON AND DESIRE
+
+=Intelligence and Reason in a Moral Act.=--A voluntary act is one which
+involves intention, purpose, and thus some degree of deliberateness. It
+is this trait which marks off the voluntary act from a purely
+unconscious one (like that of a machine) and from one which yields to
+the superior urgency of present feeling, one which is pushed on from
+behind, as an instinctive or impulsive act, instead of being called out
+by some possibility ahead. This factor of forethought and of preference
+after comparison for some one of the ends considered, is the factor of
+intelligence involved in every voluntary act. To be intelligent in
+action is, however, a far-reaching affair. To know what one is really
+about is a large and difficult order to fill; so large and difficult
+that it is the heart of morality.[158] The relevant bearings of any act
+are subtler and larger than those which can be foreseen and than those
+which will be _unless_ special care is taken. The tendencies which
+strongly move one to a certain act are often exactly those which tend to
+prevent one's seeing the effect of the act upon his own habits and upon
+the well-being of others. The internal forces and the external
+circumstance which evoke the idea of an end and of the means of
+attaining it are frequently also those which deflect intelligence to a
+narrow and partial view. The demand for a standard by which to regulate
+judgment of ends is thus the demand not only for intelligence, but for a
+certain kind of intelligence.
+
+In short, a truly moral (or right) act is one which is intelligent in an
+emphatic and peculiar sense; it is a _reasonable_ act. It is not merely
+one which is thought of, and thought of as good, at the moment of
+action, but one which will continue to be thought of as "good" in the
+most alert and persistent reflection.[159] For by "reasonable" action we
+mean such action as recognizes and observes all the necessary
+conditions; action in which impulse, instinct, inclination, habit,
+opinion, prejudice (as the case may be) are moderated, guided, and
+determined by considerations which lie outside of and beyond them. Not
+merely to form ends and select means, but to judge the _worth_ of these
+means and ends by a standard, is then the distinctive province of reason
+in morals. Its outcome is _moral knowledge_; that is judgments of right
+and wrong, both in general, and in the particular and perplexing cases
+as they arise. This is the topic of the present chapter.
+
+=Typical Problems.=--The problem of moral knowledge is in its general
+form: Is there a distinct and separate faculty of moral reason and
+knowledge, or is there but one power of judgment which varies with its
+object? The former view is the intuitional (from Latin, _intueor_: to
+look at); it is associated with theories, which, like the Kantian,
+emphasize attitudes, not results and intentions; while the view which
+holds that there is but one form of thought which, in morals, concerns
+itself with results, and with their association with the present aim, is
+the empirical. There are two especial difficulties which lead to the
+upholding of the intuitional point of view, difficulties which any
+theory of moral knowledge has to meet. They are (I) The Relation of
+Desire and Reason, and (II) the Knowledge of Private and General Good.
+
+=1. Desire and Reason.=--Ordinary knowledge in practical matters follows
+the line set by desire. Hunger makes us think of food and of how to get
+it; sociable desire, of friends, and how to secure their companionship,
+and so on. Now a surging mass of desires, vehement and bulky, may
+concentrate itself upon the idea of any end; and as soon as it does so,
+it tends to shut out wider considerations. As we have just seen, it is
+the object of reason to give us a calm, objective, broad, and general
+survey of the field. Desires work against this, and unless (so runs the
+argument) there is a faculty which works wholly independent of desires,
+as our ordinary practical knowledge does not, it is absurd to suppose
+there can be a rational principle which will correct and curb desire.
+
+=2. Private and General Good.=--Since the wide and permanent good is
+social, it is urged that unless we have an independent faculty of moral
+knowledge, our judgment will be subservient to the ends of private
+desire, and hence will not place itself at the public point of view. Or,
+if it does so, it will be simply as a matter of expediency to calculate
+better the means for getting our own pleasure. In general, it is urged
+that only a faculty of knowledge completely independent of personal
+wishes, habits, purposes can secure judgments possessing inherent
+dignity and authoritativeness; since these require an elevated,
+impartial, universal, and necessary point of view. We shall in the
+sequel attempt to show that this view of knowledge results from the
+false conception of desire as having pleasure for its object, and from a
+false conception of the relation of intent and motive. When these errors
+are corrected, there is no ground to assume any special faculty of moral
+intelligence, save as the one capacity of thought is specialized into a
+particular mental habit by being constantly occupied in judging values.
+We shall try to show that the broad and public point of view is secured
+by fusion of impulses with sympathetic affections. We shall begin with
+stating and criticizing the views of Kant, who upholds the doctrine of a
+separate independent Moral Reason in its most extreme form.
+
+
+Sec. 2. KANT'S THEORY OF PRACTICAL REASON
+
+Kant is at one with the hedonist as regards the natural object of
+desire; it is pleasure. All purposes and ends that spring from
+inclination and natural tendency come under one head: self-love. Hence,
+the ordinary use of intelligence is confined to the matter of passing
+upon what constitutes the individual's private happiness and how he
+shall secure it. There are then fundamental contrasts between ordinary
+practical activity and genuinely moral activity, contrasts which reflect
+themselves in the theory of the nature and function of moral knowledge.
+(1) The moral end is _unqualified_, absolute, categorical. It is not
+something which we can pick or leave at our option. Morality is the
+region of final ends, ends not to be disputed or questioned; and reason
+must set forth such final ends. Since, however, happiness is not a
+morally necessary end, intelligence in its behalf can only give
+hypothetical counsel and advice: _if_ you would be happy, or happy in
+this, or that way, then take such and such measures. Reason which
+promulgates ends must be of a different sort from the intelligence which
+simply searches for means.
+
+(2) Morality is not qualified, but _certain_ in its requirements. The
+most inexperienced, the humblest, the one most restricted in his
+circumstances and opportunities, must know what is morally required as
+surely as the wisest and most educated. Hence moral reason must utter
+its precepts clearly and unambiguously. But no one can be _sure_ what
+happiness is, or whether a given act will bring joy or sorrow. "The
+problem of determining certainly what action would promote the
+happiness of a rational being is insoluble." (Abbott's _Kant_, p. 36.)
+The demand for _certainty_ of precepts in moral matters also requires a
+special faculty.
+
+(3) Morality, which is inexorable and certain in its demands, is also
+_universal_ in its requirements. Its laws are the same yesterday,
+to-day, and forever, the same for one as for another. Now happiness
+notoriously varies with the condition and circumstances of a person, as
+well as with the conditions of different peoples and epochs.
+Intelligence with reference to happiness can only give counsel, not even
+rules, so variable is happiness. It can only advise that upon the
+average, under certain conditions, a given course of action has usually
+promoted happiness. When we add that the commands of morality are also
+universal with respect to the different inclinations of different
+individuals, we are made emphatically aware of the necessity of a
+rational standpoint, which in its impartiality totally transcends the
+ends and plans that grow out of the ordinary experience of an
+individual.
+
+=An A Priori Reason Kant's Solution.=--The net outcome is that only a
+reason which is separate and independent of all experience is capable of
+meeting the requirements of morality. What smacks in its origin and aim
+of experience is tainted with self-love; is partial, temporary,
+uncertain, and relative or dependent. The moral law is unqualified,
+necessary, and universal. Hence we have to recognize in man as a moral
+being a faculty of reason which expresses itself in the law of conduct
+_a priori_ to all experience of desire, pleasure, and pain. Besides his
+sensuous nature (with respect to which knowledge is bound up with
+appetite) man has a purely rational nature, which manifests itself in
+the consciousness of the absolute authority of universal law.[160]
+
+=Formal Character of Such Reason.=--This extreme separation of reason
+from experience brings with it, however, a serious problem. We shall
+first state this problem; and then show that its artificial and
+insoluble character serves as a refutation of Kant's theory of a
+transcendental, or wholly non-natural and non-empirical, mode of
+knowledge. Reason which is wholly independent of experience of desires
+and their results is, as Kant expressly declares, purely _formal_.
+(Abbott's _Kant_, p. 33; p. 114.) That is to say, it is _empty_; it does
+not point out or indicate anything particular to be done. It cannot say
+be industrious, or prudent, generous; give, or refrain from giving, so
+much money to this particular man at this particular time under just
+these circumstances. All it says is that morality is rational and
+requires man to follow the law of reason. But the law of reason is just
+that a man should follow the law of reason. And to the inevitable
+inquiry "What then is the law of reason?" the answer still is: To follow
+the law of reason. How do we break out of this empty circle into
+specific knowledge of the specific right things to be done? Kant has an
+answer, which we shall now consider.
+
+=Kant's Method.=--He proceeds as follows: The law is indeed purely
+formal or empty (since, once more, all specific ends are "empirical" and
+changeable), but it is so because it is universal. Now nothing which is
+universal can contradict itself. All we need to do is to take any
+proposed principle of any act and ask ourselves whether it can be
+universalized without self-inconsistency. If it cannot be, the act is
+wrong. If it can be, the act is right. For example:
+
+ "May I, when in distress, make a promise with the intention not to
+ keep it?... The shortest way, and an unerring one to discover the
+ answer to the question whether a lying promise is consistent with
+ duty, is to ask myself, Should I be content that my maxim (to
+ extricate myself from trouble by a false promise) should hold good
+ as a universal law, for myself as well as for others? And should I
+ be able to say to myself, every one may make a deceitful promise
+ when he finds himself in a difficulty from which he cannot
+ otherwise extricate himself? Then I personally become aware that
+ while I can will the lie, I can by no means will that lying should
+ be a universal law. For with such a law there would be no such
+ thing as a promise. No one should have any faith in the proffered
+ intention, or, if they do so over hastily, would pay one back in
+ one's own coin at the first opportunity" (_Op. cit._, p. 19).
+
+The principle if made universal simply contradicts itself, and thus
+reveals that it is no principle at all, not rational. Summing this up in
+a formula, we get as our standard of right action the principle: "Act as
+if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of
+nature" (_Op. cit._, p. 39).
+
+The procedure thus indicated seems simple. As long as an individual
+considers the purpose or motive of his action as if it were merely a
+matter of that one deed; as if it were an isolated thing, there is no
+rationality, no consciousness of moral law or principle. But let the
+individual imagine himself gifted with such power that, if he acts, the
+motive of his act will become a fixed, a regular law in the constitution
+of things. Would he, as a rational being, be willing to bring about such
+a universalization,--can he, with equanimity as a reasonable being,
+contemplate such an outcome? If he can, the act is right; if not (as in
+the case of making a lying promise), wrong.
+
+No sensible person would question the instructiveness of this scheme in
+the concrete. It indicates that the value of reason--of abstraction and
+generalization--in conduct is to help us escape from the partiality that
+flows from desire and emotion in their first and superficial
+manifestations, and to attain a more unified and permanent end. As a
+method (though not the only one) of realizing the _full meaning_ of a
+proposed course of action, nothing could be better than asking ourselves
+how we should like to be committed forever to its principle; how we
+should like to have others committed to it and to treat us according to
+it? Such a method is well calculated to make us face our proposed end in
+its impartial consequences; to teach the danger of cherishing merely
+those results which are most congenial to our passing whim and our
+narrow conception of personal profit. In short, by generalizing a
+purpose we make its _general_ character evident.
+
+But this method does not proceed (as Kant would have it) from a mere
+consideration of moral law _apart from a concrete end, but from an end
+in so far as it persistently approves itself to reflection after an
+adequate survey of it in all its bearings_. It is the possibility of
+_generalizing the concrete end_ that Kant falls back upon.
+
+Other illustrations which Kant offers enforce the same lesson. He
+suggests the following:
+
+ (1) A man in despair from misfortune considers suicide. "Now he
+ inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal
+ law of nature." We see at once that a system of nature by which it
+ should be a law to destroy life by means of the very
+ feeling--self-love--whose nature it is to impel to the maintenance
+ of life, would contradict itself and therefore could not exist.
+
+ (2) A man who has a certain talent is tempted from sluggishness
+ and love of amusement not to cultivate it. But if he applies the
+ principle he sees that, while a system of nature might subsist if
+ his motive became a law (so that all people devoted their lives to
+ idleness and amusement), yet he cannot _will_ that such a system
+ should receive absolute realization. As a rational being he
+ necessarily also wills that faculties be developed since they
+ serve for all sorts of possible purposes.
+
+ (3) A prosperous man, who sees some one else to be wretched, is
+ tempted to pay no attention to it, alleging that it is no concern
+ of his. Now, if this attitude were made a universal law of nature,
+ the human race might subsist and even get on after a fashion; but
+ it is impossible to will that such a principle should have the
+ validity of a law of nature. Such a will would contradict itself,
+ for many cases would occur in which the one willing would need the
+ love and sympathy of others; he could not then without
+ contradicting himself wish that selfish disregard should become a
+ regular, a fixed uniformity.
+
+=The Social End is the Rational End.=--These illustrations make it clear
+that the "contradiction" Kant really depends upon to reveal the
+wrongness of acts, is the introduction of friction and disorder among
+the various concrete ends of the individual. He insists especially that
+the social relations of an act bring out its general purport. A right
+end is one which can be projected harmoniously into the widest and
+broadest survey of life which the individual can make. A "system of
+nature" or of conduct in which love of life should lead to its own
+destruction certainly contradicts itself. A course of action which
+should include all the tendencies that make for amusement and
+sluggishness would be inconsistent with a scheme of life which would
+take account of other tendencies--such as interest in science, in music,
+in friendship, in business achievement, which are just as real
+constituents of the individual, although perhaps not so strongly felt at
+the moment. A totally callous and cruel mode of procedure certainly
+"contradicts" a course of life in which every individual is so placed as
+to be dependent upon the sympathy and upon the help of others. It is the
+province of reason to call up a sufficiently wide view of the
+consequences of an intention as to enable us to realize such
+inconsistencies and contradictions if they exist; to put before us, not
+through any logical manipulation of the principle of contradiction, but
+through memory and imagination a particular act, proposal, or suggestion
+as a portion of a connected whole of life; to make real to us that no
+man, no act, and no satisfaction of any man, falls or stands to itself,
+but that it affects and is affected by others. Our conclusion is: the
+right as the _rational_ good means that which is harmonious with all the
+capacities and desires of the self, that which expands them into a
+cooperative whole.
+
+=Kant's Introduction of Social Factors.=--The further development which
+Kant gives the formula already quoted (p. 312) goes far to remove the
+appearance of opposition between the utilitarian social standard and his
+own abstract rationalism. Kant points out that according to his view the
+moral or rational will is its own end. Hence every rational person is
+always an end, never a means:--this, indeed, is what we mean by a
+person. But every normal human being is a rational person. Consequently
+another formula for his maxim is: "So act as to treat humanity, whether
+in thine own person or in that of any other, as an end, never as a means
+merely." The man who contemplates suicide "uses a person merely as a
+means to maintaining a tolerable condition of life." He who would make a
+lying promise to another makes that other one merely a means to his
+profit, etc. Moreover, since all persons are equally ends in themselves
+and are to be equally regarded in behavior, we may say the standard of
+right is the notion of a "Kingdom of Ends"--the idea of "the union of
+different rational beings in a system by common laws."[161]
+
+These propositions are rather formal, but the moment we put definite
+meaning into them, they suggest that the good for any man is that in
+which the welfare of others counts as much as his own. The right is that
+action which, so far as in it lies, combines into a whole of common
+interests and purposes the otherwise conflicting aims and interests of
+different persons. So interpreted, the Kantian formula differs in words,
+rather than in idea, from Bentham's happiness of all concerned "each
+counting for one and only one"; from Mill's statement that the "deeply
+rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a
+social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that
+there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his
+fellow creatures." In all of these formulae we find re-statements of our
+conception that the good is the activities in which all men participate
+so that the powers of each are called out, put to use, and reenforced.
+
+=Consequent Transformation of Theory of Reason.=--Now if the common
+good, in the form of a society of individuals, as a kingdom of ends, is
+the object with reference to which the ends of desire have to be
+rationalized, Kant's theory of an _a priori_ and empty Reason is
+completely made over. In strict logic Kant contradicts himself when he
+says that we are to generalize the end of desire, so as to see whether
+it could become a universal law. For according to him no end of desire
+(since it is private and a form of self-love) _can possibly be
+generalized_. He is setting up as a method of enlightenment precisely
+the very impossibility (impossible, that is, on his own theory that
+private happiness is the end of desire) which made him first resort to
+his _a priori_ and transcendental reason. No more complete contradiction
+can be imagined.
+
+On the other hand, if we neglect the concrete, empirical conditions and
+consequences of the object of desire, there is no motive whatsoever that
+may not be generalized. There is no _formal_ contradiction in acting
+always on a motive of theft, unchastity, or insolence. All that Kant's
+method can require, in strict logic, is that the individual always,
+under similar circumstances, act from the same motive. Be willing to be
+always dishonest, or impure, or proud in your intent; achieve
+consistency in the badness of your motives, and you will be good!
+Doubtless no one, not even the worst man, would be willing to be
+universally consistent in his badness. But this is not in the least a
+matter of a purely formal, logical inconsistency of the motive with
+itself;[162] it is due rather to that _conflict among diverse desires,
+and different objects for which one strives, which makes him aware that
+at some time he should want to act kindly and fairly_.
+
+=Organization of Desires from the Social Standpoint.=--What Kant is
+really insisting upon at bottom is, then, the demand for such a revision
+of desire as it casually and unreflectively presents itself as would
+make the desire a consistent expression of the whole body of the
+purposes of the self. What he demands is that a desire shall not be
+accepted as an adequate motive till it has been organized into desire
+for an end which will be compatible with the whole system of ends
+involved in the capacities and tendencies of the agent. This is true
+rationalization. And he further warns us that only when a particular
+desire has in view a good which is social will it meet this requirement.
+This brings us to our next problem. Just what is the process by which we
+judge of the worth of particular proposals, plans, courses of actions,
+desires? Granted that a generalized good, a socialized happiness, is the
+point of view at which we must place ourselves to secure the reasonable
+point of view, how does this point of view become an operative method?
+
+
+Sec. 3. MORAL SENSE INTUITIONALISM
+
+So far, our conclusions are (1) that the province of reason is to enable
+us to generalize our concrete ends; to form such ends as are consistent
+with one another, and reenforce one another, introducing continuity and
+force, where otherwise there would be division and weakness; and (2)
+that only social ends are ultimately reasonable, since they alone permit
+us to organize our acts into consistent wholes. We have now, however, to
+consider how this conception takes effect in detail; how it is employed
+to determine the right or the reasonable in a given situation. We shall
+approach this problem by considering a form of intuitionalism
+historically prior to that of Kant. This emphasizes the direct character
+of moral knowledge in particular cases, and assimilates moral knowledge
+to the analogy of sense perception, which also deals directly with
+specific objects; it insists, however, that a different kind of faculty
+of knowledge operates in the knowledge of acts from that which operates
+in the knowledge of things. Our underlying aim here is to bring out the
+relation of immediate appreciation to deliberate reflection, with a view
+to showing that the reasonable standpoint, that of the common good,
+becomes effective through the socialized attitudes and emotions of a
+person's own character.
+
+=Moral Sense.=--This theory holds that rightness is an intrinsic,
+absolute quality of special acts, and as such is immediately known or
+recognized for what it is. Just as a white color is known as white, a
+high tone as high, a hard body as existent, etc., so an act which is
+right is known as right. In each case, the quality and the fact are so
+intimately and inherently bound together that it is absurd to think of
+one and not know the other. As a theory of moral judgment,
+intuitionalism is thus opposed to utilitarianism, which holds that
+rightness is not an inherent quality but one relative to and borrowed
+from external and more or less remote consequences. While some forms of
+intuitionalism hold that this moral quality belongs to general rules or
+to classes of ends, the form we are now to consider holds that the moral
+quality of an individual act cannot be borrowed even from a moral law,
+but shines forth as an absolute and indestructible part of the motive of
+the act itself. Because the theory in question sticks to the direct
+perception of the immediately present quality of acts, it is usually
+called, in analogy with the direct perception of eye or ear, the moral
+sense theory.
+
+=Objections to Theory.=--The objections to this theory in the extreme
+form just stated may be brought under two heads: (1) There is no
+evidence to prove that all acts are directly characterized by the
+possession of absolute and self-evident rightness and wrongness; there
+is much evidence to show that this quality when presented by acts can,
+as a rule, be traced to earlier instruction, to the pressure of
+correction and punishment, and to association with other experiences.
+(2) While in this way many acts, perhaps almost all, of the average
+mature person of a good moral environment, have acquired a direct moral
+coloring, making unnecessary elaborate calculation or reference to
+general principles, yet there is nothing infallible in such intuitively
+presented properties. An act may present itself as thoroughly right and
+yet may be, in reality, wrong. The function of conscious deliberation
+and reasoning is precisely to detect the existence of and to correct
+such intuitive cases.[163]
+
+=I. Direct Perception as Effect of Habits.=--It must be admitted, as a
+result of any unprejudiced examination, that a large part of the acts,
+motives, and plans of the adult who has had favorable moral surroundings
+seem to possess directly, and in their own intrinsic make-up, rightness
+or wrongness or moral indifference. To think of lying or stealing is one
+with thinking of it as wrong; to recall or suggest an act of kindness is
+the same as thinking of it as right; to think of going after mail is to
+think of an act free from either rightness or wrongness. With the
+average person it is probably rare for much time to be spent in figuring
+out whether an act is right or wrong, after the idea of that act has
+once definitely presented itself. So far as the facts of moral
+experience in such cases are concerned, the "moral sense" theory appears
+to give a correct description.
+
+(1) But the conclusion that, therefore, moral goodness or badness is and
+always has been an inherent, absolute property of the act itself,
+overlooks well-known psychological principles. In all perception, in all
+recognition, there is a funding or capitalizing of the results of past
+experience by which the results are rendered available in new
+experiences. Even a young child recognizes a table, a chair, a glass of
+milk, a dog, as soon as he sees it; there is no analysis, no conscious
+interpretation. Distance, direction, size, under normal circumstances,
+are perceived with the same assurance and ease. But there was a time
+when all these things were learning; when conscious experimentation
+involving interpretation took place. Such perceptions, moreover, take
+place under the guidance of others; pains are taken indelibly to stamp
+moral impressions by associating them with intense, vivid, and
+mysterious or awful emotional accompaniments.[164]
+
+Anthropological and historical accounts of different races and peoples
+tell the same story. Acts once entirely innocent of moral distinctions
+have acquired, under differing circumstances and sometimes for trivial
+and absurd reasons, different moral values:--one and the same sort of
+act being stamped here as absolute guilt, there as an act of superior
+and heroic virtue. Now it would be fallacious to argue (as some do) that
+because distinctions of moral quality have been acquired and are not
+innate, they are therefore unreal when they are acquired. Yet the fact
+of gradual development proves that no fixed line exists where it can be
+said the case is closed; that just this is henceforth forever right or
+wrong; that there shall be no further observation of consequences, no
+further correction and revision of present "intuitions."
+
+(2) Our immediate moral recognitions take place, moreover, only under
+usual circumstances. There is after all no such thing as complete moral
+maturity; all persons are still more or less children--in process of
+learning moral distinctions. The more intense their moral interests, the
+more childlike, the more open, flexible, and growing are their minds. It
+is only the callous and indifferent, or at least the conventional, who
+find all acts and projects so definitely right and wrong as to render
+reflection unnecessary. "New occasions teach new duties," but they teach
+them only to those who recognize that they are not already in possession
+of adequate moral judgments. Any other view destroys the whole meaning
+of reflective morality and marks a relapse to the plane of sheer custom.
+Extreme intuitionalism and extreme moral conservatism; dislike to
+calculation and reflection, for fear of innovations with attendant
+trouble and discomfort, are usually found to go together.
+
+=II. Direct Perception No Guarantee of Validity.=--This suggests our
+second objection. The existence of immediate moral quality, the direct
+and seemingly final possession of rightness, as matter of fact, is not
+adequate proof of validity. At best, it furnishes a presumption of
+correctness, in the absence of grounds for questioning it, in fairly
+familiar situations. (a) There is nothing more direct, more seemingly
+self-evident, than inveterate prejudice. When class or vested interest
+is enlisted in the maintenance of the custom or institution which is
+expressed in a prejudice, the most vicious moral judgments assume the
+guise of self-conscious sanctity. (b) A judgment which is correct under
+usual circumstances may become quite unfit, and therefore wrong, if
+persisted in under new conditions. Life, individual and social, is in
+constant process of change; and there is always danger of error in
+clinging to judgments adjusted to older circumstances. "The good is the
+enemy of the better." It is not merely false ideas of the values of life
+that have to be re-formed, but ideas once true. When economic,
+political, and scientific conditions are modifying themselves as
+rapidly and extensively as they are in our day, it is reconstruction of
+moral judgment that needs emphasis, rather than the existence of a lot
+of ready-made "intuitions." When readjustment is required, deliberate
+inquiry is the only alternative to inconsiderate, undirected, and hence
+probably violent changes:--changes involving undue relaxation of moral
+ties on one side and arbitrary reactions on the other.
+
+=Deliberation and Intuition.=--It is indeed absurd to set immediate
+recognition of quality and indirect calculation of more or less remote
+consequences, intuition and thought, over against each other as if they
+were rivals. For they are mutually supplementary. As we saw in a
+previous chapter, the foresight of future results calls out an
+_immediate reaction_ of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, of happiness
+or dislike. (See p. 272.) It is just as false to say that we calculate
+only future pains and pleasures (instead of changes in the world of
+things and persons) as it is to say that anticipations of the changes to
+be wrought in the world by our act are not accompanied by an immediate
+emotional appreciation of their value. The notion that deliberation upon
+the various alternatives open to us is simply a cold-blooded setting
+down of various items to our advantage, and various other items to our
+disadvantage (as Robinson Crusoe wrote down in bookkeeping fashion his
+miseries and blessings), and then striking an algebraic balance, implies
+something that never did and never could happen. Deliberation is a
+process of active, suppressed, rehearsal; of imaginative dramatic
+performance of various deeds carrying to their appropriate issues the
+various tendencies which we feel stirring within us. When we see in
+imagination this or that change brought about, there is a direct sense
+of the amount and kind of worth which attaches to it, as real and as
+direct, if not as strong, as if the act were really performed and its
+consequence really brought home to us.
+
+=Deliberation as Dramatic Rehearsal.=--We, indeed, estimate the import
+or significance of any present desire or impulse by forecasting what it
+would come or amount to if carried out; literally its consequences
+define its _consequence_, its meaning and importance. But if these
+consequences were conceived _merely as remote_, if their picturing did
+not at once arouse a present sense of peace, of fulfillment, or of
+dissatisfaction, of incompletion and irritation, the process of thinking
+out consequences would remain purely intellectual. It would be as barren
+of influence upon behavior as the mathematical speculations of a
+disembodied angel. Any actual experience of reflection upon conduct will
+show that every foreseen result at once stirs our present affections,
+our likes and dislikes, our desires and aversions. There is developed a
+running commentary which stamps values at once as good or evil. It is
+this direct sense of value, not the consciousness of general rules or
+ultimate goals, which finally determines the worth of the act to the
+agent. Here is the inexpugnable element of truth in the intuitional
+theory. Its error lies in conceiving this immediate response of
+appreciation as if it excluded reflection instead of following directly
+upon its heels. Deliberation is actually an imaginative rehearsal of
+various courses of conduct. We give way, _in our mind_, to some impulse;
+we try, _in our mind_, some plan. Following its career through various
+steps, we find ourselves in imagination in the presence of the
+consequences that would follow: and as we then like and approve, or
+dislike and disapprove, these consequences, we find the original impulse
+or plan good or bad. Deliberation is dramatic and active, not
+mathematical and impersonal; and hence it has the intuitive, the direct
+factor in it. The advantage of a mental trial, prior to the overt trial
+(for the act after all is itself also a trial, a proving of the idea
+that lies back of it), is that it is retrievable, whereas overt
+consequences remain. They cannot be recalled. Moreover, many trials may
+mentally be made in a short time. The imagining of various plans carried
+out furnishes an opportunity for many impulses which at first are not in
+evidence at all, to get under way. Many and varied direct sensings,
+appreciations, take place. When many tendencies are brought into play,
+there is clearly much greater probability that the capacity of self
+which is really needed and appropriate will be brought into action, and
+thus a truly reasonable happiness result. The tendency of deliberation
+to "polarize" the various lines of activity into opposed alternatives,
+into incompatible "either this or that," is a way of forcing into clear
+recognition the importance of the issue.
+
+=The Good Man's Judgments as Standard.=--This explains the idea of
+Aristotle that only the good man is a good judge of what is really good.
+Such an one will take satisfaction in the thought of noble ends and will
+recoil at the idea of base results. Because of his formed capacities,
+his organized habits and tendencies, he will respond to a suggested end
+with an emotion which confers its appropriate kind and shade of value.
+The brave man is sensitive to all acts and plans so far as they involve
+energy and endurance in overcoming painful obstacles; the kindly man
+responds at once to the elements that affect the well-being of others.
+The moral sense or direct appreciations of the good man may thus be said
+to furnish the standard of right and wrong. There are few persons who,
+when in doubt regarding a difficult matter of conduct, do not think of
+some other person in whose goodness they believe, and endeavor to direct
+and clinch their own judgment by imagining how such an one would react
+in a similar situation--what he would find congenial and what
+disagreeable. Or else they imagine what that other person would think of
+them if he knew of their doing such and such an act. And while this
+method cannot supply the standard of their own judgment, cannot
+determine the right or wrong for their own situations, it helps
+emancipate judgment from selfish partialities, and it facilitates a
+freer and more flexible play of imagination in construing and
+appreciating the situation.
+
+
+Sec. 4. THE PLACE OF GENERAL RULES
+
+Between such a highly generalized and formal principle as that of Kant,
+and the judgment of particular cases, we have intermediate
+generalizations; rules which are broad as compared with individual
+deeds, but narrow as compared with some one final principle. What are
+their rational origin, place, and function? We have here again both the
+empirical and the intuitional theories of knowledge, having to deal with
+the same fundamental difficulty: What is the relation of the special
+rule to the general principle on one side and to the special case on the
+other? The more general, the more abstractly rational the rule, the
+vaguer and less applicable it is. The more definite and fixed it is, the
+greater the danger that it will be a Procrustean bed, mutilating the
+rich fullness of the individual act, or destroying its grace and freedom
+by making it conform servilely to a hard and fast rule. Our analysis
+will accordingly be devoted to bringing to light the conditions under
+which a rule may be rational and yet be of specific help.
+
+=I. Intuitionalism and Casuistry.=--Utilitarianism at least holds that
+rules are derived from actual cases of conduct; hence there must be
+points of likeness between the cases to be judged and the rules for
+judging them. But rules which do not originate from a consideration of
+special cases, which simply descend out of the blue sky, have only the
+most mechanical and external relation to the individual acts to be
+judged. Suppose one is convinced that the rule of honesty was made
+known just in and of itself by a special faculty, and had absolutely
+nothing to do with the recollection of past cases or the forecast of
+possible future circumstances. How would such a rule apply itself to any
+particular case which needed to be judged? What bell would ring, what
+signal would be given, to indicate that just _this_ case is the
+appropriate case for the application of the rule of honest dealing? And
+if by some miracle this question were answered so one knows that here is
+a case for the rule of honesty, how would we know just what course in
+detail the rule calls for? For the rule, to be applicable to all cases,
+must omit the conditions which differentiate one case from another; it
+must contain only the very few similar elements which are to be found in
+all honest deeds. Reduced to this skeleton, not much would be left save
+the bare injunction to be honest whatever happens, leaving it to chance,
+the ordinary judgment of the individual, or to external authority to
+find out just _what_ honesty specifically means in the given case.
+
+This difficulty is so serious that all systems which have committed
+themselves to belief in a number of hard and fast rules having their
+origin in conscience, or in the word of God impressed upon the human
+soul or externally revealed, always have had to resort to a more and
+more complicated procedure to cover, if possible, all the cases. The
+moral life is finally reduced by them to an elaborate formalism and
+legalism.
+
+=Illustration in Casuistry.=--Suppose, for example, we take the Ten
+Commandments as a starting-point. They are only ten, and naturally
+confine themselves to general ideas, and ideas stated mainly in negative
+form. Moreover, the same act may be brought under more than one rule. In
+order to resolve the practical perplexities and uncertainties which
+inevitably arise under such circumstances, _Casuistry_ is built up (from
+the Latin _casus_, case). The attempt is made to foresee all the
+different cases of action which may conceivably occur, and provide in
+advance the exact rule for each case. For example, with reference to the
+rule "do not kill," a list will be made of all the different situations
+in which killing might occur:--accident, war, fulfillment of command of
+political superior (as by a hangman), self-defense (defense of one's own
+life, of others, of property), deliberate or premeditated killing with
+its different motives (jealousy, avarice, revenge, etc.), killing with
+slight premeditation, from sudden impulse, from different sorts and
+degrees of provocation. To each one of these possible cases is assigned
+its exact moral quality, its exact degree of turpitude and innocency.
+Nor can this process end with overt acts; all the inner springs of
+action which affect regard for life must be similarly classified: envy,
+animosity, sudden rage, sullenness, cherishing of sense of injury, love
+of tyrannical power, hardness or hostility, callousness--all these must
+be specified into their different kinds and the exact moral worth of
+each determined. What is done for this one kind of case must be done for
+every part and phase of the entire moral life until it is all
+inventoried, catalogued, and distributed into pigeon-holes definitely
+labelled.
+
+=Dangers of Casuistry.=--Now dangers and evils attend this way of
+conceiving the moral life, (a) _It tends to magnify the letter of
+morality at the expense of its spirit._ It fixes attention not upon the
+positive good in an act, not upon the underlying agent's disposition
+which forms its spirit, nor upon the unique occasion and context which
+form its atmosphere, but upon its literal conformity with Rule A, Class
+I., Species 1, sub-head (1), etc. The effect of this is inevitably to
+narrow the scope and lessen the depth of conduct. (i.) It tempts some to
+hunt for that classification of their act which will make it the most
+convenient or profitable for themselves. In popular speech,
+"casuistical" has come to mean a way of judging acts which splits hairs
+in the effort to find a way of acting that conduces to personal
+interest and profit, and which yet may be justified by some moral
+principle. (ii.) With others, this regard for the letter makes conduct
+formal and pedantic. It gives rise to a rigid and hard type of character
+illustrated among the Pharisees of olden and the Puritans of modern
+time--the moral schemes of both classes being strongly impregnated with
+the notion of fixed moral rules.
+
+(b) _This ethical system also tends in practice to a legal view of
+conduct._--Historically it always has sprung from carrying over legal
+ideas into morality. In the legal view, liability to blame and to
+punishment inflicted from without by some superior authority, is
+necessarily prominent. Conduct is regulated through specific injunctions
+and prohibitions: Do this, Do not do that. Exactly the sort of analysis
+of which we have spoken above (p. 327) in the case of killing is
+necessary, so that there may be definite and regular methods of
+measuring guilt and assigning blame. Now the ideas of liability and
+punishment and reward are, as we shall see in our further discussion
+(chs. xvii. and xxi.), important factors in the conduct of life, but any
+scheme of morals is defective which puts the question of avoiding
+punishment in the foreground of attention, and which tends to create a
+Pharisaical complacency in the mere fact of having conformed to command
+or rule.
+
+(c) _Probably the worst evil of this moral system is that it tends to
+deprive moral life of freedom and spontaneity_ and to reduce it
+(especially for the conscientious who take it seriously) to a more or
+less anxious and servile conformity to externally imposed rules.
+Obedience as loyalty to principle is a good, but this scheme practically
+makes it the only good and conceives it not as loyalty to ideals, but as
+conformity to commands. Moral rules exist just as independent
+deliverances on their own account, and the right thing is merely to
+follow them. This puts the center of moral gravity outside the concrete
+processes of living. All systems which emphasize the letter more than
+the spirit, legal consequences more than vital motives, put the
+individual under the weight of external authority. They lead to the kind
+of conduct described by St. Paul as under the law, not in the spirit,
+with its constant attendant weight of anxiety, uncertain struggle, and
+impending doom.
+
+=All Fixed Rules Have Same Tendencies.=--Many who strenuously object to
+all of these schemes of conduct, to everything which hardens it into
+forms by emphasizing external commands, authority and punishments and
+rewards, fail to see that such evils are logically connected with any
+acceptance of the finality of fixed rules. They hold certain bodies of
+people, religious officers, political or legal authorities, responsible
+for what they object to in the scheme; while they still cling to the
+idea that morality is an effort to apply to particular deeds and
+projects a certain number of absolute unchanging moral rules. They fail
+to see that, if this were its nature, those who attempt to provide the
+machinery which would render it practically workable deserve praise
+rather than blame. In fact, the notion of absolute rules or precepts
+cannot be made workable except through certain superior authorities who
+declare and enforce them. Said Locke: "It is no small power it gives one
+man over another to be the dictator of principles and teacher of
+unquestionable truths."
+
+=II. Utilitarian View of General Rules.=--The utilitarians escape the
+difficulties inherent in the application to particular cases of a rule
+which has nothing to do with particular cases. Their principles for
+judging right and wrong in particular cases are themselves
+generalizations from particular observations of the effect of certain
+acts upon happiness and misery. But if we take happiness in the
+technical sense of Bentham (as meaning, that is, an aggregate of
+isolated pleasures) it is impossible for general rules to exist--there
+is nothing to generalize. If, however, we take happiness in its
+common-sense form, as welfare, a state of successful achievement,
+satisfactory realization of purpose, there can be no doubt of the
+existence of maxims and formulae in which mankind has registered its
+experience. The following quotations from Mill bring out the essential
+points:
+
+ "We think utility or happiness much too complex and indefinite an
+ end to be sought except through the medium of various secondary
+ ends concerning which there may be, and often is, agreement among
+ persons who differ in their ultimate standard; and about which
+ there does in fact prevail a much greater unanimity among thinking
+ persons, than might be supposed from their diametrical divergence
+ on the great questions of moral metaphysics" (_Essay on Bentham_).
+
+These secondary ends or principles are such matters as regard for
+health, honesty, chastity, kindness, and the like. Concerning them he
+says in his _Utilitarianism_ (ch. ii.):
+
+ "Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to
+ the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs
+ which have thus come down are rules of morality for the multitude
+ and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding
+ better.... To consider the rules of morality as improvable is one
+ thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizations entirely and
+ endeavor to test each individual action directly by the first
+ principle, is another.... Nobody argues that the act of navigation
+ is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to
+ calculate the nautical almanac. Being rational creatures, they go
+ to sea with it already calculated; and all rational creatures go
+ out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common
+ questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more
+ difficult questions of wise and foolish."
+
+=Empirical Rules Run into Fixed Customs.=--It cannot be denied that Mill
+here states considerations which are of great value in aiding present
+judgments on right and wrong. The student of history will have little
+doubt that the rules of conduct which the intuitionalist takes as
+ultimate deliverances of a moral faculty are in truth generalizations of
+the sort indicated by Mill. But the truth brought out by Mill does not
+cover the ground which needs to be covered. Such rules at best cover
+customary elements; they are based upon past habits of life, past
+natural economic and political environments. And, as the student of
+customs knows, greater store is often set upon trivial, foolish, and
+even harmful things than upon serious ones--upon fashions of
+hair-dressing, ablutions, worship of idols. Coming nearer our own
+conditions, past customs certainly tolerate and sanction many practices,
+such as war, cruel business competition, economic exploitation of the
+weak, and absence of cooperative intelligent foresight, which the more
+sensitive consciences of the day will not approve.
+
+=Hence are Unsatisfactory.=--Yet such things have been so identified
+with happiness that to forego them means misery, to alter them painful
+disturbance. To take the rules of the past with any literalness as
+criteria of judgment in the present, would be to return to the
+unprogressive morality of the regime of custom--to surrender the advance
+marked by reflective morality. Since Bentham and Mill were both
+utilitarians, it is worth noting that Bentham insisted upon the
+utilitarian standard just because he was so convinced of the
+unsatisfactory character of the kind of rules upon which Mill is
+dwelling. The "Nautical Almanac" has been _scientifically_ calculated;
+it is adapted rationally to its end; but the rules which sum up custom
+are a confused mixture of class interest, irrational sentiment,
+authoritative pronunciamento, and genuine consideration of welfare.
+
+=Empirical Rules Also Differ Widely.=--The fact is, moreover, that it is
+only when the "intermediate generalizations" are taken vaguely and
+abstractly that there is as much agreement as Mill claims. All educated
+and virtuous persons in the same country practically agree upon the
+rules of justice, benevolence, and regard for life, so long as they are
+taken in such a vague way that they mean anything in general and nothing
+in particular. Every one is in favor of justice in the abstract; but
+existing political and economic discussions regarding tariff, sumptuary
+laws, monetary standards, trades unions, trusts, the relation of capital
+and labor, the regulation or ownership of public utilities, the
+nationalization of land and industry, show that large bodies of
+intelligent and equally well-disposed people are quite capable of
+finding that the principle of justice requires exactly opposite things.
+
+Custom still forms the background of all moral life, nor can we imagine
+a state of affairs in which it should not. Customs are not external to
+individuals' courses of action; they are embodied in the habits and
+purposes of individuals; in the words of Grote (quoted above, p. 173),
+they "reign under the appearance of habitual, _self-suggested_
+tendencies." Laws, formulated and unformulated, social conventions,
+rules of manners, the general expectations of public opinion, are all of
+them sources of instruction regarding conduct. Without them the
+individual would be practically helpless in determining the right
+courses of action in the various situations in which he finds himself.
+Through them he has provided himself in advance with a list of
+questions, an organized series of points-of-view, by which to approach
+and estimate each state of affairs requiring action. Most of the moral
+judgments of every individual are framed in this way.
+
+=For Customs Conflict.=--If social customs, or individual habits, never
+conflicted with one another, this sort of guidance would suffice for the
+determination of right and wrong. But reflection is necessitated because
+opposite habits set up incompatible ends, forms of happiness between
+which choice has to be made. Hence the need of _principles in judging_.
+Principles of judgment cannot simply reinstate past rules of behavior,
+for the simple reason that as long as these rules suffice there is no
+reflection and no demand for principles. Good and evil, right and wrong,
+are embodied in the injunctions and prohibitions of customs and
+institutions and are not thought about.
+
+=Moral Import of Principles is Intellectual, Not Imperative.=--This
+brings us to the essential point in the consideration of the value of
+general principles. _Rules are practical; they are habitual ways of
+doing things. But principles are intellectual; they are useful methods
+of judging things._ The fundamental error of the intuitionalist and of
+the utilitarian (represented in the quotation from Mill) is that they
+are on the lookout for rules which will of themselves tell agents just
+what course of action to pursue; _whereas the object of moral principles
+is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to
+make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the
+particular situation in which he finds himself_. No genuine moral
+principle prescribes a specific course of action; rules[165] like
+cooking recipes, may tell just what to do and how to do it. A moral
+principle, such as that of chastity, of justice, of the golden rule,
+gives the agent a basis for looking at and examining a particular
+question that comes up. It holds before him certain possible aspects of
+the act; it warns him against taking a short or partial view of the act.
+It economizes his thinking by supplying him with the main heads by
+reference to which to consider the bearings of his desires and purposes;
+it guides him in his thinking by suggesting to him the important
+considerations for which he should be on the lookout.
+
+=Golden Rule as a Tool of Analysis.=--A moral principle, then, is not a
+command to act or forbear acting in a given way: _it is a tool for
+analyzing a special situation_, the right or wrong being determined by
+the situation in its entirety, and not by the rule as such. We sometimes
+hear it stated, for example, that the universal adoption of the Golden
+Rule would at once settle all industrial disputes and difficulties. But
+supposing that the principle were accepted in good faith by everybody;
+it would not at once tell everybody just what to do in all the
+complexities of his relations to others. When individuals are still
+uncertain of what their real good may be, it does not finally decide
+matters to tell them to regard the good of others as they would their
+own. Nor does it mean that whatever in detail we want for ourselves we
+should strive to give to others. Because I am fond of classical music it
+does not follow that I should thrust as much of it as possible upon my
+neighbors. But the "Golden Rule" does furnish us a _point of view from
+which to consider acts_; it suggests the necessity of considering how
+our acts affect the interests of others as well as our own; it tends to
+prevent partiality of regard; it warns against setting an undue estimate
+upon a particular consequence of pain or pleasure, simply because it
+happens to affect us. In short, the Golden Rule does not issue special
+orders or commands; but it does simplify judgment of the situations
+requiring intelligent deliberation.
+
+=Sympathy as Actuating Principle of a Reasonable Judgment.=--We have had
+repeated occasion (as in the discussion of intent and motive, of
+intuition and deliberate calculation) to see how artificial is the
+separation of emotion and thought from one another. As the only
+effective thought is one fused by emotion into a dominant interest, so
+the only truly general, the reasonable as distinct from the merely
+shrewd or clever thought, is the _generous_ thought. Sympathy widens our
+interest in consequences and leads us to take into account such results
+as affect the welfare of others; it aids us to count and weigh these
+consequences as counting for as much as those which touch our own honor,
+purse, or power. To put ourselves in the place of another, to see from
+the standpoint of his purposes and values, to humble our estimate of our
+own claims and pretensions to the level they would assume in the eyes of
+a sympathetic and impartial observer, is the surest way to attain
+universality and objectivity of moral knowledge. Sympathy, in short, is
+the general principle of moral knowledge, not because its commands take
+precedence of others (which they do not necessarily), but because it
+furnishes the most reliable and efficacious _intellectual_ standpoint.
+It supplies the tool, _par excellence_, for analyzing and resolving
+complex cases. As was said in our last chapter, it is the _fusion_ of
+the sympathetic impulses with others that is needed; what we now add is
+that in this fusion, sympathy supplies the _pou sto_ for an effective,
+broad, and objective survey of desires, projects, resolves, and deeds.
+It translates the formal and empty reason of Kant out of its abstract
+and theoretic character, just as it carries the cold calculations of
+utilitarianism into recognition of the common good.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+For criticisms of Kant's view of reason, see Caird, _Philosophy of
+Kant_, Vol. II., Book II., ch. ii.; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp.
+194-203 and 355-363; Fite, _Introductory Study_, pp. 173-188; Muirhead,
+_Elements of Ethics_, pp. 112-124.
+
+For intuitionalism, see Calderwood, _Handbook of Moral Philosophy_;
+Maurice, _Conscience_; Whewell, _The Elements of Morality_; Martineau,
+_Types of Ethical Theory_, Vol. II., pp. 96-115; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch.
+iii.; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, Book I., chs. viii.-ix., and Book
+III. entire, but especially ch. i.; _History of Ethics_, 170-204, and
+224-236, and _Lectures on Ethics of Green, Spencer, and Martineau_,
+361-374.
+
+For the moral sense theory, see Sidgwick, _History of Ethics_, p. 189;
+Shaftesbury, _Characteristics_; Hutcheson, _System of Moral
+Philosophy_.
+
+For casuistry, see references in Rand's _Bibliography_, Vol. III., Part
+II., p. 880.
+
+For the variability of moral rules, see Locke, _Essay on the Human
+Understanding_, Book I.; Bain, _Moral Science_, Part I., ch. iii.;
+Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I., Part II.; Williams, _Review of
+Evolutional Ethics_, pp. 423-465; Bowne, _Principles of Ethics_, ch. v.;
+Schurman, _The Ethical Import of Darwinism_; the writings of Westermarck
+and Hobhouse elsewhere referred to, and Darwin, _Descent of Man_, Part
+I., chs. iv.-v.
+
+For the nature of moral judgment and the function of reason in conduct,
+see Aristotle, Book III., chs. ii.-iii., and Book VI.; Ladd, _Philosophy
+of Conduct_, ch. vii.; Sharp, _Essay on Analysis of the Moral Judgment_,
+in Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (Garman Commemorative Volume);
+Santayana, _Life of Reason_, Vol. I., chs. x.-xii.; Bryant, _Studies in
+Character_, Part II., chs. iv.-v.
+
+For the social character of conscience, see Cooley, _Human Nature and
+the Social Order_, ch. x.
+
+For sympathy and conscience, see Adam Smith, _Theory of Moral
+Sentiments_, especially Part III., chs. i. and iv., and Part IV., chs.
+i.-iii.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, pp. 228-238.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[158] "Any one can be angry: that is quite easy. Any one can give money
+away or spend it. But to do these things to the right person, to the
+right amount, at the right time, with the right aim and in the right
+manner--this is not what any one can easily do."--ARISTOTLE, _Ethics_,
+Book II., ch. ix.
+
+[159] Compare the sentence quoted on p. 268 from Hazlitt.
+
+[160] This means Duty. This phase will be discussed in the next chapter.
+
+[161] _Kant's Theory of Ethics_, trans. by Abbott, pp. 47-51.
+
+[162] In last analysis Kant is trying to derive moral enlightenment from
+the most abstract principle of formal logic, the principle of Identity,
+that A is A!
+
+[163] A student in an ethics class once made this remark: "Conscience is
+infallible, but we should not always follow it. Sometimes we should use
+our reason."
+
+[164] Compare Locke, _Essay on the Human Understanding_, Book I., ch.
+iii.
+
+[165] Of course, the word "rule" is often used to designate a
+principle--as in the case of the phrase "golden-rule." We are speaking
+not of the words, but of their underlying ideas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE PLACE OF DUTY IN THE MORAL LIFE: SUBJECTION TO AUTHORITY
+
+
+=Conflict of Ends as Attractive and as Reasonable.=--The previous
+discussion has brought out the contrast between a Good or Satisfaction
+which is such _directly_, immediately, by appealing attractively to
+desire; and one which is such indirectly, through considerations which
+reflection brings up. As we have seen, the latter must, if entertained
+at all, arouse some direct emotional response, must be felt to be in
+some way satisfactory. But the _way_ may be quite unlike that of the end
+which attracts and holds a man irrespective of the principle brought to
+light by reflection. The one may be intense, vivid, absorbing, passing
+at once into overt action, unless checked by a contrary reason. The good
+whose claim to be good depends mainly on projection of remote
+considerations, may be theoretically recognized and yet the direct
+appeal to the particular agent at the particular time be feeble and
+pallid. The "law of the mind" may assert itself less urgently than the
+"law of the members" which wars against it.
+
+=Two Senses of Term Duty.=--This contrast gives rise to the fact of
+Duty. On one side is the rightful supremacy of the reasonable but remote
+good; on the other side is the aversion of those springs to action which
+are immediately most urgent. Between them exists the necessity of
+securing for the reasonable good efficacy in operation; or the necessity
+of redirecting the play of naturally dominant desires. Duty is also
+used, to be sure, in a looser and more external sense. To identify the
+dutiful with the right apart from conflict, to say that a man did his
+duty, may mean that he did right, irrespective of the prior state of his
+inclinations. It frequently happens that the wider and larger good which
+is developed through reflective memory and foresight is welcomed, is
+directly appreciated as good, since it is thoroughly attractive. Without
+stress and strain, without struggle, it just displaces the object which
+unreflective impulse had suggested. It is the fit and proper, the only
+sensible and wise thing, under the circumstances. The man does his duty,
+but is glad to do it, and would be troubled by the thought of another
+line of action. So far as calling the act "duty" brings in any new
+meaning, it means that the right act is one which is found to meet the
+demands, the necessities, of the situation in which it takes place. The
+Romans thus spoke of duties as _offices_, the performance of those
+functions which are appropriate to the status which every person
+occupies because of his social relations.
+
+=Conscious Conflict.=--But there are other cases in which the _right_
+end is distinctly apprehended by the person as standing in opposition to
+his natural inclinations, as a principle or law which _ought_ to be
+followed, but which _can_ be followed only by constraining the
+inclinations, by snubbing and coercing them. This state of affairs is
+well represented by the following quotation from Matthew Arnold, if we
+take it as merely describing the facts, not as implying a theory as to
+their explanation:
+
+ "All experience with conduct brings us at last to the fact of two
+ selves, or instincts, or forces--name them, however we may and
+ however we may suppose them to have arisen--contending for the
+ mastery over men: one, a movement of first impulse and more
+ involuntary, leading us to gratify any inclination that may
+ solicit us and called generally a movement of man's ordinary or
+ passing self, of sense, appetite, desire; the other a movement of
+ reflection and more voluntary, leading us to submit inclination
+ to some rule, and called generally a movement of man's higher or
+ enduring self, of reason, spirit, will."[166]
+
+We shall (I.) present what we consider the true account of this
+situation of conflict in which the sense of duty is found; (II.) turn to
+explanations which are one-sided, taking up (1) the intuitive, (2) the
+utilitarian theory; and finally (III.) return with the results of this
+criticism to a restatement of our own theory.
+
+
+Sec. 1. THE SUBJECTION OF DESIRE TO LAW
+
+Ordinary language sets before us some main facts: duty suggests what is
+due, a debt to be paid; ought is connected with owe; obligation implies
+being bound to something--as we speak of "bounden duty." We speak
+naturally of "meeting obligations"; of duties being "imposed," "laid
+upon" one. The person who is habitually careless about his duties is
+"unruly" or "lawless"; one who evades or refuses them is "unprincipled."
+These ideas suggest there is something required, exacted, having the
+sanction of law, or a regular and regulative principle; and imply
+natural aversion to the requirements exacted, a preference for something
+else. Hence duty as a conscious factor means constraint of inclination;
+an unwillingness or reluctance which _should_ be overcome but which it
+is difficult to surmount, requiring an effort which only adequate
+recognition of the rightful supremacy of the dutiful end will enable one
+to put forth. Thus we speak of interest conflicting with principle, and
+desire with duty. While they are inevitably bound together, it will be
+convenient to discuss separately (1) Inclination and impulse as averse
+to duty, and (2) Duty as having authority, as expressing law.
+
+=1. Inclination Averse to Duty.=--Directly and indirectly, all desires
+root in certain fundamental organic wants and appetites. Conduct,
+behavior, implies a living organism. If this organism were not equipped
+with an intense instinctive tendency to keep itself going, to sustain
+itself, it would soon cease to be amid the menaces, difficulties,
+rebuffs, and failures of life. Life means appetites, like hunger,
+thirst, sex; instincts like anger, fear, and hope, which are almost
+imperious in their struggles for satisfaction. They do not arise from
+reflection, but antedate it; their existence does not depend upon
+consideration of consequences, but their existence it is which tends to
+call out reflection. Their very presence in a healthy organism means a
+certain reservoir of energy which overflows almost spontaneously. They
+are impulsive. Such tendencies, then, constitute an essential and
+fundamental part of the capacities of a person; their realization is
+involved in one's happiness. In all this there is nothing abnormal nor
+immoral. But a human being is something more than a mere demand for the
+satisfaction of instincts of food, sex, and protection. If we admit (as
+the theory of organic evolution requires) that all other desires and
+purposes are _ultimately_ derived from these tendencies of the organism,
+still it is true that the refined and highly developed forms exist side
+by side with crude, organic forms, and that the simultaneous
+satisfaction of the two types, just as they stand, is impossible.
+
+=Organic and Reflectively Formed Tendencies Conflict.=--Even if it be
+true, as it may well be, that the desires and purposes connected with
+property were developed out of instincts having to do with food for self
+and offspring, it is still true that the developed desires do not wholly
+displace those out of which they developed. The presence of the purposes
+elaborated by thought side by side with the more organic demands causes
+strife and the need of resolution. The accumulation of property may
+involve subordinating the immediate urgency of hunger; property as an
+institution implies that one is not free to satisfy his appetite just as
+he pleases, but may have to postpone or forego satisfaction, because the
+food supply belongs to another; or that he can satisfy hunger only
+through some labor which in itself is disagreeable to him. Similarly the
+family springs originally out of the instinct of reproduction. But the
+purposes and plans which go with family life are totally inconsistent
+with the mere gratification of sexual desire in its casual and
+spontaneous appearance. The refined, highly developed, and complex
+purposes exact a checking, a regulation and subordination of
+inclinations as they first spring up--a control to which the
+inclinations are not of themselves prone and against which they may
+rebelliously assert themselves.
+
+=Duty May Reside on the More Impulsive Side.=--It would be a great
+mistake, however, to limit the need of subordination simply to the
+unruly agencies of appetite. Habits which have been consciously or
+reflectively formed, even when in their original formation these habits
+had the sanction and approval of reason, require control. The habits of
+a professional man, of an investigator, or a lawyer, for example, have
+been formed through careful and persistent reflection directed upon ends
+adjudged right. Virtues of painstaking industry, of perseverance, have
+been formed; untimely and unseemly desires have been checked. But as an
+outcome these habits, and the desires and purposes that express them,
+have perhaps become all-engrossing. Occupation is preoccupation. It
+encroaches upon the attention needed for other concerns. The skill
+gained tends to shut the individual up to narrow matters and to shut out
+other "universes" of good which should be desired. Domestic and civic
+responsibilities are perhaps felt to be insignificant details or
+irritating burdens unworthy of attention. Thus a reflective habit,
+legitimate in itself, right in its right place, may give rise to
+desires and ends which involve a corrosive selfishness.
+
+Moreover, that the insubordination does not reside in appetites or
+impulses just as appetites and impulses, is seen in the fact that duty
+may lie on the side of a purpose connected with them, and be asserted
+against the force of a habit formed under the supervision of thought.
+The student or artist may find his pursuit makes him averse to
+satisfying the needful claims of hunger and healthy exercise. The
+prudent business man may find himself undutifully cold to the prompting
+of an impulse of pity; the student of books or special intellectual or
+artistic ends may find duty on the side of some direct human impulse.
+
+=Statement of Problem.=--Such considerations show that we cannot
+attribute the conflict of duty and inclination simply to the existence
+of appetites and unreflective impulses, as if these were in and of
+themselves opposed to regulation by any principle. We must seek for an
+explanation which will apply equally to appetites and to habits of
+thought. What is there common to the situations of him who feels it his
+duty to check the satisfaction of strong hunger until others have been
+properly served, and of the scientific investigator who finds it his
+duty to check the exercise of his habit of thinking in order that he may
+satisfy the demands of his body?
+
+=Statement of Explanation.=--Any habit, like any appetite or instinct,
+represents something formed, set; whether this has occurred in the
+history of the race or of the individual makes little difference to its
+established urgency. Habit is second, if not first, nature. (1) Habit
+represents _facilities_; what is set, organized, is relatively easy. It
+_marks the line of least resistance_. A habit of reflection, so far as
+it is a specialized habit, is as easy and natural to follow as an
+organic appetite. (2) Moreover, the exercise of any easy, frictionless
+habit is pleasurable. It is a commonplace that use and wont deprive
+situations of originally disagreeable features. (3) Finally, a formed
+habit is an active _tendency_. It only needs an appropriate stimulus to
+set it going; frequently the mere absence of any strong obstacle serves
+to release its pent-up energy. It is a propensity to act in a certain
+way whenever opportunity presents. Failure to function is uncomfortable
+and arouses feelings of irritation or lack.
+
+Reluctance to the right end, an aversion requiring to be overcome, if at
+all, by recognition of the superior value of the right end, is then to
+be accounted for _on the ground of the inertia or momentum of any
+organized, established tendency_. This momentum gives the common ground
+to instinctive impulses and deliberately formed habits. The momentum
+represents the _old_, an adaptation to familiar, customary conditions.
+So far as similar conditions recur, the formed power functions
+economically and effectively, supplying ease, promptness, certainty, and
+agreeableness to the execution of an act.
+
+But if new, changed conditions require a serious readjustment of the old
+habit or appetite, the natural tendency will be to resist this demand.
+Thus we have precisely the traits of reluctance and constraint which
+mark the consciousness of duty. A self without habits, one loose and
+fluid, in which change in one direction is just as easy as in another,
+would not have the sense of duty. A self with no new possibilities,
+rigidly set in conditions and perfectly accommodated to them, would not
+have it. But definite, persistent, urgent tendencies to act in a given
+way, occurring at the same time with other incompatible tendencies which
+represent the self more adequately and yet are not organized into
+habits, afford the conditions of the sense of restraint. If for any
+reason the unorganized tendency is judged to be the truer expression of
+self, we have also the sense of lawful constraint. _The constraint of
+appetite and desire is a phenomenon of practical readjustment, within
+the structure of character, due to conflict of tendencies so
+irreconcilable in their existing forms as to demand radical
+redirection._
+
+When an appetite is in accord with those habits of an individual which
+enable him to perform his social functions, or which naturally accrue
+from his social relations, it is legitimate and good; when it conflicts,
+it is illicit, it is lust; we call it by hard names and we demand that
+it be curbed; we regard its force as a menace to the integrity of the
+agent and a threat to social order. When the reflective habits of an
+individual come into conflict with natural appetites and impulses, the
+manifestation of which would enlarge or make more certain the powers of
+the individual in his full relations to others, it is the reflective
+habits which have to be held in and redirected at the cost of whatever
+disagreeableness.
+
+=(2) The Authority of Duty.=--A duty, in Kant's words, is a
+_categorical_ imperative--it claims the absolute right of way as against
+immediate inclination. That which, on one side, is the constraint of
+natural desire, is, on the other, the authoritative claim of the right
+end to regulate. Over against the course of action most immediately
+urgent, most easy and comfortable, so congenial as at once to motivate
+action unless checked, stands another course, representing a wider and
+more far-reaching point of view, and hence furnishing the rational end
+of the situation. However lacking in intensity, however austere this
+end, it stands for the whole self, and is therefore felt to be rightly
+supreme over any partial tendency. But since it looks to realization in
+an uncertain future, rather than permission just to let go what is most
+urgent at the moment, it requires effort, hard work, work of attention
+more or less repulsive and uncongenial. Hence that sense of stress and
+strain, of being pulled one way by inclination and another by the claims
+of right, so characteristic of an experience of obligation.
+
+=Social Character of Duties.=--But this statement describes the
+experience only on its formal side. In the concrete, that end which
+possesses claim to regulate desire is the one which grows out of the
+social position or function of the agent, out of _a course of action to
+which he is committed by a regular, socially established connection
+between himself and others_. The man who has assumed the position of a
+husband and a parent has by that very fact entered upon a _line_ of
+action, something continuous, running far into the future; something so
+fundamental that it modifies and pervades his other activities,
+requiring them to be coordinated or rearranged from its point of view.
+The same thing holds, of course, of the calling of a doctor, a lawyer, a
+merchant, a banker, a judge, or other officer of the State. Each social
+calling implies a continuous, regular mode of action, binding together
+into a whole a multitude of acts occurring at different times, and
+giving rise to definite expectations and demands on the part of others.
+Every relationship in life, is, as it were, _a tacit or expressed
+contract with others_, committing one, by the simple fact that he
+occupies that relationship, to a corresponding mode of action. Every
+one, willy-nilly, occupies a social position; if not a parent, he is a
+child; if not an officer, then a citizen of the State; if not pursuing
+an occupation, he is in preparation for an occupation, or else is living
+upon the results of the labors of others.
+
+=Connection with Selfhood.=--Every one, in short, is in _general
+relations to others_,--relationships which enter so internally and so
+intimately into the very make-up of his being that he is not morally
+free to pick and choose, saying, this good is really my affair, that
+other one not. The mode of action which is required by the fact that the
+person is a member of a complex social network is a more final
+expression of his own nature than is the temporarily intense instinctive
+appetite, or the habit which has become "second nature." It is not for
+the individual to say, the latter is attractive and therefore really
+mine, while the former is repellant and therefore an alien intruder, to
+be surrendered to only if it cannot be evaded. From this point of view,
+the conflict of desire and duty, of interest and principle, expresses
+itself as a conflict between tendencies which have got organized into
+one's _fixed character_ and which therefore appeal to him just as he is;
+and those tendencies which relate to the development of a larger self, a
+self which should take fuller account of social relations. The Kantian
+theory emphasizes the fact brought out above: _viz._, that duty
+represents the authority of an act expressing the reasonable and
+"universal" self over a casual and partial self; while the utilitarian
+theory emphasizes the part played by social institutions and demands in
+creating and enforcing both special duties and the sense of duty in
+general.
+
+
+Sec. 2. KANTIAN THEORY
+
+="Accord with" Duty versus "from" Duty.=--Kant points out that acts
+may be "in accordance with duty" and yet not be done "from duty."
+"It is always, for example, a matter of duty that a dealer should not
+overcharge an inexperienced purchaser, and wherever there is much
+commerce the prudent tradesman does not overcharge.... Men are thus
+honestly served; but this is not enough to prove that the tradesman so
+acted from duty and from principles of honesty; his own advantage
+required it" (_Kant's Theory of Ethics_, Abbott's translation, p. 13).
+In such a case the act externally viewed is in _accordance_ with duty;
+morally viewed, it proceeds from selfish calculation of personal profit,
+not from duty. This is true in general of all acts which, though
+outwardly right, spring from considerations of expediency, and are based
+on the consideration that "honesty (or whatever) is the best policy."
+Persons are naturally inclined to take care of their health, their
+property, their children, or whatever belongs to them. Such acts, no
+matter how much they accord with duty, are not done _from duty_, but
+from inclination. If a man is suffering, unfortunate, desirous of death,
+and yet cherishes his life with no love for it, but from the duty to do
+so, his motive has truly moral value. So if a mother cares for her
+child, _because_ she recognizes that it is her duty, the act is truly
+moral.
+
+=From Duty alone Moral.=--According to Kant, then, acts alone have moral
+import that are consciously performed "from duty," that is, with
+recognition of its authority as their animating spring. "_The idea of
+good and evil (in their moral sense) must not be determined before the
+moral law, but only after it and by means of it_" (_Ibid._, p. 154). All
+our desires and inclinations seek naturally for an _end_ which is
+good--for happiness, success, achievement. No one of them nor all of
+them put together, then, can possibly supply the motive of acting _from_
+duty. Hence duty and its authority must spring from another source, from
+reason itself, which supplies the consciousness of a law which _ought_
+to be the motive of every act, whether it is or not. The utilitarians
+completely reverse the truth of morals when they say that the idea of
+the good end comes first and the "right" is that which realizes the good
+end.
+
+=Dual Constitution of Man.=--We are all familiar with the notion that
+man has a dual constitution; that he is a creature both of sense and
+spirit; that he has a carnal and an ideal nature; a lower and a higher
+self, a self of appetite and of reason. Now Kant's theory of duty is a
+peculiar version of this common notion. Man's special ends and purposes
+all spring from desires and inclinations. These are all for personal
+happiness and hence without moral worth. They form man's sensuous,
+appetitive nature, which if not "base" in itself easily becomes so,
+because it struggles with principle for the office of supplying motives
+for action. The principle of a law absolutely binding, requires the
+complete expulsion of the claim of desires to _motivate_ action. (See
+_Kant's Theory_, pp. 70-79; 132-136; 159-163.) If a man were an animal,
+he would have only appetite to follow; if he were a god or angel, he
+would have only reason. Being man, being a peculiar compound of sense
+and reason, he has put upon him the problem of resisting the natural
+prompting of inclination and of accepting the duty of acting from
+reverence for duty.
+
+=Criticism of Kant's Theory.=--There is an undoubted fact back of Kant's
+conception which gives it whatever plausibility it has--the fact that
+inclinations which are not necessarily evil tend to claim a controlling
+position, a claim which has to be resisted. The peculiarity of Kant's
+interpretation lies in its complete and final separation of the two
+aspects, "higher" and "lower," the appetitive and rational, of man's
+nature, and it is upon this separation, accordingly, that our discussion
+will be directed.
+
+=I. Duty and the Affections.=--In the first place, Kant's absolute
+separation of sense or appetite from reason and duty, because of its
+necessary disparagement of the affections leads to a formal and pedantic
+view of morality. It is one thing to say that desire as it _first_ shows
+itself _sometimes_ prompts to a morally inadequate end; it is quite
+another thing to say that _any_ acceptance of an end of desire as a
+motive is morally wrong--that the act to be right must be first brought
+under a conscious acknowledgment of some law or principle. Only the
+exigencies of a ready-made theory would lead any one to think that
+habitual purposes that express the habitually dominant tendencies and
+powers of the agent, may not suffice to keep morally sound the main
+tenor of behavior; that it is impossible for regard for right ends to
+become organized into character and to be fused into working unity with
+natural impulses. Only a metaphysical theory regarding the separation
+of sense and reason in man leads to the denial of this fact.
+
+Between the merchant who is honest in his weights and fixed in his
+prices merely because he calculates that such a course is to his own
+advantage, and the merchant (if such a person could exist) who should
+never sell a spool of thread or a paper of pins without having first
+reminded himself that his ultimate motive for so doing was respect for
+the law of duty, there is the ordinary merchant who is honest because he
+has the desires characteristic of an honest man. Schiller has made fun
+of the artificial stringency of Kant's theory in some verses which
+represent a disciple coming to Kant with his perplexity:
+
+ "Willingly serve I my friends, but I do it, alas with affection.
+ Hence I am plagued with this doubt, virtue I have not attained!"
+
+to which he received the reply:
+
+ "This is your only resource, you must stubbornly seek to abhor them;
+ Then you can do with disgust that which the law may enjoin."
+
+These verses are a caricature of Kant's position; he does not require
+that affections should be crushed, but that they should be stamped with
+acknowledgment of law before being accepted as motives. But the verses
+bring out the absurd element in the notion that the affections and
+inclinations may not of themselves be morally adequate springs to
+action,--as if a man could not eat his dinner simply because he was
+hungry, or be amiable to a companion because he wanted to be, or relieve
+distress because his compassionate nature urged him to it.
+
+It is worth while noting that some moralists have gone to the opposite
+extreme and have held that an act is not right unless it expresses the
+overflowing spontaneity of the affections; that a man's act is only
+imperfectly right when he performs it not from affection, but from
+coercion by duty. Thus Emerson speaks of men who "do by knowledge what
+the stones do by structure." And again, "We love characters in
+proportion as they are impulsive and spontaneous. When we see a soul
+whose acts are all regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank
+God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel
+and say, 'Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance to all his
+native devils.'" The facts seem to be that while, in a good man, natural
+impulses and formed habits are adequate motive powers under ordinary
+conditions, there are times when an end, somewhat weak in its motive
+force because it does not express an habitually dominant power of the
+self, needs to be reenforced by associations which have gathered at all
+periods of his past around the experience of good. There is a certain
+reservoir of emotional force which, while far from fluid, is capable of
+transfer and application, especially in a conscientious person. Kant
+criticizes the moral sense theory on the ground that "in order to
+imagine the vicious man tormented with a sense of his transgressions, it
+must first represent him as morally good in the main trend of his
+character" (Abbott, p. 128). Well, a man who is capable of making appeal
+to the sense of duty in general, is the one in whom love of good is
+already dominant.
+
+=II. Tendency to Fanaticism and Idealization of Authority.=--Kant's
+theory of fixed and final separation between desire and reason leads us
+into a fatal dilemma; either a right end is impossible, or any end is
+right provided we fall back on a belief that it is our duty to perform
+it. Kant holds that every concrete end, every definite purpose which we
+entertain, comes from desire. Law utters no specific command except "do
+your duty"; it stamps an end of desire as right only when it is pursued,
+not because it is an end of desire, but "from duty." The actual end
+which is before us is, in any case, supplied through inclination and
+desire. Reason furnishes _principle_ as a _motive_. We have here, in
+another form, the separation of end and motive which has already
+occupied us (p. 248). End and motive are so disconnected, so irrelevant
+to one another, that we have no alternative except either to condemn
+every end, because, being prompted by desire, it falls so far short of
+the majesty of duty; or else fanatically to persist in any course when
+once we have formally brought it under the notion of duty.
+
+The latter alternative would be the one chosen by a truly Kantian agent
+because it is alone possible in practice. But the moral fanatic does
+about as much evil in the world as the man of no moral principle.
+Religious wars, persecutions, intolerance, harsh judgment of others,
+obstinate persistence in a course of action once entered upon in spite
+of the testimony of experience to the harm that results; blind devotion
+to narrow and one-sided aims; deliberate opposition to art, culture,
+social amenities, recreations, or whatever the "man of principle"
+happens to find obnoxious: pharisaical conviction of superiority, of
+being the peculiar, chosen instrument of the moral law;--these and the
+countless ills that follow in their wake, are inevitable effects of
+erecting the isolated conviction of duty into a sufficient motive of
+action. So far as these evils do not actually flow from an acceptance of
+the Kantian principle, it is because that has been promulgated and for
+the most part adopted, where reverence for authority and law is strong.
+In Germany the Kantian philosophy has, upon the whole, served as a help
+in criticizing law and procedure on the basis of their rationality,
+while it has also served as a convenient stamp of rational sanction upon
+a politically authoritative regime, already fairly reasonable, as such
+matters go, in the content of its legislation and administration.
+
+=III. Meaning of Duty for Duty's Sake.=--It is a sound principle to do
+our duty _as_ our duty, and not for the sake of something else. "Duty
+for duty's sake" means, in truth, _an act for the act's own sake_; the
+gift of cold water, the word of encouragement, the sweeping of the room,
+the learning of the lesson, the selling of the goods, the painting of
+the picture, because they are the things really called for at a given
+time, and hence their own excuses for being. _No moral act is a means to
+anything beyond itself,--not even to morality._ But, upon Kant's theory,
+duty for duty's sake means a special act not for its own sake, but for
+the sake of abstract principle. Just as the hedonists regard a special
+act as a mere means to happiness, so Kant makes the concrete act a mere
+means to virtue. As there is a "hedonistic paradox," namely that the way
+to get happiness is to forget it, to devote ourselves to things and
+persons about us; so there is a "moralistic" paradox, that the way to
+get goodness is to cease to think of it--as something separate--and to
+devote ourselves to the realization of the full value of the practical
+situations in which we find ourselves. Men can really think of their
+"duty" only when they are thinking of specific things to be done; to
+think of Duty at large or in the abstract is one of the best ways of
+avoiding doing it, or of doing it in a partial and perverted way.
+
+=Summary of Criticism of Kant.=--To sum up, the theory which regards
+duty as having its source in a rational self which is independent of and
+above the self of inclination and affection (1) deprives the habitual
+desires and affections, which make the difference between one concrete
+character and another, of moral significance; (2) commits us to an
+unenlightened performance of what is called duty irrespective of its
+real goodness; and (3) makes moral principle a remote abstraction,
+instead of the vivifying soul of a concrete deed. Its strongest point,
+its insistence upon the _autonomous_ character of duty, or that duty is
+organically connected with the self in some of its phases or functions,
+will appear more clearly as we contrast it with the utilitarian theory.
+
+
+
+Sec. 3. THE UTILITARIAN THEORY OF DUTY
+
+=Problem of Duty on Hedonistic Basis.=--The utilitarians' explanation of
+the constraint of desire by the authority of right is framed to meet the
+peculiar difficulty in which their hedonistic theory places them. If
+pleasure is the good, and if all desire is naturally for the good, why
+should desire have to be constrained? How can such a thing as "duty"
+exist at all? For to say that a man is obliged or bound to seek that
+which he just can't help seeking is absurd. There is, according to the
+utilitarian, a difference, however, between the pleasure which is the
+object of desire and that which is the standard of judgment. The former
+is the person's own pleasure; it is private. The happiness which
+measures the rightness of the act is that of all persons who are
+affected by it. In view of this divergence, there must, if right action
+is to occur, be agencies which operate upon the individual so as to make
+him find his personal pleasure in that which conduces to the general
+welfare. These influences are the expectations and demands of _others so
+far as they attach consequences in the way of punishment, of suffering,
+and of reward and pleasure, to the deeds of an individual_.
+
+In this way the natural inclination of an individual towards a certain
+pleasure, or his natural revulsion from a certain pain, may be checked
+and transformed by recognition that if he seeks the pleasure, others
+will inflict more than an equivalent pain, or if he bears the pain,
+others will reward him with more than compensating pleasures. In such
+cases, we have the fact of duty or obligation. There is constraint of
+first inclination through recognition of superior power, this power
+being asserted in its expressly declared intention of rewarding and
+penalizing according as its prescriptions are or are not followed. These
+are the factors: (1) demands, expectations, rules externally imposed;
+(2) consequences in the way of proffered reward of pleasure, and penalty
+of pain; (3) resulting constraint of the natural manifestation of
+desires. In the main, the theory is based on the analogy of legal
+obligations.[167]
+
+=(a) Bentham's Account.=--Bentham dislikes the very word duty; and
+speaks preferably of the "sanctions" of an act. The following quotations
+will serve to confirm the foregoing statements.
+
+ "The happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed
+ is ... the sole standard, in conformity to which each individual
+ _ought_ to be made to fashion his behavior. But whether it be
+ this, or anything else that is to be done, there is nothing by
+ which a man can ultimately be _made_ to do it, but either pain or
+ pleasure."
+
+A kind of pain or pleasure which tends to _make_ an individual find his
+own good in the good of the community is a _sanction_. Of these Bentham
+mentions four kinds, of which the first alone is not due to the will of
+others, but is _physical_. Thus the individual may check his inclination
+to drink by a thought of the ills that flow from drunkenness.
+Metaphorically, then, he may be said to have a duty not to drink;
+strictly speaking, however, this is his own obvious interest. The
+sanctions proper are (a) political, consequences in the way of pleasure
+and pain (especially pain) attached to injunctions and prohibitions by a
+legal superior; (b) popular, the consequences following from the more
+indefinite influence of public opinion--such as being "sent to
+Coventry," being shunned, rendered unpopular, losing reputation, or
+honor, etc.; and (3) religious, penalties of hell and rewards of heaven
+attached to action by a divine being, or similar penances and rewards
+by the representatives on earth (church, priests, etc.) of this divine
+being.[168]
+
+=Value and Deficiencies of This View.=--The strong point of this
+explanation of duty is obviously that it recognizes the large, the very
+large, role played by social institutions, regulations, and demands in
+bringing home to a person the fact that certain acts, whether he is
+naturally so inclined or not, should be performed. But its weak point is
+that it tends to identify duty with coercion; to change the "ought" if
+not into a physical "must," at least into the psychological "must" of
+fear of pain and hope of pleasure. Hope of reward and fear of penalty
+are real enough motives in human life; but acts performed mainly or
+solely on their account do not, in the unprejudiced judgment of mankind,
+rank very high morally. Habitually to appeal to such motives is rather
+to weaken than to strengthen the tendencies in the individual which make
+for right action. The difficulty lies clearly in the purely _external_
+character of the "sanctions," and this in turn is due to the fact that
+the obligations imposed by the demands and expectancies of others do not
+have any intrinsic connection with the character of the individual of
+whom they are exacted. They are wholly external burdens and impositions.
+
+The individual, with his desires and his pleasures, being made up out of
+particular states of feeling, is complete in himself. Social
+relationships must then be alien and external; if they modify in any way
+the existing body of feelings they are artificial constraints. One
+individual merely _happens_ to live side by side with other individuals,
+who are in themselves isolated, and are complete in their isolation. If
+their external acts conflict, it may be necessary to invade and change
+the body of feelings which make up the self from which the act flows.
+Hence duty.
+
+The later development of utilitarianism tended to get away from this
+psychical and atomic individualism; and to conceive the good of an
+individual as including _within_ himself relations to others. So far as
+this was done, the demands of others, public opinion, laws, etc., became
+factors _in the development of the individual, and in arousing him to an
+adequate sense of what his good is, and of interest in effecting it_.
+Later utilitarianism dwells less than Bentham upon external sanctions,
+and more upon an unconscious shaping of the individual's character and
+motives through imitation, education, and all the agencies which mould
+the individual's desires into natural agreement with the social type.
+While it is John Stuart Mill who insists most upon the internal and
+qualitative change of disposition that thus takes place,[169] it is Bain
+and Spencer who give the most detailed account of the methods by which
+it is brought about.
+
+=(b) Bain's Account.=--His basis agrees with Bentham's: "The proper
+meaning, or import, of the terms (duty, obligation) refers to that class
+of action which is enforced by the sanction of punishment" (Bain,
+_Emotions and Will_, p. 286). But he sets less store by political
+legislation and the force of vague public opinion, and more by the
+gradual and subtle processes of family education. The lesson of
+obedience, that there are things to be done whether one wishes or no, is
+impressed upon the child almost unremittingly from the very first moment
+of life. There are three stages in the complete evolution of the sense
+of duty. The first, the lowest and that beyond which some persons never
+go, is that in which "susceptibility to pleasure and pain is made use
+of to bring about obedience, and a mental association is rapidly formed
+between the obedience and apprehended pain, more or less magnified by
+fear." The fact that punishment may be kept up until the child desists
+from the act "leaves on his mind a certain dread and awful impression as
+connected with forbidden actions." Here we have in its germ conscience,
+acknowledgment of duty, in its most external form.
+
+A child in a good home (and a citizen in a good state) soon adds other
+associations. The command is uttered, the penalty threatened, by those
+whom he admires, respects, and loves. This element brings in a new
+dread--the fear of giving pain to the beloved object. Such dread is more
+disinterested. It centers rather about the point of view from which the
+act is held wrong than about the thought of harm to self. As
+intelligence develops, the person apprehends the positive ends, the
+goods, which are protected by the command put on him; he sees the use
+and reason of the prohibition to which he is subject, and approving of
+what it safeguards, approves the restriction itself. "A new motive is
+added on and begirds the action with a threefold fear.... If the duty
+prescribed has been approved of by the mind as _protective of the
+general interests of persons engaging our sympathies_, the violation of
+this on our part affects us with all the pain that we feel from
+inflicting _an injury upon those interests_."
+
+=Transformation into an Internal Power.=--When the child appreciates
+"_the reasons for the command, the character of conscience is entirely
+transformed_." The fear which began as fear of the penalty that a
+superior power may inflict, adds to itself the fear of displeasing a
+beloved person; and is finally transformed into the dread of injuring
+interests the worth of which the individual appreciates and in which he
+shares. The sense of duty now "stands upon an independent foundation."
+It is an internal "ideal resemblance of public authority," "an imitation
+(or facsimile) within ourselves of the government without us." "Regard
+is now had to the intent and meaning of the law and not to the mere fact
+of its being prescribed by some power." Thus there is developed a sense
+of obligation in general, which may be detached from the particular
+deeds which were originally imposed under the sanction of penalty, and
+transferred to new ends which have never even been socially imposed,
+which the individual has perhaps for the first time conceived within
+himself. "The feeling and habit of obligation" which was generated from
+social pressure remains, but as a distinct individually cherished thing
+(Bain, _Emotions and Will_, p. 319 n.). This view of the _final_ sense
+of obligation thus approximates Kant's view of the autonomous character
+of duty.
+
+=(c) Spencer's Account.=--Herbert Spencer (like Bentham) lays emphasis
+upon the restraining influence of various social influences, but lays
+stress, as Bentham does not, upon the _internal_ changes effected by
+long-continued, unremitting pressure exercised through the entire period
+of human evolution. Taken in itself, the consciousness of duty--the
+distinctively moral consciousness--is the control of proximate ends by
+remote ones, of simple by complex aims, of the sensory or presentative
+by the ideal or representative. An undeveloped individual or race lives
+and acts in the present; the mature is controlled by foresight of an
+indefinitely distant future. The thief who steals is actuated by a
+simple feeling, the mere impulse of acquisition; the business man
+conducts his acquisition in view of highly complex considerations of
+property and ownership. A low-grade intelligence acts only upon sensory
+stimulus, immediately present; a developed mind is moved by elaborate
+intellectual constructions, by imaginations and ideas which far outrun
+the observed or observable scene. Each step of the development of
+intelligence, of culture, whether in the individual or the race, is
+dependent upon ability to _subordinate_ the immediate simple,
+physically present tendency and aim to the remote, compound, and only
+ideally present intention (Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I.,
+Part I, ch. vii.).
+
+=Subordination of Near to Remote Good Dependent on Social
+Influences.=--"The conscious relinquishment of immediate and special
+good to gain distant and general good ... is a cardinal trait of the
+self-restraint called moral." But this develops out of forms of
+restraint which are not moral; where the "relinquishment" and
+subordination of the present and temporary good is not consciously
+willed by the individual in view of a conscious appreciation of a
+distant and inclusive good; but where action in view of the latter is
+forced upon the individual by outside authority, operating by menace,
+and having the sanction of fear. These outside controls are three in
+number: political or legal; supernatural, priestly, or religious; and
+popular. All these external controls, working through dread of pain and
+promise of reward, bring about, however, in the individual a habit of
+looking to the remote, rather than to the proximate, end. At first the
+thought of these extrinsic consequences, those which do not flow from
+the act but from the reaction of others to it, is mixed up with the
+thought of its own proper consequences. But this association causes
+attention at least to be fixed upon intrinsic consequences that, because
+of their remoteness and complexity, might otherwise escape attention.
+Gradually the thought of them grows in clearness and efficacy and
+dissociates itself as a motive from the externally imposed consequences,
+and there is a control which alone is truly moral.
+
+=The Internal Sanction.=--
+
+ "The truly moral deterrent from murder, is not constituted by a
+ representation of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation
+ of tortures in hell as a consequence, or by a representation of
+ the horror and hatred excited in fellow-men; but by a
+ representation of the _necessary natural results_--the infliction
+ of death agony on the victim, the destruction of all his
+ possibilities of happiness, the entailed sufferings to his
+ belongings" (Spencer, _Ibid._, p. 120).
+
+The external constraints thus serve as a schoolmaster to bring the race
+and the individual to internal restraint. Gradually the abstract sense
+of coerciveness, authoritativeness, the need of controlling the present
+by the future good is disentangled, and there arises the sense of duty
+in general. But even this "is transitory and will diminish as fast as
+moralization increases" (_Ibid._, p. 127). Persistence in performance of
+a duty makes it a pleasure; an habitually exercised obligation is
+naturally agreeable.
+
+In the present state of evolutionary development, obligation, or the
+demands made by the external environment, and spontaneous inclination,
+or the demand of the organism, cannot coincide. But at the goal of
+evolution, the organism and environment will be in perfect adjustment.
+Actions congenial to the former and appropriate to the latter will
+completely coincide. "In their proper times and places, and proportions,
+the moral sentiments will guide men just as spontaneously and adequately
+as now do the sensations" (_Ibid._, p. 129).
+
+=Criticism of Utilitarianism.=--The utilitarian account of the
+development of the consciousness of duty or its emphasis upon concrete
+facts of social arrangements and education affords a much-needed
+supplement to the empty and abstract formalism of Kant. (i.) The
+individual is certainly brought to his actual recognition of specific
+duties and to his consciousness of obligation or moral law in general
+through social influences. Bain insists more upon the family training
+and discipline of its immature members; Bentham and Spencer more upon
+the general institutional conditions, or the organization of government,
+law, judicial procedure, crystallized custom, and public opinion. In
+reality, these two conditions imply and reenforce each other. It is
+through the school of the family, for the most part, that the meaning
+of the requirements of the larger and more permanent institutions are
+brought home to the individual; while, on the other hand, the family
+derives the aims and values which it enforces upon the attention of its
+individual members mainly from the larger society in which it finds its
+own setting. (ii.) The later utilitarianism, in its insistence upon an
+"internal sanction," upon the ideal personal, or free facsimile of
+public authority, upon regard for "intrinsic consequences," corrects the
+weak point in Bentham (who relies so unduly upon mere threat of
+punishment and mere fear of pain) and approximates in practical effect,
+though not in theory, Kant's doctrine of the connection of duty with the
+rational or "larger" self which is social, even if individual. Even in
+its revised version utilitarianism did not wholly escape from the rigid
+unreal separation between the selfhood of the agent and his social
+surroundings forced upon it by its hedonistic psychology.
+
+=Fictitious Theory of Nature of Self.=--The supposition that the
+individual starts with mere love of private pleasure, and that, if he
+ever gets beyond to consideration of the good of others, it is because
+others have forced their good upon him by interfering with his private
+pleasures, is pure fiction. The requirements, encouragements, and
+approbations of others react not primarily upon the pleasures and
+calculations of the individual, but upon his _activities_, upon his
+inclinations, desires, habits. There is a common defect in the
+utilitarian and Kantian psychology. Both neglect the importance of the
+active, the organically spontaneous and direct tendencies which enter
+into the individual. Both assume unreal "_states_ of consciousness,"
+passive sensations, and feelings. Active tendencies may be internally
+modified and redirected by the very conditions and consequences of their
+own exercise. Family discipline, jural influences, public opinion, may
+do little, or they may do much. But their educative influence is as far
+from the mere association of feelings of pleasure and pain as it is
+from Kant's purely abstract law. _Social influences enable an individual
+to realize the weight and import of the socially available and helpful
+manifestations of the tendencies of his own nature and to discriminate
+them from those which are socially harmful or useless._ When the two
+conflict, the perception of the former is the recognition of duties as
+distinct from _mere_ inclinations.
+
+
+Sec. 3. FINAL STATEMENT
+
+=Duty and a Growing Character.=--Duty is what is owed by a partial
+isolated self embodied in established, facile, and urgent tendencies, to
+that ideal self which is presented in aspirations which, since they are
+not yet formed into habits, have no organized hold upon the self and
+which can get organized into habitual tendencies and interests only by a
+more or less painful and difficult reconstruction of the habitual self.
+For Kant's fixed and absolute separation between the self of inclination
+and the self of reason, we substitute the relative and shifting
+distinction between those factors of self which have become so
+definitely organized into set habits that they take care of themselves,
+and those other factors which are more precarious, less crystallized,
+and which depend therefore upon conscious acknowledgment and
+intentionally directed affection. The consciousness of duty grows out of
+the complex character of the self; the fact that at any given time, it
+has tendencies relatively set, ingrained, and embodied in fixed habits,
+while it also has tendencies in process of making, looking to the
+future, taking account of unachieved possibilities. The former give the
+solid relatively formed elements of character; the latter, its ideal or
+unrealized possibilities. Each must play into the other; each must help
+the other out.
+
+The conflict of duty and desire is thus an accompaniment of a _growing_
+self. Spencer's complete disappearance of obligation would mean an
+exhausted and fossilized self; wherever there is progress, tension
+arises between what is already accomplished and what is possible. In a
+being whose "reach should exceed his grasp," a conflict within the self
+making for the readjustment of the direction of powers must always be
+found. The value of continually _having to meet the expectations and
+requirements of others is in keeping the agent from resting on his oars,
+from falling back on habits already formed as if they were final_. The
+phenomena of duty in all their forms are thus phenomena attendant upon
+the expansion of ends and the reconstruction of character. So far,
+accordingly, as the recognition of duty is capable of operating as a
+distinct reenforcing motive, it operates most effectively, not as an
+interest in duty, or law in the abstract, but as an interest in progress
+in the face of the obstacles found within character itself.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+The most important references on the subject of duty are given in the
+text. To these may be added: Ladd, _Philosophy of Conduct_, chs. v. and
+xv.; Mackenzie, _Manual_, Part I., ch. iv.; Green, _Prolegomena_, pp.
+315-320, 353-354 and 381-388; Sharp, _International Journal of Ethics_,
+Vol. II., pp. 500-513; Muirhead, _Elements of Ethics_, Book II., ch.
+ii.; McGilvary, _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI., pp. 333-352; Stephen,
+_Science of Ethics_, pp. 161-171; Sturt, _International Journal of
+Ethics_, Vol. VII., 334-345; Schurman, _Philosophical Review_, Vol.
+III., pp. 641-654; Guyau, _Sketch of Morals, without Obligation or
+Sanction_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[166] _Last Essays on Church and Religion_, preface.
+
+[167] Historically it has often taken theological form. Thus Paley
+defined virtue as "doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of
+God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." Of obligation he said,
+"A man is said to be obliged, when he is urged by a violent motive
+resulting from the command of another."
+
+[168] The earlier English utilitarians (though not called by that name),
+such as Tucker and Paley, assert that upon this earth there is no exact
+coincidence of the right and the pleasure-giving; that it is future
+rewards and punishments which make the equilibrium. Sidgwick, among
+recent writers, has also held that no complete identification of virtue
+and happiness can be found apart from religious considerations. (See
+_Methods of Ethics_, p. 505. For theological utilitarianism see Albee,
+_History_.)
+
+[169] See his _Utilitarianism_, ch. iii.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE PLACE OF THE SELF IN THE MORAL LIFE
+
+
+We have reached the conclusion that disposition as manifest in endeavor
+is the seat of moral worth, and that this worth itself consists in a
+readiness to regard the general happiness even against contrary
+promptings of personal comfort and gain. This brings us to the problems
+connected with the nature and functions of the self. We shall, in our
+search for the moral self, pass in review the conceptions which find
+morality in (1) Self-Denial or Self-Sacrifice, (2) Self-Assertion, (3)
+Combination of Regard for Self and for Others, (4) Self-Realization.
+
+
+Sec. 1. THE DOCTRINE OF SELF-DENIAL
+
+=Widespread Currency of the Doctrine.=--The notion that real goodness,
+or virtue, consists essentially in abnegation of the self, in denying
+and, so far as may be, eliminating everything that is of the nature of
+the self, is one of the oldest and most frequently recurring notions of
+moral endeavor and religion, as well as of moral theory. It describes
+Buddhism and, in large measure, the monastic ideal of Christianity,
+while, in Protestantism, Puritanism is permeated with its spirit. It
+characterized Cynicism and Stoicism. Kant goes as far as to say that
+every rational being must wish to be wholly free from inclinations.
+Popular morality, while not going so far as to hold that all moral
+goodness is self-denial, yet more or less definitely assumes that
+self-denial on its own account, irrespective of what comes out of it, is
+morally praiseworthy. A notion so deeply rooted and widely flourishing
+must have strong motives in its favor, all the more so because its
+practical vogue is always stronger than any reasons which are
+theoretically set forth.
+
+=Origin of the Doctrine.=--The notion arises from the tendency to
+identify the self with one of its own factors. It is one and the same
+self which conceives and is interested in some generous and ideal good
+that is also tempted by some near, narrow, and exclusive good. The force
+of the latter resides in the _habitual_ self, in purposes which have got
+themselves inwrought into the texture of ordinary character. Hence there
+is a disposition to overlook the complexity of selfhood, and to identify
+it with those factors in the self which resist ideal aspiration, and
+which are recalcitrant to the thought of duty; to identify the self with
+impulses that are inclined to what is frivolous, sensuous and sensual,
+pleasure-seeking. All vice being, then, egoism, selfishness,
+self-seeking, the remedy is to check it at its roots; to keep the self
+down in its proper place, denying it, chastening it, mortifying it,
+refusing to listen to its promptings. Ignoring the variety and subtlety
+of the factors that make up the self, all the different elements of
+right and of wrong are gathered together and set over against each
+other. All the good is placed once for all in some outside source, some
+higher law or ideal; and the source of all evil is placed within the
+corrupted and vile self. When one has become conscious of the serious
+nature of the moral struggle; has found that vice is easy, and to err
+"natural," needing only to give way to some habitual impulse or desire;
+that virtue is arduous, requiring resistance and strenuous effort, one
+is apt to overlook the habitual tendencies which are the ministers of
+the higher goods. One forgets that unless ideal ends were also rooted in
+some natural tendencies of the self, they could neither occur to the
+self nor appeal to the self. Hence everything is swept into the idea
+that the self is inherently so evil that it must be denied, snubbed,
+sacrificed, mortified.
+
+In general, to point out the truth which this theory perverts, to
+emphasize the demand for constant reconstruction and rearrangement of
+the habitual powers of the self--is sufficient criticism of it. But in
+detail the theory exercises such pervasive influence that it is worth
+while to mention specifically some of the evils that accrue from it.
+
+=1. It so Maims and Distorts Human Nature as to Narrow the Conception of
+the Good.=--In its legitimate antagonism to pleasure-seeking, it becomes
+a foe to happiness, and an implacable enemy of all its elements. Art is
+suspected, for beauty appeals to the lust of the eye. Family life roots
+in sexual impulses, and property in love of power, gratification, and
+luxury. Science springs from the pride of the intellect; the State from
+the pride of will. _Asceticism_ is the logical result; a purely negative
+conception of virtue. But it surely does dishonor, not honor, to the
+moral life to conceive it as mere negative subjection of the flesh, mere
+holding under control the lust of desire and the temptations of
+appetite. All positive content, all liberal achievement, is cut out and
+morality is reduced to a mere struggle _against_ solicitations to sin.
+While asceticism is in no danger of becoming a popular doctrine, there
+is a common tendency to conceive self-control in this negative fashion;
+to fail to see that the important thing is some positive good _for_
+which a desire is controlled. In general we overemphasize that side of
+morality which consists in abstinence and _not_ doing wrong.
+
+=2. To Make so Much of Conflict with the "Flesh," is to Honor the Latter
+too Much.=--It is to fix too much attention on it. It is an open lesson
+of psychology that to oppose doing an act by mere injunction not to do
+it, is to increase the power of the thing _not_ to be done, and to
+weaken the spring and effectiveness of the other motives, which, if
+positively attended to, might keep the obnoxious motive from gaining
+supremacy. The "expulsive power" of a generous affection is more to be
+relied upon than effort to suppress, which keeps alive the very thing to
+be suppressed. The history of monks and Puritan saints alike is full of
+testimony to the fact that withdrawal from positive generous and
+wholesome aims reenforces the vitality of the lower appetites and
+stimulates the imagination to play about them. Flagellation and fasting
+work as long as the body is exhausted; but the brave organism reasserts
+itself, and its capacities for science, art, the life of the family and
+the State not having been cultivated, sheer ineradicable physical
+instinct is most likely to come to the front.
+
+=3. We Judge Others by Ourselves Because We Have No Other Way to
+Judge.=--It is impossible for a man who conceives his own good to be in
+"going without," in just restricting himself, to have any large or
+adequate idea of the good of others. Unconsciously and inevitably a
+hardening and narrowing of the conditions of the lives of others
+accompanies the reign of the Puritanic ideal. The man who takes a high
+view of the capacities of human nature in itself, who reverences its
+possibilities and is jealous for their high maintenance in himself, is
+the one most likely to have keen and sensitive appreciation of the needs
+of others. There is, moreover, no selfishness, no neglect of others more
+thoroughgoing, more effectively cruel than that which comes from
+preoccupation with the attainment of personal goodness, and this
+interest is an almost inevitable effect of devotion to the negative
+ideal of self-denial.
+
+=4. The Principle Radically Violates Human Nature.=--This indeed is its
+claim--that human nature, just as human nature, requires to have
+violence done it. But the capacities which constitute the self demand
+fulfillment. The place, the time, the manner, the degree, and the
+proportion of their fulfillment, require infinite care and pains, and to
+secure this attention is the business of morals. Morals is a matter of
+direction, not of suppression. The urgency of desires and capacities for
+expression cannot be got rid of; nature cannot be expelled. If the need
+of happiness, of satisfaction of capacity, is checked in one direction,
+it will manifest itself in another. If the direction which is checked is
+an unconscious and wholesome one, that which is taken will be likely to
+be morbid and perverse. The one who is conscious of continually denying
+himself cannot rid himself of the idea that it ought to be "made up" to
+him; that a compensating happiness is due him for what he has
+sacrificed, somewhat increased, if anything, on account of the unnatural
+virtue he has displayed.[170] To be self-sacrificing is to "lay up"
+merit, and this achievement must surely be rewarded with happiness--if
+not now, then later. Those who habitually live on the basis of conscious
+self-denial are likely to be exorbitant in the demands which they make
+on some one near them, some member of their family or some friend;
+likely to blame others if their own "virtue" does not secure for itself
+an exacting attention which reduces others to the plane of servility.
+Often the doctrine of self-sacrifice leads to an inverted hedonism: we
+are to be good--that is, to forego pleasure--now, that we may have a
+greater measure of enjoyment in some future paradise of bliss. Or, the
+individual who has taken vows of renunciation is entitled by that very
+fact to represent spiritual authority on earth and to lord it over
+others.
+
+
+Sec. 2. SELF-ASSERTION
+
+The idea that morality consists in an unbridled assertion of self, in
+its forceful aggressive manifestation, rarely receives consistent
+theoretical formulation--possibly because most men are so ready to act
+upon it practically that explicit acknowledgment would be a hindrance
+rather than a help to the idea. But it is a doctrine which tends to be
+invoked more or less explicitly as a reaction from the impotency of the
+self-denial dogma. In reference to some superior individual or class,
+some leader or group of aristocratically ordained leaders, it is always
+a more or less conscious principle. Concerning these it is held that
+ordinary morality holds eventually only for the "common herd," the
+activities of the leader being amenable to a higher law than that of
+common morality.[171] Moreover, since the self-sacrifice morality is
+almost never carried out consistently--that is, to the point of monastic
+asceticism,--much popular morality is an unbalanced combination of
+self-sacrifice in some regards and ruthless self-assertion in others. It
+is not "practicable" to carry out the principle of self-denial
+everywhere; it is reserved for the family life, for special religious
+duties; in business (which is business, not morals), the proper thing is
+aggressive and unremitting self-assertion. In business, the end is
+success, to "make good"; weakness is failure, and failure is disgrace,
+dishonor. Thus in practice the two conceptions of self-denial in one
+region and self-assertion in another mutually support each other. They
+give occasion for the more or less unformulated, yet prevalent, idea
+that moral considerations (those of self-denial) apply to a limited
+phase of life, but have nothing to do with other regions in which
+accordingly the principle of "efficiency" (that is, personal success,
+wealth, power obtained in competitive victory) holds supreme sway.
+
+Recently, however, there has sprung up a so-called "naturalistic" school
+of ethics which has formulated explicitly the principle of
+self-assertion, and which claims to find scientific sanction for it in
+the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin. Evolution, it says, is the great
+thing, and evolution means the _survival of the fit in the struggle for
+existence_. Nature's method of progress is precisely, so it is said,
+ruthless self-assertion--to the strong the victory, to the victorious
+the spoils, and to the defeated, woe. Nature affords a scene of egoistic
+endeavor or pressure, suffer who may, of struggle to get ahead, that is,
+ahead of others, even by thrusting them down and out. But the
+justification of this scene of rapine and slaughter is that out of it
+comes progress, advance, everything that we regard as noble and fair.
+Excellence is the sign of excelling; the goal means outrunning others.
+The morals of humility, of obedience to law, of pity, sympathy, are
+merely a self-protective device on the part of the weak who try to
+safeguard their weakness by setting fast limitations to the activities
+of the truly strong (compare what was said of the not dissimilar
+doctrine among the Greeks, pp. 120-22). But the truly moral man, in whom
+the principle of progress is embodied, will break regardlessly through
+these meshes and traps. He will carry his own plans through to
+victorious achievement. He is the super-man. The mass of men are simply
+food for his schemes, valuable as furnishing needed material and
+tools.[172]
+
+=Practical Vogue of the Underlying Idea.=--Such a theory, in and of
+itself, is a literary diversion for those who, not being competent in
+the fields of outer achievement, amuse themselves by idealizing it in
+writing. Like most literary versions of science, it rests upon a
+pseudo-science, a parody of the real facts. But at a time when economic
+conditions are putting an extraordinary emphasis upon outward
+achievement, upon success in manipulating natural and social resources,
+upon "efficiency" in exploiting both inanimate energies and the minds
+and bodies of other persons, the underlying principle of this theory has
+a sanction and vogue which is out of all proportion to the number of
+those who consciously entertain it as a theory. For a healthy mind, the
+frank statement and facing of the theory is its best criticism. Its bald
+brutalism flourishes freely only when covered and disguised. But in view
+of the forces at present, and especially in America, making for a more
+or less unconscious acceptance of its principle in practice, it may be
+advisable to say something (1) regarding its alleged scientific
+foundation, and (2) the inadequacy of its conception of efficiency.
+
+=1. The Theory Exaggerates the Role of Antagonistic Competitive Struggle
+in the Darwinian Theory.=--(a) The initial step in any "progress" is
+_variation_; this is not so much struggle _against_ other organisms, as
+it is _invention_ or discovery of some _new_ way of acting, involving
+better adaptation of hitherto merely latent natural resources, use of
+some possible food or shelter not previously utilized. The struggle
+against other organisms at work preserves from elimination a species
+already fixed--quite a different thing from the variation which
+occasions the introduction of a higher or more complex species. (b)
+Moreover, so far as the Darwinian theory is concerned, the "struggle for
+existence" may take any conceivable form; rivalry in generosity, in
+mutual aid and support, may be the kind of competition best fitted to
+enable a species to survive. It not only may be so, but it is so within
+certain limits. The rage for survival, for power, must not be asserted
+indiscriminately; the mate of the other sex, the young, to some extent
+other individuals of the same kin, are spared, or, in many cases,
+protected and nourished.[173] (c) The higher the form of life, the
+_more_ effective the two methods just suggested: namely, the method of
+intelligence in discovering and utilizing new methods, tools, and
+resources as substituted for the direct method of brute conflict; and
+the method of mutual protection and care substituted for mutual attack
+and combat. It is among the lower forms of life, not as the theory would
+require among the higher types, that conditions approximate its picture
+of the gladiatorial show. The higher species among the vertebrates, as
+among insects (like ants and bees), are the "sociable" kinds. It is
+sometimes argued that Darwinism carried into morals would abolish
+charity: all care of the hopelessly invalid, of the economically
+dependent, and in general of all the weak and helpless except healthy
+infants. It is argued that our current standards are sentimental and
+artificial, aiming to make survive those who are unfit, and thus tending
+to destroy the conditions that make for advance, and to introduce such
+as make towards degeneration. But this argument (1) wholly ignores the
+reflex effect of interest in those who are ill and defective in
+strengthening social solidarity--in promoting those ties and reciprocal
+interests which are as much the prerequisites of strong individual
+characters as they are of a strong social group. And (2) it fails to
+take into account the stimulus to foresight, to scientific discovery,
+and practical invention, which has proceeded from interest in the
+helpless, the weak, the sick, the disabled, blind, deaf, and insane.
+Taking the most coldly scientific view, the gains in these two respects
+have, through the growth of social pity, of care for the unfortunate,
+been purchased more cheaply than we can imagine their being bought in
+any other way. In other words, the chief objection to this
+"naturalistic" ethics is that it overlooks the fact that, even from the
+Darwinian point of view, the human _animal_ is a _human_ animal. It
+forgets that the sympathetic and social instincts, those which cause the
+individual to take the interests of others for his own and thereby to
+restrain his sheer brute self-assertiveness, are the highest
+achievements, the high-water mark of evolution. The theory urges a
+systematic relapse to lower and foregone stages of biological
+development.
+
+=2. Its Conception of "Power," "Efficiency," "Achievement" is
+Perverse.=--Compared with the gospel of abstinence, of inefficiency,
+preached by the self-denial school, there is an element of healthy
+reaction in any ethical system which stresses positive power, positive
+success, positive attainment. Goodness has been too much identified with
+practical feebleness and ineptitude; strength and solidity of
+accomplishment, with unscrupulousness. But power for the sake of power
+is as unreal an abstraction as self-denial for the sake of sacrifice, or
+self-restraint for the sake of the mere restraint. Erected into a
+central principle, it takes means for end--the fallacy of all
+materialism. It makes little of many of the most important and excellent
+_inherent ingredients_ of happiness in its eagerness to master _external
+conditions_ of happiness. Sensitive discrimination of complex and
+refined distinctions of worth, such as good taste, the resources of
+poetry and history, frank and varied social converse among intellectual
+equals, the humor of sympathetic contemplation of the spectacle of life,
+the capacity to extract happiness from solitude and society, from nature
+and from art:--all of these, as well as the more obvious virtues of
+sympathy and benevolence, are swept aside for one coarse
+undiscriminating ideal of external activity, measured by sheer quantity
+of external changes made and external results accumulated. Of such an
+ideal we may say, as Mill said, that the judge of good, of happiness, is
+the one who has experienced its various forms; and that as "no
+intelligent person would consent to be a fool" on account of the
+pleasures of the fool, so no man of cultivated spirit would consent to
+be a lover of "efficiency" and "power" for the sake of brute command of
+the external commodities of nature and man.
+
+=Present Currency of This Ideal.=--In spite of the extraordinary
+currency of this ideal at present, there is little fear that it will be
+permanently established. Human nature is too rich and varied in its
+capacities and demands; the world of nature and society is too fruitful
+in sources of stimulus and interest for man to remain indefinitely
+content with the idea of power for power's sake, command of means for
+the mere sake of the means. Humanity has long lived a precarious and a
+stunted life because of its partial and easily shaken hold on natural
+resources. Starved by centuries of abstinence enforced through lack of
+control of the forces and methods of nature, taught the gospel of the
+merit of abstention, it is not surprising that it should be intoxicated
+when scientific discovery bears its fruit of power in utilization of
+natural forces, or that, temporarily unbalanced, it should take the
+external conditions of happiness for happiness itself. But when the
+values of material acquisition and achievement become familiar they will
+lose the contrast value they now possess; and human endeavor will
+concern itself mainly with the problem of rendering its conquests in
+power and efficiency tributary to the life of intelligence and art and
+of social communication.[174] Such a moral idealism will rest upon a
+more secure and extensive natural foundation than that of the past, and
+will be more equitable in application and saner in content than that
+with which aristocracies have made us familiar. It will be a democratic
+ideal, a good for all, not for a noble class; and it will include, not
+exclude, those physical and physiological factors which aristocratic
+idealisms have excluded as common and unclean.
+
+
+Sec. 3. SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE; OR, EGOISM AND ALTRUISM
+
+For the last three centuries, the most discussed point in English
+ethical literature (save perhaps whether moral knowledge is intuitive or
+derived from experience) has been the relation of regard for one's own
+self and for other selves as motives of action--"the crux of all ethical
+speculation," Spencer terms it. All views have been represented: (a)
+that man naturally acts from purely selfish motives and that morality
+consists in an enforced subjection of self-love to the laws of a common
+social order, (b) That man is naturally selfish, while morality is an
+"enlightened selfishness," or a regard for self based upon recognition
+of the extent to which its happiness requires consideration of others.
+(c) That the tendencies of the agent are naturally selfish, but that
+morality is the subjection of these tendencies to the law of duty.
+(d) That man's interests are naturally partly egoistic and partly
+sympathetic, while morality is a compromise or adjustment of these
+tendencies. (e) That man's interests are naturally both, and morality a
+subjection of both to conscience as umpire. (f) That they are both,
+while morality is a subjection of egoistic to benevolent sentiments.
+(g) That the individual's interests are naturally in objective ends
+which primarily are neither egoistic nor altruistic; and these ends
+become either selfish or benevolent at special crises, at which times
+morality consists in referring them, equally and impartially for
+judgment, to a situation in which the interests of the self and of
+others concerned are involved: _to a common good_.
+
+=Three Underlying Psychological Principles.=--We shall make no attempt
+to discuss these various views in detail; but will bring into relief
+some of the factors in the discussion which substantiate the view (g)
+stated last. It will be noted that the theories rank themselves under
+three heads with reference to the constitution of man's tendencies:
+holding they (1) naturally have in view personal ends exclusively or all
+fall under the principle of self-love or self-regard; that (2) some of
+them contemplate one's own happiness and some of them that of others;
+that (3) primarily they are not _consciously_ concerned with either
+one's own happiness or that of others. Memory and reflection may show
+(just as it shows other things) that their consequences affect both the
+self and others, when the recognition of this fact becomes an additional
+element, either for good or for evil, in the motivation of the act. We
+shall consider, first, the various senses in which action occurs, or is
+said to occur, in behalf of the person's own self; and then take up, in
+similar fashion, its reference to the interests of others.
+
+=I. Action in Behalf of Self.=--1. _Motives as Selfish_: The Natural
+Selfishness of Man is maintained from such different standpoints and
+with such different objects in view that it is difficult to state the
+doctrine in any one generalized form. By some theologians, it has been
+associated with an innate corruption or depravity of human nature and
+been made the basis of a demand for supernatural assistance to lead a
+truly just and benevolent life. By Hobbes (1588-1679) it was associated
+with the anti-social nature of individuals and made the basis for a plea
+for a strong and centralized political authority[175] to control the
+natural "war of all against all" which flows inevitably from the
+psychological egoism. By Kant, it was connected with the purely sense
+origin of desires, and made the basis for a demand for the complete
+subordination of desire to duty as a motive for action. Morals, like
+politics, make strange bedfellows! The common factor in these diverse
+notions, however, is that every act of a self must, when left to its
+_natural_ or psychological course, have the interest of the self in
+view; otherwise there would be no motive for the deed and it would not
+be done. This theoretical and _a priori_ view is further supported by
+pointing out, sometimes in reprobation of man's sinful nature, sometimes
+in a more or less cynical vein, the lurking presence of some subtle
+regard for self in acts that apparently are most generous and
+"disinterested."[176]
+
+=Ambiguity of the Psychological Basis.=--The notion that all action is
+"for the self" is infected with the same ambiguity as the (analogous)
+doctrine that all desire is for happiness. Like that doctrine, in one
+sense it is a truism, in another a falsity--this latter being the sense
+in which its upholders maintain it. Psychologically, any object that
+moves us, any object in which we imagine our impulses to rest satisfied
+or to find fulfillment, _becomes_, in virtue of that fact, a factor in
+the self. If I am enough interested in collecting postage stamps, a
+collection of postage stamps becomes a part of my "ego," which is
+incomplete and restless till filled out in that way. If my habits are
+such that I am not content when I know my neighbor is suffering from a
+lack of food until I have relieved him, then relief of his suffering
+becomes a part of my selfhood. If my desires are such that I have no
+rest of mind until I have beaten my competitor in business, or have
+demonstrated my superiority in social gifts by putting my fellow at some
+embarrassing disadvantage, then that sort of thing constitutes my self.
+Our instincts, impulses, and habits all demand appropriate objects in
+order to secure exercise and expression; and these ends in their office
+of furnishing outlet and satisfaction to our powers form a cherished
+part of the "me." In this sense it is true, and a truism, that all
+action involves the interest of self.
+
+=True and False Interpretation.=--But this doctrine is the exact
+opposite of that intended by those who claim that all action is from
+self-love. The true doctrine says, _the self is constituted and
+developed through instincts and interests which are directed upon their
+own objects with no conscious regard necessarily for anything except
+those objects themselves_. The false doctrine implies that the self
+_exists by itself apart from these objective ends, and that they are
+merely means for securing it a certain profit or pleasure_.
+
+Suppose, for example, it is a case of being so disturbed in mind by the
+thought of another in pain that one is moved to do something to relieve
+him. This means that certain native instincts or certain acquired habits
+demand relief of others as part of themselves. The well-being of the
+other is an interest of the self: is a part of the self. This is
+precisely what is meant ordinarily by unselfishness: not lack or absence
+of a self, but _such_ a self as identifies itself in action with others'
+interests and hence is satisfied only when they are satisfied. To find
+pain in the thought of others pained and to take pleasure in the thought
+of their relief, is to have and to be moved by personal motives, by
+states which are "selfish" in the sense of making up the self; but which
+are the exact opposite of selfish in the sense of being the thought of
+some private advantage to self.[177] Putting it roundly, then, the
+fallacy of the selfish motive theory is that it fails to see that
+_instincts and habits directed upon objects are primary_, and that they
+come before any conscious thought of self as end, since they are
+necessary to the constitution of that thought.
+
+The following quotation from James[178] states the true doctrine:
+
+ "When I am led by selflove to keep my seat whilst ladies stand, or
+ to grab something first and cut out my neighbor, what I really
+ love is the comfortable seat; it is the thing itself which I grab.
+ I love _them_ primarily, as the mother loves her babe, or a
+ generous man an heroic deed. Wherever, as here, selfseeking is the
+ outcome of simple instinctive propensity, it is but a name for
+ certain reflex acts. Something rivets my attention fatally and
+ fatally provokes the 'selfish' response.... It is true I am no
+ automaton, but a thinker. But my thoughts, like my acts, are here
+ concerned only with the outward things.... In fact the more
+ utterly selfish I am in this primitive way, the more blindly
+ absorbed my thought will be in the objects and impulses of my lust
+ and the more devoid of any inward looking glance."
+
+=2. Results as Selfish: Ambiguity in the Notion.=--We must then give up
+the notion that motives are inherently self-seeking, in the sense that
+there is in voluntary acts a thought of the self as the end for the sake
+of which the act is performed. The self-seeking doctrine may, however,
+be restated in these terms: Although there is no thought of self or its
+advantage consciously entertained, yet our original instincts are such
+that their objects do as _matter of result_ conduce primarily to the
+well-being and advantage of the self. In this sense, anger, fear,
+hunger, and thirst, etc., are said to be egoistic or self-seeking--not
+that their _conscious_ object is the self, but that their inevitable
+effect is to preserve and protect the self. The fact that an instinct
+secures self-preservation or self-development does not, however, make it
+"egoistic" or "selfish" in the moral sense; nor does it throw any light
+upon the moral status of the instinct. _Everything depends upon the sort
+of self which is maintained._ There is, indeed, some presumption (see
+_ante_, p. 294) that the act sustains a _social_ self, that is, a self
+whose maintenance is of social value. If the individual organism did not
+struggle for food; strive aggressively against obstacles and
+interferences; evade or shelter itself against menacing superior force,
+what would become of children, fathers and mothers, lawyers, doctors and
+clergymen, citizens and patriots--in short, of society? If we avoid
+setting up a purely abstract self, if we keep in mind that every actual
+self is a self which _includes_ social relations and offices, both
+actual and potential, we shall have no difficulty in seeing that
+self-preservative instincts _may_ be, and taken by and large, _must_ be,
+socially conservative. Moreover, while it is not true that if "a man
+does not look after his own interests no one else will" (if that means
+that his interests are no one else's affair in any way), it is true that
+no one has a right to neglect his own interests in the hope that some
+one else will care for them. "His own interests," properly speaking, are
+precisely the ends which concern him more directly than they concern any
+one else. Each man is, so to say, nearer himself than is any one else,
+and, therefore, has certain duties to and about himself which cannot be
+performed by any other one. Others may present food or the conditions of
+education, but the individual alone can digest the food or educate
+himself. It is profitable for society, not merely for an individual,
+that each of us should instinctively have his powers most actively and
+intensely called out by the things that distinctively affect him and
+his own welfare. Any other arrangement would mean waste of social
+energy, inefficiency in securing social results.
+
+The quotation from James also makes it clear, however, that under
+certain circumstances the mere absorption in a thing, even without
+conscious thought of self, is morally offensive. The "pig" in manners is
+not necessarily thinking of himself; all that is required to make him a
+pig is that he should have too narrow and exclusive an object of regard.
+The man sees simply the seat, not the seat _and_ the lady. The boor in
+manners is unconscious of many of the objects in the situation which
+_should_ operate as stimuli. One impulse or habit is operating at the
+expense of others; the self in play is too petty or narrow. Viewed from
+the standpoint of results, the fact which constitutes selfishness in the
+moral sense is not that certain impulses and habits secure the
+well-being of the self, _but that the well-being secured is a narrow and
+exclusive one_. The forms of coarse egoism which offend us most in
+ordinary life are not usually due to a deliberate or self-conscious
+seeking of advantage for self, but to such preoccupation with certain
+ends as blinds the agent to the thought of the interests of others. Many
+whose behavior seems to others most selfish would deny indignantly (and,
+from the standpoint of their _definite_ consciousness, honestly) any
+self-seeking motives: they would point to certain objective results,
+which in the abstract are desirable, as the true ends of their
+activities. But none the less, they _are_ selfish, because the
+limitations of their interests make them overlook the consequences which
+affect the freedom and happiness of others.
+
+=3. There are also Cases in Which the Thought of the Resulting
+Consequence to the Self Consciously Enters in and Modifies the Motive of
+the Act.=--With increasing memory and foresight, one can no more ignore
+the lesson of the past as to the consequences of an act upon himself
+than he can ignore other consequences. A man who has learned that a
+certain act has painful consequences to himself, whether to his body,
+his reputation, his comfort, or his character, is quite likely to have
+the thought of himself present itself as part of the foreseen
+consequences when the question of a similar act recurs. In and of
+itself, once more, this fact throws no light upon the moral status of
+the act. Everything depends upon what sort of a self moves and how it
+moves. A man who hesitated to rush into a burning building to rescue a
+suit of clothes because he thought of the danger to himself, would be
+sensible; a man who rushed out of the building just because he thought
+of saving himself when there were others he might have assisted, would
+be contemptible.
+
+The one who began taking exercise because he thought of his own health,
+would be commended; but a man who thought so continually of his own
+health as to shut out other objects, would become an object of ridicule
+or worse. _There is a moral presumption that a man should make
+consideration of himself a part of his aim and intent._ A certain care
+of health, of body, of property, of mental faculty, because they are
+one's own is not only permissible, but obligatory. This is what the
+older moral writers spoke of as "prudence," or as "reasonable
+self-love."
+
+(i.) It is a stock argument of the universal selfishness theory to point
+out that a man's acknowledgment of some _public need or benefit_ is
+quite likely to coincide with his recognition of some private advantage.
+A statesman's recognition of some measure of public policy happens to
+coincide with perceiving that by pressing it he can bring himself into
+prominence or gain office. A man is more likely to see the need of
+improved conditions of sanitation or transportation in a given locality
+if he has property there. A man's indignation at some prevalent public
+ill may sleep till he has had a private taste of it. We may admit that
+these instances describe a usual, though not universal, state of
+affairs. But does it follow that such men are moved _merely_ by the
+thought of gain to themselves? Possibly this sometimes happens; then the
+act is selfish in the obnoxious sense. The man has isolated his thought
+of himself as an end and made the thought of the improvement or reform
+merely an external means. The latter is not truly his _end_ at all; he
+has not identified it with himself. In other cases, while the individual
+would not have recognized the end if the thought of himself had not been
+implicated, yet _after_ he has recognized it, the two--the thought of
+himself and of the public advantage--may blend. His thought of himself
+may lend warmth and intimacy to an object which otherwise would have
+been cold, _while, at the same time, the self is broadened and deepened
+by taking in the new object of regard_.
+
+(ii.) Take the case of amusement or recreation. To an adult usually
+engaged in strenuous pursuits, the thought of a pleasure for the mere
+sake of pleasure, of enjoyment, of having a "good time," may appeal as
+an end. And if the pleasure is itself "innocent," only the requirements
+of a preconceived theory (like the Kantian) would question its
+legitimacy. Even its moral necessity is clear when relaxation is
+conducive to cheerfulness and efficiency in more serious pursuits. But
+if a man discriminates mentally between himself and the play or exercise
+in which he finds enjoyment and relief, thinking of himself as a
+distinct end to which the latter is merely means, he is not likely to
+get the recreation. It is by forgetting the self, that is by taking the
+light and easy activity _as_ the self of the situation, that the benefit
+comes. To be a "lover of pleasure" in the bad sense is precisely to seek
+amusements as excitements for a self which somehow remains outside them
+as their fixed and ulterior end.
+
+(iii.) Exactly the same analysis applies to the idea of the moral
+culture of the self, of its moral perfecting. Every serious-minded
+person has, from time to time, to take stock of his status and progress
+in moral matters--to take thought of the moral self just as at other
+times he takes thought of the health of the bodily self. But woe betides
+that man who, having entered upon a course of reflection which leads to
+a clearer conception of his own moral capacities and weaknesses,
+maintains that thought as a distinct mental end, and thereby makes his
+subsequent acts simply means to improving or perfecting his moral
+nature. Such a course defeats itself. At the least, it leads to
+priggishness, and its tendency is towards one of the worst forms of
+selfishness: a habit of thinking and feeling that persons, that concrete
+situations and relations, exist simply to render contributions to one's
+own precious moral character. The worst of such selfishness is that
+having protected itself with the mantle of interest in moral goodness,
+it is proof against that attrition of experience which may always recall
+a man to himself in the case of grosser and more unconscious absorption.
+A sentimentally refined egoism is always more hopeless than a brutal and
+naive one--though a brutal one not infrequently protects itself by
+adoption and proclamation of the language of the former.
+
+=II. Benevolence or Regard for Others.=--_Ambiguity in Conception_:
+There is the same ambiguity in the idea of sympathetic or altruistic
+springs to action that there is in that of egoistic and self-regarding.
+Does the phrase refer to their conscious and express intent? or to their
+objective results when put into operation, irrespective of explicit
+desire and aim? And, if the latter, are we to believe contribution to
+the welfare of others to be the sole and exclusive character of some
+springs of action, or simply that, under certain circumstances, the
+_emphasis_ falls more upon the good resulting to others than upon other
+consequences? The discussion will show that the same general principles
+hold for "benevolent" as for self-regarding impulses: namely (1) that
+there are none which from the start are consciously such; (2) that while
+reflection may bring to light their bearing upon the welfare of others
+so that it becomes an element in the conscious desire, this is a matter
+of relative preponderance, not of absolute nature; and (3) that just as
+conscious regard for self is not necessarily bad or "selfish," so
+conscious regard for others is not necessarily good: the criterion is
+the whole situation in which the desire takes effect.
+
+=1. The Existence of Other-Regarding Springs to Action.=--Only the
+preconceptions of hedonistic psychology would ever lead one to deny the
+existence of reactions and impulses called out by the sight of others'
+misery and joy and which tend to increase the latter and to relieve the
+former. Recent psychologists (writing, of course, quite independently of
+ethical controversies) offer lists of native instinctive tendencies such
+as the following: Anger, jealousy, rivalry, secretiveness,
+acquisitiveness, fear, shyness, sympathy, affection, pity, sexual love,
+curiosity, imitation, play, constructiveness.[179] In this inventory,
+the first seven may be said to be aroused specially by situations having
+to do with the preservation of the self; the next four are responses to
+stimuli proceeding especially from others and tending to consequences
+favorable to them, while the last four are mainly impersonal. But the
+division into self-regarding and other-regarding is not exclusive and
+absolute. Anger _may_ be wholly other-regarding, as in the case of
+hearty indignation at wrongs suffered by others; rivalry may be generous
+emulation or be directed toward surpassing one's own past record. Love
+between the sexes, which should be the source of steady, far-reaching
+interest in others, and which at times expresses itself in supreme
+abnegation of devotion, easily becomes the cause of brutal and
+persistent egoism. In short, the division into egoistic and altruistic
+holds only "other things being equal."
+
+Confining ourselves for the moment to the native psychological
+equipment, we may say that man is endowed with instinctive promptings
+which naturally (that is, without the intervention of deliberation or
+calculation) tend to preserve the self (by aggressive attack as in
+anger, or in protective retreat as in fear); and to develop his powers
+(as in acquisitiveness, constructiveness, and play); and which equally,
+without consideration of resulting ulterior benefit either to self or to
+others, tend to bind the self closer to others and to advance the
+interests of others--as pity, affectionateness, or again,
+constructiveness and play. Any given individual is _naturally_ an
+erratic mixture of fierce insistence upon his own welfare and of
+profound susceptibility to the happiness of others--different
+individuals varying much in the respective intensities and proportions
+of the two tendencies.
+
+=2. The Moral Status of Altruistic Tendencies.=--We have expressly
+devoted considerable space (ch. xiii.) to showing that there are no
+motives which in and of themselves are right; that any tendency, whether
+original instinct or acquired habit, requires sanction from the special
+consequences which, in the special situation, are likely to flow from
+it. The mere fact that pity in general tends to conserve the welfare of
+others does not guarantee the rightness of giving way to an impulse of
+pity, just as it happens to spring up. This might mean sentimentalism
+for the agent, and weakening of the springs of patience, courage,
+self-help, and self-respect in others. The persistence with which the
+doctrine of the evils of indiscriminate charity has to be taught is
+sufficient evidence that the so-called other-regarding impulses require
+the same control by reason as do the "egoistic" ones. They have no
+inherent sacredness which exempts them from the application of the
+standard of the common and reasonable happiness.
+
+=Evils of Unregulated Altruism.=--So much follows from the general
+principles already discussed. But there are special dangers and evils
+attendant upon an exaggeration of the altruistic idea. (i.) _It tends to
+render others dependent_, and thus contradicts its own professed aim:
+the helping of others. Almost every one knows some child who is so
+continuously "helped" by others, that he loses his initiative and
+resourcefulness. Many an invalid is confirmed in a state of helplessness
+by the devoted attention of others. In large social matters there is
+always danger of the substitution of an ideal of conscious "benevolence"
+for justice: it is in aristocratic and feudal periods that the idea
+flourishes that "charity" (conceived as conferring benefits _upon_
+others, doing things _for_ them) is inherently and absolutely a good.
+The idea assumes the continued and necessary existence of a dependent
+"lower" class to be the recipients of the kindness of their superiors; a
+class which serves as passive material for the cultivation in others of
+the virtue of charity, the higher class "acquiring merit" at expense of
+the lower, while the lower has gratitude and respect for authority as
+its chief virtues.
+
+(ii.) _The erection of the "benevolent" impulse into a virtue in and of
+itself tends to build up egoism in others._ The child who finds himself
+unremittingly the object of attention from others is likely to develop
+an exaggerated sense of the relative importance of his own _ego_. The
+chronic invalid, conspicuously the recipient of the conscious altruism
+of others, is happy in nature who avoids the slow growth of an insidious
+egoism. Men who are the constant subjects of abnegation on the part of
+their wives and female relatives rarely fail to develop a self-absorbed
+complacency and unconscious conceit.
+
+(iii.) Undue emphasis upon altruism as a motive is quite likely to react
+to form a _peculiarly subtle egoism in the person who cultivates it_.
+Others cease to be _natural_ objects of interest and regard, and are
+converted into excuses for the manifestation and nurture of one's own
+generous goodness. Underlying complacency with respect to social ills
+grows up because they afford an opportunity for developing and
+displaying this finest of virtues. In our interest in the maintenance of
+our own benign altruism we cease to be properly disturbed by conditions
+which are intrinsically unjust and hateful.[180] (iv.) As present
+circumstances amply demonstrate, there is the danger that the erection
+of benevolence into a conscious principle in some things will serve to
+supply rich persons with a cloak for selfishness in other directions.
+Philanthropy is made an offset and compensation for brutal exploitation.
+A man who pushes to the breaking-point of legality aggressively selfish
+efforts to get ahead of others in business, squares it in his own
+self-respect and in the esteem of those classes of the community who
+entertain like conceptions, by gifts of hospitals, colleges, missions,
+and libraries.
+
+=Genuine and False Altruism.=--These considerations may be met by the
+obvious retort that it is not true altruism, genuine benevolence,
+sincere charity, which we are concerned with in such cases. This is a
+true remark. We are not of course criticizing true but spurious interest
+in others. But why is it counterfeit? What is the nature of the genuine
+article? The danger is not in benevolence or altruism, but in that
+conception of them which makes them equivalent to regard for others _as
+others_, irrespective of a social situation to which all alike belong.
+There is nothing in the selfhood of others, because they are others,
+which gives it any supremacy over selfhood in oneself. Just as it is
+exclusiveness of objective ends, the ignoring of relations, which is
+objectionable in selfishness, so it is taking the part for the whole
+which is obnoxious in so-called altruism. To include in our view of
+consequences the needs and possibilities of others on the same basis as
+our own, is to take the only course which will give an adequate view of
+the situation. There is no situation into which these factors do not
+enter. To have a generous view of others is to have a larger world in
+which to act. To remember that they, like ourselves, are persons, are
+individuals who are centers of joy and suffering, of lack and of
+potentiality, is alone to have a just view of the conditions and issues
+of behavior. Quickened sympathy means liberality of intelligence and
+enlightened understanding.
+
+=The Social Sense versus Altruism.=--There is a great difference in
+principle between modern philanthropy and the "charity" which assumes a
+superior and an inferior class. The latter principle tries to acquire
+merit by employing one's superior resources to lessen, or to mitigate,
+the misery of those who are fixed in a dependent status. Its principle,
+so far as others are concerned, is negative and palliative merely. The
+motive of what is vital in modern philanthropy is constructive and
+expansive because it looks to the well-being of society as a whole, not
+to soothing or rendering more tolerable the conditions of a class. It
+realizes the interdependence of interests: that complex and variegated
+interaction of conditions which makes it impossible for any one
+individual or "class" really to secure, to assure, its own good as a
+separate thing. Its aim is general social advance, constructive social
+reform, not merely doing something kind for individuals who are rendered
+helpless from sickness or poverty. Its aim is the equity of justice, not
+the inequality of conferring benefits. That the sight of the misery that
+comes from sickness, from insanity, from defective organic structure (as
+among the blind and deaf), from poverty that destroys hope and dulls
+initiative, from bad nutrition, should stimulate this general
+quickening of the social sense is natural. But just as the activities of
+the parent with reference to the welfare of a helpless infant are wisely
+directed in the degree in which attention is mainly fixed not upon
+weakness, but upon positive opportunities for growth, so the efforts of
+those whose activities, by the nature of circumstances, have to be
+especially remedial and palliative are most effective when centered on
+the social rights and possibilities of the unfortunate individuals,
+instead of treating them as separate individuals to whom, in their
+separateness, "good is to be done."
+
+The best kind of help to others, whenever possible, is indirect, and
+consists in such modifications of the conditions of life, of the general
+level of subsistence, as enables them independently to help
+themselves.[181] Whenever conditions require purely direct and personal
+aid, it is best given when it proceeds from a natural social
+relationship, and not from a motive of "benevolence" as a separate
+force.[182] The gift that pauperizes when proceeding from a
+philanthropist in his special capacity, is a beneficent acknowledgment
+of the relationships of the case when it comes from a neighbor or from
+one who has other interests in common with the one assisted.
+
+=The Private and the Social Self.=--The contrast between the narrow or
+restrictive and the general or expansive good explains why evil presents
+itself as a selfish end in contrast with an authoritative, but faint,
+good of others. This is not, as we have seen, because regard for the
+good of self is inherently bad and regard for that of others
+intrinsically right; but because we are apt to identify the self with
+the habitual, with that to which we are best adjusted and which
+represents the customary occupation. Any moral crisis is thus fairly
+pictured as a struggle to overcome selfishness. The tendency under such
+circumstances is to contract, to secrete, to hang on to what is already
+achieved and possessed. The habitual self needs to go out of the
+narrowness of its accustomed grooves into the spacious air of more
+generous behavior.
+
+
+Sec. 4. THE GOOD AS SELF-REALIZATION
+
+We now come to the theory which attempts to do justice to the one-sided
+truths we have been engaged with, _viz._, the idea that the moral end is
+_self-realization_. Like self-assertion in some respects, it differs in
+conceiving the self to be realized as universal and ultimate, involving
+the fulfillment of _all_ capacities and the observance of _all_
+relations. Such a comprehensive self-realization includes also, it is
+urged, the truth of altruism, since the "universal self" is realized
+only when the relations that bind one to others are fulfilled. It avoids
+also the inconsistencies and defects of the notion of self-sacrifice for
+its own sake, while emphasizing that the present incomplete self must be
+denied for the sake of attainment of a more complete and final self. A
+discussion of this theory accordingly furnishes the means of gathering
+together and summarizing various points regarding the role of the self
+in the moral life.
+
+=Ambiguity in the Conception.=--Is self-realization the end? As we have
+had such frequent occasion to observe, "end" means either the
+consequences actually effected, the closing and completing phase of an
+act, or the aim held deliberately in view. Now realization of self is an
+end (though not the only end) in the former sense. Every moral act in
+its outcome marks a development or fulfillment of selfhood. But the very
+nature of right action forbids that the self should be the end in the
+sense of being the conscious aim of moral activity. For there is no way
+of discovering the nature of the self except in terms of objective ends
+which fulfill its capacities, and there is no _way_ of realizing the
+self except as it is forgotten in devotion to these objective ends.
+
+=1. Self-Realization as Consequence of Moral Action.=--Every good act
+realizes the selfhood of the agent who performs it; every bad act tends
+to the lowering or destruction of selfhood. This truth is expressed in
+Kant's maxim that every personality should be regarded as always an end,
+never as a means, with its implication that a wrong intent always
+reduces selfhood to the status of a mere tool or device for securing
+some end beyond itself--the self-indulgent man treating his personal
+powers as mere means to securing ease, comfort, or pleasure. It is
+expressed by ordinary moral judgment in its view that all immoral action
+is a sort of prostitution, a lowering of the dignity of the self to base
+ends. The destructive tendency of evil deeds is witnessed also by our
+common language in its conception of wrong as dissipation,
+dissoluteness, duplicity. The bad character is one which is shaky,
+empty, "naughty," unstable, gone to pieces, just as the good man is
+straight, solid, four-square, sound, substantial. This conviction that
+at bottom and in the end, in spite of all temporary appearance to the
+contrary, the right act effects a realization of the self, is also
+evidenced in the common belief that virtue brings its own bliss. No
+matter how much suffering from physical loss or from material and mental
+inconvenience or loss of social repute virtue may bring with it, the
+_quality of happiness_ that accompanies devotion to the right end is so
+unique, so _invaluable_, that pains and discomforts do not weigh in the
+balance. It is indeed possible to state this truth in such an
+exaggerated perspective that it becomes false; but taken just for what
+it is, it acknowledges that whatever harm or loss a right act may bring
+to the self in some of its aspects,--even extending to destruction of
+the bodily self,--the inmost moral self finds fulfillment and
+consequent happiness in the good.
+
+=2. Self-Realization as Aim of Moral Action.=--This realization of
+selfhood in the right course of action is, however, not _the_ end of a
+moral act--that is, it is not the only end. The moral act is one which
+sustains a whole complex system of social values; one which keeps vital
+and progressive the industrial order, science, art, and the State. The
+patriot who dies for his country may find in that devotion his own
+supreme realization, but none the less the aim of his act is precisely
+that for which he performs it: the conservation of his nation. He dies
+_for_ his country, not _for_ himself. He is what he would be in dying
+for his country, not in dying for himself. To say that his conscious aim
+is self-realization is to put the cart before the horse. That his
+willingness to die for his country proves that his country's good is
+taken by him to constitute himself and his own good is true; but his aim
+is his country's good _as constituting_ his self-realization, not the
+self-realization. It is impossible that genuine artistic creation or
+execution should not be accompanied with the joy of an expanding
+selfhood, but the artist who thinks _of_ himself and allows a view of
+himself to intervene between his performance and its result, has the
+embarrassment and awkwardness of "self-consciousness," which affects for
+the worse his artistic product. And it makes little difference whether
+it is the thought of himself as materially profiting, or as famous, or
+as technical performer, or as benefiting the public, or as securing his
+own complete artistic culture, that comes in between. In any case, there
+is loss to the work, and loss in the very thing taken as end, namely,
+development of his own powers. The problem of morality, upon the
+intellectual side, is the discovery of, the finding of, the self, in the
+objective end to be striven for; and then upon the overt practical side,
+it is the losing of the self in the endeavor for the objective
+realization. This is the lasting truth in the conception of
+self-abnegation, self-forgetfulness, disinterested interest.
+
+=The Thought of Self-Realization.=--Since, however, the realization of
+selfhood, the strengthening and perfecting of capacity, is as matter of
+fact one phase of the objective end, it may, _at times_, be definitely
+present in thought as part of the foreseen consequences; and even, _at
+times_, may be the most prominent feature of the conceived results. The
+artist, for example a musician or painter, may practice for the sake of
+acquiring skill, that is, of developing capacity. In this case, the
+usual relationship of objective work and personal power is reversed; the
+product or performance being subordinated to the perfecting of power,
+instead of power being realized in the use it is put to. But the
+development of power is not conceived as a final end, but as _desirable
+because of an eventual more liberal and effective use_. It is matter of
+temporary emphasis. Something of like nature occurs in the moral
+life--not that one definitely rehearses or practices moral deeds for the
+sake of acquiring more skill and power. At times the effect upon the
+self of a deed becomes the conspicuously controlling element in the
+forecast of consequences. (See p. 382.) For example, a person may
+realize that a certain act is trivial in its effects upon others and in
+the changes it impresses upon the world; and yet he may hesitate to
+perform it because he realizes it would intensify some tendency of his
+own in such a way as, in the delicate economy of character, to disturb
+the proper balance of the springs to action. Or, on the other hand, the
+agent may apprehend that some consequences that are legitimate and
+important in themselves involve, in their attainment, an improper
+sacrifice of personal capacity. In such cases, the consideration of the
+effect upon self-realization is not only permissible, but imperative as
+_a part or phase of the total end_.
+
+=The Problem of Equating Personal and General Happiness.=--Much moral
+speculation has been devoted to the problem of equating personal
+happiness and regard for the general good. Right moral action, it is
+assumed, consists especially of justice and benevolence,--attitudes
+which aim at the good of others. But, it is also assumed, a just and
+righteous order of the universe requires that the man who seeks the
+happiness of others should also himself be a happy man. Much ingenuity
+has been directed to explaining away and accounting for the seeming
+discrepancies: the cases where men not conspicuous for regard for others
+or for maintaining a serious and noble view of life seem to maintain a
+banking-credit on the side of happiness; while men devoted to others,
+men conspicuous for range of sympathetic affections, seem to have a
+debit balance. The problem is the more serious because the respective
+good and ill fortunes do not seem to be entirely accidental and
+external, but to come as results from the moral factors in behavior. It
+would not be difficult to build up an argument to show that while
+extreme viciousness or isolated egoism is unfavorable to happiness, so
+also are keenness and breadth of affections. The argument would claim
+that the most comfortable course of life is one in which the man
+cultivates enough intimacies with enough persons to secure for himself
+their support and aid, but avoids engaging his sympathies too closely in
+their affairs and entangling himself in any associations which would
+require self-sacrifice or exposure to the sufferings of others: a course
+of life in which the individual shuns those excesses of vice which
+injure health, wealth, and lessen the decent esteem of others, but also
+shuns enterprises of precarious virtue and devotion to high and
+difficult ends.
+
+=Real and Artificial Aspects of the Problem.=--The problem thus put
+seems insoluble, or soluble only upon the supposition of some
+prolongation of life under conditions very different from those of the
+present, in which the present lack of balance between happiness and
+goodness will be redressed. _But the problem is insoluble because it is
+artificial._[183] It assumes a ready-made self and hence a ready-made
+type of satisfaction of happiness. It is not the business of moral
+theory to demonstrate the existence of mathematical equations, in this
+life or another one, between goodness and virtue. It is the business of
+men to develop such capacities and desires, such selves as render them
+capable of finding their own satisfaction, their invaluable value, in
+fulfilling the demands which grow out of their associated life. Such
+happiness may be short in duration and slight in bulk: but that it
+outweighs in quality all accompanying discomforts as well as all
+enjoyments which may have been missed by not doing something else, is
+attested by the simple fact that men do consciously choose it. Such a
+person has found _himself_, and has solved the problem in the only place
+and in the only way in which it can be solved: _in action_. To demand in
+advance of voluntary desire and deliberate choice that it be
+demonstrated that an individual shall get happiness in the measure of
+the rightness of his act, is to demand the obliteration of the essential
+factor in morality: the constant discovery, formation, and reformation
+of the self in the ends which an individual is called upon to sustain
+and develop in virtue of his membership in a social whole. The solution
+of the problem through the individual's voluntary identification of
+himself with social relations and aims is neither rare nor utopian. It
+is achieved not only by conspicuous social figures, but by multitudes of
+"obscure" figures who are faithful to the callings of their social
+relationships and offices. That the conditions of life for all should be
+enlarged, that wider opportunities and richer fields of activity should
+be opened, in order that happiness may be of a more noble and variegated
+sort, that those inequalities of status which lead men to find their
+advantage in disregard of others should be destroyed--these things are
+indeed necessary. But under the most ideal conditions which can be
+imagined, if there remain any moral element whatsoever, it will be only
+through personal deliberation and personal preference as to objective
+and social ends that the individual will discover and constitute
+himself, and hence discover the sort of happiness required as his good.
+
+Our final word about the place of the self in the moral life is, then,
+that the problem of morality is the formation, out of the body of
+original instinctive impulses which compose the natural self, of a
+voluntary self in which socialized desires and affections are dominant,
+and in which the last and controlling principle of deliberation is the
+love of the objects which will make this transformation possible. If we
+identify, as we must do, the interests of such a character with the
+virtues, we may say with Spinoza that happiness is not the reward of
+virtue, but is virtue itself. What, then, are the virtues?
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+For asceticism, see Lecky, _History of European Morals_.
+
+For self-denial, Mackenzie, _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. V.,
+pp. 273-295.
+
+For egoism and altruism: Comte, _System of Positive Politics_,
+Introduction, ch. iii., and Part II., ch. ii.; Spencer, _Principles of
+Ethics_, Vol. I., Part I., chs. xi.-xiv.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_,
+ch. vi.; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 379-399; Sorley, _Recent
+Tendencies in Ethics_; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, pp. 494-507.
+
+For the doctrine of self-interest, see Mandeville, _Fable of Bees_;
+Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, Book I., ch. vii., and Book II., ch. v.;
+Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, ch. x.; Martineau, _Types of Ethical
+Theory_, Part II., Book II., Branch I., ch. i.; Fite, _Introductory
+Study_, ch. ii.
+
+For historic development of sympathy, see Sutherland, _Origin and Growth
+of the Moral Instinct_.
+
+For the doctrine of self-realization, see Aristotle, _Ethics_; Green,
+_Prolegomena to Ethics_; Seth, _Principles of Ethics_, Part I., ch.
+iii.; Bradley, _Ethical Studies_, Essay II.; Fite, _Introductory Study_,
+ch. xi.; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, Book II., ch. i.; Taylor,
+_International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. VI., pp. 356-371; Palmer, _The
+Heart of Ethics_, and _The Nature of Goodness_; Calderwood,
+_Philosophical Review_, Vol. V., pp. 337-351; Dewey, _Philosophical
+Review_, Vol. II., pp. 652-664; Bryant, _Studies in Character_, pp.
+97-117.
+
+For the ethics of success, besides the writings of Nietzsche, see Plato,
+_Gorgias_ and _Republic_, Book I., and Sumner, _Folkways_, ch. xx.
+
+For the social self: Cooley, _Human Nature and the Social Order_, chs.
+v. and vi.; for the antagonistic self, chs. vii.-ix.
+
+For a general discussion of the Moral Self, see Bosanquet, _Psychology
+of the Moral Self_; Ladd, _Philosophy of Conduct_, ch. ix. (see also ch.
+xviii. on the Good Man).
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[170] Compare the opening words of Emerson's _Essay on Compensation_.
+
+[171] The principle of a "higher law" for the few who are leaders was
+first explicitly asserted in modern thought by Machiavelli.
+
+[172] Some phases of the writings of Nietzsche supply relevant material
+for this sketch. See especially his _Will for Power, Beyond Good and
+Evil_, and such statements as: "The loss of force which suffering has
+already brought upon life is still further increased and multiplied by
+sympathy. Suffering itself becomes contagious through sympathy"
+(overlooking the reaction of sympathy to abolish the source of suffering
+and thus increase force). "Sympathy thwarts, on the whole, in general,
+the law of development, which is the law of selection."--_Works_, Vol.
+XI., p. 242.
+
+[173] This phase of the matter has been brought out (possibly with some
+counter-exaggeration) by Kropotkin in his _Mutual Aid_.
+
+[174] Spencer puts the matter truly, if ponderously, in the following:
+"The citizens of a large nation industrially organized, have reached
+their possible ideal of happiness when the producing, distributing and
+other activities, are such in their kinds and amounts, that each
+individual finds in them a place for all his energies and aptitudes,
+while he obtains the means of satisfying all his desires. Once more we
+may recognize as not only possible, but probable, the eventual existence
+of a community, also industrial, the members of which, having natures
+similarly responding to these requirements, are also characterized by
+dominant aesthetic faculties, and achieve complete happiness only when a
+large part of life is filled with aesthetic activities" (_Principles of
+Ethics_, Vol. I., p. 169).
+
+[175] Machiavelli, transferring from theology to statecraft the notion
+of the corruption and selfishness of all men, was the first modern to
+preach this doctrine.
+
+[176] See, for example, Hobbes, _Leviathan_; Mandeville, _Fable of the
+Bees_; and Rochefoucauld, _Maxims_.
+
+[177] Compare what was said above, p. 273, on the confusion of pleasure
+as end, and as motive. Compare also the following from Leslie Stephen,
+_Science of Ethics_, p. 241. It is often "insinuated that I dislike your
+pain because it is painful to me in some special relation. I do not
+dislike it as your pain, but in virtue of some particular consequence,
+such, for example, as its making you less able to render me a service.
+In that case I do not really object to your pain as your pain at all,
+but only to some removable and accidental consequences." The entire
+discussion of sympathy (pp. 230-245), which is admirable, should be
+consulted.
+
+[178] _Psychology_, Vol. I., p. 320. The whole discussion, pp. 317-329,
+is very important.
+
+[179] See, for example, James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II., ch.
+xxiv.
+
+[180] Measures of public or state activity in the extension, for
+example, of education (furnishing free text-books, adequate medical
+inspection, and remedy of defects), are opposed by "good people" because
+there are "charitable" agencies for doing these things.
+
+[181] Compare Spencer's criticisms of Bentham's view of happiness as a
+social standard in contrast with his own ideal of freedom. See _Ethics_,
+Vol. I., pp. 162-168.
+
+[182] See Addams, _Democracy and Social Ethics_, ch. ii.
+
+[183] Compare the following extreme words of Sumner (_Folkways_, p. 9):
+"The great question of world philosophy always has been, what is the
+real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few
+generations that men have found courage to say there is none." But when
+Sumner, in the next sentence, says, "The whole strength of the notion
+that they are correlated is in the opposite experience which proves that
+no evil thing brings happiness," one may well ask what more relation any
+reasonable man would want. For it indicates that "goodness" consists in
+active interest in those things which really bring happiness; and while
+it by no means follows that this interest will _bring_ even a
+preponderance of pleasure over pain to the person, it is always open to
+him to _find_ and _take_ his dominant happiness in making this interest
+dominant in his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE VIRTUES
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+=Definition of Virtue.=--It is upon the self, upon the agent, that
+ultimately falls the burden of maintaining and of extending the values
+which make life reasonable and good. The worth of science, of art, of
+industry, of relationship of man and wife, parent and child, teacher and
+pupil, friend and friend, citizen and State, exists only as there are
+characters consistently interested in such goods. Hence any trait of
+character which makes for these goods is esteemed; it is given positive
+value; while any disposition of selfhood found to have a contrary
+tendency is condemned--has negative value. The habits of character whose
+effect is to sustain and spread the rational or common good are virtues;
+the traits of character which have the opposite effect are vices.
+
+=Virtue and Approbation; Vice and Condemnation.=--The approbation and
+disapprobation visited upon conduct are never purely intellectual. They
+are also emotional and practical. We are stirred to hostility at
+whatever disturbs the order of society; we are moved to admiring
+sympathy of whatever makes for its welfare. And these emotions express
+themselves in appropriate conduct. To disapprove and dislike is to
+reprove, blame, and punish. To approve is to encourage, to aid, and
+support. Hence the judgments express the character of the one who utters
+them--they are traits of his conduct and character; and they react into
+the character of the agent upon whom they are directed. They are part
+of the process of forming character. The commendation is of the nature
+of a reward calculated to confirm the person in the right course of
+action. The reprobation is of the nature of punishment, fitted to
+dissuade the agent from the wrong course. This encouragement and blame
+are not necessarily of an external sort; the reward and the punishment
+may not be in material things. It is not from ulterior design that
+society esteems and respects those attributes of an agent which tend to
+its own peace and welfare; it is from natural, instinctive response to
+acknowledge whatever makes for its good. None the less, the social
+esteem, the honor which attend certain acts inevitably educate the
+individual who performs these acts, and they strengthen, emotionally and
+practically, his interest in the right. Similarly, there is an
+instinctive reaction of society against an infringement of its customs
+and ideals; it naturally "makes it hot" for any one who disturbs its
+values. And this disagreeable attention instructs the individual as to
+the consequences of his act, and works to hinder the formation of
+dispositions of the socially disliked kind.
+
+=Natural Ability and Virtue.=--There is a tendency to use the term
+virtue in an abstract "moralistic" sense--a way which makes it almost
+Pharisaic in character. Hard and fast lines are drawn between certain
+traits of character labeled "virtues" and others called talents, natural
+abilities, or gifts of nature. Apart from deliberate or reflective
+nurture, modesty or generosity is no less and no more a purely natural
+ability than is good-humor, a turn for mechanics, or presence of mind.
+Every natural capacity, every talent or ability, whether of inquiring
+mind, of gentle affection or of executive skill, becomes a virtue when
+it is turned to account in supporting or extending the fabric of social
+values; and it turns, if not to vice at least to delinquency, when not
+thus utilized. The important habits conventionally reckoned virtues are
+barren unless they are the cumulative assemblage of a multitude of
+anonymous interests and capacities. Such natural aptitudes vary widely
+in different individuals. Their endowments and circumstances occasion
+and exact different virtues, and yet one person is not more or less
+virtuous than another because his virtues take a different form.
+
+=Changes in Virtues.=--It follows also that the meaning, or content, of
+virtues changes from time to time. Their abstract form, the man's
+attitude towards the good, remains the same. But when institutions and
+customs change and natural abilities are differently stimulated and
+evoked, ends vary, and habits of character are differently esteemed both
+by the individual agent and by others who judge. No social group could
+be maintained without patriotism and chastity, but the actual meaning of
+chastity and patriotism is widely different in contemporary society from
+what it was in savage tribes or from what we may expect it to be five
+hundred years from now. Courage in one society may consist almost wholly
+in willingness to face physical danger and death in voluntary devotion
+to one's community; in another, it may be willingness to support an
+unpopular cause in the face of ridicule.
+
+=Conventional and Genuine Virtue.=--When we take these social changes on
+a broad scale, in the gross, the point just made is probably clear
+without emphasis. But we are apt to forget that minor changes are going
+on all the while. The community's formulated code of esteem and regard
+and praise at any given time is likely to lag somewhat behind its
+practical level of achievement and possibility. It is more or less
+traditional, describing what used to be, rather than what are, virtues.
+The "respectable" comes to mean tolerable, passable, conventional.
+Accordingly the prevailing scheme of assigning merit and blame, while on
+the whole a mainstay of moral guidance and instruction, is also a menace
+to moral growth. Hence men must look behind the current valuation to the
+real value. Otherwise, mere conformity to custom is conceived to be
+virtue;[184] and the individual who deviates from custom in the interest
+of wider and deeper good is censured.
+
+=Moral Responsibility for Praise and Blame.=--The practical assigning of
+value, of blame and praise, is a measure and exponent of the character
+of the one from whom it issues. In judging others, in commending and
+condemning, we judge ourselves. What we find to be praiseworthy and
+blameworthy is a revelation of our own affections. Very literally the
+measure we mete to others is meted to us. To be free in our attributions
+of blame is to be censorious and uncharitable; to be unresentful to evil
+is to be indifferent, or interested perhaps chiefly in one's own
+popularity, so that one avoids giving offense to others. To engage
+profusely in blame and approbation in speech without acts which back up
+or attack the ends verbally honored or condemned, is to have a
+perfunctory morality. To cultivate complacency and remorse apart from
+effort to improve is to indulge in sentimentality. In short, to approve
+or to condemn is itself a moral act for which we are as much responsible
+as we are for any other deed.
+
+=Impossibility of Cataloguing Virtues.=--These last three
+considerations: (1) the intimate connection of virtues with all sorts of
+individual capacities and endowments, (2) the change in types of habit
+required with change of social customs and institutions, (3) the
+dependence of judgment of vice and virtue upon the character of the one
+judging,[185] make undesirable and impossible a catalogued list of
+virtues with an exact definition of each. Virtues are numberless. Every
+situation, not of a routine order, brings in some special shading, some
+unique adaptation, of disposition.
+
+=Twofold Classification.=--We may, however, classify the chief
+institutions of social life--language, scientific investigation,
+artistic production, industrial efficiency, family, local community,
+nation, humanity--and specify the types of mental disposition and
+interest which are fitted to maintain them flourishingly; or, starting
+from typical impulsive and instinctive tendencies, we may consider the
+form they assume when they become intelligently exercised habits. A
+virtue may be defined, accordingly, either as _the settled intelligent
+identification of an agent's capacity with some aspect of the reasonable
+or common happiness_; or, as _a social custom or tendency organized into
+a personal habit of valuation_. From the latter standpoint, truthfulness
+is the social institution of language maintained at its best pitch of
+efficiency through the habitual purposes of individuals; from the
+former, it is an instinctive capacity and tendency to communicate
+emotions and ideas directed so as to maintain social peace and
+prosperity. In like fashion, one might catalogue all forms of social
+custom and institution on one hand; and all the species and varieties of
+individual equipment on the other, and enumerate a virtue for each. But
+the performance is so formal as not to amount to much.
+
+=Aspects of Virtue.=--Any virtuous disposition of character exhibits,
+however, certain main traits, a consideration of which will serve to
+review and summarize our analysis of the moral life.
+
+=I. The Interest Must be Entire or Whole-hearted.=--The whole self,
+without division or reservation, must go out into the proposed object
+and find therein its own satisfaction. Virtue is integrity; vice
+duplicity. Goodness is straight, right; badness is crooked, indirect.
+Interest that is incomplete is not interest, but (so far as incomplete)
+indifference and disregard. This totality of interest we call affection,
+love; and love is the fulfilling of the law. A grudging virtue is next
+to no virtue at all; thorough heartiness in even a bad cause stirs
+admiration, and lukewarmness in every direction is always despised as
+meaning lack of character. Surrender, abandonment, is of the essence of
+identification of self with an object.
+
+=II. The Interest Must be Energetic and Hence Persistent.=--One swallow
+does not make a summer nor a sporadic right act a virtuous habit.
+Fair-weather character has a proverbially bad name. Endurance through
+discouragement, through good repute and ill, weal and woe, tests the
+vigor of interest in the good, and both builds up and expresses a formed
+character.
+
+=III. The Interest Must be Pure or Sincere.=--Honesty is, doubtless, the
+best policy, and it is better a man should be honest from policy than
+not honest at all. If genuinely honest from considerations of prudence,
+he is on the road to learn better reasons for honesty. None the less, we
+are suspicious of a man if we believe that motives of personal profit
+are the only stay of his honesty. For circumstances might arise in
+which, in the exceptional case, it would be clear that personal
+advantage lay in dishonesty. The motive for honesty would hold in most
+cases, in ordinary and routine circumstances and in the glare of
+publicity, but not in the dark of secrecy, or in the turmoil of
+disturbed circumstance. The eye single to the good, the "disinterested
+interest" of moralists, is required. The motive that has to be coaxed or
+coerced to its work by some promise or threat is imperfect.
+
+=Cardinal or Indispensable Aspects of Virtue.=--Bearing in mind that we
+are not attempting to classify various acts or habits, but only to state
+traits essential to all morality, we have the "cardinal virtues" of
+moral theory. As whole-hearted, as complete interest, any habit or
+attitude of character involves justice and love; as persistently active,
+it is courage, fortitude, or vigor; as unmixed and single, it is
+temperance--in its classic sense. And since no habitual interest can be
+integral, enduring, or sincere, save as it is reasonable, save, that is,
+as it is rooted in the deliberate habit of viewing the part in the light
+of the whole, the present in the light of the past and future, interest
+in the good is also wisdom or conscientiousness:--interest in the
+discovery of the true good of the situation. Without this interest, all
+our interest is likely to be perverted and misleading--requiring to be
+repented of.
+
+Wisdom, or (in modern phrase) conscientiousness, is the nurse of all the
+virtues. Our most devoted courage is in the will to know the good and
+the fair by unflinching attention to the painful and disagreeable. Our
+severest discipline in self-control is that which checks the exorbitant
+pretensions of an appetite by insisting upon knowing it in its true
+proportions. The most exacting justice is that of an intelligence which
+gives due weight to each desire and demand in deliberation before it is
+allowed to pass into overt action. That affection and wisdom lie close
+to each other is evidenced by our language; thoughtfulness, regard,
+consideration for others, recognition of others, attention to others.
+
+
+Sec. 1. TEMPERANCE
+
+The English word "temperance" (particularly in its local association
+with agitation regarding use of intoxicating liquors) is a poor
+substitute for the Greek _sophrosyne_ which, through the Latin
+_temperantia_, it represents. The Athenian Greek was impressed with the
+fact that just as there are lawless, despotically ruled, and
+self-governed communities, so there are lawless, and servile, and
+self-ruled individuals. Whenever there is a self-governed soul, there
+is a happy blending of the authority of reason with the force of
+appetite. The individual's diverse nature is tempered into a living
+harmony of desire and intelligence. Reason governs not as a tyrant from
+without, but as a guide to which the impulses and emotions are gladly
+responsive. Such a well-attuned nature, as far from asceticism on one
+side as from random indulgence on the other, represented the ideal of
+what was fair and graceful in character, an ideal embodied in the notion
+of _sophrosyne_. This was a _whole-mindedness_ which resulted from the
+happy furtherance of all the elements of human nature under the
+self-accepted direction of intelligence. It implied an _aesthetic_ view
+of character; of harmony in structure and rhythm in action. It was the
+virtue of judgment exercised in the estimate of pleasures:--since it is
+the agreeable, the pleasant, which gives an end excessive hold upon us.
+
+=Roman Temperantia.=--The Roman conceived this virtue under the term
+_temperantia_, which conveys the same idea, but accommodated to the
+Roman genius. It is connected with the word _tempus_, time, which is
+connected also with a root meaning divide, distribute; it suggests a
+consecutive orderliness of behavior, a freedom from excessive and
+reckless action, first this way, and then that. It means seemliness,
+decorum, decency. It was "moderation," not as quantity of indulgence,
+but as a moderating of each act in a series by the thought of other and
+succeeding acts--keeping each in sequence with others in a whole. The
+idea of time involves time to think; the sobering second thought
+expressed in seriousness and gravity. The negative side, the side of
+restraint, of inhibition, is strong, and functions for the consistent
+calm and gravity of life.
+
+=Christian Purity.=--Through the Christian influence, the connotation
+which is marked in the notion of control of sexual appetite, became most
+obvious--_purity_. Passion is not so much something which disturbs the
+harmony of man's nature, or which interrupts its orderliness, as it is
+something which defiles the purity of spiritual nature. It is the
+grossness, the contamination of appetite which is insisted upon, and
+temperance is the maintenance of the soul spotless and unsullied.
+
+=Negative Phase=:--Self-control. A negative aspect of self-control,
+restraint, inhibition is everywhere involved.[186] It is not, however,
+desire, or appetite, or passion, or impulse, which has to be checked
+(much less eliminated); it is rather that tendency of desire and passion
+so to engross attention as to destroy our sense of the other ends which
+have a claim upon us. This moderation of pretension is indispensable for
+every desire. In one direction, it is modesty, humility; the restraint
+of the tendency of self-conceit to distort the relative importance of
+the agent's and others' concerns; in another direction, it is chastity;
+in another, "temperance" in the narrower sense of that word--keeping the
+indulgence of hunger and thirst from passing reasonable bounds; in
+another, it is calmness, self-possession--moderation of the transporting
+power of excitement; in yet another, it is discretion, imposing limits
+upon the use of the hand, eye, or tongue. In matters of wealth, it is
+decent regulation of display and ostentation. In general, it is
+prudence, control of the present impulse and desire by a view of the
+"long run," of proximate by remote consequences.[187]
+
+=Positive Phase: Reverence.=--The tendency of dominant passion is to
+rush us along, to prevent our thinking. The one thing that desire
+emphasizes is, for the time being, the most important thing in the
+universe. This is necessary to heartiness and effectiveness of interest
+and behavior. But it is important that the thing which thus absorbs
+desire should be an end capable of justifying its power to absorb. This
+is possible only if it expresses the entire self. Otherwise capacities
+and desires which will occur later will be inconsistent and
+antagonistic, and conduct will be unregulated and unstable. The
+underlying idea in "temperance" is then a care of details for the sake
+of the whole course of behavior of which they are parts; heedfulness,
+painstaking devotion. Laxness in conduct means carelessness; lack of
+regard for the whole life permits temporary inclinations to get a sway
+that the outcome will not justify. In its more striking forms, we call
+this care and respect _reverence_; recognition of the unique, invaluable
+worth embodied in any situation or act of life, a recognition which
+checks that flippancy of surrender to momentary excitement coming from a
+superficial view of behavior. A sense of momentous issues at stake means
+a sobering and deepening of the mental attitude. The consciousness that
+every deed of life has an import clear beyond its immediate, or first
+significance, attaches dignity to every act. To live in the sense of the
+larger values attaching to our passing desires and deeds is to be
+possessed by the virtue of temperance.
+
+=Control of Excitement.=--What hinders such living is, as we have seen,
+the exaggerated intensity, the lack of proportion and perspective, with
+which any appetite or desire is likely to present itself. It is this
+which moralists of all ages have attacked under the name of
+pleasure--the alluring and distracting power of the momentarily
+agreeable. Seeing in this the enemy which prevents the rational survey
+of the whole field and the calm, steady insight into the true good, it
+is hardly surprising that moralists have attacked "pleasure" as the
+source of every temptation to stray from the straight path of reason.
+But it is not pleasure, it is one form of pleasure, the _pleasure of
+excitement_, which is the obstacle and danger.[188] Every impulse and
+desire marks a certain disturbance in the order of life, an exaltation
+above the existing level, a pressure beyond its existing limit. To give
+way to desire, to let it grow, to taste to the full its increasing and
+intensifying excitement, is the temptation. The bodily appetites of
+hunger and thirst and sex, with which we associate the grossest forms of
+indulgence and laxity, exemplify the principle of expanding waves of
+organic stimulation. But so also do many of the subtler forms of
+unrestraint or intemperate action. The one with a clever and lively
+tongue is tempted to let it run away with him; the vain man feeds upon
+the excitement of a personality heightened by display and the notice of
+others; the angry man, even though he knows he will later regret his
+surrender, gives away to the sense of expanding power coincident with
+his discharge of rage. The shiftless person finds it easier to take
+chances and let consequences take care of themselves, while he enjoys
+local and casual stimulations. Trivialities and superficialities
+entangle us in a flippant life, because each one as it comes promises to
+be "thrilling," while the very fear that this promise will not be kept
+hurries us on to new experiences. To think of alternatives and
+consequences is not "thrilling," but serious.
+
+=Necessity of Superior Interest.=--Now calculation of the utilitarian
+type is not adequate to deal with this temptation. Those who are prone
+to reflection upon results are just those who are least likely to be
+carried away by excitement--unless, as is the case with some
+specialists, thinking is itself the mode of indulgence in
+excitement.[189] With those who are carried away habitually by some mode
+of excitement, the disease and the incapacity to take the proffered
+remedy of reflection are the same thing. Only some _other_ passion will
+accomplish the desired control. With the Greeks, it was aesthetic
+passion, love of the grace and beauty, the rhythm and harmony, of a
+self-controlled life. With the Romans, it was the passion for dignity,
+power, honor of personality, evidenced in rule of appetite. Both of
+these motives remain among the strong allies of ordered conduct. But the
+passion for purity, the sense of something degrading and foul in
+surrender to the base, an interest in something spotless, free from
+adulteration, are, in some form or other, the chief resource in
+overcoming the tendency of excitement to usurp the governance of the
+self.[190]
+
+
+Sec. 2. COURAGE[191] OR PERSISTENT VIGOR
+
+While love of excitement allures man from the path of reason, fear of
+pain, dislike to hardship, and laborious effort, hold him back from
+entering it. Dislike of the disagreeable inhibits or contracts the
+putting forth of energy, just as liking for agreeable stimulation
+discharges and exhausts it. Intensity of active interest in the good
+alone subdues that instinctive shrinking from the unpleasant and hard
+which slackens energy or turns it aside. Such energy of devotion is
+courage. Its etymological connection with the Latin word for _heart_,
+suggests a certain abundant spontaneity, a certain overflow of positive
+energy; the word was applied to this aspect of virtue when the heart was
+regarded as literally (not metaphorically) the seat of vital impulse and
+abundant forcefulness.
+
+=Courage and the Common Good.=--One of the problems of early Greek
+thought was that of discriminating courage as virtuous from a sort of
+animal keenness and alacrity, easily running into recklessness and
+bravado. It was uniformly differentiated from mere overflow of
+physical energy by the fact that it was exhibited in support of some
+common or social good. It bore witness to its voluntary character
+by abiding in the face of threatened evil. Its simplest form was
+patriotism--willingness to brave the danger of death in facing the
+country's enemy from love of country. And this basic largeness of spirit
+in which the individual sinks considerations of personal loss and harm
+in allegiance to an objective good remains a cardinal aspect of all
+right disposition.
+
+=Courage is Preeminently the Executive Side of Every Virtue.=--The good
+will, as we saw, means endeavor, effort, towards certain ends; unless
+the end stirs to strenuous exertion, it is a sentimental, not a moral or
+practical end. And endeavor implies obstacles to overcome, resistance to
+what diverts, painful labor. It is the degree of threatened harm--in
+spite of which one does not swerve--which measures this depth and
+sincerity of interest in the good.
+
+=Aspects of Interest in Execution.=--Certain formal traits of courage
+follow at once from this general definition. In its onset, willingness
+in behalf of the common good to endure attendant private evils is
+alacrity, promptness. In its abiding and unswerving devotion, it is
+constancy, loyalty, and faithfulness. In its continual resistance to
+evil, it is fortitude, patience, perseverance, willingness to abide for
+justification an ultimate issue. The _totality_ of commitment of self
+to the good is decision and firmness. Conviction and resolution
+accompany all true moral endeavor. These various dimensions (intensity,
+duration, extent, and fullness) are, however, only differing expressions
+of one and the same attitude of vigorous, energetic identification of
+agency with the object.
+
+=Goodness and Effectiveness.=--It is the failure to give due weight to
+this factor of morality (the "works" of theological discussion) which is
+responsible for the not uncommon idea that moral goodness means loss of
+practical efficacy. When inner disposition is severed from outer action,
+wishing divorced from executive willing, morality is reduced to mere
+harmlessness; outwardly speaking, the best that can then be said of
+virtue is that it is innocent and innocuous. Unscrupulousness is
+identified with energy of execution; and a minute and paralyzing
+scrupulosity with goodness. It is in reaction from such futile morality
+that the gospel of force and of shrewdness of selecting and adapting
+means to the desired end, is preached and gains hearers--as in the Italy
+of the Renaissance[192] in reaction against mediaeval piety, and again in
+our own day (see _ante_, p. 374).
+
+=Moral Courage and Optimism.=--A characteristic modern development of
+courageousness is implied in the phrase "moral courage,"--as if all
+genuine courage were not moral. It means devotion to the good in the
+face of the customs of one's friends and associates, rather than against
+the attacks of one's enemies. It is willingness to brave for sake of a
+new idea of the good the unpopularity that attends breach of custom and
+convention. It is this type of heroism, manifested in integrity of
+memory and foresight, which wins the characteristic admiration of
+to-day, rather than the outward heroism of bearing wounds and undergoing
+physical dangers. It is _attention_ upon which the stress falls.[193]
+This supplies, perhaps, the best vantage point from which to survey
+optimism and pessimism in their direct moral bearings. The individual
+whose pursuit of the good is colored by honest recognition of existing
+and threatening evils is almost always charged with being a pessimist;
+with cynical delight in dwelling upon what is morbid, base, or sordid;
+and he is urged to be an "optimist," meaning in effect to conceal from
+himself and others evils that obtain. Optimism, thus conceived, is a
+combination of building rosy-colored castles in the air and hiding,
+ostrich-like, from actual facts. As a general thing, it will be those
+who have some interest at stake in evils remaining unperceived, and
+hence unremedied, who most clamor in the cause of such "optimism." Hope
+and aspiration, belief in the supremacy of good in spite of all evil,
+belief in the realizability of good in spite of all obstacles, are
+necessary inspirations in the life of virtue. The good can never be
+demonstrated to the senses, nor be proved by calculations of personal
+profit. It involves a radical venture of the will in the interest of
+what is unseen and prudentially incalculable. But such optimism of
+_will_, such determination of the man that, so far as his choice is
+concerned, only the good shall be recognized as real, is very different
+from a sentimental refusal to look at the realities of the situation
+just as they are. In fact a certain intellectual pessimism, in the sense
+of a steadfast willingness to uncover sore points, to acknowledge and
+search for abuses, to note how presumed good often serves as a cloak for
+actual bad, is a necessary part of the moral optimism which actively
+devotes itself to making the right prevail. Any other view reduces the
+aspiration and hope, which are the essence of moral courage, to a
+cheerful animal buoyancy; and, in its failure to see the evil done to
+others in its thoughtless pursuit of what it calls good, is nextdoor to
+brutality, to a brutality bathed in the atmosphere of sentimentality and
+flourishing the catchwords of idealism.
+
+
+Sec. 3. JUSTICE
+
+=In Ethical Literature Justice Has Borne at Least Three Different
+Senses.=[194]--In its widest sense, it means righteousness, uprightness,
+rectitude. It sums up morality. It is not _a_ virtue, but it is virtue.
+The just act is the _due_ act; justice is fulfillment of obligation. (2)
+This passes over into fairness, equity, impartiality, honesty in all
+one's dealing with others. (3) The narrowest meaning is that of
+_vindication_ of right through the administration of law.[194] Since
+Aristotle's time (and following his treatment) this has been divided
+into (i.) the _distributive_, having to do with the assignment of honor,
+wealth, etc., in proportion to desert, and (ii.) the _corrective_,
+vindicating the law against the transgressor by effecting a requital,
+redress, which restores the supremacy of law.
+
+=A Thread of Common Significance Runs through These Various
+Meanings.=--The rational good means a comprehensive or complete end, in
+which are harmoniously included a variety of special aims and values.
+The just man is the man who takes in the whole of a situation and reacts
+to it in its wholeness, not being misled by undue respect to some
+particular factor. Since the general or inclusive good is a common or
+social good, reconciling and combining the ends of a multitude of
+private or particular persons, justice is the preeminently social
+virtue: that which maintains the due order of individuals in the
+interest of the comprehensive or social unity.
+
+Justice, as equity, fairness, impartiality, honesty, carries the
+recognition of the whole over into the question of right distribution
+and apportionment among its parts. The equitable judge or administrator
+is the one who makes no unjustifiable distinctions among those dealt
+with. A fair price is one which recognizes the rights of both buyer and
+seller. An honest man is the one who, with respect to whatever he has to
+distribute to others and to receive from them, is desirous of giving and
+taking just what belongs to each party concerned. The fair-minded man is
+not bribed by pleasure into giving undue importance to some element of
+good nor coerced by fear of pain into ignoring some other. He
+_distributes_ his attention, regard, and attachment according to the
+reasonable or objective claims of each factor.
+
+=Justice and Sympathy or Love.=--The most significant questions
+regarding justice are as to its connection with love and with
+condemnation and punishment. It is a common notion that justice is harsh
+or hard in its workings and that it requires to be supplemented, if not
+replaced, by mercy. Taken literally this would mean that justice is not
+just in its workings. The truth contained is that what is frequently
+regarded as justice is not justice, but an imperfect substitute for it.
+When a legal type of morality is current, justice is regarded as the
+working of some fixed and abstract law; it is the law as law which is to
+be reverenced; it is law as law whose majesty is to be vindicated. It is
+forgotten that the nobility and dignity of law are due to the place of
+law in securing the order involved in the realization of human
+happiness. Then the law instead of being a servant of the good is put
+arbitrarily above it, as if man was made for law, not law for man. The
+result is inevitably harshness; indispensable factors of happiness are
+ruthlessly slighted, or ruled out; the loveliness and grace of behavior
+responding freely and flexibly to the requirements of unique situations
+are stiffened into uniformity. The formula _summum jus summa injuria_
+expresses the outcome when abstract law is insisted upon without
+reference to the needs of concrete cases. Under such conditions, there
+arises a demand for tempering the sternness of justice with mercy, and
+supplementing the severity of law with grace. This demand means that the
+neglected human values shall be restored into the idea of what is just.
+
+="Social Justice."=--Our own time has seen a generous quickening of the
+idea of social justice due to the growth of love, or philanthropy, as a
+working social motive. In the older scheme of morals, justice was
+supposed to meet all the necessary requirements of virtue; charity was
+doing good in ways not obligatory or strictly exacted. Hence it was a
+source of peculiar merit in the doer, a means of storing up a surplus of
+virtue to offset vice. But a more generous sense of inherent social
+relationships binding the aims of all into one comprehensive good, which
+is the result of increase of human intercourse, democratic institutions,
+and biological science, has made men recognize that the greater part of
+the sufferings and miseries which afford on the part of a few the
+opportunity for charity (and hence superior merit), are really social
+inequities, due to causes which may be remedied. That justice requires
+radical improvement of these conditions displaces the notion that their
+effects may be here and there palliated by the voluntary merit of
+morally superior individuals. The change illustrates, on a wide scale,
+the transformation of the conception of justice so that it joins hands
+with love and sympathy. That human nature should have justice done it
+under all circumstances is an infinitely complicated and difficult
+requirement, and only a vision of the capacities and accomplishments of
+human beings rooted in affection and sympathy can perceive and execute
+justly.
+
+=Transformation of Punitive Justice.=--The conception of punitive or
+corrective justice is undergoing the same transformation. Aristotle
+stated the rule of equity in the case of wrongdoing as an arithmetical
+requital: the individual was to suffer according to his deed. Later,
+through conjunction with the idea of a divine judge inflicting
+retribution upon the sinner, this notion passed into the belief that
+punishment is a form of justice restoring the balance of disturbed law
+by inflicting suffering upon the one who has done wrong. The end and aim
+of punishment was retribution, bringing back to the agent the evil
+consequences of his own deed. That punishment is suffering, that it
+inevitably involves pain to the guilty one, there can be no question;
+this, whether the punishment is externally inflicted or is in the pangs
+of conscience, and whether administered by parent, teacher, or civil
+authority. But that suffering is for the sake of suffering, or that
+suffering can in any way restore or affect the violated majesty of law,
+is a different matter.
+
+What erring human nature deserves or merits, it is just it should have.
+But in the end, a moral agent deserves to _be_ a moral agent; and hence
+deserves that punishments inflicted should be _corrective_, not merely
+retributive. Every wrongdoer should have his due. But what is his due?
+Can we measure it by his past alone; or is it due every one to regard
+him as a man with a future as well? as having possibilities for good as
+well as achievements in bad? Those who are responsible for the
+infliction of punishment have, as well as those punished, to meet the
+requirements of justice; and failure to employ the means and
+instrumentalities of punishment in a way to lead, so far as possible,
+the wrongdoer to reconsideration of conduct and re-formation of
+disposition, cannot shelter itself under the plea that it vindicates
+law. Such failure comes rather from thoughtless custom; from a lazy
+unwillingness to find better means; from an admixture of pride with lack
+of sympathy for others; from a desire to maintain things as they are
+rather than go to the causes which generate criminals.
+
+
+Sec. 4. WISDOM OR CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
+
+As we have repeatedly noted, the heart of a voluntary act is its
+intelligent or deliberate character. The individual's _intelligent_
+concern for the good is implied in his sincerity, his faithfulness, and
+his integrity. Of all the habits which constitute the character of an
+individual, the habit of _judging_ moral situations is the most
+important, for this is the key to the _direction_ and to the _remaking_
+of all other habits. When an act is overt, it is irretrievably launched.
+The agent has no more control. The moral life has its center in the
+periods of suspended and postponed action, when the energy of the
+individual is spent in recollection and foresight, in severe inquiry and
+serious consideration of alternative aims. Only through reflection can
+habits, however good in their origin and past exercise, be readapted to
+the needs of the present; only through reflection can impulses, not yet
+having found direction, be guided into the haven of a reasonable
+happiness.
+
+=Greek Emphasis upon Insight or Wisdom.=--It is not surprising that the
+Greeks, the first seriously to inquire into the nature of behavior and
+its end or good, should have eulogized _wisdom_, _insight_, as the
+supreme virtue and the source of all the virtues. Now, indeed, it seems
+paradoxical to say with Socrates that ignorance is the only vice; that
+man is bad not voluntarily, from deliberate choice, but only from
+ignorance. But this is largely because we discriminate between different
+kinds of knowledge as the Greek did not, and as they had no occasion for
+doing. We have a second-hand knowledge, a knowledge from books,
+newspapers, etc., which was practically non-existent even in the best
+days of Athens. Knowledge meant to them something more personal;
+something like what we call a "realizing sense"; an intimate and
+well-founded conviction. To us knowledge suggests information about what
+others have found out, and hence is more remote in its meaning. Greek
+knowledge was mostly directly connected with the affairs of their common
+associated life. The very words for knowledge and art, understanding and
+skill, were hardly separated. Knowledge was knowledge about the city,
+its traditions, literature, history, customs, purposes, etc. Their
+astronomy was connected with their civic religion; their geography with
+their own topography; their mathematics with their civil and military
+pursuits. Now we have immense bodies of impersonal knowledge, remote
+from direct bearing upon affairs. Knowledge has accordingly subdivided
+itself into theoretical or scientific and practical or moral. We use the
+term knowledge usually only for the first kind; hence the Socratic
+position seems gratuitously paradoxical. But under the titles of
+_conscience_ and _conscientiousness_ we preserve the meaning which was
+attached to the term knowledge. It is not paradoxical to say that
+unconscientiousness is the fundamental vice, and genuine
+conscientiousness is guarantee of all virtue.
+
+=Conscientiousness.=--In this change from Greek wisdom to modern
+conscientiousness there have been some loss and some gain. The loss lies
+in a certain hardening of the idea of insight and deliberation, due to
+the isolation of the moral good from the other goods of life. The good
+man and the bad man have been endowed with the same faculty; and this
+faculty has been treated as automatically delivering correct
+conclusions. On the other hand, modern conscientiousness contains less
+of the idea of intellectual accomplishment, and more of the idea of
+interest in finding out the good in conduct. "Wisdom" tended to
+emphasize achieved insight; knowledge which was proved, guaranteed, and
+unchangeable. "Conscientiousness" tends rather to fix attention upon
+that voluntary attitude which is interested in _discovery_.
+
+This implies a pretty radical change in wisdom as virtue. In the older
+sense it is an attainment; something possessed. In the modern, it
+resides in the active desire and effort, in pursuit rather than in
+possession. The _attainment_ of knowledge varies with original
+intellectual endowment; with opportunity for leisurely reflection; with
+all sorts of external conditions. Possession is a _class_ idea and tends
+to mark off a moral aristocracy from a common herd. Since the activities
+of the latter must be directed, on this assumption, by attained
+knowledge, its practical outcome is the necessity of the regulation of
+their conduct by the wisdom possessed by the superior class. When,
+however, the morally important thing is the desire and effort to
+discover the good, every one is on the same plane, in spite of
+differences in intellectual endowment and in learning.
+
+Moral knowing, as a fundamental or cardinal aspect of virtue, is
+then the completeness of the interest in good exhibited in effort
+to discover the good. Since knowing involves two factors, a direct
+and an indirect, conscientiousness involves both _sensitiveness_ and
+_reflectiveness_.[195]
+
+=(1) Moral Sensitiveness.=--The individual who is not directly aware of
+the presence of values needing to be perpetuated or achieved, in the
+things and persons about him, is hard and callous or tough. A "tender"
+conscience is one which is immediately responsive to the presentation of
+good and evil. The modern counterpart to the Socratic doctrine that
+ignorance is the root of vice, is that being morally "cold" or "dead,"
+being indifferent to moral distinctions, is the most hopeless of all
+conditions. One who cares, even if he cares in the wrong way, has at
+least a spring that may be touched; the one who is just irresponsive
+offers no leverage for correction or improvement.
+
+=(2) Thoughtfulness.=--While the possession of such an immediate,
+unreflective responsiveness to elements of good and bad must be the
+mainstay of moral wisdom, the character which lies back of these
+intuitive apprehensions must be thoughtful and serious-minded. There is
+no individual who, however morally sensitive, can dispense with cool,
+calm reflection, or whose intuitive judgments, if reliable, are not
+largely the funded outcome of prior thinking. Every voluntary act is
+intelligent: i.e., includes an idea of the end to be reached or the
+consequences to accrue. Such ends are ideal in the sense that they are
+present to thought, not to sense. But special ends, because they are
+limited, are not what we mean by ideals. They are specific. With the
+growth of the habit of reflection, agents become conscious that the
+values of their particular ends are not circumscribed, but extend far
+beyond the special case in question; so far indeed that their range of
+influence cannot be foreseen or defined. A kindly act may not only have
+the particular consequence of relieving present suffering, but may make
+a difference in the entire life of its recipient, or may set in
+radically different directions the interest and attention of the one who
+performs it. These larger and remoter values in any moral act transcend
+the end which was consciously present to its doer. The person has always
+to aim at something definite, but as he becomes aware of this penumbra
+or atmosphere of far-reaching ulterior values the meaning of his special
+act is thereby deepened and widened. An act is outwardly temporary and
+circumstantial, but its meaning is permanent and expansive. The act
+passes away; but its significance abides in the increment of meaning
+given to further growth. To live in the recognition of this deeper
+meaning of acts is to live in the ideal, in the only sense in which it
+is profitable for man to dwell in the ideal.
+
+_Our "ideals," our types of excellence, are the various ways in which we
+figure to ourselves the outreaching and ever-expanding values of our
+concrete acts._ Every achievement of good deepens and quickens our sense
+of the inexhaustible value contained in every right act. With
+achievement, our conception of the possible goods of life increases,
+and we find ourselves called to live upon a still deeper and more
+thoughtful plane. An ideal is not some remote all-exhaustive goal, a
+fixed _summum bonum_ with respect to which other things are only means.
+It is not something to be placed in contrast to the direct, local, and
+tangible quality of our actual situations, so that by contrast these
+latter are lightly esteemed as insignificant. On the contrary, an ideal
+is the conviction that each of these special situations carries with it
+a final value, a meaning which in itself is unique and inexhaustible. To
+set up "ideals" of perfection which are other than the serious
+recognition of the possibilities of development resident in each
+concrete situation, is in the end to pay ourselves with
+sentimentalities, if not with words, and meanwhile it is to direct
+thought and energy away from the situations which need and which welcome
+the perfecting care of attention and affection.
+
+=Thoughtfulness and Progress.=--This sense of wider values than those
+definitely apprehended or definitely attained is a constant warning to
+the individual not to be content with an accomplishment.
+Conscientiousness takes more and more the form of interest in
+improvement, in progress. Conscientiousness as sensitiveness may rest
+upon the plane of already secured satisfactions, upon discriminating
+with accuracy their quality and degree. As thoughtfulness, it will
+always be on the lookout for the better. The good man not only measures
+his acts by a standard, but he is concerned to revise his standard. His
+sense of the ideal, of the undefinable because ever-expanding value of
+special deeds, forbids his resting satisfied with any formulated
+standard; for the very formulation gives the standard a technical
+quality, while the good can be maintained only in enlarging excellence.
+The highest form of conscientiousness is interest in constant progress.
+
+=Love and Courage Required for Thoughtfulness.=--We may close this
+chapter by repeating what we have already noted, that genuine moral
+knowledge involves the affections and the resolute will as well as the
+intelligence. We cannot know the varied elements of value in the lives
+of others and in the possibilities of our own, save as our affections
+are strong. Every narrowing of love, every encroachment of egoism, means
+just so much blindness to the good. The man who pleads "good motives" as
+excuse for acts which injure others is always one whose absorption in
+himself has wrought harm to his powers of perception. Every widening of
+contact with others, every deepening of the level of sympathetic
+acquaintance, magnifies in so much vision of the good. Finally, the
+chief ally of moral thoughtfulness is the resolute courage of
+willingness to face the evil for the sake of the good. Shrinking from
+apprehension of the evil to others consequent upon our behavior, because
+such realization would demand painful effort to change our own plans and
+habits, maintains habitual dimness and narrowness of moral vision.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Upon the principle of virtue in general, see Plato, _Republic_, 427-443;
+Aristotle, _Ethics_, Books II. and IV.; Kant, _Theory of Ethics_
+(Abbott's trans.), pp. 164-182, 305, 316-322; Green, _Prolegomena_, pp.
+256-314 (and for conscientiousness, 323-337); Paulsen, _System of
+Ethics_, pp. 475-482; Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_, pp.
+242-253; Ladd, _Philosophy of Conduct_, chs. x. and xiv.; Stephen,
+_Science of Ethics_, ch. v.; Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. II.,
+pp. 3-34 and 263-276; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, pp. 2-5 and 9-10;
+Rickaby, _Aquinas Ethicus_, Vol. I., pp. 155-195; Mezes, _Ethics_, chs.
+ix. and xvi.
+
+For natural ability and virtue: Hume, _Treatise_, Part II., Book III.,
+and _Inquiry_, Appendix IV.; Bonar, _Intellectual Virtues_.
+
+For discussions of special virtues: Aristotle, _Ethics_, Book III., and
+Book VII., chs. i.-x.; for justice: Aristotle, _Ethics_, Book V.;
+Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, pp. 102-108, and _Aquinas Ethicus_ (see
+Index); Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 599-637; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch.
+xiii.; Mill, _Utilitarianism_, ch. v.; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_,
+Book III., ch. v., and see Index; also criticism of Spencer in his
+_Lectures on the Ethics of Green, Spencer and Martineau_, pp. 272-302;
+Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. II.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_,
+ch. v.
+
+For benevolence, see Aristotle, _Ethics_, Books VII.-IX. (on
+friendship); Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, pp. 237-244, and _Aquinas
+Ethicus_ (see charity and almsgiving in Index); Paulsen, _System_, chs.
+viii. and x. of Part III.; Mezes, _Ethics_, ch. xii.; Sidgwick,
+_Methods of Ethics_, Book II., ch. iv.; Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_,
+Vol. II.; see also the references under sympathy and altruism at end of
+ch. xviii. Courage and temperance are discussed in chs. x. and xi. of
+Mezes; in pp. 485-504 of Paulsen; pp. 327-336 of Sidgwick; ch. xi. of
+Ladd's _Philosophy of Conduct_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[184] This is, of course, the point made in ch. iv. on "_Customs or
+Mores_," save that there the emphasis was upon the epoch of customary as
+distinct from the reflective morals, while here it is upon the customary
+factor in the present.
+
+[185] This fact might be employed to reenforce our prior conclusion that
+moral rules, classifications, etc., are not of final importance but are
+of value in clarifying and judging individual acts and situations. Not
+the rule, but the use which the person makes of the rule in approving
+and disapproving himself and others, is the significant thing.
+
+[186] Less is said on this point because this phase of the matter has
+been covered in the discussion of self-denial in the previous chapter.
+See pp. 364-68.
+
+[187] Strict hedonism would tend to reduce all virtue to prudence--the
+calculation of subtler and remoter consequences and the control of
+present behavior by its outcome.
+
+[188] Says Hazlitt, "The charm of criminal life, like that of savage
+life, consists in liberty, in hardship, in danger, and in the contempt
+of death: in one word, in _extraordinary excitement_" (Essay on
+Bentham). But this is equally true in principle (though not in degree)
+of every temptation to turn from the straight and narrow path. Virtue
+seems dull and sober, uninteresting, in comparison with the increasing
+excitation of some desire. There are as many forms of excitement as
+there are individual men.
+
+[189] There is something of the nature of gambling, of taking chances on
+future results for the sake of present stimulation, in all unrestraint
+or intemperate action. And the reflection of the specialist--that is,
+the one whose reflection is not subjected to responsible tests in social
+behavior--is a more or less exciting adventure--a "speculation."
+
+[190] In the last words of Spinoza's _Ethics_, "No one delights in the
+good because he curbs his appetites, but because we delight in the good
+we are able to curb our lusts."
+
+[191] What has been said about Self-assertion, in the last chapter,
+anticipates in some measure what holds of this virtue.
+
+[192] See Sumner, _Folkways_, ch. xx.
+
+[193] Upon this point see James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II.,
+pp. 561-567, and Royce, _World and Individual_, Vol. II., pp. 354-360.
+
+[194] This receives more attention in ch. xxi. of Part III.
+
+[195] Compare what was said concerning the intuitive and the discursive
+factors in moral knowledge in ch. xvi.
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE WORLD OF ACTION
+
+
+GENERAL LITERATURE FOR PART III
+
+Addams, _Democracy and Social Ethics_, 1902, _Newer Ideals of Peace_,
+1907; Santayana, _The Life of Reason_, Vol. II., 1905; Bergmann, _Ethik
+als Kulturphilosophie_, 1904, especially pp. 154-304; Wundt, _Ethics_,
+Vol. III., _The Principles of Morality and the Departments of the Moral
+Life_ (trans. 1901); Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_, 1893, Vol. II.,
+_Principles of Sociology_, 1882, Vol. I., Part II.; Ritchie, _Studies in
+Political and Moral Philosophy_, 1888; Bosanquet, _Philosophical Theory
+of the State_, 1899; Willoughby, _Social Justice_, 1900; Cooley, _Human
+Nature and the Social Order_, 1902; Paulsen, _System der Ethik_, 5th
+ed., 1900, Book IV.; Runze, _Praktische Ethik_, 1891; Janet, _Histoire
+de la Science Politique dans ses Rapports avec la Morale_, 3d ed., 1887;
+Plato, _The Republic_; Aristotle, _Ethics_, Book V., and _Politics_
+(trans. by Welldon, 1883); Hegel, _Philosophy of Right_ (pub. 1820,
+trans. by Dyde, 1896); Mackenzie, _An Introduction to Social
+Philosophy_, 1890; Dunning, _History of Political Theories_, Vol. I.,
+1902, Vol. II., 1905; Stein, _Die Sociale Frage im Licht der
+Philosophie_, 1897.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL
+
+
+=Object of Part and Chapter.=--The history of morals manifests a twofold
+movement. It reveals, on one side, constantly increasing stress on
+_individual_ intelligence and affection. The transformation of customary
+into reflective morals is the change from "Do those things which our
+kin, class, or city do" to "Be a person with certain habits of desire
+and deliberation." The moral history of the race also reveals constantly
+growing emphasis upon the _social_ nature of the objects and ends to
+which personal preferences are to be devoted. While the agent has been
+learning that it is his personal attitude which counts in his deeds, he
+has also learnt that there is no attitude which is exclusively private
+in scope, none which does not need to be socially valued or judged.
+Theoretic analysis enforces the same lesson as history. It tells us that
+moral quality _resides in_ the habitual dispositions of an agent; and
+that it _consists of_ the tendency of these dispositions to secure (or
+hinder) values which are sociably shared or sharable.
+
+In Part One we sketched the historical course of this development; in
+Part Two we traced its theoretic analysis. In the present and concluding
+Part, our purpose is to consider the distinctively social aspects of
+morality. We shall consider how social institutions and tendencies
+supply value to the activities of individuals, impose the conditions of
+the formation and exercise of their desires and aims; and, especially,
+how they create the peculiarly urgent problems of contemporary moral
+life. The present chapter will take up the general question, that of
+the relation of social organization to individual life.
+
+
+Sec. 1. GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALITY THROUGH SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
+
+From one point of view, historic development represents the increasing
+liberation of individual powers from rigid social control. Sir John
+Lubbock remarks: "No savage is free. All over the world his daily life
+is regulated by a complicated and apparently most inconvenient set of
+customs (as forcible as laws), of quaint prohibitions and privileges."
+Looked at from another point of view, emancipation from one sort of
+social organization means initiation into some other social order; the
+individual is liberated from a small and fixed (customary) social group,
+to become a member of a larger and progressive society. The history of
+setting free individual power in desire, thought, and initiative is,
+upon the whole, the history of the formation of more complex and
+extensive social organizations. Movements that look like the
+disintegration of the order of society, when viewed with reference to
+what has preceded them, are factors in the construction of a new social
+order, which allows freer play to individuals, and yet increases the
+number of social groupings and the depth of social combinations.
+
+This fact of historical development is well summed up in the following
+words of Hobhouse, set forth as a summary of a comprehensive survey of
+the historic development of law and justice, of the family including the
+status of women and children, of the relations between communities, and
+between classes, the rich and the poor.
+
+ He says: "Amid all the variety of social institutions and the ebb
+ and flow of historical change, it is possible in the end to detect
+ a double movement, marking the transition from the lower to the
+ higher levels of civilized law and custom. On the one hand, the
+ social order is strengthened and extended.... On this side the
+ individual human being becomes more and more subject to social
+ constraint, and, as we have frequently seen, the changes making
+ for the tightening of the social fabric may diminish the rights
+ which the individual or large classes of individuals can claim....
+ In this relation liberty and order become opposed. But the
+ opposition is not essential. From the first the individual relies
+ on social forces to maintain him in his rights, and in the higher
+ form of social organization we have seen order and liberty drawing
+ together again.... The best ordered community is that which
+ gives most scope to its component members to make the best of
+ themselves, while the 'best' in human nature is that which
+ contributes to the harmony and onward movement of society....
+ The responsible human being, man or woman, is the center of
+ modern ethics as of modern law, free so far as custom and law are
+ concerned to make his own life.... The social nature of man is not
+ diminished either on the side of its needs or its duties by the
+ fuller recognition of personal rights. The difference is that,
+ so far as rights and duties are conceived as attaching to human
+ beings as such, they become universalized, _and are therefore the
+ care of society as a whole rather than of any partial group
+ organization_."[196]
+
+With this statement may be compared the words of Green and Alexander.
+According to Green, moral progress consists in the _extension_ of the
+area or range of persons whose common good is concerned, and in the
+deepening or _intensification_ in the individual of his social interest:
+"the settled disposition on each man's part to make the most and best of
+humanity in his own person and in the person of others."[197]
+Alexander's formulae for moral growth are the "laws of differentiation
+and of comprehension." The first means diversification, specialization,
+differentiating the powers of an individual with increased refinement of
+each. The law of comprehension means the steady enlargement of the size
+and scope of the social group (as from clan to modern national state)
+with its increased complexity of ways in which men are brought into
+contact with one another.[198]
+
+=Social Life Liberates and Directs Individual Energies.=--Breadth in
+extent of community life goes hand in hand with multiplication of the
+stimuli which call out an individual's powers. Diversification of social
+activities increases opportunities for his initiative and endeavor.
+Narrow and meager social life means limitation of the scope of
+activities in which its members may engage. It means little occasion for
+the exercise of deliberation and choice, without which character is both
+immature and fossilized; it means, in short, restricted personality. But
+a rich and varied society, one which liberates powers otherwise torpid
+and latent, also exacts that they be employed in ways consistent with
+its own interests. A society which is extensive and complex would
+dissolve in anarchy and confusion were not the activities of its various
+members upon the whole mutually congruent. The world of action is a
+world of which the individual is one limit, and humanity the other;
+between them lie all sorts of associative arrangements of lesser and
+larger scope, families, friendships, schools, clubs, organizations for
+making or distributing goods, for gathering and supplying commodities;
+activities politically organized by parishes, wards, villages, cities,
+countries, states, nations. Every maladjustment in relations among these
+institutions and associated activities means loss and friction in the
+relations between individuals; and thereby introduces defect, division,
+and restriction into the various powers which constitute an individual.
+All harmonious cooperation among them means a fuller life and greater
+freedom of thought and action for the individual person.
+
+O=rder and Laws.=--The world of action as a scene of organized
+activities going on in regular ways[199] thus presents a public or
+common order and authority, with its established modes of operation, its
+laws. Organized institutions, from the more permanent to the more
+casual, with their orderly rules of conduct, are not, of course, prior
+to individual activity; for their elements are individual activities
+related in certain ways. But with respect to _any one_ individual in his
+separate or distributive capacity, there is a genuine and important
+sense in which the institution comes first. A child is born into an
+already existing family with habits and beliefs already formed, not
+indeed rigid beyond readaptation, but with their own order
+(arrangements). He goes to schools which have their established methods
+and aims; he gradually assumes membership in business, civic, and
+political organizations, with their own settled ways and purposes. Only
+in participating in already fashioned systems of conduct does he
+apprehend his own powers, appreciate their worth and realize their
+possibilities, and achieve for himself a controlled and orderly body of
+physical and mental habits. He finds the value and the principles of his
+life, his satisfaction and his norms of authority, in being a member of
+associated groups of persons and in playing his part in their
+maintenance and expansion.
+
+=The Social and the Moral.=--In customary society, it does not occur to
+any one that there is a difference between what he ought to do, i.e.,
+the moral, and what those about him customarily do, i.e., the social.
+The socially established is the moral. Reflective morality brings with
+it, as we have seen, a distinction. A thoughtfully minded person reacts
+against certain institutions and habits which obtain in his social
+environment; he regards certain ideas, which he frames himself and which
+are not embodied in social habits, as more moral than anything existing
+about him. Such reactions against custom and such projections of new
+ideas are necessary if there is to be progress in society. But
+unfortunately it has often been forgotten that this distinctly
+_personal_ morality, which takes its stand against some established
+usage, and which, therefore, for the time being has its abode only in
+the initiative and effort of an individual, is simply the means of
+_social_ reconstruction. It is treated as if it were an end in itself,
+and as if it were something higher than any morality which is or can be
+socially embodied.
+
+At some periods, this view has led to a monastic retreat from all social
+affairs for the sake of cultivating personal goodness. At other times,
+it has led to the political indifference of the Cynic and Stoic. For
+ages, it led to a morality of "other worldliness"; to the belief that
+true goodness can be attained only in another kind of life and world--a
+belief which carried with it relative contempt and neglect of concrete
+social conditions in this life. Social affairs at best were only
+"secular" and temporal, and, in contrast with the eternal and spiritual
+salvation of the individual's own soul, of little account. After the
+Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, this kind of moral individualism
+persisted in different forms. Among the hedonists, it took the form of
+assuming that while social arrangements are of very great importance,
+their importance lies in the fact that they hinder or help individuals
+in the attainment of their own private pleasures. The transcendentalists
+(such as Kant) asserted that, since morality is wholly a matter of the
+inner motive, of the personal attitude towards the moral law, social
+conditions are wholly external. Good or evil lies wholly inside the
+individual's own will. Social institutions may help or hinder the
+outward _execution_ of moral purpose; they may be favorable or hostile
+to the successful outward display of virtue. But they have nothing to do
+with originating or developing the moral purpose, the Good Will, and
+hence, in themselves, are lacking in moral significance. Thus Kant made
+a sharp and fast distinction between _morality_, appertaining solely to
+the individual's own inner consciousness, and _legality_, appertaining
+to the social and political conditions of outward behavior. Social
+institutions and laws may indeed regulate men's outer acts. So far as
+men externally conform, their conduct is legal. But laws cannot regulate
+or touch men's motives, which alone determine the morality of their
+behavior.
+
+We shall not repeat here our prior criticisms of hedonism and
+utilitarianism in order to point out the falsity of this division of
+moral action into unrelated inner (or private) and outer (or social)
+factors. We may recall to memory, however, that Kant himself virtually
+passed beyond his own theory of moral individualism in insisting upon
+the promotion of a "Kingdom of Ends," in which every person is to be
+treated as an end in himself. We may recall that the later utilitarians
+(such as Mill, Leslie Stephen, Bain, and Spencer) insisted upon the
+_educative_ value of social institutions, upon their importance in
+forming certain interests and habits in the individual. Thus social
+arrangements were taken out of the category of mere means to private
+good, and made the necessary factors and conditions of the development
+of an individuality which should have a reasonable and just conception
+of its own nature and of its own good. We may also enumerate some of the
+more fundamental ways in which social institutions determine individual
+morality.
+
+1. Apart from the social medium, the individual would never "know
+himself"; he would never become acquainted with his own needs and
+capacities. He would live the life of a brute animal, satisfying as best
+he could his most urgent appetites of hunger, thirst, and sex, but
+being, as regards even that, handicapped in comparison with other
+animals. And, as we have already seen, the wider and the richer the
+social relationships into which an individual enters, the more fully are
+his powers evoked, and the more fully is he brought to recognize the
+possibilities latent in them. It is from seeing noble architecture and
+hearing harmonious music that the individual learns to know to what his
+own constructive and rhythmic tendencies, otherwise blind and inchoate,
+may come. It is from achievement in industrial, national, and family
+life that he is initiated into perception of his own energy, loyalty,
+and affection.
+
+2. Social conditions not only evoke what is latent, and bring to
+conscious recognition what is blind, but they select, encourage, and
+confirm certain tendencies at the expense of others. They enable the
+individual to discriminate the better and the worse among his tendencies
+and achievements. There is no limit in the power of society to awaken
+and strengthen this habit of discrimination, of choice after comparison,
+in its individual members. A small social group with fixed habits, a
+clan, a gang, a narrow sect, a dogmatic party, will restrict the
+formation of critical powers--i.e., of conscientiousness or moral
+thoughtfulness. But an individual who _really_ becomes a member of
+modern society, with its multiple occupations, its easy intercourse, its
+free mobility, its rich resources of art and science, will have only too
+many opportunities for reflective judgment and personal valuation and
+preference. _The very habits of individual moral initiative, of personal
+criticism of the existent order, and of private projection of a better
+order, to which moral individualists point as proofs of the purely
+"inner" nature of morality, are themselves effects of a variable and
+complex social order._
+
+=The Moral Value of the State.=--If then we take modern social life in
+its broadest extent, as including not only what has become
+institutionalized and more or less fossilized, but also what is still
+growing (forming and re-forming), we may justly say that it is as true
+of progressive as of stationary society, that the moral and the social
+are one. The virtues of the individual in a progressive society are more
+reflective, more critical, involve more exercise of comparison and
+selection, than in customary society. But they are just as socially
+conditioned in their origin and as socially directed in their
+manifestation.
+
+In rudimentary societies, customs furnish the highest ends of
+achievement; they supply the principles of social organization and
+combination; and they form binding laws whose breach is punished. The
+moral, political, and legal are not differentiated. But village
+communities and city-states, to say nothing of kingdoms and empires and
+modern national States, have developed special organs and special
+regulations for maintaining social unity and public order. Small groups
+are usually firmly welded together and are exclusive. They have a narrow
+but intense social code:--like a patriarchal family, a gang, a social
+set, they are clannish. But when a large number of such groups come
+together within a more inclusive social unity, some institution grows up
+to represent the interests and activities of the whole as against the
+narrow and centrifugal tendencies of the constituent factors. A society
+is then _politically_ organized; and a true public order with its
+comprehensive laws is brought into existence. The moral importance of
+the development of this public point of view, with its extensive common
+purposes and with a general will for maintaining them, can hardly be
+overestimated. Without such organization, society and hence morality
+would remain sectional, jealous, suspicious, unfraternal. Sentiments of
+intense cohesion within would have been conjoined with equally strong
+sentiments of indifference, intolerance, and hostility to those without.
+In the wake of the formation of States have followed more widely
+co-operative activities, more comprehensive and hence more reasonable
+principles of judgment and outlook. The individual has been emancipated
+from his relative submergence in the local and fixed group, and set upon
+his own feet, with varied fields of activity open to him in which to try
+his powers, and furnished with principles of judging conduct and
+projecting ideals which in theory, at least, are as broad as the
+possibilities of humanity itself.
+
+
+Sec. 2. RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM
+
+The more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the
+responsibility and the freedom of the individual. His freedom is the
+greater, because the more numerous are the effective stimuli to action,
+and the more varied and the more certain the ways in which he may
+fulfill his powers. His responsibility is greater because there are more
+demands for considering the consequences of his acts; and more agencies
+for bringing home to him the recognition of consequences which affect
+not merely more persons individually, but which also influence the more
+remote and hidden social ties.
+
+=Liability.=--Freedom and responsibility have a relatively superficial
+and negative meaning and a relatively positive central meaning. In its
+external aspect, responsibility is _liability_. An agent is free to act;
+yes, but--. He must stand the consequences, the disagreeable as well as
+the pleasant, the social as well as the physical. He may do a given act,
+but if so, let him look out. His act is a matter that concerns others as
+well as himself, and they will prove their concern by calling him to
+account; and if he cannot give a satisfactory and credible account of
+his intention, subject him to correction. Each community and
+organization informs its members what it regards as obnoxious, and
+serves notice upon them that they have to answer if they offend. The
+individual then is (1) likely or liable to have to explain and justify
+his behavior, and is (2) liable or open to suffering consequent upon
+inability to make his explanation acceptable.
+
+=Positive Responsibility.=--In this way the individual is made aware of
+the stake the community has in his behavior; and is afforded an
+opportunity to take that interest into account in directing his desires
+and making his plans. If he does so, he is a responsible person. The
+agent who does not take to heart the concern which others show that they
+have in his conduct, will note his liability only as an evil to which he
+is exposed, and will take it into consideration only to see how to
+escape or evade it. But one whose point of view is sympathetic and
+reasonable will recognize the justice of the community interest in his
+performances; and will recognize the value to him of the instruction
+contained in its assertions of its interest. Such an one responds,
+answers, to the social demands made; he is not merely called to answer.
+He holds himself responsible for the consequences of his acts; he does
+not wait to be held liable by others. When society looks for responsible
+workmen, teachers, doctors, it does not mean merely those whom it may
+call to account; it can do that in any case. It wants men and women who
+habitually form their purposes after consideration of the social
+consequences of their execution. Dislike of disapprobation, fear of
+penalty, play a part in generating this responsive habit; but fear,
+operating directly, occasions only cunning or servility. Fused, through
+reflection, with other motives which prompt to action, it helps bring
+about that apprehensiveness, or susceptibility to the rights of others,
+which is the essence of responsibility, which in turn is the sole
+_ultimate_ guarantee of social order.
+
+=The Two Senses of Freedom.=--In its external aspect, freedom is
+negative and formal. It signifies freedom _from_ subjection to the will
+and control of others; exemption from bondage; release from servitude;
+capacity to act without being exposed to direct obstructions or
+interferences from others. It means a clear road, cleared of
+impediments, for action. It contrasts with the limitations of prisoner,
+slave, and serf, who have to carry out the will of others.
+
+=Effective Freedom.=--Exemption from restraint and from interference
+with overt action is only a condition, though an absolutely
+indispensable one, of effective freedom. The latter requires (1)
+positive control of the resources necessary to carry purposes into
+effect, possession of the means to satisfy desires; and (2) mental
+equipment with the trained powers of initiative and reflection requisite
+for free preference and for circumspect and far-seeing desires. The
+freedom of an agent who is merely released from direct external
+obstructions is formal and empty. If he is without resources of personal
+skill, without control of the tools of achievement, he must inevitably
+lend himself to carrying out the directions and ideas of others. If he
+has not powers of deliberation and invention, he must pick up his ideas
+casually and superficially from the suggestions of his environment and
+appropriate the notions which the interests of some class insinuate into
+his mind. If he have not powers of intelligent self-control, he will be
+in bondage to appetite, enslaved to routine, imprisoned within the
+monotonous round of an imagery flowing from illiberal interests, broken
+only by wild forays into the illicit.
+
+=Legal and Moral.=--Positive responsibility and freedom may be regarded
+as moral, while liability and exemption are legal and political. A
+particular individual at a given time is possessed of certain secured
+resources in execution and certain formed habits of desire and
+reflection. In so far, he is positively free. Legally, his sphere of
+activity may be very much wider. The laws, the prevailing body of rules
+which define existing institutions, would protect him in exercising
+claims and powers far beyond those which he can actually put forth. He
+is exempt from interference in travel, in reading, in hearing music, in
+pursuing scientific research. But if he has neither material means nor
+mental cultivation to enjoy these legal possibilities, mere exemption
+means little or nothing. It does, however, create a moral demand that
+the practical limitations which hem him in should be removed; that
+practical conditions should be afforded which will enable him
+effectively to take advantage of the opportunities formally open.
+Similarly, at any given time, the liabilities to which an individual is
+actually held come far short of the accountability to which the more
+conscientious members of society hold themselves. The morale of the
+individual is in advance of the formulated morality, or legality, of the
+community.
+
+=Relation of Legal to Moral.=--It is, however, absurd to separate the
+legal and the ideal aspects of freedom from one another. It is only as
+men are held liable that they become responsible; even the conscientious
+man, however much in some respects his demands upon himself exceed those
+which would be enforced against him by others, still needs in other
+respects to have his unconscious partiality and presumption steadied by
+the requirements of others. He needs to have his judgment balanced
+against crankiness, narrowness, or fanaticism, by reference to the
+sanity of the common standard of his times. It is only as men are exempt
+from external obstruction that they become aware of possibilities, and
+are awakened to demand and strive to obtain more positive freedom. Or,
+again, it is the possession by the more favored individuals in society
+of an effectual freedom to do and to enjoy things with respect to which
+the masses have only a formal and legal freedom, that arouses a sense of
+inequity, and that stirs the social judgment and will to such reforms of
+law, of administration and economic conditions as will transform the
+empty freedom of the less favored individuals into constructive
+realities.
+
+
+Sec. 3. RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS
+
+=The Individual and Social in Rights and Obligations.=--That which,
+taken at large or in a lump, is called freedom breaks up in detail into
+a number of specific, concrete abilities to act in particular ways.
+These are termed _rights_. Any right includes within itself in intimate
+unity the individual and social aspects of activity upon which we have
+been insisting. As a capacity for exercise of power, it resides in and
+proceeds from some special agent, some individual. As exemption from
+restraint, a secured release from obstruction, it indicates at least the
+permission and sufferance of society, a tacit social assent and
+confirmation; while any more positive and energetic effort on the part
+of the community to guarantee and safeguard it, indicates an active
+acknowledgment on the part of society that the free exercise by
+individuals of the power in question is positively in its own interest.
+Thus a right, individual in residence, is social in origin and intent.
+The social factor in rights is made explicit in the demand that the
+power in question be exercised in certain ways. A right is never a claim
+to a wholesale, indefinite activity, but to a _defined_ activity; _to
+one carried on_, that is, _under certain conditions_. This limitation
+constitutes the _obligatory_ phases of every right. The individual is
+free; yes, that is his right. But he is free to act only according to
+certain regular and established conditions. That is the obligation
+imposed upon him. He has a right to use public roads, but he is obliged
+to turn in a certain way. He has a right to use his property, but he is
+obliged to pay taxes, to pay debts, not to harm others in its use, and
+so on.
+
+=Correspondence of Rights and Obligations.=--Rights and obligations are
+thus strictly correlative. This is true both in their external
+employment and in their intrinsic natures. Externally the individual is
+under obligation to use his right in a way which does not interfere with
+the rights of others. He is free to drive on the public highways, but
+not to exceed a certain speed, and on condition that he turns to right
+or left as the public order requires. He is entitled to the land which
+he has bought, but this possession is subject to conditions of public
+registration and taxation. He may use his property, but not so that it
+menaces others or becomes a nuisance. Absolute rights, if we mean by
+absolute those not relative to any social order and hence exempt from
+any social restriction, there are none. But rights correspond even more
+intrinsically to obligations. The right is itself a social outcome: it
+is the individual's in so far as he is himself a social member not
+merely physically, but in his habits of thought and feeling. He is under
+obligation to use his rights in social ways. The more we emphasize the
+free right of an individual to his property, the more we emphasize what
+society has done for him: the avenues it has opened to him for
+acquiring; the safeguards it has put about him for keeping; the wealth
+achieved by others which he may acquire by exchanges themselves socially
+buttressed. So far as an individual's own merits are concerned these
+opportunities and protections are "unearned increments," no matter what
+credit he may deserve for initiative and industry and foresight in using
+them. The only fundamental anarchy is that which regards rights as
+private monopolies, ignoring their social origin and intent.
+
+=Classes of Rights and Obligations.=--We may discuss freedom and
+responsibility with respect to the social organization which secures and
+enforces them; or from the standpoint of the individual who exercises
+and acknowledges them. From the latter standpoint, rights are
+conveniently treated as physical and mental: not that the physical and
+mental can be separated, but that emphasis may fall primarily on control
+of the conditions required to execute ideas and intentions, or upon the
+control of the conditions involved in their personal formation and
+choice. From the standpoint of the public order, rights and duties are
+civil and political. We shall consider them in the next chapter in
+connection with the organization of society in the State. Here we
+consider rights as inhering in an individual in virtue of his membership
+in society.
+
+=I. Physical Rights.=--These are the rights to the free unharmed
+possession of the body (the rights to life and limb), exemption from
+homicidal attack, from assault and battery, and from conditions that
+threaten health in more obscure ways; and positively, the right to free
+movement of the body, to use its members for any legitimate purpose, and
+the right to unhindered locomotion. Without the exemption, there is no
+security in life, no assurance; only a life of constant fear and
+uncertainty, of loss of limb, of injury from others, and of death.
+Without some positive assurance, there is no chance of carrying ideas
+into effect. Even if sound and healthy and extremely protected, a man
+lives a slave or prisoner. Right to the control and use of physical
+conditions of life takes effect then in property rights, command of the
+natural tools and materials which are requisite to the maintenance of
+the body in a due state of health and to an effective and competent use
+of the person's powers. These physical rights to life, limb, and
+property are so basic to all achievement and capability that they have
+frequently been termed "natural rights." They are so fundamental to the
+existence of personality that their insecurity or infringement is a
+direct menace to the social welfare. The struggle for human liberty and
+human responsibility has accordingly been more acute at this than at any
+other point. Roughly speaking, the history of personal liberty is the
+history of the efforts which have safeguarded the security of life and
+property and which have emancipated bodily movement from subjection to
+the will of others.
+
+=Unsolved Problems: War and Punishment.=--While history marks great
+advance, especially in the last four or five centuries, as to the
+negative aspect of freedom or release from direct and overt tyranny,
+much remains undone on the positive side. It is at this point of free
+physical control that all conflicts of rights concentrate themselves.
+While the limitation by war of the right to life may be cited as
+evidence for the fact that even this right is not absolute but is
+socially conditioned, yet that kind of correspondence between individual
+activity and social well-being which exacts exposure to destruction as
+its measure, is too suggestive of the tribal morality in which the
+savage shows his social nature by participation in a blood feud, to be
+satisfactory. Social organization is clearly defective when its
+constituent portions are so set at odds with one another as to demand
+from individuals their death as their best service to the community.
+While one may cite capital punishment to enforce, as if in large type,
+the fact that the individual holds even his right to life subject to the
+social welfare, the moral works the other way to underline the failure
+of society to socialize its members, and its tendency to put undesirable
+results out of sight and mind rather than to face responsibility for
+causes. The same limitation is seen in methods of imprisonment, which,
+while supposed to be protective rather than vindictive, recognize only
+in a few and sporadic cases that the sole sure protection of society is
+through education and correction of individual character, not by mere
+physical isolation under harsh conditions.
+
+=Security of Life.=--In civilized countries the blood feud, infanticide,
+putting to death the economically useless and the aged, have been
+abolished. Legalized slavery, serfdom, the subjection of the rights of
+wife and child to the will of husband and father, have been done away
+with. But many modern industries are conducted with more reference to
+financial gain than to life, and the annual roll of killed, injured, and
+diseased in factory and railway practically equals the list of dead and
+wounded in a modern war.[200] Most of these accidents are preventable.
+The willingness of parents on one side and of employers on the other,
+conjoined with the indifference of the general public, makes child-labor
+an effective substitute for exposure of children and other methods of
+infanticide practiced by savage tribes. Agitation for old-age pensions
+shows that faithful service to society for a lifetime is still
+inadequate to secure a prosperous old age.
+
+=Charity and Poverty.=--Society provides assistance and remedial
+measures, poorhouses, asylums, hospitals. The exceedingly poor are a
+public charge, supported by taxes as well as by alms. Individuals are
+not supposed to die from starvation nor to suffer without any relief or
+assistance from physical defects and disease. So far, there is growth in
+positive provision for the right to live. But the very necessity for
+such extensive remedial measures shows serious defects farther back. It
+raises the question of social responsibility for the causes of such
+wholesale poverty and widespread misery. Taken in conjunction with the
+idleness and display of the congested rich, it raises the question how
+far we are advanced beyond barbarism in making organic provision for an
+effective, as distinct from formal, right to life and movement. It is
+hard to say whether the heavier indictment lies in the fact that so many
+shirk their share of the necessary social labor and toil, or in the fact
+that so many who are willing to work are unable to do so, without
+meeting recurrent crises of unemployment, and except under conditions of
+hours, hygiene, compensation, and home conditions which reduce to a low
+level the positive rights of life. The social order protects the
+property of those who have it; but, although historic conditions have
+put the control of the machinery of production in the hands of a
+comparatively few persons, society takes little heed to see that great
+masses of men get even that little property which is requisite to secure
+assured, permanent, and properly stimulating conditions of life. Until
+there is secured to and imposed upon all members of society the right
+and the duty of work in socially serviceable occupations, with due
+return in social goods, rights to life and free movement will hardly
+advance much beyond their present largely nominal state.
+
+=II. Rights to Mental Activity.=--These rights of course are closely
+bound up with rights to physical well-being and activity. The latter
+would have no meaning were it not that they subserve purposes and
+affections; while the life of mind is torpid or remote, dull or
+abstract, save as it gets impact in physical conditions and directs
+them. Those who hold that the limitations of physical conditions have no
+_moral_ signification, and that their improvement brings at most an
+increase of more or less materialistic comfort, not a moral advance,
+fail to note that the development of concrete purposes and desires is
+dependent upon so-called outward conditions. These conditions affect the
+execution of purposes and wants; and this influence reacts to determine
+the further arrest or growth of needs and resolutions. The sharp and
+unjustifiable antithesis of spiritual and material in the current
+conception of moral action leads many well-intentioned people to be
+callous and indifferent to the moral issues involved in physical and
+economic progress. Long hours of excessive physical labor, joined with
+unwholesome conditions of residence and work, restrict the growth of
+mental activity, while idleness and excess of physical possession and
+control pervert mind, as surely as these causes modify the outer and
+overt acts.
+
+=Freedom of Thought and Affection.=--The fundamental forms of the right
+to mental life are liberty of judgment and sympathy. The struggle for
+spiritual liberty has been as prolonged and arduous as that for physical
+freedom. Distrust of intelligence and of love as factors in concrete
+individuals has been strong even in those who have proclaimed most
+vigorously their devotion to them as abstract principles. Disbelief in
+the integrity of mind, assertion that the divine principles of thought
+and love are perverted and corrupt in the individual, have kept
+spiritual authority and prestige in the hands of the few, just as other
+causes have made material possessions the monopoly of a small class. The
+resulting restriction of knowledge and of the tools of inquiry have kept
+the masses where their blindness and dullness might be employed as
+further evidence of their natural unfitness for personal illumination by
+the light of truth and for free direction of the energy of moral
+warmth.[201] Gradually, however, free speech, freedom of communication
+and intercourse, of public assemblies, liberty of the press and
+circulation of ideas, freedom of religious and intellectual conviction
+(commonly called freedom of conscience), of worship, and to some extent
+the right to education, to spiritual nurture, have been achieved. In the
+degree the individual has won these liberties, the social order has
+obtained its chief safeguard against explosive change and intermittent
+blind action and reaction, and has got hold of the method of graduated
+and steady reconstruction. Looked at as a mere expedient, liberty of
+thought and expression is the most successful device ever hit upon for
+reconciling tranquillity with progress, so that peace is not sacrificed
+to reform nor improvement to stagnant conservatism.[202]
+
+=Right and Duty of Education.=--It is through education in its broadest
+sense that the right of thought and sympathy become effective. The
+final value of all institutions is their educational influence; they are
+measured morally by the occasions they afford and the guidance they
+supply for the exercise of foresight, judgment, seriousness of
+consideration, and depth of regard. The family, the school, the church,
+art, especially (to-day) literature, nurture the affections and
+imagination, while schools impart information and inculcate skill in
+various forms of intellectual technique. In the last one hundred years,
+the right of each individual to spiritual self-development and
+self-possession, and the interest of society as a whole in seeing that
+each of its members has an opportunity for education, have been
+recognized in publicly maintained schools with their ladder from
+kindergarten through the college to the engineering and professional
+school. Men and women have had put at their disposal the materials and
+tools of judgment; have had opened to them the wide avenues of science,
+history, and art that lead into the larger world's culture. To some
+extent negative exemption from arbitrary restriction upon belief and
+thought has been developed into positive capacities of intelligence and
+sentiment.
+
+=Restrictions from Inadequate Economic Conditions.=--Freedom of thought
+in a developed constructive form is, however, next to impossible for the
+masses of men so long as their economic conditions are precarious, and
+their main problem is to keep the wolf from their doors. Lack of time,
+hardening of susceptibility, blind preoccupation with the machinery of
+highly specialized industries, the combined apathy and worry consequent
+upon a life maintained just above the level of subsistence, are
+unfavorable to intellectual and emotional culture. Intellectual
+cowardice, due to apathy, laziness, and vague apprehension, takes the
+place of despotism as a limitation upon freedom of thought and speech.
+Uncertainty as to security of position, the welfare of a dependent
+family, close men's mouths from expressing their honest convictions,
+and blind their minds to clear perception of evil conditions. The
+instrumentalities of culture--churches, newspapers, universities,
+theatres--themselves have economic necessities which tend to make them
+dependent upon those who can best supply their needs. The congestion of
+poverty on one side and of "culture" on the other is so great that, in
+the words of a distinguished economist, we are still questioning
+"whether it is really impossible that all should start in the world with
+a fair chance of leading a cultured life free from the pains of poverty
+and the stagnating influences of a life of excessive mechanical
+toil."[203] We provide free schools and pass compulsory education acts,
+but actively and passively we encourage conditions which limit the mass
+of children to the bare rudiments of spiritual nurture.
+
+=Restriction of Educational Influences.=--Spiritual resources are
+practically as much the possession of a special class, in spite of
+educational advance, as are material resources. This fact reacts upon
+the chief educative agencies--science, art, and religion. Knowledge in
+its ideas, language, and appeals is forced into corners; it is
+overspecialized, technical, and esoteric because of its isolation. Its
+lack of intimate connection with social practice leads to an intense and
+elaborate over-training which increases its own remoteness. Only when
+science and philosophy are one with literature, the art of successful
+communication and vivid intercourse, are they liberal in effect; and
+this implies a society which is already intellectually and emotionally
+nurtured and alive. Art itself, the embodiment of ideas in forms which
+are socially contagious, becomes what it is so largely, a development of
+technical skill, and a badge of class differences. Religious emotion,
+the quickening of ideas and affections by recognition of their
+inexhaustible signification, is segregated into special cults,
+particular days, and peculiar exercises, and the common life is left
+relatively hard and barren.
+
+In short, the limitations upon freedom both of the physical conditions
+and the mental values of life are at bottom expressions of one and the
+same divorce of theory and practice,--which makes theory remote,
+sterile, and technical, while practice remains narrow, harsh, and also
+illiberal. Yet there is more cause for hope in that so much has been
+accomplished, than for despondency because mental power and service are
+still so limited and undeveloped. The intermixture and interaction of
+classes and nations are very recent. Hence the opportunities for an
+effective circulation of sympathetic ideas and of reasonable emotions
+have only newly come into existence. Education as a public interest and
+care, applicable to all individuals, is hardly more than a century old;
+while a conception of the richness and complexity of the ways in which
+it should touch any one individual is hardly half a century old. As
+society takes its educative functions more seriously and comprehensively
+into account, there is every promise of more rapid progress in the
+future than in the past. For education is most effective when dealing
+with the immature, those who have not yet acquired the hard and fixed
+directing forms of adult life; while, in order to be effectively
+employed, it must select and propagate that which is common and hence
+typical in the social values that form its resources, leaving the
+eccentric, the partial, and exclusive gradually to dwindle. Upon some
+generous souls of the eighteenth century there dawned the idea that the
+cause of the indefinite improvement of humanity and the cause of the
+little child are inseparably bound together.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Kant, _Philosophy of Law_, 1796 (trans. by Hastie, 1887); Fichte, _The
+Science of Rights_, 1798 (trans. by Kroeger, 1869); Rousseau, _Social
+Contract_, 1762 (trans. by Tozer, 1893); Bonar, _Philosophy and
+Political Economy_, 1893; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, ch. iii. (on
+Social Motives); Caird, _Social Philosophy of Comte_, 1885; Sidgwick,
+_Practical Ethics_, 1898, Essay on Public Morality; Sidgwick, _Elements
+of Politics_, 1891, ch. iv. on Individualism, vi. on Contract, x. on
+Socialistic Interferences, xiii. on Law and Morality; Maine, _Ancient
+Law_, 1861, Pollock's ed., 1906, chs. iii. and iv. on law of nature and
+equity; Stephen, _Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy_, 1888;
+Rickaby, _Political and Moral Essays_, 1902; Hobhouse, _Morals in
+Evolution_, Vol. II., ch. vii. (on the general relation of the social
+and the moral). On the development of rights to life, limb, and freedom
+of movement, see Westermarck, chs. xiv.-xxii., and Sumner, _Folkways_,
+chs. vi., vii., and viii.; Hobhouse, Vol. I., ch. vii. (on slavery);
+Spencer, _Ethics_, Vol. II., Part IV. For charity, see Loch on Charity
+and Charities, _Encyclopaedia Britannica_; Uhlhorn, _Christian Charity in
+the Ancient Church_; L'Allemand, _Histoire de la Charite_; Nicholl,
+_History of the English Poor Law_, 2 vols., 1898.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[196] Vol. I., pp. 367-368, italics not in original.
+
+[197] P. 262 of _Prolegomena to Ethics_; see chs. iii. and iv. of Book
+III.
+
+[198] Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_, pp. 384-898.
+
+[199] This does not of course exclude change and reform. It means that,
+so far as a society is organized, these changes themselves occur in
+regular and authorized ways.
+
+[200] It is stated, upon good authority, that a street railway system in
+a large American city declined to adopt an improved fender, which made
+it practically impossible to kill persons, because the annual cost would
+be $5,000 more than the existing expense for damages. This same system
+declined to adopt improved brakes which would reduce accidents to life
+and limb; and it was discovered that one of its directors was largely
+interested in the manufacture of the old brakes.
+
+[201] Said Emerson: "If a man is sick, is unable, is mean-spirited and
+odious, it is because there is so much of his nature which is unlawfully
+withholden from him."
+
+[202] Recent suppression by the police in the larger American cities of
+public meetings called to discuss unemployment or other matters deemed
+by some dangerous to vested interests, shows that the value of free
+speech as a "safety-valve" has not even yet been thoroughly learned. It
+also shows how the victories of freedom in the past have to be fought
+and won over again under new conditions, if they are to be kept alive.
+
+[203] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE POLITICAL STATE
+
+
+We have been considering responsible freedom as it centers in and
+affects individuals in their distinctive capacities. It implies a public
+order which guarantees, defines, and enforces rights and obligations.
+This public order has a twofold relation to rights and duties: (1) As
+the social counterpart of their exercise by individuals, it constitutes
+_Civil Society_. It represents those forms of associated life which are
+orderly and authorized, because constituted by individuals in the
+exercise of their rights, together with those special forms which
+protect and insure them. Families, clubs, guilds, unions, corporations
+come under the first head; courts and civil administrative bodies, like
+public railway and insurance commissions, etc., come under the second.
+(2) The public order also fixes the fundamental terms and conditions on
+which at any given time rights are exercised and remedies secured; it is
+organized for the purpose of defining the basic methods of exercising
+the activities of its constituent elements, individual and corporate. In
+this aspect it is the _State_.
+
+
+Sec. 1. CIVIL RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS
+
+Every act brings the agent who performs it into association with others,
+whether he so intends or not. His act takes effect in an organized world
+of action; in social arrangement and institutions. So far as such
+combinations of individuals are recurrent or stable, their nature and
+operations are definitely formulated and definitely enforceable.
+Partnerships, clubs, corporations, guilds, families are such stable
+unions, with their definite spheres of action. Buying and selling,
+teaching and learning, producing and consuming, are recurrent activities
+whose legitimate methods get prescribed. These specific provinces and
+methods of action are defined in Civil Rights. They express the
+guaranteed and regular ways in which an individual, through action,
+voluntarily enters into association or combination with others for the
+sake of a common end. They differ from political rights and obligations
+in that the latter concern modes of social organization which are so
+fundamental that they are not left to the voluntary choice and purpose
+of an individual. As a social being, he must have political
+relationships, must be subject to law, pay taxes, etc.
+
+=1. Contract Rights.=--Modes of association are so numerous and variable
+that we can only select those aspects of civil rights which are morally
+most significant. We shall discriminate them according as they have to
+do (1) with the more temporary and casual combinations of individuals,
+for limited and explicit purposes; and (2) with more permanent,
+inclusive, and hence less definable ends; and (3) with the special
+institutions which exist for guaranteeing individuals the enjoyment of
+their rights and providing remedies if these are infringed upon. (1)
+Contract rights. Rights of the first type are rights resulting from
+express or implied agreements of certain agents to do or refrain from
+doing specific acts, involving exchange of services or goods to the
+mutual benefit of both parties in the transaction. Every bargain entered
+into, every loaf of bread one buys or paper of pins one sells, involves
+an implied and explicit contract. A genuinely free agreement or contract
+means (i.) that each party to the transaction secures the benefit he
+wants; (ii.) that the two parties are brought into cooperative or
+mutually helpful relations; and that (iii.) the vast, vague, complex
+business of conducting social life is broken up into a multitude of
+specific acts to be performed and of specific goods to be delivered, at
+definite times and definite places. Hence it is hardly surprising that
+one school of social moralists has found in the conception of free
+contract its social ideal. Every individual concerned assumes
+obligations which it is to his interest to perform so that the
+performance is voluntary, not coerced; while, at the same time, some
+other person is engaged to serve him in some way. The limitations of the
+contract idea will concern us later.
+
+=2. The Permanent Voluntary Associations.=--Partnerships, limited
+liability corporations, guilds, trades unions, churches, schools, clubs,
+are more permanent and comprehensive associations, involving more
+far-reaching rights and obligations. Societies organized for
+conversation and sociability or conviviality, "corporations not for
+profit," but for mutual enjoyment or for benevolent ends, come under the
+same head. Most significant are the associations which, while entered
+only voluntarily and having therefore a basis in contract, are for
+generic ends. Thus they are permanent, and cover much more than can be
+written in the contract. Marriage, in modern society, is entered into by
+contract; but married life is not narrowed to the exchange of specific
+services at specific times. It is a union for mutual economic and
+spiritual goods which are coextensive with all the interests of the
+parties. In its connection with the generation and rearing of children,
+it is a fundamental means of guarding all social interests and of
+directing their progress. Schools, colleges, churches, federations of
+labor, organizations of employers, and of both together, represent other
+forms of permanent voluntary organizations which may have the most
+far-reaching influence both upon those directly concerned and upon
+society at large.
+
+=3. Right to Use of Courts.=--All civil rights get their final
+application and test in the right to have conflicting rights defined
+and infringed rights remedied by appeal to a public authority having
+general and final jurisdiction. "The right to sue and be sued" may seem
+too legal and external a matter to be worthy of much note in an ethical
+treatise; but it represents the culmination of an age-long
+experimentation with the problem of reconciling individual freedom and
+public order. No civil right is effective unless it carries with it a
+statement of a method of enforcement and, if necessary, of redress and
+remedy. Otherwise it is a mere name. Moreover, conflicts of civil rights
+are bound to occur even when there is good faith on the part of all
+concerned, just because new situations arise. Unless there is a way of
+defining the respective rights of each party in the new situation, each
+will arbitrarily and yet in good faith insist upon asserting his rights
+on the old basis: private war results. A new order is not achieved and
+the one already attained is threatened or disrupted. The value of rights
+to the use of courts resides, then, to a comparatively small degree, in
+the specific cases of deliberate wrong which are settled. What is more
+important is that men get instruction as to the proper scope and limits
+of their activities, through the provision of an effective mechanism for
+amicable settlement of disputes in those cases in which rights are vague
+and ambiguous because the situations are novel.
+
+=Classes of Wrongs and Remedies.=--Infringements upon rights, such as
+murder, theft, arson, forgery, imply a character which is distinctly
+anti-social in its bent. The wrong, although done to one, is an
+expression of a disposition which is dangerous to all. Such a wrong is a
+crime; it is a matter for the direct jurisdiction of public authority.
+It is the business of all to cooperate in giving evidence, and it may
+render one a criminal accomplice to conceal or suppress evidence, just
+as it is "compounding a felony" for the wronged individual to settle the
+wrong done him by arranging privately for compensation. The penalty in
+such cases is generally personal; imprisonment or at least a heavy fine.
+The violation may, however, be of the nature of a wrong or "tort,"
+rather than of a crime; it may indicate a disposition indifferent to
+social interests or neglectful of them rather than one actively hostile
+to them. Such acts as libels, trespasses upon the land of another, are
+illustrations. In such cases, the machinery of justice is put in motion
+by the injured individual, not by the commonwealth. This does not mean
+that society as a whole has no interest in the matter; but that under
+certain circumstances encouraging individuals to look out for their own
+rights and wrongs is socially more important than getting certain wrongs
+remedied irrespective of whether men stand up for their own rights or
+not. Then again, there are civil disputes which indicate neither a
+criminal nor a harmful disposition, but rather uncertainty as to what
+the law really is, leading to disputes about rights--interpretations of
+a contract, express or implied. Here the interest of society is to
+provide a method of settlement which will hinder the growth of ill will
+and private retaliation; and which also will provide precedents and
+principles that will lessen uncertainty and conflict in like cases in
+the future.
+
+Peace and tranquillity are not merely the absence of open friction and
+disorder. They mean specific, easily-known, and generally recognized
+principles which determine the province and limits of the legitimate
+activity of every person. Publicity, standards, rules of procedure,
+remedies acknowledged in common, are their essence. _Res publica_, the
+common concern, remains vague and latent till defined by impartial,
+disinterested social organs. Then it is expressed in regular and
+guaranteed modes of activity. In the pregnant phrase of Aristotle, the
+administration of justice is also its determination: that is, its
+discovery and promulgation.
+
+
+Sec. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIL RIGHTS
+
+=Contrast of Primitive with Present Justice.=--The significance of the
+accomplishments and the defects of the present administration of law may
+be brought out by a sketch of its contrast with primitive methods. In
+savage and barbarian society, on account of the solidarity of the
+kin-group, any member of the group is likely to be attacked for the
+offense of any other (see p. 28). He may not have participated in the
+act, or have had complicity in planning it. His guilt is that the same
+blood runs in his veins.[204] The punitive attack, moreover, is made
+directly and promiscuously by the injured man and by his
+blood-relatives; it is made in the heat of passion or in the vengeance
+of stealth as custom may decree. Says Hearn, the state "did not
+interfere in the private quarrels of its citizens. Every man took care
+of his own property and his own household, and every hand guarded its
+own head. If any injury were done to any person, he retaliated, or made
+reprisals, or otherwise sought redress, as custom prescribed."[205] The
+reprisal may itself have called for another, and the blood-feud was on.
+In any case, the state of affairs was one literally, not metaphorically,
+described as "private war."
+
+=Changes Now Effected.=--This state of affairs has been superseded by
+one in which a third, a public and impartial authority (1) takes
+cognizance of offenses against another individual as offenses against
+the commonwealth; (2) apprehends the supposed offender; (3) determines
+and applies an objective standard of judgment, the same for all, the
+law; (4) tries the supposed offender according to rules of procedure,
+including rules of evidence or proof, which are also publicly
+promulgated; and (5) takes upon itself the punishment of the offender,
+if found guilty. The history of this change, important and interesting
+as it is, does not belong here. We are concerned here only with the
+relation of public authority, public law, and public activity to the
+development of the freedom of the individual on one side and of his
+responsibility on the other.[206] We shall point out in a number of
+particulars that the evolution of freedom and responsibility in
+individuals has coincided with the evolution of a public and impartial
+authority.
+
+=1. Good and Evil as Quasi-Physical.=--There are two alternatives in the
+judgment of good and evil. (1) They may be regarded as having _moral_
+significance, that is, as having a voluntary basis and origin. (2) Or
+they may be considered as substantial properties of things, as a sort of
+essence diffused through them, or as a kind of force resident in them,
+in virtue of which persons and things are noxious or helpful, malevolent
+or kindly. Savage tribes, for instance, cannot conceive either sickness
+or death as natural evils; they are attributed to the malicious magic of
+an enemy. Similarly the evil which follows from the acts of a man is
+treated as a sign of some metaphysical tendency inherent in him. Some
+men bring bad luck upon everything and everybody they have anything to
+do with. A curse is on their doings. No distinction is made between
+such evils and those which flow from intention and character. The notion
+of the moral or voluntary nature of good and evil hardly obtains. The
+quasi-physical view, bordering upon the magical, prevails. The result is
+that evil is thought of as a contagious matter, transmitted from
+generation to generation, from class or person to class or person; and
+as something to be got rid of, if at all, by devices which are equally
+physical. Natural evils, plagues, defeats, earthquakes, etc., _are
+treated as quasi-moral, while moral evils are treated as more than half
+physical_. Sins are infectious diseases, and natural diseases are
+malicious interferences of a human or divine enemy. Morals are
+materialized, and nature is moralized or demoralized.[207]
+
+Now it is hardly necessary to point out the effect of such conceptions
+in restricting the freedom and responsibility of the individual person.
+Man is hemmed in as to thought and action on all sides by all kinds of
+mysterious forces working in unforeseeable ways. This is true enough in
+his best estate. When to this limitation is added a direction of energy
+into magical channels, away from those controllable sources of evil
+which reside in human disposition, the amount of effective freedom
+possible is slight. This same misplacing of liability holds men
+accountable for acts they have not committed, because some magic
+tendency for evil is imputed to them. Famine, pestilence, defeat in war
+are evils to be remedied by sacrifice of goods or persons or by
+ritualistic ceremonies; while the remediable causes of harm in human
+ignorance and negligence go without attention.
+
+=2. Accident and Intention.=--Under such circumstances, little
+distinction can be made between the good and evil which an individual
+_meant_ to do and that which he _happened_ to do. The working
+presumption of society, up to a comparatively late stage of its history,
+was that every harmful consequence is an evidence of evil disposition in
+those who were in any way concerned. This limitation of freedom was
+accompanied by a counterpart limitation of responsibility. Where no harm
+actually resulted, there was thought to be no harmful intent. Animals
+and even inanimate objects which do injury are baleful things and come
+under disapprobation and penalty. Even in civilized Athens there was a
+survival of the practice of holding inanimate things liable. If a tree
+fell on a man and killed him, the tree was to be brought to trial, and
+after condemnation cast beyond the civic borders, i.e., outlawed.[208]
+Anyhow, the owner of an offending article was almost always penalized.
+Westermarck,[209] with reference to the guilt of animals, cites an
+instance, dated in 1457, "when a sow and her six young ones were tried
+on a charge of their having murdered and partly eaten a child; the sow,
+being found guilty, was condemned to death, the young pigs were
+acquitted on account of their youth and the bad example of their
+mother." When sticks, stones, and animals are held accountable for evil
+results, there is little chance of discriminating intent and accident or
+misadventure in the case of personal agents. "The devil himself knoweth
+not the intent, the 'thought' of man" was the mediaeval maxim; all that
+can be certain is that harm has come and the one who caused it must
+suffer; or else no overt harm has come and no one is to blame.[210] Harm
+has been done and any one concerned, even remotely, in the injurious
+situation, is _ex officio_ guilty; it will not do to take chances. The
+remoteness of an implication which may involve liability is seen in the
+condition of English law in the thirteenth century: "At your request I
+accompany you when you are about your own affairs: my enemies fall upon
+and kill me: you must pay for my death. You take me to see a wild-beast
+show, or that interesting spectacle a madman: beast or madman kills me;
+you must pay. You hang up your sword; some one else knocks it down so
+that it cuts me; you must pay."[211] Only gradually did intent clearly
+evolve as the central element in an act, and thus lead to the idea of a
+voluntary or free act.
+
+That the limitation upon the side of responsibility was equally great is
+obvious. If a man is held liable for what he did not and could not
+foresee or desire, there is no ground for his _holding himself_
+responsible for anticipating the consequences of his acts, and forming
+his plans according as he foresees. This comes out clearly in the
+obverse of what has just been said. If no harm results from a willful
+attempt to do evil, the individual is not blamed. He goes scot free. "An
+attempt to commit a crime is no crime."[212]
+
+=3. Character and Circumstances.=--Even in law, to say nothing of
+personal moral judgments, we now almost as a matter of course take into
+account, in judging an agent's intent, both circumstances, and character
+as inferred from past behavior. We extend our view of consequences,
+taking into account in judging the moral quality of a particular deed,
+consequences its doer is _habitually_ found to effect. We blame the
+individual less for a deed if we find it contrary to his habitual
+course. We blame him more, if we find he has a character given to that
+sort of thing. We take into account, in short, the permanent attitude
+and disposition of the agent. We also discriminate the conditions and
+consequences of a deed much more carefully. Self-defense, protection of
+others or of property, come in as "extenuating circumstances"; the
+degree of provocation, the presence of immediate impulsive fear or
+anger, as distinct from a definitely formed, long-cherished idea, are
+considered. The questions of first or of repeated offense, of prior
+criminality or good behavior, enter in. Questions of heredity, of early
+environment, of early education and opportunity are being brought to-day
+into account.
+
+We are still very backward in this respect, both in personal and in
+public morals; in private judgment and in legal procedure and penalty.
+Only recently have we, for example, begun to treat juvenile delinquents
+in special ways; and the effort to carry appropriate methods further
+meets with strong opposition and the even stronger inertia of
+indifference. It is regarded by many good people as lowering the bars of
+responsibility to consider early training and opportunity, just as in
+its day it was so regarded to plead absence of intent in cases where
+evil had actually resulted. It is not "safe" to let any one off from the
+rigor of the law. The serious barrier, now as earlier, is upon the
+scientific or intellectual side. There was a time when it did not seem
+feasible to pass upon intent; it was hidden, known only to God. But we
+have now devised ways, adequate in principle, though faulty in detail,
+to judge immediate intent; similarly, with the growth of anthropology,
+psychology, statistics, and the resources of publicity in social
+science, we shall in time find it possible to consider the effects of
+heredity, early environment, and training upon character and so upon
+intent. We shall then regard present methods of judging intent to be
+almost as barbarous as we now consider the earlier disregard of accident
+and provocation. Above all we shall learn that increased, not relaxed
+responsibility, comes with every increase of discrimination of causes
+lying in character and conditions.[213]
+
+=4. Intellectual Incapacity and Thoughtlessness.=--With increasing
+recognition of character as the crucial element in voluntary action, we
+now take into account such matters as age, idiocy, and insanity as
+factors of judgment. But this also has been a slow growth. If we take
+the one question of insanity, for example, in 1724 exculpation for harm
+resulting from a madman's acts required that the person excused "be a
+man that is totally deprived of his understanding and memory, and doth
+not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute, or a
+wild beast." At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the excuse was
+no longer that of being such a raving lunatic as is here implied; but of
+knowing right and wrong from each other _in the abstract_. By a
+celebrated case in 1843, the rule was changed, in English law, to
+knowledge of the difference between right and wrong in the particular
+case. Further advance waits upon progress of science which will make it
+more possible to judge the specific mental condition of the person
+acting; and thus do away with the abuses of the present system which
+tend, on the one hand, to encourage the pleading of insanity where none
+may exist; and, on the other hand (by a rigid application of a technical
+rule), to condemn persons really irresponsible.[214] Popular judgment
+still inclines to impute clear and definite intention on the basis of
+results; and to ignore conditions of intellectual confusion and
+bewilderment, and justifies itself in its course on the ground that such
+is the only "safe" course.[215]
+
+=Responsibility for Thoughtlessness.=--But the release from
+responsibility for deeds in which the doer is intellectually
+incapacitated, is met on the other side by holding individuals of normal
+mental constitution responsible for some consequences which were not
+thought of at all. We even hold men accountable for _not_ thinking to do
+certain acts. The former are acts of heedlessness or carelessness, as
+when a mason on top of a building throws rubbish on to a street below
+which injures some one, without any thought on his part of this result,
+much less any deliberate desire to effect it. The latter are acts of
+negligence, as when, say, an engineer fails to note a certain signal. In
+such cases even when no harm results, we now hold the agent morally
+culpable. Similarly we blame children for _not_ thinking of the
+consequences of their acts; we blame them for _not_ thinking to do
+certain things at a certain time--to come home when told, and so on.
+This is not merely a matter of judgment by others. The more
+conscientious a person is, the more occasions he finds to judge
+_himself_ with respect to results which _happened because he did not
+think or deliberate or foresee at all_--provided he has reason to
+believe he would have thought of the harmful results if he had been of a
+different character. Because we were absorbed in something else we did
+not think, and while, in the abstract, this something else may have
+been all right, in the concrete it may be proof of an unworthy
+character. The very fact that we permitted ourselves to become so
+absorbed that the thought of an engagement, or of an opportunity to help
+some friend whom we knew to be in need, did not occur to us, is evidence
+of a selfish, i.e., inconsiderate, character.
+
+The case seems paradoxical and is crucial. Others hold us responsible
+because we _were_ irresponsible in action and _in order_ that we may
+_become_ responsible. We blame ourselves precisely because we discover
+that an unconscious preference for a private or exclusive good led us to
+be careless of the good of others. The effect (if the regret is genuine,
+not simulated) is to develop a habit of greater thoughtfulness in the
+future. Less and less do men accept for others or for themselves
+ignorance as an excuse for bad consequences, when the ignorance itself
+flows from character. Our chief moral business is to become acquainted
+with consequences. Our moral character surely does not depend in this
+case, then, upon the fact that we had alternatives clearly in mind and
+chose the worse; the difficulty is that we had only one alternative in
+mind and did not _consciously_ choose at all. Our freedom lies in the
+_capacity_ to alter our mode of action, through having our ignorance
+enlightened by being held for the neglected consequences when brought to
+accountability by others, or by holding ourselves accountable in
+subsequent reflection. Cases of careless acts and of acts omitted
+through negligence are thus crucial for any theory of freedom and
+responsibility. Either we are all wrong in blaming ourselves or others
+in such cases, because there is no free or voluntary element in them; or
+else there is responsibility when deliberate comparison of alternatives
+and conscious preference are absent. There is responsibility for the
+absence of deliberation. Nature does not forbear to attach consequences
+to acts because of the ignorance of the one who does the deed. The evil
+results that follow in the wake of a thoughtless act are precisely the
+reminders that make one take thought the next time. Similarly, to be
+held liable by others or to take ourselves to task for forgetfulness,
+inconsiderateness, and negligence, is the way in which to build up
+conscientious foresight and deliberate choice. The increased complexity
+and danger of modern industrial activity, the menace of electric power,
+of high explosives, of railway trains and trolley cars, of powerful
+machines, have done much to quicken recognition that negligence may be
+criminal, and to reawaken the conviction of Greek thought that
+thoughtless ignorance, where knowledge is possible, is the worst of
+evils. The increased interdependence of men, through travel and
+transportation, collective methods of production, and crowding of
+population in cities, has widened the area of the harm likely to result
+from inconsiderate action, and has strengthened the belief that adequate
+thoughtfulness is possible only where there is sympathetic interest in
+others.
+
+=5. The Conflict of Form and Substance.=--The technical forms of
+procedure concerned in establishing and remedying rights were, for long
+ages, more important than the substantial ends by which alone the forms
+may be justified. Any effort for a remedy was nullified if the minutiae
+of complicated formulae (largely magical or ritualistic in their origin)
+were deviated from. Almost any obligation might be escaped by some quirk
+or turn in some slight phrase or motion, without which no agreement was
+binding, so sacramental was the importance of the very words. In early
+days the rigidity of these semi-ritualistic performances doubtless
+served to check arbitrary and reckless acts, and to impress the sense of
+the value of a standard.[216] But they survived as "rudimentary organs"
+long after they had done their work in this respect; and after they had
+been eliminated from legal procedure they survived as habits of judging
+conduct.
+
+=Survivals of Spirit of Individualistic Litigation.=--The fact that the
+procedure of justice originated as methods of supplying impartial
+umpires for conflicts waged between individuals, has had serious
+consequences. It has had indeed the desirable consequence of quickening
+men to the perception of their rights and to their obligation as social
+members to maintain them intact. But it has also had the undesirable
+result of limiting the function of the public interest to the somewhat
+negative one of securing fair play between contentious individuals. The
+battle is not now fought out with fists or spears or oaths or ordeals:
+but it is largely a battle of wits and of technical resources between
+the opposite parties and their lawyers, with the State acting the part
+of a benevolently neutral umpire. The ignorant, the poor, the foreign,
+and the _merely_ honest are almost inevitably at a discount in this
+battle.[217] And, in any case, the technical aspect of justice, that is,
+the question of proper forms gets out of true perspective. The
+"legally-minded" man is likely to be one with whom technical precedents
+and rules are more important than the goods to be achieved and the evils
+to be avoided. With increase of publicity and scientific methods of
+determining and interpreting facts, and with a public and professional
+criticism which is impartial and wise, we may anticipate that the
+supremacy of the general good will be increasingly recognized in cases
+of litigation, and that the courts, as organs of public justice, will
+take a more active and substantial part in the management of all legal
+controversies.[218]
+
+=Legal and Moral.=--But, at the best, definitions of rights and of
+remedial procedures only (1) lay down general, not individual
+conditions, and (2), so far as they are strict, register precedent and
+custom rather than anticipate the novel and variable. They can state
+what shall not be done. Except in special cases, they cannot state what
+shall be done, much less the spirit and disposition in which it shall be
+done. In their formulations, they present a sort of minimum limit of
+morality not to be overstepped by those inclined to ill. They throw
+little light on the positive capacities and responsibilities of those
+who are socially minded. They have a moral purpose: they free energy
+from the friction attendant upon vague, obscure, and uncertain
+situations, by enlightening men as to what they may do and how they may
+do it. But the exaggeration of form at the expense of the substantial
+end and good, leads to misplaced emphasis and false perspective. The
+rules are treated as ends; they are employed not to get insight into
+consequences, but as justifying, apart from consequences, certain acts.
+The would-be conscientious agent is led into considering goodness as a
+matter of obeying rules, not of fulfilling ends. The average individual
+conceives he has satisfied the requirements of morality when he has
+conformed to the average level of legal definition and prescription.
+Egoistic, self-seeking men regard their actions as sanctioned if they
+have _not_ broken the laws; and decide this question by success in
+evading penalties. The intelligence that should go to employing the
+spirit of laws to enlighten behavior is spent in ingenious inventions
+for observing their letter. The "respectable" citizen of this type is
+one of the unsocialized forces that social reformers find among their
+most serious obstacles.
+
+This identification of morality with the legal and jural leads to a
+reaction which is equally injurious: the complete separation of the
+legal and the moral, the former conceived as merely "outer," concerned
+entirely with acts, not at all with motive and character. The effect of
+this divorce is perhaps more serious upon the moral than upon the legal.
+The separation makes morals sentimental and whimsical, or else
+transcendental and esoteric. It leads to neglect of the social and
+institutional realities which form a world of action as surely as
+natural objects and energies form a physical world, and ends in the
+popular conception of morals as just a matter of "goodness" (the
+goody-goodiness) of individuals. One of the most fundamental of moral
+duties is that of making the legal order a more adequate expression of
+the common good.
+
+=Special Problems.=--Civil Society thus imposes upon its members not
+only specific obligations, but it also imposes upon all who enjoy its
+benefits the supreme obligation of seeing that the civic order is itself
+intelligently just in its methods of procedure. The peculiar moral
+problems which men have to face as members of civil society change, of
+course, from time to time with change of conditions; among the more
+urgent of present problems, we may mention:
+
+=1. Reform of Criminal Procedure.=--The negative side of morality is
+never so important as the positive, because the pathological cannot be
+as important as the physiological of which it is a disturbance and
+perversion. But no fair survey of our methods, either of locating
+criminality or of punishing it, can fail to note that they contain far
+too many survivals of barbarism. Compared with primitive times we have
+indeed won a precious conquest. Even as late as 1813, a proposal to
+change the penalty for stealing five shillings from death to
+transportation to a remote colony, was defeated in England.[219] But we
+are likely in flattering ourselves upon the progress made to overlook
+that which it remains to make. Our trials are technical rather than
+human: they assume that just about so much persistent criminality must
+persist in any case. They endeavor, in rather routine and perfunctory
+ways, to label this and that person as criminal in such and such
+degrees, or, by technical devices and resources, to acquit. In many
+American states, distrust of government, inherited from days of
+tyrannical monarchy or oligarchy, protects the accused in all sorts of
+ways. For fear the government will unjustly infringe upon the liberty of
+the individual, the latter is not only--as is just--regarded as innocent
+till proved guilty; but is provided with every possible technical
+advantage in rules of evidence, postponements and appeals, advantages
+backed up, in many cities, by association with political bosses which
+gives him a corrupt "pull."
+
+On the other hand, there is as yet no general recognition of the
+possibility of an unbiased scientific investigation into all the
+antecedents (hereditary and environmental) of evildoers; an
+investigation which would connect the wrong done with the _character of
+the individual_ committing it, and not merely with one of a number of
+technical degrees of crime, laid down in the statute books in the
+abstract, without reference to particular characters and circumstances.
+Thus while the evildoer has in one direction altogether too much of a
+chance to evade justice, he has in another direction a chance at only
+technical, rather than at moral, justice--justice as an individual human
+being. It is not possible to discuss here various methods which have
+been proposed for remedying these defects. But it is clearly the
+business of the more thoughtful members of society to consider the evils
+seriously and to interest themselves actively in their reform. We need,
+above all, a change in two respects: (a) recognition of the
+possibilities of new methods of judgment which the sciences of
+physiology, psychology, and sociology have brought about; and (b)
+surrender of that feudal conception according to which men are divided,
+as it were essentially, into two classes: one the criminal and the other
+the meritorious. We need to consider the ways in which the pressure and
+the opportunities of environment and education, of poverty and
+comfortable living, of extraneous suggestion and stimulation, make the
+differences between one man and another; and to recognize how
+fundamentally one human nature is at bottom. Juvenile courts, probation
+officers, detention officers, mark the beginnings of what is possible,
+but only the beginnings. For the most part crime is still treated
+sordidly and by routine, except when, being sensational, it is the
+occasion for a great battle of wits between keen prosecuting attorney
+and clever "criminal lawyer," with the world through the newspapers
+watching the display.
+
+=2. Reform of Punishment.=--Emerson's bitter words are still too
+applicable. "Our distrust is very expensive. The money we spend for
+courts and prisons is very ill laid out. We make, by distrust, the thief
+and burglar and incendiary, and by our court and jail we keep him
+so."[220] Reformatories, whose purpose is change of disposition, not
+mere penalization, have been founded; but there are still many more
+prisons than reformatories. And, if it be argued that most criminals are
+so hardened in evil-doing that reformatories are of no use, the answer
+is twofold. We do not know, because we have never systematically and
+intelligently tried to find out; and, even if it were so, nothing is
+more illogical than to turn the unreformed criminal, at the end of a
+certain number of months or years, loose to prey again upon society.
+Either reform or else permanent segregation is the logical alternative.
+Indeterminate sentences, release on probation, discrimination of classes
+of offenders, separation of the first and more or less accidental and
+immature offender from the old and experienced hand, special matrons for
+women offenders, introduction of education and industrial training into
+penitentiaries, the finding of employment for those released--all mark
+improvements. They are, however, as yet inchoate. Intelligent members of
+society need to recognize their own responsibility for the promotion of
+such reforms and for the discovery of new ones.
+
+=3. Increase of Administrative Efficiency.=--In the last one hundred
+years, society has rapidly grown in internal complexity. Commercial
+changes have brought about an intense concentration of population in
+cities; have promoted migratory travel and intercourse, with destruction
+of local ties; have developed world markets and collective but
+impersonal (corporate) production and distribution. Many new problems
+have been created, while at the same time many of the old agencies for
+maintaining order have been weakened or destroyed, especially such as
+were adapted to small groups with fixed habits. A great strain has thus
+been put upon the instrumentalities of justice. Pioneer conditions
+retarded in America the development of the problems incident upon
+industrial reconstruction. The possibility of moving on, of taking up
+new land, finding unutilized resources of forest and mine, the
+development of new professions, the growth of population with new needs
+to be met, stimulated and rewarded individual enterprise. Under such
+circumstances there could be no general demand for public agencies of
+inspection, supervision, and publicity. But the pioneer days of America
+are practically ended. American cities and states find themselves
+confronted with the same problems of public health, poverty and
+unemployment, congested population, traffic and transportation,
+charitable relief, tramps and vagabondage, and so forth, that have
+troubled older countries.
+
+We face these problems, moreover, with traditions which are averse to
+"bureaucratic" administration and public "interference." Public
+regulation is regarded as a "paternalistic" survival, quite unsuited to
+a free and independent people. It would be foolish, indeed, to overlook
+or deny the great gains that have come from our American individualistic
+convictions: the quickening of private generosity, the growth of a
+generalized sense of _noblesse oblige_--of what every successful
+individual owes to his community; of personal initiative, self-reliance,
+and versatile "faculty"; of interest in all the voluntary agencies which
+by education and otherwise develop the individuality of every one; and
+of a demand for equality of opportunity, a fair chance, and a square
+deal for all. But it is certain that the country has reached a state of
+development, in which these individual achievements and possibilities
+require new civic and political agencies if they are to be maintained as
+realities. Individualism means inequity, harshness, and retrogression to
+barbarism (no matter under what veneer of display and luxury), unless it
+is a _generalized_ individualism: an individualism which takes into
+account the real good and effective--not merely formal--freedom of
+_every_ social member.
+
+Hence the demand for civic organs--city, state, and federal,--of expert
+inquiry, inspection, and supervision with respect to a large number of
+interests which are too widespread and too intricate to be well cared
+for by private or voluntary initiative. The well-to-do in great cities
+may segregate themselves in the more healthful quarters; they may rely
+upon their automobiles for local transportation; they may secure pure
+milk and unadulterated foods from personal resources; they may, by their
+combined "pull," secure good schools, policing, lighting, and well-paved
+streets for their own localities. But the great masses are dependent
+upon public agencies for proper air, light, sanitary conditions of work
+and residence, cheap and effective transportation, pure food, decent
+educative and recreative facilities in schools, libraries, museums,
+parks.
+
+The problems which fall to the lot of the proper organs of
+administrative inspection and supervision are essentially _scientific_
+problems, questions for expert intelligence conjoined with wide
+sympathy. In the true sense of the word political, they are political
+questions: that is, they relate to the welfare of society as an
+organized community of attainment and endeavor. In the cant sense of the
+term political, the sense of conventional party-issues and party-lines,
+they have no more to do with politics than have the multiplication table
+and the laws of hygiene. Yet they are at present almost hopelessly
+entangled with irrelevant "political" issues, and are almost hopelessly
+under the heel of party-politicians whose least knowledge is of the
+scientific questions involved, just as their least interest is for the
+human issues at stake. So far "civil service reform" has been mainly
+negative: a purging away of some of the grosser causes which have
+influenced appointments to office. But now there is needed a
+constructive reform of civil administration which will develop the
+agencies of inquiry, oversight, and publicity required by modern
+conditions; and which will necessitate the selection of public servants
+of scientifically equipped powers.
+
+
+Sec. 3. POLITICAL RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS
+
+No hard and fast line can be drawn between civil society and the State.
+By the State, however, we denote those conditions of social organization
+and regulation which are most fundamental and most general:--conditions
+which are summed up in and expressed through the general will as
+manifested in legislation and its execution. As a civil right is
+technically focused in the right to use the courts, "to sue and be
+sued," that is in the right to have other claims adjudicated and
+enforced by a public, impartial authority, so a political right is
+technically summed up in the power to vote--either to vote directly upon
+laws or to vote for those who make and carry out laws. To have the right
+in a legislative assembly to speak for or against a certain measure; to
+be able to say "yea" or "nay" upon a roll-call; to be able to put into a
+ballot-box a piece of paper with a number of names written thereon, are
+not acts which of themselves possess the inherent value of many of the
+most ordinary transactions of daily life. But the representative and
+potential significance of political rights exceeds that of any other
+class of rights. Suffrage stands for direct and active participation in
+the regulation of the terms upon which associated life shall be
+sustained, and the pursuit of the good carried on. Political freedom and
+responsibility _express an individual's power and obligation to make
+effective all his other capacities by fixing the social conditions of
+their exercise_.
+
+=Growth of Democracy.=--The evolution of democratically regulated
+States, as distinct from those ordered in the interests of a small
+group, or of a special class, is the social counterpart of the
+development of a comprehensive and common good. Externally viewed,
+democracy is a piece of machinery, to be maintained or thrown away, like
+any other piece of machinery, on the basis of its economy and efficiency
+of working. Morally, it is the effective embodiment of the moral ideal
+of a good which consists in the development of all the social capacities
+of every individual member of society.
+
+=Present Problems: 1. Distrust of Government.=--Present moral problems
+connected with political affairs have to do with safeguarding the
+democratic ideal against the influences which are always at work to
+undermine it, and with building up for it a more complete and extensive
+embodiment. The historic antecedent of our own governmental system was
+the exercise of a monopoly by a privileged class.[221] It became a
+democratic institution partly because the King, in order to secure the
+monopoly, had to concede and guarantee to the masses of the people
+certain rights as against the oligarchical interests which might rival
+his powers; and partly because the centralization of power, with the
+arbitrary despotism it created, called out protests which finally
+achieved the main popular liberties: safety of life and property from
+arbitrary forfeiture, arrest, or seizure by the sovereign; the rights of
+free assembly, petition, a free press, and of representation in the
+law-making body.
+
+Upon its face, the struggle for individual liberty was a struggle
+against the overbearing menace of despotic rulers. This fact has
+survived in an attitude towards government which cripples its usefulness
+as an agency of the general will. Government, even in the most
+democratic countries, is still thought of as an external "ruler,"
+operating from above, rather than as an organ by which people associated
+in pursuit of common ends can most effectively cooperate for the
+realization of their own aims. Distrust of government was one of the
+chief traits of the situation in which the American nation was born. It
+is embodied not only in popular tradition, and party creeds, but in our
+organic laws, which contain many provisions expressly calculated to
+prevent the corporate social body from effecting its ends freely and
+easily through governmental agencies.[222]
+
+There can be no doubt that the movement to restrict the functions of
+government, the _laissez-faire_ movement, was in its time an important
+step in human freedom, because so much of governmental action was
+despotic in intention and stupid in execution. But it is also a mistake
+to continue to think of a government which is only the people associated
+for the assuring of their own ends as if it were the same sort of thing
+as a government which represented the will of an irresponsible class.
+The advance of means of publicity, and of natural and social science,
+provides not only protection against ignorant and unwise public action,
+but also constructive instrumentalities of intelligent administrative
+activities. One of the chief moral problems of the present day is, then,
+that of making governmental machinery such a prompt and flexible organ
+for expressing the _common_ interest and purpose as will do away with
+that distrust of government which properly must endure so long as
+"government" is something imposed from above and exercised from without.
+
+=2. Indifference to Public Concerns.=--The multiplication of private
+interests is a measure of social progress: it marks the multiplication
+of the sources and ingredients of happiness. But it also invites neglect
+of the fundamental general concerns which, seeming very remote, get
+pushed out of sight by the pressure of the nearer and more vivid
+personal interests. The great majority of men have their thoughts and
+feelings well occupied with their family and business affairs; with
+their clubs for recreation, their church associations, and so on.
+"Politics" becomes the trade of a class which is especially expert in
+the manipulation of their fellows and skilled in the "acceleration" of
+public opinion. "Politics" then gets a bad name, and the aloofness from
+public matters of those best fitted, theoretically, to participate in
+them is further promoted. The saying of Plato, twenty-five hundred years
+ago, that the penalty good men pay for not being interested in
+government is that they are then ruled by men worse than themselves, is
+verified in most of our American cities.
+
+=3. Corruption.=--This indifference of the many, which throws the
+management of political affairs into the hands of a few, leads
+inevitably to corruption. At the best, government is administered by
+human beings possessed of ordinary human frailties and partialities;
+and, at the best, therefore, its ideal function of serving impartially
+the common good must be compromised in its execution. But the control of
+the inner machinery of governmental power by a few who can work in
+irresponsible secrecy because of the indifference and even contempt of
+the many, incites to deliberate perversion of public functions into
+private advantages. As embezzlement is appropriation of trust funds to
+private ends, so corruption, "graft," is prostitution of public
+resources, whether of power or of money, to personal or class interests.
+That a "public office is a public trust" is at once an axiom of
+political ethics and a principle most difficult to realize.
+
+In our own day, a special field has been opened within which corruption
+may flourish, in the development of public utility companies. Railways,
+city transportation systems, telegraph and telephone systems, the
+distribution of water and light, require public franchises, for they
+either employ public highways or they call upon the State to exercise
+its power of eminent domain. These enterprises can be carried on
+efficiently and economically only as they are either monopolies, or
+quasi-monopolies. All modern life, however, is completely bound up with
+and dependent upon facilities of communication, intercourse, and
+distribution. Power to control the various public-service corporations
+carries with it, therefore, power to control and to tax all industries,
+power to build up and cast down communities, companies, and individuals,
+to an extent which might well have been envied by royal houses of the
+past. It becomes then a very special object for great corporations to
+control the agencies of legislation and administration; and it becomes a
+very special object for party leaders and bosses to get control of
+party machinery in order to act as brokers in franchises and in special
+favors--sometimes directly for money, sometimes for the perpetuation and
+extension of their own power and influence, sometimes for the success,
+through influential support and contribution to party funds, of the
+national party with which they are identified.
+
+=4. Reforms in Party Machinery.=--The last decade or so of our history
+has been rife with schemes to improve political conditions. It has
+become clear, among other things, that our national growth has carried
+with it the development of secondary political agencies, not
+contemplated by the framers of our constitutions, agencies which have
+become primary in practical matters. These agencies are the "machines"
+of political parties, with their hierarchical gradation of bosses from
+national to ward rulers, bosses who are in close touch with great
+business interests at one extreme, and with those who pander to the
+vices of the community (gambling, drink, and prostitution) at the other;
+parties with their committees, conventions, primaries, caucuses,
+party-funds, societies, meetings, and all sorts of devices for holding
+together and exciting masses of men to more or less blind acquiescence.
+
+It is not necessary to point out the advantages which parties have
+subserved in concentrating and defining public opinion and
+responsibility in large issues; nor to dwell upon their value in
+counteracting tendencies which break up and divide men into a multitude
+of small groups having little in common with one another. But behind
+these advantages a vast number of abuses have sheltered themselves.
+Recent legislation and recent discussion have shown a marked tendency
+formally to recognize the part actually played by party machinery in the
+conduct of the State, and to take measures to make this factor more
+responsible in its exercise. Since these measures directly affect the
+conditions under which the government as the organ of the general will
+does its work of securing the fundamental conditions of equal
+opportunity for all, they have a direct moral import. Such questions as
+the Australian ballot, the recognition of party emblems and party
+groupings of names; laws for direct primary nominations; the registering
+of voters for primary as well as for final elections; legal control of
+party committees and party conventions; publicity of accounts as to the
+reception and use of party funds; forbidding of contributions by
+corporations, are thus as distinctly moral questions as are bribery and
+ballot-box stuffing.
+
+=5. Reforms in Governmental Machinery.=--Questions that concern the
+respective advantages of written versus unwritten constitutions are in
+their present state problems of technical political science rather than
+of morals. But there are problems, growing out of the fact that for the
+most part American constitutions were written and adopted under
+conditions radically unlike those of the present, which have a direct
+ethical import. As already noted, our constitutions are full of
+evidences of distrust of popular cooperative action. They did not and
+could not foresee the direction of industrial development, the increased
+complexity of social life, nor the expansion of national territory. Many
+measures which have proved indispensable have had therefore to be as it
+were smuggled in; they have been justified by "legal fictions" and by
+interpretations which have stretched the original text to uses undreamed
+of. At the same time, the courts, which are the most technical and legal
+of our political organs, are supreme masters over the legislative
+branch, the most popular and general. The distribution of functions
+between the states and the nation is curiously ill-adapted to present
+conditions (as the discussions regarding railway regulation indicate);
+and the distribution of powers between the state and its municipalities
+is hardly less so, resting in theory upon the idea of local
+self-government, and in practice doing almost everything possible to
+discourage responsible initiative for the conduct of their own affairs
+on the part of municipalities.
+
+These conditions have naturally brought forth a large crop of
+suggestions for reforms. It is not intended to discuss them here, but
+the more important of them, so far as involving moral questions, may be
+briefly noted. The proposals termed the initiative and the referendum
+and the "recall" (this last intended to enable the people to withdraw
+from office any one with whose conduct of affairs they are dissatisfied)
+are clearly intended to make the ideal of democratic control more
+effective in practice. Proposals for limited or complete woman's
+suffrage call attention to the fact that one-half of the citizenship
+does the political thinking for the other half, and emphasize the
+difficulty under such conditions of getting a comprehensive social
+standpoint (which, as we have already seen, is the sympathetic and
+reasonable standpoint) from which to judge social issues. Many sporadic
+propositions from this and that quarter indicate a desire to revise
+constitutions so as to temper their cast-iron quality and increase their
+flexible adaptation to the present popular will, and so as to emancipate
+local communities from subjection to State legislatures in such a way as
+to give them greater autonomy and hence greater responsibility, in the
+management of their own corporate affairs. It is not the arguments _pro_
+and _con_ that we are here concerned with; but we are interested to
+point out that moral issues are involved in the settlement of these
+questions. It may, moreover, be noted that dividing lines in the
+discussion are generally drawn, consciously or unconsciously, on the
+basis of the degree of faith which exists in the democratic principle
+and ideal, as against the class idea in some of its many forms.
+
+=6. Constructive Social Legislation.=--The rapid change of economic
+methods, the accumulation and concentration of wealth, the aggregation
+of capital and labor into distinct bodies of corporations and trusts, on
+one side, and federated labor unions, on the other; the development of
+collective agencies of production and distribution, have brought to the
+focus of public attention a large number of proposals for new
+legislation, almost all of which have a direct moral import. These
+matters are discussed at length in subsequent chapters (chs.
+xxii.-xxv.); and so are passed over here with the reminder that, while
+on one side they are questions of the ethics of industry, they are also
+questions of the right and wrong use of political power and authority.
+We may also note that the theoretical principle at issue, the extension
+versus the restriction of governmental agencies, so far as it is not
+simply a question of what is expedient under the given circumstances, is
+essentially a question of a _generalized_ versus a _partial_
+individualism. The democratic movement of emancipation of personal
+capacities, of securing to each individual an _effective_ right to count
+in the order and movement of society as a whole (that is, in the common
+good), has gone far enough to secure to many, more favored than others,
+peculiar powers and possessions. It is part of the irony of the
+situation that such now oppose efforts to secure equality of opportunity
+to _all_ on the ground that these efforts would effect an invasion of
+individual liberties and rights: i.e., of privileges based on
+inequality. It requires perhaps a peculiarly sympathetic imagination to
+see that the question really involved is not one of magnifying the
+powers of the State against individuals, but is one of making individual
+liberty a more extensive and equitable matter.
+
+=7. The International Problem.=--The development of national States
+marks a tremendous step forward in the realization of the principle of a
+truly inclusive common good. But it cannot be the final step. Just as
+clans, sects, gangs, etc., are intensely sympathetic within and
+intensely exclusive and jealous without, so States are still arrayed
+against States, with patriotism, loyalty, as an internal virtue, and the
+distrust and hatred of divisive hostility as the counterpart vice. The
+idea of humanity in the abstract has been attained as a moral ideal. But
+the political organization of this conception, its embodiment in law and
+administrative agencies, has not been achieved. International law,
+arbitration treaties, and even a court like the Hague tribunal, whose
+power is sentimental rather than political, mark steps forward. Nothing
+could be more absurd, from the historic point of view, than to regard
+the conception of an international State of federated humanity, with its
+own laws and its own courts and its own rules for adjudicating disputes,
+as a mere dream, an illusion of sentimental hope. It is a very slight
+step to take forward compared with that which has substituted the
+authority of national States for the conflict of isolated clans and
+local communities; or with that which has substituted a publicly
+administered justice for the regime of private war and retaliation. The
+argument for the necessity (short of the attainment of a federated
+international State with universal authority and policing of the seas)
+of preparing in peace by enlarged armies and navies for the possibility
+of war, must be offset at least by recognition that the possession of
+irresponsible power is always a direct temptation to its irresponsible
+use. The argument that war is necessary to prevent moral degeneration of
+individuals may, under present conditions, where every day brings its
+fresh challenge to civic initiative, courage, and vigor, be dismissed as
+unmitigated nonsense.
+
+
+Sec. 4. THE MORAL CRITERION OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY
+
+The moral criterion by which to try social institutions and political
+measures may be summed up as follows: The test is whether a given custom
+or law sets free individual capacities in such a way as to make them
+available for the development of the general happiness or the common
+good. This formula states the test with the emphasis falling upon the
+side of the individual. It may be stated from the side of associated
+life as follows: The test is whether the general, the public,
+organization and order are promoted in such a way as to equalize
+opportunity for all.
+
+=Comparison with the Individualistic Formula.=--The formula of the
+individualistic school (in the narrow sense of that term--the
+_laissez-faire_ school) reads: The moral end of political institutions
+and measures is the maximum possible freedom of the individual
+consistent with his not interfering with like freedom on the part of
+other individuals. It is quite possible to interpret this formula in
+such a way as to make it equivalent to that just given. But it is not
+employed in that sense by those who advance it. An illustration will
+bring out the difference. Imagine one hundred workingmen banded together
+in a desire to improve their standard of living by securing higher
+wages, shorter hours, and more sanitary conditions of work. Imagine one
+hundred other men who, because they have no families to support, no
+children to educate, or because they do not care about their standard of
+life, are desirous of replacing the first hundred at lower wages, and
+upon conditions generally more favorable to the employer of labor. It is
+quite clear that in offering themselves and crowding out the others,
+they are not interfering with the _like_ freedom on the part of others.
+The men already engaged are "free" to work for lower wages and longer
+time, if they want to. But it is equally certain that they are
+interfering with the _real_ freedom of the others: that is, with the
+effective expression of their _whole_ body of activities.
+
+The formula of "_like_ freedom" artificially isolates some one power,
+takes that in the abstract, and then inquires whether _it_ is interfered
+with. The one truly moral question is what relation this particular
+power, say the power to do a certain work for a certain reward, sustains
+to all the other desires, purposes, and interests of the individual. How
+are _they_ affected by the way in which some one activity is exercised?
+It is in them that the concrete freedom of the man resides. We do not
+know whether the freedom of a man is interfered with or is assisted
+until we have taken into account his whole system of capacities and
+activities. The maximum freedom of one individual consistent with equal
+_concrete_ or _total_ freedom of others, would indeed represent a high
+moral ideal. But the individualistic formula is condemned by the fact
+that it has in mind only an abstract, mechanical, external, and hence
+formal freedom.
+
+=Comparison with the Collectivistic Formula.=--There is a rival formula
+which may be summed up as the subordination of private or individual
+good to the public or general good: the subordination of the good of the
+part to the good of the whole. This notion also _may_ be interpreted in
+a way which renders it identical with our own criterion. But it is
+usually not so intended. It tends to emphasize quantitative and
+mechanical considerations. The individualistic formula tends in practice
+to emphasize the freedom of the man who has power at the expense of his
+neighbor weaker in health, in intellectual ability, in worldly goods,
+and in social influence. The collectivistic formula tends to set up a
+static social whole and to prevent the variations of individual
+initiative which are necessary to progress. An individual variation may
+involve opposition, not conformity or subordination, to the existing
+social good taken statically; and yet may be the sole means by which the
+existing State is to progress. Minorities are not always right; but
+every advance in right begins in a minority of one, when some individual
+conceives a project which is at variance with the social good as it
+_has_ been established.
+
+A true public or social good will accordingly not subordinate individual
+variations, but will encourage individual experimentation in new ideas
+and new projects, endeavoring only to see that they are put into
+execution under conditions which make for securing responsibility for
+their consequences. A just social order promotes in all its members
+habits of criticizing its attained goods and habits of projecting
+schemes of new goods. It does not aim at intellectual and moral
+subordination. Every form of social life contains survivals of the past
+which need to be reorganized. The struggle of some individuals _against_
+the existing subordination of their good to the good of the whole is the
+method of the reorganization of the whole in the direction of a more
+generally distributed good. Not order, but orderly progress, represents
+the social ideal.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Green, _Principles of Political Obligation_, 1888; Ritchie, _Principles
+of State Interference_, 1891, _Natural Rights_, 1895; Lioy, _Philosophy
+of Right_, 2 vols., 1901; Willoughby, _An Examination of the Nature of
+the State_, 1896; Wilson, _The State_, 1889; Donisthorpe,
+_Individualism_, 1889; Giddings, _Democracy and Empire_, 1900; Mulford,
+_The Nation_, 1882; Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. II., Part
+V., 1882, on Political Institutions; Bentham, _Fragment on Government_,
+1776; Mill, _Considerations on Representative Government_, 1861, _On
+Liberty_, 1859, and _The Subjection of Women_, 1859; Austin,
+_Jurisprudence_, 2 vols., 4th ed., 1873; Hadley, _The Relations between
+Freedom and Responsibility in the Evolution of Democratic Government_,
+1903; Pollock, _Expansion of the Common Law_, 1904; Hall, _Crime in Its
+Relations to Social Progress_, 1901; _Philanthropy and Social Progress_,
+Seven Essays, 1893; Stephen (J. F.), _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_,
+1873 (a criticism of Mill's _Liberty_); Tufts, _Some Contributions of
+Psychology to the Conception of Justice_, Philosophical Review, Vol.
+XV., p. 361.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[204] A traveler tells of overhearing children in Australia, when one of
+their kin had injured some one in another clan, discuss whether or no
+they came within the degree of nearness of relationship which made them
+liable to suffer.
+
+[205] Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, p. 431. Hearn is speaking, moreover,
+of a later and more advanced condition of society, one lying well within
+"civilization."
+
+[206] Those interested in this important history, as every student of
+morals may well be, will find easily accessible material in the
+following references: Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, ch. iii. of Vol.
+I.; Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, ch. xix.; Westermarck, _The Origin and
+Development of the Moral Ideas_, Vol. I., pp. 120-185, and parts of ch.
+xx.; Sutherland, _Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, chs. xx. and
+xxi.; Pollock and Maitland, _History of of English Law_, Vol. II., pp.
+447-460 and ch. ix.; Pollock, _Oxford Lectures_ (The King's Peace);
+Cherry, _Criminal Law in Ancient Communities_; Maine, _Ancient Law_.
+References to anthropological literature, dealing with savage and
+barbarian customs, will be found especially in Westermarck and Hobhouse.
+
+[207] For facts regarding the importance and nature of these
+conceptions, see Westermarck, _op. cit._, pp. 52-72; Robertson Smith,
+_The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 427-435 and 139-149; Jevons,
+_Introduction to the History of Religion_; Hobhouse, _op. cit._, Vol.
+II., chs. i. and ii.; and in general facts bearing on the relations
+between taboos, holiness, and uncleanness; ablutions, purifications by
+fire, transference by scapegoats; also the evil power of curses, and the
+early conceptions of doom and fate. For a suggestive interpretation of
+the underlying facts, see Santayana, _The Life of Reason_, Vol. III.,
+chs. iii. and iv.
+
+[208] See Plato, _Laws_, IX., 873. Compare Holmes, _Common Law_. In
+mediaeval and early modern Europe, offending objects were "deodand," that
+is, devoted to God. They were to be appropriated by the proper civil or
+ecclesiastical authority, and used for charity. In theory, this lasted
+in England up to 1846. See Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, Vol. I., pp.
+286-287; and Pollock and Maitland, _op. cit._, II., pp. 471-472.
+
+[209] _Op. cit._, p. 257.
+
+[210] The very words cause and to blame are closely connected in their
+origin. Cf. the Greek [Greek: aitia].
+
+[211] Pollock and Maitland, _op. cit._, II., p. 469; I., 30. For the
+history of the idea of accident in English law with reference to
+homicide, see also pp. 477-483. Also Stephen, _History of the Criminal
+Law in England_, Vol. III., pp. 316-376.
+
+[212] Pollock and Maitland, II., p. 473; see Westermarck, pp. 240-247.
+
+[213] The slowness and indirectness of change throw light upon the
+supposed distinction of justice and mercy (see _ante_, p. 415). When the
+practical injustice of regarding accidental homicide or killing in
+self-defense as murder began to be felt, the theory was still that the
+man in justice was guilty, but that he was to be recommended to the
+crown for mercy or pardon. This was a mean term in the evolution of our
+present notion of justice.
+
+[214] For some of the main historic facts on intellectual disability,
+see Westermarck, pp. 264-277.
+
+[215] Popular judgment, we may say, tends to be as grossly utilitarian
+in its practice as it is grossly intuitional in its theoretical
+standpoint. In assuming the possibility of an almost infallible,
+offhand, pat perception of right and wrong, it commits itself
+practically to judging in an offhand, analyzed way, on the basis of the
+evils which overtly result.
+
+[216] See Pollock and Maitland, Vol. II., p. 561, who quote from
+Ihering: "Formulation is the sworn enemy of arbitrariness, the
+twin-sister of liberty"; and who add: "As time goes on there is always a
+larger room for discretion in the law of procedure: but discretionary
+powers can only be safely entrusted to judges whose impartiality is
+above suspicion and whose every act is exposed to public and
+professional criticism."
+
+[217] A lawyer, asked if the poor were not at a disadvantage in the
+legal maintenance of their rights, replied: "_Not any more than they are
+in the other relations of life._"
+
+[218] The devices of "equity" as distinct from strict legality are of
+course in part intended to secure this result.
+
+[219] Robinson and Beard, _Development of Modern Europe_, Vol. II., p.
+207.
+
+[220] "Man the Reformer."
+
+[221] The term "the King's Peace," as the equivalent in England for the
+peace and order of the commonwealth, goes back to a time when literally
+it meant a private possession. Pollock says that the desire to collect
+larger revenues was the chief motive for pushing the royal jurisdiction
+against lesser local authorities. Essay on the King's Peace in _Oxford
+Essays_.
+
+[222] Says President Hadley: "The fundamental division of powers in the
+Constitution of the United States is between voters on the one hand, and
+property-owners on the other. The forces of democracy on one side,
+divided between the executive and the legislature, are set over against
+the forces of property on the other side, with the judiciary as arbiter
+between them.... The voter could elect what officers he pleased, so long
+as these officers did not try to do certain duties confided by the
+Constitution to the property-holders. Democracy was complete as far as
+it went, but constitutionally it was bound to stop short of _social_
+democracy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ETHICS OF THE ECONOMIC LIFE
+
+
+In considering the ethics of the economic life and of property, so far
+as this latter topic has not received treatment elsewhere, we give (1) a
+general analysis of the ethical questions involved, (2) a more specific
+account of the problems raised by the present tendencies of industry,
+business, and property; we follow these analyses with (3) a statement of
+principles, and (4) a discussion of unsettled problems.
+
+
+Sec. 1. GENERAL ANALYSIS
+
+Both the economic process and property have three distinct ethical
+aspects corresponding respectively to the ethical standpoint of
+happiness, character, and social justice. (1) The economic process
+supplies men with goods for their bodily wants and with many of the
+necessary means for satisfying intellectual, aesthetic, and social needs;
+property represents permanence and security in these same values. (2)
+Through the difficulties it presents, the work it involves, and the
+incitements it offers, the economic process has a powerful influence in
+evoking skill, foresight, and scientific control of nature, in forming
+character, and stimulating ambition to excel. Property means power,
+control, and the conditions for larger freedom. (3) The economic process
+has an important social function. Through division of labor,
+cooperation, and exchange of goods and services, it affords one of the
+fundamental expressions of the organic nature of society in which
+members are reciprocally ends to each other. Property, likewise, is not
+only a possessing, but a "right," and thus, like all rights, involves
+the questions why and how far society should support the individual in
+his interests and claims. Let us examine each of these aspects further.
+
+=1. The Economic in Relation to Happiness.=--Subject to the important
+qualifications to be made below under this and the succeeding sections,
+we note first that the supply of needs and wants by industry and
+commerce is ethically a good. A constant increase in production and
+consumption is at least a possible factor in a fuller life. Wealth is a
+possible condition of weal, even if it is not to be gratuitously
+identified with it. Rome is frequently cited as an example of the evil
+effects of material wealth. But it was not wealth _per se_, but wealth
+(a) gained by conquest, and exploitation, rather than by industry; (b)
+controlled by a minority; and (c) used in largesses or in crude
+spectacles--rather than democratically distributed and used to minister
+to higher wants. The present average income in the United States is
+about two hundred dollars a year per capita, too small a sum to permit
+comfortable living, sufficient education for children, and the
+satisfaction which even a very moderate taste may seek. From this point
+of view we may then ask of any industrial process or business method
+whether it is an economical and efficient method of production, and
+whether it naturally tends to stimulate increased production. To do this
+is--so far as it goes--ethically as well as economically desirable.
+
+If wealth is a good, it might seem that property must be judged by the
+same standard, since it represents security in the satisfactions which
+wealth affords. But there is an important distinction. Wealth means
+enjoyment of goods and satisfaction of wants. Property means the title
+to the exclusive use or possession of goods. Hence the increase of
+property may involve increasing exclusion of part of the community from
+wealth, although the owners of the property may be increasing their own
+enjoyments. For, as pointed out very forcibly by Hadley in the first
+chapter of his _Economics_, the public wealth of a community is by no
+means equal to the sum of its private property. If all parks were
+divided up into private estates, all schoolhouses controlled by private
+owners, all water supplies and highways given into private control, the
+sum of private property might be very much increased; but the public
+wealth would be decreased. Property is one of the means of dealing with
+public wealth. It is important to bear in mind, however, that it is only
+one means. Wealth may be (1) privately owned and privately used; (2)
+privately owned and publicly or commonly used; (3) publicly owned, but
+privately used; (4) publicly owned and publicly or commonly used.
+Illustrations of these four methods are, for the first, among
+practically all peoples, clothing and tools; of the second, a private
+estate opened to public use--as a park; of the third, public lands or
+franchises leased to individuals; of the fourth, public highways, parks,
+navigable rivers, public libraries. Whether property in any given case
+is a means to happiness will depend, then, largely upon whether it
+operates chiefly to increase wealth or to diminish it. The view has not
+been infrequent that the wealth of the community is the sum of its
+private property. From this it is but a step to believe "that the
+acquisition of property is the production of wealth, and that he best
+serves the common good who, other things equal, diverts the larger share
+of the aggregate wealth to his own possession."[223] The ethical
+questions as to the relation of property to happiness involve
+accordingly the problem of justice and can be more conveniently
+considered under that head.
+
+=2. Relation to Character.=--Even in its aspect of satisfying human
+wants, quantity of production is not the only consideration. As was
+pointed out in the chapters on Happiness, the satisfaction of any and
+every want is not necessarily a moral good. It depends upon the nature
+of the wants; and as the nature of the wants reflects the nature of the
+man who wants, the moral value of the economic process and of the wealth
+it provides must depend upon the relation of goods to persons. As
+economists we estimate values in terms of external goods or commodities;
+as ethical students we estimate values in terms of a certain quality of
+life. We must ask first how the satisfaction of wants affects the
+consumers.
+
+=Moral Cost of Production.=--Consider next the producers. It is
+desirable to have cheap goods, but the price of goods or service is not
+measurable solely in terms of other commodities or service; the price of
+an article is also, as Thoreau has said, what it costs in terms of human
+life. There is cheap production which by this standard is dear. The
+introduction of machinery for spinning and weaving cotton cheapened
+cotton cloth, but the child labor which was supposedly necessary as a
+factor in cheap production, involving disease, physical stunting,
+ignorance, and frequently premature exhaustion or death, made the
+product too expensive to be tolerated. At least, it was at last
+recognized as too expensive in England; apparently the calculation has
+to be made over again in every community where a new system of child
+labor is introduced. What is true of child labor is true of many other
+forms of modern industry--the price in human life makes the product
+dear. The minute subdivision of certain parts of industry with the
+consequent monotony and mechanical quality of the labor, the accidents
+and diseases due to certain occupations, the devices to cheapen goods by
+ingredients which injure the health of the consumer, the employment of
+women under unsanitary conditions and for excessive hours with
+consequent risk to the health of themselves and their offspring--all
+these are part of the moral price of the present processes of industry
+and commerce.
+
+Moreover, the relation of production to physical welfare is only one
+aspect of its effects upon life and character. We may properly ask of
+any process or system whether it quickens intelligence or deadens it,
+whether it necessitates the degradation of work to drudgery, and whether
+it promotes freedom or hampers it. To answer this last question we shall
+have to distinguish formal from real freedom. It might be that a system
+favorable to the utmost formal freedom--freedom of contract--would
+result in the most entire absence of that real freedom which implies
+real alternatives. If the only alternative is, this or starve, the real
+freedom is limited.
+
+=Property and Character.=--Viewed on its positive side, property means
+an expansion of power and freedom. To seize, master, and possess is an
+instinct inbred by the biological process. It is necessary for life; it
+is a form of the _Wille zum Leben_ or _Wille zur Macht_ which need not
+be despised. But in organized society possession is no longer mere
+animal instinct; through expression in a social medium and by a social
+person it becomes a _right_ of property. This is a far higher capacity;
+like all rights it involves the assertion of personality and of a
+rational claim upon fellow members of society for their recognition and
+backing. Fichte's doctrine, that property is essential to the effective
+exercise of freedom, is a strong statement of its moral importance to
+the individual.
+
+Over against these positive values of property are certain evils which
+moralists have always recognized, evils both to the property owner and
+to society. Avarice, covetousness, hardness toward others, seem to be
+the natural effects of the enormous possibilities of power offered by
+property, joined with its exclusive character. The prophets of Israel
+denounced the rich, and Jesus's image of the difficulty found by the
+rich man in entering the kingdom of God--a moral society--has met
+general acceptance. Plato's portrayal of the State in which the wealthy
+rule sketches the perversion and disobedience of laws, the jealousies
+and class hatred, the evasion of taxes for public defense, and gives the
+moral outcome:--
+
+ "And henceforth they press forward on the path of money-getting,
+ losing their esteem for virtue as the esteem for wealth grows upon
+ them. For can you deny that there is such a gulf between wealth
+ and virtue, that when weighed as it were in the two scales of a
+ balance one of the two always falls, as the other rises?"[224]
+
+Even apart from questions of just distribution, the moral question
+arises as to whether an unlimited power should be given to individuals
+in this form, and whether there should be unlimited right of
+inheritance. But all these tend to pass over at once into questions of
+justice.
+
+=3. Social Aspects.=--The various relations of man to man, political,
+friendly, kindred, are developed forms of the interdependence implicit
+in the early group life. A group of units, each independent of the
+others, would represent mass only, but such a group as is made up of
+men, women, and children, sustaining all the relations found in present
+human life, represents something vastly more than a mass of individuals.
+Every life draws from the rest. Man without friendship, love, pity,
+sympathy, communication, cooperation, justice, rights, or duties, would
+be deprived of nearly all that gives life its value.
+
+The necessary help from others is obtained in various ways. Parental,
+filial, and other kinship ties, friendship and pity, give rise to
+certain services, but they are necessarily limited in their sphere and
+exact in return a special attitude that would be intolerable if made
+universal. The modern man does not want to be cousin to every one, to
+give every one his personal friendship, to be in a perpetual attitude of
+receiving favors, or of asking and not receiving. Formerly the way of
+getting service from men outside these means was by slavery. The
+economic relation provides for the mutual exchange of goods and services
+on a basis of self-respect and equality. Through its system of contracts
+it provides for future as well as present service. It enables each to
+obtain the services of all the rest, and in turn to contribute without
+incurring any other claims or relations. Nor does it at all diminish the
+moral value of these mutual exchanges of goods and services that they
+may be paid for. It used to be the theory that in every bargain one
+party gained and the other lost. It is now recognized that a normal
+transaction benefits both parties. The "cash payment basis," which was
+at first denounced as substituting a mechanical nexus for the old
+personal tie, is in reality a means for establishing a greater
+independence instead of the older personal relation of "master" and
+"servant." It enabled a man, as Toynbee puts it, to sell his labor like
+any other commodity without selling himself.
+
+But while the economic process has these moral possibilities, the
+morality of any given system or practice will depend on how far these
+are actually realized.
+
+First of all, we may fairly ask of a process, Does it give to each
+member the kind of service needed by him? In economic terms, Does it
+produce the kinds of goods which society needs and desires? A method
+which provides for this successfully will in so far be providing against
+scarcity of some goods and oversupply of others, and thus against one of
+the sources of crises, irregularity of work and wages, and ultimately
+against suffering and want.
+
+Secondly, if the process is an expression of the mutual dependence and
+service of members who as persons all have, as Kant puts it, intrinsic
+worth, and who in our political society are recognized as equal, we may
+fairly ask how it distributes the results of services rendered. Does
+the process tend to a broad and general distribution of goods in return
+for services rendered, or to make "the rich richer and the poor poorer?"
+Or, from another point of view, we might ask, Does the process tend to
+reward members on a moral or equitable basis, or upon a basis which is
+non-moral if not immoral or unjust.
+
+Thirdly, the problem of _conflicting services_ presents itself under
+several forms. There is, first, the ever-present conflict between
+producer and consumer. Higher wages and shorter hours are good for the
+carpenter or the weaver, until he pays his rent or buys clothes, when he
+is interested in cheaper goods. What principle can be employed to adjust
+such a question? Again, service to the consumer may lead a producer to a
+price-list implying a minimum of profits. One producer can afford this
+because of his larger business, but it will drive his competitor from
+the field. Shall he agree to a higher price at which all can do
+business, or insist on the lower which benefits the consumer and also
+himself? The labor union is a constant embodiment of the problem of
+conflicting services. How far shall it serve a limited group, the union,
+at the expense of other workers in the same trade--non-unionists? Does
+it make a difference whether the union is open to all, or whether the
+dues are fixed so high as to limit the membership? Shall the apprentices
+be limited to keep up the wage by limiting the supply? If so, is this
+fair to the boys or unskilled laborers who would like to enter? And
+granting that it is a hardship to these, is it harder or is it kinder to
+them than it would be to leave the issue to the natural weeding out or
+starving-out procedure of natural selection in case too many enter the
+trade? Shall the hours be reduced and wages raised as high as possible,
+or is there a "fair" standard--fair to both consumer and laborer? How
+far may the union combine with the capitalist to raise prices to the
+consumer?
+
+=Private Property and Social Welfare.=--The social value of property is
+obviously indirect, just as in law, private rights are regarded as
+indirectly based on social welfare. It is society's aim to promote the
+worth of its members and to favor the development of their personal
+dignity and freedom. Property may, therefore, claim social value in so
+far as it serves these ends, unless it interferes with other social
+values. The effect of private property has seemed to some disastrous to
+community of interest and feeling. Plato, for example, in his ideal
+state would permit his guardians no private property. There would, then,
+be no quarrels over "meum" and "tuum," no suits or divisions, no petty
+meanness or anxieties, no plundering of fellow-citizens, no flattery of
+rich by poor. The mediaeval church carried out his theory. Even modern
+society preserves a certain trace of its spirit. For the classes that
+Plato called guardians--soldiers, judges, clergy, teachers--have
+virtually no property, although they are given support by society. It
+would probably be generally agreed that it is better for the public that
+these classes should not have large possessions. But it is obvious that
+private property is not the sole cause of division between individuals
+and classes. Where there is a deep-going unity of purpose and feeling,
+as in the early Christian community, or in various other companies that
+have attempted to practice communism, common ownership of wealth may be
+morally valuable as well as practically possible. But without such
+unity, mere abolition of property is likely to mean more bitter
+divisions, because there is no available method for giving to each the
+independence which is necessary to avoid friction and promote happiness.
+
+Granting, however, the general position that some parts of wealth should
+be privately owned, we must recognize that a great number of moral
+problems remain as to the precise conditions under which society will
+find it wise to entrust the control of wealth to private ownership. For
+it must be clearly kept in mind that there is no absolute right of
+private property. Every right, legal or moral, derives from the social
+whole, which in turn, if it is a moral whole, must respect the
+individuality of each of its members. On this basis moral problems, such
+as the following, must be considered. What kind of public wealth should
+be given into absolute control of private individuals or impersonal
+corporations? Does the institution in its present form promote the good
+of those who have no property as well as of those who have it, or only
+of those who own? Would the welfare of society as a whole be promoted by
+giving a larger portion of public wealth into private control, or by
+retaining a larger proportion than at present under public ownership?
+Should there be any limit to the amount of land or other property which
+an individual or corporation may own? Are there any cases in which
+private ownership operates rather to exclude the mass of society from
+the benefits of civilization than to give them a share of those
+benefits? Should a man be allowed to transmit all his property to his
+heirs, or should it be in part reserved by society?
+
+The preceding analysis has aimed to state some of the problems which
+belong necessarily to the economic life. At the present time, however,
+the moral issues assume a new and puzzling aspect because of the changes
+in economic conditions. It will be necessary to consider briefly these
+changed conditions.
+
+
+Sec. 2. THE PROBLEMS SET BY THE NEW ECONOMIC ORDER
+
+=The Collective and Impersonal Organizations.=--Two changes have come
+over a large part of the economic and industrial field. The first is the
+change from an individual to a collective basis. The second, which is in
+part a consequence of the first, is a change from personal to
+impersonal or corporate relations. Corporations are of course composed
+of persons, but when organized for economic purposes they tend to become
+simply economic purpose incorporate, abstracted from all other human
+qualities. Although legally they may be subjects of rights and duties,
+they have but one motive, and are thus so abstract as to be morally
+impersonal. They tend to become machines for carrying on business,
+and, as such, may be as powerful--and as incapable of moral
+considerations--as other machines.
+
+=Ethical Readjustment.=--Both these changes require readjustment of our
+ethical conceptions. Our conceptions of honesty and justice, of rights
+and duties, got their present shaping largely in an industrial and
+business order when mine and thine could be easily distinguished; when
+it was easy to tell how much a man produced; when the producer sold to
+his neighbors, and an employer had also the relations of neighbor to his
+workmen; when responsibility could be personally located, and conversely
+a man could control the business he owned or make individual contracts;
+when each man had his own means of lighting, heating, water supply, and
+frequently of transportation, giving no opportunity or necessity for
+public service corporations. Such conceptions are inadequate for the
+present order. The old honesty could assume that goods belonged to their
+makers, and then consider exchanges and contracts. The new honesty will
+first have to face a prior question, _Who owns what is collectively
+produced_, and are the present "rules of the game" distributing the
+returns honestly and fairly? The old justice in the economic field
+consisted chiefly in securing to each individual his rights in property
+or contracts. The new justice must consider how it can secure for each
+individual a standard of living, and such a share in the values of
+civilization as shall make possible a full moral life. The old virtue
+allowed a man to act more as an individual; the new virtue requires him
+to act in concerted effort if he is to achieve results. Individualist
+theories cannot interpret collectivist facts.
+
+The changes in the economic and industrial processes by which not only
+the associated powers of present human knowledge, skill, and endurance,
+but also the combined results of past and future skill and industry are
+massed and wielded, depend on several concurrent factors. We shall
+notice the social agency, the technique of industry, the technique of
+business, the means of fixing value, and the nature of property.
+
+
+Sec. 3. THE AGENCIES FOR CARRYING ON COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY
+
+=Early Agencies.=--The early agencies for carrying on trade and industry
+were not organized purely for economic purposes. The kindred or family
+group engaged in certain industries, but this was only part of its
+purpose. So in the various territorial groups. The Athenian city-state
+owned the mines; the German village had its forest, meadow, and water as
+a common possession; and the "common" survived long in English and
+American custom, though the cattle pastured on it might be individually
+owned. In the United States certain land was reserved for school
+purposes, and if retained would now in some cases be yielding an almost
+incredible amount for public use; but it has usually been sold to
+private individuals. The national government still retains certain land
+for forest reserve, but until the recent movement toward municipal
+ownership, the civic community had almost ceased to be an economic
+factor in England and America, except in the field of roads, canals, and
+the postoffice. In both family and territorial or community control of
+industry, we have the economic function exercised as only one among
+several others. The economic helped to strengthen the other bonds of
+unity. On the other hand, the economic motive could not disentangle
+itself and stand out in all its naked force. Within either family or
+civic group the effects of the acquisitive instincts were limited by the
+fact that individuals in their industrial relations were also kin or
+neighbors.
+
+=The Business Enterprise.=--In the business enterprise--partnership,
+company, corporation, "trust,"--on the other hand, men are organized
+solely for economic purposes. No other interests or ends are regarded.
+Corporations organized for this purpose "have no souls," because they
+consist of merely the abstract economic interests. While in domestic and
+territorial agencies the acquisitive forces were to some degree
+beneficially controlled, they were also injuriously hampered. With the
+rise of business enterprise as a distinct sphere of human action, the
+way was opened for a new force to manifest itself. This brought with it
+both advantages and disadvantages for the moral and social life as a
+whole. On the one hand, it increased tremendously the possibilities of
+economic and industrial efficiency. The size of the enterprise could be
+as large or as small as was needed for the most efficient production,
+and was not, as in family or community agency, sometimes too small and
+sometimes too large. The enterprise could group men according to their
+capacity for a particular task, and not, as in the other forms, be
+compelled to take a group already constituted by other than economic or
+industrial causes. Further, it could without difficulty dispense with
+the aged or those otherwise unsuited to its purposes. When, moreover, as
+is coming to be increasingly the case, great corporations, each
+controlling scores or even hundreds of millions of capital, are linked
+together in common control, we have a tremendous force which may be
+wielded as a unit. It is easy to assume--indeed it is difficult for
+managers not to assume--that the interests of such colossal
+organizations are of supreme importance, and that diplomacy, tariffs,
+legislation, and courts should be subordinate. The moral dangers
+attaching to such corporations formed solely for economic purposes are
+obvious, and have found frequent illustration in their actual workings.
+Knowing few or none of the restraints which control an individual, the
+corporation has treated competitors, employees, and the public in a
+purely economic fashion. This insures certain limited species of
+honesty, but does not include motives of private sympathy or public
+duty.
+
+=The Labor Union.=--Correlative to these corporate combinations of
+capital are Labor Unions of various types. They are usually when first
+organized more complex in motive, including social and educational ends,
+and are more emotional, or even passionate in conduct. With age they
+tend to become more purely economic. In the United States they have
+sought to secure better wages, to provide benefits or insurance in case
+of sickness and death, and to gain better conditions in respect of
+hours, of child-labor, and of protection against dangerous machinery,
+explosions, and occupational diseases. In Great Britain they have also
+been successful in applying the cooperative plan to the purchase of
+goods for consumption. The organizations have been most successful among
+the skilled trades. For so far as the aim is collective bargaining, it
+is evident that the union will be effective in proportion as it controls
+the whole supply of labor in the given trade. In the unskilled forms of
+labor, especially with a constant flow of immigration, it is difficult,
+if not impossible, to maintain organizations comparable with the
+organizations of capital. Hence in conflicts it is natural to expect the
+moral situations which frequently occur when grossly unequal combatants
+are opposed. The stronger has contempt for the weaker and refuses to
+"recognize" his existence. The weaker, rendered desperate by the
+hopelessness of his case when he contends under rules and with weapons
+prescribed by the stronger, refuses to abide by the rules and resorts to
+violence--only to find that by this he has set himself in opposition to
+all the forces of organized society.
+
+=Group Morality Again.=--The striking feature of the new conditions is
+that it means a _reversion to group morality_. That is, it has meant
+this so far. Society is struggling to reassert a general moral standard,
+but it has not yet found a standard, and has wavered between a rigid
+insistence upon outgrown laws on the one hand, and a more or less
+emotional and unreasoned sympathy with new demands, upon the other.[225]
+Group morality meant impersonal, collective life. It meant loyalty to
+one's own group, little regard for others, lack of responsibility, and
+lack of a completely social standard. There is, of course, one important
+difference. The present collective, impersonal agencies are not so naive
+as the old kinship group. They can be used as effective agencies to
+secure definite ends, while the manipulators secure all the advantages
+of the old solidarity and irresponsibility.
+
+=Members and Management.=--The corporation in its idea is democratic.
+For it provides for the union of a number of owners, some of them it may
+be small owners, under an elected management. It would seem to be an
+admirable device for maintaining concentration of power with
+distribution of ownership. But the very size of modern enterprises and
+unions prevents direct control by stockholders or members. They may
+dislike a given policy, but they are individually helpless. If they
+attempt to control, it is almost impossible, except in an extraordinary
+crisis, to unite a majority for common action.[226] The directors can
+carry on a policy and at the same time claim to be only agents of the
+stockholders, and therefore not ultimately responsible. What influence
+can the small shareholders in a railway company, or a great industrial
+corporation, or labor union, have? They unite with ease upon one point
+only: they want dividends or results. When an illegal policy is to be
+pursued, or a legislature or jury is to be bribed, or a non-union man is
+to be "dealt with," the head officials likewise seek only "results."
+They turn over the responsibility to the operating or "legal"
+department, or to the "educational committee," and know nothing further.
+These departments are "agents" for the stockholders or union, and
+therefore, feel quite at ease. The stockholders are sure they never
+authorized anything wrong. Some corporations are managed for the
+interest of a large number of owners; some, on the other hand, by
+ingenious contracts with side corporations formed from an inner circle,
+are managed for the benefit of this inner circle. The tendency,
+moreover, in the great corporations is toward a situation in which
+boards of directors of the great railroad, banking, insurance, and
+industrial concerns are made up of the same limited group of men. This
+aggregate property may then be wielded as absolutely as though owned by
+these individuals. If it is used to carry a political election the
+directors, according to New York courts, are not culpable.
+
+=Employer and Employed.=--The same impersonal relation often prevails
+between employer and employed. The ultimate employer is the stockholder,
+but he delegates power to the director, and he to the president, and he
+to the foreman. Each is expected to get results. The employed may
+complain about conditions to the president, and be told that he cannot
+interfere with the foreman, and to the foreman and be told that such is
+the policy of the company. The union may serve as a similar buffer.
+Often any individual of the series would act humanely or generously, if
+he were acting for himself. He cannot be humane or generous with the
+property of others, and hence there is no humanity or generosity in the
+whole system. This system seems to have reached its extreme in the
+creation of corporations for the express purpose of relieving employers
+of any personal responsibility. Companies organized to insure employers
+against claims made by employees on account of injuries may be regarded
+as a device for distributing the burden. But as the company is
+organized, not primarily to pay damages, as are life insurance
+companies, but to avoid such payment, it has a powerful motive in
+contesting every claim, however just, and in making it so expensive to
+prosecute a claim that the victims may prefer not to make the attempt.
+The "law's delay" can nearly always be counted upon as a powerful
+defense when a poor man is plaintiff and a rich corporation is
+defendant.
+
+=Relations to the Public.=--The relations of corporations to the public,
+and of the public to corporations, are similarly impersonal and
+non-moral. A convenient way of approach to this situation is offered by
+the ethical, or rather non-ethical, status of the various mechanical
+devices which have come into use in recent years for performing many
+economic services. The weighing machines, candy machines, telephones,
+are supposed to give a certain service for a penny or a nickel. But if
+the machine is out of order, the victim has no recourse. His own
+attitude is correspondingly mechanical. He regards himself as dealing,
+not with a person, but with a thing. If he can exploit it or "beat" it,
+so much the better. Now a corporation, in the attitude which it takes
+and evokes, is about half-way between the pure mechanism of a machine
+and the completely personal attitude of a moral individual. A man is
+overcharged, or has some other difficulty with an official of a railroad
+company. It is as hopeless to look for immediate relief as it is in the
+case of a slot machine. The conductor is just as much limited by his
+orders as the machine by its mechanism. The man may later correspond
+with some higher official, and if patience and life both persist long
+enough, he will probably recover. But to prevent fraud, the company is
+obliged to be more rigorous than a person would be who was dealing with
+the case in a personal fashion. Hence the individual with a just
+grievance is likely to entertain toward the corporation the feeling that
+he is dealing with a machine, not with an ethical being, even as the
+company's servants are not permitted to exercise any moral consideration
+in dealing with the public. They merely obey orders. Public sentiment,
+which would hold an individual teamster responsible for running over a
+child, or an individual stage owner responsible for reckless or careless
+conduct in carrying his passengers, feels only a blind rage in the case
+of a railroad accident. It cannot fix moral responsibility definitely
+upon either stockholder or management or employee, and conversely
+neither stockholder, nor manager, nor employee[227] feels the moral
+restraint which the individual would feel. He is not wholly responsible,
+and his share in the collective responsibility is so small as often to
+seem entirely negligible.
+
+=Relations to the Law.=--The collective business enterprises, when
+incorporated, are regarded as "juristic persons," and so gain the
+support of law as well as become subject to its control. If the great
+corporation can thus gain the right of an individual, it can enter the
+field of free contract with great advantage. Labor unions have not
+incorporated, fearing, perhaps, to give the law control over their
+funds. They seek a higher standard of living, but private law does not
+recognize this as a right. It merely protects contracts, but leaves it
+to the individual to make the best contract he can. As most wage-earners
+have no contracts, but are liable to dismissal at any time, the unions
+have seen little to be gained by incorporation. They have thus missed
+contact with the institution in which society seeks to embody, however
+tardily, its moral ideas and have been, in a sense, outlaws. They were
+such at first by no fault of their own, for the law treated such
+combinations as conspiracies. And they are still at two decided
+disadvantages. First, the capitalistic or employing corporation acting
+as a single juristic person may refuse to buy the labor of a union;
+indeed, according to a recent decision, it cannot be forbidden to
+discharge its employees because of their membership in a union. As the
+corporation may employ scores of thousands, and be practically the only
+employer of a particular kind of labor, it can thus enforce a virtual
+boycott and prevent the union from selling its labor. It does not need
+to use a "blacklist" because the employers are all combined in one
+"person." On the other hand, the union is adjudged to act in restraint
+of interstate commerce if it boycotts the employing corporation. The
+union is here treated as a combination, not as a single person. The
+second point in which the employing body has greatly the legal advantage
+appears in the case of a strike. Men are allowed to quit work, but this
+is not an effective method of exerting pressure unless the employer is
+anxious to keep his plant in operation and can employ no one else. If he
+can take advantage of an open labor market and hire other workmen, the
+only resource of the strikers is to induce these to join their ranks.
+But they have been enjoined by the courts, not only from intimidating,
+but even from persuading[228] employees to quit work. The method of
+procedure in enforcing the injunction, which enables the judge to fix
+the offense, eliminate trial by jury, determine the guilt, and impose
+any penalty he deems fit, has all the results of criminal process with
+none of its limitations, and forms a most effective agency against the
+unions. Where persuasion is enjoined it is difficult to see how a union
+can exert any effective pressure except in a highly skilled trade, where
+it can control all the labor supply. In the field of private rights and
+free contract, the labor unions are then at a disadvantage because they
+have no rights which are of any value for their purposes, except, under
+certain conditions, the right to refuse to work. And since this is, in
+most cases, a weapon that injures its wielder far more than his
+opponent, it is not effective.
+
+Disappointed in the field of free contract, the labor unions seek to
+enlist public agency in behalf of better sanitary conditions and in
+prevention of child-labor, long hours for women, unfair contracts, and
+the like. Capitalistic corporations frequently resist this change of
+venue on the ground that it interferes with free contract or takes away
+property without "due process of law," and many laws have been set aside
+as unconstitutional on these grounds,[229] several of them no doubt
+because so drawn as to appear to be in the interest of a class, rather
+than in that of the public. The trend in the direction of asserting
+larger public control both under the police power and over corporations
+in whose service the public has a direct interest, will be noted later.
+Against other corporations the general public or the unsuccessful
+competitor has sought legal aid in legislation against "trusts," but
+this has mainly proved to be futile. It has merely induced a change in
+form of organization. Nor has it been easy as yet for the law to
+exercise any effective control over the business corporation on any of
+the three principles invoked--namely: to prevent monopoly, to secure the
+public interest in the case of public service corporations, and to
+assert police power. For penalties by fine frequently fail to reach the
+guilty persons, and it is difficult to fix any personal responsibility.
+Juries are unwilling to convict subordinate officials of acts which
+they believe to have been required by the policy of the higher
+officials, while, on the other hand, the higher officials are seldom
+directly cognizant of criminal acts. Gradually, however, we may believe
+that the law will find a way to make both capital and labor
+organizations respect the public welfare, and to give them support in
+their desirable ends. The cooperative principle cannot be outlawed; it
+must be more fully socialized.
+
+
+Sec. 4. THE METHODS OF PRODUCTION, EXCHANGE, AND VALUATION
+
+=The Machine.=--The technique of production has shown a similar progress
+from individual to collective method. The earlier method was that of
+handicraft. The present method in most occupations, aside from
+agriculture, is that of the machine. But the great economic advantage of
+the machine is not only in the substitution of mechanical power for
+muscle; it is also in the substitution of collective for individual
+work. It is the machine which makes possible on a tremendously effective
+basis the division of labor and its social organization. The
+extraordinary increase in wealth during the past century depends upon
+these two factors. The machine itself moreover, in its enormous
+expansion, is not only a social tool, but a social product. The
+invention and discovery which gave rise to the new processes in industry
+of every sort were largely the outcome of scientific researches carried
+on at public expense to a great extent by men other than those who
+finally utilize their results. They become in turn the instruments for
+the production of wealth, which is thus doubly social in origin.
+
+This machine process has an important bearing upon the factors of
+character mentioned in our analysis. It standardizes efficiency; it
+calls for extraordinary increase of speed; it requires great
+specialization of function and often calls for no knowledge of the whole
+process. On the other hand, it gives a certain sense of power to
+control and direct highly complicated machinery. In the more skilled
+trades there is more time and resource for intellectual, aesthetic, or
+social satisfactions. The association of workmen favors discussion of
+common interests, sympathy, and cooperation; this may evoke a readiness
+to sacrifice individual to group welfare, which is quite analogous to
+patriotic sentiment at its best, even if it is liable to such violent
+expressions as characterize patriotic sentiment at its worst. The
+association of workmen is one of the most significant features of modern
+industry.
+
+=Capital and Credit.=--The technique of exchange of services and goods
+has undergone a transformation from an individual and limited to a
+collective and almost unlimited method. The earlier form of exchange and
+barter limited the conduct of business to a small area, and the simpler
+form of personal service involved either slavery or some personal
+control which was almost as direct. With the use of money it became
+possible to make available a far greater area for exchange and to
+accumulate capital which represented the past labors of vast numbers of
+individuals. With the further discovery of the possibilities of a credit
+system which business enterprise now employs, it is possible to utilize
+in any enterprise not merely the results of the labor of the past, but
+the anticipated income of the future. A corporation, as organized at
+present, issues obligations in the form of bonds and stock which
+represent no value as yet produced, but only the values of labor or
+privilege anticipated. The whole technique, therefore, of capital and
+credit means a collective business enterprise. It masses the work and
+the abilities of thousands and hundreds of thousands in the past and the
+future, and wields the product as an almost irresistible agency to
+achieve new enterprises or to drive from the field rival enterprises.
+
+=Basis of Valuation.=--The whole basis for value and prices has also
+been changed. The old basis, employed for the most part through the
+Middle Ages in fixing the value of labor or goods, was the amount of
+labor and material which had been expended. The modern basis is that of
+supply and demand. This proceeds on the theory that it is human wants
+which after all give value to any product. I may have expended time and
+labor upon a book or carving, or in the cultivation of a new vegetable,
+or in the manufacture of an article for apparel, but if no one cares to
+read the book or look at the carving, if the vegetable is one that no
+one can eat, or the garment is one that no one will wear, it has no
+value. Starting then from this, we can see how the two elements in
+valuation--namely, demand and supply--are affected by social factors.
+The demand for an article depends upon the market: i.e., upon how many
+buyers there are, and what wants they have. Modern methods of
+communication and transportation have made the market for goods as large
+as the civilized world. Education is constantly awakening new wants. The
+facilities for communication, for travel, and for education are
+constantly leading one part of the world to imitate the standards or
+fashions set by other parts. We have, therefore, a social standard for
+valuation which is constantly extending in area and in intensity.
+
+The other factor in valuation, namely, the supply, is likewise being
+affected in an increasing degree by social forces. With many, if not
+with most, of the commodities which are of greatest importance, it has
+been found that there is less profit in an unrestricted supply than in a
+supply regulated in the interest of the producers. The great coal mines,
+the iron industries, the manufacturers of clothing, find it more
+profitable to combine and produce a limited amount. The great
+corporations and trusts have usually signalized their acquisition of a
+monopoly or an approximate control of any great field of production by
+shutting down part of the factories formerly engaged. The supply of
+labor is likewise limited by the policies of labor unions in limiting
+the number of apprentices allowed, or by other means of keeping the
+union small. Tariffs, whether in the interest of capital or of labor,
+are a social control of the supply. Franchises, whether of steam
+railroads, street transportation, gas, electric lighting, or other
+public utilities so-called, are all of them in the nature of monopolies
+granted to a certain group of individuals. Their value is dependent upon
+the general need of these utilities, coupled with the public limitation
+of supply. In many cases the services are so indispensable to the
+community that the servant does not need to give special care or thought
+to the rendering of especially efficient service. The increase in
+population makes the franchises enormously profitable without any
+corresponding increase of risk or effort on the part of the utility
+company.
+
+But the most striking illustration of the creation of values by society
+is seen in the case of land. That an acre of land in one part of the
+country is worth fifty dollars, and in another part two hundred thousand
+dollars,[230] is not due to any difference in the soil, nor for the most
+part to any labor or skill or other quality of the owner. It is due to
+the fact that in the one case there is no social demand, whereas, in the
+other, the land is in the heart of a city. In certain cases, no doubt,
+the owner of city real estate may help by his enterprise to build up the
+city, but even if so this is incidental. The absentee owner profits as
+much by the growth of the city as the foremost contributor to that
+growth. The owner need not even improve the property by a building. This
+enormous increase in land values has been called the "unearned
+increment." In America it is due very largely to features of natural
+location and transportation. It has seemed to some writers, such as
+Henry George, not only a conspicuous injustice, but the root of all
+economic evil. It is, no doubt, in many cases, a conspicuous form of
+"easy money," but the principle is not different from that which is
+involved in nearly all departments of modern industry. The wealth of
+modern society is really a gigantic pool. No individual knows how much
+he creates; it is a social product. To estimate what any one should
+receive by an attempted estimate of what he has individually contributed
+is absolutely impossible.
+
+
+Sec. 5. THE FACTORS WHICH AID ETHICAL RECONSTRUCTION
+
+The two distinctive features of the modern economic situation, its
+collective character and its impersonal character, are themselves
+capable of supplying valuable aid toward understanding the ethical
+problems and in making the reconstruction required. For _the very
+magnitude of modern operations and properties serves to bring out more
+clearly the principles involved_. _The impersonal character allows
+economic forces pure and simple to be seen in their moral bearings._
+Publicity becomes a necessity. Just as the factories are compelled to
+have better light, air, and sanitation than the sweat shops, so public
+attention is aroused and the conscience stimulated by practices of great
+corporations, although these practices may be in principle precisely the
+same as those of private persons which escape moral reprobation. In some
+cases, no doubt, the very magnitude of the operation does actually
+change the principle. A "lift" on the road from an oldtime stage-driver,
+or a "special bargain" at a country store was not likely to disturb the
+balance of competition as a system of free passes or secret rebates may
+in modern business. But in other cases what the modern organizations
+have done is simply to exhibit the workings of competition or other
+economic forces _on a larger scale_. An illustration of this is seen in
+the familiar fact that a law passed to correct some corporate practice
+is often found to apply to many practices not contemplated by the makers
+of the law.
+
+The effect of getting a principle out into the open and at work on a
+large scale is to make public judgment clear and reprobation of bad
+practices more effective. The impersonal factor likewise contributes
+powerfully to make condemnation easy. Criticism is unhampered by the
+considerations which complicate the situation when the conduct of an
+individual is in question. The individual may be a good neighbor, or a
+good fellow, or have had bad luck. But no one hesitates to express his
+opinion of a corporation, and the average jury is not biased in its
+favor, whatever may be true of the bench. Even the plea that the
+corporation includes widows and orphans among its shareholders, which is
+occasionally put forth to avert interference with corporate practices,
+usually falls on unsympathetic ears. A higher standard will be demanded
+for business conduct, a more rigid regard for public service will be
+exacted, a more moderate return for invested capital in public service,
+and a more liberal treatment of employees will be insisted upon from
+corporations than from private individuals. Nor does the organization of
+labor escape the same law. When an agent of a union has been detected in
+calling a strike for private gain, public sentiment has been as severe
+in condemnation as in the case of corporate officials who have profited
+at the expense of stockholders.
+
+=Summary.=--We may summarize some of the chief points brought out by our
+analysis. Modern technique has increased enormously the productivity of
+labor, but has increased its dangers to health and life, and to some
+extent diminished its educating and moralizing values. The impersonal
+agencies give vast power, but make responsibility difficult to locate.
+The collective agencies and the social contributions make the economic
+process a great social pool. Men put in manual labor, skill, capital.
+Some of it they have inherited from their kin; some they have inherited
+from the inventors and scientists who have devised tools and processes;
+some they have wrought themselves. This pooling of effort is possible
+because of good government and institutions which were created by
+statesmen, patriots, and reformers, and are maintained by similar
+agencies. The pool is immensely productive. But no one can say just how
+much his contribution earns. Shall every one keep what he can get? Shall
+all share alike? Or shall there be other rules for division--either made
+and enforced by society or made by the individual and enforced by his
+own conscience? Are our present rules adequate to such a situation as
+that of the present? These are some of the difficult questions that
+modern conditions are pressing upon the man who thinks.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Besides the classic treatises of Adam Smith, J. S. Mill, and Karl Marx,
+which are important for the relation of the economic to the whole social
+order during the past century, the following recent works in the general
+field give especial prominence to the ethical problems involved:
+Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, 1898; Hadley, _Economics_, 1896;
+Clark, _Essentials of Economic Theory as Applied to Modern Problems of
+Industry and Public Policy_, 1907; George, _Progress and Poverty_, 1879;
+Schmoller, _Grundriss der allgemeinen Staatswirtschaftslehre_, 1900-04;
+Bonar, _Philosophy and Political Economy_, 1893; Hobson, _The Social
+Problem_, 1901; Brooks, _The Social Unrest_, 1903.
+
+ON MODERN BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY: Veblen, _The Theory of Business
+Enterprise_, 1904; Taylor, _The Modern Factory System_, 1891; Hobson,
+_Evolution of Modern Capitalism_, 1894; Toynbee, _The Industrial
+Revolution_, 1890; Adams and Sumner, _Labor Problems_, 1905; S. and B.
+Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, 1894, _Problems of Modern Industry_,
+1898, and _Industrial Democracy_, 1902; Mitchell, _Organized Labor_,
+1903; Ely, _The Labor Movement in America_, 1886; Hollander and Barnett,
+_Studies in American Trades Unionism_, 1907; Henderson, _Social
+Elements_, 1898, chs. vii.-x.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[223] Veblen, _Theory of Business Enterprise_, p. 291.
+
+[224] _Republic_, 550. Davies and Vaughan.
+
+[225] E.g., in a strike there is sometimes a toleration by public
+sentiment of a certain amount of violence where it is believed that
+there is no legal remedy for unfair conditions.
+
+[226] Recent elections in the great insurance companies have shown this.
+
+[227] "J. O. Fagan," in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (1908), has called
+attention to the influence of the union in shielding individuals from
+the penalties of carelessness.
+
+[228] Recent Illinois decisions (216 Ill., 358 f., and especially 232
+Ill., 431-440) uphold sweeping injunctions against persuasion, no matter
+how peaceable. "Lawful competition, which may injure the business of a
+person, even though successfully directed to driving him out of
+business, is not actionable." But for a union to hire laborers away from
+an employer by money or transportation is not "lawful competition." The
+object is assumed by the court to be malicious, i.e., the injury of the
+employer. The court does not entertain the possibility that to obtain an
+eight-hour day is as lawful an aim for the labor union as to acquire
+property is for an employer. The decision shows clearly the difference
+in legal attitude toward pressure exerted by business corporations for
+the familiar end of acquisition, and that exerted by the union for the
+novel end of a standard of living. The court regards the injury to
+others as incidental in the former, but as primary and therefore as
+malicious in the latter. It may be that future generations will regard
+this judicial psychology somewhat as we regard some of the cases cited
+above, ch. xxi. Other courts have not always taken this view, and have
+permitted persuasion unless it is employed in such a manner or under
+such circumstances as to "operate on fears rather than upon their
+judgments or their sympathies" (17., _N. Y. Supp._, 264). For other
+cases, _Am. and Eng. Decisions in Equity_, 1905, p. 565 f.; also _Eddy
+on Combinations_.
+
+[229] The list appended was bulletined at the Chicago Industrial Exhibit
+of 1906, and reprinted in _Charities and The Commons_.
+
+"What 'Freedom of Contract' has Meant to Labor:
+
+1. Denial of eight-hour law for women in Illinois.
+
+2. Denial of eight-hour law for city labor or for mechanics and ordinary
+laborers.
+
+3. Denial of ten-hour law for bakers.
+
+4. Inability to prohibit tenement labor.
+
+5. Inability to prevent by law employer from requiring employee as
+condition of securing work, to assume all risk from injury while at
+work.
+
+6. Inability to prohibit employer selling goods to employees at greater
+profit than to non-employees.
+
+7. Inability to prohibit mine owners screening coal which is mined by
+weight before crediting same to employees as basis of wages.
+
+8. Inability to legislate against employer using coercion to prevent
+employee becoming a member of a labor union.
+
+9. Inability to restrict employer in making deductions from wages of
+employees.
+
+10. Inability to compel by law payment of wages at regular intervals.
+
+12. Inability to provide by law that laborers on public works shall be
+paid prevailing rate of wages.
+
+13. Inability to compel by law payment of extra compensation for
+overtime.
+
+14. Inability to prevent by law employer from holding back part of
+wages.
+
+15. Inability to compel payment of wages in cash; so that employer may
+pay in truck or scrip not redeemable in lawful money.
+
+16. Inability to forbid alien labor on municipal contracts.
+
+17. Inability to secure by law union label on city printing."
+
+Labor representatives speak of "the ironic manner in which the courts
+guarantee to workers: The right to be maimed and killed without
+liability to the employer; the right to be discharged for belonging to a
+union; the right to work as many hours as employers please and under any
+considerations which they may impose." The "irony" is, of course, not
+intended by the courts. It is the irony inherent in a situation when
+rules designed to secure justice become futile, if not a positive cause
+of injustice, because of changed conditions.
+
+[230] In Greater New York. An acre on Manhattan Island is of course
+worth much more. The Report of the New York Tax Department for 1907 is
+very suggestive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+SOME PRINCIPLES IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER
+
+
+Certain problems suggested by the foregoing analysis are unsettled, for
+the issues are so involved, and in some cases, both the facts and their
+interpretations are so much in controversy, that we cannot yet formulate
+sure moral judgments. On the other hand, certain principles emerge with
+a good degree of clearness. We state some of the more obvious.
+
+=1. Wealth and Property are Subordinate in Importance to
+Personality.=--The life is more than meat. Most agree to this, stated
+abstractly, but many fail to make the application. They may sacrifice
+their own health, or human sympathy, or family life; or they may consent
+to this actively or passively as employers, or consumers, or citizens,
+in the case of others. A civilization which loses life in providing the
+means to live is not highly moral. A society which can afford luxuries
+for some cannot easily justify unhealthful conditions of production, or
+lack of general education. An individual who gratifies a single appetite
+at the expense of vitality and efficiency is immoral. A society which
+considers wealth or property as ultimate, whether under a conception of
+"natural rights" or otherwise, is setting the means above the end, and
+is therefore unmoral or immoral.
+
+=2. Wealth Should Depend on Activity.=--The highest aspect of life on
+its individual side is found in active and resolute achievement, in the
+embodying of purpose in action. Thought, discovery, creation, mark a
+higher value than the satisfaction of wants, or the amassing of goods.
+If the latter is to be a help it must stimulate activity, not deaden it.
+Inherited wealth without any accompanying incitement from education or
+class feeling or public opinion would be a questionable institution from
+this point of view. Veblen in his _Theory of the Leisure Class_ points
+out various forms of degeneration that may attend upon leisure, when
+leisure means not merely release from mechanical labor in the interest
+of more intellectual activity, but a relinquishing of all serious labor.
+As the race has made its ascent in the presence of an environment which
+has constantly selected the more active persons, society in its
+institutions and consciously directed processes may well plan to keep
+this balance between activity and reward. Modern charity has adopted
+this principle. We fear to pauperize by giving aid to the poor unless we
+can provide some form of self-help. But in its treatment of the rich,
+society is not solicitous. Our provisions for inheritance of property
+undoubtedly pauperize a certain proportion of those who inherit. Whether
+this can be prevented without interfering with motives to activity on
+the part of those who acquire the property, or whether the rich thus
+pauperized are not as well worth saving to society as the poor, will
+undoubtedly become more pressing problems as the number of inheritors
+increases, and society recognizes that it may have a duty to its idle
+rich as well as to its idle poor.
+
+=3. Public Service Should Go Along with Wealth.=--Note that we do not
+say, "wealth should be proportionate to public service." This would take
+us at once into the controversy between the individualist and the
+socialist which we shall consider later among the unsettled problems.
+The individualist, as represented, for example, by Herbert Spencer,
+would say that except for the young, the aged, or the sick, reward
+should be proportioned to merit. The socialist, on the other hand, is
+more inclined to say, "From each according to his ability, to each
+according to his needs." In either case, it is assumed that there
+should be public service. Leaving for later consideration the question
+whether we can fix any quantitative rule, let us notice at this time why
+some service is a fundamental moral principle.
+
+Such service in the form of some economically useful contribution,
+whether to the production and distribution of goods, to the public
+order, to education, to the satisfaction of aesthetic and religious
+wants, might be demanded as a matter of common honesty. This would be to
+treat it as a just claim made by society upon each of its members. There
+is, of course, no legal claim. The law is far from adopting as a
+universal maxim, "If any man will not work, neither let him eat."
+Vagrancy is not a term applied to all idlers. It is sufficient for the
+law if some of a man's ancestors obtained possession and title by
+service, or force, or gift. Modern law, in its zeal to strengthen the
+institution of property, releases all the owner's posterity forever from
+the necessity of any useful service. The old theology used to carry the
+conception of inherited or imputed sin and merit to extremes which
+modern individualism rejects. But the law--at least in the United
+States--permits a perpetual descent of inherited property; i.e., of
+inherited permission to receive from society without rendering any
+personal return. Theologically and morally, however, the man of to-day
+repudiates any conception which would reduce him to a shadow of another.
+He wishes to stand on his own feet, to be rewarded or blamed according
+to his own acts, not because of a deed of some one else. To follow out
+this principle in the economic sphere would require that every man who
+receives aught from others should feel in duty bound to render some
+service. Merely "to have been born" is hardly sufficient in a democratic
+society, however munificent a contribution to the social weal the French
+aristocrat may have felt this to be.
+
+But it is only one aspect of the case to say that society may claim
+service as a just due. There is another aspect--what this service means
+to the person himself. It is his opportunity to fulfill his function in
+the social organism. Now a person is as large as his purpose and will.
+The person, therefore, who identifies his purposes with the welfare of
+the public is thereby identifying himself with the whole social body. He
+is no longer himself alone; he is a social power. Not only the leader of
+society, but every efficient servant makes himself an organ through
+which society itself acts and moves forward. This is perhaps most
+conspicuous in the case of the great inventors or organizers of industry
+and society. By serving civilization they have become its bearers and
+have thus shared its highest pulses. But it is true of every laborer. As
+he is an active contributor he becomes creative, not merely receptive.
+
+=4. The Change from Individual to Collective Methods, of Industry and
+Business Demands a Change from Individual to Collective Types of
+Morality.=--Moral action is either to accomplish some positive good or
+to hinder some wrong or evil. But under present conditions the
+individual by himself is practically helpless and useless for either
+purpose. It was formerly possible for a man to set a high standard and
+live up to it, irrespective of the practice or cooperation of others.
+When a seller's market was limited to his acquaintance or a limited
+territory, it might well be that honesty or even fair dealing was the
+best policy. But with the changes that have come in business conditions
+the worse practices, like a baser coinage, tend to drive out the morally
+better. This may not apply so thoroughly to the relations between seller
+and buyer, but it applies to many aspects of trade. A merchant may
+desire to pay his women clerks wages on which they can support life
+without selling their souls. But if his rival across the street pays
+only half the wage necessary for subsistence, it is evident the former
+is in so far at a disadvantage. Extend the same policy. Let the former
+have his goods made under good conditions and the latter have no scruple
+against "sweating"; let the former pay taxes on an honest estimate and
+the latter "see" the assessor, or threaten to move out of town if he is
+assessed for more than a figure named by himself; let the former ask
+only for a fair chance, while the latter secures legislation that favors
+his own interests, or gets specifications for bids worded so that they
+will exclude his opponents, or in selling to public bodies "fixes" the
+councils or school committees, or obtains illegal favors in
+transportation. Let this continue, and how long will the former stay in
+the field? Even as regards quality of goods, where it would seem more
+plausible that honest dealing might succeed, experience has shown that
+this depends on whether the frauds can be easily detected. In the case
+of drugs and goods where the adulterations cannot be readily discovered,
+there is nothing to offset the more economical procedure of the
+fraudulent dealer. The fact that it is so difficult to procure pure
+drugs and pure food would seem to be most plausibly due to the fatal
+competition of the adulterated article.
+
+Or, suppose a person has a little property invested in some one of the
+various corporations which offer the most convenient method for placing
+small sums as well as large. This railroad defies the government by
+owning coal mines as well as transporting the product; that public
+service corporation has obtained its franchise by bribery; this
+corporation is an employer of child labor; that finds it less expensive
+to pay a few damage suits--those it cannot fight successfully--than to
+adopt devices which will protect employees. Does a man, or even an
+institution, act morally if he invests in such corporations in which he
+finds himself helpless as an individual stockholder? And if he sells his
+stock at the market price to invest the money elsewhere, is it not
+still the price of fraud or blood? If, finally, he buys insurance for
+his family's support, recent investigation has shown that he may have
+been contributing unawares to bribery of legislatures, and to the
+support of political theories to which he may be morally opposed. The
+individual cannot be moral in independence. The modern business
+collectivism forces a collective morality. Just as the individual cannot
+resist the combination, so individual morality must give place to a more
+robust or social type.
+
+=5. To Meet the Change to Corporate Agency and Ownership, Ways Must be
+Found to Restore Personal Control and Responsibility.=--Freedom and
+responsibility must go hand in hand. The "moral liability limited"
+theory cannot be accepted in the simple form in which it now obtains. If
+society holds stockholders responsible, they will soon cease to elect
+managers merely on an economic basis and will demand morality. If
+directors are held personally responsible for their "legal department,"
+or union officials for their committees, directors and officials will
+find means to know what their subordinates are doing. "Crime is always
+personal," and it is not usual for subordinates to commit crimes for the
+corporation against the explicit wishes of the higher officials. In
+certain lines the parties concerned have voluntarily sought to restore a
+more personal relation.[231] It has been found profitable to engage
+foremen who can get on smoothly with workmen. It has proved to be good
+economy to treat men, whether they sell labor or buy it, with respect
+and fairness.
+
+The managers of some of the great public service corporations have also
+recently shown a disposition to recognize some public obligations, with
+the naive admission that this has been neglected. Labor unions are
+coming to see the need of conciliating public opinion if they are to
+gain their contests.
+
+=6. To Meet the Impersonal Agencies Society Must Require Greater
+Publicity and Express Its Moral Standards More Fully in Law.=--Publicity
+is not a cure for bad practices, but it is a powerful deterrent agency
+so long as the offenders care for public opinion and not solely for the
+approval of their own class. Professor Ross[232] maintains that in the
+United States classes are still so loosely formed that general approval
+is desired by the leaders. Hence he urges that it is possible to enforce
+moral standards by the "grilling of sinners." But to make this
+"grilling" a moral process society needs much more accurate information
+and a more impartial basis for selecting its sinners than present
+agencies afford. The public press is itself in many respects one of the
+most conspicuous examples of the purely economic motive. The newspaper
+or magazine must interest readers and not displease advertisers. The
+news is selected, or colored, or worked up to suit particular classes.
+If a speaker says what the reporter does not regard as interesting he is
+likely to find himself reported as saying something more striking.
+Publicity bureaus are able to point with pride to the amount of matter,
+favorable to certain interests, which they place before the public as
+news. The particular interests singled out for "exposure" are likely to
+be determined more by the anticipated effects on circulation or
+advertising than by the merits of the case. It is scarcely more
+satisfactory to leave all the education of public opinion to commercial
+control than to leave all elementary education to private interests.
+Publicity--scientific investigation and public discussion--is indeed
+indispensable, and its greatest value is probably not in the
+exhilarating discharge of righteous indignation, but in the positive
+elevation of standards, by giving completer knowledge and showing the
+fruits of certain practices. A large proportion of the public will wish
+to do the right thing if they can see it clearly, and can have public
+support, so that right action will not mean suicide.
+
+But the logical way to meet the impersonal character of modern economic
+agencies is by the moral consciousness embodied in an impersonal agency,
+the law. The law is not to be regarded chiefly as an agency for
+punishing criminals. It, in the first place, defines a standard; and, in
+the next place, _it helps the morally disposed to maintain this standard
+by freeing him from unscrupulous competition_. It is a general principle
+that to resort to the law is an ethical gain only when the getting
+something done is more important than to get it done from the right
+motive. This evidently applies to acts of corporate bodies. We do not
+care for their motives. We are not concerned to save their souls. We are
+concerned only for results--just the place where we have seen that the
+personal responsibility breaks down. The value of good motives and moral
+purpose is in this case located in those who strive to secure and
+execute progressive legislation for the public good, and in the personal
+spirit with which this is accepted and carried out by officials.[233]
+
+=7. Every Member of Society Should Share in Its Wealth and in the Values
+Made Possible by It.=--The quantitative basis of division and the method
+for giving each a share belong to the unsettled problems. But the worth
+and dignity of every human being of moral capacity is fundamental in
+nearly every moral system of modern times. It is implicit in the
+Christian doctrine of the worth of the soul, in the Kantian doctrine of
+personality, in the Benthamic dictum, "every man to count as one." It is
+imbedded in our democratic theory and institutions. With the leveling
+and equalizing of physical and mental power brought about by modern
+inventions and the spread of intelligence, no State is permanently safe
+except on a foundation of justice. And justice cannot be fundamentally
+in contradiction with the essence of democracy. This means that wealth
+must be produced, distributed, and owned justly: that is, so as to
+promote the individuality of every member of society, while at the same
+time he must always function as a member, not as an individual. In
+defining justice some will place freedom first; others, a standard of
+living. Some will seek fairness by distributing to each an actual share
+of the goods; others, by giving to each a fair chance to get his share
+of goods. Others again have held that if no moral purpose is proposed
+and each seeks to get what he can for himself, the result will be a just
+distribution because of the beneficent effects of competition. Still
+others have considered that if the economic process has once been
+established on the basis of contracts rather than status or slavery,
+justice may be regarded as the maintenance of these contracts, whatever
+the effect in actual benefits. These views will be considered under the
+next topic as unsettled problems.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+In addition to the works cited at the close of the last chapter,
+Giddings, _The Costs of Progress_, in Democracy and Empire, 1901;
+Bosanquet (Mrs. B.), _The Standard of Life_, 1898; Bosanquet, B.,
+_Aspects of the Social Problem_, 1895; Stephen, _Social Rights and
+Duties_, 1896; Tufts, _Some Contributions of Psychology toward the
+Conception of Justice_, Philosophical Review, xv., 1906, pp. 361-79;
+Woods, _Democracy, a New Unfolding of Human Power_, in Studies in
+Philosophy and Psychology (Garman Commemorative Volume), 1906.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[231] Hayes Robbins in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for June, 1907, "The
+Personal Factor in the Labor Problem."
+
+[232] _Sin and Society._
+
+[233] See Florence Kelley, _Some Ethical Gains through Legislation_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER
+
+
+Under this head we propose to consider one general and three special
+problems on which society is at present at work, framing new moral
+standards to meet new conditions. Many of the questions involved in the
+new order marshal themselves under a single antithesis. Will the moral
+values of wealth be most fully secured and justly distributed by leaving
+to individuals the greatest possible freedom and holding them morally
+responsible, or by social agency and control? The first theory is known
+as _individualism_. The most convenient term for the second position
+would be _socialism_.
+
+Socialism, however, is, for many, an epithet rather than a scientific
+conception. It is supposed to mean necessarily the abolition of all
+private enterprise or private property. In its extreme form it might
+mean this, as individualism in its extreme form would mean anarchy. But
+as a practical ethical proposition we have before us neither the
+abolition of public agency and control--extreme individualism--nor the
+abolition of private agency and control. We have the problem of getting
+the proper amount of each in order that the highest morality may
+prevail. Each theory professes to desire the fullest development and
+freedom of the individual. The individualist seeks it through formal
+freedom and would limit public agency to a minimum. The socialist is
+willing to permit limitations on formal freedom in order to secure the
+"real" freedom which he regards as more important and substantial.
+Between the extremes, and borrowing from each, is a somewhat indefinite
+programme known as the demand for equal opportunity. Let us consider
+each in a brief statement and then in a more thorough analysis.
+
+
+Sec. 1. GENERAL STATEMENT OF THE POSITIONS OF INDIVIDUALISM AND OF
+PUBLIC AGENCY AND CONTROL
+
+=1. Individualism.=--Individualism[234] believes that each man can
+secure his own welfare better than any one else can secure it for him.
+It further holds that society is made up of individuals, and hence, if
+each is provided for, the welfare of the whole is secured. Such goods as
+are social can be secured by voluntary association. Believing that the
+course of civilization has been "from status to contract," it makes free
+contract its central principle. It should be the chief business of
+organized society to maintain and safeguard this freedom. It locates the
+important feature of freedom precisely in the act of assent, rather than
+in any consideration of whether the after consequences of the assent are
+good or bad; nor does it ask what motives (force and fraud aside)
+brought about the assent, or whether there was any other alternative. In
+other words, it regards formal freedom as fundamental. If not in itself
+all that can be desired, it is the first step, and the only one which
+law need recognize. The individual may be trusted to take other steps,
+if protected in this. The only restriction upon individual freedom
+should be that it must not interfere with the equal freedom of others.
+In the economic sphere this restriction would mean, "must not interfere
+by force." The theory does not regard economic pressure by competition
+as interference. Hence it favors free competition. Leaving out of
+account benevolence, it holds that in business each should be allowed,
+or even recommended, to seek his own advantage. But when the question as
+to the justice of the distribution reached by this method is raised, a
+division appears between the _democratic_ individualists and the
+"_survival of the fittest_" individualists. The democratic
+individualists--Adam Smith, Bentham, Mill[235]--believed that
+individualism would promote the welfare of _all_ members of society. The
+"survival of the fittest" school maintains that the welfare of the race
+or of civilization depends on the sifting and selecting process known as
+the "struggle for existence." If the "fittest" are thus selected and
+survive, it matters not so much what is the lot of the rest. We must
+choose between progress through aristocratic selection and degeneration
+through democratic leveling.
+
+=2. Theory of Public Agency and Control.=--Socialism (using the word in
+a broad sense) holds that society should secure to all its members the
+goods of life. It holds that an unrestrained liberty of struggle for
+existence may secure the survival of the strongest, but not necessarily
+of the morally best. The individualist's theory emphasizes formal
+freedom. "Seek first freedom and all other things will be added." The
+socialist view emphasizes the content. It would have all members of
+society share in education, wealth, and all the goods of life. In this
+it agrees with democratic individualism. But it considers this
+impossible on the basis of individual effort. To hold that society as a
+whole can do nothing for the individual either ignores social goods or
+supposes the social will, so powerful for democracy in the political
+sphere, to be helpless and futile in the economic world. To assume that
+all the control of economic distribution--the great field of
+justice--may be left to individual freedom and agency, is as archaic as
+to leave the collection of taxes, the administration of provinces, and
+the education of citizens to private enterprise. It regards the
+unregulated struggle for existence as economically wasteful and morally
+vicious, both in its inequality of distribution and in the motives of
+egoism on which it relies. Individualism, on the other hand, so far as
+it is intelligent and does not lump socialism with anarchy and all other
+criticisms on the established order, regards socialism as ignoring the
+supreme importance of active personal effort, and the value of freedom
+as the keynote to progress.
+
+=3. Equal Opportunity.=--An intermediate view has for its maxim, "equal
+opportunity." It holds with individualism that the active personality is
+to be stimulated and made a prime end. But because it believes that not
+merely a few but all persons should be treated as ends, it finds
+individualism condemned. For it holds that an unregulated struggle for
+existence does not secure the end individualism professes to seek. When
+individuals start in the race handicapped by differences in birth,
+education, family, business, friends, and inherited wealth, _there is no
+selection of ability_; there is _selection of the privileged_. Hence it
+would borrow so much from socialism as to give each individual a "fair
+start." This would include public schools, and an undefined amount of
+provision for sanitation, and for governmental regulation of the
+stronger.
+
+It is manifest, however, that this theory of the "square deal" is a name
+for a general aim rather than for a definite programme. For a "square
+deal," or equality of opportunity, might be interpreted to call for a
+great variety of concrete schemes, ranging all the way from an
+elementary education up to public ownership of all the tools for
+production, and to abolition of the right to bequeath or inherit
+property. The peoples of America, Europe, and Australasia are at present
+working out policies which combine in various degrees the
+individualistic and the socialistic views. Most have public schools.
+Some have provision for old age and accident through either mutual or
+State systems of insurance and pensions. Let us analyze the moral
+aspects of the two opposing theories more thoroughly. It is obvious that
+the third view is only one of a number of mediating positions.
+
+
+Sec. 2. INDIVIDUALISM OR FREE CONTRACT ANALYZED: ITS VALUES
+
+=Efficiency in Production.=--Individualism can make out a strong case in
+respect to several of the ethical qualities which are demanded: viz.,
+efficiency in production of goods, stimulation of active and forceful
+character, promotion of freedom and responsibility, encouragement to
+wide diversification of occupation and thus of services, and, finally,
+the supply to society of the kinds of goods which society wants. It
+would be absurd to credit the enormous increase in production of wealth
+during the past century to individualism alone, ignoring the
+contributions of science and education which have been mainly made under
+social auspices. It would be as absurd to credit all the gains of the
+century in civilization and freedom to individualism as it would be to
+charge all the wretchedness and iniquity of the century to this same
+policy. But, setting aside extravagant claims, it can scarcely be
+doubted that Adam Smith's contentions for greater individual freedom
+have been justified as regards the tests named. Granting that the great
+increase in amount and variety of production, and in means of
+communication and distribution, has been primarily due to two agencies,
+the machine and association, it remains true that individualism has
+permitted and favored association and has stimulated invention.
+
+=Initiative and Responsibility.=--Moreover, the general policy of
+turning over to individuals the power and responsibility to regulate
+their own acts, is in accord with one great feature of moral
+development. The evolution of moral personality, as traced in our early
+chapters, shows the individual at first living as a member of a kinship
+group which determines his economic as well as his religious and social
+life, and permits him neither to strike out independently, nor, on the
+other hand, to suffer want so long as the group has supplies. Individual
+initiative and responsibility have steadily increased, and the economic
+development has undoubtedly strengthened the development of religious,
+political, and moral freedom. It is the combination of these which gives
+the person of to-day the worth and dignity belonging to autonomy,
+self-government, and democracy.
+
+=Regulation of Production.=--Further, it may be said that supply and
+demand, individualism's method of regulating prices and the kinds of
+goods produced, not only accords with a principle of freedom, but also
+gets those goods made which society most needs or wants. If goods of a
+certain kind are scarce, the high price stimulates production. While it
+permits crises, panics, and hardship, it at least throws the burden of
+avoiding hardship upon the foresight of a great many: namely, all
+producers, rather than upon a few persons who might be designated for
+the purpose. In thus providing a method to find out what society wants
+and how much, it is performing a social service, and, as we have pointed
+out, it is none the less a service because the goods are to be paid for;
+it is all the more so because they can be paid for. So far, then,
+individualism has a strong case.
+
+
+Sec. 3. CRITICISMS UPON INDIVIDUALISM
+
+There is undoubtedly great waste in some of its methods, e.g., its
+advertising and its competitions, but the most serious objections to
+individualism are not to be found here; they arise in connection with
+the other ethical criteria of economic morality. They fall chiefly
+under two heads. (1) Does individualism provide for real as well as
+formal freedom? (2) Does it distribute the benefits widely or to the
+few? Does it distribute them justly or unjustly?
+
+=It Does Not Secure Real Freedom.=--The distinction between real and
+formal[236] freedom has been forced into prominence by several causes.
+The division of labor trains a man for a specific kind of work. If there
+is no opening in this he is unable to find work. The continual invention
+of improved machinery is constantly displacing particular sets of
+workers and rendering their special training worthless. A business panic
+causes immediate discharge of thousands of laborers. A "trust" closes
+several of its shops, and workmen who have purchased homes must lose
+their jobs or their investments, or perhaps both. The employer is no
+less limited in his conduct by the methods of competing firms; but it is
+the wage-workers who have felt this lack of real freedom most keenly.
+Theoretically, no one is forced to labor. Every one is free to choose
+whether he will work, and what work he will do. But in effect, freedom
+of choice depends for its value upon what the alternative is. If the
+choice is, do this or--starve--the freedom is not worth much. Formal
+freedom excludes constraint by the direct control or will of others. It
+excludes violence or fear of violence. But subjection to the stress or
+fear of want, or to the limits imposed by ignorance, is just as fatal to
+freedom. Hunger is as coercive as violence; ignorance fetters as
+hopelessly as force. Whether a man has any choice of occupation,
+employment, residence, or wage, depends on his physical strength,
+education, family ties, and accumulated resources, and on the pressure
+of present need. To speak of free contract where there is gross
+inequality between the parties, is to use a mere form of words. Free
+contract in this case means simply the right of the stronger to exploit
+the weaker.
+
+=Individualism and Justice.=--Individualists, as stated, belong to two
+very different schools, which we may call the democratic and
+aristocratic, or perhaps more correctly, if we may coin a word,
+"oligocratic." Democratic individualism would have every man count as
+one. It would distribute benefits widely. It holds that since society is
+made up of individuals all social goods will be secured if each
+individual seeks and finds his own. Aristocratic individualism[237] has
+been reenforced by the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence as
+a condition for "survival of the fittest," by race prejudice, and by
+imperialism. It holds that civilization is for the few "best," not
+necessarily for the many. Progress lies through the selection of the few
+efficient, masterful, aggressive individuals, races, or nations.
+Individualism is a policy which favors these few. It is Nature's method
+of dealing. It is of course regrettable that there should be weak,
+backward, ineffective individuals or races, but their exploitation
+serves the advance of the rest, and benevolence or charity may mitigate
+the most painful results.
+
+The older economists of democratic individualism could properly claim
+two respects in which economic justice was furthered by economic
+processes under free management and exchange. The social body is in
+truth made up of members, and the old policy had been to tie up the
+members to make the body grow. It did promote justice to remove needless
+and excessive restrictions. In the second place, it is true, as the
+economists insisted, that in a free exchange each party profits if he
+gets what he wants. There is mutual benefit, and so far as this goes
+there is an element of justice. But while the benefit may be mutual, the
+_amount_ of advantage each gets is not necessarily the same, and if the
+party who has greater shrewdness or resources takes advantage of a great
+need on the part of the other, the result may be a very unequal
+division. Exchanges of a birthright for a mess of pottage will be
+common. Very well, says the individualist, Esau will know better next
+time--or if he doesn't, he is an object for charity. But the trouble is
+that even if Esau does "know better" he is in even poorer condition next
+time to make a bargain if his birthright is gone; besides, if starvation
+or misery for himself or his family is his only alternative, what good
+will it do him to "know better"? Can the result, then, be just or fair?
+This depends on how we define "just" and "fair." If we take a purely
+formal view and make formal freedom of contract the only criterion, then
+any price is fair which both parties agree to. The law for the most part
+takes this view, assuming absence of force or fraud. But this leaves out
+of account everything except the bare formal act of assent. It is too
+abstract a conception of personality on which to base a definition of
+justice. To get the true organic relation of mutual service and benefit
+by a system of individualism we must have the two parties to the bargain
+equal. _But in a large part of the exchange of business and services the
+two parties are not equal._ One has greater shrewdness, better
+education, more knowledge of the market, more accumulated resources,
+and, therefore, less pressing need than the other. The moral
+consciousness will call prices or contracts unfair where the stronger
+takes advantage of the weaker's necessities, even if the law does not.
+
+=Competition.=--The fact of competition is depended upon by the
+individualist to obviate the disadvantages of the weaker party. If A is
+ignorant of the market, B may impose upon him; but if C and D are
+competing with B for A's goods or services, A will soon find out what
+they are "worth." That is, he will get for them a social and not a
+purely individual valuation. There is doubtless such a gain to A. But in
+considering competition as removing the objections to the unfairness
+possible in bargaining, we must bear in mind two things. First,
+competition cuts both ways. It helps A when several compete for his
+goods or labor; but, on the other hand, it may ruin one of the
+competitors. If A is a laborer, it is a good thing if X, Y, and Z,
+employers, compete for his services. But if the boot is on the other
+foot, if B, C, and D also are laborers and compete with A for a place,
+we have the conditions which may lead to the sweat-shop. Whether there
+is any better way to avoid unequal distribution will be considered
+later. The second and seemingly fatal objection to competition as a
+means to justice, is that _free competition under an individualistic
+system tends to destroy itself_. For the enormous powers which the new
+forms of economic agency and technique give to the individual who can
+wield them, enable him to crush competitors. The process has been
+repeated over and over within the past few years in various fields. The
+only way in which a semblance of competition has been maintained in
+railroad business has been by appeal to the courts. This is an appeal to
+maintain individualism by checking individualism, and as might be
+expected from such a contradictory procedure, has accomplished little.
+Nor can it be maintained that the evils may be obviated, as Spencer
+holds, by private restraints on excessive competition. As already
+pointed out, if one of a body of competitors is unscrupulous, the rest
+are necessarily at a disadvantage. Under present conditions
+individualism cannot guarantee, and in many cases cannot permit, just
+distribution and a true organic society.
+
+The other school of individualists is not disturbed by inequality of
+goods. It frankly accedes to the logic of unrestrained competition. It
+stakes its case upon the importance for social welfare of the
+exceptionally gifted few. It is important to have their services. It
+can have them only on terms which they set, as they will not work unless
+there is sufficient motive. It is, on this view, perfectly just that all
+the enormous increase of wealth due to modern methods should go to the
+few leaders, for their ability has produced it all. "The able minority
+of men who direct the labor of the majority are the true producers of
+that amount of wealth by which the annual total output, in any given
+community, exceeds what would have been produced by the laborers if left
+to their own devices, whether working as isolated units or in small
+self-organized groups, and controlled by no knowledge or faculties but
+such as are possessed in common by any one who can handle a spade or lay
+one brick upon another."[238]
+
+Either from the standpoint of natural rights or from that of
+utilitarianism it is proper, according to this school, that all the
+increasing wealth of society, now and in all future time, should go to
+the few. For, on the one view, it belongs to the few since they have
+produced it; and, on the other, it must be given them if society is to
+have their services. It is possible they may not claim it all for their
+exclusive possession. They may be pleased to distribute some of it in
+gifts. But this is for them to say. The logical method for carrying out
+this programme would require an absolute abandonment by the people as a
+whole, or by their representatives, or the courts, of any attempt to
+control economic conditions. The courts would be limited to enforcing
+contracts and would cease to recognize considerations of public interest
+except in so far as these were accepted by the able minority. All such
+legislation as imposes any check upon the freedom of the individual is
+mischievous. Under this head would presumably come regulation of child
+labor, of hours, of sanitary conditions, of charges by railroads, gas
+companies, and other public service corporations. Graded income or
+inheritance taxes are also to be condemned from this standpoint. It
+should in fairness be added that while its upholders do not allege as
+their main argument that individualism is for the interest of the many,
+they hold, nevertheless, that the many are really better off under
+individualism than under socialism. For since all the increase in wealth
+is due to the able few whom individualism produces, and since some of
+this increase, in cases where the few compete for the custom or labor of
+the many, may fall to the share of the many or else be given them
+outright by the more generous, it appears that the only hope for the
+many lies through the few.
+
+The general naturalistic theory has been discussed in Chapter XVIII.
+Here it is only necessary to point out that it is a misreading of
+evolution to suppose unregulated competition to be its highest category
+of progress, and that it is a misinterpretation of ethics to assume that
+might is right. With the dawn of higher forms of life, cooperation and
+sympathy prove stronger forces for progress than ruthless competition.
+The "struggle" for any existence that has a claim to moral recognition
+must be a struggle for more than physical existence or survival of
+force. It must be a struggle for a _moral_ existence, an existence of
+rational and social beings on terms of mutual sympathy and service as
+well as of full individuality. Any claim for an economic process, if it
+is to be a moral claim, must make its appeal on moral grounds and to
+moral beings. If it recognizes only a few as having worth, then it can
+appeal only to these. These few have no moral right to complain if the
+many, whom they do not recognize, refuse to recognize them.
+
+=Summary of the Ethics of Individualism.=--Individualism provides well
+for production of quantity and kinds required of goods and services; for
+activity and formal freedom. Under present conditions of organization
+and modern methods it cannot be made to serve a democratic conception
+of justice, but inevitably passes over into a struggle for preeminence,
+in which the strong and less scrupulous will have the advantage. It can
+be treated as just only if justice is defined as what is according to
+contract (formal freedom); or if the welfare of certain classes or
+individual members of society is regarded as of subordinate importance;
+or, finally, if it is held that this welfare is to be obtained only
+incidentally, as gift, not directly through social action. The criticism
+on individualism is then that under a collective system like that of the
+present, it does scant justice to most individuals. It leaves the many
+out from all active participation in progress or morality.[239]
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+Individualism and Socialism are discussed in the works of Hadley,
+Veblen, Hobson, Spencer, Marx, George, already cited; cf. also Menger,
+_The Right to the Whole Produce of Labor_, 1899; Ely, _Socialism and
+Social Reform_, 1894; Bosanquet, _Individualism and Socialism_, in The
+Civilization of Christendom, 1893; Fite, _The Theory of Democracy_,
+International Journal of Ethics, xxviii. (1907), pp. 1-18; Huxley,
+_Administrative Nihilism_, in Essays; Godwin's _Political Justice_,
+1793, raised many of the fundamental questions. Recent representative
+Individualistic works are: Spencer, _Social Statics_, _The Man versus
+the State_, various essays in Vol. III. of Essays; Sumner, _What Social
+Classes Owe to Each Other_, 1883; Donisthorpe, _Individualism_, 1889;
+Harris, _Inequality and Progress_, 1897; Mallock, _Socialism_, 1907. On
+Socialism: _Fabian Essays in Socialism_, edited by Shaw, London, 1890,
+New York, 1891; Spargo, _Socialism_, 1906; Marx and Engels, _The
+Communist Manifesto_, Eng. tr.; Reeve, _The Cost of Competition_, 1906;
+Rae, _Contemporary Socialism_, 1891; Hunter, _Socialists at Work_, 1908;
+Wells, _New Worlds for Old_, 1907.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[234] See above, pp. 428 f., 471-6, 483.
+
+[235] In his later years Mill had much more confidence in the value of
+social agency.
+
+[236] See above, p. 437 f.
+
+[237] See above, pp. 368 ff.
+
+[238] W. H. Mallock, _Socialism_.
+
+[239] Above, p. 472.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER (CONTINUED)
+
+
+Sec. 4. THE THEORY OF PUBLIC AGENCY AND CONTROL
+
+The various theories of public direction, including socialism in the
+technical sense, are primarily interested in the just distribution of
+goods. It is not so much "How many goods can be produced?" as "Who is to
+get them?" Individualism was chiefly concerned in increasing public
+wealth, assuming (in the case of the democratic individualists) that all
+would get the benefit. Socialism is more concerned that the producing
+persons shall not be sacrificed, and that each member shall benefit by
+the result. Public agency and control might assert itself (1) as a
+method of production, (2) as a method of distribution of goods and
+returns, (3) as a method of property. It is important to note at the
+outset that all civilized peoples have some degree of social direction
+in each of these fields. (1) Practically all peoples collect taxes, coin
+money, carry mails, protect life and property, and supply such
+elementary demands as those for water and drainage, through State or
+municipal agency instead of leaving it to private initiative. And in
+every one of the instances the work was formerly done privately. (2)
+Under distribution, all progressive peoples give education through the
+State. Further, the benefits of the mail service are distributed not in
+proportion to receipts, but on other principles based on social welfare.
+(3) As a method of property-holding, all civilized peoples hold certain
+goods for common use, and in the United States, after a period in which
+it has been the policy to distribute for little or no compensation
+public lands, public franchises, and public goods of all kinds, the
+public policy is now not only to retain large tracts for forest reserve,
+but to construct irrigation plants, and to provide public parks,
+playgrounds, and other forms of property to be used for common
+advantage. Just as the individualist does not necessarily carry his
+doctrine to the extreme of dispensing with all social agency, at least
+in the matters of public protection and public health, so the socialist
+does not necessarily wish to abolish private property or private
+enterprise. We have, then, to consider briefly the ethical aspects of
+public agency for production, public control over distribution, public
+holding of wealth.
+
+
+Sec. 5. SOCIETY AS AGENCY OF PRODUCTION
+
+The advantage claimed for society as an agent of production is not
+primarily greater efficiency, although it is claimed that the present
+method is enormously wasteful except where there already is private
+monopoly. Nor is it in the social service rendered by providing great
+variety of goods, and of the kinds most wanted. It is rather (1) that in
+the case of public service enterprises, such as transportation or
+lighting, fairness to the various shippers, localities, and other users
+can be secured only through public control or operation. These services
+are as indispensable to modern life as air or navigation. Only by public
+agency can discrimination be avoided. (2) That the prizes to be gained
+are here so enormous that bribery and corruption are inevitable under
+private management. (3) That the profits arising from the growth of the
+community belong to the community, and can only be secured if the
+community owns and operates such agencies of public service as
+transportation, communication, and in cities water supply and lighting.
+(4) That the method of individualistic production is reckless of child
+life and in general of the health of workmen. Great Britain is already
+fearing a deterioration in physical stature and capacity. (5) The motive
+of self-interest, relied upon and fostered by individualism, is
+anti-social. How can morality be expected to improve when the
+fundamental agency and method of business and industry is contradictory
+to morality? (6) More complete socialism maintains that, under modern
+capitalism, a disproportionate share is sure to fall to the capitalist,
+and, more than this, to the great capitalist. Modern production is
+complex and expensive. It requires an enormous plant; the capitalist,
+not the workman, has the tools, and can therefore charge what he
+pleases. The small capitalist cannot undertake competition with the
+great capitalist, for the latter can undersell him until he drives him
+from business, and can then recoup himself by greater gains. Hence the
+only way to secure fair distribution is through social ownership of the
+tools and materials for production.
+
+=Private Interests and Public Welfare.=--Touching these points it may be
+said that the public conscience is rapidly coming to a decision upon the
+first five. (1) The public has been exploited, the officials of
+government have been bribed, and individual members of society
+discriminated against. The process of competition always involves
+_vae victis_, but the particular factor which makes this not only hard
+but unjust, is that in all these cases we have a quasi-public agency
+(monopoly, franchise, State-aided corporation) used to give private
+advantage. This must be remedied either by public ownership or public
+control, unless the ethics of the struggle for existence is accepted.
+The corruption which has prevailed under (2) must be met either by
+public ownership or control, or by so reducing the value of such
+franchises as to leave "nothing in it" for the "grafter" and his
+co-operators. Vice--gambling, excessive use of drugs and liquors,
+prostitution--is no doubt injurious to its victims, and when leagued
+with public officials and yielding enormous corruption funds to debauch
+politics, it is a public evil as well. But its victims are limited, and
+its appearance not attractive to the great majority. The exploitation
+and corruption practiced by the more generally successful and
+"respectable" members of society, is far more insidious and
+wide-reaching. It demoralizes not individuals only, but the standards of
+society. As to (3) there is no doubt as to the rights of the matter.
+Gains due to social growth should be socially shared, not appropriated
+by a few. The only question is as to the best method of securing these
+gains. European States and cities have gone much farther than the United
+States along the line of public agency, and, while there is still
+dispute as to the balance of advantage in certain cases, there is a
+growing sentiment that the more intelligent and upright the community,
+the more it can wisely undertake. The moral principle is that the public
+must have its due. Whether it pays certain agents a salary as its own
+officials, or a commission in the form of a moderate dividend, is not so
+important.[240] But to pay a man or a small group of promoters a million
+dollars to supply water or lighting or transportation, seems no more
+moral than to pay such a salary to a mayor or counsel or superintendent
+of schools. Taxpayers would probably denounce such salaries as robbery.
+Such franchises as have for the most part been given in American cities
+have been licenses to collect high taxes from the citizens for the
+benefit of a few, and do not differ in principle from paying excessive
+salaries, except as the element of risk enters. What is needed at
+present in the United States is a larger number of experiments in
+various methods of agency to see which type results in least corruption,
+fairest distribution, and best service.
+
+=Conditions of Labor.=--On the fourth point, the necessity of public
+control to regulate child labor, the labor of women, sanitary
+conditions, and the use of dangerous machinery, the public conscience is
+also awakening. Decisions of the courts on the constitutionality of
+regulating women's labor have been somewhat at variance. But the
+recently announced decision[241] of the United States Supreme Court in
+the "Oregon case" seems likely to be decisive of the principle that
+women may be treated as a class. Freedom of contract cannot be regarded
+as interfering with the right to establish reasonable precautions for
+women's health. Woman may be protected "from the greed as well as from
+the passion of man." The immorality of child labor under modern
+conditions is also becoming clear. For the public to see child life
+stunted physically, mentally, and morally by premature labor under the
+exhausting, deadening, and often demoralizing conditions of modern
+industry and business, is for the public to consent to wickedness. It
+cannot leave this matter to the conscience of individual manufacturers
+and parents, for the conscientious manufacturer is at a disadvantage,
+and it might with as much morality consent to a parent's starving or
+poisoning his child as to his injuring it in less violent manner. For a
+society pretending to be moral to permit little children to be used up
+or stunted under any plea of cheap production or support of parents, is
+not above the moral level of those peoples which practice infanticide to
+prevent economic stress. Indeed, in the case of a country which boasts
+of its wealth, there is far less justification than for the savage. In
+the case of provision against accident due to dangerous machinery, the
+ethical principle is also clear. To throw all the burden of the
+accidents incident to modern production upon the families of the
+laborers is entirely unjust. To impose it upon the conscientious
+manufacturer is no better, for it places him at a disadvantage. This is
+a necessary--except so far as it can be minimized by safety
+devices--part of the modern machine process. It ought to be paid for
+either by all manufacturers, who would then shift it to the consumers in
+the price of the goods, or by the public as a whole in some form of
+insurance. European countries have gone much farther than the United
+States in this direction. The theory that the employer is exempt if a
+fellow workman contributes in any way to the accident has been applied
+in the United States in such a way as to free employers, and thus the
+public, from any share in the burden of a large part of
+accidents--except as these entail poverty and bring the victim and his
+family into the dependent class.
+
+Moreover, it is only by public action that fair conditions of labor can
+be secured in many trades and under many employers. For the single
+workman has not the slightest chance to make conditions, and the union
+has no effective means to support its position unless it represents a
+highly skilled trade and controls completely the supply of labor. It may
+go without saying that violence is wrong. But it is often ignored that
+for a _prosperous society to leave the laborer no remedy but violence
+for an intolerable condition is just as wrong_.
+
+=Motives.=--(5) On the question of motives the collectivist theory is
+probably over-sanguine as to the gain to be effected by external means.
+It is difficult to believe that any change in methods would eliminate
+selfishness. There is abundant exercise of selfishness in political
+democracy, and even in families. Further, if it should be settled on
+other grounds that competition in certain cases performs a social
+service, it would then be possible for a man to compete with a desire
+to serve the public, just as truly as it would be possible to compete
+for selfish motives. That a process causes pain incidentally does not
+necessarily pervert the motive of the surgeon or parent. It does, of
+course, throw the burden of proof upon the advocate of the process.
+Rivalry need not mean enmity if the rivals are on an equal footing and
+play fair.
+
+=Exploitation of Labor.=--(6) The question whether all capitalistic
+production first exploits the laboring class, and then tends to absorb
+or drive out of business the small capitalist, is not so easy of
+decision. It seems to be easy to make a plausible statement for each
+side by statistical evidence. There seems little doubt that the general
+standard of living for laborers is rising. On the other hand, the number
+of enormous fortunes seems to rise much faster, and there is an
+appalling amount of poverty in the great cities. This is sometimes
+attributed to thriftlessness or to excessively large families. A careful
+study of an English agricultural community, where the conditions seemed
+at least as good as the average, showed that a family could not have
+over two children without sinking below the line of adequate food,
+shelter, and clothing, to say nothing of medical attendance or other
+comforts. In the United States there has been such a supply of land
+available that the stress has not been so intense. Just what the
+situation will be if the country becomes thickly settled cannot be
+foretold. Professor J. B. Clark shows that the tendency in a static
+society would be to give the laborer more and more nearly his
+share--provided there is free competition for his services. The
+difficulty is that society is not static and that a laborer cannot shift
+at will from trade to trade and from place to place.
+
+That sometimes capital exploits labor is merely to say that the buyer
+sometimes gets the advantage. That capital usually has the advantage in
+its greater resources may be admitted, but that it _invariably must_
+seems an unwarranted deduction. The multiplication of wants widens
+continually the number of occupations and thus increases the competition
+for the service of the more skilled. In such cases some, at least, of
+the sellers should be in a position to make a fair bargain. Indeed,
+recent socialists do not advocate any such complete assumption by
+society of all production as is presented in some of the socialistic
+Utopias. Their principle is "that the State must undertake the
+production and distribution of social wealth wherever private enterprise
+is dangerous or less efficient than public enterprise."[242]
+
+It is for those who do not believe in public control to prove that in
+the great enterprises for the production of the necessaries of life, for
+transportation, banking, mining, and the like, private enterprise is not
+dangerous. The conduct of many--not all--of these enterprises in recent
+years, not only in their economic aspects, but in their recklessness of
+human life, health, and morality, is what makes socialism a practical
+question. If it is adopted, it will not be for any academic or _a
+priori_ reasons. It will be because private enterprise fails to serve
+the public, and its injustice becomes intolerable. If business
+enterprise, as sometimes threatens, seeks to subordinate political and
+social institutions, including legislatures and courts, to economic
+interests, the choice must be between public control and public
+ownership. And if, whether by the inherent nature of legal doctrine and
+procedure, or by the superior shrewdness of capital in evading
+regulation, control is made to appear ineffective, the social conscience
+will demand ownership. To subordinate the State to commercial interests
+is as immoral as to make the economic interest supreme in the
+individual.
+
+As regards the relations between capital and labor, it argues an
+undeveloped state of society that we have no machinery for determining
+controversy as to what is a fair wage. In the long run, and on the
+whole, supply and demand may give an approximately fair adjustment, but
+our present method of fighting it out in doubtful cases is barbaric. The
+issue is decided often by violence or the no less unmoral motive of
+pressing want, instead of by the moral test of what is fair. And the
+great third interest, the consumer, or the public at large, is not
+represented at all. New Zealand, Canada, and some of the states in the
+United States have made beginnings. The President undoubtedly commanded
+general support in his position during the coal strike, when he
+maintained that the public was morally bound to take some part in the
+struggle.
+
+Must not society be lacking in resources if its only resource is to
+permit exploitation, on the one hand, or carry on all industry and
+business itself, upon the other? To lose the flexibility, variety, and
+keenness of interest secured by individual or associated enterprise,
+would certainly be an evil. Early business was conducted largely by
+kinship organizations. The pendulum has doubtless reached the other
+extreme in turning over to groups, organized on a purely commercial
+basis, operations that could be more equitably managed by city or state
+agency. Most favor public agency in the case of schools. Railroads, gas
+companies, and other monopolies are still subject to controversy. But
+that an ideally organized society should permit associations and
+grouping of a great many kinds as agencies for carrying on its work
+seems a platform not to be abandoned until proved hopeless.
+
+=Collective Agency is Not Necessarily Social.=--The socialist is
+inclined to think that if the agency of production were the government
+or the whole organized society this would give a genuine social agency
+of control. This by no means follows. Party government and city
+government in the United States have shown the fallacy of this. But even
+apart from the possibility of a corrupt boss there is still a wide gap
+between the collective and the socialized agency. For until the members
+of society have reached a sufficiently high level of intelligence and
+character to exercise voluntary control, and to cooperate wisely and
+efficiently, there must be some central directing agency. And such an
+agency will be morally external to a large number. It doesn't matter so
+much what name this agent is called by--i.e., whether he is
+"capitalist," or "government,"--so long as the control is external. In
+general, individuals are still without the mutual confidence and public
+intelligence which would enable them really to socialize the
+mechanically collective process.
+
+
+Sec. 6. THEORIES OF JUST DISTRIBUTION
+
+Socialism as theory of distribution does not necessarily imply public
+operation of production. By graded taxation the proceeds of production
+might be taken by society and either held, used, or distributed on some
+supposedly more equitable basis. To give point to any inquiry as to the
+justice of a proposed distribution, it would be desirable to know what
+is the present distribution. Unfortunately, no figures are accepted by
+all students. Spahr's _Present Distribution of Wealth in the United
+States_ estimates that seven-eighths of the families in the United
+States own only one-eighth of the wealth, and that one per cent. own
+more than the remaining ninety-nine per cent. This has been challenged,
+but any estimate made by the economists shows such enormous
+disproportion as to make it incredible that the present distribution can
+be regarded as just on any definition of justice other than "according
+to the principles of contract and competition." Suppose, then, the
+question is raised, How can we make a just distribution?
+
+=Criteria Proposed.=--The simplest, and at the same time most mechanical
+and abstract, method would be to divide all goods equally. This would be
+to ignore all moral and other differences, as indeed is practically done
+in the suffrage. If all men are accounted equal in the State, why not in
+wealth? It may be admitted that, if society were to distribute, it would
+have to do it on some system which could be objectively administered. To
+divide wealth according to merit, or according to efforts, or according
+to needs, would be a far more moral method. But it is difficult to see
+how, in the case of material goods or their money equivalent, such a
+division could be made by any being not omniscient as well as absolutely
+just. If we are to consider distribution as administered by society, we
+seem reduced to the alternative of the present system or a system of
+equality.
+
+=1. The Individualistic Theory.=--It is indeed supposed by some that the
+individualistic or competitive system distributes on a moral basis:
+viz., according to merit. This claim would have to meet the following
+criticisms:
+
+(1) The first abstraction which this individualistic principle of
+reward usually makes it that it gives a man credit for all he achieves,
+or charges him with all his failures, without recognizing the threefold
+origin of these achievements or failures. Heredity, society, personal
+choice, have each had some share in the result. But, in considering the
+ethics of competition upon this maxim, there is evidently no attempt to
+discriminate between these several sources. The man born with industrial
+genius, presented by society with the knowledge of all that has been
+done in the past, and equipped by society with all the methods and tools
+society can devise, certainly has an advantage over the man of moderate
+talents and no education. To claim that the first should be justly
+rewarded for his superiority would imply that the reception of one gift
+constitutes a just claim for another.
+
+(2) Secondly, the theory as applied to our present system is guilty of a
+further abstraction in assuming that the chief, if not the only, way to
+deserve reward is by individualistic shrewdness and energy.
+
+(3) It measures desert by service rendered without taking any account of
+motive or even of intent. The captain of industry performs an important
+service to society; therefore, it is argued, he should be rewarded
+accordingly, quite irrespective of the question whether he was aiming at
+social welfare or at selfish gain. It may even be plausibly argued that
+to reward men financially for good motives would be bribing men to be
+honest. It is true that financial rewards will not make good citizens,
+but this is irrelevant. The point is that whatever other
+reasons,--expediency, difficulty of estimating intent and motive,--may
+be urged for abstracting from everything but the result, the one reason
+which cannot be urged is, such abstraction is just. A person has rights
+only because he is a social person. But to call a man a social person
+because he incidentally produces useful results, is to say that purpose
+and will are negligible elements of personality.[243]
+
+=2. Equal Division.=--The system of equal division is liable to the
+following criticism. In their economic services men are not equal. They
+are unequal not merely in talent and ability; not merely in the value of
+their work; they are unequal in their disposition. To treat idle and
+industrious, useless and useful, slow and quick alike is not equality,
+but inequality. It is to be guilty of as palpable an abstraction as to
+say that all men are equally free because they are not subject to
+physical constraint. Real equality will try to treat like conditions
+alike, and unlike character, efforts, or services differently.
+
+There is, moreover, a psychological objection which would weigh against
+an equal division even if such were regarded as just. The average man
+perhaps prefers an economic order in which there are prizes and blanks
+to an order in which every man draws out the same. He prefers an
+exciting game to a sure but tame return of his investment. He may call
+for a "square deal," but we must remember that a "square deal" in the
+great American game from which the metaphor is taken is not designed to
+make the game less one of chance. It is designed to give full scope to
+luck and nerve. A game in which every player was sure to win, but also
+sure to win just what he had put in, would be equitable, but it would
+not be a game. An equal distribution might rob life of its excitement
+and its passion. Possibly the very strain of the process develops some
+elements of character which it would be unfortunate to lose.
+
+Is there no alternative possible for society except an equality which is
+external only, and therefore unequal, or an inequality which charges a
+man with all the accrued benefits or evils of his ancestry? Must we
+either recognize no moral differences in men, or else be more merciless
+than the old orthodox doctrine of hereditary or imputed guilt? The
+theological doctrine merely made a man suffer for his ancestors' sins;
+the doctrine of unlimited individualism would damn him not only for his
+ancestors' sins and defects, but for the injustice suffered by his
+ancestors at the hands of others. The analysis of the sources of a man's
+ability may give a clue to a third possibility, and it is along this
+line that the social conscience of to-day is feeling its way.
+
+=3. A Working Programme.=--A man's power is due (1) to physical
+heredity; (2) to social heredity, including care, education, and the
+stock of inventions, information, and institutions which enables him to
+be more efficient than the savage; and finally (3) to his own efforts.
+Individualism may properly claim this third factor. It is just to treat
+men unequally so far as their efforts are unequal. It is socially
+desirable to give as much incentive as possible to the full development
+of every one's powers. But the _very same reason demands that in the
+first two respects we treat men as equally as possible_. For it is for
+the good of the social body to get the most out of its members, and it
+can get the most out of them only by giving them the best start
+possible. In physical heredity the greater part is, as yet, wholly
+outside control, but there is an important factor which is in the sphere
+of moral action, namely, the physical condition of the parents,
+particularly of the mother. Conditions of food, labor, and housing
+should be such that every child may be physically well born. In the
+various elements included under social heredity society has a freer
+hand. Not a _free_ hand, for physical and mental incapacity limit the
+amount of social accumulation which can be communicated, but we are only
+beginning to appreciate how much of the deficiency formerly acquiesced
+in as hopeless may be prevented or remedied by proper food, hygiene, and
+medical care. _Completely_ equal education, likewise, cannot be given;
+not in kind, for not all children have like interests and society does
+not want to train all for the same task; nor in quantity, for some will
+have neither the ability nor the disposition to do the more advanced
+work. But as, little by little, labor becomes in larger degree
+scientific, the ratio of opportunities for better trained men will
+increase, and as education becomes less exclusively academic, and more
+an active preparation for all kinds of work, the interests of larger and
+larger numbers of children will be awakened. Such a programme as this is
+one of the meanings of the phrase "_equal opportunity_," which voices
+the demand widely felt for some larger conception of economic and social
+justice than now obtains. It would make formal freedom, formal
+"equality" before the law, less an empty mockery by giving to every
+child some of the power and knowledge which are the necessary
+conditions of real freedom.
+
+Society has already gone a long way along the line of giving an equal
+share in education. It is moving rapidly toward broader conceptions of
+education for all occupations--farming, mechanics, arts, trade,
+business--as well as for the "learned professions." It is making a
+beginning toward giving children (see the Report of the New York
+Tenement House Commission) a chance to be born and grow up with at least
+a living minimum of light and air. Libraries and dispensaries and public
+health officials are bringing the science and literature of the world in
+increasing measure into the lives of all. When by the better
+organization of the courts the poor man has real, and not merely formal
+equality before the law, and thereby justice itself is made more
+accessible to all, another long step will be taken toward a juster
+order. How far society can go is yet to be solved. But is it not at
+least a working hypothesis for experiment, that society should try to
+give to all its members the gains due to the social progress of the
+past? How far the maxim of equal opportunity will logically lead it is
+impossible to say. Fortunately, the moral problem is to work out new
+ideals, not merely to administer old ones. Other possibilities of larger
+justice are noticed under Sec. 8 below.
+
+
+Sec. 7. OWNERSHIP AND USE OF PROPERTY
+
+The public wealth may be controlled and used in four ways: It may be (1)
+Privately owned and used; (2) Privately owned and publicly used; (3)
+Publicly held, but privately used; (4) Publicly held and commonly used.
+The individualist would have all wealth, or as much as possible, under
+one of the first two forms. The tendency in the United States until very
+recently has been to divest the public of all ownership. The socialist,
+while favoring private ownership and use of the more strictly personal
+articles, favors the public holding of much which is now privately
+owned--notably the land, or the instruments of production--as versus the
+holding of these by private or corporate persons. Or, again, it may be
+maintained that while individuals should be allowed to accumulate as
+much property as they can, they should not be allowed to transmit it
+entirely to their heirs.
+
+=Value of Private Property.=--The individualist may properly point to
+the psychological and historical significance of private property, which
+has been stated in a preceding chapter (p. 490). He may say that the
+evils there mentioned as attendant upon private property do not belong
+to the property in itself, but to the exaggerated love of it. He may
+admit that the present emphasis of attention upon the ownership of
+wealth, rather than upon intellectual or aesthetic or social interests,
+is not the highest type of human endeavor. But he urges that the
+positive values of property are such that the present policy of placing
+no check upon property should be maintained. In addition to the indirect
+social value through the power and freedom given to its owners, it may
+be claimed that the countless educational, charitable, and philanthropic
+agencies sustained by voluntary gifts from private property, are both
+the best method of accomplishing certain socially valuable work, and
+have an important reflex value in promoting the active social interest
+of those who carry them on. Nor is the force of this entirely broken by
+the counter claim that this would justify keeping half the population in
+poverty in order to give the other half the satisfaction of charity. No
+system short of absolute communism can abolish the need of friendly
+help.
+
+=Defects and Dangers in the Present System.=--The first question which
+arises is: If property is so valuable morally, how many are profiting by
+it under the present system, and how many are without its beneficent
+effects? Is the number of property-owners increasing or diminishing? In
+one of the morally most valuable forms of property, the number of those
+who profit is certainly decreasing relatively: _viz._, in the owning of
+homes. The building of private residences has practically ceased in New
+York and many other cities except for the very rich. With the increasing
+value of land the owning of homes is bound to become more and more rare.
+Only the large capitalist can put up the apartment house. In the
+ownership of shops and industries the number of owners has relatively
+decreased, that of clerks has increased. The wage-workers in cities are
+largely propertyless. The management of industries through corporations
+while theoretically affording opportunity for property has yet, as Judge
+Grosscup has pointed out forcibly, been such as to discourage the small
+investor, and to prompt to the consumption of wages as fast as received.
+The objection to individualism on this ground would then be as before,
+that it is not individual enough.
+
+An objection of contrary character is that the possession of property
+releases its owner from any necessity of active effort or service to the
+public. It may therefore injure character on both its individual and its
+social side. Probably the absolute number of those who refrain from any
+social service because of their property is not very large, and it may
+be questioned whether the particular persons would be socially very
+valuable under any system if they are now oblivious to all the moral
+arguments for such activity and service.
+
+A more serious objection to the individualistic policy is the enormous
+power allowed to the holders of great properties. It has been estimated
+that a trust fund recently created for two grandchildren will exceed
+five billion dollars when handed over. It is easily possible that some
+of the private fortunes now held may, if undisturbed, amount to far
+more than the above within another generation. Moreover, the power of
+such a fortune is not limited to its own absolute purchasing value. By
+the presence of its owners upon directorates of industrial,
+transportation, banking, and insurance corporations the resources of
+many other owners are controlled. A pressure may be exerted upon
+political affairs compared with which actual contributions to campaign
+funds are of slight importance. The older theory in America was that the
+injury to the private character of the owners of wealth would negative
+the possible dangers to the public, since possession of large wealth
+would lead to relaxation of energy, or even to dissipation. It was
+assumed that the father acquired the fortune, the son spent it, and thus
+scattered it among the many, and the grandson began again at the bottom
+of the ladder. Now that this theory is no longer tenable, society will
+be obliged to ask how much power may safely be left to any individual.
+
+It must be recognized that the present management of such natural
+resources as forests under the regime of private property has been
+extremely wasteful and threatens serious injury to the United States.
+Individual owners cannot be expected to consider the welfare of the
+country at large, or of future generations; hence the water power is
+impaired and the timber supply of the future threatened.
+
+Finally it must be remembered that many of the present evils and
+inequities in ownership are not due necessarily to a system of private
+property, but rather to special privileges possessed by classes of
+individuals. These may be survivals of past conquests of arms as in
+Europe, or derived by special legislation, or due to a perfectly
+unconscious attitude of public morals which carries over to a new
+situation the customs of an early day. Mill's famous indictment of
+present conditions is not in all respects so applicable to America as to
+the older countries of Europe, but it has too much truth to be omitted
+in any ethical consideration.
+
+ "If the choice were to be made between communism with all its
+ chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings
+ and injustices, if the institution of private property necessarily
+ carried with it, as a consequence, that the produce of labor
+ should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio
+ to the labor,--the largest portions to those who have not worked
+ at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal,
+ and so in descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work
+ grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and
+ exhausting bodily labor cannot count with certainty on being able
+ to earn even the necessaries of life,--if this, or communism, were
+ the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of
+ communism would be but as dust in the balance. But to make the
+ comparison applicable, we must compare communism at its best with
+ the regime of individual property, not as it is, but as it might
+ be made. The principle of private property has never yet had a
+ fair trial in any country." (_Polit. Econ._, Book II., ch. i.)
+
+
+Sec. 8. PRESENT TENDENCIES
+
+=Individualistic Foundations.=--The general tendency up to very recent
+time in the United States has been decidedly individualistic, both in
+the policy concerning the method of holding property, and in the legal
+balance between vested property rights and the social welfare. Public
+lands were granted on easy terms to homesteaders; mines as well as soil
+were practically free to the prospector; school fund lands were in most
+cases sold for a song instead of being kept for the public. So general
+has been the attitude that all wealth ought to be in private hands that
+it has been difficult to convict men who have fraudulently obtained vast
+tracts of public land. The magnitude of the operation has given
+"respectability" to the beneficiaries. The taxing power has done little
+to maintain adjustment. In this, as in many other respects, the policy
+of the United States has been far more individualistic than that of
+Great Britain. The latter has graded income and inheritance taxes. In
+the United States, on the other hand, the Federal taxation bears more
+heavily on the poor as they are the large body of consumers,--not, of
+course, in the sense that the individual poor man pays more than the
+individual rich man, but in the sense that a million of dollars owned by
+a thousand men pays more than a million owned by one man. Legally, the
+Constitution of the United States and certain of its amendments gave
+private rights extraordinary protection, especially when contracts were
+construed to mean charters, as well as private contracts. The public
+welfare was conceived to reside almost solely in private rights.[244]
+
+=Increased Recognition of Public Welfare.=--Recent policy and legal
+decisions show a decided change. Reserves of forest lands have been
+established. Water-supplies, parks, and many other kinds of property
+have been changed from private to public ownership. The question as to
+mines has been raised. Graded inheritance taxes have been established in
+some states, and the question of graded income taxes is likely to be
+more generally considered unless some other form of taxation based on
+the social values given to land, or franchises, or other forms of
+property seems more equitable. The Supreme Court in recent decisions
+"has read into the constitution two sweeping exceptions to the
+inviolability of property rights."[245] One is that of public use.
+"Whenever the owner of a property devotes it to a use in which the
+public has an interest, he in effect grants to the public an interest in
+such use, and must to the extent of that use submit to be controlled by
+the public for the common good so long as he maintains the use." The
+second exception is that of the police power which in 1906 (204 U. S.,
+311, 318) was declared to extend "to so dealing with the conditions
+which exist in the state as to bring out of them the greatest welfare of
+its people." The application of this broad principle is still in an
+uncertain condition, but there can be no question that it recognizes a
+changed situation. When people are living in such interdependence as in
+the collective life of to-day, it is no longer possible to locate public
+welfare in any such preponderating degree in private rights as was
+justified under the conditions of a new country a century ago. Says
+Professor Smith:
+
+ "On the fundamental question of the relation of public policy to
+ private property rights the [Supreme] Court has abandoned the
+ individualist views with which the founders of the constitution
+ were imbued; and in its doctrines of the public use and the police
+ power it has distinctly accepted what may be termed, in the
+ literal and proper sense of the word, the socialist view. In so
+ doing, it has unquestionably expressed the dominant opinion of the
+ American people. The American people does not accept the
+ collectivist theory; it believes in private property; but it
+ recognizes that rights of property must yield, in cases of
+ conflict, to the superior rights of society at large."
+
+If some of the means set forth above for securing juster distribution
+were adopted, the first step toward Mill's demand[246] would be met. If
+the community should reap the return for its own growth, if taxation
+should be so arranged as to fall most heavily on those best able to pay
+rather than on those who are most honest or least able to evade, it
+would seem rational to hold that society will find a way to continue the
+four forms of control now existing, making such shifts as changing
+conditions require.
+
+Some of these shiftings are already evident and give promise of greater
+justice without loss of any of the benefits accruing from private
+property.
+
+=Social Justice through Economic, Social, and Scientific Progress.=--Not
+all moral advance comes "with observation," or by political agency. The
+economic process is providing in certain lines a substitute for
+property. Science and invention, which are themselves a fine
+illustration of the balance and interaction between individual and
+social intelligence, individual effort and social cooperation, are
+making possible in many ways a state of society in which men have at
+once greater freedom and greater power through association, greater
+individual development and greater socialization of interests, less
+private property but greater private use and enjoyment of what is
+common.
+
+The substitute for property provided by the economic process itself is
+permanence or security of support. If the person can count definitely
+upon a future, this is equivalent to the security of property. And
+through the organization of modern industry supplemented by insurance
+and pensions, either state, institutional, or in corporations, or in
+mutual benefit associations, there has been on the whole, a great
+increase of security, although it is still unfortunately true that the
+wage-worker may in most cases be dismissed at any moment, and has
+virtually no contract, or even any well-assured confidence of continued
+employment.
+
+It is a mutual cooperation of economic, social, and scientific factors
+which has brought about a great increase of individual use and enjoyment
+through public ownership. This _has placed many of the things which make
+life worth living within the enjoyment of all_, and at the same time
+given a far better service to the users than the old method of private
+ownership. _In this change lies, perhaps, the greatest advance of
+justice_ in the economic sphere, and a great promise for the future.
+There was a time when if a man would sit down on a piece of ground and
+enjoy a fine landscape, he must own it. If he would have a plot where
+his children might play, he must own it. If he would travel, he must
+carry his own lantern, and furnish his own protection from thieves. If
+he would have water, he must sink his own well. If he would send a
+letter, he must own or hire a messenger. If he would read a book, he
+must not merely own the book, but own or hire the author or copyist. If
+he would educate his children, he must own or hire the tutor. We have
+learned that public parks, public lighting and water works, public
+libraries, and public schools, are better than private provision.
+
+The objection which comes from the individualist to this programme is
+that it does too much for the individual. It is better, urges
+individualism, to stimulate the individual's activity and leave his
+wants largely unsatisfied than to satisfy all his wants at the expense
+of his activity. But this assumes that what is done through public
+agencies is done for the people and not by the people. A democracy may
+do for itself what an aristocracy may not do for a dependent class. The
+greatest demoralization at the present time is not to those who have
+not, but to those who appropriate gains due to associated activity,
+complacently supposing that they have themselves created all that they
+enjoy.
+
+=Another Great Advance is the Change in What Makes Up the Chief Values
+of Life.=--In early times the values of life were largely found in food,
+clothing, personal ornaments, bodily comfort, sex gratifications.
+Enjoyment of these involved exclusive possession and therefore property.
+But with the advance of civilization an increasing proportion of life's
+values falls in the mental realm of sharable goods.
+
+Satisfaction in knowledge, in art, in association, in freedom, is not
+diminished, but increased when it is shared. The educated man may have
+no more property than the illiterate. He has access to a whole system of
+social values. He has freedom; he has a more genuinely independent type
+of power than accrues from the mere possession of things. The society
+of the future will find a part of its justice in so adjusting its
+economic system that all may enter as fully as possible into this more
+social world.
+
+=Methods of Social Selection.=--Finally, recognizing all the value of
+the competitive process in the past as a method of selecting ability, it
+must be regarded as crude and wasteful. It is like the method of blind
+trial and error which obtains in the animal world. The method of ideas,
+of conscious use of means to secure ends, is the more effective and the
+more rational. Society now is gaining the scientific equipment which may
+allow the substitution of the more effective and less wasteful method.
+It should discover and educate capacity instead of giving merely a
+precarious encouragement to certain special types.
+
+
+Sec. 9. THREE SPECIAL PROBLEMS
+
+Three special problems may be noticed about which moral judgment is as
+yet uncertain: The open versus the closed shop, the capitalization of
+corporations, and the "unearned increment."
+
+=1. The Open versus the Closed Shop.=--In certain industries in which
+the workmen are well organized they have made contracts with employers
+which provide that only union men shall be employed. Such a shop is
+called a closed shop, in distinction from an "open shop" in which
+non-union men may be employed in part or altogether. The psychological
+motive for the demand for the closed shop is natural enough: the union
+has succeeded in gaining certain advantages in hours or wages or both;
+this has required some expense and perhaps some risk. It is natural to
+feel that those who get the advantage should share the expense and
+effort, and failing this, should not be admitted to the shop. If the
+argument stopped here it would be insufficient for a moral justification
+for two reasons. First, joining a union involves much more than payment
+of dues. It means control by the union in ways which may interfere with
+obligations to family, or even to the social order. Hence, to exclude a
+fellow workman from the opportunity to work because he--perhaps for
+conscientious reasons--would not belong to the union, could not be
+justified unless the union could make it appear that it was maintaining
+a social and not merely a group interest. Second, in some cases unions
+have sought to limit output. In so far as this is done not for reasons
+of health but to raise prices, the union is opposing the interest of
+consumers. Here again the union must exhibit a social justification if
+it is to gain social approval.
+
+On the other hand it may be noted that the individualist of the second
+sort--who believes in the competitive struggle as a moral process--has
+no ground on which to declare for "open shop." Exactly the same
+principle which would permit combination in capital and place no limit
+on competitive pressure, provided it is all done through free contracts,
+can raise no objection against combinations of laborers making the best
+contracts possible. When a syndicate of capitalists has made a highly
+favorable contract or successfully underwritten a large issue of stock,
+it is not customary under the principle of "open shop" to give a share
+in the contract to all who ask for it, or to let the whole public in "on
+the ground floor." Nor are capitalists accustomed to leave a part of the
+market to be supplied by some competitor for fear such competitor may
+suffer if he does not have business. When the capitalist argues for the
+open shop upon the ground of freedom and democracy, it seems like the
+case of the mote and the beam.
+
+An analogy with a political problem may aid: Has a nation the right to
+exclude (or tax heavily) goods or persons from other countries? May it
+maintain a "closed shop"? The policy of the American colonists and of
+the United States has varied. The Puritans maintained a "closed shop"
+on religious lines. They came to this country to maintain a certain
+religion and polity. They expelled several men who did not agree with
+them. The United States excludes Chinese laborers, and imposes a tariff
+which in many cases is intended to be prohibitive against the products
+of other countries. This is done avowedly to protect the laborer, and in
+so far as it is effective it closes the shop. The maxim "This is a white
+man's country" is a similar "closed shop" utterance. On moral grounds
+the non-union man is in the same category as the man of alien race or
+country. What, if anything, can justify a nation or smaller group from
+excluding others from its benefits? Clearly the only conditions are (1)
+that the group or nation is existing for some morally justifiable end,
+which (2) would be endangered by the admission of the outsiders. A
+colony established to work out religious or political liberty would be
+justified in excluding a multitude who sought to enter it and then
+subvert these principles. If a union is working for a morally valuable
+end, e.g., a certain standard of living which is morally desirable, and
+if this were threatened by the admission of non-union men, the closed
+shop would seem to be justified. If the purpose were merely to secure
+certain advantages to a small group, and if the open shop would not
+lower the standard but merely extend its range of benefits, it is hard
+to see why the closed shop is not a selfish principle--though no more
+selfish than the grounds on which the tariff is usually advocated.
+
+=2. The Capitalization of Corporations=, especially of public service
+corporations, is a matter on which there is a difference of policy in
+different states, owing probably to uncertainty as to the morality of
+the principles involved. The two theories held are: (a) Companies should
+issue capital stock only on the basis of money paid in; dividends then
+represent a return on actual investment. (b) Companies may issue
+whatever stock they please, or whatever they expect their income will
+enable them to pay dividends upon; dividends will then represent return
+for valuable privileges, or for some utility to be marketed. In behalf
+of this latter view it may be claimed that if the company pays dividends
+the investors have nothing to complain of, and if it sells its products
+or transportation at market rates, the consumer has nothing to complain
+of.
+
+So far as the relations between corporation and investor are concerned,
+the issues are simple. If the stocks are issued with no expectation that
+they will give any return, merely to "sell," it is pure dishonesty, of
+the same type which under cruder conditions sold spavined horses or made
+counterfeit money, and now assumes the more vulgar type of dealing in
+"green goods." The fact that fictitious capital can be publicly
+advertised, gives it a financial but not a moral advantage. This,
+however, would have such decided limitations, credulous as human nature
+is, that if fictitious capital paid no dividends it would soon have no
+market. Hence, for the far-seeing promoter, the pressure is toward
+making some at least of the fictitious capital pay dividends. What is
+the principle in this case? If we are dealing with a new and untried
+mode of production or public service, the case is simply that of any
+speculation. If a proposed product has a possible utility, but at the
+same time involves so much risk that in the long run only half of such
+enterprises will succeed, society may consider it worth offering a
+profit equal to fifty per cent. in order to pay for the risk. If, on the
+other hand, the income is to derive from valuable public franchises, or
+from the growth of the community and its necessities, the case is
+different. Here there is little, if any, risk for which it is fair for
+society to pay. The excessive capital beyond the cost is designed to
+disguise the rate of profit, and therefore conceal from the community
+the cost of the goods or service. If the public demands cheaper rates it
+is told that the company is now paying only a fair dividend upon its
+stock.[247] The usual method of capitalizing many enterprises of a
+quasi-public sort is to issue bonds to cover the cost of construction or
+plant, and then one or more series of stocks which are known as
+"velvet." In part these stocks may represent a work of organization
+which is a legitimate public service, but in many cases they represent
+devices for transferring public wealth to private property. Enormous
+sums have been taken from the public in this manner. The element which
+makes this method particularly obnoxious is that the quasi-public
+corporations are given a monopoly by the community and then take
+advantage of this to capitalize indefinitely the necessities of a
+growing community. In this case the conception of public service is lost
+sight of in the "dazzling possibility of public exploitation."[248]
+
+Few methods of extorting wealth have equaled this. In some cases bribery
+of public officials has added an item of expense to be collected later
+from the public. When the various forms of public service or protected
+industry were first projected there was risk involved. It was necessary
+to offer inducements to capital to engage in them. It was desirable to
+have railroads, gas, water, express service. But as the factor of risk
+has been eliminated, the public tires of paying double prices, and a
+"fair" return must be estimated on the basis of actual rather than
+fictitious capital. The public has come to have a clear idea as to the
+morality of such practices as have been employed in letting contracts
+for public buildings at prices far above market value. The New York City
+courthouse and Pennsylvania capitol offer familiar examples. Does it
+differ materially from such practices when a company charges the public
+an excessive price for transportation or lighting, and when State or
+municipal authorities authorize by franchise or monopoly such excessive
+charges? Probably the conscience of the next century, if not of the next
+generation, will fail to see the superior moral quality of the latter
+procedure.
+
+=3. The "Unearned Increment."=--This term is applied most frequently to
+the increase in land value or franchise value which is due, not to the
+owner, but to the growth of the community. A tract of land is bought at
+a price fixed by its value as farm land. A city grows up. The owner of
+the land may have been active in the building up of industry, but he may
+not. An increase of values follows, which is due to the growth of the
+community. Shall the owner have it all, or shall the community have it
+all, or shall there be a division? The growth in value of a franchise
+for gas, electric lighting, transportation, presents the same problem.
+It is not usually recognized, however, that the same principle is found
+in every increase of value due to increasing demand. The logical basis
+for distinction would seem to be that in some cases increase of demand
+calls out competition, and the price is lowered; the public thus
+receives its share in lower cost. In other cases, notably those first
+mentioned, there can be no competition, the price is therefore not often
+lowered unless by legislative action, and the whole benefit goes to the
+owner of land or franchise. As regards land, the case is much stronger
+in Europe, for land titles were originally gained there largely by
+seizure, whereas in America private titles have been largely through
+purchase.
+
+Individualism, according as it argues from the platform of natural
+rights or from that of social welfare, would claim either that
+individuals should have all the increase because they have a right to
+all they can get under a system of free contracts, or that it is for the
+social welfare to allow them all they can get since private property is
+public wealth. From the standpoint of natural rights the reply would
+seem to be unanswerable: the community gives the increased value; it
+belongs to the community. From the standpoint of social welfare the
+answer is not so simple. It might, for example, be socially desirable to
+encourage the owners of farming land by leaving to them the increase in
+value due to the growth of the country, whereas city land-owners might
+need no such inducement. Investors in a new form of public service
+corporation might need greater inducements than would be fair to those
+in enterprises well established. But, although details are complex, the
+social conscience is working toward this general principle: the
+community should share in the values which it produces. If it cannot do
+this by cheaper goods and better service, it must by graded taxation, by
+ownership, or by some other means. The British government has already
+considered a measure for ascertaining the land values in Scotland as a
+preliminary step toward adjustment of this question.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[240] Boston has an ingenious method of dividing profits. The company
+which supplies gas must lower the price of gas in proportion as it
+increases its rate of dividends.
+
+[241] February 24, 1908.
+
+[242] Spargo, _Socialism_, 220-27.
+
+[243] _Philosophical Review_, xiv., 370 f.
+
+[244] Cf. J. A. Smith, _The Spirit of American Government_, 1907.
+
+[245] I have followed in this paragraph the discussion of Professor
+Munroe Smith, _Van Norden's Magazine_, February, 1908. For a full
+history see E. Freund, _The Police Power_, 1905.
+
+[246] Above, p. 554.
+
+[247] As in the case of gas in New York City, where the court has
+decided that the public cannot refuse to pay interest on the value of
+the franchise--its own gift.
+
+[248] Cf. Hadley, _Economics_, p. 159.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XXV
+
+PROFESSOR SEAGER'S PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL LEGISLATION WITH SPECIAL
+REFERENCE TO WAGE-EARNERS
+
+
+In the conviction that in the field of social legislation the United
+States is behind the more progressive countries of Europe, Professor
+Henry R. Seager, of Columbia University, presented the following
+_Outline_ for discussion at a meeting of the American Association for
+Labor Legislation, December 30, 1907. It is reproduced with his consent
+as giving concrete expression to several of the principles advocated in
+the foregoing chapters.
+
+ The ends to be aimed at in any programme of social legislation
+ are:
+
+ I. To protect wage-earners in the continued enjoyment of standards
+ of living to which they are already accustomed.
+
+ II. To assist them to attain to higher standards of living.
+
+
+ _I. Measures to protect prevailing standards of living._
+
+ The principal contingencies which threaten standards of living
+ already acquired are: (1) industrial accidents; (2) illness; (3)
+ invalidity and old age; (4) premature death; (5) unemployment.
+ These contingencies are not in practice adequately provided
+ against by wage-earners themselves. In consequence the losses they
+ entail, in the absence of any social provision against them, fall
+ with crushing force on the families which suffer from them, and
+ only too often reduce such families from a position of
+ independence and self-respect to one of humiliating and
+ efficiency-destroying social dependency. The following remedies
+ for the evils resulting from this situation are suggested.
+
+ (1) Employers' liability laws fail to provide adequate indemnity
+ to the victims of industrial accidents because in a large
+ proportion of cases no legal blame attaches to the employer and
+ because litigation under them is costly and uncertain in its
+ outcome. Adequate indemnification must be sought along the line of
+ workmen's compensation for all industrial accidents at the expense
+ of the employer (the British system) or of compulsory accident
+ insurance (the German system). The former seems to accord better
+ with American ideas and traditions.
+
+ (2) The principle of workmen's compensation may be extended to
+ include indemnity for loss of wages due to trade diseases.
+ Provision against illness not directly traceable to the employment
+ must be sought either in compulsory illness insurance or in
+ subsidized and state-directed sick-insurance clubs. Trade unions
+ may assume the functions of such clubs in organized trades. The
+ latter plan seems better suited to present American conditions
+ than compulsory illness insurance.
+
+ (3) Provision against invalidity and old age may be through
+ compulsory old age insurance, or through state old age pensions.
+ The latter, though more costly, are believed to be better suited
+ to American conditions, when hedged about by proper restrictions,
+ than compulsory old age insurance with the elaborate
+ administrative machinery which it entails.
+
+ (4) Premature death may be provided against by an extension of the
+ machinery for caring for the victims of industrial accident and of
+ illness to provide for their families when accident or illness
+ results fatally.
+
+ (5) Provision against losses due to unemployment is attended with
+ great difficulties because unemployment is so frequently the
+ consequence of incapacity or of disinclination for continuous
+ labor. The most promising plan for providing against this evil
+ appears to be through subsidizing and supervising trade unions
+ which pay out-of-work benefits to stimulate this side of their
+ activity. Public employment bureaus and industrial colonies for
+ the unemployed may also help to alleviate the evil of
+ unemployment.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ Adequate social provision against these five contingencies along
+ the lines suggested, would, it is believed, go a long way towards
+ solving the problem of social dependency. If these concessions
+ were made to the demands of social justice, a more drastic policy
+ towards social dependents than public opinion will now sanction
+ might be inaugurated with good prospect of confining social
+ dependency to the physically, mentally, and morally defective.
+
+
+ _II. Measures to elevate standards of living._
+
+ The primary conditions essential to rising standards of living are
+ energy and enterprise on the part of wage-earners and
+ opportunities to make energy and enterprise count in the form of
+ higher earnings. The principal contributions which social
+ legislation may make to advancing standards of living in the
+ United States are believed to be: (1) measures serving to
+ encourage saving for future needs on the part of wage-earners by
+ providing safe investments for savings; (2) measures protecting
+ wage-earners from the debilitating effects of an unregulated
+ competition; (3) measures serving to bring within the reach of all
+ opportunities for industrial training. Standards of living will
+ also be advanced, of course, by nearly all measures calculated to
+ promote the general well-being, such as tax and tariff-reform
+ legislation, laws safeguarding the national domain, the public
+ regulation of corporations, especially those with monopolistic
+ powers, etc., but these are not usually classed under the head of
+ social legislation.
+
+ (1) The greatest present need under this head is for a postal
+ savings bank like those of European countries. The advantages of a
+ postal savings bank over privately managed banks are the wider
+ distribution of places of deposit, post-offices being located in
+ every section of the country, and the greater confidence
+ depositors would feel in such a bank. Once established the postal
+ savings bank might enter the insurance field, as has the British
+ postal savings bank, not as a rival of privately managed insurance
+ companies, but to bring to every wage-earner the opportunity to
+ secure safe insurance. Next to providing itself opportunities for
+ safe investment and insurance, the government has an important
+ duty to perform in supervising the business of privately managed
+ savings banks and insurance companies. Notwithstanding the
+ progress made in recent years in the United States in this field,
+ there is still something left for social legislation to
+ accomplish.
+
+ (2) If energy and enterprise are to be kept at a maximum,
+ wage-earners must be protected from exhausting toil under
+ unhealthful conditions. Skilled wage-earners can usually protect
+ themselves through trade unions, but unskilled workers, women and
+ children, require legal protection. Under this head belong,
+ therefore, the familiar types of protective labor laws. The
+ following may be specified:
+
+ (a) Laws prohibiting the employment of children below fourteen in
+ all gainful pursuits. Such laws should be uniform throughout the
+ United States and rigidly enforced by means of employment
+ certificates based on convincing evidence of age and physical
+ examination to determine fitness. As provision for free public
+ education is made more adequate to present needs the minimum age
+ may be advanced perhaps to sixteen.
+
+ (b) Laws limiting the hours of labor of young persons over
+ fourteen. Protection here should extend to eighteen, at least in
+ factory employments, and employment certificates should be
+ required of all under that age.
+
+ (c) Laws limiting the hours of labor of women. In the regulation
+ of women's work in the United States the principal needs are
+ uniformity and machinery for efficient enforcement. The last is
+ facilitated by the plan of specifying in the law the working
+ period for the protected classes, and American courts must be
+ brought to see the reasonableness (administratively) of such
+ prescriptions. The nine-hour day and prohibition of night work set
+ a high enough standard until greater uniformity and more efficient
+ enforcement shall have been secured.
+
+ (d) Prescriptions in regard to sanitation and safety appliances.
+ General prescriptions in regard to ventilation, etc., need to be
+ made more exact, and much more attention needs to be given to the
+ special regulation of dangerous trades, the existence of which has
+ been largely ignored thus far in American legislation.
+
+ (3) The chief reason for restricting the labor of children and
+ young persons is to permit the physical and mental development of
+ childhood and youth to proceed unhampered and to ripen into
+ strong, vigorous, and efficient manhood and womanhood. To attain
+ this end, it is necessary to provide not only for wholesome living
+ conditions and general free public education, but also for special
+ industrial training for older children superior to the training
+ afforded in modern factories and workshops. The apprenticeship
+ system now fails as a method of industrial training, even in those
+ few trades which retain the forms of apprenticeship. There is
+ urgent social need for comprehensive provision for industrial
+ training as a part of the public school system, not to take the
+ place of the training now given to children under fourteen, but to
+ hold those between fourteen and sixteen in school. As this need is
+ supplied the period of compulsory school attendance may gradually
+ be extended up to the sixteenth year. The guiding principle of
+ such industrial training should be that it is the function of
+ free public education in the United States not only to prepare
+ children to lead useful, well-rounded and happy lives, but to
+ command the earnings without which such lives are impossible.
+
+ The above programme of social legislation is urged as a step
+ towards realizing that canon of social justice which demands for
+ all equal industrial opportunities. It is believed that it will
+ also help to raise the standard of citizenship in the country by
+ making both wage-earners and employers more intelligent, more
+ efficient, and more truly democratic. Thus it will serve to
+ prepare the way for such further industrial reorganization as may
+ be found desirable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE FAMILY
+
+
+The family in its moral aspects has one end, the common good of all its
+members, but this has three aspects. (1) Marriage converts an attachment
+between man and woman, either of passion or of friendship, into a
+deliberate, intimate, permanent, responsible union for a common end of
+mutual good. It is this common end, a good of a higher, broader, fuller
+sort than either could attain in isolation, which lifts passion from the
+impulsive or selfish to the moral plane; it is the peculiar intimacy and
+the peculiar demands for common sympathy and co-operation, which give it
+greater depth and reach than ordinary friendship. (2) The family is the
+great social agency for the care and training of the race. (3) This
+function reacts upon the character of the parents. Tenderness, sympathy,
+self-sacrifice, steadiness of purpose, responsibility, and activity, are
+all demanded and usually evoked by the children. A brief sketch of the
+development of the family and of its psychological basis, will prepare
+the way for a consideration of its present problems.
+
+
+Sec. 1. HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF THE MODERN FAMILY
+
+The division of the sexes appeals to the biologist as an agency for
+securing greater variability, and so greater possibility of adaptation
+and progress. It has also to the sociologist the value of giving greater
+variety in function, and so a much richer society than could exist
+without it. Morally, the realization of these values, and the further
+effects upon character noted above, depend greatly upon the terms under
+which the marriage union is formed and maintained. The number of parties
+to the union, the mode of forming it, its stability, and the relations
+of husband and wife, parents and children, while in the family relation,
+have shown in western civilization a tendency toward certain lines of
+progress, although the movement has been irregular and has been
+interrupted by certain halts or even reversions.
+
+=The Maternal Type.=--The early family, certainly in many parts of the
+world, was formed when a man left his father and mother to "cleave unto
+his wife," that is, when the woman remained in her own group and the man
+came from his group to live with her. This tended to give the woman
+continued protection--and also continued control--by her own relatives,
+and made the children belong to the mother's clan. As recent
+ethnologists seem inclined to agree, this does not mean a matriarchal
+family. The woman's father and brothers, rather than the woman, are in
+the last analysis the authority. At the same time, at a stage when
+physical force is so large a factor, this type of family undoubtedly
+favors the woman's condition as compared with the next to be mentioned.
+
+=The Paternal Type.=--When the woman leaves her own group to live in the
+house of her husband, it means a possible loss of backing and position
+for her. But it means a great gain for the influence which insures the
+wife's fidelity, the father's authority over the children and interest
+in them, and finally the permanence of the family. The power of the
+husband and father reached its extreme among western peoples in the
+patriarchate at Rome, which allowed him the right of life and death. At
+its best the patriarchal type of family fostered the dignity and power
+of a ruler and owner, the sense of honor which watched jealously over
+self and wife and children to keep the name unsullied; finally the
+respective attitudes of protector and protected enhanced the charm of
+each for the other. At its worst it meant domineering brutality, and
+either the weakness of abject submission or the misery of hopeless
+injustice.
+
+Along with this building up of "father right" came variations in the
+mode of gaining a wife. When the man takes a wife instead of going to
+his wife, he may either capture her, or purchase her, or serve for her.
+In any of these cases she may become to a certain extent his property as
+well as his wife. This does not necessarily imply a feeling of
+humiliation. The Kafir women profess great contempt for a system in
+which a woman is not worth buying. But it evidently favors a commercial
+theory of the whole relation. The bride's consent may sometimes be a
+necessary part of the transaction, but it is not always.
+
+=Effects of Father Right.=--This family of "father right" is also likely
+to encourage a theory that the man should have greater freedom in
+marriage than the woman. In the lowest types of civilization we often
+find the marital relations very loose from our point of view, although,
+as was noted in Chapter II., these peoples usually make up for this in
+the rigidity of the rules as to who may marry or have marriage
+relations. With some advance in civilization and with the father right,
+we are very apt to find polygamy permitted to chiefs or those who can
+afford it, even though the average man may have but one wife. In certain
+cases the wives may be an economic advantage rather than a burden. It
+goes along with a family in which father and children are of first
+importance that a wife may even be glad to have her servant bear the
+children if they may only be reckoned as hers. The husband has thus
+greater freedom--for polyandry seems to have been rare among civilized
+peoples except under stress of poverty. The greater freedom of the
+husband is likely to appear also in the matter of divorce. Among many
+savage peoples divorce is easy for both parties if there is mutual
+consent, but with the families in which father right prevails it is
+almost always easier for the man. The ancient Hebrew might divorce his
+wife for any cause he pleased, but there is no mention of a similar
+right on her part, and it doubtless did not occur to the lawgiver. The
+code of Hammurabi allows the man to put away the mother of his children
+by giving her and her children suitable maintenance, or a childless wife
+by returning the bride price, but a wife who has acted foolishly or
+extravagantly may be divorced without compensation or kept as a slave.
+The woman may also claim a divorce "if she has been economical and has
+no vice and her husband has gone out and greatly belittled her." But if
+she fails to prove her claim and appears to be a gadder-about, "they
+shall throw that woman into the water." India and China have the
+patriarchal family, and the Brahmans added the obligation of the widow
+never to remarry. Greater freedom of divorce on the part of the husband
+is also attended by a very different standard for marital faithfulness.
+For the unfaithful husband there is frequently no penalty or a slight
+one; for the wife it is frequently death.
+
+=The Roman Family.=--The modern family in western civilization is the
+product of three main forces: the Roman law, the Teutonic custom, and
+the Christian Church. Early Roman law had recognized the extreme power
+of the husband and father. Wife and children were in his "hand." All
+women must be in the _tutela_ of some man. The woman, according to the
+three early forms of marriage, passed completely from the power and hand
+of her father into that of her husband. At the same time she was the
+only wife, and divorce was rare. But by the closing years of the
+Republic a new method of marriage, permitting the woman to remain in the
+_manus_ of her father, had come into vogue, and with it an easy theory
+of divorce. Satirists have charged great degeneracy in morals as a
+result, but Hobhouse thinks that upon the whole the Roman matron would
+seem to have retained the position of her husband's companion,
+counselor, and friend, which she had held in those more austere times
+when marriage brought her legally under his dominion.[249]
+
+=The Germanic Family.=--The Germanic peoples recognized an almost
+unlimited power of the husband. The passion for liberty, which Caesar
+remarked as prevalent among them, did not seem to require any large
+measure of freedom for their women. In fact, they, like other peoples,
+might be said to have satisfied the two principles of freedom and
+control by allotting all the freedom to the men and all, or nearly all,
+the control to the women. Hobhouse thus summarizes the conditions:
+
+ "The power of the husband was strongly developed; he might expose
+ the infant children, chastise his wife, dispose of her person. He
+ could not put her to death, but if she was unfaithful, he was,
+ with the consent of the relations, judge and executioner. The wife
+ was acquired by purchase from her own relatives without reference
+ to her own desires, and by purchase passed out of her family. She
+ did not inherit in early times at all, though at a later period
+ she acquired that right in the absence of male heirs. She was in
+ perpetual ward, subject, in short, to the Chinese rule of the
+ three obediences, to which must be added, as feudal powers
+ developed, the rule of the king or other feudal superior. And the
+ guardianship or _mundium_ was frankly regarded in early law rather
+ as a source of profit to the guardian than as a means of defense
+ to the ward, and for this reason it fetched a price in the market,
+ and was, in fact, salable far down in the Middle Ages. Lastly, the
+ German wife, though respected, had not the certainty enjoyed by
+ the early Roman Matron of reigning alone in the household. It is
+ true that polygamy was rare in the early German tribes, but this,
+ as we have seen, is universally the case where the numbers of the
+ sexes are equal. Polygamy was allowed, and was practiced by the
+ chiefs."
+
+=Two Lines of Church Influence.=--The influence of the church on
+marriage and family life was in two conflicting lines. On the one hand,
+the homage and adoration given to Mary and to the saints, tended to
+exalt and refine the conception of woman. Marriage was, moreover,
+treated as a "sacrament," a holy mystery, symbolic of the relation of
+Christ and the church. The priestly benediction gave religious
+sacredness from the beginning; gradually a marriage liturgy sprang up
+which added to the solemnity of the event, and finally the whole
+ceremony was made an ecclesiastical instead of a secular function.[250]
+The whole institution was undoubtedly raised to a more serious and
+significant position. But, on the other hand, an ascetic stream of
+influence had pursued a similar course, deepening and widening as it
+flowed. Although from the beginning those "forbidding to marry" had been
+denounced, it had nearly always been held that the celibate life was a
+higher privilege. If marriage was a sacrament, it was nevertheless held
+that marriage made a man unfit to perform the sacraments. Woman was
+regarded as the cause of the original sin. Marriage was from this
+standpoint a concession to human weakness. "The generality of men and
+women must marry or they will do worse; therefore, marriage must be made
+easy; but the very pure hold aloof from it as from a defilement. The law
+that springs from this source is not pleasant to read."[251] It must,
+however, be noted that, although celibacy by a selective process tended
+to remove continually the finer, more aspiring men and women, and
+prevent them from leaving any descendants, it had one important value
+for woman. The convent was at once a refuge, and a door to activity.
+"The career open to the inmates of convents was greater than any other
+ever thrown open to women in the course of modern European
+history."[252]
+
+Two important contributions to the justice of the marriage relation, and
+therefore to the better theory of the family, are in any case to be set
+down to the credit of the church. The first was that the consent of the
+parties was the only thing necessary to constitute a valid marriage.
+"Here the church had not only to combat old tradition and the authority
+of the parents, but also the seignorial power of the feudal lord, and it
+must be accounted to it for righteousness that it emancipated the woman
+of the servile as well as of the free classes in relation to the most
+important event of her life."[253] The other was that in maintaining as
+it did the indissolubility of the sacramental marriage, it held that its
+violation was as bad for the husband as for the wife. The older theories
+had looked at infidelity either as an injury to the husband's property,
+or as introducing uncertainty as to the parenthood of children, and this
+survives in Dr. Johnson's dictum of a "boundless" difference. The
+feelings of the wife, or even of the husband, aside from his concern for
+his property and children, do not seem to have been considered.
+
+The church thus modified the Germanic and Roman traditions, but never
+entirely abolished them, because she was divided within herself as to
+the real place of family life. Protestantism, in its revolt from Rome,
+opposed both its theories of marriage. On the one hand, the Reformers
+held that marriage is not a sacrament, but a civil contract, admitting
+of divorce. On the other hand, they regarded marriage as the most
+desirable state, and abolished the celibacy of the clergy. The
+"subjection of women," especially of married women, has, however,
+remained as the legal theory until very recently. In England it was the
+theory in Blackstone's time that "The very being or legal existence of
+the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated
+and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection,
+and cover, she performs everything." According to the old law, he might
+give her "moderate correction." "But with us in the politer reign of
+Charles II., this power of correction began to be doubted." It was not
+until 1882, however, that a married woman in England gained control of
+her property. In the United States the old injustice of the common law
+has been gradually remedied by statutes until substantial equality in
+relation to property and children has been secured.
+
+
+Sec. 2. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE FAMILY
+
+The psychology of family life may be conveniently considered under two
+heads: that of the husband and wife, and that of parents and children,
+brothers and sisters.
+
+1. The complex sentiment, love, which is found in the most perfect
+family life, is on the one hand (1) a feeling or emotion; on the other
+(2) a purpose, a will. Both these are modified and strengthened by (3)
+parenthood and (4) social and religious influences.
+
+=(1) The Emotional and Instinctive Basis.=--As feeling or emotion love
+may have two roots. A mental sympathy, based on kindred tastes and
+interests, is sometimes present at the outset, but in any case it is
+likely to develop under the favoring conditions of a common life,
+particularly if there are either children or a common work. But it is
+well known that this is not all. A friend is one thing; a lover another.
+The intimacy involved requires not only the more easily described and
+superficial attraction of mind for mind; it demands also a deeper
+congeniality of the whole person, incapable of precise formulation,
+manifesting itself in the subtler emotional attitudes of instinctive
+reaction. This instinctive, as contrasted with the more reflective,
+attraction is frequently described as one of opposites or contrasting
+dispositions and physical characteristics. But this is nothing that
+enters into the feeling as a conscious factor. The only explanation
+which we can give in the present condition of science is the biological
+one. From the biological point of view it was a most successful venture
+when Nature, by some happy variation, developed two sexes with slightly
+different characters and made their union necessary to the continuance
+of life in certain species. By uniting in every new individual the
+qualities of two parents, the chances of variation are greatly
+increased, and variation is the method of progress. To keep the same
+variety of fruit the horticulturist buds or grafts; to get new varieties
+he plants seed. The extraordinary progress combined with continuity of
+type, which has been exhibited in the plant and animal world, has been
+effected, in part at least, through the agency of sex. This long process
+has developed certain principles of selection which are instinctive.
+Whether they are the best possible or not, they represent a certain
+adjustment which has secured such progress as has been attained, and
+such adaptation to environment as exists, and it would be unwise, if it
+were not impossible, to disregard them. Marriages of convenience are
+certainly questionable from the biological standpoint.
+
+But the instinctive basis is not in and of itself sufficient to
+guarantee a happy family life. If man were living wholly a life of
+instinct, he might trust instinct as a guide in establishing his family.
+But since he is living an intellectual and social life as well,
+intellectual and social factors must enter. The instinctive basis of
+selection was fixed by conditions which contemplated only a more or
+less limited period of attachment, with care of the young for a few
+years. Modern society requires the husband and wife to contemplate
+life-long companionship, and a care for children which implies capacity
+in the father to provide for a great range of advantages, and in the
+mother to be intellectual and moral guide and friend until maturity. To
+trust the security of these increased demands to instinct is to invite
+failure. Instinct must be guided by reason if perfect friendship and
+mutual supplementation in the whole range of interests are to be added
+to the intenser, but less certain, attraction.
+
+=(2) The Common Will.=--But whether based on instinct or intellectual
+sympathy, no feeling or emotion by itself is an adequate moral basis for
+the life together of a man and a woman. What was said on p. 249, as to
+the moral worthlessness of any _mere_ feeling abstracted from will,
+applies here. Love or affection, in the only sense in which it makes a
+moral basis of the family, is not the "affection" of psychological
+language--the pleasant or unpleasant tone of consciousness; it is the
+resolute purpose in each to seek the other's good, or rather to seek a
+_common_ good which can be attained only through a common life involving
+mutual self-sacrifice. It is the good will of Kant specifically directed
+toward creating a common good. It is the formation of a small "kingdom
+of ends" in which each treats the other "as end," never as means only;
+in which each is "both sovereign and subject"; in which the common will,
+thus created, enhances the person of each and gives it higher moral
+dignity and worth. And, as in the case of all purpose which has moral
+value, there is such a common good as the actual result. The disposition
+and character of both husband and wife are developed and supplemented.
+The male is biologically the more variable and motor. He has usually
+greater initiative and strength. Economic and industrial life
+accentuates these tendencies. But alone he is apt to become rough or
+hard, to lack the feeling in which the charm and value of life are
+experienced. On the other hand, the woman, partly by instinct, it may
+be, but certainly by vocation, is largely occupied with the variety of
+cares on which human health, comfort, and morality depend. She tends to
+become narrow, unless supplemented by man. The value of emotion and
+feeling in relation to this process of mutual aid and enlargement, as in
+general, is, as Aristotle pointed out, to perfect the will. It gives
+warmth and vitality to what would otherwise be in any case partial and
+might easily become insincere. There was a profound truth which underlay
+the old psychology in which "the heart" meant at once character and
+passion.
+
+=(3) The Influence of Parenthood.=--Nature takes one step at a time. If
+all the possible consequences of family life had to be definitely
+forecasted, valued, and chosen at the outset, many would shrink. But
+this would be because there is as yet no capacity to appreciate new
+values before the actual experience of them. "Every promise of the soul
+has innumerable fulfillments; each of its joys ripens into a new want."
+Parental affection is not usually present until there are real children
+to evoke it. At the outset the mutual love of husband and wife is
+enough. But as the first, more instinctive and emotional factors lose
+relatively, the deeper union of will and sympathy needs community of
+interest if it is to become permanent and complete. Such community of
+interest is often found in sharing a business or a profession, but under
+present industrial organization this is not possible as a general rule.
+The most general and effective object of common interest is the children
+of the family. As pointed out by John Fiske, the mere keeping of the
+parents together by the prolongation of infancy in the human species has
+had great moral influence. Present civilization does not merely demand
+that the parents cooperate eight or ten years for the child's physical
+support. There has been a second epoch in the prolongation. The parents
+now must cooperate until the children are through school and college,
+and in business or homes of their own. And the superiority of children
+over the other common interests is that in a different form the parents
+repeat the process which first took them out of their individual lives
+to unite for mutual helpfulness. If the parents treat the children not
+merely as sources of gratification or pride, but as persons, with lives
+of their own to live, with capacities to develop, the personality of the
+parent is enlarged. The affection between husband and wife is enriched
+by the new relationship it has created.
+
+=(4) Social and Religious Factors.=--The relations of husband and wife,
+parent and child, are the most intimate of personal relations, but they
+are none the less relations of social interest. In fact, just because
+they are so intimate, society is the more deeply concerned. Or, to put
+it from the individual's standpoint, just because the parties are
+undertaking a profoundly personal step, they must take it as members of
+a moral order. The act of establishing the family signifies, indeed, the
+entrance into fuller participation in the social life; it is the
+assuming of ties which make the parties in a new and deeper sense
+organic parts of humanity. This social and cosmic meaning is
+appropriately symbolized by the civil and religious ceremony. In its
+control over the marriage contract, and in its prescriptions as to the
+care and education of the children, society continues to show its
+interest. All this lends added value and strength to the emotional and
+intellectual bases.
+
+=2. Parent and Child.=--The other relationships in the family, those of
+parents and children, brothers and sisters, need no elaborate analysis.
+The love of parents for children, like that of man and woman, has an
+instinctive basis. Those species which have cared for their offspring
+have had a great advantage in the struggle for existence. Nature has
+selected them, and is constantly dropping the strains of any race or set
+which cares more for power, or wealth, or learning than for children.
+Tenderness, courage, responsibility, activity, patience, forethought,
+personal virtue--these are constantly evoked not by the needs of
+children in general, but by the needs of our own children. The
+instinctive response, however, is soon broadened in outlook and deepened
+in meaning. Intellectual activity is stimulated by the needs of
+providing for the physical welfare, and, still more, by the necessity of
+planning for the unfolding mind. The interchange of question and answer
+which forces the parent to think his whole world anew, and which with
+the allied interchange of imitation and suggestion produces a give and
+take between all members of the family, is constantly making for
+fluidity and flexibility, for tolerance and catholicity. In the
+thoughtful parent these educative influences are still further enriched
+by the problem of moral training. For in each family, as in the race,
+the need of eliciting and directing right conduct in the young is one of
+the most important agencies in bringing home to the elders the
+significance of custom and authority, of right and wrong. It is natural
+enough, from one standpoint, to think of childhood as an imperfect
+state, looking forward for its completeness and getting its value
+because of its rich promise. But the biologist tells us that the child
+is nearer the line of progress than the more developed, but also more
+rigidly set, man. And the lover of children is confident that if any age
+of humanity exists by its own right, and "pays as it goes," it is
+childhood. It is not only meet, but a joy, that the fathers labor for
+the children. Many, if not most, of the objects for which men and women
+strive and drudge seem less satisfactory when obtained; because we have
+meanwhile outgrown the desire. Children afford an object of affection
+which is constantly unfolding new powers, and opening new reaches of
+personality.[254] Conversely, an authority which is also tender,
+patient, sympathetic, is the best medium to develop in the child
+self-control. The necessity of mutual forbearance where there are
+several children, of sharing fairly, of learning to give and take, is
+the best possible method of training for membership in the larger
+society. In fact, from the point of view of the social organism as a
+whole, the family has two functions; as a smaller group, it affords an
+opportunity for eliciting the qualities of affection and character which
+cannot be displayed at all in the larger group; and, in the second
+place, it is a training for future members of the larger group in those
+qualities of disposition and character which are essential to
+citizenship.[255]
+
+
+Sec. 3. GENERAL ELEMENTS OF STRAIN IN FAMILY RELATIONS
+
+=Difference in Temperament.=--While there are intrinsic qualities of men
+and women that bring them together for family life, and, while there is
+in most cases a strong reenforcement afforded by the presence of
+children, there are certain characteristics which tend just as
+inevitably to produce tension, and those forces of tension are
+strengthened at the present time by certain economic, educational, and
+cultural conditions. The differences between men and women may be at the
+basis of their instinctive attraction for each other; they certainly
+have possibilities of friction as well. A fundamental difference
+already noted is that the male is more variable, the female more true to
+the type. Biologically at least, the _varium et mutabile_ is applied by
+the poet to the wrong sex. Applied to the mind and disposition, this
+means probably not only a greater variation of capacity and temper as a
+whole,--more geniuses and also more at the other extreme than among
+women,--but also a greater average mobility.
+
+=Differences Accentuated by Occupation.=--From the early occupations of
+hunting and fishing, to the modern greater range of occupations, any
+native mobility in man has found stimulation and scope, as compared with
+the energies of women which have less distinct differentiation and a
+more limited contact with the work of others. And there is another
+industrial difference closely connected with this, which has been
+pointed out by Ellis,[256] and Thomas.[257] Primitive man hunted and
+fought. Much of primitive industry, the prototype, so far as it existed,
+of the industrial activity of the modern world, was carried on by woman.
+Industrial progress has been signalized by the splitting off of one
+phase of woman's work after another, and by the organization and
+expansion of this at the hands of man. Man's work has thus become more
+specialized and scientific; woman's has remained more detailed, complex,
+and diffused. Her work in the family of ordering the household, caring
+for the children, securing the health and comfort of all its members,
+necessarily involves personal adjustment; hence it resists system. As a
+result of the differentiation man has gained in greater and greater
+degree a scientific and objective standard for his work; woman neither
+has nor can have--at least in the sphere of personal relations--the
+advantage of a standard. Business has its ratings in the quantity of
+sales or the ratio of net profits. The professions and skilled trades
+have their own tests of achievement. A scientist makes his discovery, a
+lawyer wins his case, an architect builds his bridge, the mechanic his
+machine; he knows whether he has done a good piece of work, and respects
+himself accordingly. He can appeal from the man next to him to the
+judgment of his profession. Conversely, the standard of the trade or
+profession helps to lift the individual's work. It is a constant
+stimulus, as well as support. A woman's work in the family has no such
+professional stimulus, or professional vindication. If the family is
+lenient, the work is not held up to a high level. On the other hand, it
+must make its appeal to the persons immediately concerned, and if they
+do not respond, the woman feels that she has failed to do something
+really worth while. If her work is not valued, she feels that it is not
+valuable. For there is no demonstrative proof of a successful home any
+more than there is of a good work of art. It is easy enough to point out
+reasons why the picture or the home should please and satisfy, but if
+the work itself is not convincing, no demonstration that similar works
+have satisfied is of any avail.
+
+The way in which men and women come into contact with others is another
+element in the case. Man comes into contact with others for the most
+part in an abstract way. He deals not with men, women, and children, but
+with employers or employed, with customers or clients, or patients. He
+doesn't have to stand them in all their varied phases, or enter into
+those intimate relations which involve strain of adjustment in its
+fullest extent. Moreover, business or professional manner and etiquette
+come in to relieve the necessity of personal effort. The "professional
+manner" serves the same function in dealing with others, which habit
+plays in the individual life; it takes the place of continual
+readjustment of attention. When a man is forced to lay this aside and
+deal in any serious situation as "a human being," he feels a far greater
+strain. The woman's task is less in extension, but great in intension.
+It obliges her to deal with the children, at any rate, as wholes, and a
+"whole" child is a good deal of a strain. If she does not see the whole
+of the husband, it is quite likely that the part not brought home--the
+professional or business part of him--is the most alert, intelligent,
+and interesting phase. The constant close-at-hand personal relations,
+unrelieved by the abstract impersonal attitude and the generalizing
+activity which it invites, constitute an element of strain which few men
+understand, and which probably few could endure and possess their souls.
+The present division of labor seems, therefore, to make the man
+excessively abstract, the woman excessively personal, instead of
+supplementing to some extent the weak side of each.
+
+=Difference in Attitude toward the Family.=--As if these differences in
+attitude based on disposition and occupation were not enough, we have a
+thoroughgoing difference in the attitude of men and women toward the
+very institution which invites them. The man is ready enough to assent
+to the importance of the family for the race, but his family means not
+an interference with other ambitions, but usually an aid to their
+fulfillment. His family is one interest among several, and is very
+likely subordinate in his thought to his profession or his business. In
+early ages to rove or conquer, in modern life to master nature and
+control her resources or his fellowmen--this has been the insistent
+instinct which urges even the long-tossed Ulysses from Ithaca and from
+Penelope again upon the deep. Woman, on the other hand, if she enters a
+family, usually abandons any other ambition and forgets any acquired art
+or skill of her previous occupation. To be the mistress of a home may be
+precisely what she would choose as a vocation. But there is usually no
+alternative if she is to have a home at all. It is not a question of a
+family in addition to a vocation, but of a family _as_ a vocation. Hence
+woman must regard family life not merely as a good; it must be _the_
+good, and usually the exclusive good.
+
+If, then, a woman has accepted the family as the supreme good, it is
+naturally hard to be in perfect sympathy with the man's standard of
+family life as secondary. Of course a completer vision may find that a
+division of labor, a difference of function, may carry with it a
+difference in standards of value; the mastery of nature and the
+maintenance of the family may be neither an absolute good in itself, but
+each a necessity to life and progress. But neither man nor woman is
+always equal to this view, and to the full sympathy for the relative
+value of the other's standpoint. Where it cuts closest is in the
+attitude toward breach of faith in the family tie. Men have severe codes
+for the man who cheats at cards or forges a signature, but treat much
+more leniently, or entirely ignore, the gravest offenses against the
+family. These latter do not seem to form a barrier to political,
+business, or social success (among men). Women have a severe standard
+for family sanctity, especially for their own sex. But it would probably
+be difficult to convince most women that it is a more heinous offense to
+secrete a card, or even with Nora in _The Doll's House_, to forge a
+name, than to be unfaithful. It is not meant that the average man or
+woman approves either form of wrongdoing, but that there is a difference
+of emphasis evidenced in the public attitude. In view of all these
+differences in nature, occupation, and social standard it may be said
+that however well husband and wife may love each other, few understand
+each other completely. Perhaps most men do not understand women at all.
+Corresponding to the "psychologist's fallacy," whose evils have been
+depicted by James, there is a "masculine fallacy" and a "feminine
+fallacy."
+
+=Difference in Age.=--The difference in age between parents and children
+brings certain inevitable hindrances to complete understanding. The most
+thoroughgoing is that parent and children really stand concretely for
+the two factors of continuity and individual variation which confront
+each other in so many forms. The parent has found his place in the
+social system, and is both steadied and to some extent made rigid by the
+social tradition. The child, though to some extent imitating and
+adopting this tradition, has as yet little reasoned adherence to it. The
+impulses and expanding life do not find full expression in the set ways
+already open, and occasionally break out new channels. The conservatism
+of the parent may be a wiser and more social, or merely a more hardened
+and narrow, mode of conduct; some of the child's variations may be
+irrational and pernicious to himself and society; others may promise a
+larger reasonableness, a more generous social order--but meanwhile
+certain features of the conflict between reason and impulse, order and
+change, are constantly appearing. Differences in valuation are also
+inevitable and can be bridged only by an intelligent sympathy. It is
+easy to consider this or that to be of slight importance to the child
+when it is really his whole world for the time. Even if he does "get
+over it," the effect on the disposition may remain, and affect the
+temper or emotional life, even though not consciously remembered.
+Probably, also, most parents do not realize how early a crude but
+sometimes even passionate sense for "fairness" develops, or how
+different the relative setting of an act appears if judged from the
+motives actually operative with the child, and not from those which
+might produce such an act in a "grown-up." Most parents and children
+love each other; few reach a complete understanding.
+
+
+Sec. 4. SPECIAL CONDITIONS WHICH GIVE RISE TO PRESENT PROBLEMS
+
+In addition to the more general conditions of family life, there are
+certain conditions at present operative which give rise to special
+problems, or rather emphasize certain aspects of the permanent problems.
+The family is quite analogous to political society. There needs to be
+constant readjustment between order and progress, between the control of
+the society and the freedom of the individual. The earlier bonds of
+custom or force have to be exchanged in point after point for a more
+voluntary and moral order. In the words of Kant, heteronomy must
+steadily give place to autonomy, subordination of rank or status to
+division of labor with equality in dignity. The elements of strain in
+the family life at present may fairly be expected to give rise
+ultimately to a better constitution of its relations. The special
+conditions are partly economic, partly educational and political, but
+the general process is a part of the larger growth of modern
+civilization with the increasing development of individuality and desire
+for freedom. It is sometimes treated as if it affected only the woman or
+the children; in reality it affects the man as well, though in less
+degree, as his was not the subordinate position.
+
+=The Economic Factors.=--The "industrial revolution" transferred
+production from home to factory. The household is no longer as a rule an
+industrial unit. Spinning, weaving, tailoring, shoemaking, soap-making,
+iron- and wood-working, and other trades have gone to factories. Men,
+young unmarried women, and to some extent married women also, have gone
+with them. Children have lost association with one parent, and in some
+cases with both. The concentration of industry and business leads to
+cities. Under present means of transportation this means apartments
+instead of houses, it means less freedom, more strain, for both mother
+and children, and possible deteriorating effects upon the race which as
+yet are quite outside any calculation. But leaving this uncertain field
+of effects upon child life, we notice certain potent effects upon men
+and women.
+
+It might be a difficult question to decide the exact gains and losses
+for family life due to the absence of the man from home during the day.
+On the one hand, too constant association is a source of friction; on
+the other, there is likely to result some loss of sympathy, and where
+the working-day is long, an almost absolute loss of contact with
+children. If children are the great natural agencies for cultivating
+tenderness and affection, it is certainly unfortunate that fathers
+should be deprived of this education. The effect of the industrial
+revolution upon women has been widely noted. First of all, the opening
+of an increasing number of occupations to women has rendered them
+economically more independent. They are not forced to the alternative of
+marriage or dependence upon relatives. If already married, even although
+they may have lost touch to some extent with their former occupation,
+they do not feel the same compulsion to endure intolerable conditions in
+the home rather than again attempt self-support. An incidental effect of
+the entrance of women upon organized occupations, with definite hours
+and impersonal standards, is to bring out more strongly by contrast the
+"belated" condition of domestic work. It is difficult to obtain skilled
+workers for an occupation requiring nearly double the standard number of
+hours, isolation instead of companionship during work, close personal
+contact with an employer, a measure of control over conduct outside of
+the hours on duty, and finally the social inferiority implied by an
+occupation which has in it survivals of the status of the old-time
+servant. Indeed, the mistress of the house, if she "does her own work,"
+doesn't altogether like her situation. There is now no one general
+occupation which all men are expected to master irrespective of native
+tastes and abilities. If every male were obliged to make not only his
+own clothing, including head- and foot-wear, but that of his whole
+family, unassisted, or with practically unskilled labor, there would
+probably be as much misfit clothing as there is now unsatisfactory
+home-making, and possibly there would be an increase of irritability and
+"nervousness" on the one side and of criticism or desertion on the
+other, which would increase the present strain upon the divorce courts.
+To an increasing number of women, the position of being
+"jack-at-all-trades and master-of-none" is irritating. The conviction
+that there is a great waste of effort without satisfactory results is
+more wearing than the actual doing of the work.
+
+For the minority of women who do not "keep house," or who can be
+relieved entirely of domestic work by experts, the industrial revolution
+has a different series of possibilities. If there is a decided talent
+which has received adequate cultivation, there may be an opportunity for
+its exercise without serious interference with family life, but the
+chances are against it. If the woman cannot leave her home for the
+entire day, or if her husband regards a gainful occupation on her part
+as a reflection upon his ability to "support the family," she is
+practically shut out from any occupation. If she has children and has an
+intelligent as well as an emotional interest in their welfare, there is
+an unlimited field for scientific development. But if she has no regular
+useful occupation, she is not leading a normal life. Her husband very
+likely cannot understand why she should not, in the words of Veblen,
+perform "vicarious leisure" for him, and be satisfied therewith. If she
+is satisfied, so much the worse. Whether she is satisfied or not, she is
+certainly not likely to grow mentally or morally in such an existence,
+and the family life will not be helped by stagnation or frivolity.
+
+In certain classes of society there is one economic feature which is
+probably responsible for many petty annoyances and in some cases for
+real degradation of spirit. When the family was an industrial unit, when
+exchange was largely in barter, it was natural to think of the woman as
+a joint agent in production. When the production moved to factories and
+the wage or the wealth was paid to the man and could be kept in his
+pocket or his check-book, it became easy for him to think of himself as
+"supporting" the family, to permit himself to be "asked" for money for
+household expenses or even for the wife's personal expenses, and to
+consider money used in these ways as "gifts" to his wife or children.
+Women have more or less resistingly acquiesced in this humiliating
+conception, which is fatal to a real moral relation as well as to
+happiness. It is as absurd a conception as it would be to consider the
+receiving teller in a bank as supporting the bank, or the manager of a
+factory as supporting all the workmen. The end of the family is not
+economic profit, but mutual aid, and the continuance and progress of the
+race. A division of labor does not give superiority and inferiority.
+When one considers which party incurs the greater risks, and which works
+with greater singleness and sincerity for the family, it must pass as
+one of the extraordinary superstitions that the theory of economic
+dependence should have gained vogue.
+
+=Cultural and Political Factors.=--Educational, cultural, and political
+movements reenforce the growing sense of individuality. Educational and
+cultural advance strengthens the demand that woman's life shall have as
+serious a purpose as man's, and that in carrying on her work, whether in
+the family or without, she may have some share in the grasp of mind, the
+discipline of character, and the freedom of spirit which come from the
+scientific spirit, and from the intelligent, efficient organization of
+work by scientific methods. Political democracy draws increasing
+attention to personal dignity, irrespective of rank or wealth.
+Increasing legal rights have been granted to women until in most points
+they are now equal before the law, although the important exception of
+suffrage still remains for the most part. Under these conditions it is
+increasingly difficult to maintain a family union on any other basis
+than that of equal freedom, equal responsibilities, equal dignity and
+authority. It will probably be found that most of the tension now
+especially felt in family life--aside from those cases of maladaptation
+liable to occur under any system--results either from lack of
+recognition of this equality, or from the more general economic
+conditions which society as a whole, rather than any particular family,
+must meet and change.
+
+
+Sec. 5. UNSETTLED PROBLEMS: (1) ECONOMIC
+
+The family as an economic unit includes the relation of its members to
+society both as producers and as consumers.
+
+=The Family and Production.=--We have noted the industrial changes which
+have seemed to draw the issue sharply between the home and outside
+occupations. We have seen that the present organization of industry,
+business, and the professions has separated most of the occupations from
+the family, so that woman must choose between family and a specific
+occupation, but cannot ordinarily combine the two. We have said that in
+requiring all its women to do the same thing the family seems to exclude
+them from individual pursuits adapted to their talents, and to exclude
+them likewise from the whole scientific and technical proficiency of
+modern life. Is this an inevitable dilemma? Those who think it is divide
+into two parties, which accept respectively the opposite horns. The one
+party infers that the social division of labor must be: man to carry on
+all occupations outside the family, woman to work always within the
+family. The other party infers that the family life must give way to the
+industrial tendency.
+
+(1) The "domestic theory," or as Mrs. Bosanquet styles it, the
+"pseudo-domestic" theory, is held sincerely by many earnest friends of
+the family in both sexes. They feel strongly the fundamental necessity
+of family life. They believe further that they are not seeking to
+subordinate woman to the necessities of the race, but rather to give her
+a unique position of dignity and affection. In outside occupations she
+must usually be at a disadvantage in competition with men, because of
+her physical constitution which Nature has specialized for a different
+function. In the family she "reigns supreme." With most women life is
+not satisfied, experience is not full, complete consciousness of sex and
+individuality is not attained, until they have dared to enter upon the
+full family relations. Let these be preserved not merely for the race,
+but especially for woman's own sake. Further, it is urged, when woman
+enters competitive occupations outside the home, she lowers the scale of
+wages. This makes it harder for men to support families, and therefore
+more reluctant to establish them. Riehl urges that not only should
+married women remain at home; unmarried women should play the part of
+"aunt" in some one's household--he says _alte Tante_, but it is not
+necessary to load the theory too heavily with the adjective.
+
+(2) The other horn of the dilemma is accepted by many writers,
+especially among socialists. These writers assume that the family
+necessarily involves not only an exclusively domestic life for all
+women, but also their economic dependence. They believe this dependence
+to be not merely a survival of barbarism, but an actual immorality in
+its exchange of sex attraction for economic support. Hence they would
+abandon the family or greatly modify it. It must no longer be
+"coercive"; it will be coercive under present conditions.
+
+=Fallacies in the Dilemma.=--Each of these positions involves a fallacy
+which releases us from the necessity of choosing between them. The root
+of the fallacy in each case is the conception that the economic status
+determines the moral end, whereas the moral end ought to determine the
+economic status.
+
+The fallacy of the pseudo-domestic theory lies in supposing that the
+home must continue its old economic form or be destroyed. What is
+essential to the family is that man and wife, parents and children,
+should live in such close and intimate relation that they may be
+mutually helpful. But it is not essential that present methods of house
+construction, domestic service, and the whole industrial side of home
+life be maintained immutable. There is one fundamental division of labor
+between men and women. The woman who takes marriage at its full scope
+accepts this. "The lines which it follows are drawn not so much by the
+woman's inability to work for her family in the outside world--she
+constantly does so when the death or illness of her husband throws the
+double burden upon her; but from the obvious fact that the man is
+incapable of the more domestic duties incident upon the rearing of
+children."[258] But this does not involve the total life of a woman, nor
+does it imply that to be a good wife and mother every woman must under
+all possible advances of industry continue to be cook, seamstress,
+housemaid, and the rest. True it is that if a woman steps out of her
+profession or trade for five, ten, twenty years, it is in many cases
+difficult to reenter. But there are some occupations where total absence
+is not necessary. There are others where her added experience ought to
+be an asset instead of a handicap. A mother who has been well trained
+ought to be a far more effective teacher in her wholesome and
+intelligent influence. She ought to be a more efficient manager or
+worker in the great variety of civic and social enterprises of both paid
+and unpaid character. There is no doubt that the present educational and
+social order is suffering because deprived of the competent service
+which many married women might render, just as women in their turn are
+suffering for want of congenial occupation, suited to their capacities
+and individual tastes. A growing freedom in economic pursuit would
+improve the home, not injure it. For nothing that interferes with normal
+development is likely to prove beneficial to the family's highest
+interest.
+
+The fallacy of those who would abolish the family to emancipate woman
+from economic dependence is in supposing that because the woman is not
+engaged in a gainful occupation she is therefore being supported by the
+man for his own pleasure. This is to adopt the absurd assumptions of the
+very condition they denounce. This theory at most, applies to a marriage
+which is conceived from an entirely selfish and commercial point of
+view. If a man marries for his own pleasure and is willing to pay a cash
+price; if a woman marries for cash or support and is willing to pay the
+price, there is no doubt as to the proper term for such a transaction.
+The result is not a family in the moral sense, and no ceremonies or
+legal forms can make it moral. A family in the moral sense exists for a
+common good, not for selfish use of others. To secure this common good
+each member contributes a part. If both husband and wife carry on
+gainful occupations, well; if one is occupied outside the home and the
+other within, well also. If there are children, the woman is likely to
+have the far more difficult and wearing half of the common labor. Which
+plan is followed, i.e., whether the woman works outside or within the
+home, ought to depend on which plan is better on the whole for all
+concerned, and this will depend largely on the woman's own ability and
+tastes, and upon the number and age of the children. But the economic
+relation is not the essential thing. The essential thing is that the
+economic be held entirely subordinate to the moral conception, before
+marriage and after.
+
+=The Family as Consumer.=--The relation of the family as consumer to
+society and to the economic process at large involves also an important
+moral problem. For while production has been taken from the home, the
+selective influence of the family over production through its direction
+of consumption has proportionally increased. And in this field the woman
+of the family is and should be the controlling factor. As yet only the
+internal aspects have been considered. Most women regard it as their
+duty to buy economically, to secure healthful food, and make their funds
+go as far as possible. But the moral responsibility does not stop here.
+The consumer may have an influence in helping to secure better
+conditions of production, such as sanitary workshops, reasonable hours,
+decent wages, by a "white label." But this is chiefly valuable in
+forming public opinion to demand workrooms free from disease and legal
+abolition of sweatshops and child labor. The greater field for the
+consumers' control is in determining the kind of goods that shall be
+produced. What foods shall be produced, what books written, what plays
+presented, what clothing made, what houses and what furnishing shall be
+provided--all this may be largely determined by the consumers. And the
+value of simplicity, utility, and genuineness, is not limited to the
+effects upon the family which consumes. The workman who makes fraudulent
+goods can hardly help being injured. The economic waste involved in the
+production of what satisfies no permanent or real want is a serious
+indictment of our present civilization. It was said, under the subject
+of the economic process, that it was an ethically desirable end to have
+increase of goods, and of the kind wanted. We may now add a third end:
+it is important that society should learn to want the kinds of goods
+which give happiness and not merely crude gratification. Men often need
+most what they want least. Not only the happiness of life but its
+progress, its unfolding of new capacities and interests, is determined
+largely by the direction of the consumption. Woman is here the
+influential factor.
+
+If there were no other reason for the better and wider education of
+woman than the desirability of more intelligent consumption, society
+would have ample ground to demand it.
+
+
+Sec. 6. UNSETTLED PROBLEMS: (2) POLITICAL
+
+The family may be regarded as a political unit, first in its implication
+of some control of the members by the common end, and in the second
+place in its relation to the authority of the State.
+
+=1. Authority within the Family.=--If the political character of the
+family were kept clearly in mind, the internal relations of the members
+of the family would be on a far more moral basis and there would be less
+reason for friction or personal clashes. If there is a group of persons
+which is to act as a unity, there must be some leadership and control.
+In many cases there will be a common conviction as to the fittest person
+to lead or direct, but where the group is a permanent one with frequent
+occasions for divergent interests, unity has been maintained either by
+force or by some agency regarded by the people as embodying their common
+will. In the earliest forms of society this, as we have seen, was not
+clearly distinguished from personal and individual command. But as the
+conception of the political worked free from that of the personal agent,
+it could be recognized more and more that the ruler was not the man--not
+Henry or William,--but the King or the Parliament, as representing the
+nation. Then government became a more consciously moral act. Obedience
+was not humiliating, because the members were sovereign as well as
+subject. It was not heteronomy but autonomy. In the family the personal
+relation is so close that this easily overshadows the fact that there is
+also a family relation of a political sort. The man in the patriarchal
+family, and since, has exercised, or has had the legal right to exercise
+authority. And with the legal theory of inequality to support him it is
+not strange that he should often have conceived that obedience was due
+to him as a person, and not to him as, in certain cases, best
+representing the joint purpose of the family, just as in other cases the
+woman best represents this same purpose.
+
+=Equality or Inequality.=--But even when there had been recognition of a
+more than personal attitude the question would at once arise, are the
+members of a family to be considered as of equal or unequal importance?
+The answer until recently has been unequivocal. In spite of such
+apparent exceptions as chivalry, and the court paid to beauty or wit, or
+the honor accorded to individual wives and mothers, woman has seldom
+been taken seriously in the laws and institutions of society.
+Opportunities for education and full participation in the thought and
+life of civilization are very recent. Public school education for girls
+is scarcely a century old. College education for women, in a general
+sense, is of the present generation. But the conviction has steadily
+gained that democracy cannot treat half the race as inferior in dignity,
+or exclude it from the comradeship of life. Under primitive society a
+man was primarily a member of a group or caste, and only secondarily a
+person. A woman has been in this situation as regards her sex. She is
+now asserting a claim to be considered primarily as a person, rather
+than as a woman. This general movement, like the economic movement, has
+seemed to affect the attitude of unmarried women, and to a less degree,
+of men, toward marriage, and to involve an instability of the family
+tie. The question is then this: does the family necessarily involve
+inequality, or can it be maintained on a basis of equality? Or to put
+the same thing from another angle: if the family and the modern movement
+toward equality are at variance, which ought to give way?
+
+The "pseudo-domestic" theory on this point is suggested by its general
+position on the economic relations of the family as already stated. It
+believes that the family must be maintained as a distinct sphere of
+life, coordinate in importance for social welfare with the intellectual,
+artistic, and economic spheres. It holds, further, that the family can
+be maintained in this position only if it be kept as a unique
+controlling influence in woman's life, isolated from other spheres. This
+of course involves an exclusion of woman from a portion of the
+intellectual and political life, and therefore an inferiority of
+development, even if there is not an inferiority of capacity. Some of
+this school have maintained that in America the rapid advance in
+education and intelligence among women has rendered them so superior to
+the average man who has to leave school for business at an early age
+that they are unwilling to marry. A German alliterative definition of
+woman's "sphere" has been found in "the four K's"--Kirche, Kinder,
+Kueche, und Kleider.
+
+If the permanence of the family rests on the maintenance of a relation
+of inferiority, it is indeed in a perilous state. All the social and
+political forces are making toward equality, and from the moral
+standpoint it is impossible successfully to deny Mill's classic
+statement, "The only school of genuine moral sentiment is society
+between equals." But some of the advocates of equality have accepted the
+same fallacious separation between the family and modern culture. They
+have assumed that the family life must continue to be unscientific in
+its methods, and meager in its interests. Some women--like some
+men--undoubtedly place a higher value on book learning, musical and
+dramatic entertainment, and other by-products of modern civilization
+than on the elemental human sympathies and powers which these should
+serve to enrich. It is too easily granted that the opportunity and duty
+of woman as wife and mother are limited to a purely unscientific
+provision for physical wants to the exclusion of scientific methods,
+intellectual comradeship, and effective grappling with moral problems.
+
+=Isolation Not the Solution.=--The solution for the present unrest is
+therefore to be found not in forcing the separation between the family
+on the one hand and the intellectual, political, and other aspects of
+civilization on the other, but in a mutual permeation. They think very
+lightly of the elemental strength of sex and parental instincts who
+suppose that these are to be overslaughed in any great portion of the
+race by cultural interests. And it is to ignore the history of political
+progress to suppose that organic relations founded on equality and
+democracy are less stable than those resting on superiority and
+subordination. The fact is that there is no part of life so much in need
+of all that modern science can give, and no field for intellectual
+penetration and technological organization so great as the family.
+Correlative with its control over economic processes through its
+position as consumer, is its influence over social, educational, and
+political life, through its relation to the children who are constantly
+renewing the structure. To fulfill the possibilities and even the duties
+of family life under modern conditions requires both scientific training
+and civic activity. Provisions for health and instruction and proper
+social life in school, provisions for parks and good municipal
+housekeeping, for public health and public morals,--these demand the
+intelligent interest of the parent and have in most cases their natural
+motive in the family necessities. A theory of the family which would
+limit the parent, especially the mother, to "the home" needs first to
+define the limits of "the home." To measure its responsibilities by the
+limit of the street door is as absurd as to suppose that the sphere of
+justice is limited by the walls of the courtroom. A broader education
+for women is certainly justified by precisely this larger meaning of the
+care of children and of the family interests. The things of greatest
+importance to human life have scarcely been touched as yet by science.
+We know more about astrophysics than about health and disease; more
+about waste in steam power than about waste in foods, or in education;
+more about classical archaeology than about the actual causes of poverty,
+alcoholism, prostitution, and childlessness, the chief enemies of home
+life. In the light of the actual possibilities and needs of family life
+two positions seem equally absurd: the one that family life can be
+preserved best by isolating it, and particularly its women, from
+culture; the other, that it does not afford an opportunity for a full
+life. Neither of these errors can be corrected apart from the other. It
+is in the mutual permeation and interaction of the respective spheres of
+family and cultural life, not in their isolation, that the family is to
+be strengthened. Here, as in the economic field, no one family can
+succeed entirely by itself. The problem is largely a social one. But
+every family which is free and yet united, which shows comradeship as
+well as mutual devotion, is forcing the issue and preparing the way for
+the more perfect family of the future.
+
+=2. Authority over the Family: Divorce.=--The strains which have been
+noticed in the foregoing paragraphs have centered public attention on
+the outward symptoms of unrest and maladaptation. Current discussions of
+family problems are likely to turn largely upon the increase of divorce.
+For the reasons which have been given there has doubtless been
+increasing tendency to seek divorce, and this may continue until more
+stable conditions are reached. Now that the authority of the church is
+less implicitly accepted, individuals are thrown back upon their own
+voluntary controls, and whether marriages are arranged by parents as in
+France, or formed almost solely on the initiative and unguided will of
+the parties as in America, the result is much the same. Two classes of
+persons seek divorce. Those of individualistic temperament, who have
+formed the marriage for selfish ends or in frivolous moments, are likely
+to find its constraints irksome when the expected happiness fails to be
+realized and the charm of novelty is past. This is simply one type of
+immoral conduct which may be somewhat checked by public opinion or legal
+restraint, but can be overcome only by a more serious and social
+attitude toward all life. The other class finds in the bond itself,
+under certain conditions, a seemingly fatal obstacle to the very purpose
+which it was designed to promote: unfaithfulness, cruelty, habitual
+intoxication, and other less coarse, but equally effective modes of
+behavior may be destructive of the common life and morally injurious to
+the children. Or alienation of spirit may leave external companionship
+empty of moral unity and value, if not positively opposed to
+self-respect. This class is evidently actuated by sincere motives. How
+far society may be justified in permitting dissolution of the family
+under these conditions, and how far it may properly insist on some
+personal sacrifice for the sake of larger social ends is simply another
+form of the problem which we considered in the economic field--the
+antithesis between individual rights and public welfare. The solution in
+each case cannot be reached by any external rule. It will be found only
+in the gradual socializing of the individual on the one hand, and in the
+correlative development of society to the point where it respects all
+its members and makes greater freedom possible for them on the other.
+Meanwhile it must not be overlooked that the very conception of
+permanence in the union, upheld by the state, is itself effective toward
+thoughtful and well-considered action after as well as before marriage.
+Some causes of friction may be removed, some tendencies to alienation
+may be suppressed, if the situation is resolutely faced from the
+standpoint of a larger social interest rather than from that of
+momentary or private concern.
+
+=General Law of Social Health.=--Divorce is a symptom rather than a
+disease. The main reliance in cases of family pathology, as for the
+diseases of the industrial and economic system, is along the lines which
+modern science is pursuing in the field of medicine. It is isolating
+certain specific organisms which invade the system under favorable
+circumstances and disturb its equilibrium. But it finds that the best,
+and in fact the only ultimate protection against disease is in the
+general "resisting power" of the living process. This power may be
+temporarily aided by stimulation or surgery, but the ultimate source of
+its renewal is found in the steady rebuilding of new structures to
+replace the old stagnation; the retention of broken-down tissues means
+weakness and danger. The social organism does not escape this law.
+Science will succeed in pointing out the specific causes for many of the
+moral evils from which we suffer. Poverty, crime, social injustice,
+breaking down of the family, political corruption, are not all to be
+accepted simply as "evils" or "wickedness" in general. In many cases
+their amount may be greatly reduced when we understand their specific
+causes and apply a specific remedy. But the great reliance is upon the
+primal forces which have brought mankind so far along the line of
+advance. The constant remaking of values in the search for the genuinely
+satisfying, the constant forming, criticizing, and reshaping of ideals,
+the reverence for a larger law of life and a more than individual moral
+order, the outgoing of sympathy and love, the demand for justice--all
+these are the forces which have built our present social system, and
+these must continually reshape it into more adequate expressions of
+genuine moral life if it is to continue unimpaired or in greater vigor.
+
+We do not know in any full sense whence the life of the spirit comes,
+and we cannot, while standing upon the platform of ethics, predict its
+future. But if our study has shown anything, it is that the moral _is_ a
+life, not a something ready made and complete once for all. It is
+instinct with movement and struggle, and it is precisely the new and
+serious situations which call out new vigor and lift it to higher
+levels. Ethical science tracing this process of growth, has as its aim
+not to create life--for the life is present already,--but to discover
+its laws and principles. And this should aid in making its further
+advance stronger, freer, and more assured because more intelligent.
+
+
+LITERATURE
+
+On the early history of the Family, see the works cited at close of ch.
+ii.; also Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, 1889; Westermarck, _The
+History of Human Marriage_, 1901; Howard, _A History of Matrimonial
+Institutions_, 3 vols., 1904. On present problems: H. Bosanquet, _The
+Family_, 1906; Parsons, _The Family_, 1906; Bryce, _Marriage and Divorce
+in Roman and in English Law_, in Studies in History and Jurisprudence,
+1901; Ellis, _Man and Woman_; Thomas, _Sex and Society_, 1906; Bebel,
+_Woman and Socialism_; Riehl, _Die Familie_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[249] _Morals in Evolution_, Part I., p. 216.
+
+[250] Howard, _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, I., ch. vii.
+
+[251] Pollock and Maitland, _Hist. Eng. Law_, II., 383, quoted in
+Howard, I., 325-26.
+
+[252] Eckstein, _Woman under Monasticism_, p. 478.
+
+[253] Hobhouse, _op. cit._, I., 218.
+
+[254] Helen Bosanquet, _The Family_, p. 313: "'They must hinder your
+work very much,' I said to a mother busy about the kitchen, with a
+two-year-old clinging to her skirt. 'I'd never get through my work
+without them,' was the instant rejoinder, and in it lay the answer to
+much of our sentimental commiseration of hard-worked mothers. It may
+be hard to carry on the drudgery of daily life with the little ones
+clamoring around; it is ten times harder without, for sheer lack of
+something to make it worth while."
+
+[255] Bosanquet, Part II., ch. x.
+
+[256] _Man and Woman._
+
+[257] _Sex and Society._
+
+[258] Helen Bosanquet, _The Family_, p. 272.
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+ Abelard, 150 f.
+
+ Achan, 18, 29, 60, 104
+
+ Addams, Jane, 144
+
+ Aeschylus, 112, 116, 139
+
+ Aesthetic, in Greek valuation of conduct, 91, 112, 116 f., 133 f.,
+ 135 n., 137, 406, 410
+
+ Agency, public, see Public Agency;
+ rationalizing, 40-2;
+ socializing, 42-8
+
+ Altruism, discussion of theories concerning, 384-91;
+ altruistic springs, 385;
+ true and false, 387-8;
+ contrasted with social justice, 389
+
+ Amos, 85
+
+ Approbation, 399, 402
+
+ Angell, 9
+
+ Aquinas, Thomas, 150
+
+ Aristophanes, 112
+
+ Aristotle, on the criterion of a moral act, 12, 37, 202;
+ on nature and the natural, 7, 127 f.;
+ on the State, 127 ff.;
+ Eudaemonism, 134;
+ the "mean," 134;
+ on "highmindedness," 135;
+ on the reflective life, 138;
+ on the good man, 279, 324;
+ on the right, 306 n.;
+ on justice, 414;
+ referred to, 230, 455
+
+ Arnold, M., 91, 338
+
+ Art and arts, as a rationalizing agency, 41 f.;
+ as a socializing agency, 45 f.;
+ create new interests, 79 f.;
+ Hebrew, 107;
+ Greek, 112, 114 f.;
+ mediaeval, 147, 149;
+ Church and modern, 155;
+ as a good that is sharable, 559
+
+ Asceticism, 145, 185, 366, 576
+
+ Attitude, defined, 229;
+ emphasized by one type of theory, 236-7, 240;
+ relation to will, 246;
+ see Motive and "How"
+
+ Augustine, 150
+
+ Aurelius, Marcus, 136
+
+ Authority, of group, 26 f.;
+ behind customs, 52;
+ in Israel's religion, 96 f.;
+ of custom challenged in Greece, 111 ff., 119 ff.;
+ of the church, 145-7;
+ conflict of reason with, 165 f.;
+ of duty, 344;
+ in the family, 599 f.;
+ see Duty, Control, Standard
+
+ Autonomy, as essence of moral duty, 225;
+ Kant's conception of, 169, 346, 352;
+ in later utilitarianism, 361;
+ in State and the family, 599 f.;
+ see Control, Duty, Law, State
+
+ Australian customs, marriage, 22;
+ initiatory, 58 f.;
+ regulated duel, 63
+
+
+ Bacon, Francis, 4, 164, 165
+
+ Bacon, Roger, 164
+
+ Bagehot, 53
+
+ Bain, on happiness, 265;
+ on utilitarianism, 286;
+ his account of duty, 356-8
+
+ Balzac, 189
+
+ Bayard, Chevalier, 149
+
+ Benevolence, 160 f., 375-91
+
+ Bentham, on motive, 228, 247-8, 354;
+ on moral science, 235;
+ on disposition, 254-5;
+ on pleasure and happiness, 264, 286;
+ on utilitarian calculus, 275-6;
+ denial of quality of pleasure, 282;
+ on pleasure of sympathy, 291;
+ democratic individualism of, 525
+
+ Blackstone, 578
+
+ Blood feud, 28, 62 f., 70, 456
+
+ Boniface VIII., Bull of, 147
+
+ Bosanquet, Helen, 584, 595 f.
+
+ Bryce, James, 146
+
+
+ Caesar, 18
+
+ Capital and labor, 499, 501 f., 505 f., 532, 542 f.
+
+ Capitalism, as method of industry, 78, 158-60, 498 f., 508, 538, 545;
+ see Capital, Corporation
+
+ Carelessness, 462-4
+
+ Carlyle, criticism of individualism, 161, 192;
+ of utilitarianism, 265, 289 n.
+
+ Casuistry, 325-8
+
+ Categorical Imperative, 344
+
+ Celts, clan system of, 144;
+ see also Ireland, Welsh
+
+ Character, formation of, 9 f.;
+ organization of, in group morality, 72;
+ in Hebrews, 104-6;
+ among Greeks, 138-41;
+ relation to desire and deliberation, 202;
+ moral importance of, 229, 233;
+ relation to will, 246;
+ relation to conduct, Chapter XIII.;
+ and disposition, 254-7;
+ measures the pleasant and unpleasant, 277-9;
+ unification of, 283;
+ its reconstruction, 343, 362;
+ recognized by law, 460 f.
+
+ Charity, in Middle Ages, 146, 157;
+ and right to life, 444;
+ see Benevolence
+
+ Chastity, 146, 177
+
+ Chief, authority of, 61
+
+ Child-labor, 193 f., 444, 489, 538, 540 f.
+
+ Chinese customs, 17 f., 69
+
+ Chivalry, 149 f.
+
+ Christian conceptions, love, 100;
+ sacrifice, 102;
+ faith, 103;
+ freedom, 108;
+ social order, 109, 187;
+ asceticism and authority, 145 f., 364;
+ unity of members, 147;
+ moral value of labor, 156;
+ relation to social order, 184 ff.;
+ see Church, Hebrew
+
+ Church, its contribution to modern morality, 142;
+ its ideals, 145;
+ and jural theory of morals, 218 f.;
+ its influence on history of the family, 576-8;
+ see also Religion
+
+ Cicero, 152
+
+ Civil Society, Chapter XXI.;
+ defined, 451;
+ reform of its administration, 471-3
+
+ Clark, J. B., 542
+
+ Class ideals, of Greeks, 116 f.;
+ of Germans and Celts, 144 f.;
+ honor and, 86 f.;
+ as source of moral terms, 175 f.
+
+ Class interests, 84, 94, 119-24, 127, 162, 474
+
+ Closed shop, 559-61
+
+ Collective Agencies,
+ see Corporations, Labor Union, Public Agency, Socialism
+
+ Collectivism, its formula, 484;
+ contrasted with socialism, 556
+
+ Colonna, Aegidius, 147
+
+ Communism, 161
+
+ Competition, modern theory of, 158, 531, 542;
+ tends to destroy itself, 532, 538;
+ crude method of selecting ability, 559;
+ Carlyle on, 161
+
+ Conduct, as subject of ethics, 1;
+ two aspects of, 2;
+ three stages of, 8-10;
+ three levels of, 37-9;
+ first level, Chapter III.;
+ second level, Chapter IV.;
+ third level, Chapters V.-VIII.;
+ nature of, 205, 237-8;
+ relation to character, Chapter XIII.;
+ place of happiness in, Chapter XIV.;
+ place of reason in, Chapter XVI.
+
+ Conflicting services, problem of, 493
+
+ Conscience, transition from custom to, 73 f., 179;
+ Greek symbols of, 139 f.;
+ Stoic suggestion of, 140 f.;
+ with Abelard, 151;
+ meaning of, 183, 188 f.;
+ analysis of, see Intuitionalism, Knowledge, Reason
+
+ Conscientiousness, 405, 434
+
+ Consequences, Chapter XIII.;
+ importance of, 234-5, 238;
+ denied by Kant, 242-4;
+ when foreseen form intention, 247;
+ practical importance, 251;
+ as moral sanctions, 358-60;
+ as self-realization, 392;
+ accidental, 459-60;
+ careless, 463
+
+ Content, see Consequences, and "What"
+
+ Contracts, _versus_ status, 20;
+ theory and value of, 158, 452 f., 496;
+ of little benefit to wage-earner, 503-5, 529 f.;
+ as obstacle to legislation, 505 f.;
+ analyzed, 527 ff.
+
+ Control, the right as, 7;
+ in primitive group, 26-9, 32, 34, 52;
+ primitive means of enforcing, 54 ff.;
+ challenged in Greece, 118 ff.;
+ problem of, 217-9;
+ theories concerning, 225, 232;
+ external and internal, 353-61;
+ self-control, 407;
+ see Jural, Law, Standard, Right
+
+ Convention, in Greek morals and ethics, 111 f., 124 f.
+
+ Cooperation, and mutual aid, 43;
+ in industry, 43;
+ in war, 44 f.;
+ in art, 45 f.;
+ as organized in corporations and unions, 495-507
+
+ Corporations, moral difficulties of, 498;
+ management of, 500 f.;
+ relations to employes and public, 501 ff.;
+ require new types of morality, 517-22;
+ capitalization of, 561 ff.
+
+ Corruption, political, 477, 537-9
+
+ Coulanges, 19
+
+ Courage, 42, 118, 410-13
+
+ Courts, primitive, 61;
+ as school of morality, 182 f.;
+ as instruments of oppression, 195;
+ civil, ethical value of, 454;
+ in labor disputes, 504 f.;
+ on police power, 505 f., 555 f.;
+ recognition of public welfare by, 555 f.
+
+ Covenant, in Hebrew moral development, 94 ff.
+
+ Criminal Procedure, reform of, 468-9
+
+ Criterion of the moral, 5-13, 202 ff.;
+ of the good and right, typical theories of, 224 ff.;
+ see Good, Right, Kant, Utilitarianism, Plato, Aristotle
+
+ Crusades, 154
+
+ Cunningham, W., 157
+
+ Custom, and the term ethics, 1;
+ in early group life, 17 ff.;
+ as "second level" of conduct, 38, 51;
+ general discussion of, 51 ff., 171 ff.;
+ educational, 57 ff.;
+ jural, 59 ff.;
+ birth, marriage, death, 64 f.;
+ festal, 65;
+ hospitality, 67 f.;
+ values and defects of, 68 ff.;
+ transition to conscience from, 73 ff.;
+ transition among Hebrews, 95 f.;
+ among Greeks, 110 ff.;
+ opposed to "nature," 120 f.;
+ Grote on, 172 f.;
+ compared with reflective morality, 172 ff.;
+ and moral rules, 330-2, 431
+
+ Cultus, of Hebrew priesthood, 97 ff.
+
+ Cynics, 112, 125 f.
+
+ Cyrenaics, 112, 125 f.
+
+
+ Dante, 150
+
+ Darwinism, and morals, 371 f.;
+ see Naturalism
+
+ Deliberation, 202, 319;
+ and intuition, 322-3;
+ and conscience, 421;
+ of crucial importance, 464
+
+ Democracy, in Greece, 119 f.;
+ development of, 151 ff., 162 f.;
+ moral, 303;
+ and moral problems, 474-81;
+ the corporation in relation to, 500;
+ and economic problems, 521 f.;
+ and individualism, 530, 535;
+ as agency, 558;
+ and the family, 594, 600 f.
+
+ Descartes, 164 f.
+
+ Desire, hedonistic theory of, 269;
+ relation to pleasure, 270-1;
+ to happiness, 272-3;
+ and reason, 308;
+ their organization, 317;
+ conflict with duty, 339-46;
+ and temperance, 406-8
+
+ Dharna, 63
+
+ Distribution, theories of, 545-50;
+ present inequalities in, 545;
+ individualism and, 546;
+ equal division, 547;
+ a working programme, 548-50
+
+ Divorce, 574 f., 577, 603-5
+
+ Dominicans, 149 f.
+
+ Duty, Chapter XVII.;
+ Stoic conception, 140 f.;
+ origin of the term, 176;
+ standpoint of, 232;
+ double meaning of, 337;
+ conflict with desire, 340;
+ explanation of, 342-4, 362-3;
+ authority of, 344;
+ social character of, 345;
+ Kant's view, 346-52;
+ utilitarian view of, 353-62
+
+
+ Eastman, Charles, 43, 54, 60
+
+ Eckstein, 577
+
+ Economic conditions and forces, in kinship and family groups, 24 f.;
+ help to effect transition from group morality to conscience, 76;
+ among Hebrews, 93 f.;
+ among Greeks, 119 ff.;
+ modern, 155-63;
+ in reflective morality, 194;
+ restrict physical freedom, 444;
+ and freedom of thought, 447;
+ legislative reform of, 481;
+ in relation to happiness and character, 487 ff.;
+ social aspects of, 491 ff.;
+ require ethical readjustment, 496, 517-22;
+ impersonal character, 511 f.;
+ ethical principles, 514 ff.;
+ unsettled problems, 523-65
+
+ Education, moral significance of, 168 f.;
+ right to, 446 f.;
+ restrictions upon, 448 f.;
+ as a means of justice, 548 f., 557 f.
+
+ Egoism, 214, 258, 303, 423, 467;
+ hedonistic, 288-9 (see Chapter XV.);
+ naturalistic theory of, 368-74;
+ contrasted with altruism, 375;
+ explanation of, 377-81;
+ reasonable self-love, 382;
+ see Self, Individualism
+
+ Ellis, H., 584
+
+ Eliot, George, 154, 301
+
+ Emerson, 349, 350, 446 n., 470, 581
+
+ Empiricism, 226, 231, 306;
+ discussion of, 329-32
+
+ Ends, and Means, 210;
+ relation of happiness to, 273-4;
+ utilitarian, conflicts with its hedonistic motive, 289;
+ social and rational, 314;
+ kingdom of, 315 and 433
+
+ Enlightenment, period of, 163, 165 ff.
+
+ Epictetus, 140
+
+ Epicureans, theory of life, 125, 135, 218;
+ on friendship, 125, 130, 187
+
+ Ethics, definition, 1;
+ derivation of term, 1;
+ specific problem of, 2;
+ method of, 3-13
+
+ _Ethos_, meaning, 1;
+ Chapter IV., 175
+
+ Eudaemonism, 134, 230;
+ see Happiness, Self-realization
+
+ Euripides, 112, 116, 139
+
+ Evil, problem of, in Israel, 100 ff.
+
+ Excitement, and pleasure, 408
+
+ Ezekiel, on personal responsibility, 104
+
+
+ "Fagan, J. O.," 503
+
+ Family, or Household Group, 23-31;
+ as an agency in early society, 47-9;
+ as affected by reflective morality, 193;
+ and contract, 453;
+ history of, 571-8;
+ psychological basis of, 578-84;
+ strain in, 584-9;
+ present factors of strain in, 590-4;
+ and the economic order, 594-9;
+ authority in, 599-603;
+ and divorce, 603-5
+
+ Feelings, the hedonistic ultimate, 225;
+ an ambiguous term, 249-51;
+ Mill on importance of, 294
+
+ Feud, see Blood Feud
+
+ Fichte, 490
+
+ Fisher, G. P., 143
+
+ Fiske, John, 581
+
+ Franchises, abuses of, 539
+
+ Franciscans, 149 f.
+
+ Francke, Kuno, 149
+
+ Freedom, Pauline conception, 108;
+ formal and real, 158 ff., 437-9, 483 f., 525 f., 529, 549;
+ see Rights
+
+ Freund, E., 555
+
+
+ Galileo, 164
+
+ Genetic Method in Ethics, 3
+
+ Gentleman, in Greece, 116 f.;
+ mediaeval and class ideal of, 144 f., 149, 155-7
+
+ Genung, J. F., 102
+
+ George, Henry, 162, 510 f.
+
+ Germans, customs of, 18, 53;
+ character and ideals, 143 f., 149;
+ family among, 575 f.
+
+ Golden Rule; 334
+
+ Good, the, as subject of ethics, 1, 7 f., 12, 203-5, 215, 236, 241;
+ origin of the conception of moral, 183 f.;
+ in group morality, 69-72;
+ Hebrew ideals of, 107-9;
+ significance in Greek thought, 113, 117, 119, 124;
+ Greek individualistic and hedonistic theories of, 126;
+ Plato on, 131-4, 136 f., 140;
+ Aristotle on, 134 f., 138;
+ and modern civilization, 154 ff., 557 f.;
+ as happiness, 169, Chapter XIV.;
+ private and general, 289-300, 308;
+ the true, 208, 284, 302;
+ good men as standard, 279, 324;
+ rational and sensuous, 337;
+ wealth as, 487;
+ see Happiness, Value
+
+ Goodness, 233, 251;
+ formal and material, 259 n.;
+ of character, 279;
+ and happiness, 284;
+ and social interest, 298;
+ intrinsic, 318-20;
+ and progress, 422;
+ see Virtue
+
+ Government, distrust of, 474;
+ reform of, 479-80;
+ see also State
+
+ Gray, J. H., 17
+
+ Greeks, early customs, 18 f., 46;
+ compared with Hebrews, 91 f.;
+ moral development of, 111-41, 197, 215, 217 f.
+
+ Green, on duty, 225;
+ on hedonism, 269;
+ on practical value of utilitarianism, 287-8;
+ on moral progress, 429
+
+ Grosscup, Judge, 552
+
+ Grote, 19, 172 f., 178
+
+ Group ideal, mediaeval, 144 f.;
+ see Class Ideal
+
+ Group Life, early, Chapter II.;
+ necessary to understand moral life, 17;
+ typical facts of, 17;
+ kinship, 21 ff.;
+ family, 23 ff.;
+ ownership of land in, 24;
+ other economic aspects of, 25 f.;
+ political aspects of, 26-30;
+ rights and responsibilities of individual in, 27-30;
+ religious aspects of, 30-2;
+ age and sex groups in, 32-4;
+ moral significance of, 34 f.
+
+ Group Morality, 34 f., 51 ff.;
+ values and defects of, 68-73;
+ in early Hebrew life, 92;
+ in Middle Ages, 144 f.;
+ persistence of, 173-8;
+ in legal progress, 456;
+ and international relations, 481 f.;
+ in industrial conflicts, 500
+
+
+ Habit, and character, 9 f., 12, 202;
+ effect on knowledge, 319;
+ effect upon desire, 342-3
+
+ Hadley, A. T., 475 n., 488, 563
+
+ Hammurabi, Code of, 82, 105, 574
+
+ Happiness, and pleasure, 230, 263;
+ ambiguity in conception of, 266;
+ relation to desire, 272-4;
+ as standard, 275-80;
+ elements in its constitution, 281-3;
+ final or moral, 284;
+ general, 286;
+ and sympathy, 300-3;
+ and efficiency, 373;
+ private and public, 395-7;
+ see Eudaemonism, Good
+
+ Hazlitt, on Bentham, 268;
+ on excitement, 409 n.
+
+ Hearn, 24
+
+ Hebrews, early morality, 18;
+ moral development, 91-110;
+ compared with Greek, 91
+
+ Hedonism, 230;
+ Hebrew, 106 f.;
+ Greek, 126, 132 f.;
+ criticism of, 269-75;
+ universalistic, 286;
+ egoistic character of, 289-94;
+ Kant's, 309;
+ paradox of, 352;
+ its theory of duty, 353
+
+ Hegel, on institutional character of morals, 225-6
+
+ High-mindedness, Aristotle's description of, 135 n.
+
+ Hobhouse, L. T., on formation of custom, 54;
+ on social order and individuality, 428;
+ on the family, 575 f., 577
+
+ Hoeffding, 253 n.
+
+ Honesty, 188, 414, 496
+
+ Honor, 85-8, 144 f., 176
+
+ Hosea, 95
+
+ Hospitality, in group morality, 67
+
+ "How," the, in conduct, 5-8, 228 f., 240;
+ in group morality, 69 f.;
+ in Hebrew morality, 102 ff.;
+ in Greek ethics, 136 ff.;
+ see Attitude
+
+ Howard, 576
+
+
+ Ibsen, 82, 100, 157, 303, 588
+
+ Ideal, _vs._ actual in Greek thought, 136-8;
+ meaning of, 421 f.
+
+ India, customs of, 26, 63, 524
+
+ Indians (American), 25, 43, 54, 60
+
+ Indifferent Acts, 205-6, 210-11
+
+ Individual, the, in early group life, 20, 22 f., 27-30, 34, 71 f.;
+ collision of with group, 74, 75 f., 82 ff., 88, 184-7, 432;
+ among Hebrews, 104;
+ development of, in modern civilization, 148-69;
+ as affected by reflective morality, 187-92;
+ and society, 427-36;
+ relation to corporations
+ and unions, 500-3;
+ see Individualism, Self
+
+ Individualism, as factor in transition from custom to conscience, 75;
+ forces producing, 76-87;
+ in Israel, 94, 102, 104;
+ in Greece, 114-24, 432;
+ in Greek ethical theory, 124-6;
+ in modern world, 149-63, 184-6, 220-3, 432 f.;
+ in ethical theory, 225 f., 290;
+ Carlyle's criticism of, 265 f.;
+ hedonistic, 289 ff., 301 f.;
+ as self-assertion, 368-75;
+ true and false, 481;
+ political formula of, 483 f.;
+ in economic theory, 523-35;
+ democratic, 525, 530 f.;
+ "survival of the fittest," 525, 532-4;
+ values, 527 f., 548 f.;
+ does not secure real freedom, 529;
+ nor justice, 530 ff., 535, 546 f.;
+ other defects of, 551 ff.;
+ in U. S. Constitution, 534;
+ on "unearned increment," 564 f.;
+ in family, 604;
+ see Individual, Self
+
+ Industry, as a rationalizing agency, 39-42;
+ differentiation in, 41;
+ as a socializing agency, 42 f.;
+ factor in effecting transition from custom to conscience, 76-8;
+ modern development of, 155-9;
+ agencies of, 497
+
+ Initiation, in primitive tribes, 58
+
+ Institutions, 192-5, 222, 225-6;
+ see Chapter XX.
+
+ Intention, and Motive, 246-54, 257-8, 261;
+ and accident, 63, 104, 459-60;
+ see Deliberation
+
+ Intuitionalism, 226, 232, 306;
+ discussion of, 317-25;
+ and casuistry, 325-8
+
+ Ireland, ancient law of, 24 f., 62, 83
+
+ Israel, moral development of, 91-110, 197
+
+
+ James, William, on the social self, 85-7;
+ on animal activity, 204;
+ on effect of emotion on ideas, 253
+
+ Japanese morality, 18
+
+ Jesus, 106 f., 109
+
+ Job, moral theory in, 97, 101 f., 106
+
+ Judgments, moral; see Moral
+
+ Jural influence, 7, 103, 113 f., 177, 218-9, 224, 328, 353-6, 439,
+ 454-5, 467-8
+
+ Justice, in primitive society, 27 f.;
+ as Hebrew ideal, 94 f., 99 f., 108 f.;
+ in Greek theory, 113 f.;
+ natural and conventional, 120 f.;
+ as interest of the stronger, 122-4;
+ modern demand for, 148, 161 ff.;
+ and charity, 148, 389 f.;
+ virtue of, 414-7;
+ development of civil, 456-63;
+ formal and substantial, 465 f., 531;
+ social, 161, 410, 521, 556-8;
+ the new, 496 f.;
+ and individualism, 530-5;
+ in distribution, theories of, 545-50
+
+
+ Kafirs, clanship among, 19, 35
+
+ Kant, on unsocial sociableness of man, 75;
+ forces of progress, 87 f.;
+ his _Critique of Pure Reason_, 166;
+ on dignity of man, 167;
+ general standpoint, 169;
+ individualism of, 191;
+ and the "law of nature," 222 n.;
+ on moral law, 228-9;
+ on the Good Will, 241-3;
+ his theory of will discussed, 241-46;
+ on egoistic hedonism, 289;
+ theory of practical reason, 309-17;
+ theory of duty, 344, 346-52;
+ on legality and morality, 432;
+ cf. also 231, 492, 580
+
+ Kidd, Dudley, 19, 23, 35
+
+ Kinship, 21 ff.; see Group Life
+
+ Knowledge, place in morals, 215;
+ theories of, 231-2;
+ close connection with emotion, 256 n.;
+ with character, 279;
+ see Chapter XVI.;
+ Kant's theory of, 309-16;
+ intuitional theory of, 317-24;
+ casuistical view, 325-9;
+ principles in, 333-4;
+ and sympathy, 334;
+ and conscience, 418-23
+
+
+ Labor, differentiation of, in early society, 41;
+ the gentleman and, 156;
+ church and, 156;
+ and the law, 504-7;
+ conditions of, 540 f.;
+ of women and children, 540 f.;
+ exploitation of, 542-4;
+ Prof. Seager's programme for benefit of, 566 ff.;
+ see Industry, Labor Union, Capital
+
+ Labor Union, moral aspects of, 499 f.;
+ revives group morality, 500;
+ relations to the law, 503 ff.;
+ disadvantages of, 503-6;
+ violence of, 541;
+ open and closed shop, 559 ff.
+
+ Laissez-faire, 161, 475
+
+ Land, "unearned increment," 510 f., 564 f.
+
+ Lankester, Ray, 168
+
+ Law, as control in group life, 59-63;
+ in Hebrew moral development, 95-8;
+ righteousness of the, 103;
+ Greek conceptions of, 118-23;
+ of nature, 130, 136, 152, 222;
+ Roman, 142, 152, 222;
+ and government, 194 f.;
+ as defining rights, 454;
+ development of, 456 ff.;
+ formal in, 465;
+ needed reforms in, 468 ff.;
+ relation to corporations and unions, 503-7;
+ needed to embody and enforce moral standards, 520 f.;
+ moral, see Jural;
+ and Right; see Civil Society, Courts, Justice, Legal, State
+
+ Legal and Moral, 177, 182 f., 433, 439, 454-5, 467-8;
+ see also Jural, Law, Right
+
+ Leibniz, 165
+
+ Levels of conduct, 37-9, 51, 73
+
+ Liability, equals external responsibility, 436
+
+ Liberty, struggle for, 84 f.;
+ see Freedom, Rights
+
+ "Life," Hebrew and Christian moral ideal, 107;
+ the moral as, 606
+
+ Locke, on natural rights, 152;
+ on the "natural light," 166;
+ his _Essay_, 166;
+ on danger of fixed rules, 329
+
+ Love, between the sexes, 107;
+ psychological analysis of, 578 ff.;
+ as moral ideal, 100, 108 f.
+
+ Lubbock, 428
+
+
+ Machine, in production, 507 f.
+
+ MacLennan, 24
+
+ Magic, contrasted with religion, 30 n.;
+ influence on morals, 457 f.;
+ see Taboos
+
+ Maine, status and contract, 20;
+ Slav families, 60
+
+ Mallock, W. H., 533
+
+ Marriage, regulations for, in group morality, 64 f.;
+ violation of, provokes moral reflection, 106;
+ in reflective morality, 193;
+ and contract, 453;
+ Roman, 574 f.;
+ church views of, 576 f.;
+ see Divorce, Family, Sex
+
+ Marti, 98
+
+ Mead, G. H., 164
+
+ Mean, Aristotle's conception of, 134 f.
+
+ Measure, among Greeks, 112 f.
+
+ Men's clubs and houses, 32 f.
+
+ Micah, 99
+
+ Mill, John Stuart, on Bentham's method, 235 n.;
+ on motive and intention, 248;
+ on disposition, 254;
+ on partial and complete intent, 256;
+ on the desirable, 265;
+ on the quality of pleasure, 279-80;
+ on utilitarian standard, 286;
+ on general happiness, 290;
+ criticism of Bentham, 293;
+ on desire for social unity, 294, 295, 296;
+ on personal affections, 299 n.;
+ on general rules, 330;
+ as democratic individualist, 525;
+ on private property, 553 f., 556;
+ on equality in the family, 601
+
+ Monasticism, 149 f., 185 f., 187;
+ women under, 576 f.
+
+ Moral, derivation of term, 1 f.;
+ characteristics of, 5-13, 49 f., 51, 73, 89, 201-11;
+ conceptions, derivation of, 175-7;
+ differentiation of, 177-92;
+ see Morality
+
+ Morality, customary or group, 51 ff.;
+ defined, 73;
+ Hebrew, 91 ff. (Chapter VI.);
+ Greek, 111 ff. (Chapter VII.);
+ Modern, 142 ff.;
+ customary and reflective, compared, 171 ff.;
+ subjective and objective, 259;
+ Kant's view of, 309-10;
+ social nature of, 431;
+ and legality, 433, 439;
+ changes in, necessitated by present economic conditions, 496 f.,
+ 517 ff.
+
+ Mores, or customs, Chapter IV.;
+ definition, 51;
+ authority and origin of, 52-4;
+ means of enforcing, 54-7, 172
+
+ Moses, 82
+
+ Motives, 216, 228, 237;
+ in customary morality, 70;
+ purity of, insisted on by Hebrews, 105 f.;
+ relation to effort and achievement, 243-6;
+ relation to intention, 246-54, 257-8, 261;
+ hedonistic theory of, criticized, 273, 288-92;
+ sympathy as, 298-300;
+ Kantian view of, 346-8;
+ egoistic, 379-80;
+ altruistic, 385-6;
+ in business, 538, 541 f.
+
+
+ Naturalism, ethical, 369-75;
+ and individualism, in the economic, 525, 532-4;
+ see Nature
+
+ Nature, opposed to convention among Greeks, 111 f.; 124-31, 135;
+ in modern development of rights, 152 f.;
+ versus artificiality of society, 221 f.;
+ see Naturalism
+
+ Nemesis, 132, 139
+
+ Newton, 165
+
+ Nietzsche, 82, 122, 370 n.
+
+ Nineteenth Century, development of intelligence in, 163
+
+
+ Obligations, 186;
+ and responsibility, 440;
+ and rights, 441;
+ see Duty
+
+ Opportunity, equal, 526 f., 549
+
+ Optimism and courage, 412-3
+
+ "Oregon case," decision of U. S. Supreme Court in, 540
+
+ Ought, 176;
+ see Duty
+
+ Owen, 161
+
+
+ Paley, 354 n.
+
+ Parsifal, 149
+
+ Parties, political, 478
+
+ Paul, his ethics, 100, 108 f.
+
+ Peace, as moral ideal, 108
+
+ Perfectionism, 231
+
+ Pessimism, and courage, 413
+
+ Pindar, 122
+
+ Plato, on the necessity of the moral sense, 2;
+ moral influence of art, 42;
+ duty to strangers, 67;
+ on measure, 112;
+ religious critic, 116;
+ on the "gentleman," 117;
+ presents arguments of individualists, 120 ff.;
+ on the State, 127, 129 f.;
+ on the good, 131 ff.;
+ on pleasure, 132 f.;
+ on the ideal, 136 ff.;
+ on the self, 140;
+ on rule of wealthy, 491;
+ on private property, 494
+
+ Pleasure, good measured by, among early Hebrews, 107;
+ Greek doctrines of, 125 f., 132 f.;
+ not the object of desire, 269-71;
+ quality, 279, 282, 300;
+ relation to happiness, 230, 281-3;
+ and sympathy, 291-2;
+ control of, 407-8
+
+ Police Power, 505-7, 540 f., 555 f.
+
+ Pollock and Maitland, 460, 576
+
+ Post, 61
+
+ Principles, 179;
+ nature of, 333-4;
+ as motives, 350-2
+
+ Problems of Moral Theory, Chapter XI. (211-23);
+ classified, 201, 214-5, 239, 263, 307
+
+ Production, moral cost of, 489;
+ efficiency of, in individualistic systems, 527;
+ regulation of, 528 f.
+
+ Property, in primitive groups, 24-6;
+ taboo as substitute for, 55;
+ as factor in growth of individualism, 79 f., 83, 94, 119 f.;
+ Plato on, 130;
+ the Church on, 146 f.;
+ and wealth, 487 f.;
+ and character, 490;
+ social aspects of, 491 f.;
+ private, and social welfare, 493-5;
+ implies public service, 515-7;
+ value of private, 551;
+ defects in present system, 551 ff.
+
+ Prophets, Hebrew, 99 f.
+
+ Protagoras, 2
+
+ Protestantism, conception of marriage, 577
+
+ Public Agency, theory of, 525, Chapter XXV.;
+ advantages claimed by, 537 ff.
+
+ Public ownership, 494 f.
+
+ Publicity, necessity of, 511 f., 520 f.
+
+ Punishment, as necessitating moral judgment, 96 f.;
+ evil viewed as by Hebrews, 96 f., 101;
+ and duty, 353-5;
+ and justice, 417;
+ and social welfare, 442-3;
+ and intent, 461;
+ reform of, 470
+
+ Puritans, conception of God-given rights, 152;
+ of art, 155;
+ emphasized value of work, 156
+
+
+ Reason, as element in the moral, 10, 12, 40-2;
+ as standard among Greeks, 91, 131 f., 134;
+ age of, 163, 166;
+ see Chapter XVI.;
+ defined, 306;
+ relation to desire, 308;
+ _a priori_ of Kant, 310;
+ is social, 315;
+ value of principles, 333;
+ and sympathy, 334;
+ opposition to desire, 338, 340;
+ and virtue, 405;
+ and conscientiousness, 418-23
+
+ Religion, in early group life, 30-2;
+ socializing force, 81 f.;
+ moral agency among Hebrews, 94-102;
+ Greek, 115 f., 139-41;
+ ideals of mediaeval, 145-7;
+ modern development of, 148-50;
+ and customary morality, 180;
+ in reflective morality, 195 ff., 432, 448;
+ as sanction of the family, 582;
+ see Church.
+
+ Renaissance, 163 ff.
+
+ Responsibility, collective, in group life, 17-20, 63, 70, 102;
+ development of personal, 104 f., 141, 153, 158, 182 f.;
+ meaning of, 436-9;
+ for accidents, 458-60;
+ for carelessness and negligence, 463-5;
+ as affected by modern economic conditions, 500-3, 519 f.
+
+ Reverence, 30 n., 59, 71, 140, 407
+
+ Revolution, American, 152;
+ English, 151;
+ French, 152;
+ Industrial, 159, 591
+
+ Riehl, W., 595
+
+ Right, as subject of ethics and moral judgments, 1-3, 37 f., 201-3,
+ 215, 218, 224, 307 ff.;
+ meaning of, 7 f., 177, 182 f., 224 f.;
+ as standard, 7, 69, 89, 97;
+ among Hebrews as righteousness, 102-4, 109;
+ among Greeks as justice, 113 f., 140;
+ see also Jural, Justice, Law, Reason, Standard
+
+ Righteousness, typical theme in Hebrew morality, 91 f., 99, 101,
+ 102 ff., 109, 188;
+ as justice, 414;
+ see Right, Justice
+
+ Rights, development of, 83 ff., 151 ff.;
+ natural, 152 f.;
+ modern assertion of, 186;
+ and freedom, 440;
+ and obligations, 441;
+ physical, 442-4;
+ mental, 445-9;
+ civil, 452;
+ contract, 452;
+ of association, 453;
+ to use of courts, 454;
+ development of civil, 456-66;
+ political, 473-4
+
+ Ritual, 55
+
+ Romanticists, on art and morality, 155
+
+ Rome, government and law, contribution to modern morality of, 142,
+ 152, 218, 222;
+ patriarchal family, 572, 574 f.
+
+ Ross, E. A., 520
+
+ Rousseau, 152 f., 221
+
+ Rules, general, 325-35;
+ and casuistry, 326-8;
+ and legalism, 328-9;
+ utilitarian view of, 329-32;
+ distinguished from principles, 333-4
+
+
+ Sanctions, Bentham's theory of, 354;
+ internal, 359
+
+ Sceptics, 135, 218
+
+ Schiller, 42;
+ on Kant, 349
+
+ Schopenhauer, 82
+
+ Schurtz, 33
+
+ Science, as agency in effecting the transition from custom to
+ conscience, 78-80;
+ in Greek development, 114-9;
+ in modern period, 155, 167 f.;
+ influence on morals, 469, 473-6;
+ as promoting justice, 557-9;
+ and family problems, 593 f., 601-3
+
+ Seager, Henry R., programme of social legislation, 566 ff.
+
+ Secret societies, 33
+
+ Seebohm, F., 29, 61
+
+ Self, higher and lower, 5, 347 f.;
+ social, how built up, 11, 86 ff.;
+ individual and tribal or clan, 23 f.;
+ Greek conception of, 138-41;
+ the twofold, 310;
+ Arnold on, 338;
+ Kant on, 347;
+ as social, 294, 345;
+ fictitious theory of, 221, 361;
+ theories regarding its nature, see Chapter XVIII.;
+ self-denial, 364-8;
+ self-assertion, 368-74;
+ self-love and benevolence, 375-91;
+ self-realization, 391-4;
+ see Individual, Self-sacrifice
+
+ Self-sacrifice, 366-8; cf. 102, 298-304, 380-2, 388-91, 393-5
+
+ Seneca, 140
+
+ Sense, moral, 317-22
+
+ Sex, groups on the basis of, 32 f.;
+ as a socializing agency, 47 f.;
+ as prompting to self-assertion, 82;
+ taboos, 55, 60, 65;
+ in Hebrew conceptions, 98, 107;
+ in different standards for men and women, 142 ff.;
+ vices, 82, 189;
+ psychology of, 578-81;
+ differences between the sexes, 584-8
+
+ Shakspere, 23, 62, 97, 154, 197
+
+ Shop, open _vs._ closed, 559
+
+ Simmons and Wigmore, 18
+
+ Sidgwick, H., 265 n., 286
+
+ Sin, 98, 103 f., 108
+
+ Slav groups, 20, 24 f., 60, 83
+
+ Slavery, 84
+
+ Smith, Adam, on the formation of conscience, 141;
+ on sympathy, 160;
+ _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, 166;
+ as individualist, 525, 527
+
+ Smith, Arthur, 69
+
+ Smith, H. P., 106
+
+ Smith, J. A., 555
+
+ Smith, Munroe, 555 f.
+
+ Smith, W. Robertson, 29 f.
+
+ Social Ends, of utilitarianism, 287 (see Chapter XV.), 296;
+ and happiness, 302-3;
+ and rationality, 314;
+ and duties, 338, 345;
+ and altruism, 389-90;
+ and individuality, 430
+
+ Socialism, doctrine of, 162, 523, 525 f., 535;
+ on production, 537 ff.;
+ in decision of U. S. Supreme Court, 556;
+ see Public Agency, Collectivism, Individualism
+
+ Socializing Process and Agencies, 11, 33, 42 f., 47 f., 57 ff., 186,
+ 191
+
+ Socrates, 5, 116, 118
+
+ Sophocles, 35, 112, 118, 139 f.
+
+ Spahr, C. B., 545
+
+ Spargo, John, 543
+
+ Speech, freedom of, 446
+
+ Spencer (Baldwin), and Gillen (F. B.), 22, 58 f.
+
+ Spencer, Herbert, on primitive morality, 70;
+ on nature and morality, 52, 53;
+ on conduct as indifferent and as ethical, 205-6;
+ on feeling as ultimate end, 225;
+ on consequences, 234 n.;
+ on happiness 265 n.;
+ on duty, 358-60;
+ on aesthetic ingredients of happiness, 374 n.;
+ on reward and merit, 515;
+ on voluntary limitation of competition, 532
+
+ Spinoza, 82, 253 n., 397, 410 n.
+
+ Standard, right as, 7;
+ in group morality, 34;
+ custom as, 38, 51 f., 61, 69 f.;
+ law of deity as, 95-7, 103;
+ measure as, 112;
+ popular, in Greece, 116 f.;
+ felt necessity of in Greece, 118, 124;
+ for pleasure, 132 f.;
+ the "mean" as, 135 f.;
+ importance of, 138;
+ utilitarians confuse with object of desire, 266-9;
+ why necessary, 274;
+ happiness as, 275-80;
+ general happiness as, Chapter XV.;
+ the rational, 307;
+ revision of, 422;
+ of political action, 482-5
+
+ Standard of living, 503, 504 n., 522, 540-2;
+ Professor Seager's programme for, 566-70
+
+ State, the, early group as germ of, 26-30, 61 f.;
+ as bearer of moral ideals in Israel, 92 f., 100, 108 f.;
+ in Greece, 127;
+ authority challenged, 118-24;
+ Plato and Aristotle on, 127-30;
+ and Church, 146 f., 150;
+ moral effect of organization of, 194 f.;
+ moral value of, 434-6;
+ defined, 451;
+ see Chapter XXI.
+
+ Stephen, on love of happiness, 273;
+ on egoism, 378 n.;
+ also 265 n.
+
+ Stevenson, Mrs. M. C., 66
+
+ Stoics, the "wise man" of, 135;
+ on following nature, 136;
+ on inner self, 140;
+ natural law, 136, 142, 152, 222;
+ on conflict between the moral and the actual order, 185;
+ cosmopolitanism, 187;
+ on control of passions, 217
+
+ Sumner, on "mores," 51;
+ on luck, 53;
+ on taboo, 55;
+ on Ethos, 175;
+ gladiatorial shows, 189;
+ on relation between goodness and happiness, 396 n.
+
+ Sutherland, 48
+
+ Sympathetic Resentment, 44, 49, 70;
+ see Sympathy
+
+ Sympathy, as factor in socialization, 11, 35, 44;
+ fostered by art, 45 f.;
+ and family life, 47 f.;
+ and hospitality, 68;
+ when moral, 49, 70;
+ in the moral judgment, 141 n.;
+ modern development of, 160 f.;
+ Bentham's view of, 291-2;
+ Mill's view of, 293-4;
+ importance of, 298-9;
+ principle of knowledge, 334;
+ and duty, 348-9;
+ and efficiency, 370-3;
+ and thoughtfulness, 465;
+ see Sympathetic Resentment
+
+
+ Taboos, 55, 60 f.;
+ Hebrew, 96;
+ survival of, in modern life, 174
+
+ Tariff, protective, 560
+
+ Taxation, 555
+
+ Teleological, types of moral theory, 224;
+ see Good, Value
+
+ Temperance, 405-10;
+ Greek view of, 117, 406;
+ Roman, 407;
+ Christian, 408
+
+ Theodorus, 126
+
+ Theory, relation to practice, 4, 212, 606;
+ types of, classified and discussed, 224-39;
+ see also Problems
+
+ Thomas, W., 584
+
+ Thoreau, 489
+
+ Totem groups, 30
+
+ Torts, 455
+
+ Toynbee, A., 492
+
+ Trades Unions, see Labor Union
+
+
+ Unearned Increment, 510 f., 564 f.
+
+ United States, individualism in, 554;
+ Supreme Court decisions, 555 f.
+
+ Utilitarianism, relation of, to modern civilization, 169;
+ theory of intention, 246-52;
+ theory of the good, Chapters XIV. and XV.;
+ method of, 275;
+ introduction of the idea of quality, 279;
+ its social standard, Chapter XV.;
+ theory of general rules, 329-31;
+ theory of duty, 353-61;
+ see also Bentham, Mill
+
+
+ Valuation, changed basis of, 508-11;
+ see Value
+
+ Value, as "higher and lower," 6, 197;
+ the good as, 7 f., 12;
+ measure of, among Hebrews, 107 f.;
+ question and standard of, among the Greeks, 116, 119, 125 ff.;
+ in modern civilization, 153-7, 169, 194;
+ transformation of, 186 f., 558;
+ moral, and incompatible ends, 207-9;
+ and teleological theories, 224;
+ of Good Will, 241
+
+ Veblen, T. B., 488, 515, 592
+
+ Vices, of reflective stage of morality, 189 ff.
+
+ Virtue, 230, 397, Chapter XIX.;
+ origin of term, 156, 176;
+ general meaning, 230, 397;
+ in Greek popular usage, 117 f.;
+ as "mean," 134;
+ as wisdom, 135;
+ highmindedness as, 135;
+ meaning in group morality, 176;
+ "old-fashioned," 188;
+ defined, 399-402;
+ classified, 402-3;
+ aspects of, 403-4;
+ cardinal, 405
+
+ Voltaire, 166, 195
+
+ Voluntary Action, its nature, 9 f., 201 f.;
+ essential to morality, 12 f., 39, 49 f., 73, 89;
+ agencies tending to evoke, 57, 75 ff.;
+ covenant as implying, 95;
+ fundamental, in Hebrew morality, 91, 105 f.;
+ relation to moral theories, 227;
+ divided into "inner" and "outer," 227-30; 237-9, 261, 432;
+ place of motive and endeavor, 243-6;
+ place of disposition, 254-8;
+ and accident, 459-60;
+ see Conduct
+
+
+ War, as agency in development, 42, 44, 66, 84;
+ and right to life, 442 f.;
+ and organized humanity, 482
+
+ Wealth, in Israel, 93 f.;
+ in Greece, 119 ff.;
+ and property, 487 f.;
+ subordinate to personality, 514;
+ should depend on activity, 514 f.;
+ implies public service, 515-7;
+ distribution of, 521 f., 545 ff.;
+ see Property
+
+ Welsh, kin group, 29, 61
+
+ Wergild, 30, 62
+
+ Westermarck, 67, 70, 459
+
+ "What," the, meaning of, 5-8;
+ in group morality, 71;
+ in Hebrew morality, 102 ff.;
+ in Greek theory, 125 ff.;
+ relation to the "how" as outer to inner, 228-39;
+ see Attitude, Consequences, "How"
+
+ Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, 18
+
+ Windelband, 126
+
+ Wisdom, as chief excellence or virtue with Plato, 118;
+ Aristotle, 135;
+ Sceptics, Epicureans, and Stoics, 135;
+ as standard for pleasure, 133;
+ nurse of all the virtues, 405;
+ as conscientiousness, 418-23
+
+ Woman, as "leisure class," 157, 188;
+ as laborer, protection for, 489, 540;
+ and the family, 572 ff.;
+ subordination of, 574 f.;
+ her temperamental and occupational distinction from man, 584 ff.;
+ effect of industrial revolution upon, 591 f.;
+ and occupations, 594 ff.;
+ determines consumption, 598 f.;
+ use of higher training for, 599, 602;
+ see Family, Marriage, Sex
+
+ Work, see Industry, Labor
+
+ Worth, see Value
+
+ Wyclif, 150
+
+
+ Xenophon, 115 f.
+
+
+ Zuni ceremonies, 66
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+American Science Series
+
+
+ Physics.
+
+ By A. L. KIMBALL, Professor in Amherst College.
+
+ Physics.
+
+ By GEORGE F. BARKER.
+
+ Chemistry.
+
+ By IRA REMSEN, President of the Johns Hopkins University.
+
+ Astronomy.
+
+ By SIMON NEWCOMB and EDWARD S. HOLDEN.
+
+ Geology.
+
+ By THOMAS C. CHAMBERLIN and ROLLIN D. SALISBURY, Professors
+ in the University of Chicago.
+
+ Physiography.
+
+ By ROLLIN D. SALISBURY, Professor in the University of Chicago.
+
+ General Biology.
+
+ By WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK, Professor in the Mass. Institute,
+ and EDMUND B. WILSON, Professor in Columbia University.
+
+ Botany.
+
+ By CHARLES E. BESSEY, Professor in the University of Nebraska.
+
+ Zoology.
+
+ By A. S. PACKARD, Professor in Brown University.
+
+ The Human Body.
+
+ By H. NEWELL MARTIN.
+
+ Psychology.
+
+ By WILLIAM JAMES, Professor in Harvard University.
+
+ Ethics.
+
+ By JOHN DEWEY, Professor in Columbia University, and
+ JAMES H. TUFTS, Professor in the University of Chicago.
+
+ Political Economy.
+
+ By FRANCIS A. WALKER.
+
+ Finance.
+
+ By HENRY C. ADAMS, Professor in the University of Michigan.
+
+
+ For full descriptions of the Advanced, Briefer, and Elementary Courses
+ published under each topic, see the publishers' Educational Catalog.
+
+
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+
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+ 378 Wabash Ave., Chicago
+
+
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+
+1. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected
+ without comment.
+
+2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+ these letters have been replaced with transliterations.
+
+3. Certain words use oe ligature in the original.
+
+4. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved from the middle of a
+ paragraph to the end of chapters.
+
+5. Other than that, every effort has been made to represent the text
+ as close to the original as possible.
+
+
+
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